A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  His father surveyed them briefly. Then he gathered them together in a stack and began to count, wetting his finger occasionally to facilitate the process. Each magazine was a voice of dissent, each voice one lash of the belt.

  “Twenty-four. I won’t ask where you got them from, Chaplin, because I don’t care. Now you will turn your back to me and I shall lash you twenty-four times. And when we’re done, I wish never to see such filth in my house ever again, do you understand?”

  He did not reply. He simply stared at the pile in front of him and bade farewell to each and every one of his magazines.

  “Failure to reply. That doubles the punishment. Perhaps it might teach you a lesson.”

  It never did. Despite the weals all down his back and the bloom of bruises at his neck, he uttered not a word before his father again fastened his belt. Not a whimper.

  The hardest part was not to burst into tears ten minutes later when he was ordered to set fire to his possessions in the yard outside the house.

  That was what really hurt.

  She cowered in front of the packing cases. Her husband had spoken as he dragged her up the stairs, an incessant flow of words, but she was saying nothing. Nothing at all.

  “We need to get two things straight,” he said. “Give me your phone.”

  She took it out of her pocket, safe in the knowledge that it would provide him with no answers. Kenneth had shown her how to delete calls.

  He pressed some keys and studied the display, only to find nothing incriminating. She was glad that she had outwitted him. What would he do now with all his suspicions?

  “You’ve learned to delete your calls, haven’t you?”

  She did not reply, but twisted the phone from his hand and returned it to her back pocket.

  And then he gestured toward the small room in which his packing cases were stacked. “Very neatly done, I must say.”

  She breathed rather more easily now. He would find nothing here to give her away. Eventually, he would have to let her go.

  “But not quite good enough, I’m afraid.”

  She blinked twice as she scanned the room. Weren’t the coats put back in place? Was the dent in that one case really noticeable?

  “Look at the marks here.” He bent down and pointed. On the front edge of one of the cases a small notch had been made. And one exactly the same on another. Almost aligned, but not quite.

  “When you remove boxes like these and then restack them, they’ll settle in a different way.” And then he indicated two more notches that weren’t aligned. “You took the boxes out and put them back again. I can see that you did. And now you’re going to tell me what you found inside them, do you understand?”

  She shook her head. “You’re insane. They’re just cardboard boxes, why should they interest me? They’ve been there ever since we moved in. They’ve just settled some more, that’s all.”

  It was a clever move, she thought to herself. A neat explanation.

  But he shook his head. Not neat enough.

  “OK, so let’s check, shall we?” he said, pushing her back against the wall. Stay there or else, his frigid eyes told her.

  She glanced about the landing as he began to remove the first of the boxes. There wasn’t much for her to make use of in the narrow space: a stool by the door of their bedroom, a vase on the windowsill, the floor polisher against the sloping wall.

  If she could deliver a clean blow to his neck with the stool, then perhaps…

  She swallowed and clenched her fists. How hard was hard enough?

  And as she stood there, her husband backed out of the doorway and dropped a packing case at her feet with a thud.

  “Right, let’s have a look, shall we? In a moment, we’ll know for sure if you’ve been poking your nose in.”

  She stared as he opened the lid. It was one from the front, almost in the middle. Two cardboard flaps revealed the burial chamber of his innermost secrets. The cutting of her at the show-jumping competition in Bernstorffsparken. The wooden filing box with the many addresses and information on all those families and their children. He had known exactly where it was.

  She closed her eyes and tried to breathe calmly. If there was a God, then He would have to help her now.

  “I really don’t see what all this is about. What have all those papers got to do with me?” she said.

  He planted one knee on the floor, took out the first pile of cuttings, and put it to one side. He didn’t want to risk her seeing the cutting about herself in case he was unable to prove her guilt.

  She had worked him out.

  Then, carefully, he took out the filing box. He didn’t even need to open it. Just lowered his head and said in the softest of voices: “Why couldn’t you leave my things alone?”

  What had he seen? What had she overlooked?

  She stared down at his spine, glanced at the stool and then again at his spine.

  What was it about, the information in that wooden box? Why did he clench his fist so that his knuckles showed white?

  She drew her hand to her throat and felt her jugular throbbing.

  He turned toward her, his eyes narrowed to slits. A terrifying glare. His contempt so ferocious it almost prevented her from breathing.

  The stool was three meters away.

  “I haven’t touched any of it,” she said. “What makes you think I have?”

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  She moved slightly in the direction of the stool. He didn’t react.

  “Look!” He turned the front of the wooden box toward her. She didn’t know what she was supposed to see.

  “What?” she asked. “There’s nothing there.”

  When snow falls as sleet, you can see its flakes evaporate in their descent toward the ground, their beauty absorbed back into the air whence it came, their magic gone.

  She felt exactly like such a snowflake as he lunged at her legs and swept them from underneath her. Falling, she saw her life disintegrate and everything she had ever known turn to dust. She never felt the crack of her head against the floor, only that she was locked in his grip.

  “Exactly! There’s nothing there. But there should have been,” he snarled.

  She felt the blood trickle from her temple, but it didn’t hurt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she heard herself say.

