Disgrace

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  ‘No.’ Carl shook his head. Assad had enough to do. ‘But bring us some coffee, will you? Just not too strong, please.’

  With Assad whistling in the Saturday silence, when even the sanitation pipes thundered only at half strength, Carl quickly skimmed Who’s Who for information about the man he was about to meet.

  Mannfred Sloth was his name. Forty years old. Former room-mate of Kåre Bruno, the deceased school prefect. Graduated in 1987. Royal Guardsman. Lieutenant in the reserves. MBA. CEO of five companies since his thirty-third birthday. Six board appointments, one of which was in a state-owned organization. Promoter and sponsor of several exhibitions of modern Portuguese art. Since 1994 married to Agustina Pessoa. Former Danish consul in Portugal and Mozambique.

  No wonder that Sloth could add a knighthood and international orders to the list.

  ‘I only have fifteen minutes,’ he began his handshake with. Sloth sat down, crossed his legs, tossed his autumn coat casually aside and lifted the creases of his trousers a tad so his knees wouldn’t stretch the fabric. It was quite easy to picture him in a boarding-school environment. Much harder to envision him in the sandbox with his children.

  ‘Kåre Bruno was my best friend,’ he said, ‘and I know he would never have entertained the thought of going to an outdoor public pool, so it’s very odd that he was found at Bellahøj. A place such as that was far too close to all kinds of people, you understand.’ He actually meant it. ‘Besides, I’d never seen him dive before, and most certainly not from a ten-metre board.’

  ‘You don’t think it was an accident?’

  ‘How could it be an accident? Kåre was a smart chap. He wouldn’t just dawdle about up there when everyone knows falling off would be fatal.’

  ‘And it couldn’t have been suicide?’

  ‘Suicide! Why? We had just graduated. His father had given him a Buick Regal Limited as a graduation gift. A coupé model, you know?’

  Carl nodded hesitantly because he didn’t bloody know. He knew that Buick was a type of car, and that would have to do.

  ‘He was set to go to the US to study law. Harvard, right? Why would he do something so idiotic? That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.’

  ‘Was he lovesick?’ Carl asked cautiously.

  ‘Ha! He could have had whoever he wanted.’

  ‘You remember Kimmie Lassen?’

  He grimaced. The memory of her didn’t please him.

  ‘Was he upset that she’d dumped him?’

  ‘Upset? He was furious. He didn’t like being dropped. Who does?’ He smiled, teeth gleaming whitely, and swept the hair from his forehead. Hair that was tinted and newly cut, of course.

  ‘And what was he going to do about it?’

  Mannfred Sloth shrugged, brushing a few specks of dust from his coat. ‘I’m here today because I think we both believe he was murdered. That he was pushed over the edge. Otherwise, why would you bother contacting me twenty years later? Am I correct?’

  ‘We’re not absolutely certain, but naturally there’s a reason we’re working on the case again. Who do you think might have pushed him?’

  ‘I have no idea. Kimmie had some sick friends in her class. They ran around her like satellites. She had them in the palm of her hand. Lovely breasts, you know? Tits rule, am I right?’ He gave a short, dry laugh. It didn’t suit him.

  ‘Do you know if he tried to win her back?’

  ‘She already had something going with one of the teachers. One from the suburbs without the common sense to know pupils were off limits.’

  ‘Do you remember his name?’

  He shook his head. ‘He hadn’t been there terribly long. He taught a few Danish classes, I think. He wasn’t the kind of person you noticed if you didn’t have him as a teacher. His ...’ He paused and raised a finger in the air, his face radiating remembrance and concentration. ‘Yes. Now I’ve got it. His name was Klavs. With a “v”, for God’s sake!’ He snorted. The name alone was pathetic.

  ‘Klavs, you say! Klavs Jeppesen?’

  He raised his head. ‘Yes, Jeppesen. I believe that was it.’ He nodded.

  Pinch my arm, I must be dreaming, Carl thought. He was going to meet Jeppesen that very evening.

  ‘Just put the coffee there, Assad. Thank you.’

