She turned to Carl. ‘Him,’ she said, pointing at Assad. ‘He can assemble the tables. I’ll take care of the rest. And I’m not coming until five thirty tomorrow morning, because the bus doesn’t run earlier than that.’ Then she picked up the teddy bear and stuffed it in Carl’s breast pocket.
‘And this one, you’ll find the owner yourself. Agreed?’
Assad and Carl had their eyes trained on the desk as she thundered out of the room. She reminded Carl of some dippy feminist in a TV series.
‘Are we then ...’ Assad made a rhetorical pause to assess his use of the word ‘then’. ‘Are we then officially back on the case, Carl?’
‘No, not yet. We’ll find out tomorrow.’ He held the stack of yellow notes in the air. ‘I can tell from these that you’ve been busy, Assad. You’ve found someone we can talk to at the boarding school. Who?’
‘It was what I was doing then when you came, Carl.’ He leaned across the desk and located a couple of photocopies of the old boarding-school students’ membership magazine.
‘I called the school, but they weren’t so happy when I asked to talk to someone about Kimmie and the others. It was the part about the murders they didn’t like, I think. I also think they considered throwing Pram, Dybbøl Jensen, Florin and Wolf out of school back then on account of the investigation against them.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t get much out of that then. But afterwards I got the idea to go after someone who was in the same class as the guy who fell down and died at Bellahøj. And then on top of that I think I’ve found a teacher who was at the school at the same time as Kimmie and the others. He would maybe like to talk to us, since he hasn’t been there so long.’
It was almost eight o’clock in the evening when Carl found himself staring at Hardy’s empty bed up at the spinal clinic.
He grabbed the first person in white that walked past. ‘Where is he?’ he asked, with foreboding.
‘Are you a relative?’
‘Yes,’ he said, having learned from past experience.
‘Hardy Henningsen has water in his lungs. We’ve moved him in here where we can assist him better.’ She pointed to a room with a sign on the door that read INTENSIVE CARE. ‘Make it quick,’ she said. ‘He’s very tired.’
There was no doubt that Hardy had taken a turn for the worse. The respirator was running at full throttle. He lay half supine in the bed: naked torso, arms resting atop the blanket, a mask covering most of his face, tubes in his nose, IV and diagnostic equipment everywhere.
His eyes were open, but he was too tired to smile when he saw Carl.
‘Hi there, old buddy,’ Carl said, putting his hand carefully on Hardy’s arm. Not that Hardy would feel anything, but still. ‘What happened? They say you have water in your lungs.’
Hardy said something, but his voice vanished behind the mask and the incessant humming of the machines. So Carl leaned closer. ‘Can you repeat that?’ he said.
‘I got gastric acid in my lungs,’ he said in a hollow voice.
Christ, how disgusting, Carl thought, squeezing Hardy’s limp arm. ‘You’ve got to get better, Hardy, you hear me?’
‘The feeling in my upper arm has spread,’ he whispered. ‘Sometimes it burns like fire, but I haven’t told anyone.’
Carl knew why, and he didn’t like it. Hardy hoped to have an arm mobile enough that he could raise it, take the gauze scissors and puncture his carotid artery. So the question was whether one should share his hope.
‘I’ve got a problem, Hardy. I need your help.’ Carl pulled a chair over and sat beside him. ‘You know Lars Bjørn much better than I do from the old days in Roskilde. Perhaps you can tell me what’s really going on in my department.’
Carl briefly explained how his investigation had been brought to a halt. That Bak thought Lars Bjørn was part of it. And that the police chief backed up the decision all the way.
‘They’ve taken my badge, too,’ he said in conclusion.
Hardy lay staring at the ceiling. If he had been his old self, he’d have lit a cigarette.
‘Lars Bjørn always wears a dark blue tie, right?’ he said after a moment, and with great difficulty.
Carl closed his eyes. Yes, that was correct. The tie was inseparable from Lars Bjørn, and yes, it was blue.
Hardy tried to cough, but hawked instead, a sound like a kettle about to boil dry.
‘He’s an old alum from the same boarding school, Carl,’ he said weakly. ‘There are four tiny scallops on the tie. It’s their school tie.’
