Mercy aka The keeper of lost causes

31

Out on the lawn at Egely, Carl apologized to the nurse for the episode with Uffe. Then he threw the photographs and Playmobil figures into the plastic bag and strode toward the parking lot, while Uffe kept on screaming in the background. It was only when Carl started up the engine that he noticed the chaotic scene as staff members tore down the slope. That was the end of his investigative efforts on the grounds of Egely. Fair enough.

Uffe’s reaction had been very strong. So now Carl knew that in some way or another Uffe was present in the same world as everyone else. Uffe had looked into the eyes of the boy named Atomos in the photo, and it had shaken him badly. There was no doubt about that. This signified an unusually big step forward.

Carl pulled over next to a field and tapped in the name of the Godhavn children’s home on the car’s Internet system. The phone number appeared at once.

He didn’t have to offer much in the way of explanation. Apparently the staff were used to having the police call them, so there was no need to beat about the bush.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “None of your residents has done anything wrong. I’m calling about a boy who lived at the home in the late eighties. I don’t know his real name, but he was called Atomos. Does that name ring a bell?”

“In the late eighties?” said the staff member on duty. “No, I haven’t been here that long. We have case files on all the children, but they’re probably not listed under nicknames like that. Are you sure you don’t have some other name we could look up?”

“No, sorry.” Carl glanced over at the fields that reeked of manure. “Do you know of any staff member who worked there back then?”

“Hmm. Not among the full-time employees. I’m pretty sure of that,” she said. “But, let me see… oh, that’s right, we do have a retired colleague, John, who comes in a couple of times a week. He just can’t bear to stay away, and the boys would miss him if he didn’t come in. I’m sure he worked here back then.”

“He wouldn’t happen to be there today, would he?”

“John? No, he’s on holiday. The Canary Islands for one thousand, two hundred and ninety-five kroner. How could he resist? as he likes to say. But he’ll be back on Monday, so I’ll see if we can get him to come in. It’s mostly for the boys’ sake. They like him. Give us a call on Monday, and we’ll see what we can do.”

“Could you give me his home number?”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s against our policy to give out personal phone numbers for staff members. You never know who might be asking for it.”

“My name is Carl Mørck. I think I already told you that. I’m a police detective, you may recall.”

She laughed. “I’m sure you can track down his number if you’re so clever, but I suggest that you wait until Monday and call us back. OK?”

Carl leaned back in his car seat and looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock. He could still make it back to the office in time to check out Merete Lynggaard’s cell phone, if the battery was still working after five years, which was doubtful. If it was dead, they’d have to get a new one.

Out in the fields, screeching clusters of seagulls rose to the sky behind the hills. A vehicle came rumbling underneath them, whipping up dust and dirt. Then the top of the driver’s cab appeared. It was a tractor, a huge Landini with a blue cab, lumbering steadily along the plowed field. That was the sort of thing a person knew if he’d grown up with shit on his wooden clogs. So it’s time to spread the manure here too, he thought as he turned on the engine, about to drive off before the stench blew over toward him and settled in the car’s air conditioning system.

At that very moment he caught sight of the farmer inside the Plexiglas windows. He was wearing a baseball cap, and all of his attention was focused on his work and the prospect of having a record harvest this summer. He had a ruddy face, and his shirt was red-and-black checked. A real lumberjack-patterned shirt. Easily recognizable.

Fuck, he thought. He’d forgotten to call his colleagues in Sorø and tell them which type of shirt pattern he thought he could remember the shooter wearing out in Amager. He sighed at the thought. If only they hadn’t involved him in all that. Soon they’d probably be asking him to come back and point out the shirt for a second time.

He punched in the number and got hold of the officer on duty. He was immediately transferred to the head of the investigation, the one they called Jørgensen.

“This is Carl Mørck in Copenhagen. I think I can confirm that one of the shirts you showed me matched the one worn by the perp out in Amager.”

Jørgensen didn’t respond. Why the hell didn’t he at least clear his throat so Carl would know he hadn’t croaked in the meantime on the other end of the line?

“Ahem,” said Carl, thinking it might prompt a reaction, but the man didn’t say a word. Maybe he’d put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“I’ve been having dreams the past few nights, you see,” Carl went on. “More scenes from the shooting incident have come back to me. Including a picture of the shirt. I can see it really clearly now.”

“Is that so?” Jørgensen said at last after yet another resounding silence on the line. He might at least have mustered a few cheers.

“Don’t you want to know which shirt on the table I’m thinking of?”

“And you think you can remember?”

