Mercy aka The keeper of lost causes

36

He sat down at the breakfast table with his esophagus burning from acid indigestion and sleep still weighing heavily on his shoulders. Neither Morten nor Jesper said a word to him, which was standard procedure for his stepson but definitely an ominous sign when it came to his lodger.

The morning paper was lying neatly on a corner of the table, and the top story was Tage Baggesen’s voluntary resignation from his parliamentary position, citing health reasons. Morten kept his head bowed silently over his plate, steadily chewing, as Carl reached page six and sat gaping at a grainy photo of himself.

It was the same picture that Gossip had used of him the day before, but this time it was next to a slightly faded outdoor photo of Uffe Lynggaard. The caption was far from flattering:

“The head of Department Q, in charge of the investigation of ‘cases deserving special scrutiny,’ as designated by the Denmark Party, has appeared in the news in the past two days under particularly unfortunate circumstances.”

The article didn’t focus on the Gossip story, but the reporter had conducted interviews with staff members at Egely, and they all complained of Carl’s heavy-handed methods. They also blamed him for Uffe’s disappearance. The supervisory nurse was portrayed as especially furious. She used phrases such as “abuse of our willingness to help,” and “psychological rape” and “manipulation.” The article ended with the words: “As of press time, it has not been possible to get any comment from the police department.”

It would be hard to find a more evil villain than Carl Mørck in a spaghetti Western. An amazing piece of reporting, considering what had really happened.

“I’ve got a final exam today,” said Jesper, rousing Carl from his reverie.

Carl looked at him over the top of the newspaper. “In what?”

“Math.”

That didn’t sound good. “Have you studied for it?”

Jesper shrugged and got up. As usual, he paid no attention to the plethora of utensils he’d slathered with butter and jam or the rest of the mess he’d left on the table.

“Just a second, Jesper,” Carl said. “What does that mean?”

His stepson turned to look at him. “It means that if I don’t do well, I might not quality for the fifth and sixth forms at Allerød. Too bad!”

Carl pictured Vigga’s reproachful face and lowered the newspaper. The acid revolt in his system was really starting to hurt.

Out in the parking lot folks were already joking about yesterday’s database breakdown. A couple of people had no idea what they were going to do at work. One’s job was dealing with building permits, and the other’s was medical reimbursements, and both of them usually spent their time staring at computer screens all day.

On the car radio Carl heard several mayors express criticism of the municipal government reforms, which had indirectly sparked the whole mess. Other people called in to rant about the fact that the ongoing miserable situation with overworked and overburdened municipal employees was now going to get even worse. If the culprit who had shut down the databases ever dared to show up at one of the many hard-hit city halls, the closest emergency ward would no doubt have its hands full.

At police headquarters everyone was more hopeful; the individual who had caused the problem had already been arrested. As soon as they’d received an explanation from the accused-an older woman who was a computer programmer in the Interior Ministry-to explain how to repair the damage, they would make the whole story public. It would only be a few more hours before everything would return to normal. Total control of society by government bureaucrats, which so many people were sick and tired of, had been reestablished.

Poor woman.

Oddly enough, Carl managed to make it down to the basement without running into any of his colleagues, and that was a good thing. The news in the morning papers about Carl’s clash with a psychologically handicapped man in an institution in northern Zealand had undoubtedly already spread to even the lowliest office in that enormous building.

He just hoped that Marcus Jacobsen’s Wednesday meeting with the commissioner and the other police chiefs wouldn’t focus entirely on the news story.

He found Assad in his office and wasted no time launching into him.

After a few seconds Assad started looking groggy. Cheerful assistant that he was, he’d never seen this side of Carl before. But his boss now let him have the full brunt of his anger.

“You lied to me, Assad,” Carl barked, fixing his eyes on the man. “You never even mentioned the cyclist murder to Hardy. You came up with all those conclusions yourself, and yes, they were good ones, but what you said to me was something else altogether. I simply won’t have it. Do you hear me? This will have consequences.”

He could almost hear the wheels creaking inside Assad’s head. What was going on in there? Did he have a guilty conscience or what?

Carl chose to really let him have it. “Don’t bother saying anything, Assad! You’re not bullshitting me anymore! Who the hell are you, really, Assad? I’d like to know. And what were you doing since you weren’t visiting Hardy?” He waved off Assad’s objections. “Yeah, all right, I know you went there, but you never stayed very long. So spit it out, Assad. What’s going on?”

Assad’s silence couldn’t hide his nervousness. Carl caught glimpses of a hunted animal in the man’s calm expression. If they’d been enemies, Assad presumably would have leaped up to strangle him.