  “There was a thread on the lid.” He thrust his face into hers. “And now it’s gone.”

  “Let go of me. Let me get up. Couldn’t it have fallen off by itself? When did you last rummage around in those packing cases? Four years ago? All sorts of things can happen in four years!” And then she mustered all the air in her lungs and screamed as loud as she could: “LET GO OF ME!”

  But he didn’t.

  She watched the distance between herself and the stool increase as he dragged her into the room with all the boxes. She saw the trail of blood she left behind on the floor. She heard his oaths and his grunts as he held her down with his foot against her spine.

  She wanted to scream again, but she couldn’t find the breath.

  And then he raised his foot, took hold of her roughly, and threw her into the middle of the floor. And there she lay, helpless and bleeding in the valley of cardboard.

  Maybe she could have reacted, but what happened next took her completely by surprise.

  She registered only his legs stepping quickly to one side and the packing case as it was raised high above her.

  And then he slammed it down hard against her rib cage.

  For a moment, all air left her. But instinctively she twisted her body slightly onto her side and drew one leg up on top of the other. Then the second case descended, forcing her lower arm against her ribs and rendering all further movement impossible. And then, finally, a third on top.

  Three full packing cases, weighing all too much.

  She could see the landing beyond her feet, but then he closed off the space with another stack of boxes on top of her lower legs, and then ano
ther up against the door.

  As he did so, he said nothing. Neither did he speak when he slammed the door shut, trapping her tight.

  It was done so quickly that there had been no time to shout for help. But if she had shouted, who would have come to her aid?

  She wondered if he would simply leave her there. Her chest felt immobile, and she was breathing from her abdomen now. All she could see in the remaining chinks of light from the skylight above her were brown surfaces of cardboard.

  When finally darkness came, the phone in her back pocket rang.

  Chimed until it stopped.

  21

  In the first twenty kilometers to Karlshamn, Carl smoked four full-strength Cecils just to settle his system again after ingesting Tryggve Holt’s horrendous coffee.

  If only they had finished the interview the night before, he could have driven home again and would at this moment be lying in his cozy bed with the newspaper spread across his chest and the enlivening aroma of Morten’s rice porridge pancakes drifting into his nostrils.

  He could taste his own malodorous breath.

  Saturday morning. In three hours, he would be home. If he could keep his arse cheeks clenched.

  Hardly had he tuned in to Radio Blekinge before his mobile chimed in the middle of a jig performed on Hardanger fiddles.

  “Hey, Carlo, whassup? Where are you?” inquired the voice at the other end.

  Carl glanced at the time on the instrument panel. It was nine o’clock, so this boded ill. When had his stepson ever been up this early on a Saturday morning?

  “What’s wrong, Jesper?”

  The lad sounded peeved. “I don’t want to stay with Vigga anymore. I’m going to move back in with you, if that’s OK?”

  Carl turned the volume down on the Swedish folkies. “With me? Hang on a minute, Jesper, just listen up for a second, will you? Vigga gave me an ultimatum. She wants to come back, too. And if that doesn’t suit me, she wants to sell the house so she can run off with half the proceeds. So where are you going to live then?”

  “She’s joking, surely?”

  Carl smiled. It never ceased to amaze him how little the lad knew his own mother. “Anyway, why do you want to come back all of a sudden? What’s wrong? Fed up with the leaky roof in that garden shed of hers? Or was it your turn to do the washing up?”

  He smiled to himself. A bit of sarcasm did his dodgy stomach no end of good.

  “It’s too fucking far from school! An hour each way, a total downer. And then there’s Vigga’s moaning all the time. Who wants that?”

  “Moaning? What sort of moaning?” he heard himself say before he could stop himself. What a stupid question. “On second thought, Jesper, I think I’d prefer not to know.”

  “Nah, not that sort, Carlo! She moans whenever there isn’t a bloke in the house, like now. It’s getting on my nerves.”

  So Vigga was on her own at the moment? What about the poet in the horn-rimmed specs? Had he found himself another muse with more money in the bank? Someone able to keep their gob shut for five minutes at a time?

  Carl gazed out at the rain-drenched landscape. The GPS told him to go via Rödby and Bräkne-Hoby. The route looked meandering and most likely muddy as hell. And how come there were so many trees in this country?

  “That’s why she wants to go back to Rønneholtparken,” Jesper went on. “Then at least she’ll have you for company.”

  Carl shook his head. What a compliment.

  “OK, Jesper, I’ll tell you what. There’s no way I’m having Vigga back in the house. I’ll give you a thousand kroner if you can talk her out of it. How does that sound?”

  “Talk her out of it? How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Easy. Find her a new bloke. Use your brains, lad. Two thousand if you can manage it this weekend. And then you can move back in with me. That’s the deal.”

  Two birds with one stone. Carl was a happy man. Jesper, however, was stunned into silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Oh, and one more thing. If you do come back, I want no more complaints about Hardy staying with us. If you don’t like the setup, you can stay put in the little house on the prairie.”

  “On the what?”

