A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “If it’s something criminal, I can’t guarantee you anything.”

  “It is. But we’re not the criminals. He is, the man you kicked out. And what he’s done…” She took a deep breath, noticing for the first time that her voice was shaking. “What he’s done is the worst thing anyone could do to a family. He’s kidnapped two of our children. And if you tell anyone, he’ll kill them. Do you understand?”

  Twenty minutes had passed, and never in her life had Isabel been held in the grip of shock for so long. Now she saw everything as it was. The man who had been living with her, and whom for a brief, intense period she had taken to be a possible life partner, was a monster most likely capable of anything at all. She felt it now, as her senses recalled his hands on her body. Just a little too strong, too competent almost. She realized how fatal his entry into her life could have been. And her mouth went dry as she thought back to the moment when she had revealed to him that she had been gathering information on him. What if he had attacked her there and then, before she managed to tell him that she had passed on everything she knew to her brother on the force? What if he had discovered that she was bluffing? That she would never dream of involving her brother in her erotically derived catastrophes?

  She hardly dared think about it.

  She looked at these people and shared their pain. Oh, how she hated that man. And she vowed that regardless of what it might cost, he would not get away.

  “Listen, I can help you. My brother’s a policeman. He’s in the traffic police, but we can get him to put out a description. That way we can spread the word, cover the whole country in no time at all. I’ve got the number of his van. I can describe everything in detail.”

  But the woman in front of her shook her head. She wanted to agree, but couldn’t. “I told you, you’re not to tell anyone. You promised,” she said after a moment. “Now we’ve got four hours before the banks close, and we need to raise a million kroner. We can’t sit here any longer.”

  “But listen to me. If we leave now, we can be at his address in less than four hours.”

  Again, Rachel shook her head. “What makes you think he took the children there? Surely that would be the stupidest thing he could do? My children might be anywhere at all. He may have taken them over the border. Anything can get through these days. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Isabel nodded. “You’re right.” She looked at the husband. “Have you got a mobile phone?”

  Joshua pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Here,” he said.

  “Is it fully charged?”

  He nodded.

  “Have you got one, too, Rachel?”

  “Yes,” was all she said.

  “I think we should split into two teams. Joshua should try to raise the ransom, and we’ll drive to Sjælland. We need to do it now!”

  The couple looked at each other for a moment. This unlikely pair—Isabel understood them only too well. She had no children of her own, and that was cause for grief enough in itself. How must it feel to realize you were about to lose those you had, that you might fail to save them?

  “We need a million kroner,” said Joshua. “We’re good for more, but we can’t just go to the bank and ask them to give us the money, and certainly not in cash. A couple of years ago, maybe, when things were different. But not now. The only place we can go to is our congregation. It’s a risk, but it’s our only chance of getting the money.” He looked at her urgently. His breathing was shaky, his lips a little blue. “Unless you can help us. I think you can, if you want to.”

  Here, for the first time, she saw the real person behind the name, so well known for the efficient running of his business. One of the best taxpayers in Viborg Municipality.

  “Call your superiors,” he said with sadness in his eyes. “Tell them to call the tax authorities. Tell them we’ve made a mistake with our voluntary payment and that they need to return the amount to our account immediately. Can you do that?”

  And suddenly the ball was in her court.

  When she had gone to work that morning, three hours ago, she had still been feeling stunned. Out of sorts and in a foul mood. Self-pity had been her only momentum. Now she could hardly recognize those emotions. At this moment, she was prepared to act, to do anything necessary. Even if it cost her her job.

  Even if it cost her more.

  “Let me go into another room,” she said. “I’ll be as quick as I can, but it may take some time.”

  26

  “So, Laursen,” Carl said to the former forensics officer, wrapping up his briefing. “Now we know who wrote the letter.”

