Invisible Murder

HE POLICE OFFICER was female. In a way, it was two shocks in one.

Of course Skou-Larsen was well aware that the police force employed countless women, but when there was a friendly young lady on one’s doorstep, ringing one’s doorbell, well, “Whoops, the police are here” wasn’t exactly the first thing that popped into one’s head.

“Has something happened to Helle?” he asked, as soon as he realized the meaning of the identification she was showing him.

“No, no,” the policewoman said reassuringly. “We just need to follow up on all the leads in this case. Am I correct, sir, in my understanding that you own a 1984 Opel Rekord?”

“Yes.” She could see it in the carport, he thought, if she turned her head a little. But he supposed they had to ask. “Model E,” he said, to try to seem a little more accommodating. “An older car, of course, but very reliable. What is this in regard to?” She wasn’t in uniform, so it couldn’t be a traffic infraction. Or … did they not wear uniforms anymore?

“Would you mind if we came in for a moment, sir?”

We? It wasn’t until then that he noticed the second police officer, who was still standing on the sidewalk talking into his phone. Skou-Larsen furrowed his brow, but it seemed rude to say no, and it would also look suspicious in their eyes.

“Not at all,” he said. “My wife isn’t home, but perhaps I could figure out how to make us some coffee.”

The second police officer introduced himself as Mikael Nielsen, but didn’t want to sit down.

“You guys mind if I take a look at the car while you talk?” Nielsen asked.

Skou-Larsen felt a wasp-sting of irritation at the officer’s rude informality. You guys. As if he were talking to some street punk.

“Perhaps first you could just be so kind as to tell me what this case is about?” he suggested. “I can assure you that I haven’t done anything illegal.”

No one said, “No, of course not,” or any other similarly placating phrases. Both Mikael Nielsen and that young lady—what was her name now? Nystrøm, Nyhus, Nymand—were just observing him with an expectant neutrality that he found disagreeable.

“Of course, sir, we could also wait for a warrant,” Gitte Nymand said. Yes, that’s what she said her name was.

He waved his hand in irritation.

“No,” he said. “That’s fine. Check whatever you damn well please, for Pete’s sake.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” Gitte said, rewarding him with a warm smile. “The whole thing will go much quicker this way. For you as well.”

He refused to let himself to be mollified. She might be more polite than her colleague, but the signal was very clear: They were in charge, and they could invade his car and his home as it suited them. The affront stung, and he decided that he didn’t feel like struggling with the coffee machine for their sake. Deeply ingrained manners made him wait until after she had sat down on the sofa before he allowed himself to settle into his favorite armchair. Maybe it was good that Helle had that extra choir practice; with any luck, he could get this all over with and have the constabulary out of the house again before she came home.

“Let me just jump right in,” Nymand said. “Several months ago, sir, you and your wife took out a loan for a little over half a million kroner. The loan was paid out in cash, which is rather unusual. Could you explain to me what the money was for?”

“Oh,” Skou-Larsen said, suddenly feeling the light of understanding casting a reconciliatory glow over the invasion. “You’re from the fraud squad.”

“No, sir,” Nymand said. “We’re from the PET.”

“But this obviously has something to do with that scam case in Spain,” he said.

She didn’t skip a beat. “Could you please tell me about it, sir,” she said. “From your point of view, of course.”

“I’m afraid my wife was taken in by a few brightly colored brochures and a salesman who was slightly too clever. And since the house is in her name, I didn’t learn of her plans until it was too late. It was supposed to be a surprise, you understand. I’m almost eighty-five. And she thought it would be good for me to have someplace warmer to spend the winters.”

Gitte nodded encouragingly, without interrupting.

“But it turned out the whole thing was a sham. The apartment my wife thought she bought doesn’t exist. At least not outside the pictures in the brochure.”

“Do you still have the brochure, sir?”

“Of course. Would you like to see it?”

He went to retrieve it from the drawer in Helle’s nightstand and then placed it on the rosewood coffee table in front of the police officer. PUEBLO PUERTO LAGUNAS it said in sunshine-yellow capital letters across the glossy front, and the pictures underneath were brimming with enough palm trees, pool umbrellas, and idyllic balconies to produce a stab of longing in any winter-weary Danish soul. Nor was Skou-Larsen completely immune to it. The idea of escaping the asthma-inducing fogs and winter bouts of arthritis was agreeable enough, but one didn’t need to toss every scrap of judgment and healthy common sense out the window because of it.

“The problem is,” Skou-Larsen said, “that the apartment my wife thinks she bought hasn’t even been built yet. And in addition, it’s already been sold to someone else. She keeps saying that there must have been some mistake, but I’m convinced the whole thing was a scam.”

“I see. So the money was a down payment or a deposit?”

“Yes. A deposit.”

“Mr. Skou-Larsen, we’ve no record of the money having been transferred to any other account, either here in Denmark or abroad. It was just cashed from the loan account the bank set up.”

“I’m afraid my wife was so careless as to pay the sum in cash to a so-called agent in their sales office. I called them, but they claimed they had never heard of him. They said they don’t even have agents in Denmark, just in Spain and one location in England. I think it was Brighton.”

“So, sir, you believe your wife was the victim of a fraud?”

