Redemption aka A Conspiracy of Faith

14

Like Assad had said, Mona Ibsen was back. Exuding tropical sunshine and an excess of experiences that had left unmistakable albeit graceful traces in the narrow creases around her eyes.

Carl had sat for a long time on his own in the basement that morning, trying to come up with gambits that might effectively counter any defensive steps on Mona’s part. Words that might soften her gaze if she should happen to drop by.

It didn’t happen. The only female presence in the basement that morning was Yrsa, heralded by the trundle of her shopping cart and her doubtless kindly intended but nonetheless earsplitting descant in the corridor five minutes after clocking in: “Bread rolls from Netto, ready for toasting, lads!”

It was one of those moments that brought home to him how far removed the basement was from the oblivious world above it, where people went about carefree and happy.

After that, it took him a couple of hours to realize that if he was planning on ever finding happiness himself he would have to get off his arse and go looking for it.

Having asked around, he eventually located Mona over by the Magistrates’ Court in quiet discussion with the court clerk. Clad in a leather waistcoat and a pair of faded Levi’s, she resembled anything but a woman who was done with taking on new challenges in life.

“Hello, Carl,” she said, rather remotely. The look in her eyes was professional, making it abundantly clear that for the moment there was nothing more between them. All he could do was smile back at her, unable to muster a single word.

The rest of the day he could have spent in ever-decreasing circles, frustration mounting in the disintegrated ruin of his emotional life. But Yrsa had other plans.

“We might have something to go on in Ballerup,” she announced with ill-concealed glee and a bit of Netto’s bread roll stuck between her front teeth. “I’m an angel of good fortune this week. It says so in my horoscope.”

Carl looked up at her with hope in his eyes. In that case, her wings could whisk her away into the stratosphere so he could be left to ponder his cruel fate in peace.

“I had such a job getting anything out of them,” she went on. “First, I had to speak to the head teacher at Lautrupgård School, but he’d only been there since 2004. Then they sent me on to a teacher who’d been there since the school started, and she didn’t know anything, either. Then I got hold of the caretaker, and he was just as blank, so then-”

“Yrsa! If there’s a point to all this, then I’d like to hear it, please. I’m a busy man,” Carl interrupted, trying to rub some life back into a sleeping arm.

“Well, as I was just about to say, afterward I called the College of Engineering, and that’s where we got lucky.”

The blood rushed back to his limb at once. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Go on.”

“It was quite by chance, really. One of the teachers, a woman by the name of Laura Mann, was in the office when I called. She’d just started back this morning after being off sick. She’s taught there since the place opened in 1995, and as far as she could remember there’s only ever been one case that would fit.”

Carl straightened up in his chair. “And what was that?”

Yrsa cocked her head and looked at him. “Oh, so you are interested, then?” She gave his hairy forearm a playful slap of her hand. “Bet you’re dying to know now, aren’t you?”

How in God’s name had it come to this? He’d solved at least a hundred burdensome cases over the years, and here he was, reduced to playing guessing games with a temp in bright-green tights.

“Tell me about the case she recalled, Yrsa,” Carl persisted, nodding briefly to Assad, who had put his head around the door. He looked pale.

“Well, Assad called the office yesterday asking the same questions. They’d been talking about it this morning over coffee, and the woman overheard,” she continued.

Assad pricked up his ears and suddenly seemed to be back to his old self again.

“It all came back to her straightaway,” said Yrsa. “They had this elite student once. A young lad with some kind of syndrome, she said, but absolutely brilliant at maths and physics.”

“A syndrome?” Assad looked puzzled.

“Yeah, like very gifted at one thing and hopeless at everything else. Not autism, but something like it. What did she call it, now?” Yrsa wrinkled her brow. “Oh, I know. Asperger’s syndrome, that was what he had.”

Carl smiled. Most likely she had her own personal insights into what it was like.

“So what happened to this lad?” he went on.

“He took the first term and got flying marks in everything, and then he dropped out.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“He was there the last day before the winter break with his younger brother, showing him around the place, and after that they never saw him again.”

Both Assad and Carl narrowed their eyes at once. This was it. “What was his name?” Carl asked.

“His name was Poul.”

Carl felt his insides turn to ice.

“Yes!” Assad exclaimed, and proceeded to wave his arms and legs about like a jumping jack.

“The teacher said she remembered him so vividly because Poul Holt was the closest thing to a Nobel candidate they would ever be likely to see anywhere near that college. And besides that, there had never been a single student there, before or after, who had that kind of Asperger’s. He was all on his own in that respect.”

“So that’s why she remembered him?” Carl went on.

“Yeah, that’s why. And because he was in the first year of students they ever had.”

Half an hour later, Carl repeated the same questions in person at the College of Engineering and received exactly the same answers.

