measly hundred thousand kroner, and the board said no, even though they knew who she was and what had happened to her. So she had to spend several more years in institutions. Now do you understand why she hates you so much, you spoiled bitch?” The psychopath had started to cry. “A fucking hundred thousand kroner. What difference would that have made to you and your brother? None whatsoever!”
She could tell him that she knew nothing about this, but it didn’t matter. She’d already paid her debt to him. Long ago.
That very evening Lasse and his brother set up cameras and turned on the floodlights. Two blindingly bright objects that turned night into day and revealed the overwhelming squalor of her prison; once again she had a full view of the room in all its filthy detail. It was so terrible to be confronted with her own degradation that she chose to keep her eyes closed for the first twenty-four hours. The place of execution may have been put on display, but the condemned chose darkness.
Later they stretched wires across both mirrored panes to a pair of detonators, which could break the glass in a so-called emergency. Finally, right outside, they rolled into position cylinders containing compressed oxygen and hydrogen, as well as “flammable liquids,” as they called it.
Lasse informed her that everything was ready. After her body had exploded, they would run her through their composter, and then they’d blow up the whole fucking place. The explosion would be audible for miles. This time the insurance company would have to pay. Unforeseen accidents such as this had to be prepared meticulously, and all evidence permanently obliterated.
“Believe me, that’s not going to happen,” she said to herself, planning her revenge.
After a couple of days she sat down with her back to the windows and began digging in the concrete with the tongs. In a few more days she’d be finished, and the tongs surely would be too. Then she’d have to use the plastic toothpicks to puncture her arteries, but that didn’t matter. It could be done, and that was enough.
The digging took her more than a few days. It was more like a week, but by then the grooves were deep enough to withstand almost anything. She’d covered them with dust and dirt from the corners of the room. One letter after another. Once the fire experts from the insurance company came to inspect the scene to find out what had caused the blaze, she was certain that at least a few of the words would be discovered, and then they’d probably be able to figure out the rest of the message. It said: Lasse, the owner of this building, murdered his foster father and Daniel Hale and one of his friends, and after that he murdered me.Take good care of my brother, Uffe, and tell him that his sister thought about him every single day for more than five years.Merete Lynggaard, February 13, 2007, kidnapped and imprisoned in this godforsaken place since March 2, 2002.
35. 2007
What As sad had come across was a name mentioned in the police report from the deadly accident on Christmas Eve 1986, when Merete Lynggaard’s parents died. The report listed three individuals who were killed in the other vehicle: a newborn baby, a girl who was only eight, and the driver of the car, Henrik Jensen, who was an engineer and the founder of a company called Jensen Industries. After that the report became less specific, as indicated by a row of question marks in the margin. According to a handwritten note, the firm was supposedly “a flourishing enterprise that produced airtight steel containment linings.” There was another brief remark underneath. It said: “a source of pride for Danish industry,” and was apparently also a statement by a witness.
Assad had remembered correctly. Henrik Jensen was the name of the driver killed in the other car. And it was true that name was exceedingly similar to Lars Henrik Jensen. No one could claim that Assad was stupid.
“Take out the tabloids again, Assad,” said Carl. “Maybe they published the names of the survivors. It wouldn’t surprise me if the boy in the other car was Lars Henrik, named after his father. Do you see his name anywhere?” Carl suddenly regretted making Assad do all the work, so he stretched out his hand. “Give me a few of the tabloid articles. And a couple of those over there,” he said, pointing at clippings from the morning papers.
There were horrifying photos from the accident. They were displayed in a lurid context, side by side with pictures of inconsequential people, greedy for fame. The sea of flames surrounding the Ford Sierra had consumed everything, as the photo of the charred wreck documented. It was a real miracle that a couple of medics happened to be driving past and were able to pull the passengers out before the cars burned. According to the police report, the fire department hadn’t been able to reach the scene as quickly as normal. The slippery road had simply been too dangerous.
“Here it says then that the mother was named Ulla Jensen, and both her legs were crushed,” said Assad. “I can’t tell you the name of the boy. It doesn’t say. They just call him the ‘couple’s eldest child.’ But here they write that he was fourteen years old.”
“That fits with the year Lars Henrik Jensen was born, if we can rely at all on that manipulated Civil Registry number from Godhavn,” said Carl. He was studying a couple of clippings from the noon editions of the newspapers.
There was nothing in the first one. The story was printed next to some unimportant reports about political squabbles and minor scandals. The trademark of this newspaper was to follow specific guidelines for what was guaranteed to sell, no matter what it might be. This was apparently an enduring precept because if Carl exchanged this five-year-old issue with one from yesterday, he’d be hard-pressed to know which was more recent.
He was cursing the media and leafing through the next newspaper, when he turned the page and saw the name. It practically jumped out at him. Just what he’d been hoping for.
“Here it is, Assad!” shouted Carl, his eyes nailed to the page. At that moment he felt like a hawk that had spotted its prey from the treetops and then dove in for the kill. A fabulous find. The pressure in Carl’s chest vanished, and an odd feeling of relief passed through his body.
“Listen to this, Assad. ‘The survivors in the vehicle that was torpedoed by wholesaler Alexander Lynggaard’s car were Henrik Jensen’s wife, Ulla Jensen, age forty, one of her newborn twins, and their eldest child, Lars Henrik Jensen, age fourteen.’”
Assad put down the clipping he was holding. His dark brown eyes were squeezed almost shut by a huge smile.
“Hand me the police report from the accident, Assad.” Carl wanted to see whether the CR numbers of those involved might be listed. He ran his finger down the report but found only the numbers for the two drivers, Merete’s father and Lars Henrik’s father.
“If you have the father’s CR number, can you just also find the son’s number fast, Carl? Then we can maybe compare it to the one we got on the boy from Godhavn.”
Carl nodded. That should be easy enough. “I’ll check and see what I can find out about Henrik Jensen, Assad,” he said. “In the meantime, go and ask Lis to check up on the CR numbers. Tell her that we’re looking for an address for Lars Henrik Jensen. If he doesn’t have a place of residence in Denmark, ask her to find out where the mother lives. And if Lis does find his CR number, get her to print out all his addresses since the accident. Take the folder with you, Assad. And hurry.”
Carl got on the Internet and searched for “Jensen Industries,” but came up empty. Then he searched for “airtight steel containment linings for nuclear reactors,” which resulted in a list of various companies, especially in France and Germany. Then he tried the words “lining for containments,” which, as far as he knew, covered more or less the same terminology as “airtight steel containment linings for nuclear reactors.” That didn’t get him anywhere either.
He was about to give up when he found a PDF file that mentioned a company in Koge, and there he saw the sentence “a source of pride for Danish industry”—exactly the same wording as had been included in the police accident report. So this must have been where that quote came from. He sent a silent thank-you to the traffic cop who had dug a little deeper into the material than was normally required. Carl bet the man had eventually ended up working as a detective.
That was as much as he could find out about Jensen Industries. Maybe he had the name wrong. He put in a
