Mercy aka The keeper of lost causes

38

The same day

The traffic jam on the E20 was much worse than usual. Even though the police siren was about to drive Carl crazy, the people sitting in their cars didn’t seem to hear a thing. They were immersed in their own thoughts, with the radio turned up full blast, wishing they were far away.

Assad sat in the passenger seat, pounding the dashboard with impatience. They drove along the verge for the last few kilometers before they reached the exit, while the vehicles ahead of them were forced to squeeze close together to let them pass.

When they finally stopped outside the farm, Assad pointed across the road. “Was that car there before?” he asked.

Carl caught sight of it only after scanning the landscape from the gravel road into no-man’s-land. The vehicle was hidden behind some shrubbery about a hundred yards away. What they saw was presumably the hood of a steel-gray four-wheel-drive.

“I’m not sure,” he said, trying to ignore the ringing of his cell phone in his jacket pocket. He pulled the phone out and looked at the number displayed. It was police headquarters.

“Yeah. This is Mørck,” he said as he looked at the farm buildings. Everything seemed the same. No sign of panic or flight.

It was Lis on the line, and she sounded smug. “It’s working again, Carl. All the databases are functioning. It was the interior minister’s wife. She finally coughed up the antidote to all the trouble she’d set in motion. And Mrs. Sørensen has already entered all the possible CR combinations for Lars Henrik Jensen, as Assad asked her to do. I think it was a lot of work, so you owe her a big bouquet. But she found the man. Two of the digits had been changed, just as Assad assumed. He’s registered on Strøhusvej in Greve.” Then she gave him the house number.

Carl looked at some wrought-iron numbers affixed to one of the buildings. Yes, it was the same number. “Thanks, Lis,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “And give Mrs. Sørensen my thanks too. She did a really great job.”

“Wait, Carl, there’s more.”

Carl took a deep breath as he saw Assad’s dark eyes scanning the property in front of them. Carl felt it too. There was something really strange about the way these people had set up home here. It was not normal. Not at all.

“Lars Henrik Jensen has no criminal record, and he’s a ship’s steward by trade,” he heard Lis continue. “He works for the Merconi shipping company and mostly sails on ships in the Baltic. I just talked to his employer, and Lars Henrik Jensen is responsible for the catering on most of their ships. They said he was a very capable man. And by the way, they all call him Lasse.”

Carl shifted his eyes away from the property. “Do you have a mobile number for him, Lis?”

“Only a landline.” She rattled it off, but Carl didn’t write it down. What good would it do them? Should they call to say that they’d be arriving in two minutes?

“No cell phone number?”

“At that address the only one listed is for a Hans Jensen.” OK. So that was the name of the thin young man. Carl got the number and thanked Lis again.

“What did she say?” asked Assad.

Carl shrugged and took the car’s registration certificate out of the glove compartment. “Nothing we don’t already know, Assad. Shall we get going?”

The gaunt young man opened the door as soon as they knocked. He didn’t say a word, just let them in, almost as if they’d been expected.

Apparently it was supposed to look as if he and the woman had been eating a meal in peace and quiet, sitting about thirty feet from the door at a table covered with a floral oilcloth. Their meal was presumably a tin of ravioli. But Carl was sure that if he checked, he’d find the food ice cold. They couldn’t fool him. They should save that game for amateurs.

“We’ve brought a search warrant,” he said, pulling the car registration out of his pocket and briefly holding it up for them to see. The young man flinched at the sight of it.

“May we take a look around?” With a wave of his hand Carl sent Assad over to the monitors.

“That, apparently, was a rhetorical question,” said the woman. She was holding a glass of water in her hand, and she looked worn-out. The obstinate look in her eyes was gone, but she didn’t seem scared. Just resigned.

“What are you using those monitors for?” he asked after Assad checked out the bathroom. He pointed at the green light visible through the cloth draped over the screens.

“Oh, that’s something that Hans set up,” said the woman. “We live way out here in the country, and we hear about so many bad things happening these days. We wanted to put up some cameras so we could monitor the area around the house.”

He watched Assad pull off the cloth and shake his head. “They’re blank, Carl. All three of them.”

