38
Monday, May 12th, 2014
Carl looked over at the TV, where the usual bunch of laughing hosts and overly energetic chefs were trying to teach Denmark how to make a salad of pointed cabbage and sesame seeds, boldly arranged around a small, balsamic vinegar–marinated filet mignon au pimentos, or whatever the hell they were saying. Carl glanced despondently down at his pale scrambled eggs and Hardy’s stale oatmeal porridge. What a bloody nerve TV2 had to abuse bachelors and other poor souls at seven in the morning with that sort of utopian dream.
Hardy certainly looked less than enthusiastic at the spoon Morten was about to shove into his mouth.
“But the porridge will get the peristalsis going, Hardy. So won’t you please open your mouth and wipe that frown off your face?”
Hardy swallowed the lump, and breathed deeply. “If you’d eaten as much porridge as me over the past seven years, Mr. Holland, I’d like to see who’d be doing the whining. And allow me to quote Assad: It tastes like camel tonsil hockey.”
“Tonsil hockey . . .”
“French kissing an eager camel.” He tried to laugh, but didn’t have sufficient air in his lungs.
Carl put his newspaper aside, and looked at the glowing screen on his cell. It was one of the local numbers from Police Headquarters.
He glanced at Hardy a couple of times as he read the message. No doubt his old partner had understood what was going on.
“It’s about our case, isn’t it?” he said when Carl put his cell back down.
Carl nodded. “Yes, there’s been a new development in the nail-gun case.”
Morten put a hand on Hardy’s shoulder. He was having a hard time coping with that case, everyone knew that.
“It seems they may have found the firearm that killed Anker, and nearly us, too,” said Carl. “Apparently there’s been a raid somewhere, and because a Danish policeman was killed with the weapon, Lars Bjørn has called a press conference.”
Hardy didn’t say anything.
“In an hour and a half,” continued Carl.
Still not a word from Hardy.
“Damn it, Hardy.” Carl could see the pain in his eyes. Even though it hurt to think about the bloody weapon, it also felt good to be given just a little bit of hope that this might be over soon, and the murderer brought to trial.
Carl walked around Hardy’s wheelchair to give him a hug.
“They wanted to send a car so you could come. Do you want to?”
Hardy quietly shook his head. “Not until it’s definitively over,” he said. “I’m not being put on display.”
* * *
Lars Bjørn reached over Carl’s head to point at Head of Communications Janus Staal, who thanked everyone for coming. Then he presented the agenda, and sat down, leaning over toward Carl.
“You didn’t manage to get Hardy to come?”
Carl shook his head.
“I can understand him, but it was Bjørn’s idea. A man like Hardy is great publicity.”
“What the hell is this about?” whispered Carl, looking around him. Anything and anyone who could creep and crawl in the world of crime reporters was present, and TV2 News had already started filming. The crime reporter from DRTV already had his microphone out, and even a couple of tabloid magazines had turned up, as always with Gossip in the front row.
“It’s not my case anymore, so why did I have to come? What’s happened, Janus?”
Staal raised a hand in the air, pointing to his watch. “We begin in twenty seconds, Carl. Then you’ll know everything. Good thing you made it.”
Was it, though? Carl placed his briefcase on the floor next to his chair.
“Thank you for turning out in force,” began Lars Bjørn. Then he introduced the gathered assembly to Carl Mørck, followed by his head of communications, and his deputy assistant commissioner Terje Ploug, who’d been in charge of the investigation of the case since Carl and his team were shot down.
After this, he turned toward a man Carl definitely knew, although he couldn’t recall his name or where he’d last seen him.
“And this is Hans Rinus, who’s been in charge of a similar case in a suburb of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Carl Mørck was our observer in connection with the Dutch case, and he’ll tell you what happened there. Would you start, Carl?”
Yes, now Carl remembered him. The policeman who’d trampled through a crime scene with a lack of overview like a Danish politician on a bad day, wearing something that looked like safety shoes. What the heck was going on, and why was that buffoon here?
“Sure,” said Carl, quickly recapping his visit to the Netherlands and the description of the two men who’d been shot with a nail gun with 90mm Paslode nails, their mouths stuffed with cocaine of legendarily poor standard.
“We were unable to establish a link between the crimes in Denmark and the one in the Netherlands, so we handed over the Schiedam case to our Dutch colleagues, who continued work on it as a local case.”
“Which was a mistake,” added Terje Ploug with ill-concealed innuendo that it wasn’t his fault, then. “But Hans Rinus can tell you much more about that, which is why we’ve invited you here. The murder of Anker Høyer, the permanent physical damage to Hardy Henningsen, who unfortunately couldn’t make it today because he is still extremely marked by the episode, and the shooting of Carl Mørck, all of which happened on January 26th, 2007, more than seven years ago, all these crimes were committed with the same weapon, of which we’re now in possession.”
There was bustling among the reporters when he pulled a heavy semiautomatic pistol from his lap and held it up in the air. Carl slowly turned his eyes toward it, feeling the pressure rise in his head, and a couple in the crowd got up.
“How does it feel to see the weapon, Carl Mørck?” one of them shouted, the result being that Lars Bjørn asked everyone to remain calm and sit down.
