*
He didn’t know how much time had passed when he woke up with the smell of vomit in his nostrils. He tried to get away from it by lifting his head. That proved to be a mistake. A white searing pain shot through his brain and he fell back into the bottomless darkness once more.
He was obviously a quick learner, because when he regained consciousness for the second time, he stayed very still and breathed through his mouth while ignoring the stench of vomit. His whole body hurt and he decided to examine it systematically. He could move his feet and his legs without triggering insane pain, and he could raise his strangely twitching left hand up to somewhere near his head. His hand buried itself in the carpet pile and a wet mass, which he eventually identified as the undigested remains of fries, burgers and something else. His fingers sought out the places where he was glued to the floor and realized that it was congealed blood from the deep cut to his temple. It had bonded strongly with the carpet and he freed his hair with great care. Then he slowly pulled himself up on his hands and, after a few minutes, to a sitting position. The movement caused nausea to rise up through his throat, but he steeled himself, rested the back of his head against the wall and stayed put for several, long minutes.
The door to the hotel corridor had been left ajar. He could hear a couple of happy tourists chatting away outside, the sound of suitcases on wheels and his own, soft groaning.
He struggled to his feet and started looking for the light switch on the wall before he remembered that was a very bad idea indeed. So he located the light switch in the bathroom instead and closed his eyes. Even so the light cut through his eyelids in every colour of the rainbow and triggered new kinds of pain inside his head.
*
He eased open his eyelids and saw blood everywhere – in the pale grey carpet next to the pool of vomit, and continuing in several directions on the bathroom tiles. He left moist, red handprints as he fought his way to the sink, turned on the cold tap and grabbed one of the hotel’s elegant towels.
Still dazed, he watched the blood trail down the sides of the white china sink. Then he raised his eyes to the mirror and discovered Jakob Schmidt standing right behind him, framed by the doorway.
Michael couldn’t remember ever feeling so defenceless.
The ex-officer was wearing the same black roll-neck sweater as the previous evening, a knee-length black leather jacket, jeans and – Michael checked – a pair of battered hiking boots. No sign of shiny black shoes.
Most of the blood seemed to stem from a nasty cut above his left temple. He pressed a towel against the cut and stared darkly at his unexpected guest.
‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘And didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock?’
Jakob Schmidt offered him a minimalist smile. ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to pick locks and search someone’s room? Especially when you’re their guest?’
Michael made no reply, but held a corner of the towel under the cold tap before pressing it against the cut to his scalp. He pulled a face.
‘You can’t possibly know if I went to your room,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m far too clever.’
‘I’m sure people call you a lot of things, Michael, but clever isn’t one that springs to mind. Two layers of tinfoil with talcum powder under the rug inside my door. There were footprints on them when I came back. Your size, I believe.’
Michael looked at the other in the mirror.
‘You live and learn,’ he said.
‘Yes … so long as you do live.’
Jakob Schmidt folded his arms across his chest and watched him dispassionately.
‘Do you have a Band-Aid?’ he asked.
Michael nodded.
‘My travel bag. Left side pocket … if it’s still there.’
He pulled off his shirt and Jakob Schmidt took a step back. This was a common reaction the first time people saw his naked body. Michael’s torso was a topographical map of scar tissue on his back, sides and chest, and some would be able to recognize bullet entry wounds above his right hip and the slightly larger splodges on his back, where the bullets had exited. Or at least Jakob Schmidt would be able to. There was a fresh blue-and-red bruise across his abdomen.
‘You can practically see the shoe size,’ Michael said. ‘It’s smaller than yours.’
‘It wasn’t me. You look like a train crash.’
‘I’m clumsy. Band-Aid?’
‘Coming up.’
*
Twenty minutes later he was sitting on his bed with a very small miniature bottle of vodka from the minibar in his hand, wearing a clean, pale blue shirt and with the cut to his scalp deftly closed with Band-Aids by Jakob Schmidt. He had swallowed a handful of paracetamol and ibuprofen and had felt worse. But he had also felt better.
Jakob Schmidt sat in the armchair with a Coca-Cola in his hand. The shadows seemed drawn to him. He was as still as a rock and Michael surmised that he was probably a first-class hunter. Patience personified.
‘What do you want?’ Michael asked.
The other said nothing.
Michael sighed and emptied the vodka bottle, opened the door to the minibar without leaving his slightly swaying bed and found a miniature bottle of gin. He unscrewed the cap and looked at the empty desk. His laptop was gone. The envelope with the constellations from Finnmark and the location of the crime scene which he had placed under the rug by the door to the corridor was gone. He hadn’t checked the beam above his head yet, but he knew that Elizabeth Caspersen’s DVD was gone, too.
‘I think the right question is: What do you want, Michael? If that’s even your real name,’ Jakob Schmidt said softly.
‘Me? I don’t want anything at all,’ Michael said. ‘I’m just the hired help.’
‘Hired to do what?’
‘To uncover the facts in a paternity suit.’
Jakob Schmidt drank his Coke.
