“Carl, I want to talk to you today because we’ve been together long enough now to ask ourselves what we really mean to each other.”
Carl smiled to himself. It was perfect. No one could wish for a better prelude to what he was going to do next.
He felt the warm silk against his palm and prepared to place his gift on the table the moment she declared it was time for their relationship to be consolidated. A joint household, a marriage certificate at city hall—whatever she wanted, he was willing. There would be an outcry back home, of course, but it would all work out. As long as Hardy continued to provide the household with a regular income for Morten’s assistance and Mika chipped in, 73 Magnolievangen wouldn’t need to change ownership.
“What do we want with each other, Carl? Have you thought about it?” she asked.
He smiled. “As a matter of fact, I have. I was . . .”
She looked at him with such benevolence that he felt quite moved and paused for a moment. He had an incredible desire to smooth his hand against her cheek, to feel her downy skin, kiss her soft lips. And he noticed how her breathing had become sharper and more resolute, recognizing it as a reflex that usually signaled major deliberations and final decisions. But she was taking her time, and that was OK. Navigating through occasions as momentous as this couldn’t be hurried.
“Carl, I’m so very fond of you,” she said. “You’re a lovely man, but are we actually going anywhere? I’ve thought about it so many times. Would it make any difference if we were closer together? If we lived together and woke up beside each other in the mornings?” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it harder than he’d anticipated. She seemed to be having difficulty getting it said. Perhaps she preferred he take charge. But Carl merely smiled. He would allow her to answer her question herself, and then he would produce the ring.
The answer came without passion or enthusiasm. “I can’t see it would change much, to be honest. I think we’d soon run short of things to talk about. And the good sex we have once in a while would happen less and less, don’t you agree? Lately you’ve grown distant from us, Carl, and from yourself. Maybe it’s best that this should happen now. You forget when we’re supposed to see each other, and often you’re miles away when you’re with my daughter and grandchild. You don’t see me as you used to see me, and you’re unable to confront your own situation. You’ve stopped your therapy sessions in spite of what we agreed. I’m looking for development here, Carl, and have been doing so for a very long time. Long enough, if truth be told. Which is why I think we should stop now.”
Carl turned cold as ice. He had wanted to say something epochal and decisive, but now he was reeling. Was that really the way she felt about him? He shook his head and felt dazed, unable to collect his thoughts. Words stalled in his throat, but Mona seemed clearheaded and determined. In any other situation he would have loved her for it.
“I don’t know why it’s taken so long for us to have this discussion. It’s my profession, after all,” she went on. “But now it’s high time we did. I mean, neither of us is getting any younger, are we, Carl?”
He gestured for her to stop, and in the minutes that followed he tried anxiously to reassure her that things had been going fine until now, in spite of everything, but that of course he’d been having thoughts of his own as well. He mobilized his self-defense and charm offensive into a kind of symbiosis that safeguarded every word, every intonation. Where any pause too long might signal indifference, any pause too brief could make him appear panicked.
Christ, he was careful with those pauses.
Eventually she seemed softened and more compliant. As though the whole sorry situation had been caused by some kind of midlife crisis and all she had needed was to hear him talk. And so in this hour of reckoning he ventured to smile, making sure by way of conclusion to leave her the opening that all dealings between adults of equal standing required.
“So I’m one hundred percent open to any suggestions you might want to make, Mona.” And for one tiny moment he had the delicious feeling of being back in business. Any second now she would take it all back and climb down, and then he would be ready with the reward: a small, but very expensive ring.
She gave him a rather odd smile in return and nodded. But instead of meeting him halfway where they promised to do their utmost for the good of their relationship and allow each other space for spontaneity, she seized her chance and turned his words against him.
“Thanks, Carl. In that case, my suggestion is that from now on we concentrate on leading our own separate lives.”
Her words slammed into his stomach like a battering ram. His self-image, his sense of reality, were in tatters. He simply no longer knew the woman sitting across from him.
And the ring remained in its silk pouch.
It was too late.
—
It was one of those mornings when it took ages to become Carl again. How on earth he managed to make his way into the city he had no idea. The rear lights of cars in front and the recollection of Mona’s eyes as she swept him out of her life were the only things he was aware of.
He made room among the piles of folders on his desk so he could put his feet up and resume the night’s failed attempts at sleep. His body and soul needed it more than anything. But Rose appeared in front of him in full gear the moment he sat down, squawking something about the missing persons notice she’d shown him the day before.
As if he wanted to think about anything that had to do with yesterday.
He tried to shake some life into his cerebrum. He was supposed to be at work, after all, but his thoughts refused to get out of the rut that kept circling around Mona. A mere three hours of sleep was all the shock had allowed him. Even Hardy’s remarkable progress that he had witnessed on Tuesday had completely receded into the background.
“Here, Carl.” A dark hand shoved a pair of cups the size of thimbles over the desk toward him and Rose, and the stench of something decidedly other than coffee rose up from the clay-colored substance.
“I’m not so sure,” he said, peering into the cup while Assad assured him that as far as he knew no one had ever died from drinking chicory coffee, and that its beneficial effects were well documented. It was something he remembered his grandmother telling him.