  ‘Well, I must say,’ Carl’s guest said with a crooked smile. ‘You have humble conditions down here, but at least the help is well trained.’ He laughed the same dry laugh and Carl could imagine only too well how he had treated the natives in Mozambique.

  Sloth tasted the coffee and with the first gulp clearly had had enough.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I know he was still keen on the girl. There were many who were. So when she was expelled he wanted her all to himself, naturally. She was living in Næstved then.’

  ‘I don’t understand how he came to die in Bellahøj.’

  ‘When we were done with our exams, he moved in with his grandparents. He had stayed with them before. They lived in Emdrup. Very sweet, fine people they were. I spent a lot of time there back then.’

  ‘His parents weren’t in Denmark?’

  He shrugged. No doubt Mannfred Sloth’s children also went to boarding school so he could devote himself to his own affairs. Fuck him.

  ‘Did anyone in Kimmie’s circle live near the swimming centre?’

  He looked right through Carl. Now, finally, he recognized the gravity that the room exuded. The files with the old cases. The photographs on the noticeboard. The list of assault victims, with his friend Kåre Bruno’s name at the top.

  Shit, Carl thought, when he turned round and realized what Sloth was staring at.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sloth asked, with a menacing seriousness, his finger pointing at the list.

  ‘Oh,’ Carl said. ‘The cases aren’t connected. We’re in the process of categorizing our files in chronological order.’

  Idiotic explanation, thought Carl. Why in the world would they write on the board what could just as easily be in files on the shelf?

  But Mannfred Sloth didn’t ask any questions. He wasn’t the type who did that kind of slave labour, so how would he know about such basic procedures?

  ‘You must have your hands full,’ he said.

  Carl spread his arms. ‘That’s why it’s so important that you answer my questions as precisely as you can.’

  ‘What was it you asked?’

  ‘I simply asked if anyone in the gang lived near Bellahøj.’

  He nodded without hesitation. ‘Yes, Kristian Wolf did. His parents owned quite an impressive, functionalist house down by the lake, which he moved into when he threw his father out of the firm. And actually I think his wife still lives there with her new husband.’

  He didn’t get any more out of him. But what he got wasn’t so bad.

  ‘Rose,’ he called, when the hard sound of Mannfred Sloth’s Lloyd shoes had faded. ‘What do you know about Kristian Wolf’s death?’

  ‘Hello, Carl?’ She tapped her head with her notepad. ‘Do you have Alzheimer’s or what? You gave me five tasks, and that one was number four according to your own prioritization. So what do you suppose I know about it?’

  He’d forgotten. ‘So when can you tell me something? Can’t you switch the order around?’

  She put her hands on her hips like an Italian mama about to yell at her scoundrel of a husband lounging on the sofa. Then she suddenly smiled. ‘Oh, to hell with it. I can’t keep a straight face anyway.’ She licked her finger and riffled through her notepad. ‘Do you think you get to decide everything? Of course I did that one first. It was obviously the easiest.’

  When he died, Kristian Wolf was only just under thirty years old, but filthy rich. His father had founded the shipping company, but Kristian outmanoeuvred and ruined him. People said his father had it coming; he’d raised a son without feelings and when push came to shove, that’s what he got in return.

  He was a bachelor rolling in money, and for that reason his June marriage to a countess –
the third daughter of Baron Saxenholdt, Maria Saxenholdt – caused a sensation. Their wedded bliss lasted barely three months, the press wrote, before Kristian Wolf was killed in a shooting accident on 15 September 1996.

  It all seemed so pointless, and maybe that was the reason the newspaper coverage was endless. There were far more articles about his death than about the new bus terminal at Copenhagen’s City Hall, and nearly as many as about Bjarne Riis winning the Tour de France a few weeks earlier.

  He had gone out alone very early one morning at his weekend estate on the island of Lolland. He was supposed to meet the rest of the hunting party half an hour later, but more than two hours passed before they found him with an ugly gunshot wound in one thigh, his body completely drained of blood. It had to have been a fairly quick demise, the autopsy report concluded.

  That was true. Carl had seen it before.