‘Number one, Flemming had a vasectomy fifteen years ago; number two, the letter from Miss Simpson wasn’t written by an American, but by an Englishman, or someone well-educated with a good command of English,’ he said steadily. ‘An American would never spell “summarize” with an s, but with a z, nor would an American ever say “a drop in the ocean”, but “a drop in the bucket”. And especially not if this person was an editor and a seventh-generation New Yorker, as you claim. So my question is still: What do you want?’
Michael looked at him.
‘Have you talked to Elizabeth about this?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Is it common knowledge that Flemming Caspersen had had a vasectomy, and why did he?’
‘My mother thought it would be a good idea. And no, no one else knows. I think. But it’s probably not hard to find out.’
Michael wondered if the man was bluffing.
‘Your mother?’ he asked.
The figure moved slightly in the shadows. The Coke bottle was put down on the windowsill.
‘Yes.’
‘Because they were in a relationship?’
‘Why did you go to my room?’
‘I got lost,’ Michael said.
‘Through a locked door?’
‘I walk in my sleep. I don’t always know what I do. I wake up in the weirdest places.’
The other man got up.
‘I recommend tying your foot to the bed the next time you’re sleeping in a strange place,’ he said.
Michael smiled, even though it hurt.
‘I need to be able to move. Besides, it’s hard to defend yourself if you’re tied down.’
‘You don’t appear to be very good at it, even when you’re not.’
Fair point, Michael thought.
Then Jakob’s brown eyes disappeared in laughter lines, something that transformed him.
‘It’s all about picking the winning horse, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘If time is on your side, then it’s a really good idea,’ Michael said gravely.
The other man nodded. Then he
walked across the floor, carefully avoiding the blood and vomit in the passage. He turned around in the doorway to the hotel corridor.
‘You don’t have very many friends, do you?’
‘No, do you?’
‘I don’t know any more,’ he said, and closed the door behind him.
Michael hobbled to the door to make sure that it was locked. Then he pulled the desk into the middle of the floor, put the chair on top of it and climbed up with considerable effort. He sweated nervously as his fingers scuttled like frightened spiders across the beams. Nothing. The envelope with the DVD was gone. How the hell had they found it? Black defeat and blistering self-reproach washed over him. Along with the fear that Keith had been right: that he and his opponents were in different leagues. That he was now playing in a division where he was out of his depth.
Even though it was almost impossible, he pulled himself up on the beam and studied its dusty surface, inspecting the empty crack.
His attacker had to be the most pedantic and methodical person on the planet.
He lowered himself with shaking arms, nearly lost his balance, and wobbled for a few seconds on the smooth seat of the chair and the edge of fresh disasters before finally regaining his balance.
When he had returned the furniture to its original position, he undressed and headed for the shower cubicle. He turned on the cold tap, shielded the cut to his temple with one of the hotel’s ridiculous shower caps, and watched the water swirl between his feet, clear at first, then rust-coloured before it turned clear again.
Afterwards he dried himself with the speed of a Parkinson’s patient, and every movement hurt. His testicles were twice their normal size and turning blue. Blue testicles? Great. He opened his mouth, studied a cut to the inside of his cheek with some dismay, and wobbled a loose molar. He couldn’t pull it out or turn it, and hoped that it would grow back by itself.
Then he gave in to a sudden impulse, draped a towel around his shoulders and located the trimmer in his wash bag. His longish, almost black hair landed on the tiles in front of his feet. He winced whenever the machine came near the cut to his temple and let only millimetre-long stubble remain on his head. He put on the ugly glasses with the plain lenses that he had worn for his visit to the Niels Bohr Institute and studied the result in the mirror. He looked like a lifer from Siberia. The guy none of the other prisoners liked.
The porter eyed him anxiously.
‘Have you hurt yourself, Mr Sander?’
Michael smiled stiffly and spread his legs to ease the pressure on his genitals.
‘A brief encounter with a bike messenger,’ he said. ‘Please would you prepare my bill? I’m afraid I have to check out sooner than expected. Family illness.’
The woman nodded.
‘These things come in threes,’ she said, and started typing on the keyboard. ‘Minibar? … Movies?’
‘One vodka, one gin, two Cokes, one tin of peanuts,’ Michael forced a smile. ‘No naturist films.’
He paid with his MasterCard and put a banknote on the counter. The woman smiled and the note disappeared.
‘You’re always welcome back, Mr Sander.’
‘Thank you.’
He returned to the stairs, thinking that she would probably regret her last remark when she found out about of the state of his room.
On the first floor he picked up his travel bag and his shoulder bag from where he had left them in a linen cupboard. Then he glanced at the map of fire escape routes and chose the back stairs, which he knew would lead him through the kitchen and out to the back of the hotel. Once outside, he pulled up the collar of his coat and walked briskly towards Sankt Annæ Plads. He kept listening out for measured footsteps behind him and he glanced over his shoulder a couple of times before he disappeared through the glass doors into the new Danish National Theatre.
Tonight’s performance was about to begin and he mingled with the excited theatregoers who filled the foyer. He left the theatre through a side exit, a few metres from a cab rank.