“May I ask you, Hans, why the screens are on if they’re not connected?”

The man looked at his mother.

“They’re always on,” she told them. “The power comes from the junction box.”

“The junction box? I see! And where is that?”

“I don’t know. Lasse would know.” She gave Carl a triumphant look. She’d led him into a dead end. There he was, peering up at an insurmountable wall. Or so she thought.

“We heard from the shipping company that Lasse isn’t on board a ship at the moment. So where is he?”

She smiled easily. “When Lasse isn’t out sailing, he keeps company with the ladies. It’s not something he tells his mother about, nor should he.”

Her smile got bigger. Those yellow teeth of hers were just itching to make a lunge at him.

“Come on, Assad,” said Carl. “There’s nothing for us to do in here. Let’s go look at the other buildings.”

He caught a glimpse of the woman as he headed for the door. She was already reaching for her pack of cigarettes, the smile gone from her face. So they were on the right track.

“Keep a close eye on everything, Assad. We’ll take that building first,” said Carl, pointing to the one that towered high above all the others. “Stay right here and let me know if anything happens down by the other buildings. OK, Assad?”

He nodded.

As Carl turned away, he heard a quiet but all too familiar click behind him. He swung around to find Assad with a shiny, four-inch-long switchblade in his hand. Used correctly, it presented serious problems for an opponent; use it incorrectly, and everybody was in trouble.

“What the hell are you doing, Assad? How’d that get here?”

He shrugged. “It’s magic, Carl. I will then make it disappear like magic afterward. I promise.”

“You’d better do that, damn it.”

Having his mind blown by Assad was apparently turning into a permanent condition. Possession of an illegal weapon? How the hell had he come up with something so stupid?

“We’re on duty here, Assad. Do you understand? This is as wrong as it gets. Give me the knife.”

The expertise with which Assad instantly closed up the switchblade was worrisome.

Carl weighed the knife in his hand before he stuck it in his jacket pocket, accompanied by Assad’s look of disapproval. Even Carl’s big old Scout knife weighed less than this one.

The enormous hall was built on a concrete floor foundation that had been cracked from frost and water that had seeped in. The gaping holes where the windows should have been were black and rotting around the edges, and the laminated beams supporting the ceiling had also suffered from the weather. It was a huge space. Aside from some debris and fifteen or twenty buckets like the ones he’d seen scattered about the grounds, the room was completely empty.

He kicked one of the buckets, which spun around, sending up a putrid stench. By the time it stopped, it had cast off a ring of sludge. Carl leaned down to take a closer look. Were those the remains of toilet paper? He shook his head. The buckets had probably been exposed to all types of weather and then filled up with rain water. Anything would stink and look like this, given enough time.

He looked at the bottom of the bucket and identified the logo of the Merconi shipping company stamped into the plastic. The buckets were probably used for bringing home leftover food from the ships.

He grabbed a solid iron bar from the junk pile and went to get Assad. Together they walked over to the farthest of the three adjacent buildings.

“Stay here,” Carl said as he studied the padlock on the door that supposedly only Lasse had a key to. “Come and get me, Assad, if you see anything strange,” he added, then stuck the iron bar under the padlock. In his old police car he’d had an entire toolbox that could have sprung something like this lock in a flash. Now he had to clench his teeth and try brute force.

He kept at it for thirty seconds before Assad came over and quietly took the iron bar away from him.

OK, let the young gun give it a try, thought Carl.

It took only a second before the broken lock lay in the gravel at Assad’s feet.

A few moments later, Carl stepped inside the building, feeling both defeated and on high alert.

The room was similar to the one where Mrs. Jensen lived, but instead of furniture, a row of welding cylinders in various colors stood in the middle of the space, along with maybe a hundred yards of empty steel shelves. In the far corner sheets of stainless-steel had been piled up next to a door. There was not much else. Carl took a closer look at the door. It couldn’t lead out of the building or else he would have noticed.

He went over and tried to open it. The brass handle was shiny, and the door was locked. He looked at the Ruko lock; it too was shiny from recent use.