“Just a second,” said Carl. He turned to look at the computer and brought up Google onto the screen. “I’ve got a couple of questions for you. You get me?”

Assad didn’t answer.

“Are you listening at all?”

Assad murmured something even fainter than the hum of the computer. It was apparently meant as an affirmative reply.

“It says in your file that you and your wife and two daughters came to Denmark in 1998. You were in the Sandholm refugee camp from 1998 until 2000, and then you were granted asylum.”

Assad nodded.

“That was fast.”

“Not back then, Carl. Things are different now.”

“You’re from Syria, Assad. What city? It doesn’t say in your file.”

He turned around and saw that Assad’s expression was darker than he’d ever seen it.

“Am I under your interrogation, Carl?”

“Yes, you could say that. Any objections?”

“There are many things I will not tell you, Carl. You will have to respect that then. I have had a bad life. It is mine, not yours.”

“I understand that. But what city are you from? Is that such a hard question to answer?”

“I come from a suburb of Sab Abar.”

Carl typed in the name. “That’s in the middle of nowhere, Assad.”

“Did I say it was not, Carl?”

“How far would you say it is from Damascus to Sab Abar?”

“A day’s journey. More than two hundred kilometers.”

“A day’s journey?”

“Things take time there. First you have to go through the city, and then there are the mountains.”

That matched with what Carl saw on Google Earth. It would be hard to find a more desolate place. “Your name is Hafez el-Assad. At least that’s what it says in the Immigration Service’s documents about you.” He typed in the name on Google and found it instantly. “Isn’t that a rather unfortunate name to be carrying around?”

Assad shrugged.

“The name of a dictator who ruled Syria for twenty-nine years! Were your parents members of the Baath Party?”

“Yes, they were.”

“So you were named after him?”

“Several people in my family have that name. I can tell you that.”

Carl looked into Assad’s dark eyes. The man was in a different state than usual.

“Who was Hafez el-Assad’s successor?” Carl asked abruptly.

Assad didn’t even blink. “His son Bashar. Should we then not stop this now, Carl? It is not good for us.”

“You might be right. So what was the name of the first son, the one who died in a car crash in 1994?”

“I do not remember right now.”

“You don’t? That’s odd. Here it says that he was his father’s favorite and chosen successor. His name was Basil. I’d think that everyone your age in Syria would be able to tell me that without hesitation.”

“That is correct. His name was Basil.” Assad nodded. “But there are so quite many things that I have forgotten, Carl. I do not want to remember. I have…” He searched for the word.

“Suppressed them?”

“Yes, that sounds right enough.”

OK, if that’s how he’s going to act I’m not going to get any further like this, thought Carl. He was going to have to shift gears.

“You know what I think, Assad? I think you’re lying. Your name isn’t Hafez el-Assad at all. It was just the first name that came into your head when you applied for asylum. Am I right? I can just imagine that the guy who falsified your papers had a good laugh over it, didn’t he? Maybe he’s even the same man who helped us with Merete’s phone book. Am I getting warm?”

“I think we should make a stop now, Carl.”

“Where are you really from, Assad? Well, I’m used to the name, so why change now, even though it’s really your surname, isn’t it, Hafez?”

“I am Syrian, and I come from Sab Abar.”

“You mean a suburb of Sab Abar?”

“Yes, northeast of downtown.”

It all sounded very plausible, but Carl had a hard time accepting the information at face value. Maybe ten years and hundreds of interrogations ago. But not anymore. His instincts were grumbling. The way Assad reacted wasn’t quite right.

“You’re actually from Iraq, aren’t you, Assad? And you’ve got skeletons in the closet that would get you deported from Denmark and sent back to where you came from. Am I right?”

Assad’s expression changed again. The lines on his forehead were erased. Maybe he’d caught sight of a way out; maybe he was just telling the truth.

“Iraq? Not at all. Now you are sounding dumb, Carl,” he said, offended. “Come home and see my things, Carl. I brought a suitcase from home. You can talk to my wife. She understands a little English. Or my girls. Then you will know that what I am telling you is right then, Carl. I am a political refugee, and I have been through a lot of bad things. I do not want to talk about it, Carl, so, could you please leave me in peace? It is true that I did not spend a lot of time with Hardy, the way I said, but it is very far, up to Hornbæk. I am trying to help my brother come to Denmark, and that takes time too, Carl. I’m sorry. I will tell you things straight in the future.”

