"He didn't even come to my father's funeral, although I informed him. He doesn't deserve anything good, at least from me," said Markus, trying not to lose his temper.
"Please don't get upset. We're not here to judge you, nor is the hospital sending us. Ours is just a check because that person is in the same department as Ingrid Skov," said Lene, measuring her words.
"Really?" exclaimed the woman surprised. "What a strange coincidence!"
"Did you tell anyone about what happened to your uncle? It's important for us to know," asked Petersen.
"I don't understand what this has to do with you, but no, I haven't told anyone about it. It was already quite distressing for me, with Ellen giving me the nagging, and I didn't want to hear any more good advice from anybody," replied Markus.
His wife had remained silent and she seemed more and more uncomfortable. She had started rhythmically drumming her fingers on the counter, looking away. Lene knew immediately that she had instead spoken.
"Who did you tell, ma'am? It is important for us to know," she asked her with extreme tact.
"I repeat that I do not understand why you're asking," said the irritated man again.
Poulsen shut up and then Petersen answered, "This information is extremely confidential and you will not have to report it for any reason, even to people you consider to be extremely trustworthy. I must warn you right now that otherwise there could also be criminal consequences, as this is valuable news for the ongoing investigation."
The Slovaks looked at each other in real amazement and then nodded, so the inspector continued, "Yesterday someone went into the intensive care unit pretending to be an old friend of Jan Slovak. The data he provided was false, and our assumption is therefore that he may have gone only to check our witness: Ingrid Skov. What we asked ourselves is how this person knew that Slovak was a patient of the same ward, because he was able to use the information in order to enter."
"Do you suspect that he's the minister's killer?" asked the man very concerned.
"It is a possibility that we have yet to verify. Skov is protected by two cops and has never been in any real danger, but the fact that there has been this intrusion has alerted us."
"I've only told one person I trust, but I don't think..." said the woman in an uncertain voice.
"Who is it?"
"Her name is Agnes and she’s Officer Holst's wife. We've been friends for a long time and we tell each other almost everything. I told her at the beginning of this month, as soon as it happened, but I'm quite sure she kept it for herself."
"What about her husband? Maybe she told him."
"I don't know that," said Ellen, looking down.
"The attacker may have known about Jan Slovak in some other way, but we have to make sure. We'll talk to officer Holst as soon as possible, in the meantime don't say anything to anyone," concluded Petersen, then he said goodbye to them, and he and Poulsen left the pharmacy on their way to the police station.
"Damn it! I hope this Holst has nothing to do with the ongoing investigation. I can't really stand having to question a colleague," Lars said as soon as they were far enough.
"It may be that Janssen, by asking questions in the hospital, finds another track that can explain the leakage of information about Slovak and Ingrid Skov," replied Lene.
"Do you really believe that?"
"My gut says no."
"It's the same for me. I have a feeling that the answer is in this little town, even if we don't have a track yet."
They arrived at the police station fifteen minutes later, wheezing for the effort of walking through the stacks of snow. Still no one had bothered to spread salt on the sidewalks to melt the snow and the snowplows were still to be seen.
"May I help you? But if you've come to complain about the snow, I'll go ahead and tell you that we're waiting for the vehicles which should be here soon," a young guy who was wearing a police uniform, sitting behind a counter, said with kindness as soon as they came in. He must have been just over twenty years old, and he was muscular with his blond hair cut very short, like a soldier.
"Are you Officer Toft?"
"Yes," answered the other one, standing up.
"We spoke last night on the phone. I'm Inspector Petersen from Copenhagen and this is my colleague Poulsen," said Lars, showing his card.
"Excuse me, sir, but I couldn't recognize you."
"It's okay. You're still here alone?" asked Petersen.
The night before the boy had told him that Sergeant Lassen had already gone home and his colleague was out on patrol.
Toft blushed visibly and replied, "I don't know where the sergeant is, but he and Holst may have had problems with the snow."
"Where do they live?"
"Sergeant Lassen in a cottage just outside the village, while Holst is staying in a downtown apartment with his wife, not far from where I live."
"If you're already here and we got here on foot, so can he. Call him, then we'll deal with the sergeant."
"Don't you think it would be best just to wait, sir?"
It was clear that the boy was afraid to face the colleagues he had to work with every day. Petersen suspected that they were making him do almost all the work and got angry, because he couldn't stand any kind of abuse at work.
"How long have you been hired?"
"It'll be two years this February."
"What seniority of work does Holst have?"
"He's been on the force for six years, even though he hasn't yet reached a higher rank," replied the boy.
"By getting you to do all his job, he's never gonna be promoted. Call him, that's an order."
The cop dialed the number in silence. When a male voice answered him, he said only, "I'm Toft."
"Are you crazy to call me at this hour, Ole? It's not even 9:00 o'clock, you woke me up," the man started screaming.
Lars picked up the phone and replied decisively, "I'm Inspector Petersen and I told him to call you. Come to the precinct now, don't make me repeat it. I warn you that I will ask your superior to write a reprimand in your service record, for not having come to work in time today."
