“As soon as possible.”
“Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”
When Carl checked Assad’s office later, he found it empty.
On the desk was a note. Here are the figures, it read. Underneath was a formal signature: Yours sincerely, Hafez el-Assad.
Was he really so miffed?
“Yrsa!” he yelled into the corridor. “Where’s Assad, do you know?”
No answer.
If Muhammad wouldn’t go to the mountain, the mountain would have to go to Muhammad, he thought to himself, striding off to confront her.
Only to come to an abrupt halt as he put his head around her door. Anyone would have thought lightning had struck at his feet.
Rose’s icily monochrome hi-tech landscape had been transformed into something not even the most aesthetically bewildered ten-year-old girl from Barbieland would be able to emulate. Everywhere he looked, he saw pink and bric-a-brac.
He gulped and turned to look at Yrsa herself. “Have you seen Assad?” he asked.
“Yeah, he left half an hour ago. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Where was he off to?”
She shrugged. “I’ve got an interim report for you on the Lautrupvang case, if you want?”
He nodded. “Anything turn up?”
There was a flutter of Hollywood-red lips. “Absolutely sweet fuck all. Did anyone ever tell you you’ve got the same smile as Gwyneth Paltrow?” she said.
“Gwyneth Paltrow? The actress?”
She nodded.
At that, he strode back to his office and called Rose’s home number. Another day with Yrsa and things would go horribly wrong. If Department Q was to maintain its admittedly dubious standards, Rose would have to climb down and get back behind her desk at the double.
He got her answering machine.
“This is Rose and Yrsa’s answering service informing you that the ladies are in audience with Her Majesty the Queen at the moment. As soon as ceremonials have been concluded, we’ll call you back. Leave a message, if you must.” And then came the tone.
Which of the two sisters had recorded the message, only God knew.
He slumped back into his chair and rummaged around for a smoke. Someone had mentioned the postal service was hiring again, and there might be some cushy jobs up for grabs.
It sounded like paradise.
Things were looking no better when he walked into his living room that evening and saw a doctor leaning over Hardy’s bed, and Vigga, of all people, at his side.
He acknowledged the doctor’s presence politely, then drew Vigga aside.
“What are you doing here, Vigga? You’re supposed to call first if you want to see me. You know how much I hate these spur-of-the-moment visits.”
“Carl, my love.” She passed her hand across his cheek. It made a rasping sound.
This was indeed alarming.
“I think about you every day, and I’ve decided to come home again,” she announced with conviction.
Carl felt his eyes widen. She wasn’t joking, either, this garish almost-divorcée.
“You can’t, Vigga. I’m afraid the idea just doesn’t appeal.”
Vigga blinked a couple of times. “Oh, but I can, dear, and I will. Half this house still belongs to me, in case you’d forgotten. Just you think on!”
And that was when he fell into a rage, making the doctor cower and causing Vigga to counter with tears. When at last a taxi finally took her away, he removed the top from the biggest marker pen he could lay his hands on and drew a thick black line through the name of Vigga Rasmussen on the front door. High fucking time.
And to hell with the consequences.
The inevitable upshot of this was that Carl sat up in bed for most of the night conducting endless one-way conversations with imaginary divorce lawyers, all of whom had their hands in his wallet.
This would be the ruination of him.
He found slight comfort in the fact that the doctor from the spinal clinic had come. And that he had actually registered a degree of activity, albeit small, in Hardy’s arm.
Science was, in a positive sense, baffled.
He found himself passing the duty desk at Police HQ at half past five the next morning. There was no point lying in bed any longer.
“Pleasant surprise, seeing you here at this time of morning, Carl,” said the duty officer in the cage. “I’m sure your little helper will be over the moon, too. Mind you don’t give him a fright down there.”
Carl needed to run through that again. “What? You mean Assad’s here? Now?”
“Yeah. He’s been coming in every day at this time. Usually just before six, but he was here around five today. Didn’t you know?”
No, he certainly didn’t.
It seemed Assad had already said his prayers in the corridor, because his prayer mat was still there, and this was the first time Carl had come so close to observing the ritual. It was something that usually went on behind Assad’s closed door. He kept it to himself.
Carl heard the sound of Assad’s voice coming loud and clear from his office, as though he were on the phone to someone hard of hearing. He was speaking Arabic, and his tone did not seem particularly friendly, though with that language you could never be sure.
He stepped toward the door and saw the steam from the boiling kettle rising to envelop Assad’s neck. In front of him were notes in Arabic, and on the flatscreen was the flickering image of an elderly man with a mustache wearing a pair of enormous headphones. Now Carl realized that Assad was wearing his headset. Skyping with the man on the screen. Probably some relative in Syria.
“Morning, Assad,” said Carl, failing to anticipate the reaction that came. He had expected Assad to be startled, of course, this being the first time Carl had ever been there so early, but the radical jolt that shook his assistant’s body took him completely by surprise. Assad’s arms and legs flailed in the air.
The old man he was talking to seemed alarmed and moved closer to the screen. Most likely he could see the outline of Carl appear behind Assad.