Carl leaned back. He was almost to the point where he wanted to smother his skeptical brain in the sugar water that Assad was dishing out. “I don’t understand how you could acclimate yourself so quickly to doing police work, Assad. I certainly appreciate your help. You’re a spooky kind of guy, but you do have skills. Where does it come from?”

“Spooky? What is that? Something to do with ghosts and things like that?” He gave Carl a guileless look. Yes, he did have skills, all right. Maybe he had a natural talent. Maybe everything he’d said was true. Perhaps it was just Carl who was turning into a sulky grouch.

“It doesn’t say anything about your education in the file, Assad. What kind of training did you have?”

He shrugged. “There was not very much, Carl. My father owned a small company that sold tinned goods. I know everything about how long a tin of stewed tomatoes can last at fifty degrees Celsius.”

Carl tried to smile. “And then you couldn’t keep out of politics, and you ended up with the wrong name. Is that it?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“And you were tortured?”

“Yes. Carl, I do not want to talk about that. You have not seen how I can get when I feel bad. I cannot talk about it, OK?”

“OK.” Carl nodded. “And from now on you’re going to tell me what you’re doing during work hours. Do you get me?”

Assad gave his boss a thumbs-up.

The expression in Carl’s eyes allowed Assad’s gaze to relax. Then he held up his hand for a high-five, and Assad smacked it.

So that was that.

“OK, Assad. Let’s move on. We’ve got other things to think about,” said Carl. “We need to locate this Lars Henrik Jensen. I’m hoping it won’t be long before we’ll be able to log on to the Civil Registration System, but until then, let’s try to find his mother, Ulla Jensen. A man out at Risø…” He saw that Assad wanted to ask him what Risø was, but that could wait. “A man told me that she lives south of Copenhagen.”

“Is Ulla Jensen an unusual name?”

Carl shook his head. “Now that we know the name of the father’s company, we have more angles we can check. To start off, I’m going to call the Registry of Companies. We can only hope that it hasn’t been shut down too. In the meantime, go through the address-finder directory and look for the name Ulla Jensen. Try Brøndbyerne and then move south. Vallensbæk, maybe Glostrup, Tåstrup, Greve-Kildebrønde. Don’t search all the way to Køge, because that’s where the company was located before. Try north of there.”

Assad looked relieved. He was just about to go out the door but turned around to give Carl a hug. His beard stubble was like needles, and his aftershave was some cheap knock-off brand, but the sentiment was genuine.

Carl sat at his desk for a moment, letting the feeling wash over him after Assad had waltzed across the hall to his own office. It was almost like having his old team back.

The answer came from both sources at once. The Registry of Companies had been functioning without interruption throughout the computer crash, and it took only five seconds on the keyboard for them to identify HJ Industries. It was owned by Trabeka Holding, a German firm, and they’d be happy to look for more information if Carl was interested. They couldn’t see who the owners were, but that could be found out if they contacted their German colleagues. After they gave Carl the address, he shouted over to Assad that he could stop his search, but Assad shouted back that he’d already found a couple of possible addresses.

They compared results. There it was. Ulla Jensen lived on the site of the bankrupt HJ Industries, on Strøhusvej in Greve.

Carl looked it up on the map. It was only a few hundred yards away from where Daniel Hale had burned to death on the Kappelev highway. He remembered standing there. It was the road he’d looked down as they’d surveyed the countryside.

He felt the adrenaline starting to pump faster. Now they had an address. And they could drive there in twenty minutes.

“Should we call down there first then, Carl?” Assad handed him the phone number.

He gave his helper a blank look. So it wasn’t always pearls of wisdom that fell from the man’s lips. “That’s a great idea, Assad, if we want to find an empty house.”

Originally it must have been an ordinary farm with a farmhouse, pigsty, and barn arranged around a cobblestone courtyard. The house was so close to the road that they could look right into the rooms. Behind the whitewashed buildings were three or four larger ones. A couple of them had presumably never been put to use. This seemed in any case true of a building thirty to forty feet high, with gaping holes where the windows should have been set in. It was incomprehensible that the authorities had ever allowed something like that to be built. It completely ruined the view down to the fields, where yellow carpets of rapeseed gave way to meadows so green that the color couldn’t possibly be reproduced in any painting.

Carl scanned the landscape but didn’t see a soul. Not near any of the buildings either. The farmyard seemed just as neglected as everything else. The whitewash on the house was flaking off. Piled up by the road, a little farther to the east, were heaps of junk and building debris. Aside from the dandelions and flowering fruit trees that towered over the corrugated Eternit roof, the whole place looked terribly bleak.

