The Keeper of Lost Causes

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  He pressed his ear against the wall. The whining sound was coming from somewhere inside. Not from the door, not from the windows. Just from inside. It had to be an extremely high-pitched sound for it to penetrate such a solid enclosure.

  “It reads more than four bars, Carl.”

  He looked at the pressure gauge that Assad was tapping on. He was right. And four bars was the same as five atmospheres. So the pressure inside the room had already dropped by one atmosphere.

  “Assad, I think Merete Lynggaard is inside there.”

  His partner stood very still, studying the arched metal door. “You think so?”

  He nodded.

  “The pressure is going in a downward direction, Carl.”

  He was right. The needle’s movement was actually visible.

  Carl looked up at all the cables overhead. The thin wires between the detonators dangled to the floor with stripped ends. The plan must have been to fasten a battery or some other explosive device to the wires. Was that what they were going to do on May 15, when the pressure was supposed to drop to one atmosphere, as had been written on the back of the photo of Merete Lynggaard?

  He looked around to try to make sense of it all. The copper pipes led directly into the room. There were maybe ten in all, so how could anyone tell which ones released the pressure and which ones increased it? If they cut through one of the pipes, there was a huge risk they would make matters worse for the person inside the pressure chamber. The same was true if they did anything to the electrical wires.

  He stepped over to the airlock door and examined the relay boxes next to it. Here there was no question—everything was printed in black and white on the six buttons: Top door open. Top door closed. Outer airlock door open. Outer airlock door closed. Inner airlock door open. Inner airlock door closed.

  And both airlock doors were in the closed position. That was how they would stay.

  “What do you think that thing’s for?” asked Assad. He was perilously close to turning a little potentiometer from OFF to ON.

  Carl wished that Hardy was here to see this. If there was one thing that Hardy could deal with better than anyone else, it was anything to do with buttons or dials.

  “That switch was then put in after all the others,” said Assad. “Otherwise why are the others made of that brown stuff?” He pointed at a square box made of Bakelite. “And why should that one then be the only one made of plastic, out of all of them?”

  It was true. The different types of switches had obviously been fabricated decades apart.

  Assad nodded. “I think that dial might either stop the process, or else it does not mean anything.” What an imprecise but beautiful way of putting it.

  Carl took a deep breath. It was almost ten minutes since he’d spoken to the people out at Holmen, and it would still take them a while to arrive. If Merete Lynggaard was inside there, they were going to have to do something drastic.

  “Turn it,” he told Assad with a sense of foreboding.

  As soon as he did, they could hear the whistling sound slicing through the room at full force. Carl’s heart leaped to his throat. For a moment he was convinced that they’d released even more pressure.

  Then he looked up and identified the four framed rectangles on the ceiling as loudspeakers. That was how they were able to hear the whistling sounds from inside the room, which had become piercingly enervating.

  “What is happening now?” shouted Assad, holding his hands over his ears, making it hard for Carl to answer him.

  “I think you’ve turned on the intercom,” he shouted back, turning to look up at the rectangles on the ceiling. “Are you inside there, Merete?” he yelled three or four times and then listened intently.

  Now he could clearly hear that the sound was air passing through a narrow passage. Like the noise a person makes with his teeth, just as he begins to whistle. And the sound was constant.

  He cast a worried glance at the pressure gauge. Now it was almost down to four point five atmospheres. It was dropping fast.

  He shouted again, this time at the top of his lungs, and Assad took his hands away from his ears and shouted too. Their combined yelling could wake the dead, thought Carl, sincerely hoping that things hadn’t gone that far.

  Then he heard a loud thud from the black box up near the ceiling, and for a moment the room was totally silent.

  That box up there controls the pressure equalization, he thought, considering whether to run into the other room and get something to stand on so he could open the box.

  It was at that instant they heard groans coming from the loudspeakers. Like the sounds uttered by a cornered animal or a human being in deep crisis or grief. A long, monotonic moan of lament.

  “Merete, is that you?” Carl shouted.

  They stood still and waited. Then they heard a sound they interpreted as a yes.