“Assad, come in here,” he shouted. “And bring that iron bar!”

“I thought you told me to stay outside,” Assad said as he joined Carl.

Carl pointed to the bar Assad was holding and then to the door. “Show me what you can do.”

The room they entered was filled with the heavy scent of cologne. A bed, desk, computer, full-size mirror, red Wiltax blanket, an open wardrobe containing suits and two or three blue uniforms, a sink with a glass shelf and plenty of bottles of aftershave. The bed was made, the papers were stacked up neatly. There was nothing to indicate that the person who lived here was unbalanced.

“Why do you think he locked the door, Carl?” asked Assad as he lifted up the desk blotter to glance underneath. Then he knelt down and looked under the bed.

Carl inspected the rest of the room. Assad was right. There didn’t seem to be anything to hide, so why lock the door?

“There is something, Carl. Or there then would not be a lock.”

Carl nodded and began poking around inside the wardrobe. The smell of cologne was even stronger. It seemed to be clinging to the clothes. He knocked on the back wall, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In the meantime Assad lifted up the carpet. No trapdoor.

They examined the ceiling and the walls and then both of them stared at the mirror, hanging there so alone. The wall around it was painted a dull chalk-white.

Carl knocked on the wall with his knuckles. It seemed solid.

Maybe we can take the mirror off, he thought, but it was fastened securely. Then Assad pressed his cheek against the wall and peered behind the mirror.

“I think it hangs on a hinge on the other side. I can see some kind of lock here.”

He stuck his finger behind the mirror and coaxed the latch out of the lock. Then he grabbed the edge and pulled. The whole room panned past in the mirror as it slid aside to reveal a pitch-black hole in the wall, as tall as a man.

The next time we’re out in the field, I’m going to be better prepared, thought Carl. In his mind he saw the pencil-size flashlight lying on top of the piles of paper in his desk drawer. He stuck his hand inside the hole in the wall, fumbling for a light switch and longing for his service revolver. The next instant he felt the pressure in his chest.

He took a deep breath and tried to listen. No, damn it, there couldn’t be anybody inside. How could they have locked themselves in with a padlock on the outer door? Was it conceivable that Lasse Jensen’s brother or mother had been told to lock Lasse in his hiding place if the police came back and started snooping around?

He found the light switch farther along the wall and pressed it, ready to jump back if anyone was inside, waiting for them. It took a second for the scene in front of them to stop flickering as the fluorescent lights came on.

And then everything became clear.

They had found the right person. There was no doubt about it.

Carl noticed how Assad slipped silently into the room behind him as he moved closer to the bulletin boards and the worn steel tables along the wall. He stared at the photos of Merete Lynggaard, taken in all sorts of situations. From her first appearance on the speaker’s podium to the cozy home setting on the leaf-covered lawn in Stevns. Carefree moments captured by someone who wished to do her harm.

Carl looked down at one of the steel tables and understood at once the systematic way in which this Lasse, aka Lars Henrik Jensen, had worked his way toward his goal.

The first papers were from Godhavn. He lifted up a corner of a few documents and saw the original case files on Lars Henrik Jensen, the files that had disappeared years ago. He’d used some of the sheets of paper to practice, making clumsy attempts at altering his CR number. Along the way he got better at it, and by the top sheet of paper, he’d done a good job. Yes, Lasse had tampered with the documents at Godhavn, and that had won him time.

Assad pointed at the next pile of papers, which contained the correspondence between Lasse and Daniel Hale. Apparently InterLab hadn’t yet been paid the balance for the buildings that Lasse’s father had taken over so many years ago. In the beginning of 2002, Daniel Hale had sent a fax stating that he intended to file a lawsuit. He was demanding two million kroner. Hale was bringing about his own demise, but he could never have known the determination of his adversary. Maybe Hale’s demands had set off the entire chain reaction.

Carl picked up the paper on top. It was a copy of a fax that Lasse Jensen had sent on the very day that Hale was killed. It was a message and an unsigned contract:

I have the money. We can sign the papers and conclude the deal at my home today. My lawyer will bring the necessary documents; I’m faxing over a draft of the contract. Enter your comments and corrections and then bring the papers with you.