“There is no car in the courtyard, Carl,” said Assad. “Maybe it was a long time ago when somebody lived here.”

Carl clenched his teeth, trying to fend off his disappointment. His gut told him that Lars Henrik Jensen wasn’t here. Damn it. Damn it to hell.

“Let’s go in and look around, Assad,” he said as he parked the car fifty yards farther along the road.

They set off in silence. Through the hedge they reached the back of the house and a garden where fruit bushes and ground-elder were fighting for space. The bay windows of the house were gray with dirt and age. Everything seemed dead.

“Look at this,” whispered Assad, pressing his nose against one of the windowpanes.

Carl leaned in to look. The inside of the house seemed abandoned too. It was almost like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, except there were no banners or thorn bushes. Dust covered the tables, the books, and newspapers, and all sorts of papers. In one corner cardboard boxes were piled up that had never been unpacked, and there were carpets that were still rolled up.

Here was a family whose life had been interrupted during a happier time.

“I think they were in the process of moving in when the accident happened, Assad. That’s what the man at Risø said too.”

“Yes, but look over there in the back then.”

Assad pointed at a doorway on the other side of the room. Light was streaming in, and the floor behind was polished and shiny.

“You’re right,” Carl said. “It looks different.”

They made their way through an herb garden where the bumblebees buzzed around flowering chives and reached the other side of the house, down in one corner of the courtyard.

Carl moved close to the windows, which were fastened shut. Through the first panes he was able to get a glimpse of a room with bare walls and a couple of chairs. He pressed his forehead against the window and saw the room take shape. There was no doubt it was in use. A couple of shirts lay on the floor. The blankets on the box mattress had been pushed aside, and on top of them lay a pair of pajamas, a kind that he was certain he’d seen in a department store catalogue not long ago.

He concentrated on controlling his breathing and instinctively placed his hand on his belt, where he’d worn his service weapon for years. But it was months since he’d carried a gun.

“Someone slept in that bed recently,” he said quietly to Assad, who was looking through the windows a little farther away.

“Somebody was also here,” said Assad.

Carl went over and looked inside. Assad was right. The kitchen was neat and clean. Through a door in the wall directly across from them, they could see the dusty living room that they had looked into from the other side. It was like a mausoleum. A sacred place, not to be disturbed.

But the kitchen had definitely been in use quite recently.

“A deep freezer, coffee on the table, an electric kettle. There are also a couple of full bottles of cola over there in the corner,” said Carl.

He turned toward the pigsty and the other buildings behind it. They could continue their search without getting a court order, but they’d have to suffer the consequences afterward if it proved to be fruitless since they couldn’t very well claim that the opportunity would be lost if they searched the house at some other time. Actually, they could wait until morning. Yes, it might even be better to come back the next day. Maybe someone would be home by then.

He nodded. It was probably best to wait and follow proper legal procedures. He took a deep breath. In reality, he didn’t feel like doing either.

As Carl stood there thinking, Assad suddenly took off. For a man with such a compact, heavy body, he was surprisingly nimble. He crossed the yard in a couple of bounds and then went out into the road to wave down a farmer who was driving his tractor.

Carl went over to join them.

“Yes,” he heard the farmer say as he approached, the tractor idling. “The mother and son still live there. It’s a bit odd, but apparently she’s set up home in that building over there.” He pointed to the last of the adjacent buildings. “I think they must be in. At least, I saw her outside this morning.”

Carl showed the man his police badge, which prompted the farmer to turn off the tractor.

“What about the son?” said Carl. “Is his name Lars Henrik Jensen?”

The farmer squinted one eye to think. “Nay, I don’t think that’s his name. He’s a real strange, tall one. What the devil is his name?”

“So it’s not Lars Henrik?”

“No, that’s not it.”

See-saws and merry-go-rounds. Back and forth and up and down. Carl had been through this roller-coaster ride, countless times before. And he was sick and tired of it, among other things.

“You say they live in that building over there?” Carl pointed.

The farmer nodded, launching a blob of snot over the hood of his brand-new Ferguson tractor.

“How do they make a living?” asked Carl, gesturing at the open countryside.

“I don’t know. I lease a few acres from them. Kristoffersen, over there, leases some too. They’ve got some fallow land that’s subsidized, and she must also have a small pension. And a couple of times a week a van arrives from somewhere, bringing plastic items for them to clean, I think. It also brings them food. I think the woman and her son manage somehow.” He laughed. “This is farm country, you know. Out here we usually have everything we need.”