Carl sat in silence. A few years ago, a rape at the school had nearly destroyed its reputation. What damage might this case cause?
Jesus Christ. Lars Bjørn had been a student at the school. If Bjørn was an active player in all this, was it as the school’s lackey and defender? Or what? Once a boarding-school pupil, always a boarding-school pupil. That’s what people said.
He nodded slowly. Of course. It was that simple.
‘OK, Hardy,’ he said, drumming on the sheets. ‘You’re simply a genius. But who would ever doubt that?’ He stroked his old colleague’s hair. It was damp and lifeless to the touch.
‘You’re not angry with me, Carl?’ Hardy said behind his mask.
‘Why would you say that?’
‘You know why. The nail-gun case. What I told the psychologist.’
‘Hardy, for God’s sake. When you get better, we’ll solve the case together, OK? You’re lying here getting strange ideas. I understand that, Hardy.’
‘Not strange, Carl. There was something. And there was something about Anker. I’m more and more certain of that.’
‘We’ll solve that together when the time is right. How does that sound, Hardy?’
He lay silently for some time, letting the respirator do its work, and Carl couldn’t do anything but follow Hardy’s heaving chest.
‘Would you do me a favour?’ Hardy said, interrupting the monotony.
Carl pulled back in his seat. It was precisely this moment he feared whenever he visited Hardy. This eternal wish that Carl would help him die. Euthanasia, to use a classy term. Mercy killing, to use another. They were both terrible.
It wasn’t the punishment that he feared. It wasn’t the ethical considerations, either. He just couldn’t do it.
‘No, Hardy. Please don’t ask me any more. I don’t want you thinking that I haven’t considered the possibility. But, I’m really sorry, old boy, I just can’t do it.’
‘It’s not that, Carl.’ He moistened his dry lips, as if to give the message an easier time coming out. ‘I want to ask you if I can come home to yours, instead of being here.’
The silence that followed was heart-wrenching. Carl felt paralysed. All the words were stuck in his throat.
‘I’ve been wondering, Carl,’ he went on softly. ‘Can’t that guy who lives with you look after me?’
Now his desperation felt like the stab of a dagger.
Carl shook his head imperceptibly. Morten Holland as a nurse? At his place? It was enough to make him cry.
‘You can get a lot of money for home care, Carl. I’ve looked into it. A nurse will come several times a day. It’s a simple matter. You needn’t be afraid.’
Carl looked at the floor. ‘Hardy, I don’t have the right set-up for something like that. My house isn’t very big. And Morten lives in the basement, which isn’t actually legal.’
‘I could be in the living room, Carl.’ His voice was hoarse now. It sounded as if he were fighting hard not to cry, but maybe it was just his condition. ‘Your living room’s large, isn’t it, Carl? I just need a corner. No one has to know about Morten in the basement. Aren’t there three rooms upstairs? You could just put a bed in one of them, then he could still spend his time in the basement, couldn’t he?’ The big man was begging him. So big and so small at the same time.
‘Oh, Hardy.’ Carl almost couldn’t say it. The idea of this behemoth of a bed and all kinds of medical apparatus in his living room was more than frightening. The d
ifficulties would split his home apart – what little of it remained. Morten would move out. Jesper would be carping constantly about everything. There was no way it could be done, however much he might wish it – in theory.
‘You’re too ill, Hardy. If only you weren’t in such bad shape.’ He held a long pause, hoping Hardy would release him from his anguish, but he said nothing. ‘Get a little more feeling back first, Hardy. We’ll wait and see what happens.’
He watched his friend’s eyes slowly close. The busted hope had snuffed out the spark in him.
‘We’ll wait and see,’ he’d said.
As if Hardy could do anything else.
Not since his first, green years in the homicide division had Carl got to work as early as he did the next morning. It was Friday, but the Hillerød motorway was devoid of traffic for several long stretches. The officers arriving in the garage at headquarters slammed their car doors sluggishly. The clocking-in desk smelled of Thermos coffee. There was plenty of time.
