breaking, and in front of her the windshield was covered by dark shapes bumping against each other. She couldn’t tell whether it was their car or the other vehicle that made the trees along the edge of the road come toppling down, but by then Uffe’s body had twisted around and he was about to be strangled by the seat belt. Then came a deafening crash, first from the other car, then from theirs. The blood on the upholstery and front windshield was mixed with dirt and snow from the forest floor, and a tree branch pierced the calf of Merete’s leg. A broken tree trunk rammed the bottom of the vehicle and tossed them up in the air for a moment. The crash when they landed with the nose of the car on the road merged with the screeching sound of the Ford Sierra knocking over a tree. Then their car flipped over with a jolt and slid along on its side, into the thickets. Uffe’s arms were sticking up in the air, and his legs were pressed against the back of their mother’s seat, which had been wrenched from the floor. At no time did Merete see her mother or father. She saw only Uffe.
She woke with her heart pounding so hard in her chest that it hurt. She was ice-cold and clammy with sweat.
“Stop it, Merete,” she told herself out loud, taking as deep a breath as she could manage. She put her hand to her chest, as if physically trying to wipe away the memory. Only in her dreams did she see all the details with such terrifying clarity. At the time, she hadn’t been able to take them all in-she’d comprehended only the general situation. The flashes of light, screams, blood, and darkness, followed by more light.
She took another deep breath and looked down. Lying in the bed beside her was Uffe, breathing with a slight whistling sound. His face was calm. Outside, the rain was quietly trickling through the roof gutters.
She reached out her hand and cautiously stroked her brother’s hair as she pressed her lips tight to hold back the sobs trying to force their way out.
Thank God it was ages since she’d last had that dream.
10
“Hello, my name is Assad,” he said. The hairy mitt that he held out toward Carl looked as if it had tried a bit of everything.
Carl didn’t immediately realize where he was or who was talking to him. It hadn’t exactly been a scintillating morning. As a matter of fact, he’d actually fallen sound asleep with his feet propped up on the desk, the Sudoku magazine on his lap, and his chin tucked halfway down in the opening of his shirt. The usually sharp creases on his shirt now resembled an ECG. His legs were half asleep as he took them down from the desk and stared at the short, dark man standing in front of him. There was no question that he was older than Carl, or that he hadn’t been recruited from the same peasant kingdom that Carl called home.
“ Assad. OK,” replied Carl sluggishly. But what the hell did this have to do with him?
“You are Carl Morck, as it says outside on the door. I must want to help you, they say. Please, is that correct?”
Carl squinted a bit, weighing all the possible interpretations of what the man had just said. Help him?
“Yeah, I sure as hell hope so” was Carl’s reply.
He’d brought this all on himself, and now he was a victim of his own poorly thought-out demands. Unfortunately, he hadn’t realized until now that having someone else in the office across the hall would create obligations. On the one hand, the man had to be kept busy; on the other hand, Carl also had to occupy himself, at least to a reasonable degree. No, he hadn’t thought things through. He would no longer be able to drift through the day, now that he had that man staring at him. He’d thought it would make life easier, having an assistant. The man would have plenty to do while Carl kept busy counting off the hours behind his closed eyelids. The floor had to be washed, coffee had to be made, and documents needed to be added to the case files, which then had to be put away. There would be more than enough tasks to occupy him, he’d thought at first. But now, a little more than two hours later, the man was sitting there, staring at him with big eyes, and everything was nice and neat and tidy. Even the bookshelf behind Carl had been filled with reference books, arranged alphabetically, and the spines of all the ring binders had been numbered and were ready for use. In two and a half hours the man had completed all the work, and that was that.
As far as Carl was concerned, he might as well go home now.
“Do you have a driver’s license?” he asked Assad, hoping that Marcus Jacobsen had forgotten to take that detail into account. If so, the whole question of the man’s employment could be taken up for discussion again.
“I drive a taxi and a car and a truck and a T-55 tank and also a T-62 and armored cars and the motorcycles with and without sidecars.”
That was when Carl suggested that for the next couple of hours Assad should sit quietly in his chair and read some of the books on the shelf behind him. He turned around and grabbed the nearest volume, which he handed to his assistant.
“I have read all the newspapers and also the constitutions and everything else.”
“Everything else?” said Carl. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Do you like solving Sudoku puzzles too?” he asked, handing Assad the magazine.
By the afternoon his back was aching from sitting up straight. Assad’s coffee was an alarmingly potent experience, and Carl’s sleep deprivation had now been given a jolt of caffeine. He had the annoying sensation of blood racing through his veins. That was why he had started leafing through the folders. A couple of the cases he already knew inside and out, but most of them were from other police districts, and a couple were from before he joined the criminal investigation department. What all of them had in common was that they’d required a massive number of man-hours and had sparked enormous attention in the media. Several of the cases had involved citizens who were well-known public figures. But all of the cases had been stranded at the stage where the leads had petered out.
If he sorted them into rough categories, there were three types of cases.
The first and largest category included ordinary homicides of all types in which plausible motives were found, but the perpetrator remained unknown.
The next type of case also involved homicides, but of a more complex nature. It was sometimes difficult to pinpoint a motive, and there could be more than one victim. A conviction may have been handed down, but only with regard to accessories to the crime; the ringleaders or primary perpetrators were never identified. The murder itself may have had a certain random quality to it, and in some instances the act could be designated a crime of passion. The solving of these types of cases could sometimes be aided by lucky coincidences. Witnesses who just happened to be passing by; vehicles that were used in the commission of some other crime; information acquired through other unrelated circumstances, and so on. They were cases that could prove difficult for the investigators unless accompanied by a certain amount of luck.
And then there was the third category, which was a hodgepodge of homicides or presumed homicides linked to kidnappings, rapes, arson, robberies with deadly consequences, certain types of financial crimes, and a number of cases with political undertones. They were all cases the police had failed to solve, and in certain instances the very concept of justice had suffered a serious blow. An infant that had vanished from a pram; a resident of a retirement community who was found strangled in his apartment. A factory owner who was discovered murdered in a cemetery in Karup, or the case of the female diplomat at the zoo. Even though Carl hated to admit it, Piv Vestergard’s officiousness did have a certain value, even if it had been prompted by a desire to win votes. Because every one of these cases was bound to incense any cop worth his salt.
He lit another cigarette and glanced at Assad sitting across from him. A calm man, he thought. If Assad could keep himself occupied the way he was doing at the moment, maybe the situation would work out after all.
Carl put the three stacks of case files on the desk in front of him and looked at his watch. Another half hour with his arms crossed and his eyes closed. Then they could both go home.
