“He is thinking about the case, Carl. A fine man. He is a fine man.”
Carl nodded and took a bite. He planned to go and see Hardy tomorrow.
“I have put together all the papers about the car accident on your desk, Carl. If you like I can also talk a little about what I have been reading.”
Carl nodded again. Before he knew it, his assistant would be writing the report before they were even done with the case.
In other parts of Denmark on Christmas Eve in 1986, the temperature was up to six degrees Celsius, but on Sj?lland they weren’t as lucky, and it had cost ten people their lives. Five of them died on a narrow country road that ran through a wooded area in the Tibirke Hills; two of them were the parents of Merete and Uffe Lynggaard.
They had tried to pass a Ford Sierra on a stretch of road where the wind had created a carpet of ice crystals, and that’s where things went terribly wrong. No one was assigned blame, and no lawsuits were filed for damages. It was a simple accident, except that the outcome was anything but simple.
The car they tried to pass ended up in a tree and was still burning when the fire department arrived, while the car belonging to Merete’s parents lay upside down fifty yards farther away. Merete’s mother was thrown through the windshield and landed in the thickets, her neck broken. Her father was not as lucky. It took him ten minutes to die. Half of the engine block had punctured his abdomen and a tree branch had pierced his ribcage. It was assumed that Uffe remained conscious the whole time, because when the firemen cut him out of the car, he watched their efforts with wide-open, frightened eyes. He refused to let go of his sister’s hand, even when they pulled her out on to the road to give her first aid. He never let go, even for a second.
The police report was simple and brief, but the newspaper reports were not. It was too good a story.
In the other car, a little girl and her father died instantly. The circumstances were especially tragic because only the older boy escaped relatively unharmed. The mother was in the last stages of pregnancy, and the family had been on its way to the hospital. While the firemen tried to put out the blaze under the hood of the car, the mother gave birth to twins with her head resting on the body of her dead husband and one leg pinned beneath the car seat. In spite of heroic efforts to cut all of them out of the car in time, one of the babies died, and the newspapers had a guaranteed front-page story for Christmas Day.
Assad showed Carl both the local rags and the national papers, and all of them had picked up on the newsworthiness of the story. The photographs were heart-rending. The car in the tree and the torn-up road; the new mother on her way in the ambulance with a sobbing boy at her side; Merete Lynggaard lying on a stretcher in the middle of the road with an oxygen mask over her face; and Uffe, who was sitting on the thin layer of snow with frightened eyes, firmly gripping the hand of his unconscious sister.
“Here,” said Assad, taking two pages from the
All in all, the photographer who just happened to be in the Tibirke Woods on that particular afternoon had certainly got his money’s worth out of the few hundredths of a second it took to snap those pictures. He was also the one who had photographed the funeral of Merete’s parents-this time in color. Sharp, well-composed press shots of a teenage Merete Lynggaard holding her stunned brother by the hand as the urns were interred in Vestre Cemetery. There were no photographs from the other funeral. It took place in the utmost privacy.
“What the hell is going on down here?” a voice broke in. “Is it your fault that it stinks like Christmas Eve upstairs in our office?”
Sigurd Harms, one of the police sergeants from the second floor, was standing in the doorway. He stared with astonishment at the orgy of colors hanging from the lights.
“Here, Sigurd Fart-Nose,” said Carl, handing him one of the spicy, buttery rolls. “Just wait until Easter. That’s when we burn incense too.”
A message was delivered from upstairs saying that the homicide chief wanted to see Carl in his office before lunch. Jacobsen wore a gloomy and preoccupied expression as he looked up from reading the documents in front of him and invited Carl to have a seat.
Carl was about to apologize for Assad and explain that all that deepfrying wouldn’t happen again in the basement; he had the situation under control. But he never got that far before a pair of new detectives came in and sat down against the wall.
Carl gave them a crooked smile. He didn’t think they were there to arrest him because of a few samosas, or whatever those spicy, doughy things were called.
When Lars Bjorn and Deputy Police Superintendent Terje Ploug, who’d taken over the nail-gun case, entered the room, the homicide chief flipped the case file closed and turned to Carl. “I want you to know that I’ve called you in because two more murders were discovered this morning. The bodies of two young men were found in a car-repair shop outside Soro.”
Soro, thought Carl. What the devil did that have to do with them?
“They were both found with ninety-millimeter nails from a Paslode nail gun in their skulls. I’m sure that reminds you of something, right?”
Carl turned his head to look out of the window, staring at a flock of birds flying over the buildings across the road. He could feel his boss’s eyes fixed on him, but that wasn’t going to do him much good. What had happened in Soro yesterday didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the case out in Amager. Even on TV shows they used nail guns as weapons these days.
“Will you take it from here, Terje?” he heard Marcus Jacobsen say, as if from far off.
“Sure. We’re convinced that it’s the same perpetrators who killed Georg Madsen in the barracks out in Amager.”
Carl turned to face him. “And why is that?”
“Because Georg Madsen was the uncle of one of the victims in Soro.”
Carl turned back to watch the birds again.
“We’ve got a description of one of the individuals who apparently was at the scene when the murders were committed. Police Detective Stoltz and his team in Soro want you to drive down there today to compare your description with theirs.”
“I didn’t see shit. I was unconscious.”
Terje Ploug gave Carl a look that he didn’t care for. He of all people must have studied the report in detail, so why was he playing dumb? Hadn’t Carl insisted that he was unconscious from the moment he was shot in the temple until they put the IV drip in his arm in the hospital? Didn’t they believe him? What possible reason could they have for wanting to speak with him?
“In the report it says that you saw a red-checked shirt before the shots were fired.”
The shirt. Was that all this was about? “So they want me to identify a shirt?” he replied. “Because if that’s what they need, I think they should just e-mail me a photo of it.”
“They’ve got their own reasons, Carl,” Marcus interjected. “It’s in everyone’s interest that you drive down to Soro. Not least your own.”
“I don’t really feel like it.” He glanced at his watch. “Besides, it’s already getting late.”
“You don’t really feel like it? Tell me, Carl, when is it that you have an appointment to see the crisis counselor?”
Carl pursed his lips. Did Marcus really have to announce that to the whole department?
“Tomorrow.”
“Then I think you should drive to Soro today, and you’ll have your reaction to the experience fresh in your mind when you see Mona Ibsen tomorrow.” He flashed Carl a phony smile and picked a file off the top of the tallest stack on his desk. “Oh, and by the way, here are copies of the documents we received from Immigration regarding Hafez el-Assad. You can take them with you.”
Assad ended up doing the driving. He’d brought along some of the spicy rolls and triangles in a lunch box and shoveled them in his mouth as they shot along the E20. Sitting there behind the wheel, he was a happy and contented man, as evidenced by his smiling face. He moved his head from side to side in time to whatever music
