The Keeper of Lost Causes

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Then he recalled what John Rasmussen from Godhavn had said—that the father of Atomos, aka Lars Henrik Jensen, might have had something to do with the nuclear research facility at Risø.

  Carl looked up the phone number. It might be a dead end, but if there was anyone who knew something about airtight steel containment linings for nuclear reactors, it would be the people at Risø.

  The person on duty was very helpful and transferred him to an engineer named Mathiasen, who in turn transferred him to a man named Stein who again passed him on to a Jonassen. Each engineer sounded older than the previous one. Jonassen introduced himself simply as Mikkel, and he was busy, but OK, he was willing to spend five minutes helping the police. What was it Carl wished to know?

  He sounded particularly smug when he heard Carl’s question. “You want to know whether I’ve ever heard of a company that made linings for containments here in Denmark in the mid-eighties?” he said. “Yes, of course. HJ Industries was probably one of the world leaders.”

  “HJ Industries” the man had said. Carl could have kicked himself. HJ for Henrik Jensen. H-J I-n-d-u-s-t-r-i-e-s. What else?! It was that simple. You’d think the staff over at the Registry of Companies could have suggested something like that when he phoned, for Pete’s sake.

  “Henrik Jensen’s company was actually called Trabeka Holding. Don’t ask me why. But the name HJI is still known the world over. Their standards remain the industry’s benchmark. It was a sad thing that Henrik Jensen died so suddenly, and that the company was forced to close soon afterward. But the twenty-five employees couldn’t keep going without his leadership, nor could the company continue to exist without his high demands for quality. Besides, it had just undergone big changes, moving to a different location and expanding, so it was very unfortunate that he died right then. Major assets and expertise were lost. If you ask me, the business could have been saved if Risø had intervened, but back then management lacked the political support to do that.”

  “Can you tell me where HJI was located?”

  “Yes, the factory was in Køge for a long time. I made several visits there myself. But right before the accident it was moved to a site just south of Copenhagen. I’m not sure exactly where. I can try to find my old phone book; it’s here somewhere. Can you hold on for a minute?”

  It took a good five minutes while Carl listened to the man rummaging around in the background as he used his doubtlessly vast intellect to plumb the most vulgar depths of the Danish language. He sounded as if he were really pissed off at himself. Carl had seldom heard anything like it.

  “No, I’m sorry,” said Jonassen after he’d finished cursing. “I can’t find it, even though I never throw anything out. Typical. But talk to Ulla Jensen, his widow. I assume she’s still alive; she can’t be very old. She should be able to tell you everything you want to know. A truly fine woman. Too bad she had to suffer so much.”

  Carl decided to meet him halfway. “Yes, it’s too bad,” he said, ready to ask one last question.

  But the engineer was just getting started. “It was really brilliant, what they were doing at HJI. Just consider the welding techniques. The welds were practically invisible, even if you X-rayed them using the absolutely most advanced equipment. But they also had all sorts of techniques for finding leaks. For instance, they had a pressure chamber that could go up to sixty atmospheres to test the durability of their products. Probably the biggest pressure chamber I’ve ever seen. With incredibly high-tech control systems. If the containment linings could withstand that much pressure, you knew the nuclear energy reactors were getting first-class equipment. That was HJI. Always top-notch.”

  The man was so enthusiastic, it almost sounded as if he’d had stock in the business.

  “You don’t happen to know where Ulla Jensen is living today, do you?” Carl interjected.

  “Nope, but I’m sure you can find out by checking the Civil Registry. I assume she still lives on the company site. They couldn’t throw her out, as far as I know.”

  “Somewhere south of Copenhagen, you said?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  How on earth could he say “exactly” about a location as imprecise as “south of Copenhagen”?

  “If you’re particularly interested in this sort of thing, I’d be happy to invite you down here to visit,” said the man.

  Carl thanked him but declined the offer, citing that he was very pressed for time. In reality, he’d always wanted to flatten Risø with a thousand-ton steamroller and sell the scraps to some one-horse town in Siberia as road paving. So when it came to an invitation to take a tour of such an enterprise, it would be a shame to waste his time, since Jonassen had already remarked that he was a busy man.

  By the time Carl put down the phone, Assad had been standing in the doorway for several minutes.

  “What is it, Assad?” he asked. “Did we get what we needed? Did they check the CR numbers?”

  Assad shook his head. “I think myself that you need to go upstairs and talk to them, Carl. They’re totally . . .” he twirled his finger around beside his temple “. . . up in their heads today.”

  Carl approached Lis with caution, moving along the wall like a tomcat in rut. Sure enough, she was looking very frazzled. Her short hair, normally so cheerfully tousled, was now plastered down so it looked like a motorbike helmet. Standing behind her, Mrs. Sørensen flashed Carl a fierce look, and he could hear people shouting at each other in the offices. It was really pitiful.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Lis when he finally caught her eye.

  “I don’t know. When we try to log on to government databases, we’re denied entry. It’s as if all the passwords have been changed.”

  “But the Internet is working fine.”