  “Dreadful story.” Laursen breathed deeply. “You say you’ve got hold of some of Poul Holt’s possessions, so if there’s any DNA on them, then we can establish beyond a doubt whether the blood used to write the letter was his. If it was, then alongside the brother’s corroborating statement that he was killed, we should have enough to make a case. Assuming we find a suspect. But a murder case without a corpse is always going to be a dodgy business, you know that.”

  He stared at the transparent plastic bags Carl produced from his drawer.

  “Tryggve Holt told me he still kept some personal items belonging to his brother. The two of them were close, and Tryggve took these with him when he left home. I persuaded him to hand them over to us.”

  Laursen wrapped a handkerchief around his large square mitt. “These are probably no good,” he said, putting a pair of sandals and a shirt to one side. “This might be useful, though.”

  He examined the cap in detail. An ordinary white baseball cap with a blue peak proclaiming JESUS RULES!

  “Poul wasn’t allowed to wear it because of his parents. But he loved it, apparently. Kept it under his bed during the day and practically slept with it on at night.”

  “Anyone worn it other than Poul?”

  “Seems not. I asked Tryggve the same question.”

  “OK, then we’ve got his DNA here.” Laursen jabbed a thick finger at a couple of hairs adhering to the inside of the cap.

  “Most excellent!” said Assad, appearing behind them with a ream of papers in his hand. His face was as bright as a fluorescent tube, which couldn’t be attributable to Laursen’s presence alone. What had he dug up now?

  “Thanks, Laursen,” said Carl. “I know you’re up to your ears in fishcakes upstairs, but things do get through the system a lot more smoothly if they come from you.”

  Carl shook him by the hand. It was about time he got his arse up to the cafeteria and let Laursen’s mates up there know what kind of a guy they had in their midst.

  “Hey,” Laursen exclaimed, his eyes fixed somewhere in the air in front of him. And then he swiped a hand quickly and without warning at something invisible. He stood for a moment with his fist clenched, then made a movement a bit like hurling a tennis ball onto the floor. A split second later, he stamped his foot down and smiled. “I can’t stand those things,” he said by way of explanation, lifting his foot to reveal an enormous fly splayed out flat on the floor.

  And then he was gone.

  Assad rubbed his hands gleefully as Laursen’s footsteps faded. “We are running just like a well-oiled machine now, Carl. Have a look at this.”

  He dropped his pile of papers onto the desk and indicated the sheet on top. “Here is the common I nominate in all the fires, Carl.”

  “You what?”

  “The common I nominate.”

  “Common denominator, Assad. A compound noun. What common denominator?”

  “Here. Suddenly it came to me as I was on my way through JPP’s accounts. They borrowed money from a firm of bankers called RJ Invest, and this is very important.”

  Carl shook his head. The world had too many initialisms in it for his liking. What the fuck was JPP?

  “JPP, was that the firm making fittings that burned down in Emdrup?”

  Assad nodded and jabbed again at the document, then turned his head toward the corridor. “Hey, Yrsa, are you comi
ng? I’m now showing Carl what we discovered.”

  Carl felt his brow wrinkle. Had Yrsa, that odd female beanstalk, been spending her time on things other than what she was supposed to?

  He heard her feet tramping down the corridor loud enough to shame a regiment of U.S. Marines. How could she do that? She weighed maybe fifty-five kilos at the most.

  She burst in through the door and had the documents in his face before she’d even come to a halt. “Have you told him about RJ Invest, Assad?”

  Assad nodded.

  “That’s who made the loan to JPP shortly before the fire.”

  “This I have already told him, Yrsa,” said Assad.

  “OK. And RJ Invest are loaded,” she continued. “At present, their loan portfolio stands at over five hundred million euros. Not bad for a firm that wasn’t even registered until 2004, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Five hundred million euros,” Carl mused. “Everyone’s got that kind of money these days, haven’t they?”

  He thought of his own portfolio of pocket fluff.

  “RJ Invest didn’t in 2004. They were borrowing from AIJ Ltd. Who in turn borrowed their initial capital in 1995 from MJ AG, who in turn borrowed from TJ Holding. Do you see the link?”

