The Keeper of Lost Causes

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  As Carl stood there thinking, Assad suddenly took off. For a man with such a compact, heavy body, he was surprisingly nimble. He crossed the yard in a couple of bounds and then went out into the road to wave down a farmer who was driving his tractor.

  Carl went over to join them.

  “Yes,” he heard the farmer say as he approached, the tractor idling. “The mother and son still live there. It’s a bit odd, but apparently she’s set up home in that building over there.” He pointed to the last of the adjacent buildings. “I think they must be in. At least, I saw her outside this morning.”

  Carl showed the man his police badge, which prompted the farmer to turn off the tractor.

  “What about the son?” said Carl. “Is his name Lars Henrik Jensen?”

  The farmer squinted one eye to think. “Nay, I don’t think that’s his name. He’s a real strange, tall one. What the devil is his name?”

  “So it’s not Lars Henrik?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  See-saws and merry-go-rounds. Back and forth and up and down. Carl had been through this roller-coaster ride, countless times before. And he was sick and tired of it, among other things.

  “You say they live in that building over there?” Carl pointed.

  The farmer nodded, launching a blob of snot over the hood of his brand-new Ferguson tractor.

  “How do they make a living?” asked Carl, gesturing at the open countryside.

  “I don’t know. I lease a few acres from them. Kristoffersen, over there, leases some too. They’ve got some fallow land that’s subsidized, and she must also have a small pension. And a couple of times a week a van arrives from somewhere, bringing plastic items for them to clean, I think. It also brings them food. I think the woman and her son manage somehow.” He laughed. “This is farm country, you know. Out here we usually have everything we need.”

  “An official van from the municipality?”

  “No, it sure isn’t. It’s from some shipping company or something like that. It’s got a sign on the side that you sometimes see on ships on TV, but I don’t know where it’s from. All that stuff with oceans and seas has never interested me.”

  After the farmer chugged off toward the windmill, Carl and Assad studied the buildings beyond the pigsty. Strange that they hadn’t noticed them from the road, because they were quite large. It was probably because the hedges had been planted so close together and had already sprouted leaves, thanks to the warm weather.

  In addition to the three buildings surrounding the courtyard and the unfinished structure, there were three low buildings located close together next to a level area covered with gravel. Presumably at one time the plan had been to lay asphalt over there. By now weeds had sprung up everywhere, and the only gap in the greenery was a wide path connecting all the buildings.

  Assad pointed at the narrow wheel tracks on the path. Carl had already noticed them. The width of a bicycle wheel, but parallel. Most likely from a wheelchair.

  Carl’s cell phone rang, shrill and loud, just as they were approaching the building that the farmer had pointed out. He saw Assad’s expression as he cursed himself for not turning off the ringtone.

  It was Vigga. Nobody could match her ability to call him at the most inconvenient moments. He’d stood in the ooze of putrefying corpses as she asked him to bring home cream for their coffee. She’d called him when his cell phone lay in his jacket pocket under a bag in the police car, as he was in hot pursuit of some suspects. Vigga was good at that sort of thing.

  He set the ringtone to OFF.

  It was then that he raised his head and looked straight into the eyes of a tall, gaunt man in his twenties. His head was strangely elongated, almost deformed, and one entire side of his face was marred by the craters and stretched skin created by burn scars.

  “You can’t come here,” he said in a voice that belonged neither to an adult nor a child.

  Carl showed him his police badge, but the man didn’t seem to understand what it meant.

  “I’m a police officer,” Carl said in a friendly tone. “We’d like to talk to your mother. We know this is where she lives. I’d appreciate it if you’d ask her if we could come in for a moment.”

  The young man didn’t seem impressed by either the badge or the two men. So he probably wasn’t as simple-minded as he first appeared.

  “How long am I going to have to wait?” asked Carl brusquely. The man gave a start. Then he disappeared inside the house.