“It’s not the kind of thing you forget,” Laura Mann explained, flashing an ivory smile. “I imagine you remember your first arrest in much the same way?”

Carl nodded. A scrawny little alky who had lain down in the middle of Englandsvej. Carl could still see the glob of spit as it sailed through the air and stuck itself to his police badge while he tried to bundle the fool back to safety. So it was true: that first arrest remained indelible. With or without the spit.

He considered the woman sitting at the other side of the table. Sometimes she was on television when they needed an expert on alternative energy sources. Laura Mann, PhD, it read on her business card, and a lot more titles besides. Carl was glad he didn’t have one of his own.

“He had some form of autism, is that right?”

“Well, sort of, but rather a mild form, I believe. People with AS are often highly gifted. Nerdish is how most people would think of them, I suppose. Einsteins. But Poul had practical talent as well. He was very special in all sorts of ways.”

Assad smiled. He too had noted the horn-rimmed glasses and the hair gathered in a bun. She seemed to be just the right teacher for someone like Poul Holt. Nerdish minds think alike, as they said.

“Poul had his younger brother with him that day, the sixteenth of February 1996, you say, after which you never saw him again. How can you be so sure of the date?” Carl inquired.

“We kept a register of attendance in the first years. So we checked back to see when he’d been here last. He never came back after the holiday. Would you like to see the registers? They’re all filed away in the office next door.”

Carl glanced at Assad. He didn’t seem that interested, either. “No, thanks, I think we can take your word for it. I understand you contacted the family when Poul failed to show up again, is that right?”

“Yes, but they were very standoffish. Especially when we suggested a meeting at home to talk things over with Poul.”

“Did you speak to him on the phone?”

“No, the last time I spoke to Poul Holt was here at the college, and that would have been a week before the winter break. Later, when I called his home number, his father said Poul wouldn’t come to the phone. And that was that. Poul had just turned eighteen, so of course he was free to decide for himself what he wanted to do with his life.”

“Eighteen? Are you sure he wasn’t older than that?”

“Yes, he was very young. He completed his upper secondary at seventeen and went straight on from there.”

“Have you kept any data on him?”

She smiled. Naturally, she had come prepared.

Carl read aloud with Assad hovering at his shoulder.

“Poul Holt, born 13 November 1977. Maths and Physics major from Birkerød Gymnasium School. Final average 9.8.”

And then came the address. Not far away, forty-five minutes by car at the most.

“Bearing in mind this would be the old grading system with thirteen as top of the scale, I’d say that wasn’t a particularly impressive average for a genius,” Carl mused.

“True, but that’s how it pans out across the board with thirteen science and seven arts subjects,” she replied.

“Are you saying, then, that he was poor in Danish?” Assad chipped in.

She smiled. “In written Danish, certainly. His reports left a lot to be desired in terms of his writing skills. But we often see that. Even in his spoken language he expressed himself rather primitively if the subject at hand failed to interest him.”

“Is there a copy of this I could take with me?” Carl asked.

Laura Mann nodded. If it hadn’t been for her tobacco-stained fingers and greasy skin, he would have given her a hug.

“Fantastic, Carl,” Assad enthused as they approached the house. “We solved our problem within a week. We know who wrote the letter. This is the way to go! And now we are outside the family’s home.” He thumped the dashboard as if to underline their success.

“Yeah.” Carl nodded. “Now we just have to hope it was all a joke.”

“If so, then we must give this Poul a bollocking, Carl.”

“And what if it wasn’t, Assad?”

Assad nodded. If it wasn’t, they would have a job on their hands.

They parked outside the garden gate and noted immediately that the name on the nameplate wasn’t Holt.

When they rang the bell and the door was opened by a small, crumpled man in a wheelchair claiming to be the only person who had lived in the house since 1996, Carl clenched his teeth together on instinct and felt himself growing irritable.

“You’ll have bought the place from the Holts, then?” he said.

“No, as a matter of fact it was from some Jehovah’s Witnesses. The man of the house was a priest of some sort. The main room had been a kind of meeting place. You can come in and have a look, if you like.”

Carl shook his head. “So you never met the family who lived here?”

“That’s right, I never met them,” the man replied.

Assad and Carl thanked him and went away.

“Do you get the feeling all of a sudden, Assad, that we’re not dealing with boyish pranks here?” Carl said.

“Carl, just because people move house…” He stopped on the garden path. “OK, perhaps I know what you are thinking, Carl.”

“Am I right, would you say? Would a lad like Poul be the sort to do something like that? And would it be the kind of thing a couple of young Jehovah’s Witnesses would get up to? What do you reckon?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that they are allowed to lie, only not to each other.”

“You mean you know someone who’s a member?”

“No, but that is how it is with these highly religious people. The members of the Church will shield each other against the world by whatever means. Also with lies.”

