The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “What did they want?”

  “I’ve no idea. I think they were just trying to put the wind up me. Which worked rather well, I can tell you. Now they know something’s going on.”

  “I’ll set off a new text-message chain right away,” said Caspersen, withdrawing slightly.

  “They’re thorough, Curt. I get the feeling it’s you they’re after primarily, but believe me, they know more than is good for us about other things besides. Not that they were specific about anything, but they did mention Benefice and someone called Nete Hermansen. Does that ring a bell? I understood they were on their way to Nørrebro to have a word with her. They may be there by now.”

  Curt rubbed his brow. The room felt stuffy all of a sudden.

  “Yes, I know who Nete Hermansen is, though I must say I’m rather surprised she’s still alive. Nevertheless, that can be remedied. Let’s wait and see what happens during the next twenty-four hours. I think you may be right in that they’re mostly interested in me. I don’t know why, but then I don’t need to either.”

  “How do you mean? Surely you need to know that?”

  “What I mean is simply that everything might all be over before we know it. You look after the Purity Party and let me take care of the rest.”

  After Caspersen had left, clearly weighed down by the latest developments, Curt called Mikael again and told him that if they got a move on they might just be able to intercept the two police officers at Peblinge Dossering and tail them from there.

  An hour and a half later Mikael called him back to inform him that they’d been too late, but now they had a man posted in the parking lot outside Carl Mørck’s address, and Mørck had just arrived home. Hafez el-Assad, however, had given them the slip. At any rate, the flat on Heimdalsgade that was registered as his home address was completely empty.

  • • •

  Early on Sunday morning Curt called the doctor. Beate’s heavy sighs and irregular breathing next to him in bed seemed to have grown so much more pronounced during the last couple of hours.

  “Well, Curt,” said the doctor, whom Curt knew to be an excellent GP from Hvidovre. “As your own professional opinion already suggests, from what you were telling me on the phone, I fear your wife doesn’t have much time left. Her heart’s worn out, it’s as simple as that. My guess is we’re talking days, perhaps even hours now. You’re quite sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”

  He shrugged. “What good would it do?” he said. “No, I think I prefer to be alone with her to the end. But thanks, all the same.”

  When he’d gone and they were alone together he lay down on the bed beside her and reached for her hand. This little hand that had caressed his cheek so many times. This dear little hand.

  He looked out across the balcony at the dawn and wished for a moment that he believed in a god. He would say a quiet prayer for his beloved in her final hours. Three days earlier he had felt prepared for this inevitable development, ready to live on in its aftermath. Now everything had changed.

  He glanced at the bottle of sleeping pills. Potent and easy to swallow. It would take twenty seconds at most. He smiled to himself. And a minute to fetch a glass of water, of course.

  “Do you think it would be best for me to take them now, my love?” he whispered, and gave her hand a squeeze. If only she had been able to answer him. He felt so alone.

  He stroked her thin hair gently. How often he had admired her hair when she sat brushing it in front of the mirror, the light giving it a sheen. So quickly life had passed.

  “Oh, Beate. I loved you with all my heart. You were the light of my life. If I could live it over again with you, I would. Every second. If only you could wake up for just a moment so that I might tell you, my dearest.”

  Then he turned toward her and snuggled up to the faintly breathing, irrevocably expiring, and most delightful body he had ever known.

  • • •

  It was almost twelve when he woke up to the ringing of a phone that suddenly stopped.

  He lifted his head slightly and saw without relief that Beate was still breathing. Couldn’t she just die without him having to watch?

  He shook his head at the thought.

  “Pull yourself together, Curt,” he told himself. Beate wasn’t going to die alone, no matter what. He refused to let it happen.

  He looked through the French window that led out onto the balcony. The sky was November gray and the wind whistled in the bare branches of the cherry plum trees.

  Not a good day, he thought, reaching for both his mobile phones.

  There were no new messages on either, but then he pressed the display of the landline and saw a number he didn’t recognize.

  He activated the call-back function, only to sense immediately that he shouldn’t have.

  “Søren Brandt,” said a voice he had no wish to hear.

  “We two have nothing to discuss,” Wad said brusquely.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you. Can I ask if you’ve read my blog about Hans Christian Dyrmand’s suicide.”

  The man at the other end waited a moment to see if any answer would be forthcoming. It wasn’t.

  Bloody swine. Bloody Internet.

  “I’ve spoken to Dyrmand’s widow,” the bastard of a journalist went on. “She’s most perplexed by what happened. Would you have any comment on that?”

  “None whatsoever. I hardly knew the man. And you listen to me now. I’m in grief at the moment. My wife is on her deathbed. So if you’d be decent enough to leave me in peace, we can speak another day.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. I was going to tell you that information has come my way about you being in the police spotlight in connection with a missing persons case. But I have a feeling you’re not going to comment, is that right?”

  “What missing persons case?” He had absolutely no idea what it was about, and this was the second time it had been brought to his attention.