  What did she think he was, stupid or something?

  “No, Yrsa, I don’t. Unless it’s the letter ‘J.’ And what do they all stand for, anyway?”

  Carl smiled, knowing she’d have no answer.

  “Jankovic,” Assad and Yrsa replied in unison.

  Assad spread the documents out on the desk in front of him. Annual accounts of the four companies they were investigating for the period 1992 to 2009. All had borrowed money, and the lenders were highlighted with a red marker.

  All moneylenders with a “J.”

  “So what you’re trying to tell me is that the same banking firm was behind all the short-term loans taken out by our four companies prior to their properties burning down?”

  “Yes!” In unison again.

  Carl studied the documents for a while. This was definitely a breakthrough.

  “OK, Yrsa,” he said eventually. “You gather all the information you can find on these four loan companies. Do we know what the other letters stand for?”

  She smiled like a Hollywood actor with no other talent. “RJ: Radomir Jankovic. AIJ: Abram Ilija Jankovic. MJ: Milica Jankovic. TJ: Tomislav Jankovic. Siblings. Three brothers, and the sister, Milica.”

  “OK. Are they resident in Denmark?”

  “No.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Nowhere you could pronounce,” she replied, her shoulders hovering somewhere in the region of her ears.

  She and Assad looked like two schoolkids with a stash of something illegal in their backpacks.

  “No, to put it to you straight up, Carl, all four of them are dead some years ago,” said Assad.

  Of course they were. What else had he expected?

  “They made a name for themselves in Serbia when the war broke out,” Yrsa explained. “Four siblings, arms dealers, and making a packet out of it. A very naughty bunch.” She expelled a grunt that Carl supposed to be a laugh, and Assad picked up the thread.

  “Indeed, this is an understatement of Yrsa, to promote understanding,” he added.

  Where would he be without Assad?

  Carl searched Yrsa’s chuckling face, then looked her up and down. Where the hell did this bizarre creature get her information? Did she speak Serbian?

  “I’m guessing, then, that their highly dubious fortune got channeled into legal lending operations in Western Europe,” Carl said. “But if that’s the kind of case we’re dealing with, then my view is that we should kick it upstairs to some of our colleagues who are a lot better equipped than us to deal with financial crime.”

  “You should have a look at this first, Carl.” Yrsa rummaged through her documents. “We’ve got a picture here of the four of them together. It’s quite old, but still useful.”

  She placed the photograph on the desk in front of him.

  “OK,” he said, digesting the image of four overfed specimens the size of Angus cattle. “A bit on the beefy side, then. Sumo wrestlers, perhaps?”

  “Have a good look, Carl,” Assad urged. “Then you will see what we mean.”

  He traced Assad’s gaze to the bottom of the photo. The four siblings were sitting in an orderly line at a cloth-covered table. In front of each was a crystal goblet. All four had their hands neatly placed on the table in front of them, as though they had been instructed to do so by a strict mother standing just outside the picture. Four pairs of thickset hands—and each left hand displayed a ring on its little finger. A ring that had practically been engulfed by flesh.

  Carl looked up at his assistants, two of the oddest individuals ever to have graced these forbidding corridors. Now they had lifted the case into a new dimension. A case that wasn’t really even theirs.

  It was like a surreal dream.

  An hour later, Carl’s carefully considered allocation of tasks was messed up again. Deputy Chief Lars Bjørn was on the phone. One of his men had been down in records and overheard an exchange between Assad and that new girl. What was going on? Had they found another link between those arson cases?

  Carl outlined the situation, the stuffed shirt at the other end grunting at every second word to indicate that he was listening.

  “I want you to send Hafez el-Assad over to Rødovre so Antonsen can be put in the picture. We’ll proceed with the arsons here on our own patch, but you’ll have to take care of the old case yourselves, now that you’re under way,” said Bjørn.

