Mercy aka The keeper of lost causes

32

Carl had hidden a couple of half-empty bottles of whisky and gin behind some books on the living-room bookshelf-booze that Jesper hadn’t yet sniffed out and magnanimously contributed to one of his improvised parties.

Carl drank most of both bottles before a sense of calm finally descended over him, and the weekend’s endless hours were spent in a deep, deep sleep. Only three times in two days did he get up to grab from the fridge whatever it had to offer. Jesper wasn’t home, and Morten had left to visit his parents in Næstved, so who cared if the food was past its expiration date and the menu was an awkward mishmash of ingredients?

When Monday arrived, it was Jesper’s turn to try to rouse Carl out of bed for a change. “Get up, Carl. What’s with you? I need money for food. There’s nothing left in the fucking fridge.”

Carl looked at his stepson with eyes that refused to comprehend, let alone accept, the daylight. “What time is it?” he mumbled. For a moment he couldn’t even remember what day it was.

“Come on, Carl. I’m going to be late as hell.”

He glanced at the alarm clock that Vigga had so generously left for him. This was a woman who had no respect for the extent of the nighttime hours.

He stared at the clock, suddenly wide awake. It was ten minutes past ten. In less than fifty minutes he needed to be sitting in a chair, looking into the exquisite eyes of psychologist Mona Ibsen.

“So you’re having a hard time getting out of bed these days?” she ascertained, casting a quick glance at her watch. “I can see that you’re still sleeping badly,” she went on, as if she’d been corresponding with his pillow.

He was annoyed. Maybe it would have helped if he’d had time for a shower before he rushed out the door. I hope I don’t stink, he thought, turning his face slightly toward his armpit.

She looked at him calmly as she sat across from him, hands resting in her lap, legs crossed, and clad in black velvet trousers. Her hair was cut in wisps, shorter than before, her eyebrows a thundering black. All in all quite terrifying.

He told her about his collapse out in Farmer Shit’s fields, perhaps expecting some show of sympathy.

Instead, she went straight for the jugular. “Do you feel that you failed your colleagues during the shooting episode?”

Carl swallowed hard a few times, and rambled on about how he could have taken out his gun faster and about instincts that might have become blunted by years spent dealing with criminal elements.

“You feel that you failed your friends. That’s my opinion. And in that case, you’re going to continue to suffer unless you acknowledge that things couldn’t have happened any other way.”

“Things could always have happened differently,” he said.

She ignored his remark. “You should know that I’m also treating Hardy Henningsen. Which means I’m seeing the case from two sides, and I should have recused myself. But there are no regulations requiring me to, so I need to ask if you wish to continue talking to me, now that you know this. You have to realize that I can’t say anything about what Hardy has told me, just as whatever you tell me will naturally also remain confidential.”

“That’s OK,” said Carl, but he didn’t really mean it. If it weren’t for her downy-fine cheeks and lips that simply cried out to be kissed, he would have stood up and told her to go to hell. “But I’m going to ask Hardy about it,” he said. “Hardy and I can’t have secrets from each other; that just won’t work.”

She nodded and straightened her back. “Have you ever found yourself in other situations you felt you couldn’t handle?”

“Yes,” he said.

“When?”

“Right now.” He sent her a penetrating look.

She ignored it. Cold broad.

“What would you give to still have Anker and Hardy around?” she asked, and then quickly fired off four more questions that stirred up a strange feeling of grief inside Carl. With every question she looked him in the eye and then wrote down his answers on her notepad. It felt as if she wanted to push him to the edge. As if he would have to fall dramatically before she was prepared to reach out and catch him.

She noticed that his nose was running before he did. She lifted her gaze to look at him, and then took note of the moisture that had started collecting in his eyes.

Don’t blink, damn it, or the tears will fall, he told himself, not understanding what was going on inside him. He wasn’t afraid to cry, and he had nothing against her seeing his tears; he just didn’t know why it was happening at this particular moment.

“Go ahead and cry,” she said in the same worldly-wise manner that someone might use to encourage a gluttonous infant to burp.

When they ended the session twenty minutes later, Carl had had enough of spilling his guts. Mona Ibsen, on the other hand, seemed satisfied as she shook his hand and gave him another appointment. She assured him again that the outcome of the shooting incident couldn’t have been prevented, and that he would undoubtedly regain his sense of equilibrium after a few more sessions.