  A few minutes passed, as Carl felt the pressure increase in his chest. He cursed the fact that he hadn’t taken his service weapon out of the armory at police headquarters even once since he’d come back from sick leave.

  “Stay behind me, Assad,” he said. He could just picture the headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper: “Police detective sacrifices assistant in shooting drama. For the third day in a row, Deputy Police Superintendent Carl Mørck from Department Q creates a scandal.”

  He gave Assad a shove to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and then took up position close to the door. If they came out carrying a shotgun or anything like that, at least his assistant’s head wouldn’t be the first thing the muzzle pointed at.

  Then the young man came out and invited them in.

  She was sitting in a wheelchair, smoking a cigarette. It was hard to guess her age, since she looked so gray and wrinkled and worn out, but judging by the age of her son, she couldn’t be more than sixty-one or sixty-two. She sat hunched over and her legs looked strangely awkward, like branches that had been snapped in half and then had to find some way to grow back together. The car crash had really left its mark on her; it was pitiful and sad to see.

  Carl looked around. It was a huge room. A good twenty-five hundred square feet or more, but in spite of the twelve-foot-high ceiling, the place reeked of tobacco. He followed the spiraling smoke from her cigarette up to the skylights. There were only ten Velux windows, so the room was quite dim.

  There were no walls for separate rooms. The kitchen was closest to the front door, the bathroom off to one side. The living-room area, filled with furniture from IKEA and with cheap rugs on the cement floor, extended for fifteen or twenty yards and then ended at the space where the woman presumably slept.

  Aside from the nauseating air in the room, everything was meticulously neat. This was where she watched TV and read magazines and apparently spent most of her life. Her husband had died, so now she had to manage as best she could. At least she had her son to help her out.

  Carl saw Assad’s eyes making a slow survey of the room. There was something devilish in his eyes as they slid over everything, occasionally pausing to zoom in on some detail. He was extremely focused, his arms hanging at his sides and feet planted firmly on the floor.

  The woman was reasonably friendly, although she shook hands only with Carl. He made the introductions and told her not to be nervous. They were looking for her elder son, Lars Henrik. They wanted to ask him some questions; nothing special, it was just a routine matter. Could she tell them where they might find him?

  She smiled. “Lasse is a seaman,” she said. So she called him Lasse. “He’s not home right now, but he’ll be back ashore in a month. So I’ll let him know. Do you have a business card I can give him?”

  “No, unfortunately.” Carl attempted a boyish smile, but the woman wasn’t buying it. “I’ll send you my card when I get back to the office. I’d be happy to.” He tried the smile again. This one was better timed. It was the golden rule: first say something positive, then smile in order to seem sincere. To do it in reverse could mean anything: flattery, flirtation. Anything that was to one’s advantage. The woman knew that much about life, at least.

  Carl made as if to leave and grabbed hold of Assad’s sleeve. “All right, Mrs. Jensen, we have a deal. By the way, what shipping line does your son happen to work for?”

  She recognized the sequence of statement and smile. “Oh, I wish I could remember. He works on so many different ships
.” And then came her smile. Carl had seen yellow teeth before, but never any as yellow as hers.

  “He’s a first officer. Isn’t that right?”

  “No, he’s a steward. Lasse is a good cook. He’s always been good with food.”

  Carl tried to picture the boy with his arm on Dennis Knudsen’s shoulder. The boy they called Atomos because his deceased father had manufactured something for nuclear reactors. When had the son developed his knowledge about cooking? In the home of the foster family who beat him? In Godhavn? When he was a young boy at home with his mother? Carl had also been through a lot in life, but he couldn’t fry an egg. If it weren’t for Morten Holland, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  “It’s wonderful when things go well for one’s children. Are you looking forward to seeing your brother again?” Carl asked the disfigured young man who was watching them suspiciously, as if they’d come to steal something.

  His gaze shifted to his mother, but her expression didn’t change. So her son wasn’t about to say a word; that much was clear.

