When Civil Servants Fail

by John Schou

the meeting involved at first which consequences my statement would have for the firm. We couldn’t alter the event and decided to use it as a positive signal to promote our firm – honesty from bottom to top. I should emphasize – and I did today – that I could not work for the liar’s government any longer and therefore I had to escape to another country, appreciating the opinion from our lawyer that my deeds in London would not suffice for an expatriation-request.

  After that, we drifted to other issues, not relevant for the case, and at a quarter to nine, I left the meeting as the first. When I came to the car, the Rover, a young man approached. I did not pay any attention, having my head full of other thoughts but when I unlocked the car and entered, he did so too from the other side. I sat down and looked into a handgun.

  Now you want s description of the guy. Well, Mr. Erlandsson was not very satisfied but I am not good at descriptions and it was dark, but at least he was not disguised.”

  “That’s important!” Mr. Smith broke his promise not to interrupt but was punished by a comparison he did not appreciate.

  “Mr. Erlandsson thought so, too. The man did not expect me to survive this encounter. I cannot say how big he is, he was seated before I could pay attention to him and later, I had no occasion to study him. He has black slightly curly hair – at least very dark. The eyes are also dark, shall we say brown. About 30 years old. He was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans. He had a characteristically high-pitched voice; by the way, I think he was Scottish. I am going to the central police station tomorrow in order to produce a phantom picture, perhaps I can get a copy for you?”

  “The probability of getting a copy depends upon if you mention us as potential recipients. I recommend you not to mention Mr. Smith. Just say you want the picture in order to consider it for further details,” I said.

  “OK, let’s just call him Mr. X and return to further details later. He claimed that nothing would happen to me if I cooperated. So believing this was a kidnapping, I drove the car according to his instructions, not very far away. In a deserted area, of which there are not many in Copenhagen – I shall later show you on the map – I was handcuffed, blindfolded and transferred to the backseat. Mr. X was doing all that alone. Then he ordered me to lie down on the seat. At first I refused, but as he threatened to put me in the store behind, I obeyed. Then he started a long drive, almost half an hour, I guess, which is also in agreement with the place where you found me. I was puzzled when I was taken out of the car in what appeared to be a forest. There he tried to put some tablets in my mouth, but most of them, I managed to spit out. Now my confidence in his guarantee, that nothing would happen, was broken. He fixed a broad adhesive across my mouth and then wanted me to walk but I decided to let him work for it himself – which he did in carrying me, though only a limited distance. It did not work out as he had planned. Suddenly, I felt a cutting pain in my left wrist, with warm blood pulsing out on my hand. Then a car arrived, with modern music being played inside closed windows. Mr. X stopped his activity, perhaps while he was not so far away from the car. I could hear arrhythmic noise, with a different rhythm as the music, so I gathered the visitors were playing a love-game in the car. Still, Mr. X waited patiently for them to finish which they did perhaps twenty minutes later. I hope they enjoyed their time; after all they saved my life. As the car was gone, Mr. X tried to put a plastic bag over my head but then another car approached and he tore it off. Then he disappeared and the rest you know, since Andrew, Cynthia and Mr. Gusto had arrived.”

  “I had no idea that the culprit was still nearby,” I said.

  “Now we know how Dr. Kelly died,” was Mr. Smith’s comment. “I guess you told the police the same story, frequently interrupted by Mr. Erlandsson?”

  “Yes,” the victim of questioning confirmed.

  “We cannot compete with the police what the hunt for tracks are concerned, so we shall leave the two places, the one where you were transferred to the backseat and the one in the wood, as well as your car, entirely to their activity. It would only be good to get some information of, what they have found, so please register exactly what they may tell you, in particular concerning the drugs you were forced to ingest.”

  “But I only had a couple, I managed to spit most of them out.”

  “I heard it, and that gives two sources for detection, tablets found in the wood and blood analysis. The only problem is, as I said, that Mr. Erlandsson refuses to tell what he finds while he demands everything that we find out – and somehow, there is usually something to be gained from our activity.”

  I was proud that he now said “our activity,” normally he would speak only in the first person.

  “At least, the attempt with the plastic bag was an important clue. Now we know how Kelly died.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” Mrs. Lockwood said. Also her stepson looked bewildered.

  “Dr. Kelly died following a scratch in his left wrist and a couple of harmless tablets – harmless at least in that dosage. For all intelligent people it was an obvious warning and the press took care of the rest in not asking embarrassing questions to the ridiculous Hutton report. The only difference to your husband, so far, is that he is left-handed and so far survived the assault.”

  “I am also left-handed,” argued Andrew. “Is it a crime in itself?”

  Mr. Smith patiently told him: “Nothing against left-handed, but should you ever want to scratch you wrist in a similar matter, you will probably hold the knife in your left hand and attack the other side. But before you do, read my book, “how to depart from life the right way.” Apart from Kelly, nobody died from such an allegedly self-inflicted injury that year in Great Britain. It is very impressive but not reliable way to die from, because the bleeding stops automatically before you have lost a pint of blood.”

