A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  The kidnapper wasn’t here. Her children were gone. In spite of all her prayers.

  Isabel nodded deliberately. This was terrible.

  “Rachel, I’m sorry to have to say this, but I think I saw the car pass by while you were being sick,” she said hesitantly. “It was a Mercedes. A black Mercedes. There are thousands of them.”

  They stood in silence for a while as the light of the sky dimmed.

  What now?

  “You mustn’t pay,” Isabel said finally. “You mustn’t allow him to dictate what’s going to happen next. We need to buy time.”

  Rachel looked at Isabel as though she had just committed apostasy and had spat upon everything Rachel believed in and stood for. “Buy time? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, and I’m not sure I want to know.”

  Rachel glanced at her watch. They were thinking the same thing.

  In just a short time, Joshua would be getting on the train at Viborg with a duffel bag full of money, and that, as far as Rachel could see, was that. The ransom would be delivered and the children would be released. A million kroner was a lot of money, but they would manage. Isabel would not be allowed to throw a wrench in the works. All of Rachel’s body language made that abundantly clear.

  Isabel gave a sigh. “Listen, Rachel. We’ve both met this man, and he’s the most terrifying person we’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. Think of how he deceived us. Everything he said and did was a lie.” She reached out and took Rachel’s hands.

  “Your faith and my naive infatuation were his instruments. He tricked us when we were at our most vulnerable. He manipulated our feelings, and we believed him. Do you understand? We believed him, and he lied to us, OK? You can’t deny that. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  She did, of course. She wasn’t stupid. But the last thing Rachel needed now was to break down or abandon herself to blind faith. Isabel could see that. And for that reason Rachel had to search the depths, the place of all instinct. She needed to think freely and embark upon a dreadful voyage of comprehension. And Isabel felt for her.

  When Rachel opened her eyes again, it was plain that she now knew how close to the edge she stood. Her children might no longer be alive. That was where she was.

  And then she breathed in deeply and gave Isabel’s hands a squeeze. She was prepared. “What do you think we should do?” she asked.

  “We play along,” Isabel replied. “As soon as we see that strobe, we throw the bag from the train as instructed, only without the money. And when he retrieves it and looks inside, he’ll find items from the house here, proof that we’ve tracked him down.”

  She bent down and picked up the padlock and clasp, weighing them in her hand.

  “We’ll put these inside, and some of his clothes. And we’ll write a note telling him we’re on to him. That we know where he’s hiding out, we know what name he’s using, and that we’re keeping the place under observation. We’ll tell him we’re closing in on him and that it’s only a matter of time until we find him. He’ll get his money, but he needs to come up with a way for us to know for sure that we’ll get the children back. Until then, he gets nothing. We need to put the pressure on him, otherwise he’ll dictate everything.”

  Rachel lowered her gaze. “Isabel,” she said. “We’re here in Nordsjælland, don’t you realize? We can’t get on the train from Viborg. We won’t be on it to see the strobe between Odense and Roskilde.” She looked up at Isabel and yelled her frustration into her face. “How can we throw him the bag? HOW?”

  Isabel grasped her hand again. It was as cold as ice. “Rachel,” she said calmly, “we’ll get there. We’ll drive to Odense now and meet Joshua on the platform. We’ve plenty of time.”

  At that moment, Isabel saw something in Rachel she hadn’t seen before. She saw, standing in front of her, not a mother who had lost her children or a farm wife from Dollerup Bakker. All of a sudden, there was nothing rural or motherly about her at all. She was someone else. Someone Isabel had yet to fully encounter.

  “Have you thought why he wants us to change trains at Odense?” Rachel asked. “There are so many other possibilities, aren’t there? I’m sure it’s because we’re being watched. Someone will be at the station in Viborg and then again in Odense.” Then she looked away and her thoughts turned inward. She could ask questions but was unable to supply any answers.

  Isabel thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. He just wants to hassle you. I’m certain he’s on his own in all this.”

