This time, his hunting ground was mid-Jutland, a region in which the concentration of religious sects was high. A couple of years had passed since he had last struck there. Whatever else one might say, he spread death with the utmost care and attention.
For some time he had conducted observations, though as a rule only for a couple of days at a time. On the first occasion, he had stayed with a woman in Haderslev, then with another in a small place called Lønne. The risk of being recognized in the Viborg area, so far away, was minuscule.
His choice was among five families. Two were Jehovah’s Witnesses, one was Evangelist, one was with the Guardians of Morality, and the fifth with the Mother Church. As things stood, he inclined toward the latter.
He arrived in Viborg at about eight in the evening, too early by half for what he was intending, especially in a town of this size, but it was better to err on the side of caution.
His criteria for selecting the bars in which he found the women who would put him up were always the same. The place mustn’t be too small. It mustn’t lie in an area in which everyone knew one another. It mustn’t have too many regulars. And it mustn’t be such a dive that no single woman of a certain standard between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five would go there.
The first place on his tour, Julle’s Bar, was too cramped and gloomy, all wooden kitsch and one-armed bandits. The next place was better. There was a small dance floor, and the clientele were a decent mix, with the exception of a gay patron who immediately planted himself on the adjacent bar stool at a distance measurable only in millimeters. If he found a woman there, the guy would almost certainly remember him, despite his polite rejection.
He found what he was looking for at the fifth attempt. The signs above the bar counter seemed to confirm it: The quiet ones are the wild ones, The Terminal—your home from home, and perhaps in particular Best boobs in town are here all struck the right tone.
The Terminal, tucked away in the street called Gravene, closed early at eleven o’clock, but people were well in the mood on Hancock Høker ale and local rock music. He felt sure he’d get off with someone before closing.
He picked out a woman, not exactly young, sitting near the slot machines. She had been dancing on her own when he came in, her arms floating free at her sides on the tiny dance floor. She was quite pretty, certainly no easy prey. A serious fisher in these waters. A woman who wanted a man she could trust, someone worth waking up next to for the rest of her life, not someone she reckoned on finding here. She was obviously just out with some girlfriends from work after a hard day’s slog.
Two of her giggly, well-proportioned colleagues stood swaying to the music in the smoking cabin; the rest had taken possession of a number of the establishment’s mismatched tables. Most likely the girls had been partying for some time already. At any rate, he felt fairly certain none of the others would be able to describe him in any detail in a couple of hours’ time.
He made eye contact with her, and after five minutes he asked her to dance. She was tipsy, not drunk. It was a good sign.
“You’re not from round here,” she said. “What are you doing in Viborg?”
Her scent was pleasant, her gaze steady and firm. It was easy to see what she wanted him to say. That he visited Viborg often. That he was fond of the place. That he was educated and single. So that’s what he said. Casually, without making an issue of it. He would say anything as long as it worked.
Two hours later, they were lying in her bed. She was satisfied and he was safe in the knowledge that he could stay with her for a couple of weeks without the usual questions: Did he really like her? Was he serious?
He was careful not to build up her expectations. He played coy and mysterious, keeping her guessing as to what depths of personality his nonchalance concealed.
He awoke at half past five the next morning as planned. Got dressed, rummaged around discreetly in her drawers and cupboards, finding out about her before she began to stir. Divorced, as he already knew. No children. Probably a decent little office job in the local authority that just as likely sapped her of all her energy. She was fifty-two years old and at this point in her life more than ready for adventure.
Before placing the tray of coffee and toast on the bed beside her, he drew back the curtains a chink so that she could catch his smile and all his freshness.
Afterward, she cuddled up close to him. Tender and submissive, the dimples of her cheeks now deeper than before. She stroked his face and was about to kiss his scar when he lifted his chin and asked: “Should I check into the Hotel Palads, or would you like me to come back here tonight?”
The answer was a formality. She snuggled affectionately closer and told him where she kept the key. And then he sauntered out to the van and drove away from his newfound residential bliss.
The family he had selected would be able to pay the usual million-kroner ransom he demanded. They might need to sell off some stocks, though it was certainly not the best time to do so, but apart from that they were well consolidated financially. Obviously, the recession had made it harder to commit even reasonably lucrative crime, but as long as his victims were selected with prudence there would always be a way. He was certain this family possessed both the ability and the will to meet his demands, and to do so with discretion.
He had been observing them for some time. He had visited their church and had spoken in confidence with the parents after prayer meetings. He knew how long they had been members of their community, how they had made their money, how many children they had and what they were called, and in broad outline the patterns of their daily life.
