By the fifth day she’d dug out less than an inch, and gastric juices were starting to burn her insides.
The witch had repeated her demands every day at exactly the same time. If Merete didn’t wipe off the glass panes, the old woman refused to turn the lights back on, and she would deliver only spoiled food. The man had tried to mediate, but without success. There they were now, making their demands. Merete didn’t give a damn about the light, but her intestines were screaming. If she didn’t eat, she’d get sick, and she didn’t want to be sick.
She looked up at the reddish film on the panes; there was a faint light showing through the clear patch.
“If it’s so important to you, give me something I can use to wipe the panes clean!” she finally yelled.
“Use your sleeve and your piss, then we’ll turn the light on and give you some food!” the woman shouted back.
“All right, but you’ll have to send in a new jacket.”
At that the woman started in with her disgusting stabbing laughter that went straight to the marrow. She didn’t answer, just laughed until her lungs were empty. Then it was silent again.
“I won’t do it,” Merete said. But she did.
It didn’t take long, but it felt like years of defeat.
Even though they still stood out there once in a while, they couldn’t see what she was doing. When she sat over by the door she was in a blind spot, just like when she sat on the floor between the two mirrored panes. If they decided to come unannounced by night, they would immediately hear the scraping sound of the flashlight, but they never came. That was the advantage of the system they had put in place. She knew that she had the night to herself.
When she had scraped out almost an inch and a half of concrete, her existence, which had always been so predictable, changed. She had been sitting under the flickering fluorescent lights waiting for food as she figured out that it would soon be Uffe’s birthday. It was already the month of May, at any rate. May for the fifth time since she’d been imprisoned. May 2006. She had been sitting next to the toilet bucket, cleaning her teeth and thinking about Uffe, clearly picturing the sun dancing in a blue sky. “Happy birthday to you,” she sang in a hoarse voice, picturing Uffe’s happy face. Somewhere out there he was doing fine—she was sure of it. Of course he was doing fine. That was what she’d told herself so often.
“It’s that button, Lasse,” said the woman’s voice suddenly. “We can’t get it to come back out again, so she’s been able to hear everything we say.”
The image of sun and blue sky disappeared instantly, and her heart began to hammer. It was the first time she had heard the woman address the man they called Lasse.
“For how long?” replied a muted voice that made Merete hold her breath.
“Since the last time you were here. Five or six months.”
“Have you said anything she shouldn’t hear?”
“Of course not.”
For a moment there was silence. “Soon it won’t matter anyway. Go ahead and let her hear what we say. At least until I decide something else.”
That remark felt like the blow of an ax to Merete.
“Soon it won’t matter anyway.” What wouldn’t matter? What did he mean? What was going to happen?
“She’s been a real bitch while you were gone. She tried to starve herself to death, and once she blocked the hatch door. Then she smeared her own blood on the panes so we couldn’t see through them.”
“Our chum told me she had a toothache for a while. I wish I could have seen that,” said Lasse.
The woman outside laughed dryly. They knew that Merete was sitting inside, listening to everything they said. What made them act like that? What had she ever done to them?
“You monsters—what did I ever do to you?” she shouted at the top of her lungs as she stood up. “Turn off the light in here so I can see you! Turn off the light so I can look into your eyes while you talk!”
Again she heard the woman laugh. “Dream on, girl!” she shouted back.
“You want us to turn off the lights?” Lasse chuckled. “Sure, why not?” he said. “This could be the moment when the whole thing really starts. Then we’ll have some interesting days ahead of us until it’s over.”
Those were terrible words. The woman tried to object, but the man silenced her with a few harsh remarks. Then the lights above her in the ceiling suddenly went out.
Merete stood still for a moment, her pulse racing as she tried to get used to the faint light streaming into the room from outside. At first she saw the beasts out there merely as shadows, but slowly they became more distinct. The woman reached only to the bottom edge of one of the portholes; the man was much taller. Merete assumed he was Lasse.
Slowly he stepped closer. His blurry figure took form. Broad shoulders, well-proportioned figure. Not like the other tall, thin man.
She felt simultaneously an urge to curse them and to beg them to take pity on her. Anything that might make them tell her why they had done this to her. Here he was, the man who made the decisions. This was the first time she was seeing him, and there was something disturbingly exciting about the moment. She sensed that he alone would decide whether she should be allowed to know more, and now she was going to demand her rights. But when he took a step closer and she saw his face, the words refused to come out.
She looked with shock at his mouth. Saw the crooked smile freeze. Saw his white teeth slowly appear. Saw everything gather itself into a whole and shoot electrical charges through her body.
Now she knew who Lasse was.
31
2007
Out on the lawn at Egely, Carl apologized to the nurse for the episode with Uffe. Then he threw the photographs and Playmobil figures into the plastic bag and strode toward the parking lot, while Uffe kept on screaming in the background. It was only when Carl started up the engine that he noticed the chaotic scene as staff members tore down the slope. That was the end of his investigative efforts on the grounds of Egely. Fair enough.
