A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Hardy’s eyelids were heavy, not a good sign. “It’ll be expensive on a weekend,” he said after a while. “Assuming there’s a police artist anywhere near your witness, and that he or she might be interested.”

  Carl looked at the cup of coffee Morten put down for him on the bedside table. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought it was residue from a can of motor oil concentrated into something blacker.

  “It’s a good thing you’re back, Carl,” said Morten. “So I can get going.”

  “Get going? Where to?”

  “The funeral procession for Mustafa Hsownay. It starts at two o’clock from Nørreport Station.”

  Carl nodded. Mustafa Hsownay, another innocent victim of the war between the bikers and the immigrant gangs for control of the hash market.

  Morten raised his arm and waved a little flag that looked like Iraq’s. Wherever could he have got it from?

  “I went to school with someone from the Mjølnerparken development where Mustafa was shot.”

  Others might perhaps have hesitated to share such a flimsy claim to solidarity.

  But Morten was in a league of his own.

  They lay almost side by side. Carl on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table, Hardy in his hospital bed with his long, lame body turned onto its side. His eyes had been closed since Carl switched on the television, and the bitter twist of his mouth seemed now to have smoothed.

  They were like an elderly couple finally succumbing to the indispensable company of news programs and powdered presenters. Dozing off in front of the box on a Saturday evening. If they were only holding hands, the picture would be complete.

  Carl forced open his eyelids and noted that the news program that suddenly flickered in front of him was the last of the day.

  Time to get Hardy ready for the night and get some proper shut-eye.

  He stared at the screen, at Mustafa Hsownay’s funeral procession moving quietly along Nørrebrogade in a dignified and orderly manner. The cameras showed thousands of silent faces lining the street and pink tulips thrown to the hearse from windows above. Immigrants of all kinds, and just as many native Danes. Many clasping hands.

  The cauldron that was Copenhagen had gone off the boil for a moment. The gang war was not the people’s war.

  Carl nodded to himself. It was commendable of Morten to have taken part. Not many people from Allerød would have been there. He wasn’t, either, for that matter.

  “Look, there’s Assad,” Hardy said quietly.

  Carl turned his head. Had he been awake all this time?

  “Where?” He glanced back at the screen just in time to see Assad’s round face pop up amid the throng.

  Unlike everyone else there, his eyes seemed to be fixed not on the hearse but on the mourners in the procession. His head moved almost imperceptibly from side to side like a predator following its prey through undergrowth. He was concentrating. And then the producer cut away.

  “What the…?” Carl muttered to himself.

  “He looked like one of them from intelligence,” Hardy snorted.

  Carl woke up in his bed at about three o’clock, his heart pounding and his duvet weighing two hundred kilos. He wasn’t feeling well. It was like a sudden fever. Like a horde of viruses had assaulted him and shut down his sympathetic nervous system.

  He gasped for air and clutched at his chest. Why am I panicking? he asked himself, and felt in need of a hand to hold.

  He opened his eyes in the darkness.

  This has happened before, he thought, instantly recalling his previous collapse and feeling the sweat that made his T-shirt cling to his skin.

  After he and Anker and Hardy got shot out in Amager, it had lain dormant inside him, ticking away like a time bomb.

  Was it the same thing now?

  “Think your way through what happened. It’ll give you some distance,” Mona had told him during his counseling.

  He clenched his fists and recalled the impact that traveled through the floorboards when Hardy had been hit and he himself had felt the graze of the bullet against his temple. The feeling of body against body when Hardy pulled him down as he fell, covering him in blood. Anker’s heroic attempt to stop the gunmen, despite being badly injured. And then the final, fatal shot that emptied Anker’s blood so definitively onto the filthy wooden floor.

  He went through it, over and over again. Recalling the shame of having done nothing and Hardy’s bewilderment as to why it had all happened.

  And his heart continued to pound.

