call to the Registry of Companies and learned that no firms were listed under any Henrik Jensen with that particular CR number. Maybe the company was owned by foreigners, maybe it was registered under another name by a different group of owners, or it could be part of a holding company and registered under the holding company’s name.
Carl took out his ballpoint pen and crossed off the company name on his notepad. As things now stood, Jensen Industries was nothing more than a blank spot in the high-tech landscape.
He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise up to the network of pipes on the ceiling. One day the smoke alarms out in the corridor were going to catch a whiff and set off an infernal racket that would send all the employees in the building out on the street in infernal disarray. He smiled and took an extra-deep drag before blowing a thick cloud toward the door. It would put a stop to his little illegal pastime, but it would almost be worth it just to see Bak and Bjorn and Jacobsen standing outside looking up with anxious annoyance at the windows of their offices, with their hundreds of yards of shelf space filled with archived atrocities.
Then he recalled what John Rasmussen from Godhavn had said — that the father of Atomos, aka Lars Henrik Jensen, might have had something to do with the nuclear research facility at Riso.
Carl looked up the phone number. It might be a dead end, but if there was anyone who knew something about airtight steel containment linings for nuclear reactors, it would be the people at Riso.
The person on duty was very helpful and transferred him to an engineer named Mathiasen, who in turn transferred him to a man named Stein who again passed him on to a Jonassen. Each engineer sounded older than the previous one. Jonassen introduced himself simply as Mikkel, and he was busy, but OK, he was willing to spend five minutes helping the police. What was it Carl wished to know?
He sounded particularly smug when he heard Carl’s question. “You want to know whether I’ve ever heard of a company that made linings for containments here in Denmark in the mid-eighties?” he said. “Yes, of course. HJ Industries was probably one of the world leaders.”
“HJ Industries” the man had said. Carl could have kicked himself. HJ for Henrik Jensen. H-J I-n-d-u-s-t-r-i-e-s. What else?! It was that simple. You’d think the staff over at the Registry of Companies could have suggested something like that when he phoned, for Pete’s sake.
“Henrik Jensen’s company was actually called Trabeka Holding. Don’t ask me why. But the name HJI is still known the world over. Their standards remain the industry’s benchmark. It was a sad thing that Henrik Jensen died so suddenly, and that the company was forced to close soon afterward. But the twenty-five employees couldn’t keep going without his leadership, nor could the company continue to exist without his high demands for quality. Besides, it had just undergone big changes, moving to a different location and expanding, so it was very unfortunate that he died right then. Major assets and expertise were lost. If you ask me, the business could have been saved if Riso had intervened, but back then management lacked the political support to do that.”
“Can you tell me where HJI was located?”
“Yes, the factory was in Koge for a long time. I made several visits there myself. But right before the accident it was moved to a site just south of Copenhagen. I’m not sure exactly where. I can try to find my old phone book; it’s here somewhere. Can you hold on for a minute?”
It took a good five minutes while Carl listened to the man rummaging around in the background as he used his doubtlessly vast intellect to plumb the most vulgar depths of the Danish language. He sounded as if he were really pissed off at himself. Carl had seldom heard anything like it.
“No, I’m sorry,” said Jonassen after he’d finished cursing. “I can’t find it, even though I never throw anything out. Typical. But talk to Ulla Jensen, his widow. I assume she’s still alive; she can’t be very old. She should be able to tell you everything you want to know. A truly fine woman. Too bad she had to suffer so much.”
Carl decided to meet him halfway. “Yes, it’s too bad,” he said, ready to ask one last question.
But the engineer was just getting started. “It was really brilliant, what they were doing at HJI. Just consider the welding techniques. The welds were practically invisible, even if you X-rayed them using the absolutely most advanced equipment. But they also had all sorts of techniques for finding leaks. For instance, they had a pressure chamber that could go up to sixty atmospheres to test the durability of their products. Probably the biggest pressure chamber I’ve ever seen. With incredibly high-tech control systems. If the containment linings could withstand that much pressure, you knew the nuclear energy reactors were getting first-class equipment. That was HJI. Always top-notch.”
The man was so enthusiastic, it almost sounded as if he’d had stock in the business.
“You don’t happen to know where Ulla Jensen is living today, do you?” Carl interjected.
“Nope, but I’m sure you can find out by checking the Civil Registry. I assume she still lives on the company site. They couldn’t throw her out, as far as I know.”
“Somewhere south of Copenhagen, you said?”
“Yes, exactly.”
How on earth could he say “exactly” about a location as imprecise as “south of Copenhagen”?
“If you’re particularly interested in this sort of thing, I’d be happy to invite you down here to visit,” said the man.
Carl thanked him but declined the offer, citing that he was very pressed for time. In reality, he’d always wanted to flatten Riso with a thousand-ton steamroller and sell the scraps to some one-horse town in Siberia as road paving. So when it came to an invitation to take a tour of such an enterprise, it would be a shame to waste his time, since Jonassen had already remarked that he was a busy man.
By the time Carl put down the phone, Assad had been standing in the doorway for several minutes.
“What is it, Assad?” he asked. “Did we get what we needed? Did they check the CR numbers?”
Assad shook his head. “I think myself that you need to go upstairs and talk to them, Carl. They’re totally. .” he twirled his finger around beside his temple “. . up in their heads today.”
Carl approached Lis with caution, moving along the wall like a tomcat in rut. Sure enough, she was looking very frazzled. Her short hair, normally so cheerfully tousled, was now plastered down so it looked like a motorbike helmet. Standing behind her, Mrs. Sorensen flashed Carl a fierce look, and he could hear people shouting at each other in the offices. It was really pitiful.
“What’s going on?” he asked Lis when he finally caught her eye.
“I don’t know. When we try to log on to government databases, we’re denied entry. It’s as if all the passwords have been changed.”
“But the Internet is working fine.”
“Yes, but try to log on to the CR files or the tax authority, and you’ll see what I mean.”
“You’re going to have to wait, just like everybody else,” gloated Mrs. Sorensen in her flat-sounding voice.
He stood there for a moment, trying to figure out another way to get the information, but gave up when he saw Lis’s screen display one error message after another.
He shrugged. What the hell. It wasn’t really urgent, anyway. A man like him knew how to turn a force majeure to his advantage. If the electronics had decided to shut down, then it must be a sign that he should station himself in the basement and hold a profound dialogue with the coffee cups for an hour or two, his feet propped up on his desk.
“Hi, Carl,” he heard someone say behind him. It was Marcus Jacobsen, wearing a dazzling white shirt and neatly pressed tie. “I’m glad you’re up here. Could you come to the cafeteria for a second?” Carl could tell it wasn’t a question. “Bak’s giving a briefing, and I think you’ll have a certain interest in what he has to say.”
There must have been at least fifteen people in the cafeteria, with Carl standing at the very back, and the homicide chief off to one side. Up front, with the windows behind them, stood a couple of narcotics officers, Vice- Superintendent Lars Bjorn, and Borge Bak and his second-incommand. Bak’s colleagues all looked extremely pleased.
Lars Bjorn turned over the floor to Bak, and everyone knew what he was going to say.
“This morning we made an arrest in the cyclist murder case. At this very moment the accused is consulting with his lawyer, and we’re convinced that a written confession will be made available before the end of the day.”
He smiled and patted his comb-over. The morning was all his. “The key witness, Annelise Kvist, provided us