  “How can you be certain?” asked Rachel, without looking at her.

  “Because that’s the way he is. He’s a control freak. He needs to know exactly what’s happening and when. And he’s calculating, too. He strolled into this local bar, picked me out as a victim straightaway, and was giving me perfectly timed orgasms only hours later. He could lay on breakfast and say things that would stay in my mind the rest of the day. Everything he did was part of the plan, and all of it performed by a virtuoso. He wouldn’t be capable of working with anyone else, and besides, that ransom would be too small if there were accomplices involved. He’s not the kind to share.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “What if I am? Does it matter? We’re the ones issuing the ultimatum tonight, not him. Putting these things in the ransom bag proves that we’ve been here at his hiding place.”

  Isabel looked around the dilapidated property. Who was this scheming individual? Why was he doing this? With his good looks, his intelligence, and his ability to manipulate others, the sky would seem to be his limit in any normal life.

  It was hard to fathom.

  “Let’s get going,” Isabel said. “You can call your husband on the way and put him in the picture. And then we can dictate to him what to write in the note.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I’m not sure. I’m scared. I mean, I’m with you up to a point, but aren’t we putting the kidnapper under a lot of pressure here? Isn’t he going to give it all up and get out?” Her lips were quivering now. “And what about my children, if he does? Won’t they suffer? Perhaps he’ll do them harm, something terrible. You hear about these things.” Tears welled in her eyes. “And if he does, what do we do then, Isabel? What do we do then?”

  28

  “What the hell happened out there in Rødovre, Assad? I’ve never heard Antonsen sound off like that before.”

  Assad shifted uneasily in his chair. “Nothing to worry about, Carl. It was a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

  A misunderstanding? Presumably the French Revolution had broken out over a misunderstanding, too.

  “In that case, you need to explain to me how a so-called misunderstanding can lead to two grown men rolling around the floor of a Danish police station knocking the stuffing out of each other.”

  “Stuffing?”

  “Yes, the stuffing. It’s an idiom. For Chrissake, Assad, you know perfectly well there was a reason you laid into Samir Ghazi like that. And it’s about time you came clean. I want a decent explanation. Where do you two know each other from?”

  “We don’t actually know each other at all.”

  “Oh, come on, Assad, don’t give me that. People don’t go around beating up strangers for no reason. If it’s something to do with family reunification or forced marriage or someone’s fucking honor, then I want to know—now! We need to get this into the open, otherwise I won’t have you here, are you with me? Remember, Samir’s the policeman, not you.”

  Assad turned his head toward Carl with a wounded look in his eye. “I can leave right now, if that is what you wish.”

  “I hope for your sake that my long-standing friendship with Antonsen will be enough for him not to make that decision on my behalf.” Carl leaned across the desk. “Listen, Assad, when I ask you something, I expect you to answer. And if you don’t, it tells me something’s wrong. Maybe something serious enough to affect your residence here in this country, not just lose you this fucking fantastic job of yours.”
>
  “You will perhaps persecute me, then?” Hurt was too mild a word to describe the man’s demeanor.

  “Have you and Samir had any altercation with each other before? In Syria, for instance?”

  “No, not in Syria. Samir is from Iraq.”

  “So you admit there’s a grudge. But you still don’t know each other?”

  “Yes, Carl. Would you please not ask me any more about this?”

  “I’ll think about it. But if you don’t want me to ask Samir Ghazi for a report on this fight of yours, you’re going to have to give me something to go on and calm me down a bit. And you’re definitely to stay away from Samir from now on, understood?”

  Assad sat for a while staring into space before nodding. “I am to blame for one of Samir’s relatives now being dead. It was never my intention, Carl, you must believe this. The truth is I did not even know.”

  Carl closed his eyes for a moment.

  “Have you committed any crime in this country?”

  “No, I swear at you, Carl.”

  “Swear to me, Assad. You swear to me.”

  “Yes, that is what I do.”