“I most certainly do. Wouldn’t you call that a con job?”

“If it happened the way you describe, sir, I certainly would. We’ll have to look into it more closely. In the meantime, perhaps you could tell me if you can remember what you were doing Saturday, May second, between 6 and 11 P.M.?”

Skou-Larsen was brought out of his rightful indignation with a jerk.

“What I was doing …?” he said hesitantly. It sounded just like something one of those godawful mystery-novel detectives would ask the murder suspect. And he didn’t see how it could be related to the fraud case. Unless the con man had met with some kind of accident? They had asked about the car, after all.

“I should think I was watching TV,” he said hesitantly. “We usually do on Saturday. My wife likes those prime time dramas.” Then he happened to think of something. “No, wait. I think that might be the Saturday I had to go to the clinic because I fainted. Doctors hardly ever make house calls anymore, you know, not even if you’re practically dying. But once I got there, they changed their mind, and ended up admitting me to the hospital for the night.”

“Which hospital?”

“Bispebjerg.”

“And what was wrong with you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Blood pressure. It was too low.” At the hospital they claimed that he must have taken too many of his Fortzaar pills, but he was sure he hadn’t. “They kept me in until Sunday, so I wasn’t home that night.”

The second policeman, Nielsen, returned from the carport with a yellow device that reminded Skou-Larsen of the blood pressure monitor the doctor used, maybe because they had just been talking about that night at Bispebjerg Hospital. Instead of the blood pressure monitor’s inflatable cuff, it had a stethoscope-like object connected to it by a spiral cord. Skou-Larsen noticed the two officers exchange a look and an infinitesimal shake of the head.

“We also need to check the house,” the one named Nielsen said.

“Mr. Skou-Larsen was kind enough to give us permission to check anything we needed to,” Gitte said quickly, and Skou-Larsen already regretted his rash words. Were they going to go rooting around in his closets and drawers and gape at his folded underwear now? But that wasn’t what the young man was doing. Instead, he plugged a pair of headphones into his yellow box and started walking around waving the stethoscope-like instrument.

“I’m sorry, but what on earth is he doing?” Skou-Larsen asked. “What kind of device is that?”

At first he wasn’t sure if Gitte was going to answer him. But after a brief pause, it came.

“It’s a Geiger counter,” she said. “Or more accurately, a Geiger-Müller counter. Mr. Skou-Larsen, does anyone besides you ever use your car? Your wife, perhaps?”

“Helle doesn’t drive,” he responded absentmindedly. A Geiger counter? In his house? “Does this have anything to do with that business in Valby? Why in the world would you think there’s radioactivity in our home? Do we need to be evacuated?” His muddled brain reached all the way back to the safety drills from the ’50s, and he started contemplating what he would need if he were going to spend the night in the air-raid shelter under Emdrup School. No, wait, it wasn’t called that anymore. What was it now, Lundehus School? Did they even still have the bomb shelter? He could picture the old brochure clearly. IN THE EVENT OF WAR, it was called, with a foreword by former Prime Minister Viggo Kampmann, and gave information about “the destructive range of the new weapons” and the recommendation to keep enough emergency rations on hand for eight days. But this wasn’t a nuclear war, this was … this was something else. You can’t make an atomic bomb out of cesium, he told himself. But a Geiger counter—in his house?

“What is he looking for?” he managed to ask.

“Try to concentrate now, Mr. Skou-Larsen. Has anyone else used your car? Has it ever been stolen?”

“No,” he said. “Never.”

“Do you own a computer, sir?” Gitte asked.

“Uh, yes. Our son … he’s good at sending e-mails and that kind of thing.”

“We would like permission to copy the contents of your hard drive.”

“Yes. But.…” Suddenly he discovered that he had put his hand on her wrist, a move that took both of them by surprise. “Won’t you tell me what’s going on?” he asked, letting go of her again even though he actually wanted to keep holding on until she responded. It was unbearable, all of it. It was as if his home on Elmehøjvej were suddenly transformed into the setting for one of those absurdist 1960s dramas. They had been to see one, he recalled. With a title like Happy Days, he had expected it to be entertaining, but it was mostly sad, and Helle got angry and said it wasn’t right to waste people’s time with stuff like that. That was actually the last time they had been to the theater, apart from a musical or two.

Gitte gave him a look that was not entirely devoid of compassion, or so he thought.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Skou-Larsen. But as I said, we have to follow up on every lead. Even the more unlikely ones.” She stood up. “Mikael?”

“Yes,” came the muffled response from upstairs.

“Are you about done?”

“Just about.”

A moment later, the policeman with the Geiger counter came back down to the living room.

“Clean,” he said. “Just background radiation.”

She nodded as if that was just what she had been expecting.

“There, you see now, Mr. Skou-Larsen. There’s no reason to worry. We have to take your hard drive with us, or would you rather have us wait here until someone from IT can come out and make a copy?”

“Take it,” he said hoarsely. The sooner he got them out of the house, the better. “We almost never use the computer. Not since Helle learned how to send text messages.”

They left, after a polite goodbye—even from the rude young male officer. But Skou-Larsen was shaken and dazed, not sure that anything made sense anymore.

Thank God Helle hadn’t been home.…