If only they had had a few more seconds, he would have asked her to come with him. To pack some things, pick up Benjamin, and take off.
She would have said yes if her husband hadn’t turned up, he was sure of it. And at his place, they would have had time together to unravel the knots of their ill-spent lives.
But instead he had to go. She’d been insistent. Out through the back door. Off into the dark like a timid dog. And without his bike.
He had thought about nothing else since. Not for a second.
Now three days had passed. It was Tuesday, and he had been to the house several times since Saturday’s unwelcome surprise. So what if he ran into Mia’s husband? So what if things came to a head? He no longer feared other people, only himself. What he might do to the man, if it turned out he had harmed Mia.
But when he returned the first time, he found the house empty, likewise when he came again. And still he felt compelled to come back. A suspicion, rooted in instinct, grew inside him. The same instinct that had taken hold of him the time one of his comrades had pointed down an Afghan side street where ten local citizens were later killed. He had just known they should stay away from that street, the same way he knew this house contained secrets that would never see the light of day without his help.
He stood at her front door and called out her name. If the family had been going on holiday, she would have told him. If she no longer wanted him, her radiant eyes would have avoided his gaze.
She did want him, but now she was gone. Even his calls to her mobile remained unanswered. For some hours he had reasoned that she was too frightened to answer, because her husband was there. Then he convinced himself her husband had taken the phone away from her, and that he knew everything.
If he did, he was welcome to come and confront him, he told himself. It would not be an equal fight.
And then on Monday, for the first time, he began to think that the answer might lie elsewhere.
His attention had been caught by a sound. It was an unexpected sound, of the kind a soldier was trained to hear: faint sounds that could mean death in a second if overlooked.
It was such a sound he heard as he stood outside the house and called her mobile.
The mobile that chimed so faintly inside the walls.
And then he’d snapped shut his own phone and listened. Nothing.
He had dialed Mia’s number one more time and waited for a moment. There it was again. Her mobile was somewhere upstairs behind the closed, slanting window in the roof, responding to his call.
He’d stood there for a second, considering what to do.
She could have left it behind on purpose, but it was unlikely.
She called it her lifeline, and no one would give up a lifeline just like that.
That was something he knew.
He had come one more time since then and heard the mobile chime again inside the upstairs room above the front door. Nothing had changed. Why did he have this enduring suspicion that something was wrong?
Was it the hound in him, sniffing danger in the air? Was it the soldier? Or was it being in love that made him blind to the possibility that he had already become a parenthesis in her life?
And for all the questions, all the possible answers, this nagging suspicion remained.
Behind the curtains of the house across the way, an elderly couple sat watching him. As soon as he called out Mia’s name they were there. Perhaps he should ask them if they had noticed anything untoward.
It took them a while to open the door, and they were hardly accommodating when they did.
Why couldn’t he leave their nice neighbors alone, the woman asked.
He forced a smile and showed them how his hands were shaking. Showed them how frightened he was and how much he needed their help.
Reluctantly, they told him the husband had been home several times during the last couple of days. His Mercedes had been in the drive, but they had not seen his wife or their child for some time.
He thanked them and asked if they would be kind enough to keep an eye out, then gave them his phone number.
When they shut the door again, he knew they would not call. Mia wasn’t his wife. That was the fact of the matter.
He called her number one last time, and one last time he heard her mobile chime inside the room upstairs.
Mia, where are you? he thought to himself with increasing anxiety.
Starting tomorrow, he would come back to the house at regular intervals during the daytime.
If he saw nothing to put his mind at rest, he would go to the police.
Not because there was anything tangible to go on.
But what else could he do?
35
A buoyant step. A face with manly furrows in all the right places. Obviously expensive clothes.
A superior combination of just about everything that could make Carl feel like something the cat dragged in.
“This is Kris,” she said by way of introduction, responding only fleetingly to Carl’s welcoming hug.
“Kris and I were together in Darfur. Kris specializes in war trauma and works more or less permanently for Médecins Sans Frontières. Isn’t that right, Kris?”
She said were together in Darfur. As opposed to worked together in Darfur. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to work that one out. He hated the poncey twat already.
“I’m fairly familiar with the details,” said Kris, revealing a row of implausibly regular, implausibly white teeth. “Mona has confirmed with her superiors that she’s allowed to put me in the picture.”
Confirmed with her superiors. Bollocks, Carl thought to himself, and wondered why no one had confirmed with him.
“I take it we have your consent?”
A bit late in the day, wasn’t it? He gave Mona a look, and she returned his gaze with the sweetest, most underplayed of smiles. Fucking hell.
“Of course,” he answered. “Mona has my fullest confidence.”
He smiled back at the guy, and Mona noticed. Nice timing.
“I’ve been allotted thirty hours to see if we can get you up and running again. I understand from your boss that you’re quite indispensable.” He let out a slight chuckle. Most likely it meant they were paying him more than he was worth.