Uffe’s reaction had been very strong. So now Carl knew that in some way or another Uffe was present in the same world as everyone else. Uffe had looked into the eyes of the boy named Atomos in the photo, and it had shaken him badly. There was no doubt about that. This signified an unusually big step forward.
Carl pulled over next to a field and tapped in the name of the Godhavn children’s home on the car’s Internet system. The phone number appeared at once.
He didn’t have to offer much in the way of explanation. Apparently the staff were used to having the police call them, so there was no need to beat about the bush.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “None of your residents has done anything wrong. I’m calling about a boy who lived at the home in the late eighties. I don’t know his real name, but he was called Atomos. Does that name ring a bell?”
“In the late eighties?” said the staff member on duty. “No, I haven’t been here that long. We have case files on all the children, but they’re probably not listed under nicknames like that. Are you sure you don’t have some other name we could look up?”
“No, sorry.” Carl glanced over at the fields that reeked of manure. “Do you know of any staff member who worked there back then?”
“Hmm. Not among the full-time employees. I’m pretty sure of that,” she said. “But, let me see . . . oh, that’s right, we do have a retired colleague, John, who comes in a couple of times a week. He just can’t bear to stay away, and the boys would miss him if he didn’t come in. I’m sure he worked here back then.”
“He wouldn’t happen to be there today, would he?”
“John? No, he’s on holiday. The Canary Islands for one thousand, two hundred and ninety-five kroner. How could he resist? as he likes to say. But he’ll be back on Monday, so I’ll see if we can get him to come in. It’s mostly for the boys’ sake. They like him. Give us a call on Monday, and we’ll see what we can do.”
“Could you give me his home number?”
“No, I’m sorry. It’s against our policy to give out personal phone numbers for staff members. You never know who might be asking for it.”
“My name is Carl Mørck. I think I already told you that. I’m a police detective, you may recall.”
She laughed. “I’m sure you can track down his number if you’re so clever, but I suggest that you wait until Monday and call us back. OK?”
Carl leaned back in his car seat and looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock. He could still make it back to the office in time to check out Merete Lynggaard’s cell phone, if the battery was still working after five years, which was doubtful. If it was dead, they’d have to get a new one.
Out in the fields, screeching clusters of seagulls rose to the sky behind the hills. A vehicle came rumbling underneath them, whipping up dust and dirt. Then the top of the driver’s cab appeared. It was a tractor, a huge Landini with a blue cab, lumbering steadily along the plowed field. That was the sort of thing a person knew if he’d grown up with shit on his wooden clogs. So it’s time to spread the manure here too, he thought as he turned on the engine, about to drive off before the stench blew over toward him and settled in the car’s air conditioning system.
At that very moment he caught sight of the farmer inside the Plexiglas windows. He was wearing a baseball cap, and all of his attention was focused on his work and the prospect of having a record harvest this summer. He had a ruddy face, and his shirt was red-and-black checked. A real lumberjack-patterned shirt. Easily recognizable.
Fuck, he thought. He’d forgotten to call his colleagues in Sorø and tell them which type of shirt pattern he thought he could remember the shooter wearing out in Amager. He sighed at the thought. If only they hadn’t involved him in all that. Soon they’d probably be asking him to come back and point out the shirt for a second time.
He punched in the number and got hold of the officer on duty. He was immediately transferred to the head of the investigation, the one they called Jørgensen.
“This is Carl Mørck in Copenhagen. I think I can confirm that one of the shirts you showed me matched the one worn by the perp out in Amager.”
Jørgensen didn’t respond. Why the hell didn’t he at least clear his throat so Carl would know he hadn’t croaked in the meantime on the other end of the line?
“Ahem,” said Carl, thinking it might prompt a reaction, but the man didn’t say a word. Maybe he’d put his hand over the mouthpiece.
“I’ve been having dreams the past few nights, you see,” Carl went on. “More scenes from the shooting incident have come back to me. Including a picture of the shirt. I can see it really clearly now.”
“Is that so?” Jørgensen said at last after yet another resounding silence on the line. He might at least have mustered a few cheers.
“Don’t you want to know which shirt on the table I’m thinking of ?”
“And you think you can remember?”
“If I can remember the shirt after getting a bullet in my head and three hundred and thirty pounds of paralyzed deadweight on top of me while I was being sprayed with a gallon of my best colleagues’ blood, don’t you think I can remember how those damned shirts were laid out after four days?”
“It doesn’t really seem normal.”
Carl counted to ten. It was very possible it wasn’t normal on Storgade in Sorø. That was probably also why he’d ended up in a police department with twenty times as many homicide cases as Jørgensen.
But what he said was: “I’m also good at playing the Memory Game.”
A pause to let the words sink in. “Oh, really! Well, then I’d certainly like to hear what you can tell me.”
Damn, what a country bumpkin the man was.
“The shirt was the one on the far left,” said Carl. “The one closest to the window.”
“OK,” replied Jørgensen. “That matches what the witness told us.”
“Good. I’m glad. Well, that was all. I’ll send you an e-mail so you have it in writing.” By now the tractor in the field had come precariously close. The spray of piss and manure that pounded out of the hoses and onto the ground was truly a joy to behold.