“If I can remember the shirt after getting a bullet in my head and three hundred and thirty pounds of paralyzed deadweight on top of me while I was being sprayed with a gallon of my best colleagues’ blood, don’t you think I can remember how those damned shirts were laid out after four days?”

“It doesn’t really seem normal.”

Carl counted to ten. It was very possible it wasn’t normal on Storgade in Sorø. That was probably also why he’d ended up in a police department with twenty times as many homicide cases as Jørgensen.

But what he said was: “I’m also good at playing the Memory Game.”

A pause to let the words sink in. “Oh, really! Well, then I’d certainly like to hear what you can tell me.”

Damn, what a country bumpkin the man was.

“The shirt was the one on the far left,” said Carl. “The one closest to the window.”

“OK,” replied Jørgensen. “That matches what the witness told us.”

“Good. I’m glad. Well, that was all. I’ll send you an e-mail so you have it in writing.” By now the tractor in the field had come precariously close. The spray of piss and manure that pounded out of the hoses and onto the ground was truly a joy to behold.

Carl rolled up the window on the passenger side and was just about to end the conversation.

“Just a moment, before you go,” said Jørgensen. “We’ve taken in a suspect. Well, just between the two of us, I can say that we’re convinced we’ve caught one of the perpetrators. When do you think you can come down here for the lineup? Some time tomorrow?”

“A lineup? No, I can’t do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tomorrow is Saturday, and it’s my day off. When I’m done sleeping, I’m going to get up and make myself a cup of coffee and then go back to bed. I may do that all day long, you never know. Besides, I never saw the perps out in Amager, which I’ve actually said many times, in case you take a look at the reports. And since the man’s face wasn’t revealed to me in my dreams, you can conclude that I haven’t seen him since. So I’m not coming in. Is that OK with you, Jørgensen?”

Another pause, for Christ’s sake. This was more enervating than politicians who constantly inserted an “er” or “um” between every other word in their nauseating, long-winded sentences.

“Only you can decide whether it’s OK or not,” said Jørgensen. “It was your friends who suffered at the hands of this man. We’ve searched the suspect’s place of residence, and several of the things we found indicate a connection between the events in Amager and Sorø.”

“That’s good, Jørgensen. Good luck, then. I’ll follow the story in the newspapers.”

“You do know that you’ll be asked to testify in court, don’t you? It’s your identification of the shirt that helps to link the two crimes.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there. Happy hunting.”

Carl cut off the connection and noted an unpleasant feeling in his chest. A much stronger sensation than before. Maybe it was due to the unbelievably offensive odor that had seeped into the car, but it could also be a sign of something more serious.

For a minute he just sat and waited until the pressure in his rib cage eased up a bit. Then he returned the wave the farmer had sent him, and started the motor. After Carl had driven about five hundred yards along the road, he slowed down, opened the window, and began gasping for air, arching his back as much as he could to release the tension. Then he pulled over and began sucking the air deeper and deeper into his lungs. He’d seen other people suffering from this type of panic attack, but experiencing it inside his own body was totally surreal. He opened the car door, cupped his hands around his mouth to decrease the effect of hyperventilation, and flung the door all the way open.

“Damn it!” he shouted, doubling over as he staggered along the ditch with a piston pounding in his bronchial tubes. Overhead the clouds were spinning, the sky closing in around him. He dropped to the ground with his legs off to the side and fumbled after the cell phone in his jacket pocket. He was damned if he’d die of a heart attack without having anything to say about it.

A car slowed down on the road. The people inside couldn’t see him in the ditch, but he could hear them. “That looks odd,” said a voice, and then the car drove on. If I had their license number, I’d show them, all right. That was the last thought Carl had before everything went black.

When he came to, he was holding his phone pressed to his ear, with an awful lot of dirt around his mouth. He licked his lips, spat out some grime, and looked around in confusion. He put his hand to his chest; the pressure was still there but not as bad, and he concluded that things may not be as dire as he’d thought. Then he hauled himself to his feet, staggered back to the car, and tumbled into the driver’s seat. It wasn’t even one-thirty, so he hadn’t been out for long.

“What’s going on, Carl?” he asked himself. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt twice as thick as normal. His legs were like ice, while his torso was drenched in sweat. Something had gone very wrong with his body.

“You’re about to lose control,” he heard a voice bellow inside of him. And then his mobile rang.

Assad didn’t ask him how he was feeling. Why should he? “We have now a problem, Carl” was all he said as Carl swore to himself.

“The technicians do not dare remove the crossed-out line in Merete Lynggaard’s phone book,” Assad continued, undaunted. “They say that the number and the crossed-out line were made with the same ballpoint pen, so even though they have dried up different, there is much too big a risk that both layers disappear.”

