“Could you check for the name Lars Henrik Jensen?”
The man on the other end of the line gave a weary laugh. Apparently the list was a real whopper.
In the time that it took Assad to finish yet another prayer, splash his face with water from a little bowl in the corner, blow his nose with an expressive blast, and then put on yet another pot of candied water to boil, the clerk in the Scandlines office managed to complete his search. “No, there’s no Lars Henrik Jensen,” he said, and with that the phone call was over.
It was damned depressing.
“Why do you look so gloomy, Carl?” asked Assad with a smile. “Do not think anymore about that stupid picture in that stupid paper. Just think about if you had broken all your arms and legs-that would have been much worse then.”
Undeniably a strange consolation.
“I found out that boy Atomos’s real name, Assad,” Carl said. “I had a feeling that he worked on board the ship Merete disappeared from, but he didn’t. That’s why I look like this.”
Carl received a well-placed thump on the back. “But you found out about the list of the ship’s crew anyway then. Good job, Carl,” Assad said, using the same tone of voice as when a toddler has successfully used the potty.
“Well, it didn’t really lead to anything, but we’ll keep plugging away. His CR number was in the fax from Godhavn, so I’m sure we’ll find the guy. Thank God we’ve got access to all the official registries we have use for.”
He typed in the number on the computer, with Assad standing behind him, and felt like a child about to open a Christmas present. The best moment for every police detective was when the identity of a prime suspect was about to be revealed.
But instead came disappointment.
“What does that mean, Carl?” asked Assad, pointing at the computer screen.
Carl took his hand off the mouse and stared up at the ceiling. “It means the number can’t be found. No one in the whole kingdom of Denmark has that particular CR number. It’s that simple.”
“Didn’t you write it wrong then? Are you sure that is what the fax says?”
Carl checked. Yes, he’d copied the number correctly.
“Maybe it is then not the right number.”
Good guess.
“Maybe somebody changed it.” Assad took the fax from Carl, frowning as he studied the number. “Look at this, Carl. I think someone changed one number or two. What do you think? Isn’t it like scratched in there and there?” He pointed at two of the last four digits. It was hard to see, but on the fax copy there did seem to be a faint shadow surrounding two of the typed numbers.
“Even if only two numbers were changed, Assad, there would be hundreds of possible combinations.”
“Yes, and so what? Mrs. Sorensen can type in the CR numbers in a half hour, if we send some flowers upstairs to her.”
It was unbelievable how the guy had wormed his way into the good graces of that shrew. “As I said, there could be hundreds of possibilities, Assad. And if somebody changed two numbers, maybe they changed all ten. We need to get the original document from Godhavn and examine it more closely before we start trying out number combinations.”
Carl called the institution immediately and asked them to send the original document to police headquarters by messenger, but they refused to comply. They didn’t want the original to get lost.
Then Carl explained how important it was. “It’s likely that you’ve had a counterfeit document in your archives for years.”
His assertion had no effect. “No, I don’t think so,” came the self-confident reply. “We would have discovered it when we reported the information to the authorities to renew our funding.”
“I see. But what if the counterfeiting occurred a long time after the client left the institution? Who on earth would discover it then? You have to consider the possibility that this new CR number didn’t appear in your books until at least fifteen years after Atomos left.”
“I’m sorry, but we still can’t let you have the original document.”
“OK, then we’ll have to get a court order. I find your attitude less than cooperative. We’re investigating a possible murder here. Keep that in mind.”
Neither the fact that they were investigating a murder nor the threat of court involvement was going to do any good; Carl knew that from the start. Appealing to a person’s ego was far more effective. Because who wanted to be saddled with a derogatory label? Not people in the Social Services system, at any rate. The phrase “less than cooperative” was such an understatement that it packed a lot of punch. “The tyranny of the quiet remark,” as one of Carl’s instructors at the police academy liked to call it.
“You’ll need to send us an e-mail first, with a request to see the original,” said the staff member.
Finally he’d hit home.
“So what was the real name then of that Atomos boy, Carl? Do we know how he got a nickname like that?” Assad asked afterward, his foot resting on the open drawer of Carl’s desk.
“They told me it was Lars Henrik Jensen.”
“Lars Henrik. Strange name. Not many people could be called that.”
Probably not where Assad comes from, thought Carl. He was considering making a sarcastic remark when he noticed the oddly pensive expression on Assad’s face. For a moment he looked completely different than usual. More present, more focused. More of an equal, somehow.
“What are you thinking, Assad?” he asked.
It was as if a film of oil slid over his eyes, and their color changed. He frowned and grabbed the Lynggaard file. It took only a second for him to find what he was looking for.
“Can that be a coincidence?” he asked, pointing to a line on the top document.
Carl looked at the name and then realized which report Assad was holding.
For a moment Carl tried to picture everything in his mind, and then it happened. Somewhere inside of him, where cause and effect were not weighed against each other, and where logic and explanations never challenged consciousness, in that place where thoughts could live freely and be played out against each other-right there in that spot, things fell into place, and he understood how it all fitted together.
34
The biggest shock was not to look into the eyes of Daniel, the man to whom she had been so attracted. Nor was it the realization that Daniel and Lasse were one and the same person, even though that made her legs weak. No, the worst thing was knowing who he really was. It simply drained everything out of her. All that remained was the heavy weight of guilt that had rested on her shoulders her entire adult life.
It wasn’t really his eyes that she recognized-it was the pain she saw in them. The pain and the despair and the hatred, which in a split second had taken over this man’s life. Or rather, the boy’s life. She knew that now.
Because Lasse was only fourteen on that frosty clear winter day when he looked out of the window of his parents’ car and saw in another car a girl, full of life and thoughtless, teasing her brother so vigorously on the backseat that she diverted her father’s attention. Diverting for a few milliseconds her father’s sense of judgment and prevented him from gripping the steering wheel. Those precious fractions of a second of lapsed vigilance, which could have spared the lives of five people and prevented three others from being maimed. Only Merete and the boy named Lasse had escaped from the accident with their lives and health intact. And precisely for that reason, it was between the two of them that the account now had to be settled.
She understood that. And she surrendered to her fate.