  “Where is your son’s ship sailing at the moment?”

  She looked at Carl, her yellow teeth slowly disappearing behind her parched lips. “Lasse spends a lot of time sailing in the Baltic, but I think he’s in the North Sea right now. Sometimes he goes out on one ship and comes home on another.”

  “It must be a big shipping line. Don’t you remember what it’s called? Can you describe the company’s logo?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m not so good at things like that.”

  Again Carl glanced at the young man; it was obvious he knew what they were talking about. He could probably draw a picture of the damned logo if his mother would let him.

  “But it is painted on the van that comes here a couple of times every week,” Assad interjected. That was not well timed. Now the guy’s eyes looked uneasy, and the woman drew smoke deep into her lungs. Her face was obscured by a thick cloud when she blew it out again.

  “Well, it’s not something we’re really sure about,” Carl managed to add. “One of your neighbors thought he’d seen it, but he could be mistaken.” He tugged at Assad’s arm. “Thank you for talking to us today,” he continued. “Ask your son Lasse to call me when he gets back. Then we can take care of these couple of questions once and for all.”

  They headed for the door as the woman rolled after them. “Push me outside, Hans,” she said to her son. “I need some fresh air.”

  Carl knew that she didn’t want to let them out of her sight until they’d left the property. If there had been a car in the courtyard or back here, where they stood, he would have thought she was trying to hide the fact that Lars Henrik Jensen was inside one of the buildings. But Carl’s intuition told him otherwise. Her elder son wasn’t here; she just wanted to get rid of them.

  “It’s an impressive group of buildings you have here. Was this a factory at one time?”

  The woman was right behind them, puffing on another cigarette as her wheelchair lumbered along the path. Her son was pushing it, hands tightly gripped on the handles. He seemed very agitated inside that ruined face of his.

  “My husband had a factory that manufactured sophisticated linings for nuclear reactors. We had just moved here from Køge when he died.”

  “Yes, I remember reading about it. I’m very sorry.” Carl pointed to the two low buildings in front of them. “Was that where the manufacturing was supposed to be done?”

  “Yes, there and in the large hall.” She pointed as she spoke. “The welding shop was there, the pressure testing facility there, and the full assembly was going to take place in the hall. The building I live in was supposed to store the finished containments.”

  “Why don’t you live in the house? It seems like a nice one,” Carl said as he noticed a row of grayish-black buckets in front of one of the buildings that didn’t fit with the rest of the landscape. Maybe they’d been left there by the previous owner. In places like this, time often moved at a snail’s pace.

  “Oh, I don’t know. There are so many things in that house that are from bygone times. And then there’s the doorsills; I can’t deal with them anymore.” She thumped the armrest of her wheelchair.

  Carl noticed that Assad was trying to pull him aside. “Our car is over there, Assad,” he said, nodding in the opposite direction.

  “I would just rather go through the hedge there and up to the road,” said Assad, but Carl saw his attention was fixed on the piles of junk that were heaped on top of an abandoned concrete foundation.

  “All that rubbish was already here when we arrived,” said the woman apologetically, as if half a container of scrap metal could mar the property’s overall dismal impression.

  It was nothing but random garbage. On top of the rubbish heap were more of the grayish-black tubs. There were no labels on them, but they looked as if they might once have contained oil or some sort of foodstuffs in large quantities.

  Carl would have stopped Assad if he’d known what his assistant had in mind, but before he could react, Assad had already leaped over some metal rods, jumbled piles of ropes, and plastic tubing.

  “I have to apologize for my partner. He’s an incorrigible junk collector. What did you find, Assad?” Carl called out.

  But Assad wasn’t interested in playing his role at the moment. He was hunting for something. He kicked at the junk, turning it over until he finally stuck his hand in and with some effort pulled out a thin sheet of metal, which turned out to be a sign that was about twenty inches high and at least twelve feet long. He turned it over. It said: “InterLab A/S.”