Entering his basement was something of a shock. A ruler-straight row of tables in the corridor, nicely elevated to elbow height, bid welcome to Department Q’s domain. Oceans of paper were lined up in small stacks, apparently sorted according to a system that was bound to create some problems. Three noticeboards hung in a row on the wall with various clippings from the Rørvig case. On the very last table Assad lay in a deep sleep, snoring in the foetal position on a small, lavishly decorated prayer rug.
Further down the hall, from Rose’s office, came a noise that at best could be described as a Bach melody set to unrestrained whistling – all in all, quite an organ concert.
Ten minutes later Rose and Assad were sitting before him, cups steaming, in the office which Carl, the day before, had called his, but now almost couldn’t recognize.
Rose watched as he removed his coat and draped it over the back of the chair. ‘Nice shirt, Carl,’ she said. ‘You remembered to put the teddy bear in this one, I can see. Well done.’ She pointed at the bulge in his breast pocket.
He nodded. It was to remind him to shoo Rose on to a new, unsuspecting department when the opportunity presented itself.
‘What do you say then, boss?’ Assad said, making a sweeping gesture round a room where nothing seemed visibly out of order. A joy to behold for Feng Shui fans. Clean lines, the floor included.
‘We got Johan to come down here and help us. He came back to work yesterday,’ Rose said. ‘After all, he was the one who set everything in motion.’
Carl tried to put a little glow into his frozen smile. It wasn’t that he wasn’t pleased. Just a little overwhelmed.
Four hours later they sat at their respective desks waiting for the Norwegian delegation to arrive. They all had their roles to play. They’d discussed Johan’s list of assaults and had received verification that two easily identifiable fingerprints found on one of the Trivial Pursuit cards matched those of the murdered Søren Jørgensen, and another one, less well preserved, matched the sister. Now the question was, who had taken the cards from the crime scene? If it was Bjarne Thøgersen, then why were the cards in a box found at Kimmie’s house in Ordrup? And if others had been in the summer cottage beside Thøgersen, it would really be a radical departure from the court’s interpretation of events at the time of sentencing.
The euphoria spread all the way into Rose Knudsen’s office, where Bach’s mistreatment had now been supplanted by a concentrated effort to dig up facts about Kristian Wolf’s death, while Assad tried to get leads on where a ‘K. Jeppesen’ – Kimmie & Co.’s Danish teacher – now lived and worked.
There was quite enough to do before the Norwegians came.
When it got to twenty minutes past ten, Carl knew what that meant.
‘They’re not coming down here unless I fetch them,’ he said, setting off with his briefcase.
He trotted up the rotunda’s stone steps to the third floor.
‘Are they in there?’ he shouted to a pair of his weary colleagues, who were busy untying Gordian knots. They nodded.
There were at least fifteen people in the canteen. Besides the homicide chief there was Deputy Commissioner Lars Bjørn, Lis with her notebook, a pair of alert young blokes in boring suits who Carl guessed were from the Justice Ministry, and five colourfully dressed men who, in contrast to the rest of the gathering, received him with polite, toothy smiles. One point for the guests from Oslo-stan.
‘Oh my, if it isn’t Carl Mørck, what a pleasant surprise,’ the homicide chief exclaimed, meaning the opposite.
Carl shook hands with everyone, including Lis, and introduced himself extra clearly to the Norwegians. He himself didn’t understand a lick of what they were saying.
‘Soon we’ll continue the tour in the lower chambers,’ Carl said, ignoring Bjørn’s glare. ‘But first I would like to quickly explain my principles as head of the newly established unit, Department Q.’
He stood in front of the whiteboard, the notations on which they’d apparently been discussing, and said: ‘Do all you guys understand what I’m saying?’
He noted their eager nods and the four scallops on Lars Bjørn’s dark blue tie.
For the next twenty minutes he walked them through the Merete Lynggaard investigation, which the Norwegians – judging by their facial expressions – were well acquainted with, and topped it off with a brief account of their current case.
It was clear the chaps from the Justice Ministry were unacquainted with the latter. They’d never heard of that case, he figured.
He turned to the homicide chief.
