a long time, even back then.”
“But you still kept trying?”
He nodded without saying a word.
“What did the telegram say? Try to stick to the truth this time.”
He tilted his head a bit to the side. “Just the usual. That I’d like to see her. I don’t remember the exact words. And that’s the truth.”
“And so you killed her because she wasn’t interested in you?”
Now Baggesen’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. His lips were closed tight. A second before the tears began running down the side of the politician’s nose, Carl was inclined to arrest him. Then Baggesen raised his head and looked at him. Not as if Carl were the executioner who had placed a noose around his neck, but as if he were a father confessor to whom he could finally open his heart.
“Who would kill the one person who made life worth living?” he asked.
They sat there for a moment, looking at each other. Then Carl looked away.
“Do you know whether Merete had any enemies here? Not political adversaries. I mean real enemies.”
Baggesen wiped his eyes. “All of us have enemies, but not what you’d call real enemies,” he replied.
“Nobody who might have had designs on her life?”
Baggesen shook his head. “That would really surprise me. She was well liked, even by her political opponents.”
“I have a different impression. So you don’t think she was working with key issues that might have proved so problematic for someone that they’d do anything to stop her? Special-interest groups that felt pressured or threatened?”
Baggesen gave Carl an indulgent look. “Ask her own party members. She and I were not what you’d call political confidants. Far from it, I must say. Have you found out anything in particular?”
“Politicians the world over are always held accountable for their opinions, right? Opponents of abortion, animal-rights fanatics, people with anti-Muslim attitudes, or the opposite — anything at all can elicit a violent reaction. Just look at Sweden or Holland or the United States.” Carl made a motion to stand up and noticed the look of relief already appearing on the face of the MP sitting across from him. But maybe he shouldn’t read too much into that. Who wouldn’t want this sort of conversation to come to an end?
“Baggesen,” Carl went on. “Maybe you’d be kind enough to get in touch with me if you happen to stumble on anything at all that I should know.” He handed the man his card. “If not for my sake, then for your own. Not many people in this place felt as positive about Merete Lynggaard as you did, I’m afraid.”
That hit home. The tears would undoubtedly begin flowing again, even before Carl was out the door.
According to the Civil Register, Sos Norup’s last place of residence was the same as that of her parents, right in the middle of Copenhagen’s snooty Frederiksberg district. On the brass plate next to the front door it said: “Wholesaler Vilhelm Norup and actress Kaja Brandt Norup.”
Carl rang the bell and heard the sound reverberating behind the massive oak door. A moment later it was supplemented by a quiet “Yes, yes, I’m coming.”
The man who opened the door must have retired at least a quarter of a century earlier. Judging by the waistcoat he was wearing and the silk cravat around his neck, his fortune hadn’t dried up yet. He stared uneasily at Carl with eyes ravaged by illness, as if this stranger on his doorstep might be the Grim Reaper. “Who are you?” he asked bluntly, ready to slam the door.
Carl introduced himself, and again took his badge out of his pocket. He asked if he might come inside.
“Has something happened to Sos?” the man demanded to know.
“I don’t know. Why do you ask? Isn’t she at home?”
“She doesn’t live here anymore, if she’s the one you’re looking for.”
“Who is it, Vilhelm?” called a faint voice from behind the double doors to the living room.
“Just somebody who wants to talk to Sos, dear.”
“Then he’ll have to go elsewhere,” she replied.
The wholesaler grabbed Carl’s sleeve. “She lives in Valby. Tell her we want her to come and get her things if she’s planning to go on living like that.”
“Like what?”
The man didn’t answer. He gave Carl the address on Valhojvej, then slammed the door shut.
* * *
In the small co-op building there were only three names next to the intercom. In the past the place had undoubtedly been home to six families, each with four or five children. What had previously been a slum was now gentrified. It was here in this attic apartment that Sos Norup had found her true love, a woman in her mid-forties whose skepticism regarding Carl’s police badge manifested itself in pale lips that were pressed tight.
Sos’s lips were not much friendlier. Even at first glance, Carl understood why DJOF and the Democrats’ office at Christiansborg hadn’t fallen apart when she left. One would have to search far and wide to find someone who presented a less sympathetic aura.
“Merete Lynggaard was a frivolous boss,” she remarked.
“You mean, she didn’t take her job seriously? That’s not what I heard.”
“She left everything up to me.”
“I’d think that would be a plus.” He looked at her. She seemed like a woman who’d always been kept on a short leash and hated it. Wholesaler Norup and his wife, no doubt once very prominent, had probably taught Sos the meaning of blind obedience. That must have been hard to take for an only child who saw her parents as gifts from God. Carl was convinced it must have reached the point where she both detested and loved them. Detested what they stood for, and loved them for the very same thing. In Carl’s humble opinion, that was why she’d moved back and forth from home all her adult life.
He glanced over at her girlfriend. Dressed in loose-fitting garb and with a smoldering cigarette hanging from her lips, she sat there making sure he wouldn’t try to molest anyone. She was determined to provide Sos with a permanent anchor here from now on. That much was obvious.
“I heard that Merete Lynggaard was very satisfied with your work.”
“Oh, really.”
“I’d like to ask you about Merete’s personal life. Was there any reason to think that she might have been pregnant when she disappeared?”
Sos frowned and drew back.
“Pregnant?” She said the word as if it were in the same category as contagion, leprosy, and the bubonic plague. “No, I’m positive that she wasn’t.” She glanced over at her lover and rolled her eyes.
“How can you be so sure?”
“How do you think? If she was as together as everybody thought, she wouldn’t have had to borrow tampons from me every time she got her period.”
“You’re saying that she had her period just before she disappeared?”
“Yes, the week before. We always got our periods at the same time when I was working for her.”
He nodded. That was something she would know. “Do you know if she had a lover?”
“I’ve already been asked that a hundred times before.”
“Refresh my memory.”
Sos took out a cigarette and tapped it firmly on the table. “All the men stared at her as if they wanted to throw her down on the table. How would I know if one of them had something going on with her?”
“In the report it says that she received a valentine telegram. Did you know it was from Tage Baggesen?”
She lit her cigarette and disappeared behind a blue haze. “No, I didn’t.”
“So you don’t know whether there was something going on between them?”
“Something going on? This was five years ago, as I’m sure you’ll recall.” She blew a cloud of smoke right at Carl’s face, eliciting a wry smile from her lover.
Carl moved back a bit. “Now, listen here. I’m going to take off in four minutes. But before I do, let’s pretend
