Mercy aka The keeper of lost causes

really expected anything else? That he was alive and kicking and would immediately confess that he’d impersonated Hale, murdered Lynggaard, and then killed Hale afterward? Nonsense!

“Lis said that he was a thug from out in the sticks, Carl. She said that he was in prison several times for dumb driving. Do you know what she means by ‘thug’ and ‘sticks’?”

Carl nodded wearily.

“Good,” said Assad, and continued reading aloud from his hieroglyphics. At some point Carl was going to have to suggest that his assistant write his notes in Danish.

“He lived in Sk?vinge in northern Zealand,” he went on. “They found him dead then in his bed with quite a lot of vomit in his windpipe and with an alcohol of at least a thousand. He had also taken pills.”

“I see. When did this happen?”

“Not long after the accident. In the report it says that the whole shit with him came from that.”

“You mean he drank himself to death because of the accident?”

“Yes. Because of post-dramatic stress.”

“It’s called post-traumatic stress, Assad.” Carl drummed his fingers on the desk and closed his eyes. There may have been three people out on the road when the collision took place; if so, it was most likely murder. And if it was murder, then the thug from Sk?vinge really did have something to drink himself to death over. But where was the third person, the man or woman who had waded out in front of Daniel Hale’s car, if that was what actually happened? Had he or she also killed themselves with booze?

“What was the man’s name?”

“Dennis. Dennis Knudsen. He was twenty-seven when he died.”

“Do you have the address where he lived? Are there any relatives? Family members?”

“Yes. He lived with his father and his mother.” Assad smiled. “A lot of twenty-seven-year-olds in Damascus do that too.”

Carl raised his eyebrows. That was as far as Assad’s Middle Eastern experiences came into the discussion at the moment. “You said you also had some good news.”

As predicted, Assad’s smile was so big that it practically split his face open. With pride, one would expect.

“Here,” he said, passing Carl a black plastic bag that he’d set down on the floor.

“OK. And what’s this, Assad? Forty pounds of sesame seeds?”

Carl got up, stuck his hand inside, and instantly touched the handle. Suspecting what it was, shivers ran down his spine as he pulled the object out of the plastic bag.

It was exactly as he thought: a worn briefcase. Just like in Jonas Hess’s photograph, with a big rip not only on the side but also on the top.

“What the hell, Assad!” said Carl, slowly sitting down. “Is her diary inside?” He felt a tingling in his arm when Assad nodded. It felt as if he were holding the Holy Grail.

He stared at the briefcase. Take it easy, Carl told himself, and then opened the locks and flipped up the lid. There they all were. Her time system calendar in brown leather. Her Siemens cell phone and charger, handwritten notes on lined paper, a couple of ballpoint pens, and a packet of Kleenex. It was the Holy Grail.

“How…?” was all he could muster. And then he wondered whether he ought to give it to forensics first, for a closer examination.

Assad’s voice sounded far away. “First I went to see Helle Andersen. She was not home, but then her husband called her on the phone. He was in bed with a hurt back. When she came, I showed her the picture of Daniel Hale, but him she could not remember having seen before.”

Carl stared at the briefcase and its contents. Patience, he thought. Assad would get to the briefcase eventually.

“Was Uffe there when the man brought the letter? Did you remember to ask her that?” He was trying to keep Assad on track.

Assad nodded. “Yes. She says that he was standing right next to her the whole time. He was very interested. He was always that when the doorbell rang.”

“Did she think the man with the letter looked like Hale?”

Assad wrinkled his nose. A good imitation of Helle Andersen. “Not very much. But a little bit. The man with the letter was maybe not as old as him. His hair was a little darker and a little more masculine. Something about his eyes and so on, but that was all she had to say about it.”

“So then you asked her about the briefcase, right?”

Assad’s smile returned. “Yes. She did not know where it was. She remembered it, but she did not know if Merete Lynggaard brought it home with her on the last night then. Because she was not there-remember?”

“Assad, get to the point. Where did you find it?”

“Next to the furnace in their utility room.”

“You went to the house in Magleby to see the antique dealer?”

He nodded. “Helle Andersen said that Merete Lynggaard did everything every day the same way. She noticed this herself over the years. Always the same way. She threw off her shoes in the utility room, but first she looked always in the window. At Uffe. She took every day right away her clothes off and laid it by the washing machine. Not because it was dirty, but because that was where it just lay. She also always put on a bathrobe. And she and her brother watched the same video films then.”

“And what about the briefcase?”

“Well, the home help did not really know about that, Carl. She never saw where Merete put it, but she thought then that it was either in the front hall or the utility room.”

“How the hell were you able to find it near the furnace in the utility room when the whole Rapid Response Team couldn’t? Wasn’t it visible? And why was it still there? I have a pretty good feeling that those antique dealers are very meticulous when it comes to cleaning. How’d you find it?”

“The antique dealer gave me complete permission to look around the house on my own, so I just played it all through in my head.” He tapped his knuckles on his skull. “I kicked off my shoes and hung my coat on the hook in the utility room. I just pretended, because the hook was not there anymore. But then I pictured in my head that she maybe was holding something in both hands. Papers in one hand and the briefcase in the other. And then I thought that she could not take off her coat without first putting the other things down that she had in her hands first.”

“And the furnace was the closest thing?”

“Yes, Carl. Just right next to me.”

“But afterward, why didn’t she take the briefcase with her into the living room or her home office?”

“I will get to that, Carl, just in a minute. I looked up at the furnace, but the briefcase was not there so. I did not think it would be either. But do you know what I saw, Carl?”

Carl just stared at him. Obviously Assad would answer his own question.

“I saw that just between the furnace and the ceiling there was at least a whole three feet of air.”

“Fantastic,” replied Carl feebly.

“And then I thought that she would not lay the briefcase down on the dirty furnace because it once belonged to her father, so she took care of it.”

“I don’t quite follow you.”

“She did not lay it, Carl. She set it up on the furnace then. The way you set a briefcase on the floor. There was plenty of room.”

“So that’s what she did, and then it toppled over behind the furnace.”

Assad’s smile was confirmation enough. “The rip on the other side is new. See for yourself.”

Carl closed the briefcase and turned it around. It didn’t look very new, in his opinion.

“I wiped off the briefcase because it was covered with dust, so maybe the rip looks a little dark now. But it looked very fresh when I found it. This is true, Carl.”

“Confound it, Assad-you wiped off the briefcase? And I suppose you’ve also touched everything inside?”

He was still nodding, but with less enthusiasm.

“Assad.” Carl took a deep breath so he wouldn’t sound too harsh. “Next time you find something important in a case, you keep your mitts off it, OK?”