The Keeper of Lost Causes

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

“What does your wife say, Hardy?”

  “She doesn’t know yet, Carl. I just decided.”

  Carl pictured Minna Henningsen in his mind. She and Hardy had met when they were both very young. By now their son had moved out, and she still looked young. At this point in her life, she probably had enough to attend to.

  “Go and talk to her today, Carl. You’d be doing me an awfully big favor.”

  Carl looked at the ships in the distance.

  The realities of life would probably make Hardy regret that particular request.

  After only a few seconds, Carl could see that he’d been right.

  Minna Henningsen opened the door to reveal a group of jovial, laughing women. It was a scene that couldn’t possibly fit in with Hardy’s hopes. Six women wearing colorful outfits and pert hats who were making wild plans for the rest of the day.

  “It’s the first of May, Carl. This is what we girls in the club always do today. Don’t you remember?” He nodded to a couple of them as she led him out to the kitchen.

  It didn’t take Carl long to explain the situation to her, and ten minutes later he was once again out on the street. She had taken his hand and told him how difficult things were for her, and how much she missed her former life. Then she put her head on his shoulder and cried a bit as she tried to explain why she didn’t have the strength to take care of Hardy.

  After she dried her eyes, she’d asked him with a timid smile if he might want to come over and have dinner with her sometime. She needed to talk to somebody, she said, but the intent behind her words was as blatant and direct as could be.

  Standing on Strand Boulevard, he took in the noise coming from over in Fælled Park. The festivities were in full swing, so maybe the people were once again waking up.

  He considered going over to the park for a while and having a beer, for old times’ sake, but he changed his mind and got back in the car.

  If I wasn’t so crazy about Mona Ibsen, that stupid psychologist, and if Minna wasn’t married to my paralyzed friend Hardy, I might take her up on her invitation, he thought to himself. Then his cell phone rang.

  It was Assad, and he sounded excited.

  “Hey, hey, slow down, Assad. Are you still at work? Tell me again. What is it you’re trying to say?”

  “They just called from the National Hospital to talk to the homicide boss. I just found out from Lis. Merete Lynggaard has been brought out of her coma.”

  Carl’s eyes slid out of focus. “When did it happen?”

  “This morning. I thought you would like to know then.”

  Carl thanked him, put down the phone, and stared out at the vitality of the trees towering overhead, their light green, trembling branches flush with spring. Deep down he ought to be happy, but he wasn’t. Merete could wind up a vegetable for the rest of her life. Nothing in this world was straightforward. Not even springtime lasted; that was the most painful thing about reliving it every year. Soon the days will start getting shorter again, he thought, hating himself for his pessimistic outlook.

  Once more he glanced over at Fælled Park and the gray colossus of the National Hospital looming in the distance.

  Then for the second time he put the parking timer on his dashboard and headed for the park and the hospital. “Restart Denmark” was this year’s May Day slogan. People were sitting on the grass with their bottles of beer as a big screen projected Folketing politician Jytte Andersen’s farewell speech all the way to the Freemason Lodge.

  A lot of good that was going to do.

  Back when Carl and his friends were young, they had sat here in T-shirts, looking like daddy longlegs. Today the collective corpulence was twenty times greater. Now it was an excessively self-satisfied populace that came out to protest. The government had given them their opium: cheap cigarettes, cheap booze, and all kinds of other shit. If these people sitting on the grass disagreed with the government, the problem was only temporary. Their average lifespan was decreasing fast, and soon there wouldn’t be anybody left to get upset over having to watch healthier people’s sporting feats on Danish TV.

  Oh yes, the situation was well under control.

  A pack of journalists was already on the scene in the corridor.

  When they saw Carl come out of the elevator, they pushed and shoved at each other to make their questions heard.

  “Carl Mørck!” shouted a reporter in front. “What do the doctors say about the brain damage sustained by Merete Lynggaard? Do you know?”

  “Has the deputy detective superintendent visited Merete Lynggaard before?” asked another.

  “Hey, Mørck! What do you think about the job you did? Are you proud of yourself?”

  Carl turned toward the voice and looked right into the red-rimmed piggy eyes of Pelle Hyttested, while the other reporters stared daggers at the man, as if he were unworthy of their profession.

