Redemption aka A Conspiracy of Faith

13

“It’s not good at all, Carl,” said Assad.

Carl had no idea what he was on about. One two-minute story on DR.’s Update channel about green bailouts to the tune of trillions and he was off in the land of nod.

“What’s not good, Assad?” he heard himself say, from miles away.

“I have looked everywhere and now I am able to say with certainty that no incident of attempted kidnapping was reported at anytime in that place. Not for as long as any road called Lautrupvang has existed in Ballerup.”

Carl rubbed his eyes. No, it wasn’t good, Assad was right about that. Assuming the message in the bottle was on the level, that is.

Assad was standing in front of him with his trusty pocketknife stuck into a plastic tub covered with Arabic scribble and filled with some mystery foodstuff. He smiled in anticipation, dug out a dollop, and shoveled it into his mouth. Above his head, the faithful fly buzzed attentively.

Carl looked up. Maybe it was time he expended some energy on its extermination, he thought to himself.

He turned his head lazily in search of an appropriate murder weapon, finding it almost immediately on the desk in front of him. A battered bottle containing correction fluid, made of the kind of hard plastic flies most definitely did not survive collisions with.

It’s all in the aim, he thought for a brief second before hurling the bottle toward the dratted insect and discovering the top hadn’t been screwed on properly.

The splatter against the wall caused Assad to look up in perplexity at the white matter now slowly descending toward the floor.

The fly was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s very odd,” Assad muttered with his mouth still full. “All along I was thinking in my head that Lautrupvang was a place where people lived, but then I see that it is only offices and industry.”

“So what?” said Carl, puzzling over what the smell of the mud-colored gunge in Assad’s little tub reminded him of. Was it vanilla?

“Yes, offices and industry, you know,” Assad went on. “What was he doing there, the person who claims he was kidnapped?”

“Presumably he worked there?” Carl suggested.

Assad’s face contorted into an expression that could best be described as total skepticism. “Come on now, Carl. Think about it. He spelled so badly he could not even spell the name of the road.”

“Maybe he just wasn’t born into the language, Assad. Do you know the type?” Carl turned to his computer and entered the name of the road.

“Have a look here, Assad. There are all sorts of workplaces, schools, and colleges in that area. So there’s bound to be any number of people of ethnic background around there during the daytime.” He indicated one of the addresses on the screen. “Lautrupgård School, for instance. A school for kids with social and emotional difficulties. Maybe it was all just a sick joke, after all. Let’s see once we’ve deciphered the rest of the message. It might turn out to be just a perverted way of nettling some poor sod of a teacher.”

“Deciphering here and nettling there. Such words, Carl. But what if it is someone who worked for a firm there? The businesses are plenty.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think the firm would have reported it to the police if one of their employees went missing? I see where you’re coming from, but we have to bear in mind that nothing even resembling the kind of crime mentioned in the message was ever reported. Are there any other streets of the same name anywhere else in the country?”

Assad shook his head. “You are saying perhaps that you do not think it to be the right kidnapping?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“I think you are mistaken, Carl.”

“But listen, Assad. If there really was a kidnapping, what’s to say whoever was kidnapped wasn’t released again after a ransom was paid? It’s conceivable, wouldn’t you say? And then maybe it was all forgotten about. In which case, our investigations are going to lead us nowhere, right? Maybe only a very few individuals even knew about it.”

Assad looked at him for a moment. “Yes, Carl. That is something we don’t know. But we will never find out if you say we should not proceed with the case.”

He turned and tramped off without another word, leaving his tub of goo and his pocketknife behind on Carl’s desk. What the hell was the matter with him? Was it what he’d said about poor spelling and immigrants? He wasn’t usually that sensitive. Or was he so wound up in the case he couldn’t concentrate on anything else?

Carl cocked his head and listened to Assad’s and Yrsa’s combined voices in the corridor. Bellyaching, he shouldn’t wonder.

Then he remembered Antonsen’s question and got to his feet.

“Mind if I disturb you two turtle doves for a moment?” he quipped as he approached his two staff members, who were back in front of the blow-up on the wall. Yrsa had been standing there ever since she’d given him those annual reports he’d asked her for. Four or five hours that day, all in all, and not so much as an exclamation mark on the notepad she’d dumped on the floor in front of her feet.