  No peace for the wicked.

  “I don’t think Assad will want to, to be honest.”

  “Well, you’ll have to do it yourself, then, won’t you?”

  Lars fucking Bjørn.

  “You don’t mean this, surely, Carl? You are pulling my leg, I think?” Great dimples appeared in Assad’s stubble, only to vanish just as quickly.

  “Take the car, Assad. And mind your speed once you hit Roskildevej. The traffic boys are out with their lollipops today.”

  “If I should think a thought now, it would be that this is very foolish, indeed. Either we must take all the arson cases or not any at all.” He nodded emphatically.

  Carl said nothing and handed him the car keys.

  Once Assad’s cloud of mother-tongue invective had faded with the echo of his footsteps on the stairs, Carl flopped down on his chair and contemplated the serenade emanating in an earsplitting key from Yrsa’s vocal cords farther down the corridor. He realized how much he missed Rose’s more than occasional muteness. And what the hell was she doing, anyway?

  He jumped to his feet and went out into the corridor.

  Of course. There she was, gawping at the blowup on the wall.

  “There’s no point in that now, Yrsa,” he said. “Tryggve Holt’s already given us his take on it, and I’d say he was the best judge, wouldn’t you? What more’s it got to tell us? Not much, if you ask me. So go on back to your office and do something useful, like we agreed.”

  She didn’t stop singing until he had finished. “Come here, Carl,” she said, tugging on his sleeve and dragging him with her into her little pink fairyland.

  She planted him in front of Rose’s desk, on which was a copy of Tryggve’s version of the message from the bottle.

  “Look at this. We’re all in agreement as to the first few lines.”

  HELP

  The 16 febrary 1996 we were kidnaped he got us at the bus sdop on Lautropvang in Ballerup—The man is 18. tall with short hair

  “Right?”

  Carl nodded.

  “After that, Tryggve suggests the following.”

  dark eyes but blue—Hes got a scar on his rite…

  “Yeah, and we still don’t know where that scar is,” Carl interjected. “Tryggve never saw it, and Poul never mentioned it to him. But it was exactly the kind of thing Poul would have taken note of, accor
ding to Tryggve. Maybe other people’s little peculiarities offset his own. Anyway, go on.”

  Yrsa nodded.

  drives a blue van Mum and Dad know him—Freddy and somthing with a B—He thretned us he gave us electric shocks—Hes going to kil us—

  “All seems plausible to me.” Carl peered up at the ceiling where another fly suddenly appeared to be laughing at him. He studied it more closely. Was that a spot of white on its wing? It was! This was the same fly he had attempted to obliterate with that bottle of correction fluid. Where the hell had it been hiding?

  “So we agree that Tryggve was present when all this was going on, and that he was conscious,” Yrsa went on, unperturbed. “This passage here is about the kidnapper’s distinguishing marks, and if we put it together with Tryggve’s description of him, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what he looks like. All we need now is the artist’s impression from Sweden.”

  She pointed at the lines that followed. “I’m not that sure about the next sentences. The question is whether it really says what we think it does. Read it out loud, would you, Carl?”

  “Read it out loud? What for, have you lost your tongue?” Who did she think he was, Mads Mikkelsen?

  She slapped him playfully on the shoulder, then pinched his arm for good measure. “Come on, Carl. It’ll give you the feel of it.”

  He shook his head in despair and cleared his throat. She was off her head. He read.

  He pressd a rag in my face first then my brothers—We drove nearly 1 hour and now we are by warter There are some wind turbins close by It smels here—hurry up and come My brother is Tryggve—13 and I am Poul 18 years

  POUL HOLT

  She applauded his performance soundlessly with the tips of her fingers.

  “Very nice, Carl. Now, I know Tryggve is pretty sure about most of it, but do you think the bit about the wind turbines is right? Some of the other words seem like they might be wrong, too. What if there’s more hidden behind those dots than we’re able to imagine?”