"Who are you?" asked incredulous Holst on the other side of the phone.
"I've already told you, but maybe you have problems understanding things. I'm Inspector Petersen and I've come from Copenhagen to investigate the murder that took place in this town. If you want to keep your job, I strongly advise you to get your ass up and run here as soon as possible," Lars said and then hung up.
"Was I clear enough?" he asked Poulsen.
"Crystal clear," she replied smiling.
"Are you going to do the same with the sergeant?" asked Toft, who was increasingly worried.
"With him, we will be more delicate, at least for the moment. Call him, you can say that we've just arrived and that we need to talk urgently."
Toft called the number, but Sergeant Lassen's home phone rang vacant for a long time.
"He's not home, he's probably on his way here," concluded the officer, relieved.
"Does he live alone?"
"As far as I know."
"Let's go back to yesterday then. Explain to me what happened."
"We got a call from the Mertens at 2:15 p.m. They had gone to church as usual, but when they entered they found Ingrid dying along the aisle. They quickly returned home to call for help. They live near the church and it would take them just a couple of minutes. They informed us and also called an ambulance."
"Who was here in the office?"
"Me and Holst, the sergeant was out."
Petersen refrained from commenting on it and asked, "Did they only mention the girl or even the pastor during the phone call?"
"Only her, they were so shocked by the sight of all that blood that they had not even noticed the corpse on the ground not far away. Holst and I found him when we got there."
"What did you do, once you were at the church?"
"The ambulance had just arrived, and they took the gir
l away, then we sealed the scene and since the sergeant was still missing I thought of calling the central police station in Copenhagen."
"Was it you?" asked Lars, surprised.
"Yes. Jens said to wait for the boss, but I didn't want to leave the pastor in there alone, and I know that in case of murder that's the thing to do."
"You did well," said the inspector, and the boy blushed again.
"When did Lassen get there?"
"I think a couple of hours later. He said he'd been on a stakeout and hadn't heard the radio."
"What kind of stakeout?"
"A couple of weeks ago we stopped a man driving a van on the nearby highway for high speed, and we found several doses of drugs on his vehicle. They were too many for a personal use only, so we proceeded to arrest him. The sergeant came to the conclusion that he sold them in the village, thanks to the help of a cousin who lives nearby and is a well known prejudiced. We've been watching him ever since."
"What's his name?"
"It's all in the report my superior filled out at the time of the arrest, but I'd prefer you to ask him for permission to see it."
"No problem, we'll do that as soon as he gets here. Has the press already shown?"
"Yesterday in the late afternoon. There was a crew that took a few shots of the church from outside, and then they asked the sergeant for news."
"What did he say?"
"The usual things, almost only that there would be an investigation and he couldn't reveal any details yet."
"All right, that's all for now," said Petersen, and the boy visibly relaxed. Up until then, he had been under tension like he was taking an exam.
"That's all the precinct is?" asked Poulsen after a few minutes of absolute silence from both parts, carefully observing the environment in which they were.
It consisted of a kind of large room divided in two by the counter from which they had been received by Toft. On the one hand at the entrance to the office, just after the glass door, there was the waiting room, equipped with a row of plastic chairs.
On the other side there were a couple of desks full of paperwork and open reports, a coffee table where there was a coffee machine half full along with a couple of cups and a radio transmitter with which you could talk to the car on patrol.
At the end of the room there was a bathroom, at least judging from the plaque on the top. Next to it there was a closed door and on the left what looked like the sergeant's office.
"Yes, unfortunately we do not have your means," answered the cop. "The door next to the bathroom leads to the temporary detention cells. We have two of them, and we keep in there the people we arrest until someone comes to pick them up from the capital. Inside, there is also another room that we use as a locker room to put us in uniform, with our personal lockers. The one on the left is the chief's office, no one can go in when he's not here," he added, pointing to the closed door on the left.
He didn't like the woman, she was as beautiful and slender as he preferred, but she had something that made him quite uncomfortable. Although it was clear how respectful she was of her superior, whom she let ask most of the questions, she observed everything with a look that seemed to dig into you, a bit like his old history teacher in high school that he couldn’t stand.
"You can't fool me, dear Ole," she kept repeating to him the last school year, when he started copying his assignments, but at that time he was a rising star of local football and in the end she had to turn a blind eye, like everyone else, on his small trades.
Thinking of that time that ended a few years earlier with the breakage of his knee, destroyed by a murderous entrance of a defender whose name he had expressly forgotten, Ole mechanically began to massage the knee. Not that it hurt him, in fact, apart from his career ended, he had no handicap left, but it was a gesture that he could not control. It came back when he was particularly upset.
Luckily, at that moment he saw something out of the stained-glass window that led to the office that would surely distract, at least for a while, the attention of the colleagues who had come from Copenhagen, because he said with a certain emphasis, "Here's Holst, he's coming right now," and the two of them turned around to look at a man in his thirties, overweight and with little hair, who was running up the stairs leading to the precinct.