He nodded. In a certain sense he did feel better. Maybe because her scent overshadowed his own, and because her handshake felt so light and soft and warm.

“Call me if there’s anything you want to talk about, Carl. It doesn’t matter whether it’s something big or small. It might be important for the work we’ll be doing together. You never know.”

“Well, then, I’ve already got a question for you,” he said, trying to draw her attention to his sinewy and purportedly sexy hands. Hands that had often won high praise from the ladies.

She noticed his posturing and smiled for the first time. Behind her soft lips were teeth even whiter than Lis’s up on the second floor. A rare sight in an age where red wine and caffeinated beverages made most people’s teeth look like smoked glass.

“So what’s the question?” she asked.

He pulled himself together. It was now or never. “Are you currently involved with someone?” He was startled by how clumsy that sounded, but it was too late to take back his words. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. He was having a hard time figuring out how to go on. “I just wanted to ask if you might be receptive to a dinner invitation someday.”

Her smile stiffened. Gone were the white teeth and the silky skin.

“I think you need to get back on your feet before you engage in that sort of offensive, Carl. And you’d be wise to choose your victims with greater care.”

He felt disappointment settling throughout his entire endocrine system as she turned her back and opened the door to the hallway. Damn it all, anyway. “If you don’t think you’re a good choice,” he grumbled, “then you have no idea what an amazing effect you have on the opposite sex.”

She turned around and held out her hand to show him the ring on her finger.

“Oh yes, I’m aware of it,” she said, retreating from the field of battle.

He was left standing there, shoulders drooping. In his own eyes he was one of the best detectives the kingdom of Denmark had ever produced, so he wondered how in the world he’d managed to overlook something so elementary.

Someone from the Godhavn children’s home called to tell Carl they’d got hold of the retired teacher, John Rasmussen, and that on the following day he’d be in Copenhagen to visit his sister. He wanted to pass on the message that he’d always been interested in seeing police headquarters, so he’d be happy to pay Carl a visit between ten and ten-thirty, if that was OK. Carl couldn’t call him back, because it was the home’s policy not to give out private phone numbers, but he could leave a message if he wouldn’t be able to meet with Rasmussen.

It wasn’t until after Carl put down the phone that he returned to reality. His failed efforts with Mona Ibsen had disconnected certain parts of his brain, and the job of reconnecting them had only just started. So the teacher from Godhavn, who’d been on holiday in the Canary Islands, was going to come and see him. It might have been reassuring to hear that the man actually remembered the boy known as Atomos before Carl agreed to play tour guide at police headquarters. But what the hell.

He took a deep breath and tried to chuck Mona Ibsen and her catlike eyes out of his system. There were plenty of threads in the Lynggaard case that needed to be tied up, so he’d better get started before self-pity sank its claws into him.

One of the first tasks was to ask Helle Andersen, the home help from Stevns, to take a look at the photos he’d borrowed from Dennis Knudsen’s house. Maybe she too could be persuaded to come down to headquarters for a tour guided by a deputy detective superintendent. Anything so he wouldn’t have to drive across the Tryggevælde River again.

He called her number and got hold of her husband, who claimed to still be on sick leave with unbelievably bad pain in his back, but who otherwise sounded surprisingly fit. He said “Hi, Carl” as if they’d gone to Scout camp together and shared all their meals.

Listening to him was like sitting next to an old aunt who’d never snagged a husband. Of course he’d be happy to get Helle to come to the phone if she were at home. No, she was always busy with her clients until at least… But wait a minute, he thought he heard her car in the driveway. She’d bought herself a new one, by the way, and he could always hear the difference between a 1.3- and a 1.6-liter engine. And it was true what the man on TV said; damned if those Suzukis didn’t deliver what they promised. At any rate it was great to get rid of their old Opel for a good price. The husband’s voice churned on and on while his wife could be heard announcing her arrival in the background with a shrill: “Hi, O-o-o-le! Are you home? Did you stack up the firewood?”

Lucky for Ole that Social Services didn’t hear that question.

Helle Andersen was cordial and obliging when she finally caught her breath. Carl thanked her for talking to Assad the other day and then asked if she would be able to receive by e-mail some photos he’d scanned.

“Right now?” she asked, and in the next breath was probably going to explain why this wasn’t the most favorable moment. “I’ve brought home a couple of pizzas.” Here it came. “Ole likes them with lettuce on top, and it’s not much fun when the lettuce has a chance to sink into the cheese.”

