The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “If you want to raise the standard of our future dialogues, Assad, I suggest you prick up your ears. When I ask you something, it always matters.”

  “Do what with my ears, Carl?”

  “Just answer me, Assad,” Carl replied with annoyance, pulling on his coat. “What were you doing here so early this morning? Is it to do with your family?”

  “Yes, that is it.”

  “Listen, Assad. If you’re having trouble with the wife, it’s none of my business. And if it’s because you’re Skyping with that uncle of yours, or whoever the hell he happens to be, there’s no need for you to be here at the crack of dawn, surely? Haven’t you got a computer at home for that sort of thing?”

  “Cracker dawn?”

  Carl’s arm got stuck in his sleeve. “For Chrissake, Assad! It’s a figure of speech. Have you got a computer at home, or what?”

  Assad gave a shrug. “Not at the moment. It’s all difficult to explain, Carl. Can we not move on to Børge Bak now?”

  • • •

  Back at the beginning of time, when Carl would put on his white gloves and set off on his beat in that same part of Vesterbro, people would hang out of the windows of run-down tenements, baiting him in their flat Copenhagen dialect. Coppers like him from Jutland could get back in their wooden shoes and sod off to the hinterland where they belonged. At the time it had been a shock to him, but now he yearned for it. As he stood there, looking around at the neighborhood where talentless architects had deluded brainless local politicians into plastering the streets with ugly concrete blocks not even social class 5 could think of as home, it was an era that seemed light-years away. These days, people only lived here as a last resort. It was as simple as that. The residents of former times had been forced out into something even less desirable in Ishøj and other godforsaken outposts, where they now sat reminiscing about the good old days.

  No, if you wanted to see classic redbrick buildings with cornices and sooty chimneys, you’d have a bloody job these days in the side streets off Istedgade. But if what you were looking for were concrete shells, baggy-arsed tracksuits, and junkies with empty sockets for eyes you’d come to the right place. Here were Nigerian pimps alongside East European con artists, and even the most humble and bizarre forms of crime found a fertile breeding ground.

  More than anyone else in the homicide division, Børge Bak had served his time in these streets. He knew the dangers, the pitfalls, and the rules, one of which was that you never on any account entered an enclosed space around here without backup.

  Now Carl and Assad stood in the pissing rain, analyzing this miserable, barren cityscape, and Bak was nowhere in sight. Which indicated he must have fallen foul.

  “He said he would wait for us,” said Assad, pointing to the basement steps of what had once been a shop and was now a vandalized ruin with whitewashed windows.

  “Are you sure of the address?”

  “As sure as eggs is eggs, Carl.”

  Carl stared at him incredulously, wondering where the hell he could have picked up a saying like that, then collected himself and turned to read the sun-bleached note in the window of the basement. Kaunas Trading/Linas Verslovas, it read. Innocuous enough, but firms like that tended to die as quickly as they were born, and more often than not their owners were shadier than a hundred-year-old tree in summer.

  In the car Assad had quoted from Linas Verslovas’s record. He had been pulled into HQ on several occasions, only to be released again. The man was described as a ruthless psychopath with a remarkable ability to talk gullible Eastern Europeans into taking the blame for his scummy activities in exchange for a pittance. Vestre Prison was full of them.

  Carl tried the handle and gave the door a shove. A bell jingled as it opened to reveal a rectangular room containing absolutely nothing but packing materials and crumpled newspaper left behind by the previous occupant.

  As they entered, they heard a dull thud from the back room. It sounded like the thump of a fist, but without the usual groan that followed.

  “Bak,” Carl called out, “are you in there?” He put his hand to his holster and made ready to draw his pistol and disengage the safety.

  “I’m OK,” said a voice from behind the flimsy, battered door.

  Carl pushed it open with caution and assessed the sight he encountered.

  Both men were beaten up, but the wiry Lithuanian was the worse off. The dragon tattoo that snaked around his throat and neck was set off by bruising, making it seem almost three-dimensional.

