“Copenhagen Police! Open up!”
This time he pounded on the door. Hannah looked alarmed. He shouldn’t have brought her along. It was unprofessional of him to bring her here. He was just about to send her back downstairs when an unkempt man with bloodshot eyes opened the door.
“Carl Petersen?”
“What have I done now?”
Niels showed the man his ID. Carl studied it. Niels looked a good deal younger in the photo.
“May we come in for a moment?”
Carl glanced over his shoulder. Maybe making one last survey of his own wretchedness before he allowed strangers inside. He shrugged and opened the door all the way. They were the ones who insisted on coming in. “Hurry up, so the birds don’t get out.”
The stench inside the apartment was unbearable. Food and piss and animals and decay. Two rooms and a kitchen. For some reason there was a double bed in each of the rooms, which were hardly big enough to hold them.
“Do you live alone?”
“Who the hell would want to live with me? I’m a convicted murderer.”
Hannah looked at Carl in astonishment.
“Why are you pretending to be surprised?” he said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You show up every time some woman in the neighborhood gets raped and you run out of leads. Who is it this time?”
Niels ignored him and went into the kitchen, but Carl wasn’t letting him off the hook. “Tell me who I’ve raped now! Tell me! I’ve paid my debt, goddammit!”
Newspaper clippings had been taped to the refrigerator door. Random anti-immigrant articles cut out of the newspapers that were distributed for free: 20,000 Polish workmen in Denmark. Bilingual pupils do poorly in school compared to Danes. Fifty percent of Muslim women unemployed. In the middle was a postcard showing a smiling Pia Kjærsgaard, cofounder of the Danish People’s Party: We need your vote. Niels turned from the gallery of articles on the fridge to look at Carl. Hate was a commodity. It was possible to sell hatred and receive something in return. Carl got a little extra home help and a cheap meal once a day. In return, he had sold his hatred, which was probably mostly self-hatred, to the arch-conservative woman politician on the fridge. And now she was free to make use of it.
“What do you want from me?” Carl’s words were interrupted by a fit of coughing. “Bronchitis,” he managed to whisper before the next wave overtook him. He was using a deep royal-blue bowl for the excess phlegm.
I wonder if that used to be a champagne bucket? Hannah managed to ask herself before she glanced inside. She shouldn’t have done that. She could feel the nausea rising. With two swift steps, she moved over to the window and was just about to open it when Carl shouted: “No!” He looked at her in fright. “The birds are out.” He pointed to an empty cage. A couple of parakeets were watching Carl’s every move from a shelf lined with glasses. Only now did Hannah notice the bird shit. Little circular white and gray spots were everywhere, none of them bigger than an old five-øre coin.
“So are you going to tell me what the hell is going on here?” said Carl.
Hannah caught Niels’s eye. It couldn’t be this man. Impossible.
At that moment they heard the helicopter outside the window. A big Sikorsky was flying low over the rooftops.
“Those fucking choppers. They keep landing day and night,” mumbled Carl as Niels and Hannah moved to look out the kitchen window, which faced southwest. The helicopter was about to land. Carl was grumbling in the background. “I haven’t gotten a whole night’s sleep since they built that landing pad on top of the hospital.”
Niels and Hannah looked at each other. She was the first to say it: “The National Hospital.”
61
Ospedale Fatebenefratelli—Venice
Tommaso di Barbara leaned against the wall. The sun had disappeared again. He was the only person on the hospice balcony, but other smokers had been there before him. Two ashtrays with biblical motifs painted on the sides stood on a white plastic table. The ashtrays bore witness to the December rains. Water filled them to the brim, and the cigarette butts swam around, bumping into each other.
He was taking a break. The monk wanted to try again to reach Sister Magdalena on the phone. They had sat in the room together for about half an hour without saying a word. Then Tommaso remembered his mother’s dog, left behind in the boat. The monk had promised to go and look after him. He had insisted because he thought Tommaso should have some time alone.
As the monk said, “When a person has looked death in the face, it’s important to be alone for a while before going back out into the world.”
His family. Should Tommaso call them now? His uncles and aunts. His mother’s younger sister, who hadn’t visited her even once. He took his cell phone out of his pocket. Someone had left him a message, but he didn’t have time to listen to it before he was interrupted.
“I’m sorry about your mother, Signor di Barbara.”
Tommaso was startled, even though the voice was so feeble and faint, sounding like it had traveled a thousand miles to reach him. But it hadn’t. The man was standing right next to him. Signor Salvatore. Tommaso knew him slightly. He owned a couple of souvenir shops near the Piazza di San Marco. He wasn’t nearly as old as Tommaso’s mother, but he, too, was ill and would soon die.
“Your mother. I’m so sorry.”
The old man’s naked legs were visible below the hem of his bathrobe. Covered with varicose veins and gray hair.
“Thank you.”
“May I have a cigarette?”
That doesn’t sound like such a good idea, thought Tommaso, but what the hell. The party was just about over for Signor Salvatore.
“Thanks.”