The family lived outside Frederiks, twenty minutes southwest of Viborg. Five children aged between ten and eighteen. All still living at home, all active members of the Mother Church. The two eldest attended the gymnasium school in Viborg; their siblings were taught at home by their mother, a former teacher of the Tvind schools in her midforties, who for want of a better life had turned to God. It was she who wore the trousers at home. She who steered the troops and their religion. Her husband was twenty years her senior and one of the area’s wealthiest businessmen. Though he donated half his income to the Mother Church, as all members were obliged to, there was plenty left over. A business such as his, hiring out agricultural machinery and equipment to local farmers, was never in jeopardy.
The corn kept growing even when the banks went down the plughole.
The only drawback about this particular family was that the second son, who seemed otherwise to be an excellent choice of victim, had begun attending karate lessons. Not that there was any reason to be nervous about any physical threat this slight young man might pose, but it might upset the timing.
And timing was everything, once things got ugly.
Apart from that, this second son and his middle sister, the fourth child of the family, had all the characteristics required for his mission to be successful. They were enterprising, the best-looking of the siblings, and also the most dominant. Almost certainly the apples of their mother’s eye. Good churchgoers but also rather unruly. The kind who ended up either as high priests or expelled from the Church altogether. Believers, and yet indomitably self-possessed. It was the perfect combination.
A bit like he had once been himself, perhaps.
He parked the van between the trees of the windbreak and sat for a long time looking through the binoculars, observing the children running around in the garden beside the farmhouse during their breaks from home schooling. The girl he had selected seemed to be up to something in a corner beneath some trees. Something not intended to be seen by the others. For some time she remained occupied, kneeling in the tall grass. This confirmed to him what a good choice she was.
Whatever she was doing, her mother and the Church would not approve, he thought to himself with a nod of acknowledgment. God always puts the best of his flock to the test, and twelve-year-old Magdalena, this girl soon to become a young woman, was no exception.
; He watched for another hour or two, reclining inside the van, keeping his eye on the farmhouse that nestled in the bend of the road at Stanghede. Through the binoculars he could clearly see a pattern emerging in the girl’s behavior. Every time the children were given a break, she would seek her own company in her corner of the garden, and when her mother called them in for their next lesson, she would cover up whatever it was she had been occupied with.
All things considered, being an almost grown-up girl in a family that had devoted itself to the Mother Church entailed no small amount of deference. Dance, music, printed matter issuing from sources other than the Church, alcohol, social intercourse with individuals outside the community, pets, television, the Internet—all these things were forbidden, and punishment for consistent disobedience was harsh: ostracism from both the family and the Church.
He drove away before the boys came home, satisfied with his choice of family. Now he would examine the father’s company accounts and personal tax returns one last time before resuming his observations the next morning.
Soon, there would be no turning back, and he was content at the thought.
Her name was Isabel, this woman who now housed him, though she was hardly as exotic as her name. Swedish crime novels on the shelves and Anne Linnet on the CD player. This was the straight and narrow.
He looked at his watch. She could be home in half an hour, but there was plenty of time to check whether any unpleasant surprises might be in store. He sat down at her desk and switched on her laptop, growled audibly when it asked for a password. He tried six or seven combinations in vain before lifting the desk-protector to discover a comprehensive list of Internet passwords. It was always the same: women such as Isabel either used birthdays, the names of their children or dogs, phone numbers, or simply a straight sequence of digits, often in descending order, or they wrote down their passwords and concealed them no more than a couple of meters from the keyboard so they could read them without getting up.
He read her dating correspondence and noted to his satisfaction that in him she had found the man she had been seeking for some time. Perhaps he was a couple of years younger than she had imagined, but what woman would decline?
He went through her e-mail contacts on Outlook. One of them was a regular correspondent. His name was Karsten Jønsson. A brother, perhaps, or the ex-husband. It wasn’t important. The significant thing was the suffix of his e-mail address: police.dk.
Not good, he thought to himself. When the time came, he would have to refrain from violence and instead make do with verbal abuse or simply leave his dirty laundry around the house, which according to her online dating profile was one of her major turn-offs.
He fished the little BlueTinum flash drive out of his pocket and stuck it into the USB port. Skype account and contacts, all at once. Then he typed his wife’s mobile number.
She would be shopping at this time. Always the same routine. He would suggest she buy champagne and put it in the fridge, ready.
At the tenth ring, he frowned. She had never failed to answer before. If there was one thing his wife clung to, it was that mobile of hers.
He called again. No answer.
He leaned forward and stared down at the keyboard, feeling his cheeks flush.
She had better have a good explanation. Revealing unknown aspects of her personality now might force him to demonstrate some new aspects of his own.
And she wouldn’t like that. She wouldn’t like that at all.
6
“Well, I must say that Assad’s observation has given us food for thought, Carl,” said the chief, wriggling his shoulders into his leather jacket. In ten minutes he would be standing on a street corner in the Nordvest district, studying bloodstains from the night’s shooting. Carl did not envy him.
He nodded. “You agree with Assad, then? That there might be a connection between the fires?”
