“DID YOU SCOPE OUT the ceiling space?”
“Scope?” Danish Dunja hadn’t understood his Swedish vernacular.
“Yes — inspect?”
“Are you suggesting that he pulled himself up on top of that air duct and came into Morten’s room through the ceiling?”
“How else would he have gotten in, besides the door?”
Dunja Hougaard shook her head and tried to figure out how she could have missed something so obvious. She felt stupid and wished she could sink through the floor. She tried to think of something smart to say, but her mind refused to work. Could she be any more awkward? Sure, he was good looking, but he was married and she hadn’t decided what she thought of him yet.
She’d had a negative first impression of Fabian Risk, as was the case with most Swedes. He walked around as if he owned the whole world and, more specifically, this investigation. Even though he had been formally removed from the case, he intended to keep working toward solving it. He said he would consider giving her a hand in exchange for her help.
“Is someone a bit hungover? It looks like you could use a bite to eat,” he said. Dunja realized that he might not be so bad after all. “And if I don’t get some food soon, I’ll be the next victim.”
She laughed and said: “First and foremost, it looks like you need a new shirt, unless that coffee stain is part of a new trend.”
*
THE FRESH AIR DID Dunja some good. After a visit to Illum, where an overly helpful salesperson sold Risk one of their most expensive shirts, Dunja decided to take him to Café Diamanten on Gammel Strand. It was a stone’s throw away and usually wasn’t too crowded, even though it was only a few blocks from Strøget, the main shopping street. For some reason, the tourists never found their way to Gammel Strand, although it got great sun and had quite a few restaurants. Diamanten was her favourite and was the least pretentious.
They sat down at a table in the shade of an umbrella. Risk ordered a Caesar salad and mineral water, and she got a hamburger and an extra-large Coke. A few sips in, she felt herself coming back to life. She and Risk had made mostly small talk about the weather, the Danish soccer fiasco, and why Danes had such trouble understanding Skåne Swedish. They were avoiding the real topic, and Dunja decided to take the first step.
“I hope you’re aware that I’m taking a big risk by meeting with you right now. I’m under strict orders to keep the Swedish police as far from this investigation as possible.”
“Then it’s awfully lucky I’m off the investigation and only on vacation.” They raised their glasses to cheers. Dunja couldn’t help smiling. She didn’t know why, but Risk had managed to put her in a good mood in some mysterious way.
“Did your boss Sleizner explain why we aren’t supposed to collaborate?”
“Kim isn’t the type who wastes energy on explanations. My guess is that he wants to give you all a slap on the wrist for stepping on his toes. He hates two things more than anything else in the world: people who go over his head, and Swedes. You should have called Kim before getting in touch with the station in Køge.”
“We did. I was there when Tuvesson made the call. Your boss didn’t answer.”
“Are you suggesting that he’s lying?”
“I’m not saying anything except that we called him and he didn’t answer, so we left a message on his voicemail. It was an emergency and we couldn’t spare the time.”
Dunja didn’t know what to think. Kim had come out swinging to defend himself, both internally and to the media. He had made a big deal out of the fact that no one had contacted him, and he blamed the Swedish police for Mette Louise Risgaard’s death. It was his word against theirs.
“Here’s Astrid Tuvesson’s phone number,” Fabian said, writing the number down on a napkin.
Dunja looked at the Swedish cell number. “What am I supposed to do with this? If I call her, I’m sure she’ll say the same thing you just did,” she said, dipping a French fry into the puddle of ketchup on her plate.
“I don’t want you to call her. You should get in touch with the operator who connected the call.”
Of course, she thought to herself, feeling unusually slow on the uptake today. With this number, she could find out whether the Swedes really had called Sleizner, as well as the exact time and how long the call had lasted. At the end of the day, the outcome didn’t mean much in her eyes: the girl and now the police officer were dead, and it would be best for the two countries to co-operate in order to find the killer.
“What will it cost me?”
“Access to the car.”
“No, that’s out of the question. We’re still in the middle of examining it.”
“I just want to take a quick look. Five minutes max.”
“What will I get out of it?”