“Turtle doves! You should let those thoughts of yours rotate a while inside your skull before opening your mouth and letting them out,” said Yrsa, then turned once more toward the giant photocopy on the wall.

“Listen up a minute, would you, Assad? There’s a superintendent over in Rødovre says he’s received an application from Samir Ghazi. Apparently, Samir wants to go back there. Do you know anything about it?”

Assad looked at Carl as if he didn’t know what he was talking about, but he was definitely on his guard. “Why should I know about that?”

“You’ve been avoiding Samir, haven’t you? Maybe you’re not the best of mates. Am I right?”

Was that an affronted look?

“I don’t know this man, Carl. Not really. Perhaps he just wants to go back to his old job again.” The smile that now appeared on his face was a tad too broad. “Maybe he can’t take the pace and wants to get out of the kitchen?”

“Is that what I’m to tell Antonsen, then?”

Assad shrugged.

“I’ve got a couple more words here,” Yrsa then announced.

She took hold of the stepladder and dragged it into place.

“I’ll use a pencil so we can rub it out again,” she said from the highest rung but one. “So now it looks like this. It’s just a suggestion, mind, and I’m not entirely sure once we get past ‘Hes got.’ But the sequence fits and it makes sense, so why not? And whoever wrote it can’t spell for toffee, but in places it’s actually a help in a funny sort of way.”

Assad and Carl exchanged glances. Hadn’t they told her that?

“For example, I’m pretty certain that ‘retnd’ is ‘thretned,’ i.e., ‘threatened.’”

She considered her work once again. “Oh, yeah, and I’m absolutely sure ‘an’ should be ‘van,’ there’s just no trace of the ‘v’ anymore. But have a look and tell me what you think.”

HELP

The.6 febrary 1996 we were kidnaped he got us at the bus sdop on Lautropvang in Ballerup-The man is 18. tall with short hair…………-Hes got a scar on his rite…r… a blue van Mum and Dad know him-Fr.d…nd…t.in. with a B-… thretned us……ve us……-Hes going to kil us-…ressd………ace…rst…… brother.-We drove nearly 1 hour………… by warter……… win..urb…s…… It smels here-…p…………r…ry.gv.-………… years

P……

“What do you reckon?” she asked, still without so much as a glance in their direction.

Carl read it through a couple of times. It appeared convincing enough, that much he had to concede. Hardly made up to slag off a teacher or anyone else who might have got the sender’s back up.

Although there was definitely some authenticity about it, it was still by no means certain they were dealing with an actual cry for help. But if indeed it was genuine, a couple of sentences in particular gave rise to concern.

Mum and Dad know him, it read. Surely not the kind of thing a person would make up. And then: Hes going to kil us.

With no “might” or “perhaps” in sight.

“We don’t know where he’s got that scar of his, either, which pisses me off a bit,” Yrsa continued, her fingers delving into her golden locks, then adding in English: “If you’ll pardon my French.”

“It’s like there’s too many body parts with three letters,” she went on. “Especially if you can’t spell. Leg, arm, toe, foot if you spell it with a ‘u.’ Would you agree that we can assume this scar to be on a limb or some other extremity? Is there any other part of the body with only three letters?”

“How about ear or eye?” Carl suggested. “Lip, or knee without the ‘k’?” Apart from those I can’t think of any more. But maybe we can rule out the legs. My guess is it’s somewhere reasonably visible.”

“What part of the body is visible in February in this refrigerator country?” Assad wanted to know.

“He may have taken his clothes off,” said Yrsa, her face brightening momentarily. “He may have been a pervert. Maybe that’s why he’s a kidnapper.”

Carl nodded. Unfortunately, it was a factor that couldn’t be ruled out.

“In the cold, only the head is visible,” said Assad. He stared at Carl’s ear. “The ear can be seen if the hair is not too long, so the scar might be in that place. But what about the eye? Can a scar be on the eye?” Assad was obviously doing his utmost to visualize it. “No, not a scar,” he concluded. “Not on the eye. That is not possible.”

“Let’s leave it for now,” said Carl. “Hopefully, we’ll get a better picture of our perp if and when the lab people over at Forensic Genetics manage to find some useful DNA on the bottle. These things take time, so we’re going to have to wait. Any suggestions as to how to proceed in the meantime?”

Yrsa turned to face them. “Yeah, it’s lunchtime!” she announced. “Anyone fancy a bread roll? I’ve brought my toaster with me.”