“That same groove in the victims’ finger bones in three out of four incidents. It certainly gives us something to think about. We’ll just have to wait and see. The material’s with the pathologists, so it’s their shout now. But the nose, Carl…” He tapped an index finger against his distinctive protuberance. Not many noses had been poked into as many rotten cases as Jacobsen’s had. Most likely Assad and Jacobsen were right. There was a connection. Carl sensed it himself.
He mustered a semblance of authority in his voice, no easy matter on the wrong side of ten o’clock. “You’ll be taking over from here then, I assume.”
“For the moment, yes.”
Carl nodded. Now he could go back downstairs and mark the old arson case closed as far as Department Q was concerned.
It would look good in the statistics.
“Come and see, Carl. Rose has something to show you.” The reverberating voice made it sound like a troop of howler monkeys from Borneo had appropriated the lower chambers. Assad certainly had no problems with his vocal cords, that much was plain.
He stood beaming, clutching a ream of photocopies. As far as Carl could make out, they weren’t case documents. More like blowups of something fragmentary that at best could be described as blurred.
“Look what she did.”
Assad pointed down the corridor at the partition wall the joiner had just put up in order to contain the asbestos contamination. Or rather, he pointed to where it ought to have been visible. For both the wall and the door in it were completely covered with photocopies that had been meticulously put together to form one single image. If anyone wanted to come through, they would need a pair of scissors.
Even at a distance of ten meters, it was clear that this was an enormous blowup of the message in the bottle.
HELP, it read, spanning the entire width of the corridor.
“Sixty-four sheets of A4, no less. Great, is it not, Carl? These are the last five in my hand here. Two hundred and forty centimeters high and one hundred and seventy wide. Big, yes? Is she not clever?”
Carl stepped a couple of meters closer. Rose was on her knees with her backside in the air, sticking Assad’s copies into place in the bottom corner.
Carl considered first her backside, then the work the two of them had produced. The enormous blowup had its advantages and its drawbacks, that much was obvious straightaway. Areas where the letters had been absorbed into the paper were a blur, whereas others containing practically illegible, spidery handwriting that the Scottish forensics team had tried to reconstruct suddenly became meaningful.
The upshot of it all was that at a stroke they now had at least twenty more legible characters to add to the puzzle.
Rose turned toward him for a second, ignoring his little wave and dragging a stepladder out into the middle of the corridor.
“Get up there, Assad. I’ll tell you where to put the dots, yeah?”
She shoved Carl aside and positioned herself in the exact spot where he had been standing.
“Not too hard, Assad. We need to be able to rub them out again.”
Assad nodded from on high, pencil at the ready.
“Start underneath ‘HELP’ and in front of ‘he.’ My eye makes out three distinct blotches, one before ‘he’ and two after. Are you with me?”
Assad and Carl considered the mottled stains on the paper. They looked like gray cumulus clouds alongside the touched-up “h” and “e.”
Then Assad nodded and placed a dot on each of the three blotches.
Carl took a step to one side. It seemed reasonable enough. Underneath the clearly legible heading HELP, the two characters that followed were flanked by visible blurs. Seawater and condensation had played their part. The three blood-written characters had long since dissolved and been absorbed into the pulp. If only they could figure out what they were.
He stood watching for a moment as Rose bossed Assad around. It was a meticulous business. And where would it lead, when it came down to it? To endless hours of guesswork, that was where. And what for? The message could go back decades. Besides, it was still quite possi
ble that it might all have been just a practical joke. The hand seemed clumsy, as though it belonged to a child. A couple of Cub Scouts, a little nick in the finger, and there you have it. But then again…
“I’m not sure about this, Rose,” he ventured. “Maybe we should just forget all about it. We’ve enough to be getting on with as it is.”
He noted with bewilderment the effect of his words. Rose began to quiver, like jelly. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was about to burst into laughter. But Carl knew Rose all too well, and for that reason he retreated. Only a step, but enough to avoid the explosive splutter of invective that suddenly showered toward him.
It meant that Rose was dissatisfied with his meddling. He wasn’t so gormless that he didn’t get the gist.
He nodded. Like he said, there was plenty else to be getting on with. He knew of at least two folders of important case documents which, positioned correctly, would cover his face nicely while he caught up on his sleep. Rose and Assad could amuse themselves with their little puzzle while he took care of business.
Rose registered his cowardly retreat. She turned slowly and looked daggers at him.
“Ingenious idea, though, Rose. Very well done,” he blurted out, but he was cutting no ice.
“I’ll give you a choice, Carl,” she hissed. Assad, at the top of the ladder, rolled his eyes. “Either you shut your gob, or else I’m off home. And for your information, I might just send my twin sister over instead, and do you know what’ll happen then?”
Carl shook his head. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know. “Let me guess. She’ll be over here with three kids and four cats, a pair of lodgers, and some shit of a husband. Am I right? Your office’ll be a bit cramped, yeah?”
A Conspiracy of Faith Page 4