“What kind of stocks?”
“All sorts of shit. And then I hired a new stockbroker who advised me to invest in weapons factories in the United States and France.”
Not the sort of thing that the manager at Carl’s local bank in Allerod would recommend to his customers as a sound investment for their savings. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it out in the ashtray. No, Carl could see that these weren’t the kind of investments a leading member of the pacifist Radical Center Party would want to be known for.
“I also leased two of my properties to massage parlors. I didn’t know about it in the beginning, but I soon found out. They were located in Stroby Egede, near where Merete lived, and people were starting to talk. I had a lot of different things going on at the time. Unfortunately, I bragged about my business deals to Merete. I was so in love with her, and she couldn’t have cared less about me. Maybe I was hoping that she’d show more interest in me if I acted like a big shot, but of course it didn’t make any difference.” He reached up to massage the back of his neck. “She wasn’t like that at all.”
Carl fixed his eyes on the cloud of smoke until it was swallowed up by the room. “And she asked you to stop what you were doing?”
“No, she didn’t ask me to stop.”
“What then?”
“She said that she might say something by mistake to her secretary, Marianne Koch. It was clear what she meant. If that secretary found out anything, everybody else would know about it in seconds. Merete just wanted to warn me.”
“Why was she interested in your business affairs?”
“She wasn’t. That was the whole problem.” He sighed and buried his head in his hands. “I’d been making advances for so long that she finally just wanted to get rid of me. And that was how she got her way. I’m positive that if I’d continued pressuring her, she would have leaked the information. I don’t blame her. What the hell was she supposed to do?”
“So you decided to leave her alone, but you kept running your business ventures?”
“I canceled the lease agreements for the massage parlors, but I kept the stocks that I owned. I didn’t sell them until shortly after 9/11.”
Carl nodded. There were plenty of people who had made a fortune from that catastrophe.
“How much did you make?”
Baggesen looked up. “Nearly ten million kroner.”
Carl stuck out his lower lip. “And then you killed Merete because she was going to blow the whistle on you?”
That gave the member of parliament a start. Carl recognized the man’s frightened expression from the last time they’d gone a round together.
“No, no! Why on earth would I do that? What I did wasn’t illegal, you know. The only thing that would have happened is what’s going to happen today.”
“You would have been asked to leave your party instead of resigning?”
Baggesen’s eyes flicked around the room and didn’t stop until he saw his own initials on the list of suspects on the whiteboard.
“You can cross me off your list now,” he said and stood up.
Assad didn’t show up at the office until three o’clock, which was considerably later than would be expected of a man with his modest qualifications and precarious position. For a second Carl weighed how useful it would be to bawl him out, but Assad’s cheerful expression and enthusiasm didn’t exactly invite an ambush.
“What the hell have you been doing all this time?” he asked instead, pointing at the clock.
“Hardy sends you his greetings, Carl. You sent me yourself up there, remember?”
“You’ve been talking to Hardy for seven hours?” He pointed again at the clock.
Assad shook his head. “I told him what I knew about the cyclist murder then, and do you know what he said?”
“He told you who he thinks the killer is?”
Assad looked surprised. “You know Hardy pretty very well, Carl. Yes, that is actually what he did.”
“He didn’t give you a name, though. Am I right?”
“A name? No, but he said to look for a person who was important for the witness’s children then. That it probably was not a teacher or somebody in the day-care centers but somebody they were really dependent on. The ex-husband of the witness or a doctor or maybe someone the children saw a lot. A riding instructor or something. But it had to be a person who had something to do with both of the children. I have also just said it up on the second floor.”
“Oh really,” said Carl, pursing his lips. It was astounding how well informed Assad suddenly was. “I can just imagine Bak must have been over the moon.”
“Over the moon?” Assad considered Carl’s choice of words. “Maybe. How would that make him look?”
Carl shrugged. Now Assad was his old self again. “So what else have you been doing?” Judging by the way Assad’s eyebrows danced, Carl guessed that he had something up his sleeve.
“Look what I have here, Carl.” He took Merete Lynggaard’s worn leather diary out of a plastic shopping bag and set it on the desk. “Take a look. Isn’t the man so good?”
Carl opened the phone book to the letter
He couldn’t resist looking it up. But without any luck, of course.
“It says it’s an invalid number. Call Lis and ask her to check out the number asap. Tell her it might well have been disconnected five years ago. We don’t know which mobile company issued it, but I’m sure she can find out. Hurry up, Assad,” said Carl, giving his assistant a pat on his granitelike shoulder.
Carl lit a cigarette, leaned back, and summed up what they knew so far.
Merete Lynggaard had met the fraudulent Daniel Hale at Christiansborg and had possibly carried on a flirtation with him, but then dropped him after a few days. It was unusual for her to do something like crossing out his name in her phone book; it almost seemed ritualistic. No matter what the reason for doing so, meeting the man who called himself Daniel Hale had undoubtedly been a radical experience in Merete’s life.
Carl tried to picture her in his mind. The beautiful politician with her whole life ahead of her, who happened to meet the wrong guy. An impostor, a man with evil intentions. Several people had linked him to the boy called Atomos. The home help in Magleby thought the boy was very likely identical to the man who had brought the letter with the message: “Have a nice trip to Berlin.” And according to Bille Antvorskov, Atomos was the same person who later claimed to be Daniel Hale. The same boy that Dennis Knudsen’s sister claimed had exerted great influence over her brother in childhood. And by all accounts he was also the one who many years later convinced his friend Dennis to crash into the car driven by the real Daniel Hale, thereby causing his death. Complicated, and yet not really.
By now quite a lot of evidence had piled up: there was Dennis Knudsen’s peculiar death shortly after the car accident. There was Uffe’s much too strong reaction when he saw the old photo of Atomos, who was most likely the person Merete later met as Daniel Hale. A meeting that must have required a great deal of planning.
And finally, there was the disappearance of Merete Lynggaard.
Carl felt acid indigestion etching its way up and almost wished he could have a sip of Assad’s sickly sweet tea.
Carl hated waiting when it wasn’t necessary. Why the hell couldn’t he talk to that fucking teacher from the Godhavn children’s home right this minute? The boy nicknamed Atomos must have a real name and a Civil Registry number. Something that would still be valid today. He wanted to know what it was. Now!
He stubbed out his cigarette and took down the lists from the whiteboard, scanning what he had written.
SUSPECTS:
