Even though it was five years since Daniel Hale lost his life on the Kappelev highway, it wasn’t hard to see traces left by the accident. His car had crashed into a building, which afterward had undergone rudimentary repairs; most of the soot had been washed off, but as far as Carl could tell, the majority of the insurance money must have gone to other uses.
He looked down the long expanse of open road. What bad luck for the man to drive right into that ugly building. Only thirty feet to either side and his car would have sailed into the fields.
“Very unlucky. What do you say, Carl?”
“Damned unlucky.”
Assad kicked at the tree stump still standing in front of the scarred wall. “He drove into the tree, and the tree snapped like a stick, and then he rammed into the wall and the car started to burn, right?”
Carl nodded and turned around. He knew that farther along was a side road. It was apparently from that road that the other vehicle had pulled out, as far as he could remember from the police report.
He pointed north. “Daniel Hale came from that direction, driving his Citroen from Tastrup. According to the other driver and the police measurements, they crashed at that spot there.” He pointed at the line in the middle of the road. “Maybe Hale fell asleep. In any case, he drove over the center line and ran right into the oncoming vehicle. Then Hale’s car was flung back, right into the tree and the building. The whole thing didn’t take more than a split second.”
“What happened to him, the man in the other car?”
“Well, he landed out there,” said Carl, pointing to a flat piece of land that the EU had allowed to go fallow years ago.
Assad gave another low whistle. “And him nothing happened to?”
“No. He was driving some sort of gigantic four-by-four. You’re out in the country now, Assad.”
His partner looked as if he knew exactly what Carl was talking about. “There are also many four-by-fours in Syria,” he said.
Carl nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. “It’s strange, isn’t it, Assad?” he said then.
“What? That he drove into the building?”
“No, that he happened to die the day after Merete Lynggaard disappeared. The man that Merete had just met and who might have been in love with her. Very strange.”
“You think maybe it was suicide? That he was so sad because she disappeared down into the sea?” Assad’s expression changed a bit as he looked at Carl. “He killed himself maybe because he was the one who murdered Merete. It has happened before, Carl.”
“Suicide? No. Then he would have rammed the building on purpose. No, it definitely wasn’t suicide. And besides, he couldn’t have killed her. He was on a plane when Merete disappeared.”
“OK.” Assad touched the scarred surface of the wall. “So maybe it could not be him either who brought the letter that said, ‘Have a nice trip to Berlin.’”
Carl nodded and looked at the sun, which was about to settle in the west. “You could be right.”
“What are we doing then here, Carl?”
“What are we doing?” He stared out over the fields, where the first weeds of spring were already taking hold. “I’ll tell you, Assad. We’re investigating. That’s what we’re doing.”
25
“Thank you for arranging this meeting for me, and for agreeing to see me again so soon.” He shook hands with Birger Larsen, adding, “This won’t take long.” He looked around at the familiar faces gathered in the Democrats’ vice-chairman’s office.
“All right, Morck. I’ve invited all of the people who worked with Merete Lynggaard just before she disappeared. You might recognize a few of them.”
Carl nodded to everyone. Yes, he did recognize some of them. A number of the politicians sitting here might be able to knock the present government out of power during the next election. One could always hope so, at least. Here sat the party spokesperson in a knee-length skirt; a couple of the more prominent members of parliament; and a few people from the party office, including the secretary Marianne Koch, who sent Carl a flirtatious look, reminding him that in only three hours he was due to be crossexamined by Mona Ibsen.
“As Birger Larsen has no doubt told you, we’re investigating Merete Lynggaard’s disappearance one more time, before we close the case. And in that connection, I need to find out anything that might help me to understand Merete’s behavior during those last few days, as well as her state of mind. It’s my impression that back then, at quite an early stage in the investigation, the police came to the conclusion that she fell overboard by accident, and they were probably right. If that was the case, we’ll never know for certain what happened. After five years in the sea, her body would have decomposed long ago.”
Everyone nodded, looking both solemn and sad. These were the people that Merete would have counted among her colleagues. Perhaps with the exception of the party’s new “crown princess.”
“Many things have turned up that point to an accident,” Carl continued, “so you’d have to be a bit of a conspiracy nerd to think otherwise. At the same time, we in Department Q are a bunch of skeptical devils, and that’s probably why we were given this assignment.” Everyone smiled a bit. At least they were listening. “So I’m going to ask all of you a number of questions, and don’t hesitate to speak up if you have anything to say.”
Most of them nodded again.
“Do any of you remember whether Merete had a meeting with a group lobbying for placenta research shortly before she disappeared?”
“Yes, I do,” said someone from the party office. “It was a delegation put together for the occasion by Bille Antvorskov from BasicGen.”
“Bille Antvorskov? You mean
“Yes, that’s right. He put together the group and arranged a meeting with Merete. They were making the rounds.”
“Making the rounds? With Merete Lynggaard?”
“No.” The woman smiled. “That’s what we call it when a special-interest lobby meets with all the parties, one after the other. The group was trying to put together a majority of votes in the Folketing.”
“Would there be a record of the meeting anywhere?”
“Yes, there should be. I don’t know whether it was printed out, but we might be able to find it on the computer belonging to Merete’s secretary.”
“Does that computer still exist?” asked Carl. He could hardly believe what he was hearing.
The woman from the party office smiled. “We always save the hard drives when we change operating systems. When we switched to Windows XP, at least ten hard drives had to be replaced.”
“Aren’t all of you on a network?”
“Yes, we are, but back then Merete’s secretary and a few others weren’t hooked up to it.”
“Paranoid, perhaps?” He smiled at the woman.
“Maybe.”
“Would you be willing to try to find the minutes of that meeting for me?”
She nodded again.
He turned to the rest of the group. “One of the participants at that meeting was a man named Daniel Hale. From what I’ve heard, he and Merete were interested in each other. Is there anyone here who can confirm or expand on this?”
Several people exchanged glances. Apparently he’d hit home again. Now it was just a matter of who wanted to answer.
“I don’t know his name, but I saw her talking to a man down in Snapstinget, the MPs’ restaurant.” It was the party spokesperson who decided to take the floor. She was an irritating but tough young lady who looked good on