  Carl felt a burning in his throat. Merete Lynggaard was inside there. Imprisoned for over five years in this bleak and disgusting setting. And now she was possibly about to die, and Carl had no idea what to do.

  “What can we do, Merete?” he yelled. At the same instant he heard an enormous bang from the plasterboard on the far wall. He knew at once that someone had fired a shotgun through the plasterboard from behind, scattering buckshot all over the room. He felt a throbbing several places in his body as warm blood began trickling out. He stood paralyzed for a tenth of a second that felt like an eternity. Then he threw himself backward against Assad, who was standing there with one arm bleeding and an expression that matched the situation.

  As they lay on the floor, the plasterboard tipped forward to reveal the person who had fired the shot. It wasn’t hard to recognize him. Aside from the lines on his face, which his hard life and tormented soul had produced over the years, Lasse Jensen looked exactly like the boy in the photos they’d seen.

  He stepped out of his hiding place, holding the smoking shotgun, inspecting the wounds his shot had made with the same cool indifference as if it had been a flooded basement.

  “How did you find me?” he asked, as he cracked the barrel and inserted more shells. He came over to them. There was no question that he would pull the trigger if he felt like it.

  “You can still stop this, Lasse,” Carl said, propping himself up so that Assad could get out from under his body. “If you stop now, you might get off with a few years in prison. Otherwise it’s going to be a life sentence for murder.”

  The man smiled. It wasn’t hard to see why women fell for him. He was a devil in disguise. “Then there’s a lot you don’t know,” he said, aiming the gun straight at Assad’s temple.

  Yeah, that’s what you think, thought Carl as he felt Assad’s hand feel its way inside his jacket pocket. “I’ve called for backup. My colleagues will be here any minute. Give me that shotgun, Lasse, and everything will be OK.”

  Lasse shook his head. He didn’t believe it. “I’ll kill your partner if you don’t give me an answer. How the hell did you find me?”

  Considering how much pressure he must be under, Lasse sounded far too controlled. He was obviously raving mad.

  “It was Uffe,” Carl told him.

  “Uffe?” Now the man’s expression changed. That piece of information just didn’t fit into the world he was determined to control. “Bullshit! Uffe Lynggaard doesn’t know a thing,” Lasse said. “He can’t even talk. I’ve been following the news the past couple of days. He didn’t say a word. You’re lying.”

  Carl could feel that Assad had grabbed the switchblade.

  To hell with regulations and laws about concealed weapons. He just hoped Assad would have time to use it.

  A sound came from the loudspeakers overhead as if the woman in the room wanted to say something.

  “Uffe Lynggaard recognized you in a photograph,” Carl said. “A photo of you and Dennis Knudsen standing next to each other as boys. Do you remember that picture, Atomos?”

  The name stung him like a slap in the face. It was obvious t
hat years of suffering were now surfacing inside Lasse Jensen.

  He grimaced and nodded. “So you know about that too! I assume you know everything. Then you also realize that you’re going to have to accompany Merete.”

  “You won’t have time. Help is on the way,” Carl said, leaning forward a bit so that Assad could pull out the knife and lunge at the man in one movement. The question was whether the psychopath would be able to press the trigger in time. If Lasse fired both barrels simultaneously at such close range, he and Assad were done for.

  Lasse smiled again. He had already regained his composure. It was the trademark of a psychopath: nothing could touch him.

  “Oh, I’ll have time. You can be sure of that.”

  The jerk in Carl’s jacket pocket and the subsequent click of the switchblade coincided with the sound that flesh makes when you stick a knife into it. Sinews being severed, healthy muscles clipped. Carl saw the blood on Lasse’s leg just as Assad knocked the shotgun upward with his bloodied left arm. The boom from the shotgun next to Carl’s ears when Lasse fired out of sheer reflex blocked out all other sounds. He saw Lasse silently topple over backward, and then Assad threw himself at the man, his knife raised to strike.

  “No!” yelled Carl, though he could barely hear the sound of his own voice. He tried to get up but now felt the full extent of the shot he’d taken. He looked down underneath himself and saw blood pouring out onto the floor. Then he grabbed his thigh and pressed hard as he stood up.