Yes, everything had been carefully planned. If the papers hadn’t burned up in the car, Lasse would probably have made sure they disappeared before the police and ambulances arrived. Carl noted the date and time of the proposed meeting. It all fit together. Hale had been lured to his death. Dennis Knudsen was waiting for him on the Kappelev highway with his foot on the accelerator.

“Look at this, Carl,” said Assad, picking up the paper on top of the next pile. It was an article from the Fredriksborg Amts newspaper that mentioned Dennis Knudsen’s death at the bottom of the page. “Death a Result of Drug Abuse” was the curt headline.

The perfect “cause-of-death” category to be filed under.

Carl looked at the next pages in the pile. There was no doubt that Lasse had offered Dennis a lot of money to cause the car accident. Nor was there any doubt that it was Lasse’s brother, Hans, who had stepped out in front of Hale’s car, forcing him to veer into the middle of the road. Everything went as planned, except for the fact that Lasse never paid Dennis, as he’d promised, and Dennis got mad.

A surprisingly well-formulated letter from Dennis Knudsen to Lasse presented an ultimatum: either he paid the three hundred thousand kroner or Dennis would obliterate him somewhere out on some road or highway when he least expected it.

Carl thought about Dennis’s sister. What a lovely kid brother she was mourning.

He looked up at the bulletin boards and got an overview of the devastating events in the course of Lasse Jensen’s life. The car accident, the rebuff from the insurance company. A request for funding from the Lynggaard Foundation denied. The motives accumulated and became much clearer than before.

“Do you think he went good and crazy in the head from all this?” asked Assad, handing something to Carl.

Carl frowned. “I don’t dare think about it, Assad.”

He looked closely at the object that Assad had given him. It was a small, compact Nokia mobile phone. Red and new and shiny. On the back someone had printed in tiny, crooked letters “Sanne Jønsson” under a little heart. He wondered what the girl would say when she found out her cell phone still existed.

“We’ve got everything here,” he said to Assad, nodding at the photos on the wall of Lasse’s mother sitting in a hospital bed, weeping, of the Godhavn buildings and of a man with the words “foster father Satan” written underneath in thick letters. Old newspaper clippings praising HJ Industries and Lasse Jensen’s father for his exceptional pioneering work in the field of high-tech Danish industry. There were at least twenty detailed photos taken on board the Schleswig-Holstein, along with sailing schedules and measurements of the distance down to the car deck, as well as the number of steps. There was also a time schedule in two columns. One for Lasse, and one for his brother. So both of them had been involved.

“What does this mean?” asked Assad, pointing at the numbers.

Carl wasn’t sure.

“It could mean that they kidnapped her and killed her somewhere. I’m afraid that might be the explanation.”

“And what does this mean then?” Assad went on, pointing at the last steel table, on top of which were several ring binders and a series of technical cross-section diagrams.

Carl picked up the first ring binder. There were section dividers inside, and the first one was labeled “Handbook for Diving-The Naval Weapons Academy AUG 1985.” He leafed through the pages, reading the headers: diving physiology, valve maintenance, surface decompression tables, oxygen handling tables, Boyle’s law, Dalton’s law.

It was pure gibberish to Carl.

“Does a first mate need to know about diving then, Carl?” asked Assad.

Carl shook his head. “Maybe it’s just a hobby of his.”

He went through the pile of papers and found a meticulous, handwritten draft for a manual. It was titled “Instructions for the pressure testing of containments, by Henrik Jensen, HJ Industries, November 10, 1986.”

“Can you read that, Carl?” asked Assad, who apparently couldn’t, his eyes glued to the text.

Several diagrams had been drawn on the first page along with surveys of pipe lead-ins. Apparently they had to do with specifications for changes in an existing installation, presumably the one that HJ Industries had taken over from InterLab when the buildings were purchased.

Carl did his best to skim through the handwritten pages, stopping at the words “pressure chamber” and “enclosure.”

He raised his head and looked at a close-up photo of Merete Lynggaard that hung above the stack of papers. Once more the words “pressure chamber” thundered through his mind.