The man uttered a few hasty words and then disconnected. Meanwhile, Assad tried to collect himself on the edge of his chair.
His eyes were wide with bewilderment, as if to say: What are you doing here? He looked like a man who had been caught with both hands in the till.
“Sorry, Assad. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. Are you OK?” He put his hand on Assad’s shoulder. The fabric of his shirt was cold and clammy with sweat.
Assad clicked out of Skype, back to the document he had been working on before. Maybe he didn’t want Carl to see who he had been connected to.
Carl raised his hands apologetically. “It’s OK, I won’t pry. Get on with whatever it was you were doing. Then come and see me when you’ve finished.”
Assad had yet to say a word. That in itself was highly unusual.
A moment later, Carl plonked himself on his office chair, already feeling exhausted. Only a few weeks before, the basement underneath Police Headquarters had been his bolt-hole. Two reasonably amenable assistants and a general mood that on a good day might even be called pleasant. Now Rose was gone and had been replaced by someone equally odd, only in a different way, and Assad had gone funny on him. In such circumstances, keeping all the other hardships of this world at bay suddenly seemed like a tall order indeed. Not to mention what might happen if Vigga demanded a divorce and half his earthly possessions.
Bollocks to it.
Carl glanced up at a job opening he had lightheartedly pinned to the notice board a couple of months before: National Commissioner of Police. Just the ticket, he’d thought. What could be better than a job with minions bowing and touching their forelocks, an order of chivalry from the Queen, cheap travel, and a salary that would reduce even Vigga to silence? Seven hundred and two thousand, two hundred and seventy-seven kroner per annum, no less. Plus perks. Just uttering the figure took up half the morning.
Should have put in for
it, he thought to himself. And then Assad was standing in front of him.
“Carl, do we need to talk about what happened just now?”
About what? That he’d been Skyping with someone? That he was on the job so early? That Carl’s sudden appearance had scared the shit out of him?
The question was decidedly odd.
Carl shook his head and looked at the time. Still an hour until his shift officially began. “What you do here so early in the morning is your own business, Assad. I’ve no problem with you keeping in touch with people you don’t see that often.”
Assad looked almost relieved. Curiouser and curiouser.
“I have been studying the accounts of Amundsen and Mujagic A/S in Rødovre, K. Frandsen Wholesalers, JPP Fittings A/S, and Public Consult.”
“OK. Find anything you want to tell me about?”
Assad scratched the barren patch in his black curls. “They seem to be rather solid companies most of the time.”
“But?”
“In the months surrounding the fires they are not.”
“How can you tell?”
“They borrow money. Their orders go down.”
“You mean, first the orders go down, and then they borrow the money they’ve lost?”
Assad nodded. “Yes, that’s it.”
“OK, then what?”
“Well, we can see that only in the Rødovre case. The other fires are all so new.”
“What happened there, then?”
“First there is the fire, then the company receives the insurance payout, and afterward the loan is gone.”
Carl reached for his cigarettes and lit up. It sounded like copybook stuff. Insurance fraud. But where did the bodies with the finger rings come in?
“What kind of loans are we talking about?”
“Short term. One year at a time. In the case of Public Consult, the company that burned down on Stockholmsgade last Saturday, only six months.”
“The loans fell due and they hadn’t the funds to pay?”
“That is what it looks like.”
Carl blew smoke into the room, prompting Assad to step back and flap his hands. Carl ignored him. This was his domain and his smoke. If Assad didn’t like it, tough shit.
“Who lent them the money?” he asked.
Assad gave a shrug. “Various. Bankers in central Copenhagen.”
Carl nodded. “Get me the names and tell me who’s behind them.”
Assad’s shoulders sagged.
“All right, no need to get depressed about it. Do it when the offices open, Assad. That’s a couple of hours away yet. Relax.”
Carl’s words did not appear to cheer him up at all. In fact, they almost seemed to make things worse.
The pair of them were getting on Carl’s nerves with all their jabber and recalcitrance. It was like Assad and Yrsa were infecting each other. As if they were the ones who did the deciding around here. If they kept it up, he would give them each a pair of rubber gloves and have them scrubbing the basement floor on their hands and knees until they could see their faces in it.
Assad lifted his head and nodded silently. “Anyway, I will not keep you anymore, Carl. You can come to me when you’re finished.”
“What do you mean?”
Assad winked and flashed him a wry little smile. The transformation was utterly baffling. “Soon you will have both hands full,” he added, winking again.
“Let me try that one more time. What the fuck are you going on about, Assad?”
“I am referring to Mona, of course. Do not try to tell me you had no idea she was back.”
14
Like Assad had said, Mona Ibsen was back. Exuding tropical sunshine and an excess of experiences that had left unmistakable albeit graceful traces in the narrow creases around her eyes.
Carl had sat for a long time on his own in the basement that morning, trying to come up with gambits that might effectively counter any defensive steps on Mona’s part. Words that might soften her gaze if she should happen to drop by.