  “That’d be a matter between you and the police, wouldn’t it? But as far as I understand it, they’re rather eager to exchange information with me about The Cause and its obviously criminal activities. So my last question for now is whether you and Wilfrid Lønberg intend to make similar activities, such as forced abortions, part of the Purity Party’s official platform?”

  “Enough slander! I’ll sort the matter out with the police, make no mistake. And if you publish so much as a word without documentation, I promise you I shall make sure you end up paying dearly.”

  “OK. Documentation’s not a problem, actually, but thanks for your comments. It’s always nice to have a couple of quotes.”

  And then he hung up. He hung up. Curt Wad was fuming.

  What kind of documentation was he referring to? Had knowledge of Nørvig’s archives really reached that far already? This was going to be Brandt’s downfall. Bloody lowlife.

  He picked up the secure mobile and dialed Caspersen’s number.

  “What’s the status on our foray into Police HQ, Caspersen?”

  “Not good, I’m afraid. Our man got in, no problem, but as soon as he went down to the basement he ran into Hafez el-Assad. It seems he sleeps down there.”

  “Damn it! He’s guarding Nørvig’s archive, is that it?”

  “It looks like it, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you call and inform me?”

  “I did, Curt. I called you several times this morning. Not this number, the other one.”

  “I’m not using my iPhone at the moment. For security reasons.”

  “But I called your landline, too.”

  Curt reached out and pressed the display. He was right. There were several unanswered calls before Søren Brandt’s. Caspersen had been calling every twenty minutes since eight o’clock.

  Had he really slept so soundly next to Beate? Would it be the last time in thei
r lives together?

  He hung up and looked at Beate as he thought about what to do.

  All three had to be eliminated, there was no other way. The Arab, Mørck, and Brandt. He would decide about Nete Hermansen later. She wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the others.

  He dialed Mikael’s number on the secure mobile.

  “Can we trace Søren Brandt?”

  “I should think so. He’s staying at a weekend cabin in Høve at the moment.”

  “How do we know?”

  “Because we’ve been keeping an eye on him ever since he kicked up a fuss at the national congress.”

  Curt smiled. It was the first time that day.

  “All right, Mikael, well done. What about this Carl Mørck? Do we know what he’s up to?”

  “We do, yeah. Right now he’s on his way across the parking lot where he lives. Our man’s on his tail. If anyone knows what he’s doing, he does. Former Police Intelligence guy. We still don’t know where the Arab is, though.”

  “In that case I can enlighten you. He’s in the basement of Police Headquarters. You can put a man outside the mail terminal over the road so we know when he leaves. And Mikael?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When everyone’s asleep at Carl Mørck’s place tonight, an accident will happen. Are you with me?”

  “A fire?”

  “Yes. Starting in the kitchen. Make it explosive. A blaze with lots of smoke. Tell our people to make sure they get out of there without being seen.”

  “That’ll be me, I reckon.”

  “Good. Cover your back and get out quickly.”

  “Will do. What about Søren Brandt?”

  “Put your dogs on him, and do it now.”

  33

  November 2010

  Carl was woken by someone shaking him hard.

  He opened his eyes and hazily registered a figure bent over him. He tried to get up, only to feel dizzy and suddenly and inexplicably find himself on the floor by the side of his bed. Something was wrong, drastically wrong.

  To his bewilderment he felt the rush of wind from an open window and smelled gas.

  “I’ve got Jesper awake now,” someone shouted from the landing. “He’s vomiting. What should I do?”

  “Turn him onto his side. Have you opened the window?” the dark figure at Carl’s side shouted back.

  He felt a hard slap against his cheek, then another. “Carl, look at me. Focus. Are you OK?”

  He nodded, but wasn’t sure.

  “We need to get you downstairs, Carl. There’s still too much gas up here. Can you manage to walk?”

  He got up slowly, staggered onto the landing, and descended the stairs unsteadily. It felt like he was falling into a hole. Not until he was sitting on a chair in front of his garden door did the blur of outlines become more distinct, enough to start making sense.

  He peered up at Morten’s boyfriend, who was standing beside him.

  “What the fuck?” he mumbled. “You still here? Have you moved in?”

  “If he has, we should all be very grateful,” came the dry comment from Hardy’s bed.

  Carl turned his head, still woozy. “What happened?”

  There was a commotion as Morten lugged Jesper down the stairs. Carl’s stepson was looking even worse than he’d done the time he came home from two weeks’ partying in Kos.

  Mika gestured toward the kitchen. “Someone’s been in the house. Whoever it was doesn’t like us.”

  Carl got to his feet with difficulty and went to see.

  He saw the gas cylinder immediately, one of the new ones made of hard plastic. It was a kind he knew he didn’t have. He used the old yellow ones for the gas barbecue; there was nothing wrong with them. And what was it doing there, anyway, with a length of rubber tubing attached to the regulator?

  “Where’d that come from?” he asked, still too befuddled to remember the name of the man standing next to him.

  “It wasn’t here at two this morning when I looked in on Hardy,” the guy answered.

  “Hardy?”