  Assad sat down, bleeding, on Lasse’s chest, with the knife pressed to the man’s throat. Carl couldn’t hear, but he could see Assad shouting at the man beneath him, and he saw Lasse spitting in Assad’s face with every sentence he spoke.

  Slowly Carl regained his hearing in one ear. The relay overhead had again begun releasing air from the chamber. This time the whistling sound was a notch higher than before. Or was it his hearing that was playing tricks on him?

  “How do we stop this shit? How do we shut off the ventilators? Tell me!” shouted Assad for the umpteenth time, taking another wad of spit in the face. Only now did Carl notice that each time Lasse spat, the knife was pressed harder against his throat.

  “I have cut throats of better men than you!” Assad yelled and made a shallow slice into the skin, deep enough for the blood to trickle down Lasse’s neck.

  “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” Lasse snarled. Carl looked down at Lasse’s leg, where Assad had stabbed him. It wasn’t bleeding very heavily, not like when the big femoral artery in the thigh is severed. But it was still serious enough.

  He looked up at the manometer; the pressure was dropping slowly but steadily. Where the hell was the police backup? Hadn’t the officer at Holmen called his colleagues, as he’d requested? Carl leaned against the wall and took out his cell phone. He punched in the number of the duty officer and was told help would arrive in a matter of minutes. His colleagues and the medics were going to have their hands full.

  He didn’t feel the blow to his arm; he merely noticed his cell phone on the floor and how his arm fell to his side. He jerked his body around and saw the skinny creature standing behind them take aim again and slam the iron bar against Assad’s temple. He fell over without a word.

  Then Lasse’s brother took a step forward and stomped on Carl’s cell phone until it was smashed to bits.

  “Oh God, is it serious, my boy?” came a voice from behind them. The woman rolled toward them in her wheelchair, all life’s woes etched into her face. She paid no attention to the unconscious man lying on the floor. She saw only the blood sieving through her son’s trouser leg.

  Lasse got up with difficulty, giving Carl a furious look. “It’s nothing, Mum,” he said. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, pulled off his belt, and wrapped both of them tightly around his thigh, assisted by his brother.

  She wheeled past them and stared up at the manometer. “How’s it going, you miserable bitch?” she shouted at the windowpane.

  Carl looked down at Assad, who was breathing weakly on the floor. Maybe he was going to survive. Carl scanned the floor in hopes of locating the switchblade. It could be underneath Assad, or maybe it would come into view if the gaunt one moved aside.

  It was as if Hans was reading Carl’s mind. He turned toward Carl with a child’s expression on his face, as if Carl was going to steal something from him, or even start hitting him. The look he gave Carl was one that stemmed from the loneliness of childhood. From the taunts of other children who didn’t understand how vulnerable a simple-minded individual could be. He raised the iron bar and aimed for Carl’s throat.

  “Should I kill him, Lasse? Should I? I can do it.”

  “You’re not doing anything,” said the woman, rolling her wheelchair closer.

  “Sit down, you bastard cop,” commanded Lasse as he straightened up to his full height. “Go get the battery, Hans. We’re going to blow this building sky-high. It’s the only thing we can do now. Hurry up. In ten minutes we’re out of here.”

  He reloaded the shotgun, keeping his eyes fixed on Carl, who slid down the wall until he was sitting with his back against the airlock door.

  Then Lasse ripped the duct tape off the windowpanes and grabbed the explosive charges. With one swift movement he wrapped the deadly mix of wires and detonators around Carl’s neck like a scarf.

  “You won’t feel anything, so don’t be scared. But for her in there things will be different. That’s the way it has to be,” Lasse said coldly, dragging the gas cylinders over toward the wall of the pressure chamber behind Carl.

  Then his brother came back with the battery and a coil of wire.