The thought sent shivers down his back. Could it really be true? It was a gruesome, horrifying thought. Horrifying enough to get the sweat trickling.

“What is wrong, Carl?” asked Assad.

“Go outside and keep watch on the place. Do it now, Assad.”

His partner was about to repeat his question when Carl turned to look at the last pile of papers. “Go now, Assad. And be careful. Take this with you.” He handed Assad the iron bar that they’d used to prize open the lock.

He paged quickly through the papers. There were lots of mathematical calculations, mostly written by Henrik Jensen, and also by others. But he found nothing related to what he was looking for.

Again he studied the knife-sharp photo of Merete Lynggaard. It had presumably been taken at close range, but she probably hadn’t noticed, since her attention was directed slightly to the side. There was a particular look in her eyes. Something vital and alert that couldn’t help affecting the viewer. But Carl was certain that wasn’t why Lasse Jensen had hung up this photo in particular. On the contrary. There were lots of holes around its edges. Presumably it had been taken down and put up again, time after time.

One by one Carl pulled out the four pins that held the picture. Then he lifted it off and turned it over. What was written on the back was the work of a madman. He read it several times.

These disgusting eyes will pop out of your head. Your ridiculous smile will be drowned in blood. Your hair will shrivel up, and your thoughts will be pulverized. Your teeth will rot. Nobody will remember you for anything other than what you are: a whore, a bitch, a devil, a fucking murderer. Die like that, Merete Lynggaard.

And underneath had been added in block letters:

July 6, 2002: 2 Atmospheres

July 6, 2003: 3 Atmospheres

July 6, 2004: 4 Atmospheres

July 6, 2005: 5 Atmospheres

July 6, 2006: 6 Atmospheres

May 15, 2007: 1 Atmosphere

Carl glanced over his shoulder. It felt as if the walls were closing in around him. He put his hand to his forehead and stood there, thinking hard. They had her here, he was sure of it. She was somewhere close by. It said here they were going to kill her in five weeks, on May 15, but it was likely they’d already done so. He had a feeling that he and Assad might have provoked the deed, and it had definitely happened somewhere nearby.

What do I do? Who would know something? Carl wondered, as he dug through his memory.

He grabbed his cell phone and punched in the number of Kurt Hansen, his former colleague who’d ended up as an MP of the Conservative Party.

He paced the room as he listened to the phone ring. Father Time was out there somewhere, laughing at all of them, he could feel it so clearly now.

A second before he was going to put the phone down, he heard Kurt Hansen’s distinctive throat-clearing, then his voice.

Carl told him not to speak, just listen and think fast. No questions, just answers.

“You want to know what would happen to a person who was subjected to up to six atmospheres of pressure over a period of five years and then the pressure was released all at once?” Kurt repeated. “That’s a strange question. This is a hypothetical situation, right?”

“Just answer me, Kurt. You’re the only one I can think of who knows about these things. I don’t know anybody else who has a professional diving certificate, so tell me what would happen.”

“Well, the person would die, of course.”

“Yes, but how fast?”

“I have no idea, but it would be a horrible affair.”

“In what way?”

“Everything would explode from the inside. The alveoli would burst the lungs. The nitrogen in the bones would shred the tissue. The organs, and everything in the body would expand because there’s oxygen everywhere. Blood clots, cerebral hemorrhages, massive bleeding, even-”

Carl stopped him. “Who could help somebody in this situation?”

Kurt Hansen again cleared his throat. Maybe he didn’t know the answer. “Is this an actual situation, Carl?” he asked.

“I’m seriously afraid that it is, yes.”

“Then you need to call the naval station at Holmen. They have a mobile decompression chamber. A Duocom from Dräger.” He gave Carl the number. Carl thanked him and ended the call.

It took only a moment to explain the situation to the naval officer on duty.

“You’ve got to hurry. This is incredibly urgent,” said Carl. “Bring people with pneumatic drills and other equipment, because I don’t know what kind of obstacles you’re going to encounter. And notify police headquarters. I need reinforcements.”

“I think I understand the situation,” said the voice on the phone.