How did it feel? Right now the muzzle was pointing straight at him. It was the same muzzle from which five 9mm projectiles had been fired, ruining life for quite a few people, including his own. How did it feel?
He raised his left hand and pushed the muzzle away with his index finger. There was a sound of at least twenty-five clicks from digital cameras all at the same time.
Terje Ploug put the pistol on the table with a clonk. “We’re dealing with a pistol of the type PAMAS G1, a variety of the more widely known Beretta 92, which was produced for the French Gendarmerie Nationale. Automatic, semi-heavy. The serial number has been filed off, and given that quite a few of these pistols have disappeared from military arsenals over the years, we’ve got no chance of establishing the history of this one. What we do know with certainty, because it’s been confirmed through our ballistic investigations, is that this is the weapon that was used in the shooting of our three colleagues in 2007.”
At this, Janus Staal pressed a key on his laptop, and a PowerPoint image of the pistol and a data sheet of its properties were projected onto the screen above their heads.
If Carl’s arms and hands had been allowed to decide, they would’ve been shaking. His forehead felt like ice, while his body was almost boiling. They could’ve spared him from this.
Now Lars Bjørn took over. “Obviously, we’ve called this press meeting today to impress on the public that when police officers are killed on duty, it will always take very high priority in our investigations, and that we won’t stop until the perpetrators have been brought to trial. Apart from that, we wanted to inform you that we’re now in possession of the knowledge that the nail-gun murders in Schiedam, Netherlands, and those on Amager and in Sorø, here in Denmark, are likely to be connected after all. And now I’ll pass you over to Hans Rinus.”
The man cleared his throat a couple of times. Carl remembered him clearly now. His English was worse than Assad’s Danish the first time Carl had met him.
“Thank you,” he said in some kind of Danish, and then went on to butcher what was supposed to be English.
“I am police in Zuid-Holland, and the murders in Schiedam are mine. For a long time it wasn’t certain who had the kill, and it still isn’t, but now we know, hmmm, what do you say, that the dead man was also someone that the Danish police was after.”
You’d have to look far and wide to find worse gibberish than that.
Lars Bjørn gave a friendly smile and put his hand on Hans Rinus’s arm.
“Thank you very much for your splendid work,” he said in English, before continuing in Danish. Thank God.
“Three days ago, Daniel Jippes, a twelve-year-old schoolboy out riding his bike in a suburb called Vriesland, southwest of Rotterdam, found a body in a canal called Meeldijk. He was on his way into a park area, where the canal runs under the bicycle path through a drainpipe.”
He pointed at the head of communications, who pressed another key. This time it produced a screenshot from Google Maps showing the location. Park trees, the canal running into the drainpipe where the body had been found, and the cycle path that led over the dike that the pipe went through. Everything was very, very green. Park Brabrand it read underneath.
“The body was a male, found with sturdy string tied around his right foot. The string went all the way across the cycle path, down on the other side, and under the cycle path through the pipe, where the other end was tied to his left wrist.”
Janus Staal produced a slightly blurred photo that showed both the string on the cycle path and what was presumably the body in the drainpipe. That was probably the closest the Danish press would come to a photo of the deceased.
“There were clear signs of defensive bruising on the body, and the technicians assume he was tied while lying on the cycle path, then the string was pulled through the pipe, and finally they dragged him in the water and through the pipe, where he drowned.”
Carl frowned. Why not make a clean kill if they’d wanted to eliminate the man anyway?
“We can’t rule out the possibility that he was dragged back and forth a few times before they finally decided to let him die.”
“They were probably trying to get something out of him,” interjected Terje Ploug. Lars Bjørn gave him a penetrating look.
“Yes, as Terje Ploug said, we can probably conclude that someone tried to get something out of the man.”
The journalists started to raise their hands in the air, but the head of communications stopped them before the questions piled up.
“You won’t have an opportunity to ask questions today, but you will all be given a printout of all the available facts.”
They grumbled. Carl could understand them. How the hell could they sell the story if they all had the same poor starting point?
“The man has been identified,” said Terje Ploug, once again using PowerPoint to show a photo of a balding man in his forties, with blue eyes and a characteristic, annoying, droll smile.
He was clearly well dressed. Ray-Ban sunglasses in his hair, pressed white shirt, and a Hugo Boss–type jacket signaled that he was someone who wanted to exude that he had things under control. Which probably wasn’t what he felt just before he was pulled down into the drainpipe.
“We’re dealing with a Danish citizen living in the Netherlands, by the name of Rasmus Bruhn, forty-four years of age, several prior convictions. Over the past few years, he also worked as a journalist under the pseudonym Pete Boswell.”
Carl frowned. What did he say?
Ploug lifted his eyes toward the assembly. “Some of you probably recall that this was the name given to the dismembered body we found in a box out on Amager, when the barrack was torn down where the shooting of the three Danish police officers took place years ago.”
Both Carl and the people from the press were confused. “So why did you assume back then that the dead man on Amager was called Pete Boswell?” someone shouted.