CHAPTER 6
"Good morning. I'm Officer Jens Holst, we spoke on the phone," said the man coughing.
He had just entered the door and was still gasping for the effort he had made to walk there from the center of the town with all that snow.
"I’m Inspector Petersen and this is my colleague Poulsen," said Lars, inviting him to catch his breath.
"I wanted to apologize for the delay, but this morning my wife wasn’t feeling well, and I had to stay with her," said the cop after a few moments. It was clear that he had prepared that excuse on the way from home.
"Sergeant Lassen can easily verify that, can't he?"
Holst turned pale and said, "Sure. Where is he?"
"We're waiting for him. In the meantime, we'd like to ask you a few questions, maybe in private. Can we go to the locker room?"
"Am I accused of something?" asked the man with a worried look.
"If you were, I would have already told you that you have the right to be assisted by an union representative, but I just need an explanation and don't immediately ask me about what."
"At the moment we have no one in custody, so we'll be alone," Holst said, then asked them to follow him.
"You stay here," Poulsen told the other cop before she joined the inspector.
Beyond the wooden door next to the bathroom there was a corridor that was barely lit by a pointed light hanging from the ceiling. Its twin, located a couple of meters away, had burned down, which was why half of the environment remained in the semi-darkness. On the right you could see two empty cells.
Jens led them past the door on the left into the locker room, which consisted of a secluded room with a medium length wooden bench in the middle, while on one side of the wall there was a row of lockers.
"What do you want to know from me?" said the cop, sitting on the bench and crossing his arms in a defiant tone. He was clearly on the defensive.
"We’ve just heard from Ellen Slovak, the pharmacist, that she told your wife Agnes a few weeks ago an important news. In fact, it's about her husband's uncle, Jan Slovak, who is in intensive care in the capital’s hospital. We need to know if your wife told you, too," said Petersen.
The man looked at him as if he did not understand. He had expected that he would ask him anything, but not that nonsense.
"Are you serious?"
"Please answer."
"It was just innocent gossip. Markus has every reason not to go and visit him. I wouldn't want him to think that I judged him in any way," said the officer, failing to understand the exact reason for that question.
"Did you tell anyone about this? Maybe your colleagues?"
"We're all half related here and Ole's father is Slovak's third cousin."
"So you told Toft. Can you confirm that?"
"Yes, I did."
"Can you tell me on what occasion?"
"It was January 7th when we pulled down the Christmas tree that was standing in the waiting room. We were talking about past holidays and relatives, so it escaped me."
"Was Sergeant Lassen there?"
"You must have noticed that he's hardly here," said Holst, almost as if to point out to him that he wasn't the only black sheep in the office, then he added, "but on that occasion he was with us. I remember because he was impressed and asked me if there was any chance that the man would survive."
"I want to give you a little chance," said Lars after a moment, looking Holst right in the face. "I forget about this morning, unless it happens again, and you keep your mouth shut about what we just asked you, with everyone, but especially with Toft and Lassen. Just know that there may be a connection to the pastor's death. If you talk, you can say goodbye to your
career. Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly," said the man.
Before leaving home, Holst had phoned a friend who was on the force in the capital. He wanted to ask him about that Petersen who was already busting his balls, as soon as he arrived. His friend had told him that the inspector, besides being a discreet colossus, was also a big shot in the central police station and it would not be safe to make him angry. Jens understood the hint, and now he was ready to serve.
"Good. Then change and reach us out," said Petersen and left him alone, taking his blonde colleague with him.
It was clear that the woman was a subordinate, much younger than the inspector, but she also seemed a tough girl, at least judging by how she looked around, thought Jens, starting to change his clothes.
As Lene was going out, she said, "Unfortunately, we have reached a dead end, with the clue on Slovak. I wonder how many others they've told here in town, Toft and the sergeant."
"It’s the problem of these small towns. You start with a confidence to someone and in a short time everyone knows everything about everyone. I remain convinced that it is more likely that our killer got this information here in Torslunde than in the hospital in Copenhagen, although it will be difficult to find it out," replied the inspector, opening the door.
"Have you sorted it out?" asked Toft as soon as he saw them coming back.
"It only took a few minutes to explain ourselves. We're not going to tell your sergeant about the delay of your colleague. Are you happy?" said the inspector, spying on his reaction.
The officer didn't say anything, but he didn't look particularly happy.
"Rather, the sergeant is not yet here and it is now ten o'clock. Try to phone him again," said Poulsen.
Toft stood still at his desk, as if he had not heard her or had no intention of doing what the woman had asked him to do.
"Boy, don't be stupid, or I'll kick you out. My colleague is a senior, put it in your head and when she gives you an order just think about executing it. Don't make me repeat it again," said Petersen, raising his voice for the first time.
"Excuse me," he replied without too much conviction in his voice and dialed the sergeant's number again, but with the same result as before.
An Old Debt Page 6