When the gearbox begins to grumble, it’s time for a change of oil, and right now Department Q was having considerable difficulty moving up the gears.

Time for an overhaul, Carl thought to himself.

“I think we’ll try chucking the whole caboodle in the air and see how it all lands. Maybe it’ll give us some new angles. What do you reckon?” he said.

They nodded. Assad rather reticently, perhaps taking the unfamiliar expression literally.

“Excellent. We’ll swap around. You take a look at those company accounts, Assad. And Yrsa, you can ring around the colleges and other institutions in the area of Lautrupvang.”

Carl nodded to himself. Of course. A cheerful female voice such as hers would have the desk jockeys running around the archives in no time.

“Get the administrative staff in those places to ask around and see if any of their older colleagues can recall anyone, a pupil or someone who worked there, who stopped turning up all of a sudden,” he instructed her. “And Yrsa, give them something to go by. Landmark events in 1996. Remind them it was when the area had just been rebuilt.”

At this point, Assad apparently felt he had heard enough and sloped off to his own office. It was obvious this new division of labor suited him badly. But Carl was in charge here, so he’d just have to put up with it. Besides, the arson case was more substantial, and as such it was the one that gave them most leverage in relation to their colleagues in Department A, a point not to be taken lightly.

Assad would just have to put it behind him and roll up his sleeves. In the meantime, further musings about the message in the bottle could muddle along at Yrsa’s plodding pace.

Carl waited until she was out of the door and then found the number of the spinal clinic in Hornbæk.

“I want to speak to the consultant. No one else,” he said into the receiver, knowing full well he was hardly entitled to pressure anyone there.

Five minutes passed before the senior registrar finally came to the phone.

He didn’t sound particularly happy. “Yes, I’m aware of who you are,” he said wearily. “I assume this has something to do with Hardy Henningsen?”

Carl put him in the picture.

“I see,” the doctor rattled. How come doctors’ voices always turned more nasal with each rung they climbed up the salary scale?

“So you’re asking me about the likelihood of nerve paths being restored in a case such as Hardy’s?” he went on. “The problem is that Mr. Henningsen is no longer under our daily supervision, so we are unable to monitor his progress as we would otherwise wish. We did advise repeatedly against removing the patient from our care, as you well recall.”

“If Hardy had stayed with you lot, he’d have been dead by now. Instead, he’s found a modicum of spirit to go on living. I’d say that was a good thing, wouldn’t you?”

There was silence at the other end.

“Couldn’t one of you come out and take a look at him?” Carl continued. “Perhaps it might be a good time to assess the situation from scratch. For you, as well as for him.”

More silence. Then, “You say he has some movement in his wrist? We already noted some spasms in a couple of finger joints. Perhaps he’s mixing the two things up. It may be just some reflexive movement.”

“Am I to understand that a spinal cord as damaged as Hardy’s is never going to function any better than it does now?”

“Inspector, what we’re talking about here is not whether your friend is ever going to walk again, because he isn’t. Hardy Henningsen is paralyzed from the neck down and will be forever bound to his bed, and that’s a certain fact. Whether he might regain some feeling in some part of the arm in question is another matter. I don’t consider that we should expect anything more than such tiny contractions as those you have described, and probably not even that.”

“So he won’t ever be able to move his hand?”

“I can’t imagine it.”

“So you won’t conduct an examination at home?”

“I didn’t say that.” There was a rummaging of paper at the other end. Probably a planner. “When did you have in mind?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”

When Carl checked Assad’s office later, he found it empty.

On the desk was a note. Here are the figures, it read. Underneath was a formal signature: Yours sincerely, Hafez el-Assad.

Was he really so miffed?

“Yrsa!” he yelled into the corridor. “Where’s Assad, do you know?”

No answer.

If Muhammad wouldn’t go to the mountain, the mountain would have to go to Muhammad, he thought to himself, striding off to confront her.

Only to come to an abrupt halt as he put his head around her door. Anyone would have thought lightning had struck at his feet.

Rose’s icily monochrome hi-tech landscape had been transformed into something not even the most aesthetically bewildered ten-year-old girl from Barbieland would be able to emulate. Everywhere he looked, he saw pink and bric-a-brac.

He gulped and turned to look at Yrsa herself. “Have you seen Assad?” he asked.

“Yeah, he left half an hour ago. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Where was he off to?”