‘During our investigation we’ve come into the possession, just yesterday, of highly unambiguous evidence that at least one member of the gang, Kimmie Lassen, can be connected directly or indirectly to the crime.’ He outlined the events, assured everyone there was a reliable witness to his removal of Kimmie’s box from the house in Ordrup, and watched as Lars Bjørn’s look grew darker and darker.
‘She could have got the metal box from Bjarne Thøgersen. She lived with him!’ the homicide chief interjected. True enough. They had already discussed that possibility down in the basement.
‘Yes, but I don’t think so. Look at the date on the newspaper. It’s from the day that Kimmie, according to Bjarne Thøgersen, moved in with him. I believe she folded it up and hid it because she didn’t want him to see it. But there may be other explanations. We can only hope we track down Kimmie Lassen, so we can interrogate her. To that end we will request an all-points bulletin be sent out, plus reinforcements of a few men to monitor the area around Copenhagen’s central station and shadow the drug addict Tine and, not least of all, Messrs Pram, Dybbøl-Jensen and Florin.’ Here he glanced at Lars Bjørn with a venomous glint in his eye before turning to the Norwegians. ‘Three of those pupils who were once suspected of committing the double murder in Rørvig. They are now well-known men in Denmark,’ he explained, ‘who today live as respectable citizens in the upper echelons of Danish society.’
Now the homicide chief’s forehead, too, was beginning to display a frown.
‘You see,’ Carl said, directly addressing the Norwegians, who were knocking back their cups of coffee as if they had sat through a sixty-hour flight without food or drink, or at the very least came from a country that hadn’t seen a coffee bean since the German invasion, ‘as you know through your and Kripo’s generally fabulous work in Oslo, such lucky coincidences often throw light on other crimes that were never solved, or even reveal other cases not previously classified as crimes.’
At this point one of the Norwegians raised his hand and asked a question in his sing-song dialect that Carl needed to have repeated a couple of times before a liaison officer came to his rescue.
‘What Superintendent Trønnes would like to know is whether a list has been drawn up of the possible crimes that could be linked to the Rørvig murders,’ came the translation.
Carl nodded politely. How the hell could the man find so much coherent meaning in all that chirping?
> He pulled Johan Jacobsen’s list from his briefcase and fastened it to the whiteboard. ‘The homicide chief assisted in this part of the investigation.’ He glanced appreciatively at Marcus, who in return smiled politely around at the others, while simultaneously resembling a bundle of question marks.
‘Our homicide chief has placed a civil employee’s personal investigative work at Department Q’s disposal. Without fine colleagues like him and his team, and without cross-disciplinary collaboration, it would be impossible to get so far in an investigation in such a short period of time. We must remember that this case, which is more than twenty years old, has been the object of our interest for two weeks only. So thank you, Marcus.’
He raised an imaginary glass to Jacobsen, knowing that all this would boomerang on him sooner or later.
Despite attempts – Lars Bjørn’s being especially eager – at redirecting Carl’s agenda, it was very easy to hustle the Norwegians down to the basement.
The liaison officer made an effort to keep Carl abreast of their Norwegian brothers’ commentary. They apparently admired Danish thrift and considered that results should always take precedence over daily demands for resources and fringe benefits. That interpretation would most likely be met with a certain amount of irritation when it made the rounds upstairs.
‘There’s a guy here who’s asking me questions all the time I can’t understand a word of. Do you speak Norwegian?’ he whispered to Rose, as Assad heaped praises and medals on the Danish Police’s policy for integrating foreigners and also explained his present slave labour with surprising skill and comprehensiveness.
In the most intelligible and perhaps most attractive-sounding Norwegian Carl had yet to lend an ear to, Rose said, ‘Here we have the key to our work process,’ and proceeded to go through a stack of papers she had systematized during the early hours of the morning.
As much as he hated to admit it, the presentation was rather impressive.
When they reached Carl’s office, the large-screen TV was displaying a sunny, guided tour of the Holmekollen ski resort. Assad had put in a DVD promoting the wonders of Oslo that he’d purchased around the corner at Politiken’s Bookshop ten minutes earlier, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The justice minister would be flashing his teeth in an ecstatic smile when they gathered for lunch in another hour.
Disgrace Page 21
