Redemption aka A Conspiracy of Faith

47

What had happened was disastrous. A catastrophe, no less.

He had put the two men together, and it had gone terribly wrong.

Carl shook his head in despair. Fucking hell. He had been too eager, too determined. But how could he have known things would go so badly? All he had wanted to do was put the wind up them and see what happened.

Both of them fitted the bill, but which was their man? That was the issue. Both bore at least some resemblance to the police artist’s likeness, and he wanted to see how they would react under duress. He was expert at spotting those burdened by guilt. So he had thought, anyway.

And now it had all gone pear-shaped. The only person who could tell him where the children were was being carried on a stretcher out to a waiting ambulance with his life in the balance, and it was Carl’s fault entirely. The situation was even graver than before.

“Look at this, Carl.”

He turned to Assad, who had Pope’s wallet in his hand. He didn’t look happy.

“Yeah, what is it, Assad? No address?”

“Actually, there is. But that’s not it. There’s something else, and it is not good, Carl. Look!”

He handed him a checkout receipt from a Kvickly supermarket. “Look at the time on it, Carl.”

Carl stared at it for a moment and felt sweat begin to trickle down his neck.

Assad was right. Something else that wasn’t good.

A checkout receipt from Kvickly in Roskilde. It was a modest amount, for a lottery ticket, a newspaper, and a packet of Stimorol. Bought that same day at three twenty-five p.m. Only minutes after Isabel Jønsson was attacked at the Rigshospital in Copenhagen. More than thirty kilometers away.

If this receipt belonged to Pope, then he wasn’t their man. And why shouldn’t it belong to him, being in his wallet?

“Shit,” Carl groaned.

“The paramedics found half a packet of Stimorol chewing gum in his pocket,” Assad said, gazing around the room with a gloomy look on his face.

And then his expression changed. Like a light going on. “Where is René Henriksen?” he burst out.

Carl scanned the premises. Where the fuck was he?

“There!” Assad yelled, pointing in the direction of the narrow passage that led out into the room where the pin machines were serviced and maintained.

Carl saw it straightaway. A streak on the wall, hardly a few centimeters long. But it was blood.

“Bastard,” he snarled and took off across the lanes.

“Be careful, Carl,” Assad shouted behind him. “The knife is gone, too. I think he took it with him.”

Please let him be here. It was his only thought as he entered a room a couple of meters wide, filled with machinery, tools, and junk. But the place was too quiet. Much too quiet.

He darted past ventilation pipes, ladders, and a work surface cluttered with spray cans and ring binders. And then he was at the back door.

He wrenched it open with dread and peered out into a dark void with a fire escape leading away.

Their man was gone.

Assad returned after ten minutes. Sweating and empty-handed.

“I found blood over by the parking structure,” he said.

Carl exhaled slowly. He had been on tenterhooks and had just received word back from the duty officer at Police HQ.

“No, sorry. Name and civil registration number don’t match,” the officer had told him.

No match! It meant that René Henriksen didn’t exist. And yet this was the man they were looking for.

“OK, thanks, Assad,” he said wearily. “I’ve called in the dog team. They should be here any minute. At least they’ve something to go on, even if it’s our only hope.”

He filled Assad in on the situation. They had no data on the man calling himself René Henriksen. What they did have was a serial killer on the loose.

“I want you to get hold of the chief superintendent here in Roskilde. His name’s Damgaard,” Carl said after a moment. “I’ll call Marcus Jacobsen.”

He was not unused to disturbing his boss at home. Jacobsen was available at that number around the clock. That was the standing agreement.

“Violence never rests in the city, so why should I?” he always said.

Nevertheless, Marcus sounded anything but pleased to be dragged away from his domestic bliss when he heard why Carl was calling.

“For God’s sake, Carl. Roskilde’s not my jurisdiction, you know that. Get on to Damgaard instead.”

“I know that, Marcus, and Assad’s trying to find his number as we speak, but the moron who fucked up is one of yours.”

“Well, I never thought I’d hear that kind of admission coming from Carl Mørck, I must say.” He sounded almost pleased.

Carl dismissed the thought. “There’ll be journalists crawling all over this place any minute now,” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Put Damgaard in the picture, then pull yourself together. You’ve let your perp get away, now it’s up to you to catch the son of a bitch. Bring in local plod. Good night, Carl, and good hunting. We’ll follow up in the morning.”

Carl felt a pain in his chest. He and Assad were on their own. With fuck all to go on.

“Here is Chief Superintendent Damgaard’s private number,” said Assad. All Carl had to do now was press the right keys on his mobile.

He listened to the phone ringing at the other end, feeling the pain in his chest again. No, for Chrissake. Not now!

“Damgaard here. I’m not available right now. Please leave a message,” said the voicemail.

Carl snapped the phone shut angrily. Wasn’t a chief super supposed to be available 24/7?

He gave a sigh. They would have to make do with the local lot once they turned up. Maybe one of them might even know how to stop the tabloid circus before it got started. They’d have to, before every journalist on Sjælland got there. Two of the local vultures were already taking pictures at the back entrance. Jesus Christ! Rumor ran even faster than events themselves in this multimedia age. A hundred pairs of eyes had witnessed the incident and a hundred mobile phones had been on hand to preserve it for posterity. No wonder the scavengers were already on the scene.

He nodded to the two local detectives who had been let through by uniformed police posted at reception.

“Carl Mørck.” He flashed them his ID. Both seemed to recognize the name but said nothing. He put them in the picture. It wasn’t easy.