Carl put his hand on his chest again. Now it felt as if he’d swallowed air. It hurt like hell. Was he really having a heart attack? Or did it just feel like he was?

“They say we have to send it all to England. Something about combining some kind of digitalizing process with a chemical emersion, or whatever they said.” He was probably waiting for Carl to correct the terms that he’d used, but Carl wasn’t correcting anything at the moment. He had enough to deal with as he squeezed his eyes shut and summoned all his willpower to get rid of the awful spasms that were pumping through his torso.

“I think it takes too long, the whole thing. They say that we will not have the results until three or four weeks. Don’t you agree?”

He tried to concentrate, but Assad didn’t have the patience to wait.

“Maybe I should not tell you this, Carl, but I think I can count really good on you, so I will tell you anyway. I know a guy who can do this for us.” Assad paused for some sort of acknowledgment, but he waited in vain. “Are you there now still, Carl?”

“Yes, damn it,” he snapped. Then he inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs to the limit. It hurt like hell for a moment before the pressure eased. “Who is he?” Carl asked, trying to relax.

“You do not want to know that, Carl. But he is very good. He is from the Middle East. I know him real well enough, and he is good. Should I set him on the job?”

“Just a minute, Assad. I need to think.”

Carl stumbled out of the car and stood there for a moment, doubled over, his head hanging and his hands on his knees. That sent the blood flowing back to his brain. His face was ablaze but the pressure in his chest faded. Oh, that felt good. In spite of the stench from the farmer’s field that wafted past him like a disease, the air out there felt almost refreshing.

When he straightened up, he felt fine.

He picked up his cell. “OK, Assad, I’m back. We can’t have a passport counterfeiter doing work for us. Do you hear me?”

“Who says he is a passport counterfeiter? I did not say that.”

“So what then?”

“He was just good at doing this kind of thing, where he came from. He can remove stamp marks so you cannot see them. It should be simple for him to remove a little ink. You do not need to know more then. And I will not tell him what he is doing this for. He is fast, Carl. And it will cost nothing. He owes me favors.”

“How fast?”

“We have it on Monday if we want.”

“Then go ahead and give him the shit, Assad. Go ahead.”

Assad muttered something on the other end of the line. Presumably “OK” in Arabic.

“Just one more thing, Carl. Mrs. Sørensen from upstairs in the homicide department wants me to tell you that the witness, that woman in the cyclist case, has started to talk a little bit. And she-”

“Stop right there, Assad. That’s not our case.” Carl got back in the car. “We have enough to do as it is.”

“Mrs. Sørensen did not say it exactly to me, but I think upstairs they want your opinion, I mean without asking you, like directly.”

“Go up there and pump her for information, Assad. And then go and visit Hardy on Monday morning and tell him about it. I’m sure it would amuse him more than me. Take a cab out there, and then I’ll see you back at headquarters later. OK? In the meantime, keep your chin up, Assad. Say hello to Hardy for me and tell him I’ll be out to visit him sometime next week.”

Carl ended the conversation and peered out the windshield, which looked as though it had been through a shower. But it wasn’t rain; he could smell what it was from inside the car. It was pig’s piss, à la carte. The springtime country menu.

Sitting on Carl’s desk was a sumptuously decorated monster of a tea apparatus, sputtering away. If Assad had thought that the oil flame would keep the mint tea good and hot until his boss returned, he was mistaken, because by now all the water in the kettle had boiled off and the bottom was making creaking noises. Carl blew out the flame and dropped heavily onto his chair, noticing the pressure in his chest again. He’d heard it all before. A warning, then relief. Then maybe another brief warning and after that: you’re dead. Bright prospects for a man who had buckets full of years that had to be poured out before he could retire.

He took out Mona Ibsen’s business card and weighed it in his hand. Twenty minutes next to her soft, warm body and he’d probably feel much better. The question was whether he’d feel just as good if he had to make do with the company of her soft, warm eyes.

He picked up the phone and punched in her number; as it rang, the pressure in his chest returned. Was it a life-affirming heartbeat or a warning of the opposite? How could he tell?

He was gasping for air as she answered the phone.

“Carl Mørck here,” he said awkwardly. “I’m ready to make a full confession.”

“Then you’d better go over to St. Peter’s Church,” she said drily.

“No, honestly. I had a panic attack today; at least I think that’s what it was. I’m not feeling well.”

“All right then. Monday at eleven o’clock. Should I phone in a prescription for a sedative, or can you make it through the weekend?”