  Carl felt his face contract into a grimace. He was glad someone else had been on the receiving end.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Bak? Have you lost your mind, or what?”

  “He stabbed me.” Bak jerked his head toward the floor where a knife lay, its blade covered in blood. One of those vicious switchblades, the kind of thing that made Carl’s stomach turn. If it was up to him, getting caught with one of those would cost a bundle in fines.

  “You OK?” he asked, and Bak nodded.

  “Flesh wound in the arm, I’ll be all right. Fending off attack, so you can call it self-defense in the report,” he said, then hammered his fist so suddenly against the bridge of the Lithuanian’s nose that it made Assad jump.

  “Arh, fuck you!” the pimp groaned, with an obvious accent. Carl stepped forward to intervene. “You saw that! I didn’t do fuck all. Like when he came barging in. He came up and hit me. What was I supposed to do?” the Lithuanian lamented. He was hardly more than twenty-five years old and already up to his neck in shite.

  Additional stuttered sentences from the mouth of the sinewy man proclaimed his total innocence. He knew nothing about any attack on anyone in any brothel. Indeed he had already told this to the police a thousand times.

  “Come on, Bak, we’re leaving. NOW!” Carl commanded, prompting Bak to follow up with another fist in the Lithuanian’s face, knocking him backward over a table.

  “He’s not getting away with what he did to my sister.” Bak turned to Carl, every fiber in his face tensed. “Do you realize she’s going to lose her sight in one eye? That one side of her face is going to be scar tissue? This little scumbag’s coming with us. Do you read me, Carl?”

  “If you keep this up, Bak, I’m going to call City for assistance. In which case you’ll have to take the punches as they come,” Carl cautioned, and meant it.

  Assad shook his head. “One moment,” he said, stepping around his superior and yanking Bak aside so violently that a seam burst in the man’s ubiquitous leather jacket.

  “Get this crazy Arab away from me!” the Lithuanian screamed as Assad grabbed him and hauled him toward another door at the rear of the room.

  The Lithuanian filled the air with threats. Everyone in the room was as good as dead if they didn’t get the hell out immediately. Their stomachs would be split open and their heads torn off. Threats that would normally be taken seriously when issued by a man like him. Threats that were enough on their own to get him thrown into jail.

  But Assad gripped the man’s collar so hard that his invective could no longer escape his throat. He flung open the door of the back room and bundled the Lithuanian inside.

  Bak and Carl exchanged glances as Assad kicked back his heel and the door slammed shut.

  “Assad! You’re not to kill him in there, do you understand?” Carl shouted, just to be on the safe side.

  The silence was deafening.

  Bak smiled, and it was obvious why, for Carl’s options were all gone. There’d be no brandishing of the pistol now, no calls to Station City. He wasn’t about to risk putting his assistant in an awkward position, and Bak knew it.

  “Worried now, are you, Carl?” Bak nodded smugly to himself, then rolled up his sleeve to inspect the gash in his lower arm. He’d need a couple of stitches, but that was all. He produced a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and t
ied it tightly around the wound. Carl thought that probably wasn’t a good idea, but who was he to intervene? A bout of blood poisoning might teach Bak some hygiene.

  “Don’t forget I know all about your past, Carl. You and Anker knew better than anyone how to squeeze shite out of swine. You were a right pair, the two of you. If Hardy hadn’t joined you, you’d have ended up in the shit sooner or later, so leave out the holier-than-thou crap, all right?”

  Carl glanced toward the back room. What the hell was Assad up to in there? He turned to Bak. “You know fuck all, Bak. I don’t know what you’re basing your assumptions on, but be sure of one thing: you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “I’ve been asking around, Carl. It’s a miracle how you got away without disciplinary proceedings. Got to hand it to you, though, the two of you certainly knew how to get results out of your interrogations. Maybe that would explain it.” He rolled his sleeve down. “I’d like my job back at HQ. I think you should help me on that one,” he said. “I know Marcus is a bit reluctant, but it’s common knowledge he listens to you. Christ knows why.”

