The Keeper of Lost Causes

same.

Carl grabbed the phone and punched in the number for Kurt Hansen.

A secretary in the office of the Conservative Party answered. She was polite but told him that unfortunately Kurt Hansen was unavailable at the moment. Would he care to wait on the line? As far as she could tell, the meeting would be finishing in a couple of minutes.

Carl looked at the pieces of paper lying in front of him as he waited with the receiver to his ear. They had been in the briefcase since March 2002, and most likely for a whole year prior to that. Maybe it was something trivial, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Merete Lynggaard had kept them because they might be important at some point, but maybe not.

After listening to a few minutes of chit-chat in the background, Carl heard a click and then Kurt Hansen’s distinctive voice.

“What can I do for you, Carl?” asked the MP, not bothering with any introductory remarks.

“How can I find out when Tage Baggesen proposed legislation for a tax reform?”

“Why the hell would you want to know that, Carl?” He laughed. “Nothing could be less interesting than what the Radical Center thinks about taxes.”

“I need to establish a specific time.”

“Well, that’s going to be difficult. Baggesen presents legislative proposals every other second.” He laughed again. “OK, joking aside. Baggesen has been the traffic policy chairman for at least five years. I don’t know why he withdrew from the tax chairmanship. Wait just a minute.” Hansen placed his hand over the phone as he mumbled something to someone in his office.

“We think it was in early 2001 under the old government. Back then he had more opportunity for that sort of shenanigan. Our guess is March or April 2001.”

Carl nodded with satisfaction. “OK, Kurt. That fits in with what I thought. Thanks. You couldn’t transfer me to Tage Baggesen, could you?”

He heard a few beeps on the line before he was connected with a secretary who told him that Baggesen was out of the country on a fact-finding trip to Hungary, Switzerland, and Germany to take a look at tram networks. He’d be back on Monday.

Fact-finding trip? Tram networks? They had to be kidding. A holiday was what Carl would call it. Pure and simple.

“I need his mobile number. Would you be so kind as to tell me what it is?”

“I don’t think I’m allowed to do that.”

“Now listen here, you’re not talking to some farmer from Funen. I can find out that number in a matter of minutes, if I have to. But don’t you think Tage Baggesen would be sorry to hear that your office refused to assist me?”

* * *

There was a lot of crackling on the line, but it was still possible to hear that Baggesen’s voice sounded anything but enthusiastic.

“I’ve got some old messages here, and I just need to have an explanation from you,” Carl said, his tone mild. He’d already seen how the guy could react. “It’s nothing special; just a formality.”

“Go ahead.” The sharp tone of voice was clearly trying to distance itself from their conversation three days ago.

Carl read the messages, one after the other. By the time he got to the last one, Baggesen seemed to have stopped breathing on the other end of the line.

“Baggesen?” Carl said. “Are you still there?”

And then he heard only a beeping on the phone.

I hope he doesn’t throw himself into the river now, thought Carl, trying to remember which one ran through Budapest. He took down the piece of paper with the list of suspects and added Tage Baggesen’s initials to item number four: “‘Colleagues’ at Christiansborg.”

He had just put down the phone when it began to ring.

“Beate Lunderskov,” said a woman’s voice. Carl had no idea who she was.

“We’ve examined Merete Lynggaard’s old hard drive, and I’m sorry to say that it has been very efficiently wiped clean.”

Now it dawned on Carl who she was. One of the women from the Democrats’ office.

“But I thought you kept hard drives because you wanted to save the information on them.”

“That’s true, but apparently nobody informed Merete’s secretary, Sos Norup.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she’s the one who erased it, according to the note printed very neatly on the back. It says: “Formatted on March 20, 2002, Sos Norup.’ I’m holding it in my hand.”

“But that was almost three weeks after Merete disappeared.”

“Yes, so it would appear.”

Damn Borge Bak and his gang. Had they done anything in this investigation by the book?

“Couldn’t we send it in for closer analysis? There must be people who can retrieve erased data that’s been buried deep,” said Carl.

“I think that’s already been done. Just a minute.” He could hear her rummaging around, and then she was back, a note of satisfaction in her voice. “Yes, here’s the report. They tried to reconstitute the data at the Down Under shop on Store Kongensgade in early April 2002. There’s a detailed explanation as to why they weren’t successful. Do you want me to read it to you?”

“That’s not necessary,” he replied. “Sos Norup apparently knew how to make a proper job of it.”

“Apparently. She was a very meticulous sort of person.”

Carl thanked her and hung up.

He sat there staring for a moment before he lit a cigarette. Then he picked up Merete Lynggaard’s worn diary from the desk and opened it with a feeling that bordered on reverence. That was the way he always felt when he had the chance to examine a lifeline to the last days of a murder victim.

Like the notes he’d already seen, the handwriting in the diary was almost illegible and showed signs of great haste. Capital letters written down in a hurry. Ns and Gs that weren’t closed up; words that ran into each other. He started with the meeting with the placenta special-interest group on Wednesday, February 20, 2002. Farther down on the page it said: “Cafe Bankerat 6:30 p.m.” That was all.

On the following days there was hardly a line that wasn’t filled in; quite a hectic schedule, he could see, but no remarks of a personal nature.

As he approached Merete’s last day at work, a feeling of desperation began settling over him. There was absolutely nothing that might give him any leads. Then he turned to the last page. Friday, March 1, 2002. Two committee meetings and another with lobbyists. That was all. Everything else had been lost to the past.

He pushed the book away and looked down at the empty briefcase. Had it really spent five years behind the furnace for no good reason? Then he picked up the diary again and leafed through the rest of the pages. Like most people, Merete Lynggaard had used only the calendar and the phone list in the back.

He began running through the phone numbers from the beginning. He could have skipped to D or H, but he wanted to keep his disappointment at bay. Under A, B, and C he recognized ninety percent of the names. There was little similarity with his own phone book, which was dominated by names like Jesper and Vigga and a sea of people who lived in Ronneholt Park. It was easy to conclude that Merete hadn’t had many personal friends. In fact, none at all. A beautiful woman with a brain-damaged brother and a hell of a lot of work — and that was it. He reached the letter D, knowing that he wouldn’t find Daniel Hale’s phone number there. Merete didn’t list her contacts by their first names, the way Vigga did; different strokes for different folks. Who the hell would look up Sweden’s prime minister under G for Goran? Besides Vigga, that is.

And then he saw it. The moment he turned the page to H, he knew that the whole