Carl rolled up the window on the passenger side and was just about to end the conversation.
“Just a moment, before you go,” said Jørgensen. “We’ve taken in a suspect. Well, just between the two of us, I can say that we’re convinced we’ve caught one of the perpetrators. When do you think you can come down here for the lineup? Some time tomorrow?”
“A lineup? No, I can’t do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow is Saturday, and it’s my day off. When I’m done sleeping, I’m going to get up and make myself a cup of coffee and then go back to bed. I may do that all day long, you never know. Besides, I never saw the perps out in Amager, which I’ve actually said many times, in case you take a look at the reports. And since the man’s face wasn’t revealed to me in my dreams, you can conclude that I haven’t seen him since. So I’m not coming in. Is that OK with you, Jørgensen?”
Another pause, for Christ’s sake. This was more enervating than politicians who constantly inserted an “er” or “um” between every other word in their nauseating, long-winded sentences.
“Only you can decide whether it’s OK or not,” said Jørgensen. “It was your friends who suffered at the hands of this man. We’ve searched the suspect’s place of residence, and several of the things we found indicate a connection between the events in Amager and Sorø.”
“That’s good, Jørgensen. Good luck, then. I’ll follow the story in the newspapers.”
“You do know that you’ll be asked to testify in court, don’t you? It’s your identification of the shirt that helps to link the two crimes.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there. Happy hunting.”
Carl cut off the connection and noted an unpleasant feeling in his chest. A much stronger sensation than before. Maybe it was due to the unbelievably offensive odor that had seeped into the car, but it could also be a sign of something more serious.
For a minute he just sat and waited until the pressure in his rib cage eased up a bit. Then he returned the wave the farmer had sent him, and started the motor. After Carl had driven about five hundred yards along the road, he slowed down, opened the window, and began gasping for air, arching his back as much as he could to release the tension. Then he pulled over and began sucking the air deeper and deeper into his lungs. He’d seen other people suffering from this type of panic attack, but experiencing it inside his own body was totally surreal. He opened the car door, cupped his hands around his mouth to decrease the effect of hyperventilation, and flung the door all the way open.
“Damn it!” he shouted, doubling over as he staggered along the ditch with a piston pounding in his bronchial tubes. Overhead the clouds were spinning, the sky closing in around him. He dropped to the ground with his legs off to the side and fumbled after the cell phone in his jacket pocket. He was damned if he’d die of a heart attack without having anything to say about it.
A car slowed down on the road. The people inside couldn’t see him in the ditch, but he could hear them. “That looks odd,” said a voice, and then the car drove on. If I had their license number, I’d show them, all right. That was the last thought Carl had before everything went black.
When he came to, he was holding his phone pressed to his ear, with an awful lot of dirt around his mouth. He licked his lips, spat out some grime, and looked around in confusion. He put his hand to his chest; the pressure was still there but not as bad, and he concluded that things may not be as dire as he’d thought. Then he hauled himself to his feet, staggered back to the car, and tumbled into the driver’s seat. It wasn’t even one-thirty, so he hadn’t been out for long.
“What’s going on, Carl?” he asked himself. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt twice as thick as normal. His legs were like ice, while his torso was drenched in sweat. Something had gone very wrong with his
body.
“You’re about to lose control,” he heard a voice bellow inside of him. And then his mobile rang.
Assad didn’t ask him how he was feeling. Why should he? “We have now a problem, Carl” was all he said as Carl swore to himself.
“The technicians do not dare remove the crossed-out line in Merete Lynggaard’s phone book,” Assad continued, undaunted. “They say that the number and the crossed-out line were made with the same ballpoint pen, so even though they have dried up different, there is much too big a risk that both layers disappear.”
Carl put his hand on his chest again. Now it felt as if he’d swallowed air. It hurt like hell. Was he really having a heart attack? Or did it just feel like he was?
“They say we have to send it all to England. Something about combining some kind of digitalizing process with a chemical emersion, or whatever they said.” He was probably waiting for Carl to correct the terms that he’d used, but Carl wasn’t correcting anything at the moment. He had enough to deal with as he squeezed his eyes shut and summoned all his willpower to get rid of the awful spasms that were pumping through his torso.
“I think it takes too long, the whole thing. They say that we will not have the results until three or four weeks. Don’t you agree?”
He tried to concentrate, but Assad didn’t have the patience to wait.
“Maybe I should not tell you this, Carl, but I think I can count really good on you, so I will tell you anyway. I know a guy who can do this for us.” Assad paused for some sort of acknowledgment, but he waited in vain. “Are you there now still, Carl?”
“Yes, damn it,” he snapped. Then he inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs to the limit. It hurt like hell for a moment before the pressure eased. “Who is he?” Carl asked, trying to relax.
“You do not want to know that, Carl. But he is very good. He is from the Middle East. I know him real well enough, and he is good. Should I set him on the job?”
“Just a minute, Assad. I need to think.”
The Keeper of Lost Causes Page 26
