The man seemed pleasant enough, if a bit long-winded. Not at all the type that delinquent boys would have the patience to put up with, in Carl’s opinion. But there were probably still a few things that Carl didn’t know about delinquent boys.
“I’ll fax you what we have about him up at the home; I’ve already arranged with the office staff that it would be OK. But I have to tell you that there isn’t much. Atomos’s case file disappeared a few years ago, and when we finally found it behind a bookshelf, at least half of the documents were missing.” He shook his head, making the loose skin under his chin wobble.
“Why did he end up in your institution?”
Rasmussen shrugged. “Problems on the home front, you know. And he’d been placed with a foster family that probably wasn’t the best choice. Which can provoke a reaction, and sometimes things go too far. He was apparently a good kid, but he wasn’t given enough challenges and he was too smart. And that makes for an ugly combination. You see kids like that everywhere in the ghettos where the foreign workers live. They’re practically exploding with untapped energy, those young people.”
“Was he mixed up in any sort of criminal activity?”
“I suppose he was, in a sense, but I think it was only minor stuff. I mean, OK, he had a fierce temper, but I don’t remember him being at Godhavn because of anything violent. No, I don’t recall anything like that, but it was twenty years ago, after all.”
Carl pulled his notepad closer. “I’m going to ask you a few quick questions, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your answers brief. If you can’t answer a question, we’ll just move on. You can always go back to it, if you think of an answer later. OK?”
The man gave a friendly nod to Assad, who offered him one of his viscous, burning-hot substances in a dainty little cup decorated with gold flowers. Rasmussen accepted the cup with a smile. He was going to regret it.
Then he turned to look at Carl. “OK,” he said. “I understand.”
“What’s the boy’s real name?”
“I think it was Lars Erik or Lars Henrik, or something like that. He had a very common last name. I think it was Petersen, but I’ll tell you in my fax.”
“Why was he called Atomos?”
“It was a nickname his father had given him. Apparently he really looked up to his father, who’d died a few years earlier. I think his father was an engineer and had something to do with the nuclear research station at Riso, or someplace like that. But I’m sure you can find out more details when you have the boy’s name and CR number.”
“Do you still have his CR number?”
“Yes. It disappeared with the other documents from his file, but we had a bookkeeping system that was linked to funding from the municipalities and the national government, so the number has been restored to his file.”
“How long was he in your institution?”
“I think he was there about three or four years.”
“That was a long time, considering his age, wasn’t it?”
“Yes and no. That’s how it goes sometimes. It wasn’t possible to find another place for him in the system. He refused to live with a new foster family, and his own family wasn’t able to look after him until then.”
“Have you heard from him since? Do you know what happened to him?”
“I happened to see him, just by chance, some years later, and he seemed to be doing fine. I think it was in Helsingor. He was apparently working as a steward or a first mate, or something like that. He was wearing a uniform, at any rate.”
“You mean, he was a seaman?”
“Yes, I think so. Something along that line.”
I have to get hold of the crew list for the
“Just a minute,” he said to Rasmussen, and then told Assad to go upstairs and find Bak. He needed to ask him whether they’d ever received a list of personnel on the ferry that Merete Lynggaard had taken. And if so, where was it now?
“Merete Lynggaard? Is this about her?” asked the man, his eyes sparkling like Christmas lights. He took a big gulp of the syrupy tea.
Carl gave him a smile that radiated how incredibly pleased he was to be asked that question. Then he went back to his own questions, without replying.
“Did the boy have psychotic tendencies? Do you remember if he was able to show empathy?”
The teacher looked at his empty cup as if he were still thirsty. Apparently he was one of those people whose taste buds had been tempered back in the macrobiotic days. Then he raised his gray eyebrows. “A lot of the boys who come to us are emotionally abnormal. Of course some of them are given a medical diagnosis, but I don’t remember that happening with Atomos. I do think he was able to show empathy. At least he worried about his mother a lot.”
“Was there any reason for that? Was she a drug addict or something?”
“No, not at all. But I seem to recall that she was quite ill. That was why it took so long before his family could take him back.”
The tour of police headquarters was brief. John Rasmussen turned out to be an insatiable observer, and he commented on everything he saw. If it had been up to him, he would have examined every square foot of the buildings. No detail was too insignificant for Rasmussen, so Carl pretended he had a pager in his pocket that was beeping. “Oh, sorry, I just received the signal that there’s been another murder,” he told the man with a solemn look that the teacher immediately adopted. “I’m afraid I’ll have to say good-bye now. Thanks for your help, Mr. Rasmussen. And I’ll count on receiving a fax from you within an hour or two. All right?”
Silence had settled over Carl’s domain. On his desk in front of him was a message from Bak saying that he knew nothing about any ferry-boat personnel list. Why the hell had Carl expected anything else?
He could hear the murmur of prayers coming from the corner of Assad’s cubbyhole where the rug was positioned, but otherwise no other sound. Carl felt tossed by the storm and swept by the wind. The phone had been ringing off the hook for over an hour because of the fucking tabloid article. Everyone had called, from the police commissioner, who wanted to give him a word of advice, to local radio stations, website editors, magazine journalists, and all sorts of other vermin that crawled about on the fringes of the media world. Apparently Mrs. Sorensen upstairs was finding it amusing to transfer all the calls to Carl, so now he’d switched the phone to silent and activated the caller-ID function, which displayed the number of the incoming call. The problem was that he’d never been good at remembering numbers. But at least for now he didn’t have to put up with anyone else accosting him.
The fax from the Godhavn teacher was the first thing that managed to haul Carl out of his self-imposed torpor.
As expected, Rasmussen was a polite man, and he took the opportunity to offer his thanks and praise to Carl for taking the time to show him around headquarters. The other pages were the promised documents, and in spite of their brevity, they were a gold mine.
The real name of the boy called Atomos was Lars Henrik Jensen. His CR number was 020172-0619, so he was born in 1972. Today he would be thirty-five, which meant that he and Merete Lynggaard were approximately the same age.
Lars Henrik Jensen — what an insanely ordinary name, thought Carl wearily. Why the hell hadn’t Bak or one of those other clowns on the original investigative team been smart enough to print out the crew list from the
He pursed his lips. It would be a huge step forward if it turned out that this guy had worked on the ferry back then, but hopefully that could readily be revealed by making an inquiry to Scandlines. He read over the faxes one more time and then grabbed the phone to call the main Scandlines office.