  “Yes, but try to log on to the CR files or the tax authority, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “You’re going to have to wait, just like everybody else,” gloated Mrs. Sørensen in her flat-sounding voice.

  He stood there for a moment, trying to figure out another way to get the information, but gave up when he saw Lis’s screen display one error message after another.

  He shrugged. What the hell. It wasn’t really urgent, anyway. A man like him knew how to turn a force majeure to his advantage. If the electronics had decided to shut down, then it must be a sign that he should station himself in the basement and hold a profound dialogue with the coffee cups for an hour or two, his feet propped up on his desk.

  “Hi, Carl,” he heard someone say behind him. It was Marcus Jacobsen, wearing a dazzling white shirt and neatly pressed tie. “I’m glad you’re up here. Could you come to the cafeteria for a second?” Carl could tell it wasn’t a question. “Bak’s giving a briefing, and I think you’ll have a certain interest in what he has to say.”

  There must have been at least fifteen people in the cafeteria, with Carl standing at the very back, and the homicide chief off to one side. Up front, with the windows behind them, stood a couple of narcotics officers, Vice-Superintendent Lars Bjørn, and Børge Bak and his second-incommand. Bak’s colleagues all looked extremely pleased.

  Lars Bjørn turned over the floor to Bak, and everyone knew what he was going to say.

  “This morning we made an arrest in the cyclist murder case. At this very moment the accused is consulting with his lawyer, and we’re convinced that a written confession will be made available before the end of the day.”

  He smiled and patted his comb-over. The morning was all his. “The key witness, Annelise Kvist, provided us with a detailed statement after being assured that the suspect had been arrested, and her statement supports our view a hundred percent. The individual in question is a highly respected and professionally active physician, a specialist with a practice in Valby. In addition to stabbing the drug dealer in Valby Park to death, he also played a role in Annelise Kvist’s alleged suicide attempt, and issued death threats against her children.” Bak pointed to his assistant, who continued the report.


  “During a search of the suspect’s residence, we found more than six hundred and fifty pounds of various types of narcotics, which are now being identified by our technicians.” He paused for a moment to let the reaction die down. “There is no doubt that the doctor has built up a large and extensive network of colleagues, and they’ve all made significant sums from the sale of various types of prescription drugs—from methadone to diazepam, phenobarbital and morphine—and from the importation of drugs such as amphetamines, zopiclone, THC, or acetophenazine. As well as large quantities of neuroleptics, soporifics, and hallucinogens. Nothing was too big or too small for the accused. Apparently he had customers for everything.

  “The man who was murdered in Valby Park was the ringleader behind the distribution of these drugs to people who went to clubs, in particular. We’re guessing that the victim tried to blackmail the doctor, and the latter made short work of things, but that the murder was not premeditated. Annelise Kvist witnessed the killing, and she happened to know the doctor. Because of this, the doctor was able to track her down and force her to keep quiet.” The officer stopped, and Bak took over.

  “We now know that right after the murder, the doctor went to see Annelise Kvist at her home. He specializes in bronchial diseases and Annelise’s daughters were two of his asthma patients; both are very dependent on the medicine they take. On that evening at Annelise’s apartment, the doctor displayed dramatically violent behavior, and he forced her to give her children pills, or he said he would kill them. The pills caused their alveoli to constrict, which was life-threatening. He then gave them an injection, which was the antidote. It must have been extremely traumatic for a mother to watch her daughters turn blue in the face, unable to communicate with her.”

  Bak looked around the room. Everyone was nodding at what he said. He went on.

  “Afterward the doctor claimed that the girls would have to make regular visits to his office to receive the antidote, or they would suffer a fatal relapse. That was how he kept the mother quiet.

  “We can thank Annelise’s mother for the fact that we eventually located our key witness. She knew nothing about the intervening scene that had been played out in her daughter’s flat that night, but she did know that her daughter had witnessed the murder. She got Annelise to say so the next day when she saw what a state of shock her daughter was in. The only thing the mother didn’t find out was who the murderer was; Annelise refused to tell her. So when we brought Annelise Kvist in for questioning at her mother’s insistence, she was a woman undergoing a deep inner crisis.

  “Today we also know that the doctor went to see Annelise again a couple of days later. He warned her that if she talked, he’d kill the girls. He used words like ‘flay them alive’ and pushed her so far that he was able to force her to take a deadly cocktail of pills.

  “You all know the rest of the story. The woman was hospitalized, her life was saved, and she clammed up completely. But what you don’t know is that our investigation received a great deal of help from our new Department Q, which is headed by Carl Mørck.”

  Bak turned to Carl. “You didn’t participate in the actual investigation, Carl, but you set in motion several trains of thought. My team and I would like to thank you for that. We’d also like to thank your assistant, whom you used as a messenger between us and Hardy Henningsen, who also provided us with valuable input. We’ve sent Hardy some flowers, just so you know.”

  Carl was dumbfounded. A couple of his former colleagues turned toward him and attempted to wring smiles out of their stony faces, but the others didn’t budge.