  “Yeah, he had a reaction to his treatment yesterday. Hot flushes, headaches. It’s a good sign he responds so strongly to the stimuli. Plus it almost certainly saved our lives.”

  “No, you did that, Mika,” Hardy called out from his bed.

  That was it, yeah. Mika.

  “Explain,” Carl commanded, policeman’s instinct kicking in.

  “I’ve been looking in on Hardy every two hours since yesterday evening. I’ll keep on over the next couple of days so I can observe exactly how he’s reacting. Anyway, half an hour ago my alarm went off and I woke up to a smell of gas. It was very strong in the basement and almost knocked me out when I came up here to the ground floor. I turned off the flow from the cylinder and opened all the windows, and then I noticed there was a little saucepan on the stove with smoke coming off it. When I looked closer I could see it was almost dry, apart from a little bit of olive oil in the bottom and a scorched piece of paper towel. That was where the smoke was coming from.”

  He gestured toward the kitchen window. “I chucked it out as quick as I could. A moment later and the paper would have caught fire.”

  • • •

  Carl nodded to his colleague from Fire Investigation, Erling Holm. Strictly speaking this wasn’t his patch, but Carl didn’t want to get the Hillerød police involved, and Erling lived only five kilometers away in Lynge.

  “Very nasty, this, Carl. Twenty, thirty seconds more and that paper towel would have burst into flame and ignited the gas. And as far as I can gauge from the weight of the cylinder, a lot had already seeped out. With that regulator and the wide-bore tubing on the nozzle it’d have taken about twenty minutes at most, I reckon.” He shook his head. “That’s why whoever did this didn’t turn the stove up full whack. He wanted the house full of gas before it all went off.”

  “And we needn’t hazard a guess at the outcome, eh, Erling?”

  “Put it this way. Department Q would have been advertising for a new boss.”

  “Big explosion, then?”

  “Yes and no. But effective, certainly. All your rooms and everything in them would have gone up in flames at once.”

  “But Jesper and Hardy and I would have died from the gas before then, right?”

  “Hardly. It’s not poisonous like that. Might have given you a headache, though.” He laughed. Funny buggers, these fire investigators. “You’d have burned to death in an instant, and those in the basement wouldn’t have been able to get out. The most fiendish bit is it’s by no means certain our boys would’ve been able to determine any crime had taken place. We’d most likely have localized the source of the blaze as the gas cylinder and the saucepan on the stove, but it could easily have looked like an accident. Lack of due care and attention. We see it all the time these days, now everyone’s got a barbecue. To be honest, I could imagine whoever it was getting off scot-free.”

  “He bloody won’t, not if I can help it.”

  “Any idea who might have done it, Carl?”

  “Yeah. Someone with a pick gun. There’s a lot of little marks on the front-door lock. Apart from that, I’ve no idea.”

  “Suspicions?”

  “My life’s full of them.”

  Carl gave his thanks and assured Erling that everyone in the house was OK before doing a quick round of the neighbors to find out if anyone had seen anything. Most of them were annoyed. Who wouldn’t be at five in the morning? But all in all, the majority seemed genuinely shocked, though no one was able to identify any suspects.

  • • •

  It took less than an hour for Vigga to turn up, her hair all over the place and a reluctant Gurkamal at her side with his turban, big white teeth, and extravagant beard.

  “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Tell me Jesper’s all right.
”

  “He’s fine. Puked on the sofa and all over Hardy’s bed, but apart from that he’s right as rain. First time in ages I’ve heard him say he wanted his mum, though.”

  “Oh, goodness, the little dear.” Not a word as to how Carl was doing. The difference between soon-to-be ex-husband and son was obvious indeed.

  He heard her fussing over her offspring in the background when the doorbell rang.

  “If that’s him back with another gas cylinder, tell him we’ve still got some left in the first one,” Hardy called out from his bed. “He can come back next week instead.”

  What on earth’s Mika been doing to the bloke? Carl mused, opening the door.

  The girl standing in front of him was pale from lack of sleep. She had dark shadows under her eyes, a ring through her lip, and was sixteen years old at most.

  “Hi,” she said. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward his neighbor Kenn’s house, and the way she was squirming with embarrassment she seemed almost in danger of dislocating something.

  “I’m going out with Peter from over there and we’d been at a party at the youth club. I was sleeping at his house because I live in Blovstrød and there’s no buses at that time of night. We got back a few hours ago and Kenn came down to look in on us in the basement after you’d been over to ask if anyone had noticed anything strange going on around your house last night. He told us what had happened and we said we’d seen something when we got home, so Kenn wanted me to come over and tell you about it.”

  Carl raised an eyebrow. Clearly, she wasn’t as dozy as she looked, with all those words coming out of her.

  “OK. What did you see, then?”

  “There was a man at your door when we walked past. I asked Peter if he knew him, but his mind was on other things.” She giggled.

  Carl went on. “What was he like, this man? Did you get a look at him?”

  “Yeah, he was standing in the light by the door. It looked like he was messing with the lock, but he didn’t turn round so I didn’t see him from the front.”