She shrugged. “I’ve got an interim report for you on the Lautrupvang case, if you want?”

He nodded. “Anything turn up?”

There was a flutter of Hollywood-red lips. “Absolutely sweet fuck all. Did anyone ever tell you you’ve got the same smile as Gwyneth Paltrow?” she said.

“Gwyneth Paltrow? The actress?”

She nodded.

At that, he strode back to his office and called Rose’s home number. Another day with Yrsa and things would go horribly wrong. If Department Q was to maintain its admittedly dubious standards, Rose would have to climb down and get back behind her desk at the double.

He got her answering machine.

“This is Rose and Yrsa’s answering service informing you that the ladies are in audience with Her Majesty the Queen at the moment. As soon as ceremonials have been concluded, we’ll call you back. Leave a message, if you must.” And then came the tone.

Which of the two sisters had recorded the message, only God knew.

He slumped back into his chair and rummaged around for a smoke. Someone had mentioned the postal service was hiring again, and there might be some cushy jobs up for grabs.

It sounded like paradise.

Things were looking no better when he walked into his living room that evening and saw a doctor leaning over Hardy’s bed, and Vigga, of all people, at his side.

He acknowledged the doctor’s presence politely, then drew Vigga aside.

“What are you doing here, Vigga? You’re supposed to call first if you want to see me. You know how much I hate these spur-of-the-moment visits.”

“Carl, my love.” She passed her hand across his cheek. It made a rasping sound.

This was indeed alarming.

“I think about you every day, and I’ve decided to come home again,” she announced with conviction.

Carl felt his eyes widen. She wasn’t joking, either, this garish almost-divorcée.

“You can’t, Vigga. I’m afraid the idea just doesn’t appeal.”

Vigga blinked a couple of times. “Oh, but I can, dear, and I will. Half this house still belongs to me, in case you’d forgotten. Just you think on!”

And that was when he fell into a rage, making the doctor cower and causing Vigga to counter with tears. When at last a taxi finally took her away, he removed the top from the biggest marker pen he could lay his hands on and drew a thick black line through the name of Vigga Rasmussen on the front door. High fucking time.

And to hell with the consequences.

The inevitable upshot of this was that Carl sat up in bed for most of the night conducting endless one-way conversations with imaginary divorce lawyers, all of whom had their hands in his wallet.

This would be the ruination of him.

He found slight comfort in the fact that the doctor from the spinal clinic had come. And that he had actually registered a degree of activity, albeit small, in Hardy’s arm.

Science was, in a positive sense, baffled.

He found himself passing the duty desk at Police HQ at half past five the next morning. There was no point lying in bed any longer.

“Pleasant surprise, seeing you here at this time of morning, Carl,” said the duty officer in the cage. “I’m sure your little helper will be over the moon, too. Mind you don’t give him a fright down there.”

Carl needed to run through that again. “What? You mean Assad’s here? Now?”

“Yeah. He’s been coming in every day at this time. Usually just before six, but he was here around five today. Didn’t you know?”

No, he certainly didn’t.

It seemed Assad had already said his prayers in the corridor, because his prayer mat was still there, and this was the first time Carl had come so close to observing the ritual. It was something that usually went on behind Assad’s closed door. He kept it to himself.

Carl heard the sound of Assad’s voice coming loud and clear from his office, as though he were on the phone to someone hard of hearing. He was speaking Arabic, and his tone did not seem particularly friendly, though with that language you could never be sure.

He stepped toward the door and saw the steam from the boiling kettle rising to envelop Assad’s neck. In front of him were notes in Arabic, and on the flatscreen was the flickering image of an elderly man with a mustache wearing a pair of enormous headphones. Now Carl realized that Assad was wearing his headset. Skyping with the man on the screen. Probably some relative in Syria.

“Morning, Assad,” said Carl, failing to anticipate the reaction that came. He had expected Assad to be startled, of course, this being the first time Carl had ever been there so early, but the radical jolt that shook his assistant’s body took him completely by surprise. Assad’s arms and legs flailed in the air.

The old man he was talking to seemed alarmed and moved closer to the screen. Most likely he could see the outline of Carl appear behind Assad.

The man uttered a few hasty words and then disconnected. Meanwhile, Assad tried to collect himself on the edge of his chair.

His eyes were wide with bewilderment, as if to say: What are you doing here? He looked like a man who had been caught with both hands in the till.

