“Can you tell me where HJI was located?”
“Yes, the factory was in Koge for a long time. I made several visits there myself. But right before the accident it was moved to a site just south of Copenhagen. I’m not sure exactly where. I can try to find my old phone book; it’s here somewhere. Can you hold on for a minute?”
It took a good five minutes while Carl listened to the man rummaging around in the background as he used his doubtlessly vast intellect to plumb the most vulgar depths of the Danish language. He sounded as if he were really pissed off at himself. Carl had seldom heard anything like it.
“No, I’m sorry,” said Jonassen after he’d finished cursing. “I can’t find it, even though I never throw anything out. Typical. But talk to Ulla Jensen, his widow. I assume she’s still alive; she can’t be very old. She should be able to tell you everything you want to know. A truly fine woman. Too bad she had to suffer so much.”
Carl decided to meet him halfway. “Yes, it’s too bad,” he said, ready to ask one last question.
But the engineer was just getting started. “It was really brilliant, what they were doing at HJI. Just consider the welding techniques. The welds were practically invisible, even if you X-rayed them using the absolutely most advanced equipment. But they also had all sorts of techniques for finding leaks. For instance, they had a pressure chamber that could go up to sixty atmospheres to test the durability of their products. Probably the biggest pressure chamber I’ve ever seen. With incredibly high-tech control systems. If the containment linings could withstand that much pressure, you knew the nuclear energy reactors were getting first-class equipment. That was HJI. Always top-notch.”
The man was so enthusiastic, it almost sounded as if he’d had stock in the business.
“You don’t happen to know where Ulla Jensen is living today, do you?” Carl interjected.
“Nope, but I’m sure you can find out by checking the Civil Registry. I assume she still lives on the company site. They couldn’t throw her out, as far as I know.”
“Somewhere south of Copenhagen, you said?”
“Yes, exactly.”
How on earth could he say “exactly” about a location as imprecise as “south of Copenhagen”?
“If you’re particularly interested in this sort of thing, I’d be happy to invite you down here to visit,” said the man.
Carl thanked him but declined the offer, citing that he was very pressed for time. In reality, he’d always wanted to flatten Riso with a thousand-ton steamroller and sell the scraps to some one-horse town in Siberia as road paving. So when it came to an invitation to take a tour of such an enterprise, it would be a shame to waste his time, since Jonassen had already remarked that he was a busy man.
By the time Carl put down the phone, Assad had been standing in the doorway for several minutes.
“What is it, Assad?” he asked. “Did we get what we needed? Did they check the CR numbers?”
Assad shook his head. “I think myself that you need to go upstairs and talk to them, Carl. They’re totally…” he twirled his finger around beside his temple “… up in their heads today.”
Carl approached Lis with caution, moving along the wall like a tomcat in rut. Sure enough, she was looking very frazzled. Her short hair, normally so cheerfully tousled, was now plastered down so it looked like a motorbike helmet. Standing behind her, Mrs. Sorensen flashed Carl a fierce look, and he could hear people shouting at each other in the offices. It was really pitiful.
“What’s going on?” he asked Lis when he finally caught her eye.
“I don’t know. When we try to log on to government databases, we’re denied entry. It’s as if all the passwords have been changed.”
“But the Internet is working fine.”
“Yes, but try to log on to the CR files or the tax authority, and you’ll see what I mean.”
“You’re going to have to wait, just like everybody else,” gloated Mrs. Sorensen in her flat-sounding voice.
He stood there for a moment, trying to figure out another way to get the information, but gave up when he saw Lis’s screen display one error message after another.
He shrugged. What the hell. It wasn’t really urgent, anyway. A man like him knew how to turn a force majeure to his advantage. If the electronics had decided to shut down, then it must be a sign that he should station himself in the basement and hold a profound dialogue with the coffee cups for an hour or two, his feet propped up on his desk.
“Hi, Carl,” he heard someone say behind him. It was Marcus Jacobsen, wearing a dazzling white shirt and neatly pressed tie. “I’m glad you’re up here. Could you come to the cafeteria for a second?” Carl could tell it wasn’t a question. “Bak’s giving a briefing, and I think you’ll have a certain interest in what he has to say.”
There must have been at least fifteen people in the cafeteria, with Carl standing at the very back, and the homicide chief off to one side. Up front, with the windows behind them, stood a couple of narcotics officers, Vice- Superintendent Lars Bjorn, and Borge Bak and his second-incommand. Bak’s colleagues all looked extremely pleased.
Lars Bjorn turned over the floor to Bak, and everyone knew what he was going to say.
“This morning we made an arrest in the cyclist murder case. At this very moment the accused is consulting with his lawyer, and we’re convinced that a written confession will be made available before the end of the day.”
He smiled and patted his comb-over. The morning was all his. “The key witness, Annelise Kvist, provided us with a detailed statement after being assured that the suspect had been arrested, and her statement supports our view a hundred percent. The individual in question is a highly respected and professionally active physician, a specialist with a practice in Valby. In addition to stabbing the drug dealer in Valby Park to death, he also played a role in Annelise Kvist’s alleged suicide attempt, and issued death threats against her children.” Bak pointed to his assistant, who continued the report.
“During a search of the suspect’s residence, we found more than six hundred and fifty pounds of various types of narcotics, which are now being identified by our technicians.” He paused for a moment to let the reaction die down. “There is no doubt that the doctor has built up a large and extensive network of colleagues, and they’ve all made significant sums from the sale of various types of prescription drugs-from methadone to diazepam, phenobarbital and morphine-and from the importation of drugs such as amphetamines, zopiclone, THC, or acetophenazine. As well as large quantities of neuroleptics, soporifics, and hallucinogens. Nothing was too big or too small for the accused. Apparently he had customers for everything.
“The man who was murdered in Valby Park was the ringleader behind the distribution of these drugs to people who went to clubs, in particular. We’re guessing that the victim tried to blackmail the doctor, and the latter made short work of things, but that the murder was not premeditated. Annelise Kvist witnessed the killing, and she happened to know the doctor. Because of this, the doctor was able to track her down and force her to keep quiet.” The officer stopped, and Bak took over.
“We now know that right after the murder, the doctor went to see Annelise Kvist at her home. He specializes in bronchial diseases and Annelise’s daughters were two of his asthma patients; both are very dependent on the medicine they take. On that evening at Annelise’s apartment, the doctor displayed dramatically violent behavior, and he forced her to give her children pills, or he said he would kill them. The pills caused their alveoli to constrict, which was life-threatening. He then gave them an injection, which was the antidote. It must have been extremely traumatic for a mother to watch her daughters turn blue in the face, unable to communicate with her.”
Bak looked around the room. Everyone was nodding at what he said. He went on.
“Afterward the doctor claimed that the girls would have to make regular visits to his office to receive the antidote, or they would suffer a fatal relapse. That was how he kept the mother quiet.
“We can thank Annelise’s mother for the fact that we eventually located our key witness. She knew nothing about the intervening scene that had been played out in her daughter’s flat that night, but she did know that her daughter had witnessed the murder. She got Annelise to say so the next day when she saw what a state of shock her daughter was in. The only thing the mother didn’t find out was who the murderer was; Annelise refused to tell her. So when we brought Annelise Kvist in for questioning at her mother’s insistence, she was a woman undergoing a deep inner crisis.
“Today we also know that the doctor went to see Annelise again a couple of days later. He warned her that if she talked, he’d kill the girls. He used words like ‘flay them alive’ and pushed her so far that he was able to force