Carl had to wait twenty minutes before she called him back, and it sounded as if she hadn’t quite swallowed the last mouthful.

“Did you get the e-mail I sent?”

“Yes,” she told him. She was sitting there looking at the three files.

“Click on the first one and tell me what you see.”

“That’s Daniel Hale. Your assistant already showed me a picture of him. But I’ve never seen him before.”

“Then click on the second file. What about that one?”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. His name is Dennis Knudsen. Have you ever seen him before? Maybe a few years older than in the picture?”

She laughed. “Not wearing a silly cap like that, at any rate. No, I’ve never seen him before. I’m sure of it. He reminds me of my cousin Gorm, but Gorm is at least twice as fat.”

It seemed to be a family trait.

“What about the third picture? It shows a person talking to Merete at Christiansborg shortly before she disappeared. I know you can only see him from the back, but is there anything about him that seems familiar? His clothes, hair, posture, height, body type, anything at all?”

She paused for a moment, which was a good sign.

“I’m not sure, since the picture only shows him from the back, as you said. But I may have seen him before. Where did you think I would have seen him?”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me.”

Come on, Helle, thought Carl. How many possibilities could there be?

“I know you’re thinking about the man who delivered the letter. I did see him from behind, but he had on very different clothes, so it’s not easy to tell. He looks familiar, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Then you shouldn’t say anything, dear,” said the allegedly backdamaged pizza eater in the background.

Carl had to make an effort not to sigh. “OK,” he said. “I have one last photo that I’d like to send you.” He clicked on his e-mail.

“It’s here,” she said ten seconds later.

“Tell me what you see.”

“I see a picture of the guy who was also in the second picture, I think. Dennis Knudsen. Wasn’t that his name? Here he’s only a boy, but that funny expression on his face is unmistakable. What odd cheeks he has. Yes, I’ll bet he drove go-karts when he was a boy. My cousin Gorm did too, strangely enough.”

That was probably before he weighed a thousand pounds, Carl was tempted to say. “Take a look at the other boy standing behind Dennis. Do you recognize him?”

There was silence on the phone. Not even the malingerer husband said a word. Carl waited. Patience was supposedly a virtue for detectives. So it was just a matter of living up to this maxim.

“This is really creepy,” Helle Andersen said at last. Her voice seemed to have shrunk. “That’s him. I’m positive that’s him.”

“The man who brought the letter to you at Merete’s house? Is that who you mean?”

“Yes.” Another pause, as if she needed to gauge the photo against the ravages of time. “Is he the man you’re looking for? Do you think he had something to do with what happened to Merete? Should I be scared of him?” She sounded genuinely worried. And maybe at one time she would have had reason to be.

“It was five years ago, so you have nothing to fear, Helle. Take it easy.” He heard her sigh. “So you think this is the same man who brought the letter. Are you sure now?”

“It has to be. Yes, I’m sure of it. His eyes are so distinctive, you know what I mean? Oh, this is making me feel weird.”

It’s probably just the pizza, thought Carl as he thanked the woman and put down the phone. Then he leaned back in his chair.

He looked at the tabloid photos of Merete Lynggaard that were lying on top of the case folder. Right now Carl felt more strongly than ever that he was the link between the victim and perpetrator in this case. For the first time he felt that he was on the right track. This Atomos had lost his grip on life during childhood and grown up to do the devil’s work, to use a colorful phrase. The evil inside him had led him to Merete; the question was why and where and how? Maybe Carl would never find the answers, but he was going to try.

Mona Ibsen could sit and polish her wedding ring in the meantime.

Next he sent the pictures to Bille Antvorskov. In less than five minutes Carl had an answer in his e-mail inbox. Yes, one of the boys in the pictures did look like the man who’d been part of the group at Christiansborg. But Antvorskov couldn’t swear that it was the same person.

That was enough for Carl. He was sure that Antvorskov was not the sort to swear to anything without first examining it from head to toe.

The phone rang. It wasn’t Assad or the man from the Godhavn children’s home, as he expected. Of all people on earth to be calling him at this moment, God help him, it was Vigga.

“What happened to you, Carl?” she said, her voice quavering.

He tried to decipher what was going on but didn’t come up with anything before she launched into him.

“The reception started half an hour ago, and not a soul has turned up. We have ten bottles of wine and twenty bags of snacks. If you don’t show up either, I simply don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“At your gallery? Is that what you mean?”

A couple of sniffles told him that she was about to start sobbing.