  “Bastards, bastards,” he snarled, repeating himself as he reached for the light and a smoke. Tomorrow, he would call Mona and tell her he’d come unstuck again. He would be as charming as he could, though with a smidgeon of added despair. Then, maybe, she’d give him more than a consultation. He could always hope, anyway.

  He smiled at the thought and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs. Then he closed his eyes, only to feel his heart carrying on like a pneumatic drill again. Was he really ill this time?

  He got out of bed with difficulty and edged his way down the stairs. If he was having a heart attack, he didn’t want to be up there all on his own in bed.

  And that was where he fell, to be woken up by Morten gently shaking him, a painted Iraqi flag fading on his forehead.

  The raised eyebrows of the on-call doctor signaled that Carl had wasted his time. The verdict was short and to the point: overexertion.

  Overexertion! An insult, followed by some standard wording about stress and a couple of tablets to take that hammered Carl into the land of nod until way past church time.

  By the time he woke up on Sunday, it was half past one in the afternoon and his head was throbbing with all manner of unpleasant thoughts. His heart, though, was beating normally.

  “Jesper wants you to call him,” Hardy said from his bed when Carl finally tottered down the stairs. “Are you OK?”

  Carl gave a shrug. “There’s some stuff inside my head I can’t control,” he answered.

  Hardy forced a smile, and Carl could have bitten off his own tongue. That was the thing about having Hardy around. You always had to think before opening your gob.

  “I’ve been thinking about Assad, seeing him on telly last night,” Hardy said. “What do you actually know about him, Carl? Don’t you think you should meet that family of his? Maybe it’s about time you paid him a visit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Isn’t it normal to take an interest in your partner?”

  Partner! Was Assad now his partner all of a sudden? “I know you, Hardy,” he said. “You’re on to something. What is it?”

  Hardy drew back his lips in something resembling a smile. It was always gratifying to be properly understood.

  “It’s like I saw him in a different light. As if I didn’t know him. Do you know Assad, do you think?”

  “Ask me if I know anyone. Who really knows who, at the end of the day?”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Heimdalsgade, I think.”

  “You think?”

  Where does he live? What’s his family like? Was this some kind of interrogation? But Hardy was right. He knew fuck all about Assad.

  “What did Jesper want?” he asked, changing the subject.

  Hardy raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t finished with Assad. For whatever reason.

  “Hardy says you called,” Carl said into his mobile a moment later.

  “I did, yeah,” said Jesper. “You can get your savings out of the bank now, Carlo.”

  Carl blinked uncontrollably. The lad sounded sure of himself.

  “Carl! The name’s Carl, Jesper. If you call me Carlo once more I shall be forced to momentarily go deaf at very decisive moments in your potentially short life, do you get my drift?”

  “Got you, Carlo.” He could almost see Jesper laughing at the other end of the connection. “Hope you can hear me now. I’ve found Vigga a bloke.”

  “You don’t say. Is he worth t
wo thousand kroner, or is she going to chuck him out with the bathwater tomorrow like she did with her man of letters? Because if she is, you can forget all about your dosh.”

  “He’s forty years old. Owns an Opel Vectra and a convenience store. Nineteen-year-old daughter.”

  “Well, I never. And where did you dig him up?”

  “I put a flyer up in his shop. It was the first one.”

  Easy money.

  “And what makes you think this Grocer Jack can sweep Vigga off her feet? Does he look like Brad Pitt?”

  “Try again, Carlo. Not unless Brad Pitt fell asleep in the sun for a week or two.”

  “You mean he’s black?”

  “Not black, exactly, but not fucking far off!”

  Carl held his breath as the rest of the story was delivered in detail. The man was a widower, endowed with the kind of soulful brown eyes that Vigga was almost bound to find irresistible. Jesper had dragged him down to the house on the allotment, where the man had heaped praise on Vigga’s paintings and exclaimed with obvious delight that her little place was the most charming he had seen in all his life. And that, apparently, had sealed it. At that very moment, they were having lunch together at some restaurant in the city.

