“Oh sure, plenty of times.” Hess put an
Carl nodded again. “But why didn’t you take any good pictures of Merete and Uffe together, so the whole world would know why she was always in such a hurry to get home from Christiansborg?”
“I didn’t do it because a member of my own family is handicapped. My sister.”
“But you take photographs for a living.”
Hess gave him an apathetic look. If Carl didn’t go and get those beers soon, he wasn’t going to get any copies.
“Hey, you know what?” replied the photographer, looking Carl right in the eye. “Just because somebody is a shit, it doesn’t mean he has no integrity. Like yourself, for example.”
Carl walked along the pedestrian street from Allerod Station, noting with annoyance that the street scene was looking more and more miserable. Concrete boxes camouflaged as luxury apartments were already towering over the Kvickly supermarket, and soon even the snug, old, one-story houses on the other side of the road would be gone. What had previously been a picturesque feast for the eyes had now turned into a tunnel of dolled-up concrete. A few years ago he wouldn’t have thought it possible, but now it had reached his own town. Thanks to politicians like Erhard Jakobsen in Bagsv?rd, Urban Hansen in Copenhagen, and God only knew who in Charlottenlund. Homey, precious townscapes shattered. An abundance of mayors and town councils with no taste. These hideous new buildings were clear proof of that.
The barbecue gang at Carl’s house in Ronneholt Park was in full swing, thanks to the continuing good weather. It was 6:24 p.m. on March 22, 2007-and spring had officially arrived.
In honor of the day, Morten had donned flowing robes that he’d bartered for during a trip to Morocco. Dressed in that outfit, he could have easily started up a new sect in ten seconds flat. “Just in time, Carl,” he said, dumping some spare ribs on to his plate.
His neighbor Sysser Petersen already seemed a bit tipsy, but bore it with dignity. “I just don’t feel like doing this anymore,” she said. “I’m going to sell my dump and move.” She took a big gulp of red wine. “Down at Social Services we spend more time filling out stupid forms than helping citizens. Did you know that, Carl? Let those smug government ministers give it a try. If they had to fill out forms to get their free dinners and free chauffeurs and free rent and their enormous salaries and free junkets and free secretaries and all that other shit, they wouldn’t have any time left for eating or sleeping or driving or anything else. Can’t you just picture it? If the prime minister had to sit down and tick off a list of what he wanted to discuss with his ministers before the meeting even got started? In triplicate, printed out from a computer that only worked every other day. And first he’d have to get it approved by some government official before he was even allowed to speak. It would wear the man out.” And with that, she threw back her head and howled with laughter.
Carl nodded. Soon the discussion would turn to the cultural minister’s right to muzzle the media, or whether there was anyone who remembered the arguments for breaking up the counties of Denmark, or the hospitals or the tax system, for that matter. And the talk wouldn’t end until the last drop had been drunk and the last spare rib sucked clean.
He gave Sysser a little hug, patted Kenn on the shoulder, and took his plate up to his room. They were all more or less in total agreement. More than half of the country wished the prime minister would go to hell, and they would keep wishing the same thing tomorrow and the day after, until finally all the misfortune that he’d brought flooding in over Denmark and its citizens had been rectified.
It would take decades.
But Carl had other things on his mind at the moment.
28
At three o’clock in the morning Carl opened his eyes to pitch darkness. In the back of his mind he had a vague memory of red-checked shirts and nail guns and a clear sense that one of the shirts in Soro did have the right pattern. His pulse was racing and his mood was glum; he was definitely not feeling good. He simply didn’t have the energy to think about the case, but who could stop the nightmares or keep his sheets from getting clammy?
And now he had to deal with that slimy journalist Pelle Hyttested. Was he going to start digging around? Was one of the headlines in the next issue of
What a mess. Just the thought of it made his abdominal muscles contract so they felt like armor plate for the rest of the night.
“You look tired,” said the homicide chief.
Carl dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. “Have you told Bak that he needs to be here?”
“He’ll be here in five minutes,” said Marcus, leaning forward. “I noticed that you haven’t signed up for the management course yet. The deadline is coming up soon, you know.”
“I guess I’ll just have to wait until next time, won’t I?”
“You know we have a plan here, don’t you, Carl? When your department starts showing results, it would be only natural that you got help from your former colleagues. But it won’t do any good if you don’t have the authority that the title of police superintendent would give you. You don’t really have a choice, Carl. You
“It won’t make me a better investigator, sitting in a classroom sharpening pencils.”
“You’re the head of a new department here, and the title goes along with the baggage. You’re taking the course-or you’ll have to find somewhere else to do your investigating.”
Carl stared out of the window at the Golden Tower in Tivoli Gardens, which a couple of workmen were making ready for the new season. Four or five times up and down on that monstrous ride and Marcus Jacobsen would be begging him mercy.
“I’ll take that into consideration, Mr. Superintendent.”
The mood was a bit chilly when Borge Bak came in with his black leather jacket draped neatly over his shoulders.
Carl didn’t wait for the homicide chief to initiate the conversation. “So, Bak! That was a hell of a job you lot did on the Lynggaard case. You were up to your necks in signs that everything wasn’t as it should be. Had the whole team caught sleeping sickness, or what?”
Bak’s eyes were like steel, but Carl was damned if he was going to look away.
“So now I want to know if there’s anything else in the case that you’re keeping to yourself,” Carl went on. “Was there someone or something that put the brakes on your excellent investigation, Borge?”
At this point the homicide chief was clearly considering putting on his reading glasses so he could hide behind them, but the scowl on Bak’s face demanded some sort of intervention.
“If we just ignore the last couple of remarks that Carl delivered in his inimitable style”-Marcus raised his eyebrows as he glanced at Carl for a moment-“then it’s easy to understand his point of view, since he’s just discovered that the deceased Daniel Hale was not the man that Merete Lynggaard met at Christiansborg. Which is something that should have been uncovered during the previous investigation. We have to give him that.”
Bak’s hunched shoulders produced a couple of folds in his leather jacket, the only sign of how tense this information was making him feel.
Carl went for the jugular. “That’s not all, Borge. Did you happen to know, for example, that Daniel Hale was gay? Or that he was out of the country during the period when he presumably was in contact with Merete Lynggaard? You should have taken the trouble to show Hale’s photo to Merete’s secretary, Sos Norup, or to the head of the delegation, Bille Antvorskov. Then you would have known at once that something wasn’t right.”