“An official van from the municipality?”

“No, it sure isn’t. It’s from some shipping company or something like that. It’s got a sign on the side that you sometimes see on ships on TV, but I don’t know where it’s from. All that stuff with oceans and seas has never interested me.”

After the farmer chugged off toward the windmill, Carl and Assad studied the buildings beyond the pigsty. Strange that they hadn’t noticed them from the road, because they were quite large. It was probably because the hedges had been planted so close together and had already sprouted leaves, thanks to the warm weather.

In addition to the three buildings surrounding the courtyard and the unfinished structure, there were three low buildings located close together next to a level area covered with gravel. Presumably at one time the plan had been to lay asphalt over there. By now weeds had sprung up everywhere, and the only gap in the greenery was a wide path connecting all the buildings.

Assad pointed at the narrow wheel tracks on the path. Carl had already noticed them. The width of a bicycle wheel, but parallel. Most likely from a wheelchair.

Carl’s cell phone rang, shrill and loud, just as they were approaching the building that the farmer had pointed out. He saw Assad’s expression as he cursed himself for not turning off the ringtone.

It was Vigga. Nobody could match her ability to call him at the most inconvenient moments. He’d stood in the ooze of putrefying corpses as she asked him to bring home cream for their coffee. She’d called him when his cell phone lay in his jacket pocket under a bag in the police car, as he was in hot pursuit of some suspects. Vigga was good at that sort of thing.

He set the ringtone to OFF.

It was then that he raised his head and looked straight into the eyes of a tall, gaunt man in his twenties. His head was strangely elongated, almost deformed, and one entire side of his face was marred by the craters and stretched skin created by burn scars.

“You can’t come here,” he said in a voice that belonged neither to an adult nor a child.

Carl showed him his police badge, but the man didn’t seem to understand what it meant.

“I’m a police officer,” Carl said in a friendly tone. “We’d like to talk to your mother. We know this is where she lives. I’d appreciate it if you’d ask her if we could come in for a moment.”

The young man didn’t seem impressed by either the badge or the two men. So he probably wasn’t as simple-minded as he first appeared.

“How long am I going to have to wait?” asked Carl brusquely. The man gave a start. Then he disappeared inside the house.

A few minutes passed, as Carl felt the pressure increase in his chest. He cursed the fact that he hadn’t taken his service weapon out of the armory at police headquarters even once since he’d come back from sick leave.

“Stay behind me, Assad,” he said. He could just picture the headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper: “Police detective sacrifices assistant in shooting drama. For the third day in a row, Deputy Police Superintendent Carl Mørck from Department Q creates a scandal.”

He gave Assad a shove to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and then took up position close to the door. If they came out carrying a shotgun or anything like that, at least his assistant’s head wouldn’t be the first thing the muzzle pointed at.

Then the young man came out and invited them in.

She was sitting in a wheelchair, smoking a cigarette. It was hard to guess her age, since she looked so gray and wrinkled and worn out, but judging by the age of her son, she couldn’t be more than sixty-one or sixty-two. She sat hunched over and her legs looked strangely awkward, like branches that had been snapped in half and then had to find some way to grow back together. The car crash had really left its mark on her; it was pitiful and sad to see.

Carl looked around. It was a huge room. A good twenty-five hundred square feet or more, but in spite of the twelve-foot-high ceiling, the place reeked of tobacco. He followed the spiraling smoke from her cigarette up to the skylights. There were only ten Velux windows, so the room was quite dim.

There were no walls for separate rooms. The kitchen was closest to the front door, the bathroom off to one side. The living-room area, filled with furniture from IKEA and with cheap rugs on the cement floor, extended for fifteen or twenty yards and then ended at the space where the woman presumably slept.

Aside from the nauseating air in the room, everything was meticulously neat. This was where she watched TV and read magazines and apparently spent most of her life. Her husband had died, so now she had to manage as best she could. At least she had her son to help her out.

Carl saw Assad’s eyes making a slow survey of the room. There was something devilish in his eyes as they slid over everything, occasionally pausing to zoom in on some detail. He was extremely focused, his arms hanging at his sides and feet planted firmly on the floor.

The woman was reasonably friendly, although she shook hands only with Carl. He made the introductions and told her not to be nervous. They were looking for her elder son, Lars Henrik. They wanted to ask him some questions; nothing special, it was just a routine matter. Could she tell them where they might find him?

She smiled. “Lasse is a seaman,” she said. So she called him Lasse. “He’s not home right now, but he’ll be back ashore in a month. So I’ll let him know. Do you have a business card I can give him?”

