lifestyle experts. New speculation about her sexual preferences made otherwise decent journalists follow in the wake of the tabloid press. And more than anything else the discovery that she had a brother provided plenty of fodder for the sleazy reporters.
Many of Merete’s closest colleagues jabbered nonsense about how they had imagined something of the kind. That there was something in her private life she’d wanted to hide. Of course they couldn’t have known that it would be a handicapped brother, but it had to be something like that.
Old photos of the car accident that had killed Merete’s parents and handicapped Uffe appeared on the front page of the morning tabloids when interest in the case began to ebb. Nothing was off-limits. She’d been good material when alive, and she was just as good when she was dead. The hosts on the morning TV programs had a hard time concealing their glee. The war in Bosnia, a prince consort who lost his temper, a suburban mayor’s excessive consumption of red wine, a drowned member of parliament-all the same shit. So long as there were some good photographs to be had.
They printed big pictures of the double bed in Merete Lynggaard’s house. It was impossible to know where they’d come from, but the headlines were cruel. Did the brother and sister have a sexual relationship? Was that the reason for her death? Why was there only one big bed in that huge house? Everybody in the whole country was supposed to think it was odd.
When they couldn’t make any more hay out of that topic, the reporters threw themselves into speculations about why Uffe had been released. Was it because heavy-handed police methods had been used? Was it a miscarriage of justice? Or had the brother gotten off easy? Was it more a matter of the naivete of the judicial system and inadequate handling of the case? There were a few more peeps in the media about Uffe being committed to Egely. After that, news about the case finally petered out. The slow news season in the summer of 2002 turned its focus on the weather and the birth of a Danish prince and the World Cup.
Oh yes, the Danish press knew all about what the average reader was interested in. Merete Lynggaard was old news.
And after six months the police investigation, to all intents and purposes, was shut down. There were plenty of other cases.
Carl took out two pieces of paper and with a ballpoint pen he wrote on one of them:
SUSPECTS:
1. Uffe
2. Unknown postman-the letter about Berlin
3. The man/woman from Cafe Bankerat
4. “Colleagues” at Christiansborg
5. Murder resulting from a robbery-how much money in her purse?
6. Sexual assault
On the second piece of paper he wrote:
CHECK:
The caseworker in Stevns
The telegram
The secretaries at Christiansborg
Witnesses on the ferry
After staring at what he’d written for a moment, he added to the bottom of the second page:
The foster family after the accident-old classmates at the university. Did she have a tendency to get depressed? Was she pregnant? In love?
As Carl was closing up the case file, he got a call from upstairs saying that Marcus Jacobsen wanted to see him in the conference room.
He nodded to Assad as he went past his assistant’s little office. The guy was glued to his phone, looking serious and as if he were concentrating hard. Not the way he usually appeared when he stood in the doorway wearing his green rubber gloves. He was almost like a different person.
They were all there, everyone who was involved in the investigation of the murdered cyclist. Marcus Jacobsen pointed to the seat that Carl was supposed to take at the conference table, and then Bak began.
“Our witness, Annelise Kvist, has at long last asked for witness protection. We now know that she received threats that her children would be flayed alive if she didn’t keep quiet about what she saw. She has been withholding information the whole time, and yet in her own way she has been cooperative. All along she has given us hints so that we could move forward with the case, but she has also withheld crucial information. Then came the serious threats, and after that she shut down completely.
“Let me summarize: The victim’s throat was cut in Valby Park at approximately ten o’clock in the evening. It was dark and cold, and the park was deserted. Even so, Annelise Kvist saw the perpetrator talking to the victim only a few minutes before the murder occurred. That gives us reason to believe it was not premeditated. If it had been, the arrival of Annelise Kvist would presumably have thwarted the whole course of events.”
“Why was Annelise Kvist walking through the park? Why wasn’t she riding her bicycle? Where was she coming from?” asked one of the new team members. He didn’t know that he was supposed to wait until afterward to ask questions if Bak was running the meeting.
Bak replied with an annoyed look. “She’d been visiting a woman friend, and her bicycle had a flat tire. That’s why she was pushing it through the park. We know that it must have been the perpetrator she saw because there were only two sets of footprints around the crime scene. We put great effort into investigating Annelise Kvist to find any weak points in her background. Anything that might explain her behavior when we began questioning her. We now know that she was once part of a biker gang, but we’re also relatively sure that we’re not going to find the killer in that environment.
“The victim was the brother of Carlo Brandt, one of the most active bikers in the Valby area, and was absolutely in ‘good standing,’ even though he did sell drugs once in a while on his own. We now also know from this Carlo Brandt that the victim was a friend of Annelise Kvist, and at some point they were apparently on intimate terms. We’re looking into that now. At any rate, we’ve reached the conclusion that there is every indication she knew both the murderer and the victim.
“As for what frightened the witness, her mother admitted to us that Annelise has previously been subjected to physical violence. Granted it was on a milder scale, involving being punched and threatened and the like, but it had a profound effect on Annelise. The mother thinks that her daughter has only herself to blame for all of this because she spends a lot of time in bars and isn’t very particular about who she brings home. But as far as we can tell, Annelise’s sexual and social habits aren’t much different from those of most other young women.
“The discovery of the ear in Annelise’s toilet tells us that the killer knows who she is and where she lives, but as I’ve mentioned, we haven’t yet been able to convince her to tell us the name of the murderer.
“The children have now been sent to stay with family members south of Copenhagen, and that has softened up Annelise a bit. There is no longer any doubt that she was under the influence of drugs at the time when she ostensibly tried to commit suicide. According to the tests, a stew of various euphoriants in pill form were found in her stomach.”
Carl had kept his eyes closed during most of the session. The mere sight of Bak standing there and thrashing through things in that roundabout and tedious manner of his was enough to make his blood boil. He simply didn’t feel like looking at the man. And why should he? None of this had anything to do with him. His place was downstairs in the basement; that was what he needed to keep in mind. The homicide chief had summoned him up here to give him a pat on the back because he’d pushed the investigation a step further. That was all. He would spare them any opinions he might have in the future.
“We haven’t found the pill bottle, so it’s possible the pills were provided in loose weight, presumably by the same perpetrator, and forced down her throat,” said Bak.
So he’d figured that much out, at least.
“All indications are that we’re talking about a failed murder attempt. The threats to kill her children made the witness stop talking,” Bak went on.