“Did I hear you say thirty hours?” Was he supposed to keep this puffed-up windbag company for thirty hours? They were having him on, surely?
“Well, let’s assess the extent of the damage first. But thirty hours tends to be more than sufficient in most cases.”
“You don’t say!” In this case, they might be in for a surprise.
They sat down in front of him. Mona smiling that smile of hers.
“When you think about Anker Høyer, Hardy Henningsen, and yourself in that allotment house out in Amager where you were shot, what’s the first feeling you get?” the man asked.
Carl felt an icy shiver go down his spine. What was the first feeling he got?
Trance. Slow motion. Arms that were turned to stone.
“That it was a long time ago,” he said.
The ridiculously named Kris nodded, demonstrating exactly how he had acquired his laughter lines. “Got your guard up, eh, Carl? But I’ve been warned, you see. Just testing.”
Had he come here for a boxing match? It was an interesting prospect.
“Did you know that Hardy Henningsen’s wife has applied for a legal separation?”
“No. Hardy never said a word.”
“As I understand it, she has a certain weakness for you. But you rejected her advances. You paid her a visit to offer your support, I think she said. That tells me something about you, something that goes beyond the hard-boiled exterior. What would you say to that?”
Carl frowned. “What the hell’s Minna Henningsen got to do with this? Have you been talking to people behind my back? If you have, then I’m not fucking happy about it, all right?”
The guy turned to Mona. “There you are, you see. Exactly as I predicted.
” They beamed at each other.
One more word out of place, and this twerp was going to get his tongue twisted around his throat. It would look nice alongside the gold chain dangling against his chest.
“And now you’d like to hit me, isn’t that right, Carl? Work me over, punch my lights out. I can tell.” He looked Carl straight in the eye, so the blue of his irises almost engulfed him.
And then he changed. Now he was serious. “Just calm down, Carl. I’m actually on your side, and you’re feeling fucked, I know you are.” He put up his hand to stop the protest. “No need to be on edge. And if what you’re wondering right now is who in this room I’d most like to climb into bed with, the answer is you.”
Carl’s jaw dropped.
The guy had told him not to be on edge. It was a relief, of course, to know which side of the road he was on, but that alone didn’t make everything all right.
They said their good-byes after agreeing how things would proceed from here. Mona nuzzled her head against his shoulder so that he nearly felt his legs give way underneath him.
“See you tonight at mine, OK? How about ten o’clock? Can you get away, or do you have to look after your boys at home?” she whispered in his ear.
In his mind’s eye Carl weighed the image of Mona’s naked body against that of Jesper’s stroppy face.
Decisions, decisions.
“Yes, I thought we’d probably find people working down here,” said the worm from Health and Safety, extending a clerkish, undersized hand. “John Studsgaard, Working Environment Authority.”
Did the man think he was senile or something? It was only a week since he had been here last.
“Carl Mørck,” he replied. “Detective Inspector, Department Q. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s the asbestos problem along there.” He pointed down the corridor toward the makeshift partition wall. “And for another, the spaces here in the basement haven’t been approved as working areas for Police Headquarters staff, and yet here you are again.”
“Listen, Studsgaard, let me be frank with you. Since you were here last, ten shooting incidents have occurred in this city. Two people have died as a result. The hash market has gone ballistic. The justice minister has ordered two hundred nonexistent police officers onto the streets. Two thousand jobs have gone down the drain, the government’s tax reform has shafted the most economically vulnerable of this country’s inhabitants, schoolteachers are getting their heads kicked in by the kids they’re supposed to be teaching, young lads are getting blown up in Afghanistan, people’s homes are being repossessed, pensions are worth fuck all anymore, and banks are collapsing all around us, unless they’re busy screwing their customers for every penny. And in the midst of all this mayhem, our prime minister’s running around trying to find himself a better job on the taxpayers’ money. How, then, in fuck’s name, can you be bothered about whether I’m sitting here or two hundred meters away in another basement room where everything imaginable is allowed? Is it not…” and at this point he inhaled deeply “…COMPLETELY FUCKING IMMATERIAL where I happen to sit, as long as I’m doing my job?”
Studsgaard had stood impassively listening to this bombast. When it was over, he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. “May I sit down?” he asked, pointing to a chair on the other side of the desk. “Naturally, I shall have to make a report,” he said drily. “It may well be that the rest of the country has gone off the rails, but fortunately some of us keep on going.”
Carl sighed heavily. The man had a point.
“OK, Studsgaard. I’m sorry for shouting at you like that. Too much on my plate. You’re right, of course.”
The bureaucrat lifted his head.
“I’d very much like to cooperate with you. Perhaps you could tell me what we need to do to get this place approved?”
Studsgaard put down his pen. Now he’d probably be given a lecture, Carl thought, about how unfeasible it was and how much hospital capacity was taken up due to the effects of poor working environment.