“No, unfortunately.” Carl attempted a boyish smile, but the woman wasn’t buying it. “I’ll send you my card when I get back to the office. I’d be happy to.” He tried the smile again. This one was better timed. It was the golden rule: first say something positive, then smile in order to seem sincere. To do it in reverse could mean anything: flattery, flirtation. Anything that was to one’s advantage. The woman knew that much about life, at least.

Carl made as if to leave and grabbed hold of Assad’s sleeve. “All right, Mrs. Jensen, we have a deal. By the way, what shipping line does your son happen to work for?”

She recognized the sequence of statement and smile. “Oh, I wish I could remember. He works on so many different ships.” And then came her smile. Carl had seen yellow teeth before, but never any as yellow as hers.

“He’s a first officer. Isn’t that right?”

“No, he’s a steward. Lasse is a good cook. He’s always been good with food.”

Carl tried to picture the boy with his arm on Dennis Knudsen’s shoulder. The boy they called Atomos because his deceased father had manufactured something for nuclear reactors. When had the son developed his knowledge about cooking? In the home of the foster family who beat him? In Godhavn? When he was a young boy at home with his mother? Carl had also been through a lot in life, but he couldn’t fry an egg. If it weren’t for Morten Holland, he didn’t know what he’d do.

“It’s wonderful when things go well for one’s children. Are you looking forward to seeing your brother again?” Carl asked the disfigured young man who was watching them suspiciously, as if they’d come to steal something.

His gaze shifted to his mother, but her expression didn’t change. So her son wasn’t about to say a word; that much was clear.

“Where is your son’s ship sailing at the moment?”

She looked at Carl, her yellow teeth slowly disappearing behind her parched lips. “Lasse spends a lot of time sailing in the Baltic, but I think he’s in the North Sea right now. Sometimes he goes out on one ship and comes home on another.”

“It must be a big shipping line. Don’t you remember what it’s called? Can you describe the company’s logo?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m not so good at things like that.”

Again Carl glanced at the young man; it was obvious he knew what they were talking about. He could probably draw a picture of the damned logo if his mother would let him.

“But it is painted on the van that comes here a couple of times every week,” Assad interjected. That was not well timed. Now the guy’s eyes looked uneasy, and the woman drew smoke deep into her lungs. Her face was obscured by a thick cloud when she blew it out again.

“Well, it’s not something we’re really sure about,” Carl managed to add. “One of your neighbors thought he’d seen it, but he could be mistaken.” He tugged at Assad’s arm. “Thank you for talking to us today,” he continued. “Ask your son Lasse to call me when he gets back. Then we can take care of these couple of questions once and for all.”

They headed for the door as the woman rolled after them. “Push me outside, Hans,” she said to her son. “I need some fresh air.”

Carl knew that she didn’t want to let them out of her sight until they’d left the property. If there had been a car in the courtyard or back here, where they stood, he would have thought she was trying to hide the fact that Lars Henrik Jensen was inside one of the buildings. But Carl’s intuition told him otherwise. Her elder son wasn’t here; she just wanted to get rid of them.

“It’s an impressive group of buildings you have here. Was this a factory at one time?”

The woman was right behind them, puffing on another cigarette as her wheelchair lumbered along the path. Her son was pushing it, hands tightly gripped on the handles. He seemed very agitated inside that ruined face of his.

“My husband had a factory that manufactured sophisticated linings for nuclear reactors. We had just moved here from Køge when he died.”

“Yes, I remember reading about it. I’m very sorry.” Carl pointed to the two low buildings in front of them. “Was that where the manufacturing was supposed to be done?”

“Yes, there and in the large hall.” She pointed as she spoke. “The welding shop was there, the pressure testing facility there, and the full assembly was going to take place in the hall. The building I live in was supposed to store the finished containments.”

“Why don’t you live in the house? It seems like a nice one,” Carl said as he noticed a row of grayish-black buckets in front of one of the buildings that didn’t fit with the rest of the landscape. Maybe they’d been left there by the previous owner. In places like this, time often moved at a snail’s pace.

“Oh, I don’t know. There are so many things in that house that are from bygone times. And then there’s the doorsills; I can’t deal with them anymore.” She thumped the armrest of her wheelchair.

Carl noticed that Assad was trying to pull him aside. “Our car is over there, Assad,” he said, nodding in the opposite direction.

“I would just rather go through the hedge there and up to the road,” said Assad, but Carl saw his attention was fixed on the piles of junk that were heaped on top of an abandoned concrete foundation.