“Sorry, Assad. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. Are you OK?” He put his hand on Assad’s shoulder. The fabric of his shirt was cold and clammy with sweat.

Assad clicked out of Skype, back to the document he had been working on before. Maybe he didn’t want Carl to see who he had been connected to.

Carl raised his hands apologetically. “It’s OK, I won’t pry. Get on with whatever it was you were doing. Then come and see me when you’ve finished.”

Assad had yet to say a word. That in itself was highly unusual.

A moment later, Carl plonked himself on his office chair, already feeling exhausted. Only a few weeks before, the basement underneath Police Headquarters had been his bolt-hole. Two reasonably amenable assistants and a general mood that on a good day might even be called pleasant. Now Rose was gone and had been replaced by someone equally odd, only in a different way, and Assad had gone funny on him. In such circumstances, keeping all the other hardships of this world at bay suddenly seemed like a tall order indeed. Not to mention what might happen if Vigga demanded a divorce and half his earthly possessions.

Bollocks to it.

Carl glanced up at a job opening he had lightheartedly pinned to the notice board a couple of months before: National Commissioner of Police. Just the ticket, he’d thought. What could be better than a job with minions bowing and touching their forelocks, an order of chivalry from the Queen, cheap travel, and a salary that would reduce even Vigga to silence? Seven hundred and two thousand, two hundred and seventy-seven kroner per annum, no less. Plus perks. Just uttering the figure took up half the morning.

Should have put in for it, he thought to himself. And then Assad was standing in front of him.

“Carl, do we need to talk about what happened just now?”

About what? That he’d been Skyping with someone? That he was on the job so early? That Carl’s sudden appearance had scared the shit out of him?

The question was decidedly odd.

Carl shook his head and looked at the time. Still an hour until his shift officially began. “What you do here so early in the morning is your own business, Assad. I’ve no problem with you keeping in touch with people you don’t see that often.”

Assad looked almost relieved. Curiouser and curiouser.

“I have been studying the accounts of Amundsen and Mujagic A/S in Rødovre, K. Frandsen Wholesalers, JPP Fittings A/S, and Public Consult.”

“OK. Find anything you want to tell me about?”

Assad scratched the barren patch in his black curls. “They seem to be rather solid companies most of the time.”

“But?”

“In the months surrounding the fires they are not.”

“How can you tell?”

“They borrow money. Their orders go down.”

“You mean, first the orders go down, and then they borrow the money they’ve lost?”

Assad nodded. “Yes, that’s it.”

“OK, then what?”

“Well, we can see that only in the Rødovre case. The other fires are all so new.”

“What happened there, then?”

“First there is the fire, then the company receives the insurance payout, and afterward the loan is gone.”

Carl reached for his cigarettes and lit up. It sounded like copybook stuff. Insurance fraud. But where did the bodies with the finger rings come in?

“What kind of loans are we talking about?”

“Short term. One year at a time. In the case of Public Consult, the company that burned down on Stockholmsgade last Saturday, only six months.”

“The loans fell due and they hadn’t the funds to pay?”

“That is what it looks like.”

Carl blew smoke into the room, prompting Assad to step back and flap his hands. Carl ignored him. This was his domain and his smoke. If Assad didn’t like it, tough shit.

“Who lent them the money?” he asked.

Assad gave a shrug. “Various. Bankers in central Copenhagen.”

Carl nodded. “Get me the names and tell me who’s behind them.”

Assad’s shoulders sagged.

“All right, no need to get depressed about it. Do it when the offices open, Assad. That’s a couple of hours away yet. Relax.”

Carl’s words did not appear to cheer him up at all. In fact, they almost seemed to make things worse.

The pair of them were getting on Carl’s nerves with all their jabber and recalcitrance. It was like Assad and Yrsa were infecting each other. As if they were the ones who did the deciding around here. If they kept it up, he would give them each a pair of rubber gloves and have them scrubbing the basement floor on their hands and knees until they could see their faces in it.

Assad lifted his head and nodded silently. “Anyway, I will not keep you anymore, Carl. You can come to me when you’re finished.”

“What do you mean?”

Assad winked and flashed him a wry little smile. The transformation was utterly baffling. “Soon you will have both hands full,” he added, winking again.

“Let me try that one more time. What the fuck are you going on about, Assad?”

“I am referring to Mona, of course. Do not try to tell me you had no idea she was back.”