  Carl shook his head. He ought to be as pleased as punch, and instead all he felt was an ache in his stomach.

  When Jesper was finished, he snapped his mobile shut in slow motion and turned his gaze on Morten and Hardy, who were gawping at him like a pair of stray dogs waiting for some leftovers.

  “We’re saved, so it seems. Let’s cross our fingers, anyway. Seems Jesper’s got Vigga paired off with the man of her dreams, so maybe we can stay on here for a while longer.”

  Whereupon Morten’s jaw dropped and he clapped his hands with glee. “Oh, how sweet!” he exclaimed. “Who’s the lucky white knight?”

  “White?” Carl tried to force his mouth into a smile, but his muscles seemed to be stuck. “According to Jesper, Gurkamal Singh Pannu is the darkest thing north of the equator.”

  Did he hear them gasp?

  The whole of the outer Nørrebro district was blue and white that day and populated by utterly miserable faces. Carl had never seen quite so many FC Copenhagen supporters looking so down in the dumps as they milled through the streets. Flags trailed along the ground, cans of beer seemed almost too heavy to be raised to the lips, and the chants had all but died away, only now and then to be superseded by roars of frustration that echoed through the city like the pained cries of gnu succumbing to lions.

  Their heroes had gone down 2–0 to Esbjerg. Fourteen home victories on the trot, and then beaten by a team who hadn’t won a single away match for a year.

  The city was defeated.

  He parked halfway along Heimdalsgade and glanced around. Since his patrolling days here, immigrant stores had sprouted all over the place. The area was alive, even on a Sunday.

  He found Assad’s name on a doorplate and pushed the buzzer. Better to be snubbed on the spot than turned down over the phone. If Assad wasn’t in, he would drive out to Vigga’s place and check out what new version of reality she was now operating in, just to make sure he knew what he was up against.

  After twenty seconds, there was still no answer.

  He stepped back and peered up at the balconies. It wasn’t quite the ghetto he had been expecting. He saw no visible laundry and surprisingly few satellite dishes.

  “Are you wanting in?” asked a chirpy voice behind him, and a young blond girl, the type whose eyes alone were enough to render a man speechless, stepped past him and unlocked the door.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled, following her into the stairwell of the concrete block.

  He found the flat on the third floor, discovering that, unlike the densely populated nameplates of his two Arab neighbors, Assad’s had only his own name on it.

  Carl pressed the bell a couple of times, sensing already that he was out of luck. Then he bent down and flipped open the letter box.

  The place looked empty. Apart from some junk mail and a couple of bills on the floor, he could see nothing but a pair of timeworn leather armchairs against the far wall.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Carl turned his head to see a pair of baggy white tracksuit bottoms with stripes down the leg.

  He straightened up to face a powerhouse whose tanned upper arms looked like sides of beef. “I’m looking for Assad. Do you know if he’s been home today?”

  “The Shiite? No, he hasn’t.”

  “What about his family?”

  The man cocked his head slightly. “You sure you know him? Or maybe you’re the fucker who’s been doing the break-ins around here? What’s with all the peering through people’s letter boxes?”

  He thrust his chest against Carl’s.

  “All right, hold on a minute, Rambo.”

  He put a hand against the man’s complex of abdominal muscles and fumbled around in his own inside pocket.

  “Assad’s my friend, and so are you if you can answer some questions for me.”

  The man stared at the police badge Carl held up in front of his face.

  “Who’d want to be friends with one of you lot?” he snarled, lips retracted.

  He made to turn and go, but Carl grabbed his sleeve.

  “Maybe you’ll answer me anyway. It’d be a help…”

  “Stick your questions up your arse, you fucking wanker.”

  Carl nodded. In about three and a half seconds, he would demonstrate to this overgrown, protein-powder monster who the real wanker was. The guy may have been built like a brick shithouse, but he wasn’t so big he could ignore the firm grip of the law on his collar and the threat of arrest for insulting an officer on duty.

