under the carpet so you’ll have something to write about next week?” Carl moved in so close that Hyttested chose to fix his eyes on the banknote again. “Hardy Henningsen was the best colleague anyone could ever have. I would have died for him, if I could. Do you get me?”
Hyttested looked over his shoulder to give his coworkers a triumphant look. Shit. Now the headline for the next issue was in the bag, and Carl was the casualty. Now all they needed was a photographer to immortalize the situation. He’d better get out while he could.
“Do I get the thousand kroner if I tell you which photographer specialized in taking pictures of Merete Lynggaard?”
“What good would that do me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would help. You’re a cop, aren’t you? Can you really afford to ignore a tip?”
“Who is it?”
“You should try talking to Jonas.”
“Jonas who?” Now there were only a few inches between the thousand kroner and Hyttested’s greedy fingers.
“Jonas Hess.”
“Jonas Hess? Yeah, OK. Where do I find him? Is he here in the office right now?”
“We don’t hire guys like Jonas Hess. You’ll have to look him up in the phone book.”
Carl made a mental note of the name and then in a flash stuffed the thousand kroner back in his pocket. The jerk was going to write about him in the next issue, no matter what. Besides, he’d never in his life paid for information, and it would take somebody of an entirely different caliber than Hyttested before that ever changed.
“You would have died for him?” Hyttested yelled after Carl, as he strode between the rows of cubicles. “Then why didn’t you, Carl Morck?”
He got Jonas Hess’s address from the receptionist, and a taxi dropped him in front of a tiny stucco house on Vejlands Alle, which had become silted up over the years with the detritus of society: old bicycles, shattered aquariums, and glass flagons from ancient home-brewing projects, moldy tarpaulins that could no longer hide the rotting boards underneath, a plethora of bottles, and all sorts of other junk. The owner of the house would be an ideal candidate for any one of those home makeover programs on TV. Even the most inept of landscape architects would be welcome here.
A bicycle lying in front of the door and the quiet growling from a radio behind the filthy windows indicated that somebody was home. Carl leaned on the doorbell until his finger started to ache.
Finally he heard from inside: “Cut that out, damn it.”
A ruddy-faced man displaying the unmistakable signs of a massive hangover opened the door and tried to focus on Carl in the blinding sunlight.
“What the hell’s the time?” he asked, as he let go of the doorknob and retreated inside. There was no need for a court order to follow him in.
The living room was of the type shown in disaster movies after the comet has split the earth in two. The homeowner threw himself onto a sagging sofa with a satisfied sigh. Then he took a huge gulp from a whisky bottle as he tried to localize Carl out of the corner of his eye.
Carl’s experience told him this man would not exactly be an ideal witness.
He said hello from Pelle Hyttested, hoping that would break the ice a bit.
“He owes me money,” replied Hess.
Carl was about to show the photographer his badge, but changed his mind and stuck it back in his pocket. “I’m from a special police unit that’s trying to solve mysteries about some unfortunate people,” he said. A statement like that couldn’t possibly scare anyone off.
Hess lowered the bottle for a moment. Maybe that was too many words for him to process, considering his condition.
“I’m here to talk to you about Merete Lynggaard,” Carl ventured. “I know that you sort of specialized in her.”
Hess tried to smile, but acid indigestion prevented it. “There aren’t many who know that,” he said. “And what about her?”
“Do you have any pictures of her that you haven’t published?”
Hess doubled over, trying to suppress a laugh. “Jesus, how can you ask such a stupid question? I’ve got at least ten thousand of them.”
“Ten thousand! That sounds like a lot.”
“Listen here.” He held up his hand with the fingers splayed out. “Two or three rolls of film every other day for two to three years — how many photos would that make?”
“A lot more than ten thousand, I would think.”
After an hour, and helped along by the calories contained in neat whisky, Jonas Hess was finally alert enough that he could lead the way, without staggering, to his darkroom, which was in a little building made of breeze blocks behind the house.
Here things were quite different from inside his house. Carl had been in plenty of darkrooms before, but none as sterile and neat as this one. The difference between the man in the house and the man in the darkroom was unsettling.
Hess pulled out a metal drawer and dived in. “Here,” he said, handing Carl a folder labeled: MERETE LYNGGAARD: NOVEMBER 13, 2001 TO MARCH 1, 2002. “Those are the negatives from the last period.”
Carl opened the folder, starting at the back. Each plastic sleeve contained the negatives from a whole roll of film, but in the last sleeve there were only five shots. The date had been meticulously printed on it: MARCH 1, 2002 ML.
“You took pictures of her the day before she disappeared?”
“Yes. Nothing special. Just a couple of shots in the parliament courtyard. I often stood in the gate, waiting.”
“Waiting for her?”
“Not just for her. For all the Folketing politicians. If you only knew what surprising groupings I’ve seen appear on that stairway. All it takes is waiting, and one day it happens.”
“But there were apparently no surprises that day, as far as I can see.” Carl took the plastic sleeve out of the folder and placed it on the light table. So these pictures were taken on Friday, when Merete Lynggaard was on her way home. The day before she disappeared.
He leaned down to get a closer look at the negatives.
There it was: She had her briefcase under her arm.
Carl shook his head. Incredible. The very first picture he looked at, and he already had something. Here was the proof in black-and-white. Merete had taken the briefcase home with her. An old, worn-out case with a rip on one side and everything.
“Could I borrow this negative?”
The photographer took another gulp of whisky and wiped his mouth. “I never lend out my negatives. I don’t even sell them. But we can make a copy; I’ll just scan it. I assume the quality doesn’t have to be fit for a queen.” He took in a big breath, then hawked a bit as he laughed.
“Thanks, I’d really appreciate a copy. You can send the bill to my department.” Carl handed the man his card.
Hess looked at the negatives. “Yeah, well, that day there wasn’t anything special. But there hardly ever was when it came to Merete Lynggaard. The biggest deal was in the summertime if it got cold and you could see her nipples through her blouse. I got good money for those shots.”
Again there was that hawking laughter as he went over to a small red refrigerator propped up on a couple of containers that had once held darkroom chemicals. He took out a beer, and seemed to offer it to his visitor, but the contents vanished before Carl even had time to react.
“Of course the scoop would be to catch her with a lover, right?” Hess said, looking for something else to toss down his throat. “And I think that’s what I caught on film a few days earlier.”