Chicory coffee? Wasn’t that what they’d tricked innocent citizens with during the war? Had this affront to centuries of careful refinement of the noble bean really survived such a definitive, universal holocaust? What horrible injustice.
“It’s like I say: weeds and cockroaches will be the only things left when we finally press the button,” he said with a sigh.
They stared at him as if he’d suffered an acute brain hemorrhage. He was able to sense it, but so what if he had skipped a couple of steps in making his deduction?
He let it be and studied Rose’s sunburned nose instead. She looked almost human all of a sudden. “Why is that notice so important to you, Rose? We’ve still got the Anweiler case, you know.”
“The Anweiler case needs a name change if you ask me. Hopefully we agree that the man’s innocent, don’t we? I’ve written Lars Bjørn a report giving the department’s investigation a good kick in the nuts. Assad and I have reached the conclusion that either the bloke the dead woman ran out on is worth having a chat with, or else maybe we should try and find out if she was technologically illiterate.”
“‘Technologically illiterate’? Don’t know the expression. What the devil does it mean?”
“Someone dysfunctional in matters electronic. A person who’s unable to operate devices that have more than one handle or button. Thick as a half-wit when it comes to understanding a manual, switching from a dial telephone to a mobile or from sink to dishwasher. You know the type?”
Assad nodded attentively. No doubt it was he who’d coined the expression in the first place.
“You don’t say. S
o you reckon the fire on the houseboat could have been an accident, is that it? And all the experts who’ve been involved are no more than a bunch of superficial chuckleheads who never bothered to let that possibility sink in and pursue it?”
Assad raised a finger in the air. Carl stared at it, fascinated. Where did all those hairs on it come from? Chicory coffee?
“That was good, Carl. Letting the possibility sink in. Just like the boat, yes? Very clever.”
Carl closed his eyes and gave a sigh. Had his two most trusted and only colleagues been downing soda all night in a kindergarten, or what? Christ on a bike. If only they’d leave him in peace.
He turned to Assad. “What do the fire investigation boys have to say about this accident?”
“It seems they do not believe there was anything on the boat to cause such a very big explosion. Neither the gas bottle, nor—”
Rose interrupted. “When you’re a lamebrain all sorts of accidents can happen. The right combination of hair spray on the kitchen counter, the stove leaking gas because she forgot to light it. Lamp oil to get the heating stove going, nail polish remover on the shelf. And how did Anweiler make his living? Think about it. He was a roadie and lighting man, wasn’t he? Don’t they have all sorts of things that get dead hot when they’re in use? A spotlight, maybe, that he’d left behind, and the woman turned it on by mistake, and then it falls on to the sofa where she’s left a couple of bottles of household spirits. There are so many possibilities, we just don’t know. And basically I don’t care, because it’s not our case, is it? I was just told to ring doorbells, right? That lot on the third floor can work out all the answers.”
Carl took a deep breath. With an imagination like that, Rose had no need to worry about her future. A new Agatha Christie was born.
“And Carl, you’d do well to think back on yesterday. Wasn’t there something you couldn’t be arsed about with this Anweiler case?”
Carl straightened up in his chair and donned his mental work clothes. It was high time he quelled his emotional hangover and reminded this cheeky shrew whose door had a shiny brass plate on it and whose didn’t.
“I dunno, was there? Anyway, I know perfectly well where you’re heading with this, and the answer is that today I can’t be arsed with dealing with missing persons, so you might just as well get it into your head. You don’t kick off a new case until you finish the one you’re on, especially when not all its aspects have been investigated thoroughly, right? Besides, we’ve got any amount of cold cases as it is.”
Assad gave a shudder of delight. Like when you realize your backside is freezing off because it’s sticking out from your duvet on an ice-cold winter’s night, and then you draw it back it again. His eyes sparkled in anticipation of Rose’s reaction.
“So tell me, why would we need another case on our hands?” Carl went on. “Or have you forgotten the ones still up on the board out there in the corridor? All those cases joined up with Assad’s red and blue strings? How many have we got at the moment, Assad?”
“What? Strings?”
“No, cases!”
Rose’s mascara glare rumbled in his direction. “Sixty-two cases in all, don’t you think I keep count? But this one’s—”
“Listen, Rose. They may have done a shoddy piece of work upstairs on the Anweiler case, but so will we if we don’t get our act together and tie up the loose ends we’ve uncovered.”
Assad nodded zealously in agreement. Obviously some element of syntax had gone over his head.
“We need to take into account that the fire investigation was severely inhibited by the boat being totally burned out and having sunk to the bottom. On top of which weather conditions were bad and the current in the harbor was relatively strong. For Christ’s sake, Rose, these technicians know what they’re doing, they’re experts.”
She gave him a surly look.
“And don’t sulk either, because it happens to be true. I’ve been in this job since you were a snotty-nosed kid, remember? And if you don’t acknowledge the fact, then that’s what you are still.”
Assad rasped his hand across the stubble of his chin. It almost drowned out Rose’s sigh.