“Besides my boss’s number?”
She nodded, and he laughed.
“Another Coke, and everything I know about the case.”
She pretended to consider it for a moment before smiling. “What do you know about the killer?”
“We were in the same class all through school. Back then, his name was Claes Mällvik and he was bullied pretty badly.”
“Everyone picked on him?”
“I didn’t, but others did. Two people in particular.”
“The two victims?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t that much better. I ignored it, just like everyone else.”
“Why did they pick on Claes?”
“To be completely honest, I don’t know. He had glasses and his last name was easy to make fun of, but mostly I think it was just chance that he got picked on. They wanted someone to bully, and it just happened to be him.”
“You’re sure he’s the killer?”
“Who else could it be?”
Dunja shrugged. “Well, Morten Steenstrup didn’t recognize him from the picture you released.”
“There are lots of reasons why he wouldn’t be able to identify Claes. Was there morphine in his system? Did he even see the perpetrator’s face? Could his memory have been affected by the accident?”
“He was very emphatic.”
“Was he able to describe the man?”
“Unfortunately not. He was too tired. I was planning to have him do that today.”
“So that means the perpetrator probably changed identities again.”
“Which tells us something else.”
Risk looked her in the eyes.
“He’s not done yet. There are more people on his list,” Dunja said, standing up.
Fabian watched her as she disappeared into the café, thinking about what she’d just said. A nagging feeling had been bothering him for the past few days. He had tried to shrug it off, but it had stubbornly returned. And now that Dunja Hougaard had said it so plainly, there could be no doubt. Rune, Claes, or whatever name he was going by, was not finished — not by far.
Jörgen and Glenn, the two most obvious targets, were out of the way. But who was left? Had he been bullied by others? Maybe at work? Fabian had read that adults who were bullied as children were often bullied in the workplace as well. It was like those around them could smell their weakness, a characteristic they couldn’t shake throughout their lives. He decided to call Tuvesson and ask her to send someone to question Schmeckel’s colleagues about the atmosphere at Lund Hospital, especially after the scandal when he’d forgotten to remove the clips from that patient’s bladder. Incidentally, the patient was another person Fabian should contact. But first, he needed to take a look at the Peugeot.
*
DUNJA HAD MADE IT clear to Fabian that it would be best if no one found out she had a Swedish police officer with her, so they entered the station through the back door. The Peugeot was four storeys underground. The storage area took up an entire floor of the police station and was full of confiscated items waiting to be examined or used as evidence in trial. There was everything from cars to torn underwear.
An older man was sitting in a wheelchair behind a Plexiglas window, which was perforated by holes at face level, fiddling with something made of dark plastic. Naked pin-up girls from the early 1980s were pasted on the wall behind him, revealing how many years he had been sitting there hidden from daylight. Dunja knocked on the window, but the man refused to look up. She knocked again, this time so hard that the pane rattled, and pushed her ID through the hatch.
“Hello! I don’t have all day — I’m here to see the Peugeot that came in a few days ago.”
“The Swede car,” said the man. “I just have to fix my catheter.”
Dunja nodded.
“And who’s that?” The man pointed at Fabian.
“My name is Fabian Risk.” He reached for his wallet to dig out his ID.
“He’s a potential witness. We’re here to see if he can identify the car,” Dunja said quickly, shoving Fabian’s wallet away.
The man’s eyes wandered back and forth between Dunja and Fabian as if he were considering an all-in poker bet. At last he gave a long, heavy sigh.
They followed the man through the warehouse. He steered his electric wheelchair so efficiently that they had to jog to keep up, but he stopped now and then to unlock a gate. Fabian had no idea how the man could find his way through the apparently endless labyrinth of aisles, whose shelves were as high as those in an IKEA warehouse, or how he knew which key fit which lock. But he obviously knew his stuff, and they were at last shown into a garage full of cars, some of which closely resembled piles of scrap metal, while others seemed brand new. The Peugeot was in the far corner.