  Carl shook his head. If sense of occasion was hereditary, the gene was completely absent from Bak’s DNA.

  He walked forward and opened the door of the back room.

  The sight that met him was tranquil, to say the least. The Lithuanian was seated on the edge of a table, staring at Assad as though hypnotized. The face that had been so twisted and embittered now exuded the utmost gravity. It was a face washed clean of blood, and the man’s shoulders had assumed a more normal latitude.

  He got to his feet on a nod from Assad and walked past Bak and Carl without so much as a glance. Silently, he picked up a duffel bag from the floor, went over to a cupboard, and pulled out a drawer from which he took a few items of clothing, shoes, and a small bundle of banknotes, all of which he tossed into the bag.

  Assad watched the man without speaking, red-nosed and runny-eyed, not obviously a sight that would frighten anyone.

  “Can I have it now?” the Lithuanian asked.

  Two photos and a wallet changed hands.

  Verslovas opened the wallet and searched its compartments. They contained a fair amount of money as well as credit cards.

  “Give me the driving license as well,” he said, but Assad shook his head. The matter was already closed.

  “Then I’m gone,” said the Lithuanian. Bak was about to intervene, but Assad shook his head. He had this under control.

  “You’ve got thirty hours, and not one second more! Do you understand?” Assad said with composure. The Lithuanian nodded.

  “Hey, hang on a minute! You can’t just let him go, for Chrissake!” Bak protested, only to stop when Assad turned toward him and spoke calmly.

  “He’s my man now, Bak, can’t you see? You don’t think about him anymore, are you with me?”

  Bak’s face went white for a moment before the color returned. Assad exuded the air of a hydrogen bomb that had just been armed and prepared for release. The case was out of Bak’s hands, and there was nothing he could do.

  The last they saw of the Lithuanian as he opened the door was his dragon tattoo and the shoe he almost lost in the hurry. The transformation was total. The veneer scraped away. What was left was a boy of twenty-five, running for his life.

  “Now you can tell your sister you have avenged her,” Assad sniffled. “You will never see this man again, I promise you!”

  Carl frowned, but said nothing until they were outside on the pavement by the car.

  “What happened in there, Assad?” he asked. “What did you do to him? And what was all that about thirty hours?”

  “I took him by the scruff of the neck, Carl, and mentioned some names. Names of people who could be let loose on him and his family if he did not leave the country immediately. I told him I did not care what he did now, but that he should hide himself away very carefully if they were not to find him.” Assad nodded. “But they will, if they so wish.”

  There were years of accumulated distrust in the look Bak sent Assad. “There’s only one thing people like him respect, and that’s the Russian mafia,” said Bak. “And you’re not going to tell me you’ve got a say there.” He waited for Assad’s answer, but none was forthcoming. “Which means you’ve let him off scot-free, you idiot.”

  Assad tipped his head to one side and peered at Bak with bleary eyes. “I think you should say to your sister that everything is sorted now. Should we not be getting back, Carl? I feel the need for a cup of hot tea.”

  5

  November 2010

  Carl’s gaze wavered back and forth between the case folder on his desk and the flatscreen on the wall. Neither was particularly appealing. On TV2’s news channel the foreign minister teetered about on her high heels, trying to look competent while tame journalists nodded and deferred to the daggers in her eyes, and on the desk in front of him lay the folder concerning his uncle’s drowning in 1978.

  It was like choosing between plague and cholera.

  He scratched behind his ear and closed his eyes. What a bloody awful day. Nowhere near as inactive and unstructured as he had hoped.

  There was a whole meter of new unresolved cases on the shelf, two of which had already captured Rose’s imagination. In particular the one about Rita Nielsen, the brothel owner who had disappeared in Copenhagen. It was a state of affairs that did not bode well. But to make matters worse, Assad was in his cubbyhole on the other side of the corridor, sniffling snot back up his nose every seven seconds and emitting multitudes of bacteria into the communal air. The man was at death’s door, yet less than an hour and a half ago he’d smacked a hardened criminal up against a wall and issued threats so definitive the guy had fled for his life with terror written all over his face. What the hell was it with this Assad? Even his old mate Anker, who could scare the shit out of just about anyone, had been a Boy Scout by comparison.