“So we’re looking for a man who can disguise himself beyond recognition. We don’t know his name. And the only thing we’ve got to go on, basically, is that he drives a Mercedes. Not much, is it?” one of the detectives recapped. “Let’s get some prints off that bottle of mineral water he was drinking. Maybe that might give us something. What about your statement? Do you want us to take it now?”

Carl gave his colleague a pat on the shoulder. “My statement can wait. You know how to find me, so start with the staff here. I’ll have a word with his bowling mates.”

They let him get on, albeit reluctantly. He was right.

Carl nodded to Lars Brande, who was looking pretty shaken. Two men gone at once. A stabbing, and most likely a death. His team was in tatters. People he thought he knew had let him down unforgivably.

He was gutted, no doubt about it. His brother and the pianist, too, for that matter. Silent, moping faces, all three of them.

“We need to establish René Henriksen’s true identity, so think hard. Is there anything you know that might help us? Anything at all. Has he got kids? If so, what are their names? Is he married? Where has he worked? Where does he do his shopping? What bakery does he use when it’s his turn to get the pastries in? Think!”

Three of the bowling team didn’t react at all. The fourth, the mechanic they called Throttle, shifted uneasily on his bar stool. He didn’t seem quite as affected as the others.

“Actually, I have wondered once or twice how come he never talked about his work,” he said after a moment. “I mean, the rest of us do all the time.”

“And?”

“Well, he always seemed to be so much better off than the rest of us financially, so he must have a pretty decent job. Always got more rounds in after tournaments than we did. So, yeah, I reckon he’s well-heeled in comparison. Take that bag there, for example.”

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the floor behind an adjacent bar stool.

Carl stepped backward at once and found himself staring at an odd-looking sports bag composed of different compartments joined together by zips.

“That’s an Ebonite Fastbreak,” said the mechanic. “Do you want to know what one of them costs? Thirteen hundred, at least. You should see mine. Not to mention the balls he uses…”

Carl wasn’t listening anymore. This was just too incredible for words. Why hadn’t they thought of this before? Here was the guy’s bag, for Chrissake.

He shoved the bar stool away and pulled the bag toward him. It was like a little suitcase on wheels, the various compartments seemingly able to combine in different ways.

“You sure this is his?”

The mechanic nodded, surprised that his information should create such interest.

Carl waved his Roskilde colleagues over. “Gloves, quick!” he barked.

One of them delved into his pockets and produced a pair of latex examination gloves.

Carl felt sweat begin to drip from his brow and onto the blue sports bag as he opened it. It was like entering some long-forgotten burial chamber.

The first thing he saw was a large, multicolored bowling ball. Smooth and shiny, consummately modern. Then a pair of shoes, a tin of talcum powder, and a small bottle of Japanese peppermint oil.

He held the bottle up in front of the bowling team. “What would he use this for?”

The mechanic stared. “It was just something he did. A drop in each nostril just before a game. Probably reckoned it helped his breathing. For concentration, maybe. You can try it yourself. Wouldn’t recommend it, though. Horrible stuff.”

Carl unzipped the other compartments. Another bowling ball in one, the next empty. And that was it.

“Can I see, too?” Assad asked as Carl straightened up and stepped back. “What about these front compartments? Have you checked them?”

“I was just going to,” Carl replied, his thoughts already elsewhere.

“You wouldn’t know where he bought this bag, I suppose?” he asked no one in particular.

“Off the Internet,” said three voices all at once.

The bloody Internet.

“What about the shoes and the other stuff?” he asked, as Assad pulled a pen from his pocket and proceeded to poke it into the finger holes of one of the bowling balls.

“We get all our gear off the Internet. It’s cheaper,” said the mechanic.

“Didn’t you ever talk about more private things? About your childhoods and growing up? How you got into bowling? The first time you scored over two hundred?”

Come on, you oiks. You’re holding back on me, you must be.

“Actually, no. Apart from work, the only thing we ever talked about was the game,” the mechanic continued. “And when it was over, we talked about how we’d got on.”

“Here, Carl,” Assad said suddenly.

Carl stared at the piece of paper in his assistant’s hand. It was compressed tightly into a ball.

“I found it at the bottom of the thumbhole,” Assad explained.

Carl stared at him, at a loss. The bottom of the thumbhole, was that what he said?

“That’s right, yeah,” Lars Brande said. “René always lined his thumbholes. His thumbs were rather short. He had this idea that he had to have contact with the bottom. Said it gave him a better feeling of the ball when he put the spin on it.”

Brande’s brother Jonas chipped in: “Everything always had to be just right with him. Lot of rituals. The peppermint oil, the thumbholes, the color of the ball. He couldn’t ever play with a red ball, for instance. Said it took away his focus.”

“Yeah,” the pianist added. It was the first time he had opened his mouth. “And he used to stand like three or four seconds on one leg before making his run-up. We should never have called him Three. Stork would have been better. We’ve often joked about it.”

They all broke into laughter, then stopped just as abruptly.

“This one is from the other ball,” said Assad, handing Carl another wad of paper the same as the first. “I was very careful when extracting it.”

Carl smoothed out the two paper pellets on the counter.

And then he looked up at Assad in disbelief. What the hell would he do without him?

“These are receipts, Carl. Receipts from an ATM.”

Carl nodded. Some bank staff would be putting in overtime now.

A checkout receipt from Kvickly and two withdrawal receipts from Danske Bank. Three small, utterly unremarkable slips of paper.

They were back in business.