  “So this all happened some time ago?”

  “Yes.”

  Carl nodded. Maybe Assad would open up another day.

  “Have a look at this, you two.” Yrsa barged in through the door without knocking. She had a serious look on her face, for once, and was holding a sheet of paper out in front of her. “It’s a fax from the Swedish police in Ronneby. Just in two minutes ago. This is what he looked like.”

  She put the fax down on the desk. It wasn’t a photofit, pieced together on a computer. This was the real thing. A proper drawing, with shading and all the rest of it, and in color to boot. A male face, pleasing at first blush, but which on closer inspection displayed a number of jarring elements.

  “He looks just like my cousin,” Yrsa commented drily. “A pig farmer from Randers.”

  “I had not imagined him to look like this exactly,” said Assad.

  Carl hadn’t, either. Short sideburns, dark mustache neatly trimmed back above the lip. Hair slightly lighter, precisely parted. Thick eyebrows almost converging. Unremarkable, half-full lips.

  “We need to bear in mind that this drawing may not reflect his true appearance. Remember, Tryggve was only thirteen at the time, and just as many years have passed since all this happened. Our man probably looks different now anyway. But how old would you say he was here?”

  They were about to reply, but Carl stopped them. “Look closely. The mustache might make him look older than he is. Write down your guess here.”

  He tore off a couple of pages from a notepad and handed them to his two assistants.

  “To think he’s the one who killed Poul,” Yrsa mused. “It’s almost like he killed someone you knew.”

  Carl wrote down his own estimate and took Assad’s and Yrsa’s.

  Two of them said twenty-seven. The other said thirty-two.

  “Yrsa and I agree on twenty-seven, Assad. What makes you think he’s older?”

  “It is simply because of this.” He pointed his finger to a diagonal line issuing from the eyebrow of the man’s right eye. “This is not the wrinkle of a smile.”

  He indicated his own face, then lit up in a smile and pointed at the corners of his beaming eyes. “Look at these lines. They go out toward the cheek. And now look.”

  He turned his mouth down at the corners. Now he looked just like he had done when Carl had been giving him a bollocking a few minutes earlier. “Is there not a line just here?” He indicated a point next to his eyebrow.

  “Maybe, but it’s hard to tell,” said Yrsa, then mimicked the expression herself and felt for a line with her fingertip.

  “That is because I am a happy man. The killer is not happy. A wrinkle like this is something a person is born with, or else it appears because the person is not happy. And if it appears, it will do so only with time. My mother was not so happy, and hers did not come until she was fifty.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, Assad. And perhaps you’re not,” said Carl. “But the fact is that all three of our guesses are in the same region, which fits in with Tryggve’s assessment, too. So if he’s still alive, he’ll be somewhere between forty and forty-five now.”

  “Could we scan the picture into our system and add a few years onto him?” Yrsa inquired. “Computers can do that, can’t they?”

  “Of course, but the risk is you end up with something that may be even more inaccurate than the original. I reckon we should stick with what we’ve got. A decent-looking fellow, more attractive than average, and quite masculine. Otherwise a fairly subdued kind of appearance, a bit conservative, like an office worker.”

  “I’d say he looks more like a soldier or a policeman,” Yrsa added.

  Carl nodded. The man could have been anything at all. It was usually the way.

  He glanced up at the ceiling. That bastard fly again. Maybe he should take the liberty, on behalf of the state, of investing in a can of flyspray. Most likely they’d prefer that to him expending a bullet on the bloody thing.

  He forced his thoughts back to the matter at hand and looked at Yrsa. “Get this photocopied, and be sure to send it out to all districts. Do you know how?”

  She gave a shrug.

  “Oh, and Yrsa, let me see the wording before you put it out, yeah?”

  “What wording?”

  He sighed. In many ways, she was amazing, but she would never reach Rose’s level. “You need to write a description of what the case is about, Yrsa. Something like: ‘We suspect this person of having committed a murder, and we want to know if anyone has any knowledge of a man of this appearance having been in trouble with the police.’”