  And then there was the sudden echo from Carl’s past. Why had his cousin, Ronny, been sounding off in a bar in Thailand about his uncle’s death not being an accident, when Carl knew for a fact it was? And how come Ronny had claimed he had killed his father himself, when Carl knew he couldn’t have? He and Carl had been together, ogling two pairs of tits up on Hjørringvej when it occurred, so it couldn’t possibly have been Ronny. And now here Bak was, telling him Ronny had said Carl had been in on it.

  Carl shook his head. He killed the TV images of the smug, empty-headed firebrand of a foreign minister and grabbed the phone.

  He made four calls to four numbers, all in vain. He ran a check with the Civil Registration Office, then another couple of calls that were just as fruitless as the first. Ronny seemed to have an uncanny knack of being swallowed into oblivion by society’s ever-accumulating piles of dross.

  He’d have to get Lis onto it. She could find the scumbag for him, wherever the fuck he’d hidden himself.

  Thirty seconds of busy tone followed before Carl got to his feet in annoyance, his entire system clogging up with frustration. What the hell were they doing upstairs that stopped them answering the phone?

  On his way up to the third floor he encountered several red-nosed individuals all looking like death warmed up. The bloody flu was all over the place. He held his hand in front of his face as he passed. “Get thee behind me, satanic virus,” he muttered to himself, nodding politely to coughing and sneezing colleagues with watery eyes and expressions so pained anyone would have thought the world was about to end.

  Upstairs in homicide, however, all was quiet as the grave. As though all the killers the department’s investigators had snapped into handcuffs over the years had joined forces to strike back with biological weaponry. The department’s name suddenly seemed apt indeed. Had they all been wiped out, or what?

  No steamingly libidinous Lis behind the counter with her flirty, flamingo-like poise, and even more surprisingly, no Ms. Sørensen, th
e miserable cow who only ever got up to go to the toilet.

  “Where the hell is everyone?” he bellowed, making even the staplers rattle.

  “All right, keep your fucking hair on, Carl,” came a voice from an open door, halfway down the corridor.

  Carl poked his head into the chaotic office whose timeworn furniture and mountains of documents made his own tip in the basement look like a luxury suite on a cruise liner.

  He nodded to the head that was only barely visible behind the mounds of paper and repeated his question before Terje Ploug raised his flu-plagued face to peer at him.

  “Where the hell is everyone? Have they all gone down in the epidemic?”

  The reply said it all. Five well-delivered sneezes in quick succession, followed by assorted coughs and splutters, snot streaming from the man’s nostrils.

  “O-K!” said Carl, with emphasis on the second syllable, and stepped back.

  “Lars Bjørn’s in the briefing room with one of the teams and Marcus is out in the field,” Ploug proffered between sniffles. “But now you’re here, Carl, we’ve got a new lead in the nail-gun case. I was just about to give you a call.”

  “You don’t say.” Carl removed his gaze from the man’s beacon of a nose, and his eyes drifted out of focus. It already seemed an age since he, Anker, and Hardy had been shot in that run-down shed in Amager. Would he ever be able to stop thinking about it?

  “That allotment garden house where the three of you got hit after you found Georg Madsen with a nail fired into his brain was pulled down this morning,” Ploug said drily.

  “About time, and all.” Carl stuck his hands in his pockets. They felt sticky.

  “The bulldozers were very thorough. Took away the topsoil down to the clay.”

  “So what did they find?” Carl asked, already loath to hear more. Bastard case.

  “A wooden box knocked together with Paslode nails. Inside was a sack containing body parts in various states of decay. They turned it up an hour ago and made the call straightaway. Marcus is out there now with the SOCOs.”