  Which he was.

  Carl answered a couple of the questions and then turned his attention inward as the pressure in his chest got worse. No one had asked him why he was there. He didn’t even know himself.

  Maybe he’d expected to see a bigger group of visitors on the ward, but aside from the nurse from Egely, who was sitting on a chair next to Uffe, there were no faces that he recognized. Merete Lynggaard was good material for the media, but as a human being she was just another patient case file. First, two weeks of intensive care provided by decompression doctors in the pressure chamber, followed by a week in the trauma center. Then intensive care in the neurosurgical department, and now here in the neurology ward. Waking her out of the coma was an experiment, said the ward’s head nurse when he asked. She admitted that she knew who Carl was. He was the one who had found Merete Lynggaard. If he’d been anyone else, she would have thrown him out.

  Carl slowly approached the two seated figures who were drinking water from plastic cups. Uffe was using both hands.

  Carl nodded to the nurse from Egely, not expecting anything in return, but she stood up and shook his hand. She seemed moved to see him, but didn’t say a word. She just sat down again and stared toward the door of the hospital room, her hand on Uffe’s arm.

  There was obviously a lot of activity going on inside. Several doctors nodded to them as they strode back and forth, and after an hour a nurse came out to ask if they’d like some coffee.

  Carl was in no hurry. Morten’s barbecue parties were always the same, anyway.

  He took a sip of coffee and looked at Uffe’s profile as he sat quietly, watching the door. Occasionally a nurse would go by, blocking his view, but each time Uffe again fixed his eyes on the door. Not for a moment did he let it out of his sight.

  Carl caught the eye of the Egely nurse and pointed at Uffe, asking her in silent pantomime how he was doing. She gave him a smile in return and shook her head slightly, which probably meant not bad but not good either.

  It took a few minutes for the coffee to have an effect, and when Carl came back from the bathroom, the chairs out in the hall were empty.

  He went over to the door and opened it a crack.

  It was completely quiet in the room. Uffe was standing at the end of the bed with the Egely nurse’s hand on his shoulder while the hospital nurse wrote down figures that were displayed on the digital instruments.

  Merete Lynggaard was almost invisible as she lay there with the sheet pulled up to her chin and bandages around her head.

  She seemed peaceful; her lips were parted, and her eyelids quivered faintly. The blood suffusion in her face was apparently starting to fade, but the overall impression was still worrisome. For one who had once looked so vital and healthy, she now seemed fragile and under threat. Her skin was a snowy white and paper thin, and there were deep hollows under her eyes.

  “It’s all right to go closer,” said the nurse as she stuck her ballpoint pen in her breast pocket. “I’m going to wake her up again, but she might not react. It’s not just because of the brain damage and the time she’s spent in a coma; there are a lot of other fac
tors. Her vision is still very poor in both eyes, and the blood clots have caused some paralysis and presumably major brain injuries as well. But it’s not as hopeless as it may seem at the moment. We believe that one day she’ll regain mobility; the big question is how much she’ll be able to communicate. The blood clots are gone now, but she still hasn’t spoken. Most likely the aphasia has permanently robbed her of the ability to speak. I think that’s something we all need to prepare ourselves for.” She nodded to herself. “We don’t know what she’s thinking inside that head, but we can always hope.”

  Then she went over to her patient and adjusted one of the many IV drips hanging over the bed. “All right. I think she’ll be with us in a moment. Just pull the cord if there’s anything you need.” And then she left with her clogs clopping on the floor as she moved on to the next of many tasks.

  All three of them stood silently looking down at Merete. Uffe’s face was utterly expressionless; the Egely nurse had a mournful look in her eyes. Maybe it would have been better for everyone if Carl had never gotten involved in this case.

  A minute passed and then Merete very slowly opened her eyes, clearly bothered by the light from outside. The whites of her eyes were a reddish-brown network of veins, and yet the sight of her awake was enough to take Carl’s breath away. She blinked several times, as if trying to focus, but apparently without success. Then she closed her eyes again.

  “Go on, Uffe,” said the nurse from Egely. “Why don’t you sit a while with your sister?”

  He seemed to understand, because he went to get a chair and placed it next to the bed with his face so close to Merete’s that her breathing caused his blond bangs to flutter.

