Mercy aka The keeper of lost causes

“Not in the slightest.”

“Have you talked to the press?”

“What do you mean?”

“One of the political commentators at Christiansborg. They’ve always got their noses in everything. Or what about the tabloids? Pelle Hyttested at Gossip, for instance. That little weasel has been gleefully digging dirt out of the woodwork at Christiansborg ever since he was fired from Aktuelt, so he’s an old hand there by now. Ask him, and you’ll know more than you do now.” A smile appeared on Hardy’s face, and then it was gone.

I’ll tell him now, thought Carl, and then he spoke very slowly so that it would sink in properly, right from the start. “There’s been a murder down in Soro, Hardy. I think it’s the same guys who were out in Amager.”

Hardy’s expression didn’t change. “And?” he said.

“Yeah, well, the same circumstances, the same weapon, the same red-checked shirt presumably, the same group of people, the same-”

“I said, ‘And?’”

“Well, that’s why I’m telling you all this.”

“I said, ‘And?’ Meaning, ‘And what the hell do I care?’”

Gossip’s editorial office was in that in-between phase when the weekly deadline had been met and the next issue was just starting to take shape. A couple of journalists glanced at Carl without interest as he walked through the open office landscape. Apparently they didn’t recognize him, which was just as well.

He found Pelle Hyttested preening his well-trimmed but skimpy red beard over in a corner where an eternal lethargy had descended upon the senior journalists. Carl was well acquainted with Hyttested’s reputation as a scumbag and an asshole that only money could stop. It was incomprehensible why so many Danes loved to read the overwrought trash that he wrote, but his victims didn’t share their enthusiasm. There was a long queue of lawsuits waiting outside Hyttested’s door, but the editor-in-chief held a protective hand over his favorite little demon. To hell with it if the editor-in-chief had to pay a few fines along the way.

The man cast a brief glance at Carl’s police badge and turned back to his colleagues.

Carl placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got a couple of questions for you, I said.”

Hyttested looked right through him when he turned to face Carl again. “Can’t you see I’m working? Or maybe you’d like to take me down to the station…”

It was at this point that Carl pulled from his wallet the thousand-kroner note that he’d been saving for months and stuck it in front of the journalist’s nose.

“What was it you wanted to see me about?” asked the man, trying to suck up the bill with his eyes. Maybe he was working out in his mind how many late-night hours the money could keep him going at Andy’s Bar.

“I’m investigating the disappearance of Merete Lynggaard. My colleague Hardy Henningsen thinks you might be able to tell me whether Merete had any reason to fear somebody in political circles.”

“Fear somebody? That’s an odd way to put it,” he said, stroking the almost invisible tufts of hair on his face. “Why are you asking me about this? Has something new turned up in that case?”

Now the cross-examination was moving in the wrong direction.

“Something new? No, nothing like that. But the case has reached the point where certain questions need to be resolved once and for all.”

Hyttested nodded, obviously unimpressed. “Five years after she disappeared? Come on, you’ve got to be kidding. Why don’t you tell me what you know instead, and then I’ll tell you what I know.”

Carl waved the banknote again so the man’s attention would be drawn to what was essential.

“So you have no knowledge of anyone who might have been especially angry with Merete Lynggaard at the time? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Everybody hated the bitch. If it hadn’t been for her fucking beautiful tits, she would have been tossed out long ago.”

Not a supporter of the Democrats, Carl gathered. It could hardly come as a surprise. “OK, so you don’t know anything.” He turned to the others in the room. “Do any of you know anything? Anything at all. It doesn’t have to be related to Christiansborg. Maybe some wild rumors. Or people who were seen around her while your paparazzi were on the prowl. Vague impressions. Ring any bells?” He looked at Hyttested’s colleagues. It would be easy to diagnose at least half of them as brain-dead. They looked at him with blank eyes that said they didn’t give a shit.

He turned around to look at the rest of the office. Maybe one of the younger journalists who still had some life in his skull would have something to say. If not from first-hand experience, then maybe third- or fourth-hand. This was gossip central, after all.

“Did you say that Hardy Henningsen sent you here?” asked Hyttested as he crept closer to the thousand-kroner note. “Maybe it was you who fucked things up for him. I remember very clearly reading something about a Carl Morck. Isn’t that your name? You’re the one who took cover under one of your colleagues. The guy who lay underneath Hardy Henningsen and played dead. That’s you, right?”

Carl felt the Greenland ice cap creeping up his spine. How in the world had the guy come to that conclusion? All of the internal hearings had been closed to the public. No one had ever even hinted at what this shithead was now insinuating.

“Are you saying that because you want me to grab you by the collar, crush you flat, and then shove you under the carpet so you’ll have something to write about next week?” Carl moved in so close that Hyttested chose to fix his eyes on the banknote again. “Hardy Henningsen was the best colleague anyone could ever have. I would have died for him, if I could. Do you get me?”

Hyttested looked over his shoulder to give his coworkers a triumphant look. Shit. Now the headline for the next issue was in the bag, and Carl was the casualty. Now all they needed was a photographer to immortalize the situation. He’d better get out while he could.

“Do I get the thousand kroner if I tell you which photographer specialized in taking pictures of Merete Lynggaard?”

“What good would that do me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would help. You’re a cop, aren’t you? Can you really afford to ignore a tip?”

“Who is it?”

“You should try talking to Jonas.”

“Jonas who?” Now there were only a few inches between the thousand kroner and Hyttested’s greedy fingers.

“Jonas Hess.”

“Jonas Hess? Yeah, OK. Where do I find him? Is he here in the office right now?”

“We don’t hire guys like Jonas Hess. You’ll have to look him up in the phone book.”

Carl made a mental note of the name and then in a flash stuffed the thousand kroner back in his pocket. The jerk was going to write about him in the next issue, no matter what. Besides, he’d never in his life paid for information, and it would take somebody of an entirely different caliber than Hyttested before that ever changed.

“You would have died for him?” Hyttested yelled after Carl, as he strode between the rows of cubicles. “Then why didn’t you, Carl Morck?”

He got Jonas Hess’s address from the receptionist, and a taxi dropped him in front of a tiny stucco house on Vejlands Alle, which had become silted up over the years with the detritus of society: old bicycles, shattered aquariums, and glass flagons from ancient home-brewing projects, moldy tarpaulins that could no longer hide the rotting boards underneath, a plethora of bottles, and all sorts of other junk. The owner of the house would be an ideal candidate for any one of those home makeover programs on TV. Even the most inept of landscape architects would be welcome here.

A bicycle lying in front of the door and the quiet growling from a radio behind the filthy windows indicated that somebody was home. Carl leaned on the doorbell until his finger started to ache.

Finally he heard from inside: “Cut that out, damn it.”