  But then a voice came from behind him.

  “Hey, Bilal, whassup? The man’s got a badge.”

  Carl turned to see an even bigger individual, whose main occupation was clearly lifting weights. He was a window display of sports clothing. If his enormous T-shirt had been bought in a normal shop, then the place had certainly been well stocked.

  “Sorry about my brother. He’s on steroids,” he said, extending a mitt the size of a provincial market town. “We don’t have anything to do with Hafez el-Assad. In fact, I’ve only ever seen him twice. Funny-looking guy. Round face and big eyes, yeah?”

  Carl nodded and let go of the giant’s sleeve he was still clutching.

  “Tell you the truth,” the brother continued, “I don’t think he even lives here. And if he does, it’s not with any family, that’s for sure.” He smiled. “Just as well, it’s only a one-room flat.”

  After calling Assad’s number a couple of times with no answer, Carl got out of the car and took a deep breath before walking up the path to Vigga’s little allotment garden house.

  “Hello, angel,” she sang in greeting.

  Music of a kind he had never heard before poured from the tiny speakers in the front room. Was that a sitar, or some poor animal being tormented?

  “What’s this, then?” he asked, fighting the urge to put his hands to his ears and shut out the noise.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” She danced a couple of steps that no Indian in his right mind could possibly consider well chosen. “Gurkamal gave me a CD. He says he’s got lots more I can have, if I want.”

  “Is he here?” Stupid question in a dwelling with only two rooms.

  Vigga smiled exuberantly. “He’s at his shop. His daughter’s got curling practice, so he had to take over.”

  “Curling! Age-old Indian sport, eh?”

  She swatted at him playfully. “You say Indian, but I say Punjabi. That’s where he’s from.”

  “Oh, so he’s Pakistani then?”

  “No, he’s Indian. But don’t waste your brain cells on it.”

  Carl sat down heavily in a moth-eaten armchair. “Vigga, this whole situation’s no good. Jesper flitting back and forth, and you putting the squeeze on us like that. I hardly know where I stan
d with the house.”

  “But that’s life when you’re still married to a woman who owns half.”

  “That’s what I mean. Can’t we come to some sort of fair arrangement so I can buy you out?”

  “Fair?” She made the word sound almost odious.

  “Yes, fair. If you and I were to draw up a deed in the amount of, say, two hundred thousand, then I could pay you back two thousand a month. How does that sound?”

  Vigga’s cogs began to whirr. When it came to smaller sums, she tended to be hopeless, but as soon as a figure contained enough zeros, she could be exacting indeed.

  “Carl, my dear,” she began, and he realized instantly that the initiative was lost. “This is neither the time nor the place. At some point, perhaps. Though we’d have to up the figure. Who knows what the future might bring?” And then she laughed out loud, without apparent reason, and he was back to his usual state of bewilderment.

  He felt he should collect himself and tell her they should have a solicitor look things over, but his courage failed him.

  “But I will say one thing, Carl. We’re a family, and we need to support each other. I know how happy you and Hardy and Morten and Jesper are living at Rønneholtparken, and it would be a shame to disrupt things for you. I can see that.”

  Looking at her, he sensed that any second now she was going to table a proposal that would knock the wind out of him.

  “So I’ve decided to leave you all in peace for the time being.”

  It was easy enough for her to say. But what would happen when this Gherkin, or whatever his name was, tired of her incessant jabber and knitted socks?

  “But I want you to do me a favor in return,” she added.

  It was the kind of utterance that from the mouth of Vigga could entail no end of insurmountable problems.

  “I think—” he managed to say before being interrupted.

  “My mother would like you to visit her. She’s always talking about you, Carl. She still thinks the sun shines out of your backside. So I’ve decided you should look in on her once a week. If that’s all right with you. Starting tomorrow.”