“I didn’t know anything about any reception.”

“Hugin sent out fifty invitations the day before yesterday.” She sniffled one last time and then pulled the real Vigga out of the goody bag. “Why can’t I count on your support at least? You’re an investor in the gallery, after all!”

“Try asking your wandering phantom.”

“Who are you calling a phantom? Hugin?”

“Do you have other lice like him crawling all over you?”

“Hugin is just as concerned as I am that this gallery is a success.”

Carl didn’t doubt it. Where else could the man exhibit his torn-off scraps of underwear ads and smashed McDonald’s Happy Meal figures splattered with the cheapest paint you could find?

“I’m just saying, Vigga, that if Einstein actually remembered to post the invitations on Saturday, as you claim, then they won’t show up in anyone’s letter box until they get home from work sometime later today.”

“Oh my God, no! Damn it!” she groaned.

So there was probably a man in black who wasn’t getting laid tonight.

Carl couldn’t resist feeling gleeful.

Tage Baggesen knocked on the doorframe to his office just as Carl was lighting the cigarette that had been yelling and nagging at him for hours.

“Yeah, what is it?” said Carl, his lungs filled with smoke. Then he recognized the man clad in a nicely acquitted state of mild intoxication that sent a scent of cognac and beers wafting into the room.

“I just wanted to apologize for cutting off our phone conversation so abruptly the other day. I needed time to think, now that everything is going to be made public.”

Carl invited Baggesen to sit down and asked if he’d like something to drink, but the MP dismissed the offer with a wave of his hand as he took a seat. No, he wasn’t thirsty.

“Which things did you specifically have in mind?” asked Carl, trying to make it sound as if he had more up his sleeve, which wasn’t the case at all.

“Tomorrow I plan to resign from my position in parliament,” said Baggesen, looking around the room with weary eyes. “I’m going to meet with the chairman after we’re done talking here. Merete told me this would happen if I didn’t listen, but I didn’t want to believe her. And then I did what I never should have done.”

Carl narrowed his eyes. “Then it’s good that the two of us clear the air before you start making confessions to everyone and his uncle.”

The stout man nodded and bowed his head. “I bought some stocks in 2000 and 2001, and made a killing on them.”

“What kind of stocks?”

“All sorts of shit. And then I hired a new stockbroker who advised me to invest in weapons factories in the United States and France.”

Not the sort of thing that the manager at Carl’s local bank in Allerød would recommend to his customers as a sound investment for their savings. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it out in the ashtray. No, Carl could see that these weren’t the kind of investments a leading member of the pacifist Radical Center Party would want to be known for.

“I also leased two of my properties to massage parlors. I didn’t know about it in the beginning, but I soon found out. They were located in Strøby Egede, near where Merete lived, and people were starting to talk. I had a lot of different things going on at the time. Unfortunately, I bragged about my business deals to Merete. I was so in love with her, and she couldn’t have cared less about me. Maybe I was hoping that she’d show more interest in me if I acted like a big shot, but of course it didn’t make any difference.” He reached up to massage the back of his neck. “She wasn’t like that at all.”

Carl fixed his eyes on the cloud of smoke until it was swallowed up by the room. “And she asked you to stop what you were doing?”

“No, she didn’t ask me to stop.”

“What then?”

“She said that she might say something by mistake to her secretary, Marianne Koch. It was clear what she meant. If that secretary found out anything, everybody else would know about it in seconds. Merete just wanted to warn me.”

“Why was she interested in your business affairs?”

“She wasn’t. That was the whole problem.” He sighed and buried his head in his hands. “I’d been making advances for so long that she finally just wanted to get rid of me. And that was how she got her way. I’m positive that if I’d continued pressuring her, she would have leaked the information. I don’t blame her. What the hell was she supposed to do?”

“So you decided to leave her alone, but you kept running your business ventures?”

“I canceled the lease agreements for the massage parlors, but I kept the stocks that I owned. I didn’t sell them until shortly after 9/11.”

Carl nodded. There were plenty of people who had made a fortune from that catastrophe.

“How much did you make?”

Baggesen looked up. “Nearly ten million kroner.”

Carl stuck out his lower lip. “And then you killed Merete because she was going to blow the whistle on you?”

That gave the member of parliament a start. Carl recognized the man’s frightened expression from the last time they’d gone a round together.

“No, no! Why on earth would I do that? What I did wasn’t illegal, you know. The only thing that would have happened is what’s going to happen today.”