  Lars Bjørn took over. “A lot of people have worked on this case. We also want to thank you boys,” he added, pointing to the two narcotics cops. “Now it’s up to you to unravel the ring of drug-dealing doctors. We know it’s going to be a huge job. On the other hand, those of us in homicide can now turn our attention to other matters, and we’re glad about that. There’s plenty to keep all of us busy up here on the third floor.”

  Carl waited until almost everyone had left the room. He knew how hard it must have been for Bak to give him any sort of praise. So he went over to shake hands with him. “I didn’t deserve that, but I’d like to say thanks, Bak.”

  Børge Bak looked at Carl’s outstretched hand for a moment and then started packing up his papers. “Don’t thank me. I would never have done it if Marcus Jacobsen hadn’t ordered me to.”

  Carl nodded. So once again they knew where each of them stood.

  Out in the hall, panic was spreading. All the office workers were clustered around the boss’s door, and everyone had a complaint.

  “OK, OK. We don’t yet know what’s wrong,” said homicide chief Marcus Jacobsen. “But from what the police commissioner has told us, no official database can be accessed at the moment. Somebody has hacked into the central servers and changed all the passwords. We don’t know yet who’s behind it. There aren’t many who’d be capable of doing something like this, so we’re pulling out all the stops to find the culprits.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” someone said. “How can it be possible?”

  Jacobsen shrugged. He tried to look calm and composed, but probably wasn’t.

  Carl told Assad that the workday was over since there was nothing more they could do. Without the information from the Civil Registration System they wouldn’t be able to track Lars Henrik Jensen’s movements. It would just have to wait.

  As Carl drove north to the Clinic for Spinal Cord Injuries, he heard on the radio that a letter had been sent to the media by an angry citizen who claimed to have infected all the official government databases with a virus. It was assumed the individual was a civil servant who held a key position but may have been laid off due to municipal reforms. But so far nothing could be confirmed. Computer experts tried to explain how it was possible to access such well-protected data, and the prime minister called the culprits “the worst kind of bandits one can imagine.” Security experts specializing in data transmission were already in full swing, he claimed, and everything would soon be back in working order. Of course whoever was to blame could expect a very long prison sentence. The prime minister was just about to compare the situation to the attacks on the World Trade Center, but stopped short of doing so.

  The first smart thing he’d done in a long time.

  There was, in fact, a bouquet of flowers from Bak’s team on Hardy’s bedside table, but even the smallest gas station kiosk could have come up with something nicer. Hardy didn’t care. He couldn’t see the flowers anyway since the nurses had moved him over to the window so he could look out.

  “I’m supposed to say hello from Bak,” Carl told him.

  Hardy gave him a look that might be described as surly, but in reality was indefinable. “What does that fucking creep have to do with me?”

  “Assad gave him your tip, and now they’ve made an arrest that’s going to stick.”

  “I haven’t given anybody a damn tip about anything.”

  “Sure you did. You said that Bak should take a look at everyone who might be giving medical treatment to the key witness, Annelise Kvist.”

  “What case are we talking about?”

  “The cyclist murder, Hardy.”

  He frowned. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, Carl. You’ve tossed that idiotic case about Merete Lynggaard in my lap, and that psychologist bitch keeps harping on the shooting incident out in Amager. That should be plenty. I have no idea what this cyclist murder case is about.”

  Now it wasn’t only Hardy who was frowning. “Are you sure Assad didn’t mention the cyclist case to you? Are you having trouble with your memory, Hardy? It’s OK to tell me.”

  “Aww, fuck off, Carl. I don’t feel like listening to this bullshit. My memory is my worst enemy. Can’t you understand that?” Hardy sputtered, his eyes crystal clear.

  Carl raised his hand in an apologetic gesture. “Sorry, Hardy. I must have been misinformed by Assad. It happens.”

&nbs
p; But deep inside he wasn’t taking it nearly as casually.

  That sort of thing couldn’t and wouldn’t happen again.

  36

  2007

  He sat down at the breakfast table with his esophagus burning from acid indigestion and sleep still weighing heavily on his shoulders. Neither Morten nor Jesper said a word to him, which was standard procedure for his stepson but definitely an ominous sign when it came to his lodger.

  The morning paper was lying neatly on a corner of the table, and the top story was Tage Baggesen’s voluntary resignation from his parliamentary position, citing health reasons. Morten kept his head bowed silently over his plate, steadily chewing, as Carl reached page six and sat gaping at a grainy photo of himself.

  It was the same picture that Gossip had used of him the day before, but this time it was next to a slightly faded outdoor photo of Uffe Lynggaard. The caption was far from flattering:

  “The head of Department Q, in charge of the investigation of ‘cases deserving special scrutiny,’ as designated by the Denmark Party, has appeared in the news in the past two days under particularly unfortunate circumstances.”

  The article didn’t focus on the Gossip story, but the reporter had conducted interviews with staff members at Egely, and they all complained of Carl’s heavy-handed methods. They also blamed him for Uffe’s disappearance. The supervisory nurse was portrayed as especially furious. She used phrases such as “abuse of our willingness to help,” and “psychological rape” and “manipulation.” The article ended with the words: “As of press time, it has not been possible to get any comment from the police department.”