She saw people looking at her and murmuring to each other, but she felt mesmerized by his gaze.
8
Carl was more or less satisfied. The workmen had been busy all morning in the basement room, while he’d stood outside in the corridor, making coffee on one of the rolling tables and tapping one cigarette after another out of the pack. Now carpeting covered the floor of his so-called office in Department Q, and the paint cans and everything else had been tossed into gigantic plastic rubbish sacks. The door was back on its hinges, a flat-screen TV had been brought in, a whiteboard and a bulletin board had been hung up, and the bookshelves were filled with his old law books, which other people had thought they could commandeer. In his trouser pocket was the key to a dark blue Peugeot 607, recently decommissioned by the Intelligence Service because they didn’t want their bodyguards riding behind the queen’s royal vehicles in a car with scratches in the paint. The Peugeot had only forty-five thousand kilometers on it, and was now the sole property of Department Q. What a status symbol it was going to be in the parking lot on Magnolievangen. And no more than twenty yards from his bedroom window.
In a couple of days he’d have the assistant they’d promised him. Carl had gotten the workmen to clear out a small room directly across the corridor. The room had been used for storing the battered helmets and shields used by Civil Defense Forces during the riots that erupted over the closing down of the Youth House. Now the space held a desk and chair, a broom cupboard, and all the fluorescent tubes that Carl had thrown out of his own office. Marcus Jacobsen had taken Carl’s request literally and hired a man to do the cleaning and any other necessary tasks, but Marcus required that his assistant clean the rest of the basement as well. This was something Carl was going to get changed at some later date, which Jacobsen was no doubt expecting. It was all part of a tug of war to decide who was going to handle what-and, more specifically, when it would all get done. No matter how one looked at it, it was Carl who was sitting in the dark depths of the basement while the others were upstairs with a view of Tivoli. There needed to be a series of trade-offs, in order to strike a balance.
At one o’clock in the afternoon that day, two secretaries from Admin finally arrived with the case files. They told Carl they contained only the general documents, and if he wanted more extensive background materials, he’d have to send in a requisition form. At least now he had two people from his old department that he could consult. Or at least one of the secretaries: Lis, a warm, fair-haired woman with provocative, slightly overlapping front teeth. With her he would have liked to exchange much more than ideas.
He asked the secretaries to set their stacks of folders on either end of the desk. “Do I happen to see a twinkle in your eye, or do you always look so fantastic, Lis?” he asked the blonde.
The brunette gave her colleague a look that could have made even Einstein feel like a fool. It had probably been a long time since she herself had been the recipient of such a remark.
“Carl, dear,” said the fair-haired Lis, as she always did. “The twinkle in my eye is reserved for my husband and children. When are you going to accept that?”
“I’ll accept it the day the light vanishes and eternal darkness swallows me up along with the rest of the earth,” he replied, not exactly understating his case.
Even before the two secretaries had turned down the corridor and headed for the stairs, the brunette was voicing her indignation.
For the first couple of hours Carl didn’t even glance at the case files. But he did muster the energy to count the folders; that was a form of work, after all. There were at least forty, but he didn’t open any of them. Plenty of time for that. At least another twenty years before retirement, he figured, as he played a couple more games of Spider Solitaire. If he won the next game, he’d consider taking a look at the pile of folders on his right.
After he made his way through at least two dozen games, his cell phone rang. He looked at the display but didn’t recognize the number: 3545-and-something. It was a Copenhagen number.
“Yeah,” he said, expecting to hear Vigga’s overwrought voice. She was always able to find some sympathetic soul to lend her a cell phone. “Get your own phone, Mum!” Jesper was always saying. “It’s fucking annoying that I have to call your neighbors to get hold of you.”
“Yes, hello,” said the voice, and it sounded nothing like Vigga. “This is Birte Martinsen. I’m a psychologist at the Clinic for Spinal Cord Injuries. I’m just ringing to inform you that when one of the assistant nurses gave Hardy Henningsen some water this morning, he tried to suck it down into his lungs. He’s OK, but very depressed, and he’s been asking for you. Could you possibly come and visit? I think it would help him.”
Carl was allowed to be alone in the room with Hardy, even though the psychologist clearly would have liked to listen in on their conversation.
“So, did you just get sick and tired of it all, old boy?” he said, taking Hardy’s hand. There was a tremor of life in it. Carl had noticed that before. Right now the tips of his middle and index fingers curled slightly, as if they wanted to beckon Carl closer.
“What is it, Hardy?” he said, bending his face down to his colleague’s.
“Kill me, Carl,” he whispered.
Carl pulled away and looked him right in the eye. His tall partner had the bluest eyes in the world, and at that moment they were filled with sorrow and doubt and an urgent plea.
“For God’s sake, Hardy,” he whispered. “You know I can’t do that. You need to get back on your feet. You need to get up and walk again. You’ve got a son who wants his father home. Don’t you realize that, Hardy?”
“He’s twenty years old. He’ll be fine,” whispered Hardy.
That was just like him. He was perfectly lucid. And Hardy meant what he said.
“I can’t do it, Hardy. You’re going to have to tough it out. You’re going to get well.”
“I’m paralyzed, and that’s how I’m going to stay. They gave me the prognosis today. No chance of recovery. Not a chance in hell.”
“I imagine that Hardy Henningsen probably asked you to help him take his own life,” said the psychologist, inviting Carl’s confidence. Her professional demeanor required no reply. She was convinced she was right. She’d seen it before.
“No, he didn’t!”
“Oh really? I was positive he would.”
“Hardy? No, that wasn’t what he wanted.”
“I’d be most interested to hear what he did say to you, if you wouldn’t mind telling me.”
“I could do that.” Carl pursed his lips and looked out the window at Havnevejen. Not a soul in sight. Damned strange.
“But you’re not going to?”
“It would make you blush if you heard what he said. I can’t repeat something like that to a lady.”
“You could try.”
“I don’t think so.”
9
Merete had often heard about the little cafe on Nansengade called Bankerat, with the strange, stuffed animals, but until that evening she had never been inside.