  “No, we’re going to do it in a different way, Hans. We’ll take the battery outside with us. You just have to connect it like this,” said Lasse, showing him how the explosives around Carl’s neck should be connected to the detonation cords and then to the battery. “Cut off a really long piece. It has to reach all the way out to the yard.” He laughed and looked straight at Carl. “We’ll connect the current outside, and the explosion will take this fucker’s head off and blow up the gas cylinders.”

  “But what about before that? What about him?” asked his brother, pointing at Carl. “He could just tear off the wires.”

  “Him?!” Lasse smiled and pulled the battery farther away from Carl. “You’re entirely right. In a minute I’m going to let you beat him senseless.”

  Then his voice changed, and he turned again to look at Carl, a grave expression on his face. “How the hell did you find me? You said it was because of Dennis Knudsen and Uffe. But I don’t understand. How did you link them to me?”

  “You made thousands of mistakes, you clown. That’s how!”

  Lasse backed up a bit with what could only be interpreted as insanity rooted deep in his eyes. He was sure to shoot Carl a moment from now. Just take careful aim and pull the trigger. Then good-bye, Carl. No matter what, Lasse wasn’t going to let this cop stop him from blowing up the place. As if Carl didn’t know.

  With peace in his soul, Carl looked up at Lasse’s brother. He was fumbling. Couldn’t get the wires to lie properly. They kept curling together as he unrolled them.

  At that instant Carl felt Assad’s wounded arm trembling against his leg. Maybe he wasn’t hurt that badly. Small consolation in this situation, because in a moment they’d both lie dead.

  Carl closed his eyes and tried to recall a couple of significant moments in his life. After a few seconds of nothingness, he opened them again. Even that solace was denied him.

  Had his life really had so few high points to offer?

  “You need to leave the room now, Mother,” he heard Lasse say. “Go out to the yard, far away from the outer walls. We’ll join you in a minute. Then we’ll all disappear.”

  She nodded, took one last look at the porthole, and spat on the glass.

  As she passed her sons, she looked down with disdain at Carl and the man lying next to him. She would have kicked them if she could. They
had stolen her life, just as others had stolen it before them. She was in a permanent state of bitterness and hatred. No other emotion would be allowed to penetrate the protective glass bubble in which she lived.

  There’s no room for you to get past, you witch, thought Carl, noticing how awkwardly Assad’s leg was stretched out to the side.

  When her wheelchair drove into Assad’s leg, he uttered a roar. In one movement he leaped to his feet and was standing between the woman and the door. The two men standing next to the windows whirled around. Lasse raised the shotgun as Assad, blood pouring from his temple, crouched down behind the wheelchair, grabbed the woman’s bony knees, and stormed toward the men, using the chair as a battering ram. The cacophony of sounds was infernal. Assad roaring, the woman screaming, the whistling from the pressure chamber, and the warning shouts of the two men that was cut off by the chaos caused by the wheelchair as it knocked them down.

  The woman lay with her legs in the air as Assad jumped on top of her and threw himself at the shotgun, which Lasse was trying to aim at him. The brother started wailing when Assad got hold of the barrel with one hand and began pounding Lasse’s larynx with the other. In a few seconds it was all over.

  Assad moved away, holding on to the shotgun. He shoved the wheelchair aside, forced a coughing Lasse to his feet, and stood there for a moment, staring at him.

  “Tell us how to stop this shit then!” he shouted as Carl stood up as well.

  Carl spied the switchblade over by the wall. He unwrapped the wires and detonators from around his neck and went over to get the knife as Hans tried to pick up his mother.

  “Tell us. Now!” Carl stuck the knife against Lasse’s cheek.

  They both saw it in Lasse’s eyes. He didn’t believe them. In his mind, only one thing was important: Merete Lynggaard had to die inside the room behind them. Alone, slowly and painfully. That was Lasse’s goal. He would take whatever punishment they gave him afterward. At that point, what did it matter?

  “We will blow up him and his family, Carl,” said Assad, his eyes narrowed. “Merete Lynggaard is finished soon anyway. We cannot do anything for her more then.” He pointed up at the manometer that now showed well under four atmospheres. “We do the same to them that they wanted to do to us. And we do Merete a favor.”