“It’s very simple. You ask your superior to put in an application. Then someone else will come, make an inspection, and issue instructions.”
Carl thrust his head forward in astonishment.
“And would you be able to assist with that application?” Carl inquired, more humbly than he had intended.
“Well, let’s see what else I have in my briefcase, shall we?” Studsgaard smiled and handed him a form.
“How did you get on with Health and Safety?” Assad asked.
Carl shrugged. “I gave the bloke a dressing down, then he went tame on me.”
He could see that dressing down was an expression that failed to click with Assad. What did dressing gowns have to do with it, he was probably thinking.
“What about you, Assad. Any headway?”
He nodded. “Yrsa gave me a name who I then called. A man who used to belong to the House of Christ. Are you familiar with the House of Christ, Carl?”
Carl shook his head. Not exactly, no.
“They are very strange, I think. They believe that Jesus will come back to Earth in a spaceship with beings from other worlds that we humans are supposed to re-create with.”
“Procreate. I think you mean procreate, Assad.”
Assad shrugged. “This man said that many people had left the Church of their own accord this last year. There was a lot of fuss about it. No one he knew personally had been kicked out, but then he said he had heard of a couple who were still members and whose child had been expelled. He thought maybe it was five or six years ago.”
“And what’s so special about that information?”
“The boy was only fourteen years old.”
Carl pictured his stepson, Jesper. He’d been headstrong at that age.
“OK, that’s probably unusual. But I can tell you’ve got more you want to share with me, Assad.”
“I don’t know, Carl. This is just a gut feeling.” He patted his paunch. “Did you know that ostracism is very uncommon in religious sects in Denmark, apart from Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
Carl shrugged. Ostracized or merely shunned, what difference did it make? He knew quite a few people where he came from who were anything but welcome in their own evangelical homes. So what was Assad getting at?
“But it happens, one way or another,” he said. “Officially or otherwise.”
“Yes, unofficially.” Assad raised an index finger into the air. “The House of Christ is very fanatical and threatens people with all sorts of things, but they never expel anyone officially. This is what I was told.”
“And?”
“In this case it was the mother and father themselves who ostracized the child. The parents were criticized for it by the congregation, but they didn’t care.”
Their eyes met. Carl had his own gut feeling now.
“Did you get an address for these people, Assad?”
“I was given an old address where they no longer live. Lis is looking into it now.”
At a quarter to two, Carl received a call from the duty desk. The Holbæk Police had brought in a man he wanted for questioning, and what were they supposed to do with him? It was Poul Holt’s father.
“Send him downstairs to me, only make sure he doesn’t do a bunk.”
Five minutes later, two slightly bewildered young officers were standing in the corridor with the man in front of them.
“No easy job, finding this place,” one of them said in a dialect that had West Jutland written all over it in capital letters.
Carl nodded to them both and waved Martin Holt in. “Please take a seat,” he said.
He turned to the two young officers. “My assistant’s office is just across the corridor there. He’ll be happy to make you a cup of tea, though I wouldn’t recommend his coffee. I’m assuming you’ll be waiting here until we’re finished. You can take Mr. Holt back with you once we’re done.”
Neither the prospect
of tea nor of hanging around seemed to fill them with enthusiasm, he noted with Jutlandish understatement.
Martin Holt was not like he had been at his front door in Hallabro. There he had been obstinate, now he was different, rattled even.
“How did you know I was in Denmark?” was the first thing he said. “Am I under surveillance?”
“Mr. Holt, I can only imagine what you and your family have been through these last thirteen years. I’d like you to know that you, your wife, and your children have the full sympathy of all of us in this department. I don’t wish to make this hard for you, because you have suffered enough as it is. However, it’s important for you to know that we will spare no effort in our attempts to apprehend the man who killed Poul.”
“Poul isn’t dead. He’s in America somewhere.”
If this man had known how obvious it was that he was lying, he would undoubtedly have remained silent. The clenched hands, the head thrust backward, the pause just before he said America. That, and four or five other things of the kind Carl had learned to notice after years of experience with that segment of the population for whom telling the truth was not a natural choice.
“Has it ever crossed your mind that there might be others in the same situation as you?” Carl inquired. “That Poul’s killer may still be at large? That he may have other murders on his conscience, before and after Poul’s?”
“I told you. Poul is in America. If I had any contact with him, I would tell you where. Can I go now?”
“Listen to me, Martin. Let’s forget all about the outside world for a moment, shall we? I know you people have your dogmas, your rules, and I’m perfectly aware that if you could get me off your back once and for all, you would. Am I right?”
“I’d like you to call those officers back now. This is all a misunderstanding. As indeed I tried to make you aware when we spoke in Hallabro.”
Carl nodded. The man was still scared. Thirteen years of fear had hardened him against anything that threatened to burst the bubble with which he had surrounded himself and his family.
A Conspiracy of Faith Page 34