Fabian pulled on a pair of vinyl gloves, got into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. He wanted to be left alone. Dunja seemed to understand and kept her distance. She had said that the car was still being inspected, but he couldn’t see any marks to indicate which surfaces had been inspected, or where prints or strands of hair had been found. The only possible explanation was that they hadn’t even started their examination. Fabian didn’t know Ingvar Molander well, but from the little he had seen he was convinced the man would have already completed his investigation of the car if he were in the Danes’ shoes.
Fabian opened the glove compartment and emptied it out. It contained a ballpoint pen with the Lund Hospital logo, a few AAA batteries, an extra bulb for the car headlights, and the manual and insurance papers, which listed Rune Schmeckel as the owner of the car. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary thus far. He flipped through the service records and discovered that Rune had followed the recommended schedule of maintenance appointments to a tee. Schmeckel was a scrupulous man, not the sort to be careless or improvise his way through a situation. Fabian only took his car to the mechanic when a new, alarming noise surfaced, often when it was too late — at least for his wallet.
In the rear-view mirror he saw Dunja standing and looking at her watch, casting impatient looks around the garage. The old man, however, was gone. It was time for Fabian to do what he’d come here for.
*
KIM SLEIZNER’S HEADACHE HAD started to ease up, and he could feel his body settling into an inner peace. He was standing at the window of his office, looking out across the water. He could see Islands Brygge on the other side of the harbour, as well as Gemini Residence, the harbourfront’s most spectacular building. The structure was composed of two large converted silos, attached like Siamese twins; the interior stairwells always reminded Kim of A Clockwork Orange. He lived there with his wife and daughter in a fantastic apartment — the largest in the building.
He hadn’t been able to get enjoyment out of much in the past twenty-four hours. His old ulcers had felt on the verge of tearing open from stress, and he feared that they might not be able to afford their apartment if he had to resign. But that was then. Now his anxiety had vanished, and he could barely feel his ulcers. Even his neck and shoulders were starting to relax.
The murder of Morten Steenstrup had played right into his hands. In one fell swoop, the storm of questions about who was to blame for the murder of Mette Louise Risgaard had abated, and all the focus had shifted to the perpetrator himself. Kim wanted nothing more than to solve the case before the Swedes.
Suddenly MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” came on, echoing through the room. He picked up his phone from the desk. His daughter had stolen his cell phone, adding the “U Can’t Touch This” ringtone and deleting all the other options. It was one of his least favourite songs — just the sound of it put him in a bad mood — but he didn’t know how to change ringtones. He had been suffering through it for almost a year.
He tried to answer it before the irritating “woo-o-oo”s kicked in. “Hello?”
“Hi, this is Niels Pedersen.”
“Who?” Kim had never heard of Niels Pedersen, and felt a pure and unadulterated aversion to finding out.
“I work down in the warehouse.”
“You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m in a meeting —”
“This will only take a second. I just wanted to double-check that I have all the correct information.”
“What?” Sleizner hissed, feeling his ulcer awaken.
“You mentioned that nothing related to the Peugeot case is to be released to the Swedish police without your permission.”
“Hold on. Who am I speaking to?”
“Niels Pedersen, down in the evidence warehouse. We sat across from each other at the Christmas dinner in 2003.”
“Has someone contacted you?”
“Yes. He’s here right now.”
“Who, dammit? The Swedes?” Shit. How the hell could they have got this far without me knowing? Kim thought to himself.
“His name is Fabian Risk and he’s here with Dunja Hougaard.”
Dunja. Of course it was Dunja. This wasn’t the first time she had refused to follow his orders. He had made it perfectly clear the minute he took over as chief of the unit that he would be nice to her if she was nice to him. It was very straightforward. Someone like Dunja Hougaard would most certainly have understood his intention for a symbiotic relationship.
Kim had recognized the type of girl she was when they’d met nearly five years ago. He had seen it in her eyes right away, but his outstretched hand had yielded him no results. Back then, Dunja walked around like she just wasn’t horny, but ever since she had broken up with her boyfriend things had changed. Everyone in law enforcement seemed to know about the new Dunja. The rumours had spread like a virus to every backwoods town with a police station: how she gobbled up guy after guy, fucking like bunnies.