The cabbie folded his newspaper and watched him in the rear-view mirror.
‘Where to?’
‘Good question,’ Michael said.
The man smiled.
‘And what’s the answer?’
Was Elizabeth Caspersen still at her office? And if not, then where did she live?
He gave the driver her office address in Bredgade.
The driver didn’t move.
‘You can walk it in three minutes, mate,’ he said.
Michael found his wallet and passed a folded 500-kroner note over cabbie’s headrest.
‘Just drive, will you,’ he said, ‘and keep the meter running when we get there.’
Chapter 37
Michael’s eyes were on Elizabeth Caspersen as she walked down the ramp to the underground car park, greeted the attendant in the glass cubicle by the barriers and headed towards her Opel. When she got in, she leaned back in her seat, lit a cigarette and inserted a CD of a piano concerto into the car stereo. She was driving towards the ramp when she spotted him in the back; she screamed out loud and dropped her cigarette.
‘Only me,’ he said. ‘I was attacked in my room and hoped you’d still be here.’
She scrambled around her feet and pedals for the glowing cigarette; found it, burned her fingers, and straightened up with a jerk only a second away from crashing into a concrete pillar.
‘Christ Almighty, Michael. What the hell … I mean, what are you doing here?!’
He looked miserably at the back of her head and ran his palm across his stubbly scalp.
‘Trouble, I’m afraid. They’re on to me.’
She turned around.
‘Then get down and shut up,’ she ordered him.
He curled into a foetal position obediently and pulled a blanket over his head.
‘What happened? … Michael?’
‘I was careless,’ he said. ‘Someone was waiting for me. Someone who decided to use my head as a football. He knew what he was doing.’
‘But surely you had expected some kind of reaction?’
‘Yes, only not so soon. Which reminds me … Did you get hold of Charlotte Falster?’
‘I’ve spoken to her. She’s going to talk to Lene Jensen and try to persuade her into some kind of partnership. It didn’t sound as if it was going to be easy.’
‘He took everything, Elizabeth,’ he said.
She turned off at Frederiksborggade and drove along the lakes.
‘All of it? What do you mean? Sit up!’
‘The location in Finnmark … the DVD …’
He could see her jaw muscles quiver and her mouth was a tight, red line, but she didn’t utter a single word.
‘I wish you’d say something,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Where are we going?’ she asked him after a pause.
‘I need a place to think,’ he said.
‘Shit, Michael! Shit, shit, shit.’
She banged her hands on the steering wheel.
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he mumbled.
‘This was exactly what couldn’t happen! This very thing,’ she yelled.
‘I’m sorry. I really am.’
‘Who attacked you?’ she asked.
‘I never saw his face, but he wore pointy, black shoes. I have an imprint of them on my abdomen and on the side of my head. The strange thing is that Jakob Schmidt turned up afterwards. He had found out that I had been to his room at Pederslund.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be clever, God dammit! I pay you 20,000 kroner a day to be clever!’
‘Am I fired?’
‘Perhaps you should consider getting a real job, in a care home, for instance. Or as a gravedigger. Somewhere you’re not constantly outwitted.’
‘So I am fired?’
She shot him a withering look in the rear-view mirror, tossed the cigarette out of the window and lit a fresh one.
‘Yo
u’re fired when I tell you you’re fired. What did Jakob want?’
‘I think he had come to beat me up himself. He seemed disappointed that someone got there first.’
‘I know exactly how he feels,’ she grunted.
‘Incidentally, he told me about your father’s vasectomy. Everyone, except you, appears to have known about it. Jakob said his mother had suggested it. He had also noticed a couple of linguistic errors in our letter.’
‘So we can conclude that neither of us is especially clever,’ she said, taking a deep drag on her cigarette.
‘So it would appear.’
‘What did he really want, Michael?’
‘To find out who’s going to win. You know him better than I do. He actually looked like someone who wanted to do the right thing.’
‘I can’t see him as a cold-blooded killer, Michael. I just can’t. Not Jakob.’
‘Countless relatives, friends and acquaintances of cold-blooded killers have said that time and again,’ he said. ‘How well do we really know other people?’
*
She indicated right and pulled up at the kerb of a quiet, residential road in Frederiksberg, turned off the ignition and switched off the headlights.
‘Can you spare a cigarette?’ he asked, patting his pockets.
She turned around, gave him one and lit it for him.
‘Get in the front,’ she said. ‘I’ll get a crick in my neck.’
He got out and looked up and down the road before he got in beside her and rolled down the window. They smoked in silence.
‘So what do we do now?’ she asked some minutes later. ‘And, yes, I’m officially giving you a second chance to prove yourself.’
‘Thank you. Let’s start by looking at the plus points,’ he said.
‘Well, that shouldn’t take long,’ she said after a good look at his battered face.
‘What does Victor want?’ he asked.
‘That’s easy,’ she replied. ‘He wants to preserve and expand his life’s work. Same as my father. Victor is a determined and very vain man. If I play along and back him as the new chairman of the board, I’ll be fine … if I don’t, he’ll destroy me.’
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