“You would have been asked to leave your party instead of resigning?”

Baggesen’s eyes flicked around the room and didn’t stop until he saw his own initials on the list of suspects on the whiteboard.

“You can cross me off your list now,” he said and stood up.

Assad didn’t show up at the office until three o’clock, which was considerably later than would be expected of a man with his modest qualifications and precarious position. For a second Carl weighed how useful it would be to bawl him out, but Assad’s cheerful expression and enthusiasm didn’t exactly invite an ambush.

“What the hell have you been doing all this time?” he asked instead, pointing at the clock.

“Hardy sends you his greetings, Carl. You sent me yourself up there, remember?”

“You’ve been talking to Hardy for seven hours?” He pointed again at the clock.

Assad shook his head. “I told him what I knew about the cyclist murder then, and do you know what he said?”

“He told you who he thinks the killer is?”

Assad looked surprised. “You know Hardy pretty very well, Carl. Yes, that is actually what he did.”

“He didn’t give you a name, though. Am I right?”

“A name? No, but he said to look for a person who was important for the witness’s children then. That it probably was not a teacher or somebody in the day-care centers but somebody they were really dependent on. The ex-husband of the witness or a doctor or maybe someone the children saw a lot. A riding instructor or something. But it had to be a person who had something to do with both of the children. I have also just said it up on the second floor.”

“Oh really,” said Carl, pursing his lips. It was astounding how well informed Assad suddenly was. “I can just imagine Bak must have been over the moon.”

“Over the moon?” Assad considered Carl’s choice of words. “Maybe. How would that make him look?”

Carl shrugged. Now Assad was his old self again. “So what else have you been doing?” Judging by the way Assad’s eyebrows danced, Carl guessed that he had something up his sleeve.

“Look what I have here, Carl.” He took Merete Lynggaard’s worn leather diary out of a plastic shopping bag and set it on the desk. “Take a look. Isn’t the man so good?”

Carl opened the phone book to the letter H and immediately saw the transformation. Yes, the man had truly done a spectacular job. The thick line through the phone number was now gone; the number was a bit faded but clearly legible: “Daniel Hale, 25772060.” It was amazing. Even more amazing than the speed with which Carl’s fingers tapped on the computer keyboard to check the number.

He couldn’t resist looking it up. But without any luck, of course.

“It says it’s an invalid number. Call Lis and ask her to check out the number asap. Tell her it might well have been disconnected five years ago. We don’t know which mobile company issued it, but I’m sure she can find out. Hurry up, Assad,” said Carl, giving his assistant a pat on his granitelike shoulder.

Carl lit a cigarette, leaned back, and summed up what they knew so far.

Merete Lynggaard had met the fraudulent Daniel Hale at Christiansborg and had possibly carried on a flirtation with him, but then dropped him after a few days. It was unusual for her to do something like crossing out his name in her phone book; it almost seemed ritualistic. No matter what the reason for doing so, meeting the man who called himself Daniel Hale had undoubtedly been a radical experience in Merete’s life.

Carl tried to picture her in his mind. The beautiful politician with her whole life ahead of her, who happened to meet the wrong guy. An impostor, a man with evil intentions. Several people had linked him to the boy called Atomos. The home help in Magleby thought the boy was very likely identical to the man who had brought the letter with the message: “Have a nice trip to Berlin.” And according to Bille Antvorskov, Atomos was the same person who later claimed to be Daniel Hale. The same boy that Dennis Knudsen’s sister claimed had exerted great influence over her brother in childhood. And by all accounts he was also the one who many years later convinced his friend Dennis to crash into the car driven by the real Daniel Hale, thereby causing his death. Complicated, and yet not really.

By now quite a lot of evidence had piled up: there was Dennis Knudsen’s peculiar death shortly after the car accident. There was Uffe’s much too strong reaction when he saw the old photo of Atomos, who was most likely the person Merete later met as Daniel Hale. A meeting that must have required a great deal of planning.

And finally, there was the disappearance of Merete Lynggaard.

Carl felt acid indigestion etching its way up and almost wished he could have a sip of Assad’s sickly sweet tea.

Carl hated waiting when it wasn’t necessary. Why the hell couldn’t he talk to that fucking teacher from the Godhavn children’s home right this minute? The boy nicknamed Atomos must have a real name and a Civil Registry number. Something that would still be valid today. He wanted to know what it was. Now!