Yet she had rejected Kim, even at the most recent Christmas party, which he thought was pretty ridiculous considering that he had been hitting the gym three times a week, had the body of a thirty-five-year-old, earned good money, and had the power to jump-start her career — or stop it in its tracks. Kim had been searching for a solution that would allow him to get rid of her for a long time. He wanted to move her to a Podunk town as far away as possible, but no matter how hard he tried, he was never able to argue for her relocation because she was too damn good a police officer.
“Should I stop them?” Pedersen asked.
“No, let them continue,” Kim said, his eyes following a tugboat moving along the canal. “But keep an eye on them, especially if it looks like they’ve found something of interest.”
*
FABIAN TURNED OFF THE headlights so they wouldn’t flash on automatically, stuck the new-looking key in the ignition, and carefully turned on the car. He absolutely did not want the engine to roar to life. The dashboard panel lit up, revealing the GPS start screen — just what he was after. Seconds passed as slowly as cold honey until a map filled the screen. It was zoomed in on a spot about ten kilometres north of Køge, at the intersection between Cementvej and a strange little road that led straight out into a field and rounded a grove of trees. So that was where the chase came to an end, Fabian thought. A digression that had cost two innocent people their lives. But Fabian hadn’t come all this way to learn where Morten had ended his pursuit. He navigated to the main menu and pressed FAVOURITE DESTINATIONS. A list of three saved locations popped up on the screen:
— Home — Adelgatan 5, Lund
— Work — Klinikgatan 20, Lund
— Away — 15 rue du Thouron, Grasse
He made a mental note to ask Tuvesson if they had found anything of interest in Grasse, and pressed RECENT DESTINATIONS in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This record was the entire reason for his visit to Copenhagen. A list of various addresses and times appeared on the screen. He glanced through them, quickly discovering that most of the trips before June 19 had been between home and work, with the occasional side trip to buy groceries.
The pattern wasn’t broken until Monday, June 21, which is where things started to get interesting. On June 22, the day of Jörgen Pålsson’s murder, the car had been at the Øresund Bridge toll booth and went down to Germany, only to stop at the gas station in Lellinge. The car GPS only confirmed the information about June 22 that Fabian already knew; it was June 21 that sparked his interest.
At 10:23 a.m. on June 21, the car stopped on a street without a name. The GPS showed the location on the map. The car had made quite the detour from its usual route, travelling up to Söderåsen about a kilometre north of Stenestad — thirty kilometres east of Helsingborg. The road appeared to stop in the middle of nowhere. Several hours later, the car left the deserted area and driven to Tögatan, the street Jörgen Pålsson lived on. Fabian jotted down the coordinates for the unnamed road: 56.084298, 13.09021. He had found exactly what he was looking for.
*
DUNJA LOOKED AROUND TO make sure that none of her colleagues could see her sneaking into the sleeping room they had been allocated two years ago but that no one ever dared to use. She lay down on the cot and closed her eyes. Risk had seemed very pleased when they parted ways, though he claimed to have found nothing of interest. Dunja knew he had found something. She’d managed to ascertain that he was going back to Sweden to check on a lead, and he promised to contact her if it turned out to be interesting.
She wondered if she should feel irritated about Risk’s reticent behaviour, but decided that she probably would have done the exact same thing in his position. She never liked to reveal anything prematurely, preferring to remain tight-lipped until she was certain the information she had was solid. She was well aware that several of her colleagues found this trait annoying; in their perfect world, every single idea would be shared with the entire team so they could twist and turn it beyond recognition.
Her phone started to vibrate. “Sleazeball” appeared on the caller ID.
“This is Dunja Hougaard.”
“You don’t have to pretend like you don’t know who’s calling.”
“Hi, Kim. It’s always such a pleasure to hear your voice. What can I do for you?”
“Come over. I need to talk to you.”
“I’m busy working on —”
“Now.”
