“How long was he in your institution?”
“I think he was there about three or four years.”
“That was a long time, considering his age, wasn’t it?”
“Yes and no. That’s how it goes sometimes. It wasn’t possible to find another place for him in the system. He refused to live with a new foster family, and his own family wasn’t able to look after him until then.”
“Have you heard from him since? Do you know what happened to him?”
“I happened to see him, just by chance, some years later, and he seemed to be doing fine. I think it was in Helsingor. He was apparently working as a steward or a first mate, or something like that. He was wearing a uniform, at any rate.”
“You mean, he was a seaman?”
“Yes, I think so. Something along that line.”
I have to get hold of the crew list for the
“Just a minute,” he said to Rasmussen, and then told Assad to go upstairs and find Bak. He needed to ask him whether they’d ever received a list of personnel on the ferry that Merete Lynggaard had taken. And if so, where was it now?
“Merete Lynggaard? Is this about her?” asked the man, his eyes sparkling like Christmas lights. He took a big gulp of the syrupy tea.
Carl gave him a smile that radiated how incredibly pleased he was to be asked that question. Then he went back to his own questions, without replying.
“Did the boy have psychotic tendencies? Do you remember if he was able to show empathy?”
The teacher looked at his empty cup as if he were still thirsty. Apparently he was one of those people whose taste buds had been tempered back in the macrobiotic days. Then he raised his gray eyebrows. “A lot of the boys who come to us are emotionally abnormal. Of course some of them are given a medical diagnosis, but I don’t remember that happening with Atomos. I do think he was able to show empathy. At least he worried about his mother a lot.”
“Was there any reason for that? Was she a drug addict or something?”
“No, not at all. But I seem to recall that she was quite ill. That was why it took so long before his family could take him back.”
The tour of police headquarters was brief. John Rasmussen turned out to be an insatiable observer, and he commented on everything he saw. If it had been up to him, he would have examined every square foot of the buildings. No detail was too insignificant for Rasmussen, so Carl pretended he had a pager in his pocket that was beeping. “Oh, sorry, I just received the signal that there’s been another murder,” he told the man with a solemn look that the teacher immediately adopted. “I’m afraid I’ll have to say good-bye now. Thanks for your help, Mr. Rasmussen. And I’ll count on receiving a fax from you within an hour or two. All right?”
Silence had settled over Carl’s domain. On his desk in front of him was a message from Bak saying that he knew nothing about any ferry-boat personnel list. Why the hell had Carl expected anything else?
He could hear the murmur of prayers coming from the corner of Assad’s cubbyhole where the rug was positioned, but otherwise no other sound. Carl felt tossed by the storm and swept by the wind. The phone had been ringing off the hook for over an hour because of the fucking tabloid article. Everyone had called, from the police commissioner, who wanted to give him a word of advice, to local radio stations, website editors, magazine journalists, and all sorts of other vermin that crawled about on the fringes of the media world. Apparently Mrs. Sorensen upstairs was finding it amusing to transfer all the calls to Carl, so now he’d switched the phone to silent and activated the caller-ID function, which displayed the number of the incoming call. The problem was that he’d never been good at remembering numbers. But at least for now he didn’t have to put up with anyone else accosting him.
The fax from the Godhavn teacher was the first thing that managed to haul Carl out of his self-imposed torpor.
As expected, Rasmussen was a polite man, and he took the opportunity to offer his thanks and praise to Carl for taking the time to show him around headquarters. The other pages were the promised documents, and in spite of their brevity, they were a gold mine.
The real name of the boy called Atomos was Lars Henrik Jensen. His CR number was 020172-0619, so he was born in 1972. Today he would be thirty-five, which meant that he and Merete Lynggaard were approximately the same age.
Lars Henrik Jensen-what an insanely ordinary name, thought Carl wearily. Why the hell hadn’t Bak or one of those other clowns on the original investigative team been smart enough to print out the crew list from the
He pursed his lips. It would be a huge step forward if it turned out that this guy had worked on the ferry back then, but hopefully that could readily be revealed by making an inquiry to Scandlines. He read over the faxes one more time and then grabbed the phone to call the main Scandlines office.
A voice started speaking even before he had punched in the number. For a moment he thought it was Lis, but then Mona Ibsen’s wax-coated, velvety voice rolled into his ear, leaving him holding his breath.
“What happened?” she asked. “The phone didn’t even ring.”
Yes, that was a good question. She must have been transferred to his phone at the same instant that he picked it up.
“I saw today’s issue of
He swore under his breath. Not her too. If that shitty tabloid only knew how many readers he’d brought in this week, they’d probably put his likeness under their masthead permanently.
“This is a rather unusual situation, Carl. How has it made you feel?”
“Well, it’s not the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I have to admit,” he told her.
“You should come and see me again soon,” she said.
Somehow the offer didn’t seem quite as attractive as it had before. Most likely because of the signal-disrupting wedding ring that had caused interference with his antenna.
“I have a feeling that you and Hardy won’t be free, in a psychological sense, until the killers have been caught. Do you agree, Carl?”
He felt the distance between them grow. “No, not at all,” he said. “It has nothing to do with those bastards. People like us have to live with danger all the time.” He tried hard to recall Marcus’s lecture from earlier that day, but this erotic individual’s breathing on the other end of the line wasn’t helping. “You have to consider that there are plenty of times in a cop’s professional past when things didn’t go wrong. Sooner or later it’s bound to happen.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” she replied. Hardy must have said something similar. “But you know what, Carl? It’s pure bullshit! I’m going to expect to meet with you on a regular basis, so we can figure this whole thing out. Next week there won’t be anything more about you in the tabloids, so we should be able to work in peace and quiet.”
The man Carl talked to at Scandlines was very accommodating. As with similar cases of missing persons, the company had a case file on Merete Lynggaard at hand, and they were able to confirm that the personnel list from that sad day had indeed been printed out back then, with a copy delivered to the police Rapid Response Team. All crew members, both above and below decks, had been interviewed, but unfortunately no one had any information that might indicate what had happened to Merete during the crossing.
Carl felt like banging his head against the wall. What the hell had the police done with that list in the meantime? Used it for a coffee filter? To hell with Bak & Company, and everyone like them.
“I have a CR number,” he told the secretary. “Could you run a search on it?”
“Not today,” he replied. “I’m sorry, but the whole accounting department is away taking a course.”
“OK. Is the list in alphabetical order?” Carl asked. It wasn’t. The captain and his closest subordinates had been listed first; that was common procedure. On board a ship, everyone knew his or her place in the hierarchy.