He stubbed out his cigarette and took down the lists from the whiteboard, scanning what he had written.

SUSPECTS:

1. Uffe

2. Unknown postman-the letter about Berlin

3. The man/woman from Café Bankeråt

4. “Colleagues” at Christiansborg-TB +?

5. Murder resulting from a robbery-how much money in her purse?

6. Sexual assault

CHECK:

The telegram

The secretaries at Christiansborg

Witnesses on the ferry Schleswig-Holstein

The foster family after the accident-old classmates at the university. Did she have a tendency to get depressed? Was she pregnant? In love?

Next to “Unknown postman” Carl now wrote in parentheses: “Atomos as Daniel Hale.” Then he crossed out item number four with Tage Baggesen’s initials and the question about her being pregnant at the bottom of the second page.

In addition to item number three, he still had items five and six left on the first list. Even a small amount of money could have tempted the sick brain of some robber. But item number six, the possible sexual-assault motive, seemed unlikely, given the circumstances and time frame on board the ferry.

With regard to the items on the second list, he still hadn’t talked to the witnesses on the ferry, the foster family, or university classmates. As for the witnesses, their statements had offered nothing useful, and the other points he’d written down were no longer relevant. It was obvious that Merete had not committed suicide, in any case.

No, these lists aren’t going to get me any further, thought Carl. He studied them for a few more minutes and then tossed them in the wastebasket, which had to be put to good use, after all.

He picked up Merete’s phone book and held it close to his eyes. Assad’s contact had certainly done a hell of a job. The crossed-out line was completely gone. It was really unbelievable.

“Tell me who did this!” Carl shouted across the hall, but Assad stopped him from saying anything else with a wave of his hand. Carl saw that his assistant had the phone glued to his ear as he sat at his desk, nodding his head. He didn’t look very animated; on the contrary. No doubt it hadn’t been possible to find out the name of the subscriber for the old mobile number listed in the telephone registered under the name of Hale.

“Was there a prepaid calling card in the mobile?” he asked when Assad came in holding a scrap of paper and fanning away the cigarette smoke with disapproval.

“Yes,” he replied, handing Carl the note. “The cell phone belonged to a girl at Tjørnelys middle school in Greve. She reported it stolen from her coat, which she hung up outside the classroom on Monday, February 18, 2002. The theft was not reported until a few days later, and no one knows who did it.”

Carl nodded. So now they knew the name of the subscriber, but not who stole the mobile and then used it. That made sense. He was now convinced that everything was connected. Merete Lynggaard’s disappearance was no accident. A man had approached her with dishonest intentions, and set off a chain of events that ended with no one having seen the beautiful Folketing politician since. In the meantime, more than five years had passed. Naturally Carl feared the very worst.

“Lis is asking now if she should keep going on the case,” said Assad.

“What do you mean?”

“Should she look for a link between those conversations there from the old phone in Merete’s office with this number?” Assad pointed at the little scrap of paper where he had neatly printed in block letters: “25772060, Sanne Jønsson, Tværager 90, Greve Strand.” So Assad was capable of writing something that was legible after all.

Carl shook his head at himself. Had he really forgotten to compare the lists of phone calls? Damned if he wasn’t going to have to start making notes for himself before Alzheimer’s Lite took over.

“Of course,” he replied in an authoritative tone. In that way they might be able to establish a timeline in communication that showed a pattern in the course of the relationship between Merete and the Daniel Hale impostor.

“But you know what, Carl? It will take a couple of days, and Lis does not have time right now. She says that it will be fairly so difficult after such a long time then. Maybe it cannot even be done.” Assad looked downright mournful.

“Tell me now, Assad. Who do you know that does such nice work?” said Carl, weighing Merete’s appointment diary in his hand.

But Assad refused.

Carl was just about to explain that this sort of secrecy wasn’t helping his chances of keeping his job, but then the phone rang.

It was the director from Egely, and his disdain for Carl practically dripped out of the receiver. “I want you to know that Uffe Lynggaard took off a short time after your utterly insane assault on him last Friday. We have no idea where he is right now. The police in Frederikssund have been alerted, but if anything serious happens to him, Carl Mørck, I promise I am going to torment you for the rest of your career.”

Then he slammed down the phone, leaving Carl in a thundering void.

Two minutes later the homicide chief called and asked Carl to come upstairs to his office. He didn’t need to elaborate; Carl recognized the tone.

He’d been summoned. Now.