  After he’d sat there watching her for a while, he lifted up a corner of the sheet so her arm was visible. Then he took her hand and sat there, his gaze quietly wandering over her face.

  Carl took a couple of steps forward and stood next to the Egely nurse at the foot of the bed.

  The sight of the silent Uffe holding his sister’s hand, face resting against her cheek, was very touching. At that moment he seemed like a lost puppy who, after restless searching, had finally found his way back to the warmth and security of the other puppies in the litter.

  Then Uffe moved his face slightly back, stared intently at Merete again, laid his lips against her cheek and kissed her.

  Carl saw Merete’s body tremble slightly under the sheet, and how the display of her heart rhythm rose slightly on the ECG apparatus. He glanced at the next instrument. Yes, her pulse had also increased a bit. Then she uttered a deep sigh and opened her eyes. This time Uffe’s face shielded her from the light, and the first thing she saw was her brother, who sat there smiling at her.

  Carl could feel his own eyes opening wide as Merete’s expression became more and more conscious. Her lips opened. Then they quivered. But there was a tension between the two siblings that simply wouldn’t allow contact. This became apparent as Uffe’s face grew darker and darker, as if he were holding his breath. Then he began rocking back and forth as whimpers formed in his throat. He opened his mouth; he seemed confused and under strain. He squeezed his eyes shut and let go of his sister’s hand as he raised his hands to his throat. No words came out, but it was clear that he was thinking them.

  Then he let all the air out of his body and seemed about to fall back in his chair, having failed in what he wanted to accomplish. But then the sounds in his throat started up again, and this time they were not as guttural.

  “Mmmmmmmmm,” he said, panting hard with the effort. Then came “Mmmmmeme.” Merete was now staring hard at her brother. There was no doubt that she knew who was sitting in front of her. Tears filled her eyes.

  Carl gasped. The nurse standing next to him put her hands up to her mouth.

  “Mmmmeerete” finally burst out of Uffe after an enormous effort.

  Even Uffe was shocked by the outpouring of sound. He was breathing hard, and for a moment his mouth fell open as the woman standing next to Carl began to sob and her hand sought his shoulder.

  Then Uffe again reached for Merete’s hand.

  He gripped it hard and kissed it. He was shaking all over, as if he’d just been pulled out of a hole in the ice.

  All of a sudden Merete tipped back her head, her eyes wide and body tensed; and the fingers of her free hand curled into her palm as if in a cramp. Even Uffe recognized this change as something ominous, and the Egely nurse immediately pulled the cord to summon help.

  A deep, dark moan issued from Merete’s lips, and then her whole body relaxed. Her eyes were still open, and she was looking at her brother. Another hollow sound came from her, almost as if she were breathing onto a cold windowpane. Now she was smiling. She seemed almost amused by the sounds she was making.

  Behind them the door opened, and the nurse rushed in followed by a young doctor with a concerned expression. They stopped in front of the bed to watch Merete, who looked relaxed as she held her brother’s hand.

  The doctor and nurse glanced inquiringly at all the instruments but apparently found nothing alarming, so they turned to the Egely nurse. They were just about to ask her a question when sound came out of Merete’s mouth again.

  Uffe placed his ear close to his sister’s lips, but everyone in the room could hear it.

  “Thank you, Uffe,” she said quietly, and looked up at Carl.

  And Carl felt the pressure in his chest slowly fade.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A big thanks to Hanne Adler-Olsen, Henning Kure, Elsebeth Wæhrens, Søren Schou, Freddy Milton, Eddie Kiran, Hanne Petersen, Micha Schmalstieg, and Karsten D. D. for their invaluable and thorough critiques. Thanks to Gitte and Peter Q. Rannes and the Danish Center for Writers and Translators at Hald for providing the peace and quiet I needed during crucial periods while writing this book. Thanks to Peter H. Olsen and Jørn Pedersen for inspiration. Thanks to Jørgen N. Larsen for research, to Michael Needergaard for factual information about the effects of pressure chambers, and my thanks to K. Olsen and Police Commissioner Leif Christensen for correcting issues in the book related to police matters. Finally, a big thanks to my Danish editor, Anne Christine Andersen, for an exceptional collaboration.