It didn’t happen. The only female presence in the basement that morning was Yrsa, heralded by the trundle of her shopping cart and her doubtless kindly intended but nonetheless earsplitting descant in the corridor five minutes after clocking in: “Bread rolls from Netto, ready for toasting, lads!”
It was one of those moments that brought home to him how far removed the basement was from the oblivious world above it, where people went about carefree and happy.
After that, it took him a couple of hours to realize that if he was planning on ever finding happiness himself he would have to get off his arse and go looking for it.
Having asked around, he eventually located Mona over by the Magistrates’ Court in quiet discussion with the court clerk. Clad in a leather waistcoat and a pair of faded Levi’s, she resembled anything but a woman who was done with taking on new challenges in life.
“Hello, Carl,” she said, rather remotely. The look in her eyes was professional, making it abundantly clear that for the moment there was nothing more between them. All he could do was smile back at her, unable to muster a single word.
The rest of the day he could have spent in ever-decreasing circles, frustration mounting in the disintegrated ruin of his emotional life. But Yrsa had other plans.
“We might have something to go on in Ballerup,” she announced with ill-concealed glee and a bit of Netto’s bread roll stuck between her front teeth. “I’m an angel of good fortune this week. It says so in my horoscope.”
Carl looked up at her with hope in his eyes. In that case, her wings could whisk her away into the stratosphere so he could be left to ponder his cruel fate in peace.
“I had such a job getting anything out of them,” she went on. “First, I had to speak to the head teacher at Lautrupgård School, but he’d only been there since 2004. Then they sent me on to a teacher who’d been there since the school started, and she didn’t know anything, either. Then I got hold of the caretaker, and he was just as blank, so then—”
“Yrsa! If there’s a point to all this, then I’d like to hear it, please. I’m a busy man,” Carl interrupted, trying to rub some life back into a sleeping arm.
“Well, as I was just about to say, afterward I called the College of Engineering, and that’s where we got lucky.”
The blood rushed back to his limb at once. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Go on.”
“It was quite by chance, really. One of the teachers, a woman by the name of Laura Mann, was in the office when I called. She’d just started back this morning after being off sick. She’s taught there since the place opened in 1995, and as far as she could remember there’s only ever been one case that would fit.”
Carl straightened up in his chair. “And what was that?”
Yrsa cocked her head and looked at him. “Oh, so you are interested, then?” She gave his hairy forearm a playful slap of her hand. “Bet you’re dying to know now, aren’t you?”
How in God’s name had it come to this? He’d solved at least a hundred burdensome cases over the years, and here he was, reduced to playing guessing games with a temp in bright-green tights.
“Tell me about the case she recalled, Yrsa,” Carl persisted, nodding briefly to Assad, who had put his head around the door. He looked pale.
“Well, Assad called the office yesterday asking the same questions. They’d been talking about it this morning over coffee, and the woman overheard,” she continued.
Assad pricked up his ears and suddenly seemed to be back to his old self again.
“It all came back to her straightaway,” said Yrsa. “They had this elite student once. A young lad with some kind of syndrome, she said, but absolutely brilliant at maths and physics.”
“A syndrome?” Assad looked puzzled.
“Yeah, like very gifted at one thing and hopeless at everything else. Not autism, but something like it. What did she call it, now?” Yrsa wrinkled her brow. “Oh, I know. Asperger’s syndrome, that was
what he had.”
Carl smiled. Most likely she had her own personal insights into what it was like.
“So what happened to this lad?” he went on.
“He took the first term and got flying marks in everything, and then he dropped out.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“He was there the last day before the winter break with his younger brother, showing him around the place, and after that they never saw him again.”
Both Assad and Carl narrowed their eyes at once. This was it. “What was his name?” Carl asked.
“His name was Poul.”
Carl felt his insides turn to ice.
“Yes!” Assad exclaimed, and proceeded to wave his arms and legs about like a jumping jack.
“The teacher said she remembered him so vividly because Poul Holt was the closest thing to a Nobel candidate they would ever be likely to see anywhere near that college. And besides that, there had never been a single student there, before or after, who had that kind of Asperger’s. He was all on his own in that respect.”
“So that’s why she remembered him?” Carl went on.
“Yeah, that’s why. And because he was in the first year of students they ever had.”
Half an hour later, Carl repeated the same questions in person at the College of Engineering and received exactly the same answers.
“It’s not the kind of thing you forget,” Laura Mann explained, flashing an ivory smile. “I imagine you remember your first arrest in much the same way?”
Carl nodded. A scrawny little alky who had lain down in the middle of Englandsvej. Carl could still see the glob of spit as it sailed through the air and stuck itself to his police badge while he tried to bundle the fool back to safety. So it was true: that first arrest remained indelible. With or without the spit.
He considered the woman sitting at the other side of the table. Sometimes she was on television when they needed an expert on alternative energy sources. Laura Mann, PhD, it read on her business card, and a lot more titles besides. Carl was glad he didn’t have one of his own.
A Conspiracy of Faith Page 12