“True. But the kidnapping thing can’t have been a necessary lie. That’d be overstepping the boundaries. I’m sure all Jehovah’s Witnesses would be able to see that.”

Assad nodded. On that point they agreed.

So what now?

Yrsa was like an army of ants on the march back and forth between her own office and Carl’s. For the moment, the kidnapping case was hers and she wanted to know everything, preferably in small installments. What did this Laura Mann look like? What did she have to say about Poul? What was the house like that they had lived in? What more did they know about the family, besides that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses?

“Take it easy. Assad’s checking the Civil Registration System. We’ll find them before long.”

“Come out here into the corridor with me for a minute, would you, Carl?” she said, dragging him with her to the blowup on the wall. Now she had added Poul’s name at the bottom, as well as filling in a couple of the smaller words in the main body of the text.

HELP

The 16 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-He 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

POUL HOLT

“Right then! He was kidnapped along with his brother,” Yrsa summed up. “His name is Poul Holt, and he says they drove nearly an hour, my guess being that they drove to some water.” She planted her fists on her narrow hips. Now, clearly, she was going to present her own standpoint.

“If this lad had Asperger’s or something like it, I don’t think he would be making that kind of thing up, about them driving out to the water.” She turned to face Carl. “Would he?”

“Maybe his younger brother’s behind it. So far, we’ve no way of knowing, strictly speaking.”

“No, but think about it, Carl. Laursen found a fish scale on the original message. If the younger brother had written it, would he go to the bother of sticking a fish scale on just to make his story more believable? Not to mention fish slime?”

“Maybe he’s as bright as his brother. Only in another way?”

At this point, she stamped her foot, causing a resounding echo to clatter through the basement rotunda. “Carl, you’re not listening. Put your thinking cap on. Where were they kidnapped?” She patted him on the shoulder as though to soften the harshness of her tone.

Carl noted how a few flakes of dandruff were sent whirling into the air in the process. “In Ballerup,” he answered.

“Right, so what do you think if they were kidnapped in Ballerup and yet drive for nearly an hour to get to some water? It wouldn’t take them an hour to Hundested, would it? How long does it take to Jyllinge from Ballerup? Half an hour at the most, I’d say.”

“Stevns would be a possibility, yeah?” He growled slightly under his breath. No one liked to have their intellectual capacities dragged through the mud. And that included Carl Mørck.

“Exactly!” She stamped her foot again. If there had been rats in the crawl space beneath them, they were there no longer.

“But if the message is just a flight of fancy,” she went on, “why make it all so difficult? Why not just write that they drove for half an hour to get to the water? Surely that’s what any young lad making up a story would do? That’s why I don’t believe it’s made up. We should be taking this letter very seriously, Carl.”

He inhaled deeply. He hadn’t the energy to share his take on the gravity of the situation. Maybe he would have done so with Rose, but not Yrsa.

“Yeah, OK, no need to get worked up,” he said, trying to talk things down to a sensible level. “Let’s see how things are looking once we’ve got hold of the family.”

“What is going on?” Assad popped his head out of his pygmy-size office. It was obvious he was trying to weigh up the mood. Was this a proper argument, or what?

“I have the address, Carl,” he announced, thrusting a piece of paper into Carl’s hand. “Four times they have moved since 1996. Four addresses in thirteen years, all in Sweden.”

Shit, Carl thought to himself. Sweden, the country with the world’s largest mosquitoes and dullest cuisine.

“Let me guess,” he said. “They moved up north to where even the reindeer get lost? Luleå or Kebnekaise, somewhere like that?”

“Hallabro. The place is called Hallabro, and it’s in Blekinge. Approximately two hundred and fifty kilometers from here.”

Two hundred and fifty kilometers. A jaunt, unfortunately. He saw the weekend disappear before his eyes.

He tried to wangle his way out. “OK, but they won’t be in when we get there. And if we call them beforehand, they won’t be in, either. And if by chance they’re in, all they’ll speak is Swedish, and how the hell’s anyone from Jutland to understand a word? Am I right?”

Assad frowned, as if this were slightly too much information for him to process all at once. “But I already called. And they were in.”

“You did what? Chances are they’ll be out tomorrow, then.”

“Not at all, Carl, because I did not tell them who I was. I slammed down the receiver at once.”

A crabby pair, these two assistants of his. And such a flair for sound effects.

Carl shuffled back into his office and called home, giving brief instructions for Morten on what to do if Vigga turned up while he was away. Who knew what she was capable of next?

Then he instructed Assad on the continuing investigation into the arsons and told him to keep an eye on what Yrsa was up to. “Give her a good long list of religious sects to look into. And then go upstairs to Laursen and ask him to get on to Forensic Genetics, see if he can hurry them up a bit on those DNA tests, eh?”

After that, he stuffed his service pistol into his bag. You never knew with the Swedes.

At least not the ones from Denmark.