somebody else. There were plenty of assholes like that running around.
Carl nodded curtly to the nurse who came in with a fresh IV drip. The last time he’d been here, she had asked him to step outside while she tended to Hardy. She didn’t get the response she was expecting, and it was clear that she hadn’t forgotten.
“So, you’re here again?” she said sullenly, glancing at her watch.
“This is a better time for me, before I go to work. Is that a problem?”
Again she looked at her watch. Yeah, so what if he showed up for work later than most people?
The nurse extended Hardy’s arm and inspected the IV attached to the back of his hand. Then the door to the corridor opened, and the first physiotherapist of the day came in. She had hard work ahead of her.
Carl patted the sheet where the contour of Hardy’s right arm was visible. “These harpies want to have you all to themselves, so I’m going to take off now, Hardy. I’ll come back a little earlier tomorrow so we can have a talk. Keep smiling, man.”
The smell of medicine followed him out in the corridor, where he stopped to lean against the wall. His shirt was sticking to his back, and the sweat stains under his arms were plowing their way farther down his shirt. After the shooting incident, it didn’t take much.
* * *
Hardy, Carl, and Anker, as was their custom, had arrived at the murder scene in the suburb of Amager ahead of the others, and they were already wearing the white disposable coveralls, masks, gloves and hairnets that procedures prescribed. It was only half an hour since the old man had been found with the nail in his head. The drive from police headquarters took no time at all.
That day they had plenty of time before the body would be examined. As far as they knew, the homicide chief was at some sort of reorganization meeting with the police commissioner, but there was no doubt that he would arrive as soon as he could, along with the medical examiner. No office hassles were going to keep Marcus Jacobsen away from a crime scene.
“There’s not much outside the house for the crime-scene techs to go on,” said Anker, jabbing his foot at the ground, which was soft and sludgy after the rain the night before.
Carl looked around. Aside from the marks left by the neighbor’s wooden clogs, there weren’t many footprints around the barracks building, which was one of those that the military had sold off in the sixties. Back then the barracks had all probably looked great, but by now, for this particular building at any rate, those days were over. The rafters had fallen in, the tar paper on the roof was riddled with holes, not a single plank on the facade was still in one piece, and the dampness had done its job. Even the sign, on which the name “Georg Madsen” had been printed with a black marker, was half rotted off. And then there was the stench of the dead man, seeping out through the cracks. All in all, a real shithouse.
“I’ll go and talk to the neighbor,” Anker said, turning toward the man who had been waiting half an hour. It was no more than five yards to the porch of his small cottage. Once the barracks were knocked down, his view was guaranteed to improve significantly.
Hardy was good at tolerating the stench of corpses. Maybe because he was taller and towered over the worst of it, or maybe because his sense of smell was decidedly less acute than most people’s. This time the odor was especially bad.
“Damn, what a stink,” Carl grunted, as they stood in the hallway, pulling on the blue plastic booties.
“I’ll open a window,” said Hardy, stepping into the room next to the claustrophobic entrance.
Carl went over to the doorway leading to the small living room. Not much light was coming through the blinds that had been pulled down, but there was enough to see the figure sitting in the corner with the grayish- green skin and deep fissures in the blisters that covered most of his face. Reddish fluid trickled from his nose, and the buttons of his shirt were threatening to pop off from the pressure of the swollen torso. His eyes were like wax.
“The nail was fired into the head with a Paslode pneumatic framing nailer,” said Hardy from behind. “It’s lying on the table in the next room. There’s also a power screwdriver, and it’s still charged. Remind me that we need to find out how long it can lie around before it needs recharging.”
They’d been standing there surveying the scene for only a moment when Anker joined them.
“The neighbor has lived out here since January sixteenth,” he said. “So that’s ten days, and he hasn’t seen the deceased come out of the house even once.” He pointed to the body and looked around the room. “The neighbor was sitting outside on his porch, enjoying the global warming, and that’s when he noticed the smell. He’s really shaken up, the poor man. Maybe we should get the medical officer to take a look at him after he examines the body.”
Later Carl was only able to provide a very sketchy description of what happened next, and the top brass would just have to make do with that. According to most people, he hadn’t been fully conscious anyway. But that wasn’t true. He actually remembered all too well what occurred. He just didn’t feel like going into detail.
He’d heard someone come in the kitchen door, but he hadn’t reacted. Maybe it was the stench, maybe he thought it was the crime-scene techs arriving.
A few seconds later, out of the corner of his eye, he registered a figure wearing a red-checked shirt who launched himself forward into the room. Carl thought that he should draw his weapon, but didn’t. His reflexes failed him. On the other hand, he did notice the shock waves when the first shot struck Hardy in the back so that he fell, pulling Carl down and trapping him underneath. The enormous pressure of Hardy’s bullet-pierced body wrenched Carl’s spine hard to one side and jammed his knee.
Then came the shots that struck Anker in the chest and Carl in the temple. He recalled with great clarity how he lay there with a frantically hyperventilating Hardy on top of him, and how Hardy’s blood seeped out through the coverall to mix with his own on the floor beneath them. And as the perpetrators’ legs moved past him, he kept thinking he better get hold of his gun.
Behind him, Anker was lying on the floor, trying to wriggle his body around as the assailants talked to each other in the small room beyond the entrance. Only a few seconds passed before they were back in the living room. Carl heard Anker ordering them to halt. Later he found out that Anker had drawn his gun.
The reply to Anker’s command was yet another shot, which shook the floor and struck Anker right in the heart.
That’s all the time it took. The shooters slipped out the kitchen door, and Carl didn’t move. He lay there totally motionless. Not even when the ME arrived did he give any sign of life. Later both the ME and the homicide chief said that at first they thought Carl was dead.
Carl lay there a long time, as if he’d fainted, with his head full of desperate thoughts. They took his pulse and then drove off with him and his two partners. Only at the hospital did he open his eyes. They told him that his eyes had a dead look to them.
They thought it was the shock, but it was from shame.
“Can I help you with something?” asked a man in his mid-thirties wearing a white coat.
Carl stopped leaning on the wall. “I’ve just been in to see Hardy Henningsen.”
“Hardy, yes. Are you a family member?”
“No, I’m his colleague. I was Hardy’s team leader in the homicide division.”
“I see.”
“What’s Hardy’s prognosis? Will he be able to walk again?”
The young doctor made a barely perceptible move away. The answer was clear. The state of his patient’s health was none of Carl’s business. “I’m afraid I can’t give out information to anyone other than his family. I’m sure you understand.”
Carl grabbed the doctor’s sleeve. “I was with him when it happened, do you understand that? I was shot too. One of our colleagues was killed. We were in it together, so that’s why I’d like to know. Is he going to be able to walk again? Can you tell me that?”
“I’m sorry.” He brushed off Carl’s hand. “I can’t give you that information, but in your line of work I’m sure