  “Where does this get us, Carl? What’s the connection? Any ideas?” Lars Bjørn frowned and shoved the photo of the four Jankovic siblings back across the table to the homicide chief.

  “I’ll tell you where it gets us. If you want to proceed with your arson cases, you need to look through the criminal registers for Serbs with exactly the same kind of finger ring as our four tubbies here. You might even find a match in the Danish archives, but if I were you, I’d get on to the police in Belgrade pretty sharpish.”

  “So you believe the bodies that were found at the scenes of the arsons are Serbs in some way connected to the Jankovic family, and that these rings signify that relationship?” Jacobsen ventured.

  “Definitely. And what’s more, my guess is that they were almost born with those rings on, judging by the extent of the deformation of the finger bone in each case.”

  “Some kind of crime syndicate?” Bjørn proffered.

  Carl gave him a goofy smile. The man was on form for a miserable Monday morning.

  Marcus Jacobsen eyed the flattened cigarette packet on the table in front of him as though he might devour it any minute. “Well, we certainly need to research the matter with our Serbian colleagues. If your assumptions are correct, then it would seem membership might even be hereditary. Do we know who’s behind these banking firms now? The four founders are no longer with us, I understand.”

  “I’ve got Yrsa looking into that. It’s a limited company, but the majority of the shares are still owned by people called Jankovic.”

  “A Serbian crime syndicate lending out money, then?”

  “Looks like it. We do know that the companies hit by the arsons all owed money to the Jankovic family at one point or another. What we don’t know is where the bodies come from and why. We’ll gladly leave that one with you.” Carl smiled and shoved another picture across the table.

  “This is our presumed perp in the murder of Poul Holt and the kidnapping of his brother. Nice-looking bloke, yeah?”

  Marcus Jacobsen considered the portrait in front of him as he would any other. He had seen murderers aplenty in his time.

  “I understand Pasgård has made a couple of breakthroughs in the case today,” Jacobsen stated drily. “Good thing he was able to
assist you.”

  Carl frowned. What the fuck was he on about?

  “Breakthroughs? What breakthroughs?”

  “You mean he hasn’t told you yet? He’s probably writing his report as we speak.”

  Twenty seconds later, Carl was standing in Pasgård’s office. A dingy room—the photo of the incumbent’s family of three failed to cheer the place up, serving instead as a reminder of how immeasurably little the office of a public servant could resemble home.

  “What’s going on?” Carl demanded, as Pasgård’s fingers danced across the keyboard of his computer.

  “Two minutes, and you’ll have your report. Then the case is all yours.”

  It all sounded too fucking efficient by half. Nevertheless, the man swiveled around on his chair what seemed like exactly two minutes later and announced: “You can read it off the screen before I print it out. Make any corrections yourself, if you feel the need.”

  Pasgård and Carl had started at HQ at about the same time, but though Carl could hardly be called biddable, the majority of decent jobs had fallen his way, much to the chagrin of an arse-licker like Pasgård.

  So Pasgård’s smug little smile now was a thinly veiled manifestation of the infinite pleasure that surged through him as Carl read his report.

  When he had finished, Carl turned to face him.

  “Nice work, Pasgård,” was all he said.

  “Are you off home, or can you put in a couple more hours tonight, Assad?” Carl asked. Hundred to one he didn’t have the balls to say no.

  Assad smiled. Most likely he thought of it as a pat on the back. Now they could get on with the job. Questions about Samir Ghazi and the issue of where Assad actually lived were on the back burner.

  “Yrsa, you can come along, too. I’ll drop you off at your place. It’s on our way.”

  “You mean Stenløse? You must be joking, that’s miles out. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take the train. I love trains, me.” She buttoned her coat and hung her nifty little fake-crocodile-skin bag over her shoulder. Like her thick-heeled brogues, this seemed to be inspired by old English films.