“I never made any sort of statement about the case to anyone at
He tossed the tabloid on the desk and stood up. Now he’d given his testimony, and it was the truth. What the hell was Marcus going to do about it? Fire him? That would certainly produce some more good headlines.
His boss gave him a resigned look. “The crime program on Channel 2 called. They want to talk to you. I told them to forget it.”
“OK,” replied Carl. His boss probably didn’t dare do otherwise.
“They asked me if there was anything to the
“Is that right? Then I’d like to hear what you told them.”
“I said that the whole thing was pure bullshit.”
“OK, that’s good.” Carl nodded doggedly. “Is that what you really think?”
“Carl, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen carefully. You’ve been on the force for a long time now. How many times during your career have you seen a colleague being pushed into a corner? Think about the very first time you were a cop on the night beat in Randers, or wherever the hell it was, and all of a sudden you found yourself face to face with a bunch of shit-faced farmboys who didn’t like your uniform. Do you remember what that felt like? Then, as the years pass, situations come up that are a hundred times worse. I’ve been through it. Lars Bjorn and Bak have been through it. And plenty of former colleagues who now make their living doing something else have been through it too. Life-threatening situations. With axes and hammers, metal rods, knives, broken beer bottles, shotguns, and all sorts of weapons. How many times can a person handle that sort of situation, and when does he decide he just can’t take it anymore? Who knows? It’s impossible to predict, don’t you think? We’ve all been up shit creek at one time or another. Anyone who hasn’t is not a real cop. We just have to go out there, knowing that we might be out of our depth once in a while. That’s our job.”
Carl nodded, feeling the pressure in his chest take on a new form. “So what’s the verdict on all this, boss?” he said, pointing at the tabloid. “What do you have to say about it? What do you think?”
The homicide chief looked at Carl with a calm expression. Without saying a word, he got up and opened the window facing Tivoli. Next he picked up the newspaper, bent over, and pretended to wipe his backside with it. Then he tossed the whole mess out into the street.
He couldn’t have been more explicit about his opinion.
Carl felt a smile tugging at his lips. Some pedestrian down on the street below was going to be the lucky recipient of a free copy of the TV schedule.
He nodded to his boss. Marcus’s reaction had actually been quite touching.
“I’m close to having new information in the Lynggaard case,” he said in return, and waited to be given permission to leave.
Jacobsen nodded back with a certain show of approval. It was in these sorts of situations that he demonstrated why he was so well liked, and why he’d been able to hold on to the same beautiful woman for more than thirty years. “Just remember that you still haven’t signed up for the management course, Carl,” Jacobsen interjected. “And you need to do that in the next two days. Do you hear me?”
Carl nodded, but didn’t mean anything by it. If his boss was going to insist that he take the course, Marcus would first have to deal with the union.
The four minutes that it took Carl to walk from the homicide chief’s office down to the basement were a gauntlet of scornful looks and disapproving attitude. You’re a disgrace to us all, said some of those eyes. But I don’t give a shit, he thought. They should be giving him their support instead; then he probably wouldn’t have this feeling of a big fat ax hacking into his chest.
Even Assad had seen the article, but at least he gave Carl a pat on the back. He thought the picture on the front page was nicely in focus, but the tabloid cost too much.
It was refreshing to hear a different point of view.
At ten o’clock sharp the phone rang; it was from “the cage,” the front desk at police headquarters. “There’s a man here who says he has an appointment with you, Carl,” said the duty officer coldly. “Are you expecting somebody named John Rasmussen?”
“Yes, send him down.”
Five minutes later they heard hesitant footsteps out in the corridor and then a cautious “Hello, is anybody here?”
Carl forced himself to get up. In the doorway he came face to face with an anachronism wearing an Icelandic sweater, corduroy trousers, and the whole hippie outfit.
“I’m John Rasmussen, the one who was a teacher at the Godhavn children’s home. We have an appointment,” he said, holding out his hand with a sly expression. “Hey, wasn’t that your picture on the front page of one of the tabloids today?”
It was enough to drive you mad. Dressed in that sort of get-up, the man really should have known better than to stare.
After that they quickly established that John Rasmussen did remember Atomos, and then they agreed to go over the case before they took a tour of police headquarters. That would allow Carl the chance to get off with giving him a mini-tour of the ground floor and a brief look out in the courtyards.
The man seemed pleasant enough, if a bit long-winded. Not at all the type that delinquent boys would have the patience to put up with, in Carl’s opinion. But there were probably still a few things that Carl didn’t know about delinquent boys.
“I’ll fax you what we have about him up at the home; I’ve already arranged with the office staff that it would be OK. But I have to tell you that there isn’t much. Atomos’s case file disappeared a few years ago, and when we finally found it behind a bookshelf, at least half of the documents were missing.” He shook his head, making the loose skin under his chin wobble.
“Why did he end up in your institution?”
Rasmussen shrugged. “Problems on the home front, you know. And he’d been placed with a foster family that probably wasn’t the best choice. Which can provoke a reaction, and sometimes things go too far. He was apparently a good kid, but he wasn’t given enough challenges and he was too smart. And that makes for an ugly combination. You see kids like that everywhere in the ghettos where the foreign workers live. They’re practically exploding with untapped energy, those young people.”
“Was he mixed up in any sort of criminal activity?”
“I suppose he was, in a sense, but I think it was only minor stuff. I mean, OK, he had a fierce temper, but I don’t remember him being at Godhavn because of anything violent. No, I don’t recall anything like that, but it was twenty years ago, after all.”
Carl pulled his notepad closer. “I’m going to ask you a few quick questions, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your answers brief. If you can’t answer a question, we’ll just move on. You can always go back to it, if you think of an answer later. OK?”
The man gave a friendly nod to Assad, who offered him one of his viscous, burning-hot substances in a dainty little cup decorated with gold flowers. Rasmussen accepted the cup with a smile. He was going to regret it.
Then he turned to look at Carl. “OK,” he said. “I understand.”
“What’s the boy’s real name?”
“I think it was Lars Erik or Lars Henrik, or something like that. He had a very common last name. I think it was Petersen, but I’ll tell you in my fax.”
“Why was he called Atomos?”
“It was a nickname his father had given him. Apparently he really looked up to his father, who’d died a few years earlier. I think his father was an engineer and had something to do with the nuclear research station at Riso, or someplace like that. But I’m sure you can find out more details when you have the boy’s name and CR number.”
“Do you still have his CR number?”
“Yes. It disappeared with the other documents from his file, but we had a bookkeeping system that was linked to funding from the municipalities and the national government, so the number has been restored to his file.”