  The investigators had been surprised that things could have gone so terribly wrong for such an experienced hunter. But many of his hunting buddies explained that Wolf had a habit of carrying his gun with the safety latch off. Once he’d missed the chance to shoot a polar bear in Greenland because his fingers had been too cold to release the latch, and he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  In any event, it was a bit of a mystery how he’d managed to shoot himself in the thigh, but the conclusion was that he had stumbled over a ploughed furrow and accidentally fired the shotgun. Reconstructions of the accident showed that it was just possible.

  That the young wife didn’t make a bigger issue of the accident was more or less unofficially ascribed to the fact that by that time she’d already regretted the marriage. After all, he was older than her, and very different, and the inheritance was a rather nice consolation, all things considered.

  The country house practically jutted out over the lake. There weren’t many properties of its calibre in the vicinity. It was of the kind that makes all those around it appreciate considerably in value.

  Carl estimated it was worth 40 million kroner before the real estate market had been brought to its knees. Now this sort of place was just about unsellable. Still he suspected the owners had voted for the very government that had created the conditions for this economic slump in the first place. But what the hell, it was all just words, anyway. A consumer orgy followed by an overheated economy. Who gave a hoot about that around here?

  It was people’s own fault.

  The boy who opened the door was eight or nine years old at most. He had a stuffy, red nose and was wearing a dressing gown and slippers. A quite unexpected sight in this enormous hall where businessmen and finance moguls had held court for generations.

  ‘I’m not allowed to let anyone in,’ he managed to say, through a couple of highly inflated bubbles of snot. ‘My mother won’t be home for a little while. She’s in Lyngby.’

  ‘Can you call her and tell her the police would like to speak with her?’

  ‘The police?’ He eyed Carl sceptically. It was in these kinds of situations that a long black leather coat like Bak’s or the homicide chief’s would help develop mutual trust.

  ‘Here,’ Carl said. ‘This is what my badge looks like. Ask your mother if I may wait inside.’

  The boy slammed the door.

  For half an hour he stood on the steps, observing people running around on the paths on the other side of the lake. Ruddy-cheeked people with swinging arms and mincing gaits. It was a Saturday morning. The citizens of the Welfare State were out getting their exercise fix.

  ‘Are you looking for someone?’ the woman asked, when she’d stepped from her car. She was on her guard. One wrong move and she would throw her purchases on the ground and race to the back door.

  Having learned from experience, he flashed his police badge immediately.

  ‘Carl Mørck, Department Q. Your son didn’t call?’

  ‘My son is ill. He’s in bed.’ She looked instantly concerned. ‘Isn’t he?’

  So he hadn’t called, the little scamp.

  He introduced himself once again and was reluctantly let in.

  ‘Frederik!’ she called upstairs. ‘I’ve got a sausage for you.’ She seemed sweet and natural. Not what you’d expect of a genuine countess.

  His shuffling down the stairs came to an abrupt halt when he saw Carl standing in the hall. In an instant it seemed as though childish visions of the kind of punishment he would get for not doing exactly as the police said clouded his snot-streaming face with dread. He was certainly not ready to be confronted with the consequences of his offence.

  Carl winked at him to signal that everything was OK. ‘Oh, so you really are bedridden, huh, Frederik?’

  The boy nodded rather slowly, then took his French hot dog and disappeared. Out of sight, out of mind, he probably thought. Wise kid.

  Carl got straight to the point.

  ‘I don’t know if I can help you with anything,’ she said, giving him a friendly look. ‘Kristian and I didn’t actually know each other terribly well. So I’ve no idea what was going on in his head in those days.’

  ‘And you remarried?’

  ‘No need to be so formal. Just call me Maria,’ she smiled. ‘Yes, I met my husband, Andrew, the same year Kristian died. We have three children now. Frederik, Susanne and Kirsten.’

  Very ordinary names. Maybe Carl needed to reconsider his prejudices about the ruling class’s signature values.

  ‘And Frederik is the oldest?’

  ‘No, he’s the youngest. The twins are eleven.’ She beat him to his question. ‘And, yes, Kristian is their biological father, but my present husband has always been there for them. The girls board at a wonderful all-girls school near my in-laws’ estate in Eastbourne.’

  She said it so sweetly and unaffectedly and shamelessly. How the hell did she have the heart to do that to her children? Eleven years old, and they were already exported to the backwaters of England and subjected to relentless discipline.

  He looked at her with a freshly cemented foundation under his class prejudices. ‘While you were married to Kristian, did he ever talk about a Kirsten-Marie Lassen? I’m sure it must be a curious coincidence that she shares your daughter’s name, but Kristian knew the woman very well. She went by the name of Kimmie. They were at boarding school together. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  A veil descended over her face.

  He waited a moment, expecting her to say something. But she didn’t.

  ‘Excuse me, but what just happened?’ he said.

  She raised her palms, fingers splayed. ‘I don’t care to talk about it, that’s all I wish to say.’ She hadn’t needed to say that. It was evident.

  ‘Do you think he might have had an affair with her, is that it? Even though you were pregnant at that point?’

  ‘I don’t know what he had going on with her, and I don’t want to know.’ She stood with her arms crossed under her breasts. In a second she would be asking him to leave.

  ‘She’s a bag lady now. She lives on the street.’

  That piece of information apparently didn’t console her.

  ‘Whenever Kristian had been talking to her, he beat me. Are you satisfied? I don’t know why you’re here, but you may leave now.’

  There it was, finally.

  ‘I’m here because I’m investigating a murder,’ he tried.

  The response was instantaneous. ‘If you think I killed Kristian then you’d better think again. Not that it never crossed my mind.’ She shook her head and looked out over the lake.

  ‘Why did he hit you? Was he sadistic? Did he drink?’

  ‘Was he sadistic?’ She glanced down the hallway to make sure a little head didn’t suddenly appear. ‘You can bet your life he was.’

  He stood reconnoitring the area before climbing back in his car. The atmosphere in that vast mansion house had been oppressive, as, layer by layer, she had uncovered what a strong, sadistic man could do to a slender woman of twenty-two. How the honeymoon was quickly transformed into a
daily nightmare. It started with mean words and threats, then things escalated. He was careful not to leave marks, because in the evening she had to be dressed to the nines, showing off her pedigree. That’s why he had chosen her. For that reason only.

  Kristian Wolf. A guy she’d fallen in love with in an instant and would spend the rest of her life trying to forget. Him, his deeds, the way he behaved and the people he surrounded himself with. All of it had to be swept away.

  Inside the car Carl sniffed for petrol. Then he called Department Q.

  ‘Yeah,’ Assad simply said. He didn’t say ‘Department Q’, or ‘Vice Police Superintendent Assistant Hafez el-Assad speaking’ or anything else. Just a ‘yeah’!

  ‘You need to identify yourself and the department when you pick up the telephone, Assad,’ he said, without identifying himself.

  ‘Hi, Carl! Rose has just given me her dictaphone. It looks so nice. And then she wants to talk to you.’

  There was some shouting and loud, echoing footsteps, and then she was on the line. ‘I’ve found a nurse from Bispebjerg for you,’ she said drily.

  ‘OK. Super.’

  That didn’t warrant a response.

  ‘She works at a private hospital up near Arresø,’ Rose continued, giving him the address. ‘She was easy to track down once I found her name. It’s a really peculiar one, too.’

  ‘Found it where?’

  ‘At Bispebjerg Hospital, of course. I scoured their old archive filing cabinets. She was working in the gynaecological ward when Kimmie was hospitalized. I called her and she remembered the case. Everyone who worked there back then would remember Kimmie, she said.’

  ‘Denmark’s most beautiful hospital’ – as Rose had quoted from the website.

  Carl looked down at the snow-white buildings and concurred. Everything was exquisitely well maintained. Even this late into autumn, the manicured lawns were worthy of Wimbledon. Absolutely magnificent surroundings. The royal couple had enjoyed the sight only a few months earlier.

  Their palace at Fredensborg had nothing on this place.

  Head nurse Irmgard Dufner was rather a contrast. Smiling and as big as a vessel putting in to port, she cruised out to greet him. People around her stepped quietly to the side as she passed them. A pudding-basin haircut with a fringe, legs like two-by-fours, and shoes that pounded heavily on the floor.