Bankerat, where Merete Lynggaard had met someone for dinner a few days before her death. There was nothing boring about Nansensgade with all of its cafes and hangouts. It was a real Parisian-style paradise.
Carl turned around and immediately caught sight of Vigga and her boyfriend passing by the baker’s window. She occupied the street with all the confidence and flair of a matador in a bullring. Her artist’s outfit spoke with all the colors of the palette. She’d always been a festive one, that Vigga. The same, however, could not be said of her sickly-looking male companion, with his tight-fitting black clothes, his chalk-white skin, and dark circles under his eyes. His type could best be found inside the lead-lined coffins in a Dracula film.
“Sweeeetheart,” Vigga called, as she crossed Ahlefeldtsgade.
This was going to be expensive.
By the time the emaciated phantom had taken measurements of the whole place, Vigga had softened Carl up. He would only have to pay two-thirds of the rent; she would pay the rest herself.
She threw out her arms. “The dough’s gonna be pouring in, Carl.”
Yeah, right. Or pouring out, he thought, calculating that his share was going to come to two thousand six hundred kroner per month. Maybe he should take that fucking superintendent’s course, after all.
They went over to Cafe Bankerat to read through the rental agreement, and Carl took a look around. Merete Lynggaard had been here. And less than two weeks later, she had vanished from the face of the earth.
“Who owns this place?” he asked one of the girls at the bar.
“Jean-Yves. He’s sitting over there.” She pointed to a man who looked solid enough. There was nothing pretentiously delicate or French about him.
Carl got up. “May I ask you how long you’ve owned this fine establishment?” he asked, taking out his police badge to show it to the man. That wasn’t really necessary, judging by the man’s amiable smile, but once in a while he needed to take the thing out of mothballs.
“I took over the business in 2002.”
“Do you remember exactly when that was?”
“What’s this about?”
“About a member of parliament named Merete Lynggaard. You may remember that she disappeared.”
He nodded.
“And she was here not long before she died. Were you the owner back then?”
He shook his head. “I took over the business from one of my friends on March 1, 2002. But I do remember that the police asked him if anyone here recalled who she’d had dinner with. But nobody did.” He smiled. “Maybe I would have remembered if I’d been here.”
Carl smiled back. Yes, maybe. The owner seemed on the ball. “You came on the scene a month too late. That’s how it goes sometimes,” said Carl, shaking the man’s hand.
In the meantime Vigga had signed all the papers. She’d always been generous with her signature.
“Let me just have a look at everything,” Carl said, taking the papers away from Hugin.
He made a show of placing them on the table in front of him. The standard contract was filled with words too small to read, and his eyes instantly glazed over. All those people out there who are totally oblivious to what could happen to them, he thought. Merete Lynggaard had sat here in this restaurant, enjoying herself as she looked out of the window on a cold February evening in 2002.
Had she expected something else out of life? Or was it really possible that even then she suspected that in a few days’ time she’d be slipping away in the raw, cold waters of the Baltic?
When he got back to the office, his assistant was still fully occupied with the secretaries upstairs, and that suited Carl just fine. The emotional upset of meeting Vigga and her wandering ghost had sapped him of all energy. Only a quick little nap with his feet propped up on the desk and his thoughts buried in dreamland could put him back in the game.
He’d probably been sitting like that for only ten minutes when his meditative state was interrupted by the sensation that all police detectives know only too well — what women call intuition. It was the turmoil of experience bubbling up in his subconscious. The feeling that a number of concrete events would inevitably lead to a specific result.
He opened his eyes and looked at the notes that he’d put up on the whiteboard.
Then he got up and crossed out “The caseworker in Stevns” on the piece of paper. Under the word “Check” it now said: “The telegram — The secretaries at Christiansborg — Witnesses on the ferry
Perhaps Merete Lynggaard’s secretary had something to do with that telegram. Who had actually accepted delivery of the valentine telegram at Christiansborg? Why had he immediately assumed that it had to be Merete Lynggaard herself? At that time there was hardly any other MP who was as busy as she was. So it was only logical that at some point the telegram had to have passed through the hands of her secretary. Not that he suspected the secretary of the vice-chair of a group to be sticking her nose in her boss’s personal affairs. But wasn’t it possible?
It was this possibility that was bothering him.
“So now we have the answer from TelegramsOnline, Carl,” said Assad from the doorway.
Carl looked up.
“They could not tell me what the telegram said, but they had a record of who sent it. It was some funny name.” He looked at his notes. “Tage Baggesen. I got the phone number that he used to order the telegram. They said it came from inside the Folketing. That was all I wanted to say then.” He handed the note to Carl and had already turned to leave. “We are investigating the car accident now. They are waiting for me upstairs.”
Carl nodded. Then he picked up the phone and punched in the number to the parliament.
The voice that answered belonged to a secretary in the office of the Radical Center Party.
She was friendly enough, but was sorry to inform Carl that Tage Baggesen was in the Faroe Islands for the weekend. Would he like to leave a message?
“No, that’s OK,” said Carl. “I’ll contact him on Monday.”
“I have to tell you that Mr. Baggesen will be very busy on Monday. Just so you know.”
Then Carl asked to be transferred to the office of the Democrats.
This time the secretary who answered the phone sounded worn out, and she didn’t know the answer to his question offhand. But wasn’t there a Sos Norup who used to be Merete Lynggaard’s secretary?
Carl confirmed that she was right.
No one really remembered much about Sos, because she’d been there for only a very short time. But one of the other secretaries in the office said that she thought Sos Norup had come from DJOF, the Federation of Jurists and Economists, and had gone back there instead of staying on to work for Merete Lynggaard’s successor. “She was a bitch,” Carl suddenly heard somebody say in the background, and that apparently refreshed everyone’s memory.
Yes, thought Carl with satisfaction. It’s the good, stable arseholes like us who are remembered best.
Then he phoned DJOF, and found out that yes, they all knew Sos Norup. But no, she hadn’t come back to work for them. She had apparently vanished into thin air.
He put down the phone and shook his head. All of a sudden his job had developed into
Carl found them in one of the smaller offices with faxes and photocopies and all sorts of scraps of paper spread out on the table in front of them. It looked as if Assad had set up a campaign office in a presidential election. Three secretaries sat there chattering with each other as Assad served tea and nodded diligently every time the conversation moved a small step forward. An impressive effort.
Carl knocked discreetly on the doorframe.