*
DUNJA CLOSED THE DOOR behind her and sat in the visitor’s chair facing Kim Sleizner’s tidy desk. His smile did not bode well for her. She always felt more at ease when he was angry or grumpy. It was a different story when he was boasting a self-righteous smile, which usually meant that he had come up with some plan or other that he thought was incredibly brilliant, and would ask his little minions to carry it out for him. Previous tasks included everything from some cold case they’d be forced to follow up on, to a new rule assigning each person a day he or she would be responsible for bringing treats to go with coffee — everyone but the Sleazeball himself, of course.
“You look a bit tired. Was last night a late one?”
“Not as late as I had hoped. As you know, we got saddled with another murder.” She made an effort to look as indifferent as possible.
“Right. How’s that going? Have you made any progress?”
“Not yet. But Richter is at the hospital, inspecting the ceiling space. There are quite a few indications that’s how the perpetrator got in.”
“So, in other words, you have nothing right now?”
“Correct.”
“Anything else you want to share with me?”
Dunja wondered if there was any chance he knew about her encounter with Risk. She thought it was unlikely and shook her head.
“You don’t think that the fact you spent half the day with a Swedish police officer, letting him examine the confiscated Peugeot, is important enough to tell me?”
How the hell does he know?
“Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?” He stopped talking and waited for a reaction that she wasn’t prepared to give. “Let me put it this way,” he continued. “What, exactly, was unclear about my instructions not to release anything related to this investigation, especially to the Swedes, without my approval?”
It must have been that old bastard. He was the only one who could have called to tattle on her. Dunja wanted to yank out his catheter and jam it into his mouth. “Kim, I understood your instructions, but I believe that finding the killer is the most important task at hand, no matter who —”
“I don’t think anyone asked for your opinion. While I am disappointed in you, I have no reason to broadcast your little overstep any more than is necessary.”
“I don’t agree that I overstepped. In fact, I think it —”
“Shut up! It doesn’t matter what you think. You have violated the confidentiality clause in your contract!”
Dunja had no idea what contract Sleizner was referring to until he placed the document she’d signed when she was first hired on the desk. He tapped his nicotine-stained nail on the clause in question and read it out loud: “The employee is prohibited from disclosing, releasing, or exploiting confidential information. This prohibition is applicable to the employee to the same extent that it applies to the public authority he or she is employed by.” He looked up from the contract and straight into her eyes. “I hope you are aware that this is more than sufficient grounds for me to fire you.”
He has to be joking, Dunja thought, even though she knew deep down that wasn’t the case. “You can’t do this,” she said, cursing herself for sounding so pathetic. Her facade had crumbled. “You just can’t —”
“I can do whatever the hell I want. If we’re out of toilet paper, I am well within my rights to use you instead. I’m sure you understand that I can’t have a bunch of unreliable leaks on my team.”
“All I did was let in one of our Swedish colleagues, who is working on the same case —”
“I know exactly what you did! You let in an unauthorized individual and allowed him to examine our technical evidence, without having the slightest idea of his true motive.”
“For God’s sake, he just wants to solve the case, same as we do! Or at least the same as I do!”
“As far as the case is concerned, the perpetrator could just as well be Fabian Risk as anyone else. After all, they were in the same class.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“The only thing we know for certain is that Morten Steenstrup didn’t recognize the man in the wanted picture, which I’ve heard that Risk himself made a big deal of releasing. Steenstrup was murdered shortly after that, the same day Risk just happens to be in town. We also know that he was — and may still be — in love with the first victim’s wife. Perhaps those are only coincidences, but what if they’re not? In any case, you don’t give a crap. You rolled out a red carpet for Risk, giving him total access to the car, even before we’d had time to examine it. Do you even have an idea of what he was doing in the car? He could have been removing evidence!”
Dunja realized there was no point in arguing with Sleizner anymore. She was already stuck in quicksand: the more she fought, the deeper she sank. They sat staring at each other silently, both well aware that Sleizner was full of shit. No one could make bullshit sound more logical and meaningful than he could, which was probably why he had gotten so far in his career: he had certainly never been a good police officer.
Sleizner put away the employment contract and forced a smile. “As luck would have it, I’m not that kind of guy. I’m willing to put this little mess aside, let it marinate for a while, see how things shape up. Perhaps you can offer me a little something in return?”