“If you don’t eat, you’re going to end up burning in hell without ever having that satisfaction,” snarled the woman, but there was something more in her voice. Like a cat playing with a mouse, and the cat wasn’t done playing yet. They wanted their prisoner to live. Live for as long as they had decided, and no longer.
“I
“Is it an abscess?” asked the man’s voice.
She nodded.
“You’ll have to deal with it yourself,” he said coldly.
Merete stared at her reflection in one of the portholes. The poor woman before her had hollow cheeks and her eyes looked as if they might fall out of her head. The upper part of her face was distorted from the abscess, and the dark circles under her eyes told their own story. She looked deathly ill, and she was.
She set her back against the glass and slowly slid down to the floor. There she sat, with tears of anger in her eyes and a new awareness that her body wanted to live and was capable of doing so. She would take whatever was in the bucket and force herself to swallow it. The pain would either kill her or it wouldn’t; time would tell. In any case, she would not give up without a fight, because she had just made a promise to that awful bitch out there. A promise she was determined to keep. At some point that disgusting woman would get a taste of her own medicine.
For a moment Merete’s body felt calm, like a shattered landscape in the eye of a hurricane, and then the pain was back. This time she screamed as uninhibitedly as she could. She felt the pus from her gum flow on to her tongue and how the throbbing of the toothache spread all the way to her temple.
Then she heard the whistling of the airlock door, and a new bucket came into view.
“Here! We’ve put some first aid in the bucket for you. Go ahead and take it,” laughed the woman’s voice outside.
Merete quickly crawled over to the hatch on all fours and pulled out the bucket. She looked inside.
Way down at the bottom, lying on a piece of fabric just like a surgical instrument, was a pair of tongs.
A big pair of tongs. Big and rusty.
27. 2007
Carl’s morning had been an oppressive one. First bad dreams and then Jesper’s griping at breakfast had drained him of energy even before he sank into the driver’s seat of his car, only to discover the gas gauge pointing to empty. The forty-five minutes that he then spent sitting in the exhaust fumes of the small stretch of motorway between Nymollevej and V?rlose didn’t do much to encourage the side of his personality that might manifest charm, amiability, and patience.
When he was finally sitting at his desk in the basement of police headquarters, he found himself staring at the sparks of energy apparent in Assad’s morning-fresh face. That was when he considered going upstairs to Marcus Jacobsen’s office and smashing a few chairs so he’d be sent off someplace where they’d take good care of him. Where he would only need to pay attention to all the world’s misfortunes when the evening news appeared on TV.
Carl nodded wearily to his assistant. If he could only get the man to contain his high spirits for a moment, then perhaps his own inner batteries might have a chance to recharge. He glanced at the coffeemaker, saw that it was empty, and then accepted the tiny cup that Assad handed him.
“I do not entirely understand it, Carl,” said Assad. “You say that Daniel Hale is dead, but he was not the one who came to the meeting at Christiansborg. So who was that man then?”
“I have no idea, Assad, but Hale had nothing to do with Merete Lynggaard. Whoever came in Hale’s place did, however.” He took a sip of Assad’s mint tea. Without the four or five spoonfuls of sugar, it might actually be drinkable.
“But how could this other guy know that the billionaire who was boss of the meeting up at Christiansborg had never seen Daniel Hale in reality then?”
“That’s a good question. Maybe this man and Hale knew each other somehow.” Carl set his cup on the desk and looked up at the bulletin board, where he had pinned up the brochure from InterLab A/S with Daniel Hale’s well-groomed likeness.
“So it was not Hale who delivered the letter, was it? And he was not the man who had dinner with Merete Lynggaard at the Bankerat, right?”
“According to Hale’s colleagues, he wasn’t even in the country at the time.” Carl turned to look at his assistant. “What did the police report say about Daniel Hale’s car after the accident? Do you remember? Was everything a hundred per cent in order? Did they find any defects that might have caused the accident?”
“You mean, were the brakes fine?”
“The brakes. Steering mechanism. Everything. Was there any sign of sabotage?”
Assad shrugged. “It was difficult to see anything, because the car burned up, Carl. But it was then probably believed to be an ordinary accident, as I can understand that report.”
That was how Carl remembered it too. Nothing suspicious.
“And there were no witnesses who can say otherwise?”
They exchanged glances.
“I know, Assad. I know.”
“Only him, the man who drove into him.”
“Exactly.” Without thinking, Carl took a gulp of the mint tea, which made him shudder. He certainly wasn’t going to get addicted to this swill.
Carl considered taking a cigarette or a throat lozenge out of the desk drawer, but he didn’t have enough energy even for that. It was a hell of a development. Here he was, just about to close up the damn case and now this turn of events had to happen, pointing to unexplored aspects. An endless workload suddenly loomed before him, and this was just one case. There were forty or fifty more stacked on the desk in front of him.
“What about him, the witness in the other car, Carl? Shouldn’t we talk to that man who Daniel Hale crashed into?”
“I’ve got Lis trying to track him down.”
For a moment Assad looked thoroughly disappointed.
“But I’ve got a different assignment for you.”
An oddly blissful change in mood brought a smile to his lips.
“I want you to drive down to Holtug in Stevns and talk to the home help, Helle Andersen, one more time. Ask her if she recognizes Daniel Hale as the man who personally delivered the letter. Take his picture with you.” He pointed at the bulletin board.
“But he was not the one, it was him, the other one who—”
Carl stopped Assad with a wave of his hand. “You know that, and I know that. But if she says no, as we expect her to do, then ask her whether Daniel Hale looked anything like the guy with the letter. We need to get a better description of the man, OK? And one more thing: Ask her whether Uffe was there and might have caught a glimpse of the man who brought the letter. And finally, ask her whether she remembers where Merete used to put her briefcase when she came home. Tell her it’s black and has a big rip on one side. It was her father’s, and he had it in the car when the accident happened, so it must have meant a lot to her.” Carl raised his hand again as Assad was about to say something. “And afterward, drive over to see the antique dealers who bought Merete’s house in Magleby and ask them if they’ve seen a briefcase like that anywhere. We’ll talk about everything tomorrow, OK? You can take the car home with you. I’ll take cabs today, and later I can catch the train home.”
By now Assad was flailing his arms about.
“Yes, Assad?”
“Just a minute, right? I have to find a writing book. Will you please just say everything one more time?”
Hardy had looked worse. Previously his head resembled something that had melted into the pillow, but now