They smoked in silence. Tommaso remembered that he’d been about to call his mother’s sister and dump his guilty conscience on her. He glanced at his phone. He still hadn’t listened to the last message. From a number in Denmark. He tapped on his voice mail.
“I used to talk to your mother once in a while, Signor di Barbara.”
“Thank you for doing that.”
Tommaso listened to the message. Hannah. Calling you for Niels Bentzon. The Danish policeman. Regarding the case . . . and then something else in French that he couldn’t understand.
“I knew your father, too.”
“Excuse me a moment.”
Tommaso got up and moved a short distance away. . . . removed the oceans, all the water. I hope you understand, it’s a little difficult to explain on the phone.
“He wasn’t a bad sort, your father.”
Tommaso looked in bewilderment at the old man. What the hell was he babbling about? Hannah was struggling with her limited vocabulary in French—or maybe she was having trouble because the subject was so complicated . . . . I mean, with all the water gone, and all the landmasses pressed together the way the continents used to be at the dawn of time . . .
Tommaso ignored Salvatore. He was listening to Hannah. You can look at an atlas and see for yourself. All you have to do is cut the water away. Then you’ll see it at once. Just move all the continents around the South Pole.
“But today we can finally talk about it again. He wasn’t all that bad—Benito, I mean.”
Tommaso had no idea who the old man was rambling on about. Tommaso’s father wasn’t named Benito.
Then the old man pronounced the name with a secret glee, as if he were being quite daring. “Il Duce.”
Hannah was finishing up her message. . . . the coordinates here in Copenhagen and in Venice. The next murder. I’ll send you a text message. Au revoir.
Tommaso rushed past the office. Several of the nurses stopped him, wanting to express their condolences. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate your kindness to my mother,” he replied, then hurried on. He knew it was here somewhere. The library. He remembered seeing it the first time he came to visit the hospice. That was three months ago, shortly before his mother was admitted as a patient. He had been given a tour of the whole
place, even though everyone knew full well that his mother would probably never leave her bed again.
The smell of chlorine. Tommaso was standing in front of a swimming pool that was used for physical therapy. He wasn’t in the right place. “Excuse me. Where is the library?”
The physical therapist looked up at him from the pool. He had his hands under the arms of a patient who was staring blankly up at the ceiling.
“The library? Do you mean the reading room?”
“Yes.”
“It’s on the second floor. All the way over in the other wing of the building.”
Tommaso took off running as he tried in vain to make sense of the strange message that had been left on his phone by the Danish woman. He raced downstairs and through a ward that for once didn’t smell of death. Just illness.
The reading room was located in the section of the hospice that had remained unchanged since the days when the building was used as a cloister. An elderly woman was the only person in the room, although she wasn’t reading. She sat there looking anxious, both hands clutching her purse. As if Tommaso might try to take it away from her.
“Ciao.”
He headed straight for the bookshelves, filled with dusty volumes. Mostly novels. Books intended for the patients, though these days they preferred to watch TV. There had to be an atlas somewhere.
He glanced at the old woman. “Would you mind helping me?”
At first she looked surprised. Then her face lit up and she said, “Yes, of course.”
“We need to find an atlas. Why don’t you start over there.”
It was clearly a welcome break in the monotony of her days. She threw herself into the task, even setting down her purse. Tommaso ran his finger over the spines of the books, looking at the titles. Why were there so many cookbooks? Surely that was the last thing anyone needed in a hospice.
“Here you are.” The old woman handed him a children’s book. It said Our World on the cover, with a picture of cowboys and Indians.
“Thanks. Thanks for your help.”
In the center of the book, he found a colored map of the world. Tommaso glanced at the woman. Her smile faded as he swiftly ripped out the pages.
62
The National Hospital—Copenhagen
A direct and immediate connection between theory and proof was something that was completely foreign to Hannah. She was used to spending years discussing theories with her colleagues. When physicists finally came up with a relatively satisfactory theory, they could then begin to look for proof. And it was not at all certain that the proof would emerge during their lifetime. The English physicist Peter Higgs could regard himself as a very lucky man. In 1964 he proposed the theory about the particle that was now being sought, using all available means, in a specially constructed, twenty-seven-kilometer underground tunnel in Switzerland. Higgs was now eighty. Forty years ago he had theorized about the existence of this particle, and if it were found, then he would be one of the few physicists to experience a direct convergence between theory and proof. Along with Hannah Lund.
She looked at the people in the lobby of the National Hospital. Men and women wearing white coats. Last night she had discovered the logic in a pattern of murders. With geographical precision, she had calculated these coordinates without having the faintest idea that they designated the location of Denmark’s largest hospital.
Niels came back from his tour of the lobby. “Of course, of course,” he murmured.
Hannah didn’t know what to say. She was feeling uneasy. She took out the GPS. Maybe she’d read it wrong. She switched it on.
“Is the battery working again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
The position locator began searching. It instantly picked up the signal from the satellite making its eternal orbit of the earth.
“What do you think?” asked Niels impatiently.