“All that rubbish was already here when we arrived,” said the woman apologetically, as if half a container of scrap metal could mar the property’s overall dismal impression.

It was nothing but random garbage. On top of the rubbish heap were more of the grayish-black tubs. There were no labels on them, but they looked as if they might once have contained oil or some sort of foodstuffs in large quantities.

Carl would have stopped Assad if he’d known what his assistant had in mind, but before he could react, Assad had already leaped over some metal rods, jumbled piles of ropes, and plastic tubing.

“I have to apologize for my partner. He’s an incorrigible junk collector. What did you find, Assad?” Carl called out.

But Assad wasn’t interested in playing his role at the moment. He was hunting for something. He kicked at the junk, turning it over until he finally stuck his hand in and with some effort pulled out a thin sheet of metal, which turned out to be a sign that was about twenty inches high and at least twelve feet long. He turned it over. It said: “InterLab A/S.”

Assad looked up at Carl, who nodded in appreciation. It was a hell of a find. InterLab A/S was Daniel Hale’s big laboratory, which had now moved to Slangerup. So there was a direct link between the family and Daniel Hale.

“Your husband’s company wasn’t called InterLab, was it, Mrs. Jensen?” asked Carl, smiling at her tightly pressed lips.

“No. That’s the company that sold us the property and a couple of the buildings.”

“My brother works at Novo. I seem to remember him mentioning that company.” Carl silently sent an apology to his older brother, who at the moment was probably feeding mink up at the mink farm in Frederikshavn. “InterLab. Didn’t they make enzymes, or something like that?”

“It was a testing laboratory.”

“Hale. Wasn’t that his name? Daniel Hale?”

“Yes, the man who sold this place to my husband was named Hale. But not Daniel Hale. He was just a boy back then. The family moved InterLab north, to a different location, and after the old man died, they moved it again. But this is where it started.” She gestured toward the scrap pile. InterLab had certainly made a success of itself if this was how it began.

Carl studied the woman closely as she talked. She seemed to be completely closed off, and yet right now the words were pouring out of her. She didn’t seem agitated; on the contrary. She seemed totally poised, all of her nerve endings tautly woven. She was trying to appear normal, and that was precisely what seemed so abnormal.

“Wasn’t he the man who was killed not far from here?” Assad suddenly asked.

This time Carl could have kicked him in the shin. They would have to have a talk about these sorts of candid remarks when they got back to the office.

He turned to look at the buildings. They exuded more than the story of a ruined family. The gray-on-gray facades also had other nuances. It was as if the buildings were speaking to him. The acid in his stomach churned even worse when he looked at them.

“Was Hale killed? I don’t remember that.” Carl flashed a warning glance at Assad and turned back to the woman.

“I’d really like to see where InterLab started out. It’d be fun to tell my brother about it. He has talked so often about launching his own business. Do you think we could have a look at the other buildings? Unofficially, of course.”

She gave him a much-too-friendly smile, which meant she was feeling just the opposite. She didn’t want him here any longer. He should just pack up and leave.

“Oh, I’d be happy to show you, but my son has locked everything up, so I’m not able to let you in. But when you talk to him, you can ask him to show you around. And bring your brother too.”

Assad didn’t say a word as they drove past the building with the crash marks on the wall where Daniel Hale had lost his life.

“There was something really off about that place,” said Carl. “We need to go back with a search warrant.”

But Assad wasn’t listening. He just sat and stared into space as they reached Ishøj with its looming concrete high-rises. He didn’t even react when Carl’s cell phone rang after he’d switched it back on.

“Yeah,” Carl said, expecting to hear a sharp torrent of words from Vigga. He knew why she was calling. Something had gone wrong again. The reception had been moved to today. That damn reception. He could really do without a handful of soggy chips and a glass of cheap supermarket wine, not to mention that misbegotten soul she’d chosen to join forces with.

“It’s me,” said the voice on the line. “Helle Andersen from Stevns.”

Carl shifted down to a lower gear as he ratcheted up his attention.

“Uffe is here. I’m at Merete’s old house, making a home visit, and a few minutes ago a cab brought him here from Klippinge. The driver had driven for Merete and Uffe before, so he recognized Uffe when he saw him poking around in the ditch on the side of the motorway near the exit to Lellinge. He’s completely exhausted. He’s sitting here in the kitchen, drinking one glass of water after another. What should I do?”

Carl looked at the traffic lights. A breeze of excitement stirred inside him. It was tempting to make a U-turn and floor the accelerator.

“Is he OK?” asked Carl.