“I can make it,” he said, although he wasn’t too sure about that as he put down the phone.

Time kept ticking away mercilessly. In less than two hours Morten would be home from his afternoon shift at the video shop.

Carl took Merete Lynggaard’s phone out of the charger and switched it on. It said: “Enter PIN code.” At least the battery was still working. Good old reliable Siemens.

He punched in 1-2-3-4 and got an error message. Then he tried 4-3-2-1, and got the same message. After that he had only one shot left before he’d have to send the phone off to the experts. He opened the case file and found Merete’s birth date. Of course, she might just as well have used Uffe’s birth date. He leafed through the documents until he found it. Then again, it might also be a combination of the two, or something else altogether. He decided to combine the first two digits of their birth dates, starting with Uffe’s. He punched in the numbers.

When the display showed a smiling Uffe, with his arm around Merete’s neck, the pressure in Carl’s chest vanished for a moment. Someone else might have uttered a triumphant cheer, but Carl didn’t have the energy for that. Instead, he leaned back and hauled his feet up on the desk.

As the constriction in his chest returned, he opened the list of incoming and outgoing calls and went through all the numbers from February 15, 2002, until the day Merete Lynggaard disappeared. It was a long list. Some of them he’d have to look up in the companies’ archives. Numbers that had been changed and then changed again. It sounded tedious, but after an hour, a clear pattern emerged: during the entire period, Merete had communicated only with colleagues and spokespersons for various special-interest groups. Thirty calls alone were from her own secretary, including the very last call, made on March 1.

That meant that any calls from the fake Daniel Hale must have gone through the landline at Christiansborg. If there had been any calls, that is. Carl sighed and used his foot to push a stack of papers to the middle of his desk. His right leg was itching to give Børge Bak a good kick up the backside. If the original investigative team had ever had a call list for Merete’s office phone, it must have been lost, because there was nothing like that in the case file.

Well, he’d just have to leave that issue for Assad to take care of on Monday morning, while he went to see Mona Ibsen for a therapy session.

The selection of Playmobil toys in the toy shop in Allerød wasn’t bad; on the contrary. But the prices sure were steep. He couldn’t fathom how the local citizenry could afford to bring kids into the world. He chose the absolute cheapest set he could find with more than two figures-a police car with two officers for two hundred sixty-nine kroner and seventy-five øre, and asked for the receipt. He was pretty certain that Morten would want to come in and exchange the set, anyway.

As soon as Morten arrived home, Carl confessed what he’d done. He took the pieces that he’d borrowed out of the plastic bag and handed his lodger the newly purchased set as well. He told Morten he was more than sorry, and he would never do it again. In fact, he would never set foot in Morten’s domain when he wasn’t home. Morten reacted as Carl had expected, but it was still a surprise to see how this big, flabby example of how destructive a fatty diet and the lack of exercise could be was able to tense up his body with such physical rage. How the human body could quiver so much with indigation or that disappointment could be expressed with so many different words. Not only had he stepped on Morten’s mega-long toes, he had apparently flattened them totally on the laminated parquet floor.

Carl was looking with dismay at the little plastic family standing on the edge of the kitchen table, wishing that this had never happened, when the pressure in his chest returned in a whole new form.

Morten was so busy declaring that Carl would have to find himself a new lodger that he didn’t notice Carl’s distress. Not until he collapsed on the floor with cramps from his neck to his navel. This time the pains were not confined to Carl’s chest. His skin felt too tight, his muscles were surging with blood circulation, and he had stomach-muscle spasms that forced his internal organs up against his spine. It didn’t really hurt, but he almost couldn’t breathe.

In a matter of seconds Morten was bending over him, his eyes wide, asking Carl if he needed a glass of water. A glass of water? What good would that do? Carl thought as his pulse danced to its own irregular beat. Was Morten planning to pour the water over him so his body would have a nice little reminder of a sudden summer shower? Or was he thinking of forcing the water down his throat between his clenched teeth, which at the moment were whistling from the low pressure in his pinioned lungs?

“Yeah, thanks, Morten,” Carl forced himself to say. Anything so they could at least meet halfway, there in the middle of the kitchen floor.

By the time Carl had recovered enough to settle into the most squashed corner of the sofa, Morten’s sense of alarm had been replaced by a more pragmatic attitude. If an otherwise level-headed guy like Carl could accompany his apology with such a dramatic breakdown, then he must have really meant it.

“OK. So we agree to forget all about this little episode, right, Carl?” said Morten, looking solemn.

Carl nodded. He’d agree to anything that would give him some peace and quiet and a few hours to recover before Mona Ibsen started digging around inside him.