  “Are you with me? Two thousand if you get her sorted this weekend.”

  More silence as the proposition passed through the standard teenage filters of resentment and bone-idleness, together with a liberal spread of morning-after sloth.

  “Two thousand, straight up?” came the response after a while. “OK, you’re on. I’ll run some flyers off.”

  “Deal.” Carl had his doubts, though, as to Jesper’s chosen method. He had imagined something more along the lines of him inviting a swarm of impoverished daubers to the allotment house where they could see with their own eyes the magnificent and, more important, gratis studio that might be part of the package when taking on a female hippie with mileage on the odometer.

  “What are you going to put on those flyers, then?”

  “Haven’t a clue, Carlo.” He mused for a moment.

  “Maybe something like: Hey, my lush mum’s looking for a lush bloke. Miserable bastards and down-and-outs needn’t apply.” He laughed at his own suggestion.

  “OK, but have another think before you get started.”

  “No probs, Carlo!” Jesper laughed again, a hangover rasp. “Get your money ready!” And then he hung up.

  Slightly bewildered, Carl peered out over the dashboard at red-painted houses and grazing cows in the pouring rain.

  There was nothing like modern technology to muddle together life’s elements.

  It was a dejected, doleful smile Hardy mustered when Carl appeared in the front room.

  “Where have you been?” he asked softly as Morten wiped mashed potato from the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh, a little jaunt over to Sweden. Had to go to Blekinge and stayed the night. In actual fact, I stood outside a pretty sizable police station in Karlshamn this morning knocking on a locked door. It’s even worse than here. Too bad if there’s a crime on a weekend.” He allowed himself an ironic chuckle. Hardy didn’t think it was funny, either.

  To be fair, Carl’s story wasn’t entirely true. The police station in Karlshamn had been equipped with an entry phone. The sign next to it read: Press B and state business. Carl had done so tentatively, only to find himself up against incomprehensible gobbledygook when the duty officer answered. The crackling voice had then spoken some Swedish variant of English that Carl likewise failed to decipher.

  So then he’d buggered off.

  He gave his corpulent lodger a pat on the back. “Thanks, Morten. I’ll take over for a minute, if that’s OK. Would you mind getting some coffee on the go in the meantime? Only not too strong.”

  His gaze followed Morten’s waddling bulk as it disappeared into the kitchen. Had the man been living on a diet of cream cheese these past weeks? He looked like a pair of tractor tires.

  Then he turned to Hardy. “You’re looking a bit down in the dumps today. What’s up?”

  “Morten’s killing me, bit by bit,” Hardy whispered, catching his breath. “He force-feeds me all day long like there’s nothing else to do. Fatty food that goes right through me. I don’t know why he bothers. He’s the one who has to wipe my arse. Can’t you ask him to give it a rest? Just once in a while?” He shook his head as Carl raised the next spoonful to his mouth.

  “And then there’s his jabbering all day long. Driving me up the wall, he is. All sorts of shite about Paris Hilton and the Law of Succession and pension payouts. What do I care? One long blather, from one subject to the next.”

  “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  Hardy closed his eyes. OK, so he’d tried already. Morten wasn’t the kind for making U-turns.

  Carl nodded. “Of course. I’ll have a word with him, Hardy. How are you doing, anyway, apart from that?” It was a cautiously posed question. Well inside the minefield.

  “I’ve got phantom pain.�
��

  Carl saw Hardy’s Adam’s apple struggling to let him swallow.

  “Do you want some water?” He took a bottle from the holder by the bed and put the straw to Hardy’s lips. If Hardy and Morten were going to have a falling-out, who would be left to do all this?

  “Phantom pain, you say? Where?” he asked.

  “Behind my knees, I think. It’s so hard to tell. All I know is it hurts, like someone hitting me with a wire brush.”

  “Do you want an injection?”

  He nodded. Morten could take care of that shortly.

  “What about the feeling in your finger and shoulder? Can you still move your wrist?”

  Hardy’s mouth drooped. Enough said.

  “Talking of Karlshamn,” Carl went on, “didn’t you once work with them on some case or other?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I need a police artist to do a likeness of a killer. I’ve got a witness in Blekinge who can give a description.”

  “So?”

  “Well, I need to get it done pretty sharpish, and the Swedish plod seem to be just as good as we are at shutting up shop when it comes to local stations. Like I said, I stood outside this great big yellow building on Erik Dahlbergsvägen in Karlshamn at seven o’clock this morning, staring at a sign that said Closed Saturday and Sunday. Open weekdays 9 A.M. to 3 P.M. And that was that. On a Saturday!”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “You could ask your mate in Karlshamn if he could do Department Q in Copenhagen a favor.”

  “What’s to say he’s still in Karlshamn? It’s been six years, at least.”

  “You’re right, he’s probably moved on by now. Still, if you give me his name, I’ll do a search for him on the Internet. If we’re lucky, he’ll still be on the force. Bit of an apple-polisher, wasn’t he, if I remember right? All you’d have to do is ask him to get on the blower and call a police artist. It won’t be more trouble than that. Wouldn’t you do the same for him if he were to ask?”