“An anonymous tip,” Bjørn broke in. “We were given several leads, but the decisive factor was a fleur-de-lis branded on his right shoulder. We didn’t go public with it for several reasons and, furthermore, it took the medical examiners a few days to verify it due to the decomposition of the body. Admittedly, it was an assumption, but in our opinion a well-founded one. That’s how it is with anonymous tips. The press hopefully knows that better than anyone. You need to take them with a grain of salt, am I right? And this tip unfortunately turned out to be misleading.”
Carl clenched the cigarettes in his jacket pocket. Just knowing they were there was better than nothing. Damn it, there was so much he could discuss with Bjørn and Ploug. He just didn’t have the energy.
“Our Dutch colleagues have checked up on the man’s background, and there are several striking facts. Firstly, in his capacity of travel correspondent, he had ample opportunity to act as courier for people—by this we are mainly thinking about precious stones—and secondly, his network was so extensive that he could easily have connected people and passed on messages that way.
“He has travelled in many countries in East Asia and the Middle East, but also in Africa and the Caribbean.”
He nodded to their Dutch colleague. “And now our colleague Hans Rinus will explain the results of the technical examination of the body and the search of Rasmus Bruhn’s home.”
A lengthy, complicated account followed, but the meaning was clear enough. The body had been in the water for some days. The tongue, which was hanging out of the mouth, was no longer blue, and his irises already slightly blurry. There were scratch marks on the inside of the pipe, and the silt on the bottom indicated that he’d tried to drag himself out. He’d dressed young for his age, and had nothing on him except a business card, which—despite days in the water—was still readable and led them directly to his residence at Haverdreef in the neighborhood of De Akkers, just north of the crime scene. That was also where the pistol was found, the magazine full and his fingerprints on it, along with 250 grams of poor cocaine and some notebooks containing names, including some relations in Denmark. More precisely, these relations lived in Sorø, and even more precisely, one of them was the younger of the two men who were murdered with a nail gun in a car repair shop in town. He was the nephew of the man Carl, Anker, and Hardy found murdered with a Paslode nail in his temple on Amager.
Carl looked over at Lars Bjørn, who was watching his head of communications switch between different effects on the screen with a straight face.
All this ought to feel like a relief. A chain of information that put things into context and triggered new possibilities for investigation. Still, Carl felt nothing but displeasure, his jaw muscles now working away uncontrollably.
How long had Lars Bjørn kept this knowledge to himself? How many times had he chosen not to inform Carl? Why hadn’t Carl been the first person he went to?
While the people next to him talked their way through a series of possible scenarios and motives, which they knew absolutely nothing about anyway, rebellion started to stir inside him.
Weren’t they just sitting there presenting unsubstantiated hypotheses to gather points in the great performance lottery? Was it the case that Lars Bjørn wanted to demonstrate that despite his anonymity, he was a man of leadership, impact, and perspective? That he was a worthy successor to Marcus Jacobsen, the man who hadn’t granted Carl as much as a few minutes to explain himself in one of the TV police report programs?
“Do you have anything you’d like to add?” Lars Bjørn suddenly asked his colleagues. Carl must’ve been in another world for a minute, because their Dutch colleague was already standing.
Carl bent down to pick up his briefcase.
“Yes,” he said, “I do.”
He rummaged through the briefcase before he found the right papers.
“I’m investigating another case, a road casualty, and in that connection we’re looking for this man. About six-one, dimple in his chin, husky voice, blue eyes, strong features, dark eyebrows, and wide front teeth with a small light mark. He speaks fluent Danish.”
Carl avoided Bjørn’s eyes, but noticed Terje Ploug sending him a worried look, while he held up his photocopy of the man next to the VW Kombi directly in front of the TV2 News camera.
“This is the man. Please note the VW Kombi, light blue with a wide fender. What you can’t see is the big peace sign painted on the roof. We know he’s called Frank, and that he’s since changed his name to something more exotic.”
Bjørn grasped his forearm. Rather hard for a white-collar worker. “Thank you, Carl Mørck,” he said. “I think that’s enough already! Today we’re talking about another . . .”
Carl freed his arm. “He was staying on Bornholm in 1997, and took part in the excavations of timber circles. They were a type of platform resting on thick posts, designed for sun worship and offerings of stone and animal bone. We know for certain that he’s a sun worshipper, and that he might still be practicing as one. All tips in regard to this . . .”
“Stop right there, Carl Mørck!” Bjørn held his hand up toward the press. “We’d like to save this case until we have a bit more to go on. Allow me to thank you all for coming. Regarding the nail-gun case, we’ll get back to you when there is progress in the Danish part of the investigation. Meanwhile . . .”
“You can contact Department Q directly. The phone number is here under the photo.” Carl pointed. “We’re working at full throttle, waiting only for your tip.” Carl looked directly in the camera and held the photo right in front of it.
If he’d had the chance, he would’ve liked to show other items from his briefcase, but he reckoned he’d pushed his luck enough if he wanted to hang on to the hope of still having a job tomorrow.
Carl left his copy of the photostat for everyone to see on the table in the briefing room, but Bjørn managed to remove it before the journalists got to it.
“My office, immediately,” he ordered Carl.