  “So you also think that British authorities stand behind this attack on my life?” the victim asked.

  “Not necessarily. If they do, my task will be to hold them up from repeating the attempt, not to find Mr. X or disclose the ones who gave him his marching orders. These persons are too powerful to hit. However, there is the chance that somebody wanted to get rid of you in a way which would make everybody else, except me, believe this was an act performed by people standing above the law – or themselves believing that they do.”

  “Which evidences do you have for that hypothesis?”

  “Please accept that I must keep that disclosed at the moment,” Mr. Smith answered.

  “But you do have some?”

  “Yes. That also leads me to my next question: can you imagine the existence of enemies in your social and occupational sphere?”

  “Absolutely not! My small family is here and you know from your assistant, that they play a crucial role in my rescue. And the leading persons in my firm have demonstrated their loyalty even before the event.”

  “And the non-leading persons in your firm?” I added.

  “I have no outspoken enemies there, nor am I aware of any among my social connections. By the way, we don’t have any extensive social life, hardly any feasts. I am working very much and Andrew is studying hard, graduating as an engineer next year. And I have never seen Mr. X before.”

  “And if we can do anything to it, you shall never see him again, unless we can bring him for a court here in Copenhagen,” I supplied.

  “Can you influence that the participants in the meeting yesterday evening, except yourself, can come here tomorrow at 10 a.m.?” Mr. Smith asked. I was feeling good at this question; my boss thereby signalized that he had fully control of the case.

  “I can order them to come.”

  “Please do.”

  “I shall call them when we get home. Then there is no point for them, first to go to the firm in the morning. Besides, they all live nearby here.”

  “How many are there?” I asked nervously, as Mr. Smith’s office was not designed for larger meetings.

  “There were only four others at the meeting yesterday ev
ening. The two other members of the board have a perfect alibi: I talked with them in the telephone before the meeting – in their hotel in Australia.”

  Mr. Smith probably agreed that there was no reason for them to go to work early in the morning, as he would express it. In his view, ten in the morning was the absolutely early time for doing something serious, provided there was enough coffee around to facilitate the process.

  After some additional questions, which had the purpose of emphasizing Mr. Smith’s interest in the case rather than so solve it, our guests left. They had had some hard hours in the preceding 24 hours. Also Mr. Smith had had a hard time in the preceding minutes and wanted to rest. However, now I had a burning question: “You said there were some evidence that this attempted murder was not the product of the British government as we must assume the Kelly murder was. What is this evidence?”

  “It is related to the failure of the attempt. How many persons brought Kelly in a different world?”

  “Two or three, it seems.”

  “That is exactly the reason. Our Mr. X may be a very skilful professional killer, but a real intelligence agent doesn’t take such risks. He was counting on Mr. Lockwood to be killed and therefore saw no reason to disguise himself. Thereby there were many weak points where something could go wrong, from his point of view, before it actually did.”

  “What about Mr. Lockwood’s left-handedness?”

  “I discarded that as unimportant. Whether Mr. X knew it and pretended not to know it, or if he was really ignorant of the fact, makes no difference. The scratch at the wrist was anyhow assumed to signalize a suicide and the resemblance to the Kelly murder an invitation to press and authorities not to ask any questions.”

  “When Mr. Lockwood mentioned the plastic bag, you said that ‘Now we know how Kelly died.’ What did you mean by that?”

  “Actually, I did not need Mr. Lockwood’s word for it; I have only not shown any interest for it before. According to the documentation you served me this afternoon, there was no blood loss and no relevant toxicological findings. So how to kill a person without violence or poison? That is where the plastic bag comes in. It kills by means of CO2, which is anyhow naturally present and can hardly be shown as the cause of death by an autopsy – provided you patiently wait until your victim has died and then removes it. I want you to go and get it now.”

  “And where is it?” I asked sceptical.

  “Mr. X was at least so clever not to park his vehicle, whatever it was, near to the planned assassination scene. So if you use some imagination, the most probable place is not difficult to find: He has taken the path to the hunting castle, ‘Eremitagen,’ and from there towards the seaside, where a car or, more anonymously, a bike has been waiting. There is definitely a wastebasket there and we can only hope it was not emptied today. Except for that danger, there have probably not been many wanderers today, at this time of the year and the current weather, so your chances to find an empty plastic bag there are not bad.”

  “Unless Mr. X has been killed by an angry deer in the night …”

  “Even better. Then we can present his would-be assassin to Mr. Lockwood and the vehicle will be waiting there instead. You better be going before Mr. Erlandsson start thinking.”

  “No risk,” I muttered.

  “And another question: can you produce a timeline of the events?”

  “I did already in my notebook, only I did not transfer it to the computer.”

  “You can do so when you return, there should still be enough time before dinner. You can use the occasion to let the car get some fresh air.”

  I like driving the old Bentley around, in particular when there are some people to impress. Today,