“OK,” he finally said. “We must speak to Anweiler. We need to know what condition the boat was in. Was it good or bad? Who was the victim? We must investigate her profile.”
“My thoughts exactly, Assad. You might even bring Mona Ibsen in on that one. I think she might need something to get her teeth into.” He smiled to himself. If she thought she could get rid of him just like that, she’d have to relocate to northern Greenland.
“Assad’s right,” he continued. “We need to get all that sorted before we can even think about letting go of the case, and you know that as well as I do, Rose.”
She said nothing but looked like she was counting to ten inside her head. One never knew when the latent explosion she carried inside her was about to detonate.
Carl smiled wryly. He quite fancied trying.
“And yet here you come with another case that tickles your fancy.” He gestured toward her missing persons notice. “What was it that caught your attention? The bloke’s carrot top? Or maybe his bedraggled smile? Something about his eyes, perhaps, that awakens your motherly instinct? Whatever it is, I’ll be buggered if I can see it.”
She nodded, releasing the safety catch on the icy incendiary she was about to discharge. “OK, Carl. But you probably never had the kind of loving relationship to your father as the girl who made this notice had to hers, am I right?”
“Did you, Rose?”
Assad’s eyebrows shot up as though released by a spring.
Of all the things Carl could have said to her, this obviously shouldn’t have been one of them.
Before he even realized his gaffe, Rose had turned on her heel, leaving her coat and bag on the floor, and was gone, a departing “Bye” hanging in the air like an icicle.
“Oops,” ventured Assad quietly.
Carl knew what he was thinking. Rather a boil on the ass than Rose on the warpath. Still, fuck her. Fuck her and the Anweiler case. Fuck Marcus for running out on them, and fuck Bjørn, too. Fuck Vigga and Mona and everything else to boot. Basically, he didn’t give a toss about any of them, as long as they left him in peace.
And then he felt a trembling in his abdomen that spread to his sides. Not exactly uncomfortable, but still pretty spooky. It was as if all the veins and arteries of his torso and limbs contracted at once, then expanded again, and had decided to keep it up.
Then came a tingling sensation that ran along his shoulder blades and under his armpits. He began to sweat, then felt a chill. He didn’t know if he was too hot or too cold.
Was this the prelude to an anxiety attack? He’d had them before.
Or maybe it was just Mona, coming back to haunt him?
With trembling fingers he grabbed Rose’s coffee cup and downed the tepid contents in one gulp.
All his facial muscles twitched as if he’d just bitten into an unripe lemon. The rancid taste of chicory clutched at his throat. For a moment he was gasping for air, and then the sensation left his body.
Embarrassed and bewildered, he sat for a while staring up at the ceiling.
And then he let out a deep sigh.
Assad broke the silence. “I’ve already been upstairs to see Lars Bjørn like you said I should. He said they were completely on top of the Anweiler case and that Rose’s criticism was a mile wide.”
Carl cleared his throat, otherwise he would have been unable to say a word. “Did Bjørn really say that? Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes, he said the case was still on his desk, and they would make sure to nail Anweiler. He had everything under control, Carl.”
Their eyes met for a moment, then Assad expelled a snort from the depths of his respiratory system like the snore of a man with sleep ap
noea.
“Just kidding, Carl. The man doesn’t know his ass from his tip.”
Carl smiled. “His tit, Assad. He doesn’t know his ass from his tit. Anyway, I reckon I’ll just pop up and have a word with Marcus Jacobsen. In the meantime, perhaps you wouldn’t mind calling the deceased woman’s ex-husband and ask him to come in as soon as possible? Tell him he can choose between a taxi or a patrol car.”
12
There was an odd mood about the homicide chief’s office. Opening the door of this confetti-strewn hell was like entering a chaotic crime scene. Shredded or torn-up documents, technical reports, photos that ordinary citizens would be unlikely to forget in a hurry, the contents of drawers littered across the desk. Carl could see Marcus was clearing out, but it looked more like the mementos of centuries of discord and strife.
“Who tossed the hand grenade, Marcus?” he ventured, trying to pick out a surface that could be sat upon. He couldn’t find any.
“Lis’ll be here soon with some trash bags. Can’t it wait half an hour, Carl?”
“I just wanted to say that Department Q will be taking on the Anweiler case. We’ve had a breakthrough.”
Jacobsen paused, his hand inserted in a drawer among a mishmash of old erasers, broken pencils, empty pens, and the kind of crud that accumulates in such places by the kilo in the course of a number of years.
“No, Department Q is not, Carl. That case belongs up here. It wasn’t a freebie, just something to give Rose some practice, remember? You must have learned by now that your cases are the ones we formally send down to you. You can’t pick and choose, only decide what order you want to take them in.”
“Now you’re oriented, Marcus. Think of it as a farewell present. Before you know it the case will be solved and you can give yourself another merit badge. You deserve a nice little success story to wrap up your final days. How are you doing, anyway? All right?”
Marcus looked up with a jolt, as if all the nerve endings under his professional exterior had suddenly been exposed. If this was what his retirement was doing to him already, what would he be like in a month or a year? Why the hell was he going through with it? And how old was he, anyway? Sixty?
The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel Page 15