  Assad looked up at Carl, who nodded in appreciation. It was a hell of a find. InterLab A/S was Daniel Hale’s big laboratory, which had now moved to Slangerup. So there was a direct link between the family and Daniel Hale.

  “Your husband’s company wasn’t called InterLab, was it, Mrs. Jensen?” asked Carl, smiling at her tightly pressed lips.

  “No. That’s the company that sold us the property and a couple of the buildings.”

  “My brother works at Novo. I seem to remember him mentioning that company.” Carl silently sent an apology to his older brother, who at the moment was probably feeding mink up at the mink farm in Frederikshavn. “InterLab. Didn’t they make enzymes, or something like that?”

  “It was a testing laboratory.”

  “Hale. Wasn’t that his name? Daniel Hale?”

  “Yes, the man who sold this place to my husband was named Hale. But not Daniel Hale. He was just a boy back then. The family moved InterLab north, to a different location, and after the old man died, they moved it again. But this is where it started.” She gestured toward the scrap pile. InterLab had certainly made a success of itself if this was how it began.

  Carl studied the woman closely as she talked. She seemed to be completely closed off, and yet right now the words were pouring out of her. She didn’t seem agitated; on the contrary. She seemed totally poised, all of her nerve endings tautly woven. She was trying to appear normal, and that was precisely what seemed so abnormal.

  “Wasn’t he the man who was killed not far from here?” Assad suddenly asked.

  This time Carl could have kicked him in the shin. They would have to have a talk about these sorts of candid remarks when they got back to the office.

  He turned to look at the buildings. They exuded more than the story of a ruined family. The gray-on-gray facades also had other nuances. It was as if the buildings were speaking to him. The acid in his stomach churned even worse when he looked at them.

  “Was Hale killed? I don’t remember that.” Carl flashed a warning glance at Assad and turned back to the woman.

  “I’d really like to see where InterLab started out. It’d be fun to tell my brother about it. He has talked so often about launching his own business. Do you think we could have a look at the other buildings? Unofficially, of course.”

  She gave him a much-too-friendly smile, which meant she was feeling just the opposite. She didn�
��t want him here any longer. He should just pack up and leave.

  “Oh, I’d be happy to show you, but my son has locked everything up, so I’m not able to let you in. But when you talk to him, you can ask him to show you around. And bring your brother too.”

  Assad didn’t say a word as they drove past the building with the crash marks on the wall where Daniel Hale had lost his life.

  “There was something really off about that place,” said Carl. “We need to go back with a search warrant.”

  But Assad wasn’t listening. He just sat and stared into space as they reached Ishøj with its looming concrete high-rises. He didn’t even react when Carl’s cell phone rang after he’d switched it back on.

  “Yeah,” Carl said, expecting to hear a sharp torrent of words from Vigga. He knew why she was calling. Something had gone wrong again. The reception had been moved to today. That damn reception. He could really do without a handful of soggy chips and a glass of cheap supermarket wine, not to mention that misbegotten soul she’d chosen to join forces with.

  “It’s me,” said the voice on the line. “Helle Andersen from Stevns.”

  Carl shifted down to a lower gear as he ratcheted up his attention.

  “Uffe is here. I’m at Merete’s old house, making a home visit, and a few minutes ago a cab brought him here from Klippinge. The driver had driven for Merete and Uffe before, so he recognized Uffe when he saw him poking around in the ditch on the side of the motorway near the exit to Lellinge. He’s completely exhausted. He’s sitting here in the kitchen, drinking one glass of water after another. What should I do?”

  Carl looked at the traffic lights. A breeze of excitement stirred inside him. It was tempting to make a U-turn and floor the accelerator.

  “Is he OK?” asked Carl.

  She sounded a little worried, displaying less of her country-gal cheerfulness than normal. “I don’t really know. He’s filthy and looks like something that’s been dragged through the gutter. Uffe’s not quite himself.”