“That’s what it says. This is the place.” She gave him a resigned look.
Niels shook his head. “Doctors. Midwives.”
Hannah took over. “Cancer researchers, lab technicians, surgeons. Almost everybody who works at the hospital is involved with saving lives. All of them would qualify as good people.”
“Can’t you find a more exact location?” asked Niels.
“We’re not going to get any closer. There’s no time.”
Niels muttered a few swear words and then resumed roaming around the lobby. A thought flitted through his mind: If it hadn’t been for his damned travel phobia, he’d be sitting next to a swimming pool right now. He could have sat there, not giving a shit about any of this, and drinking himself silly. Instead, here he stood, looking inside the hospital’s employee cafeteria. Hundreds of people wearing white coats. White was a symbol of goodness. Hitler’s most trusted soldiers wore black. Doctors always wear white.
Hannah took his hand. She knew what he was thinking. “There are so many of them,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied. “Too many.”
Reception area, the National Hospital—Copenhagen
The receptionist didn’t look up from his computer. Maybe he thought Niels was joking when he asked, “How many people work here?”
“General questions about the hospital should be directed to our PR division.”
Niels pulled out his police ID. “I asked you how many people work here.”
“But—”
“Including all the employees. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, cleaning staff. Everybody.”
“Are you here to see a specific patient?”
“Including all the patients and their visitors. Okay, let me ask the question another way: How many people do you think are here in the hospital at this very minute?”
The receptionist gave Niels a helpless look. Hannah tugged at his arm. “Niels.”
“And how many of them are between the ages of forty-four and fifty?”
“Niels. This is pointless.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
She gave the receptionist an apologetic look. He merely shrugged.
“Niels.”
“It has to be possible! These days everything is entered in computers. It should be easy to find out which employees are the right age and are working at the moment.”
“And then what?”
“We need to find out which of them most deserves to be called a good, righteous person. And prevent a murder. Wasn’t that why you phoned me?”
“I don’t know. It seems like such a long shot.”
“Why’s that? Just look at the list of victims. Pediatricians, pastors, lawyers, teachers—most of them had contact with a lot of people. They were all trying to help others.”
Hannah sighed loudly. Like Niels, she’d been thinking about where she could be other than here. At the lake. Sitting in a deck chair. With a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee. In her own world.
Nearby was a scale model of the hospital in a glass case. Niels leaned over it, pressing his hands against the glass. He was sweating nervously. When he lifted them away, his palms left marks on the pane. Hannah went over to stand next to him. In silence, they studied the miniature version of the hospital. As if it made everything easier to grasp. They read that the main building was sixteen stories high. The old section of the hospital was spread over an area large enough to contain a small village. Suddenly, Niels turned to Hannah. “Okay, you’re right. We need to do this a different way.”
63
Amager—Copenhagen
Shit Island. Niels hated that nickname. Nevertheless, two demonstrators stood alongside the highway, holding up a clumsily printed placard: WELCOME TO SHIT ISLAND—MEETING PLACE OF THE WORLD’S SHITTY LEADERS. Hannah saw them, too, but didn’t comment. Snow and ice were clinging to the beard of one of the men. He looked like what he undoubtedly was: a madman. The sort of person who was always attracted to events such as the climate conference. COP15 was perfect fodder for the conspiracy theories and paranoid reasoning that is always on the lookout
for signs of the apocalypse, such as having all the world leaders gathered in one place. At the site where the citizens of Copenhagen in the old days dumped their human waste. It was almost too symbolic. Nowadays a thin layer of asphalt covered the marshland, and on top stood an urban district straight out of the visions of the future depicted in French science fiction films of the 1960s. Elevated tracks for trains that ran without any humans at the controls, and white-painted high-rises that all looked the same. Clinical architecture designed in the days when it was thought that the future would obliterate the individual in favor of the community. That wasn’t what happened. Back then, over forty years ago, no one could have foreseen that the world would become a thermostat that could be turned up or down. Mostly up.
A few more activist stragglers were making their way through the snow alongside the highway, heading for the Bella Center.
“Looks like the madhouse has opened its doors,” muttered Niels.
Hannah attempted a laugh but failed. “Are you sure I really need to go with you?”
“Yes. You have to explain the whole thing.”
Hannah looked out the car window. She was regretting getting involved. She didn’t feel up to explaining anything.
The Bella Center. A fancy name for a building made of drab concrete located on Europe’s flattest stretch of marshland. Niels parked some distance away. Special permission was required to drive up to the entrance. The Bella Center was not under Danish jurisdiction while the conference was going on. At the moment it belonged to the UN. Otherwise, a handful of despots wouldn’t have been able to attend. Heads of state who, according to normal Western standards, ought to be serving thirty-eight consecutive life sentences for crimes against humanity. But they were all here. Mugabe, Ahmadinejad, and the whole gang. For the purposes of turning down the earth’s temperature. It was almost touching.
“Have you seen Sommersted?” Niels asked one of the officers.
The Last Good Man Page 26