wheelchair, Assad gave Carl a look that was unmistakable. They had to press Lasse to the point where he would start to take them seriously. Lasse might not fight to save his own skin, but he would fight to save his mother’s and brother’s. Assad had seen it in his eyes, and he was right.
Then Carl raised Lasse’s arms and attached the stripped ends of the wires to the detonation cords, as Lasse had prescribed.
“Go sit in the corner,” Carl ordered the woman and her younger son. “Hans, take your mother over there and set her on your lap.”
He looked at Carl with frightened eyes; then he picked up his mother in his arms as if she were a piece of fluff and sat down on the floor with his back against the far wall.
“We’re going to blow up all three of you along with Merete Lynggaard, if you don’t tell us how to shut off your infernal machine,” said Carl as he twisted a detonation cord on to one of the battery terminals.
Lasse turned his gaze away from his mother and looked at Carl. Hatred burned in his eyes. “I don’t know how to stop it,” he said calmly. “I could find out by reading the manuals, but there’s no time for that.”
“That’s a lie! You’re just stalling for time!” shouted Carl. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Assad was considering striking Lasse.
“Believe whatever you like,” said Lasse and turned his head to give Assad a smile.
Carl nodded. The man wasn’t lying. He was ice cold, but he wasn’t lying. Years of experience told Carl that. Lasse didn’t know how to stop the system without reading the manual. Very bad luck.
He turned to Assad. “Are you OK?” he asked, placing his hand on the barrel of the shotgun only seconds before Assad would have smashed the butt end into Lasse’s face.
Assad nodded angrily. The buckshot in his arm hadn’t done any significant damage, nor had the blow to his head. He was made of solid stuff.
Carl carefully took the shotgun out of his hands. “I can’t go that far. I’m taking the gun, Assad, and I want you to run over and get the manual. You saw where it was. The handwritten manual in the inside room. It’s in the pile at the very end. On top, I think. Go get it, Assad. And hurry!”
Lasse smiled as soon as Assad left and Carl stuck the barrel of the shotgun under his chin. Like a gladiator, Lasse was weighing his opponents’ strengths to choose the one who matched him best. It was clear he figured Carl was a better choice than Assad. And it was equally clear to Carl that he was wrong.
Lasse began backing toward the door. “You don’t dare shoot me. The other guy would have done it. I’m going now, and you can’t stop me.”
“Is that what you think?” Carl stepped forward and grabbed him hard by the throat. The next time the man made a move, he was going to slam the gun in his face.
Then they heard the police sirens in the distance.
“Run!” screamed Lasse’s brother as he abruptly stood up, clutching his mother, and kicked the wheelchair at Carl.
Lasse was gone in a second. Carl wanted to run after him, but he couldn’t. He was apparently in worse shape than Lasse; his wounded leg simply refused to obey.
He aimed the gun at the woman and her son as he let the wheelchair roll past and crash into the wall.
“Look!” yelled Hans, pointing at the long cord that Lasse was trailing after him.
They all watched as the cord slid across the floor. Lasse was obviously trying to tear the explosives from his neck as he ran down the corridor. They saw the slack in the cord being taken up as he made his way out of the building, until at last the wires wouldn’t reach any farther and the battery toppled over and was dragged toward the door. When it reached the corner and ran into the doorframe, the loose wire slipped underneath the battery and touched the other terminal.
They felt the explosion only as a faint tremor, along with a muffled thud in the distance.
Merete lay on her back in the dark and listened to the whistling as she tried to arrange the position of her arms so that she could press hard on both wrists at the same time.
It wasn’t long before her skin began to itch, but nothing else happened. For a moment she felt as if the greatest possible miracle was going to shine upon her, and she screamed at the nozzles in the ceiling that they weren’t going to get her.
But she knew the miracle wasn’t going to happen when the first filling began loosening in her mouth. During the next few minutes she considered letting go of her wrists as the headache and joint pains and the pressure on all her internal organs worsened and began to spread. By the time she decided to let go of her wrists, she couldn’t even feel her hands.
I need to turn over, she thought, and ordered her body to turn on to its side, but her muscles no longer had any strength. She noticed everything getting hazy at the same time as nausea made her retch, almost suffocating her.
She lay on the floor, immobile, and felt the convulsions increase. First in her gluteal muscles, then her abdomen, and up into her chest.
It’s going too slow! a voice inside of her cried, as she again tried to release her grip on the arteries in her wrists.
After a few more minutes she slipped into a foggy lethargy. It was impossible to hold on to thoughts of Uffe. She saw flashes of color and glints of light and spinning shapes; that was all.
When the first filling burst out of her tooth, she began a prolonged and monotonous moaning. All the energy she had left went into this tortured sound. But she didn’t hear herself; the whistling from the nozzles overhead was much too loud.
All of a sudden the seeping out of air stopped, and the sound disappeared. For a moment she imagined that she might be saved. She heard voices outside. They were calling for her, and she stopped her wailing. Then a voice asked if she was Merete. Everything inside her called out: “Yes, I’m here.” Maybe she said the words out loud. After that she heard them talking about Uffe as if he were a normal boy. She said his name, but it sounded wrong. Then she heard a loud bang, and Lasse’s voice was back, slicing through all her hope. She breathed slowly, noticing the clumsy grip of her fingers letting go of her wrists. She didn’t know if she was still bleeding. She felt neither pain nor relief. Then the whistling in her cage returned.
When the earth shook beneath her, everything turned cold and hot at the same time. For a moment she remembered God and whispered His name to herself. Next she felt a flash inside her head.
A flash of light followed by an enormous roaring and more light streaming in.
And then she let go of herself.
EPILOGUE. 2007
The media coverage was tremendous. In spite of the sad outcome, the investigation and solving of the Lynggaard case was a success story. Piv Vestergard from the Denmark Party was extremely pleased and reveled in the attention, since she was the one who had demanded the formation of Department Q in the first place. At the same time, she took the opportunity to trash everyone who didn’t share her view of society.
That was just one of the reasons why Carl finally couldn’t take anymore.
Three trips to the hospital to have the buckshot dug out of his leg and a single appointment with Mona Ibsen, which he canceled. That was about all he’d been able to deal with.
Now they were back at their posts in the basement. Two small plastic bags hung from the bulletin board, both filled with buckshot. Twenty-five in Carl’s and twelve in Assad’s. In the desk drawer lay a knife with a four-inch blade. Eventually the whole kit and caboodle would probably be tossed in the trash.
They took care of each other — Carl and Assad. Carl, by letting his assistant come and go as he pleased, and Assad, by creating a more carefree mood in their basement. After three weeks of stagnation with cigarettes and coffee and Assad’s cat-howling music playing in the background, Carl finally reached over to the stack of case files sitting on the corner of his desk and began leafing through them.