She sounded a little worried, displaying less of her country-gal cheerfulness than normal. “I don’t really know. He’s filthy and looks like something that’s been dragged through the gutter. Uffe’s not quite himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s sitting here brooding. He keeps looking around the kitchen, as if he doesn’t recognize it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” In his mind Carl pictured the antique dealers’ copper pans covering the walls from floor to ceiling. The rows of crystal bowls, the pastel-colored wallpaper with the exotic fruit print. Of course Uffe wouldn’t recognize the place.

“I don’t mean the way it’s furnished. I can’t explain it. He seems scared to be here, but he won’t get into the car with me.”

“Where were you planning to take him?”

“To the police station. I’m not going to let him run away again. But he refuses to go with me. Even when the antique dealer asked him nicely.”

“Has he said anything? Made any sort of sound?”

Carl could tell that she was shaking her head. “No, no sounds. But he’s trembling. That’s what my oldest son used to do when he couldn’t have what he wanted. I remember once at the supermarket-”

“Helle, you need to call Egely. Uffe has been missing for five days now. They need to know that he’s OK.” He looked up the number for her. It was the only right thing to do. It would be a bad idea for him to get involved. The tabloids would be rubbing their ink-smeared hands with glee.

Now the small, low buildings began to appear along the old Køge highway. An ice cream stand from the old days. A former electrician’s shop that now housed a couple of buxom girls that the vice squad had had a lot of trouble with.

Carl glanced at Assad and considered whistling to see if there was still life in him. It wasn’t unheard of for people to die in the middle of a sentence, with their eyes wide open.

“Anybody home, Assad?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

Carl reached across him to open the glove compartment and take out a semiflattened packet of Lucky Strikes.

“Carl, would you mind not smoking? It makes the car stink,” said Assad, sounding surprisingly alert.

If a little smoke was going to bother him, he could walk home.

“Stop over there,” Assad went on. Maybe he’d had the same idea.

Carl shut the glove compartment and found a space to pull over near one of the side roads leading down to the beach.

“This is all wrong, Carl.” Assad turned to look at him, his eyes dark. “I have thought about what we saw out there. It was all wrong everywhere.”

Carl nodded slowly. There was no fooling this guy.

“There were four televisions inside the old woman’s house.”

“Really? I only saw one.”

“There were three next to each other, not very big, over by the end of her bed. They were sort of covered up, but I could see the light from them.”

He must have eyes like an eagle paired with an owl, thought Carl. “Three TVs that were on, covered by a blanket? Could you really see it from that distance, Assad? It was almost pitch dark in there.”

“They were there then, all the way down by the edge of the bed, up against the wall. Not very big. Almost like some kind of…” He was searching for the word. “Some kind of…”

“Monitors?”

Assad nodded. “And you know what, Carl? I have been realizing more and more in my head. There were three or four monitors. You could see a weak gray or green light through the blanket. What were they there for? Why were they on? And why were they covered up, like we must not see them?”

Carl looked at the road where trucks were rumbling their way toward town. Those were good questions.

“And now one more thing then, Carl.”

Now it was Carl who wasn’t really paying attention. He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. If they drove back to police headquarters and went through all the proper procedures, it would be at least two hours before they could be back down there.

Then his cell phone rang again. If it was Vigga, he’d just hang up. Why did she think he was at her disposal night and day?

But it was Lis. “Marcus Jacobsen wants to see you in his office, Carl. Where are you?”

“He’ll have to wait, Lis. I’m on my way to do a search. Is it about the newspaper article?”

“I’m not really sure, but it might be. You know how he is. He gets awfully quiet whenever anybody writes something bad about us.”

“Then tell him that Uffe Lynggaard has been found, and he’s fine. And tell him that we’re working on the case.”

“Which case?”

“The one that will make those damned newspapers write something positive about me and the department for a change.”

Then he swung the car into a U-turn, and considered switching on the flashing blue lights.

“What were you about to say to me before, Assad?”

“About the cigarettes.”

“What do you mean?”

“How long have you smoked the same brand, Carl?”

He frowned. How long had Lucky Strikes existed?

“People do not just change their brands like that, right? And she had ten packs of Prince on the table, Carl. Brand new, unopened packs. And she had such completely yellow fingers. But her son did not.”

“What are you getting at?”

“She smoked Prince with filter tips, and her son didn’t smoke. I am pretty sure.”

“So?”

“Why were there then no filters on the cigarettes that were lying almost on top in the ashtray?”

That’s when Carl turned on the siren and blue lights.