“And she was here not long before she died. Were you the owner back then?”
He shook his head. “I took over the business from one of my friends on March 1, 2002. But I do remember that the police asked him if anyone here recalled who she’d had dinner with. But nobody did.” He smiled. “Maybe I would have remembered if I’d been here.”
Carl smiled back. Yes, maybe. The owner seemed on the ball. “You came on the scene a month too late. That’s how it goes sometimes,” said Carl, shaking the man’s hand.
In the meantime Vigga had signed all the papers. She’d always been generous with her signature.
“Let me just have a look at everything,” Carl said, taking the papers away from Hugin.
He made a show of placing them on the table in front of him. The standard contract was filled with words too small to read, and his eyes instantly glazed over. All those people out there who are totally oblivious to what could happen to them, he thought. Merete Lynggaard had sat here in this restaurant, enjoying herself as she looked out of the window on a cold February evening in 2002.
Had she expected something else out of life? Or was it really possible that even then she suspected that in a few days’ time she’d be slipping away in the raw, cold waters of the Baltic?
When he got back to the office, his assistant was still fully occupied with the secretaries upstairs, and that suited Carl just fine. The emotional upset of meeting Vigga and her wandering ghost had sapped him of all energy. Only a quick little nap with his feet propped up on the desk and his thoughts buried in dreamland could put him back in the game.
He’d probably been sitting like that for only ten minutes when his meditative state was interrupted by the sensation that all police detectives know only too well-what women call intuition. It was the turmoil of experience bubbling up in his subconscious. The feeling that a number of concrete events would inevitably lead to a specific result.
He opened his eyes and looked at the notes that he’d put up on the whiteboard.
Then he got up and crossed out “The caseworker in Stevns” on the piece of paper. Under the word “Check” it now said: “The telegram-The secretaries at Christiansborg-Witnesses on the ferry
Perhaps Merete Lynggaard’s secretary had something to do with that telegram. Who had actually accepted delivery of the valentine telegram at Christiansborg? Why had he immediately assumed that it had to be Merete Lynggaard herself? At that time there was hardly any other MP who was as busy as she was. So it was only logical that at some point the telegram had to have passed through the hands of her secretary. Not that he suspected the secretary of the vice-chair of a group to be sticking her nose in her boss’s personal affairs. But wasn’t it possible?
It was this possibility that was bothering him.
“So now we have the answer from TelegramsOnline, Carl,” said Assad from the doorway.
Carl looked up.
“They could not tell me what the telegram said, but they had a record of who sent it. It was some funny name.” He looked at his notes. “Tage Baggesen. I got the phone number that he used to order the telegram. They said it came from inside the Folketing. That was all I wanted to say then.” He handed the note to Carl and had already turned to leave. “We are investigating the car accident now. They are waiting for me upstairs.”
Carl nodded. Then he picked up the phone and punched in the number to the parliament.
The voice that answered belonged to a secretary in the office of the Radical Center Party.
She was friendly enough, but was sorry to inform Carl that Tage Baggesen was in the Faroe Islands for the weekend. Would he like to leave a message?
“No, that’s OK,” said Carl. “I’ll contact him on Monday.”
“I have to tell you that Mr. Baggesen will be very busy on Monday. Just so you know.”
Then Carl asked to be transferred to the office of the Democrats.
This time the secretary who answered the phone sounded worn out, and she didn’t know the answer to his question offhand. But wasn’t there a Sos Norup who used to be Merete Lynggaard’s secretary?
Carl confirmed that she was right.
No one really remembered much about Sos, because she’d been there for only a very short time. But one of the other secretaries in the office said that she thought Sos Norup had come from DJOF, the Federation of Jurists and Economists, and had gone back there instead of staying on to work for Merete Lynggaard’s successor. “She was a bitch,” Carl suddenly heard somebody say in the background, and that apparently refreshed everyone’s memory.
Yes, thought Carl with satisfaction. It’s the good, stable arseholes like us who are remembered best.
Then he phoned DJOF, and found out that yes, they all knew Sos Norup. But no, she hadn’t come back to work for them. She had apparently vanished into thin air.
He put down the phone and shook his head. All of a sudden his job had developed into
Carl found them in one of the smaller offices with faxes and photocopies and all sorts of scraps of paper spread out on the table in front of them. It looked as if Assad had set up a campaign office in a presidential election. Three secretaries sat there chattering with each other as Assad served tea and nodded diligently every time the conversation moved a small step forward. An impressive effort.
Carl knocked discreetly on the doorframe.
“So, it looks like you’ve found a whole lot of lovely documentation for us.” He pointed at the papers, feeling like the Invisible Man. Only Mrs. Sorensen even bothered to glance at him, and that was something he could have done without.
He retreated to the hallway, and for the first time since his schooldays was filled with jealousy.
“Carl Morck?” said a voice behind him, tearing him free of the tight grip of defeat and bringing him back on track to victory. “Marcus Jacobsen says that you want to talk to me. Should we set up an appointment?”
He turned around and found himself looking right into the eyes of Mona Ibsen. Set up an appointment?
Hell yes.
22
When they turned off the light and raised the air pressure on her thirty-third birthday, Merete slept for a whole day and night. The recognition that everything was beyond her control and that she was apparently on the brink of despair knocked her out completely. Only the next day, when the food bucket once again appeared with a clatter in the hatch, did she open her eyes and try to reorient herself.
She looked up at the portholes, noticing that the hint of a glow was visible. That meant a light was on in the room next door. It produced as much light as a match, but it was there. She got on to her knees and tried to locate the source, but couldn’t make out anything behind the panes. Then she turned around and surveyed the space. There was no doubt that there was now enough light in the room that in a matter of days she’d be able to distinguish all its details.
For a moment this made her happy, but then she reminded herself that no matter how weak the light was, it could also be turned off.
She was not the one who had control of the switch.
When she made a move to stand up, her hand bumped against the little metal tube lying on the floor next to
