12

There was an odd mood about the homicide chief’s office. Opening the door of this confetti-strewn hell was like entering a chaotic crime scene. Shredded or torn-up documents, technical reports, photos that ordinary citizens would be unlikely to forget in a hurry, the contents of drawers littered across the desk. Carl could see Marcus was clearing out, but it looked more like the mementos of centuries of discord and strife.

‘Who tossed the hand grenade, Marcus?’ he ventured, trying to pick out a surface that could be sat upon. He couldn’t find any.

‘Lis’ll be here soon with some bin bags. Can’t it wait half an hour, Carl?’

‘I just wanted to say that Department Q will be taking on the Anweiler case. We’ve had a breakthrough.’

Jacobsen paused, his hand inserted in a drawer among a mishmash of old erasers, broken pencils, empty biros and the kind of crud that accumulates in such places by the kilo over the course of a number of years.

‘No, Department Q is not, Carl. That case belongs up here. It wasn’t a freebie, just something to give Rose some practice, remember? You must have learned by now that your cases are the ones we formally send down to you. You can’t pick and choose, only decide what order you want to take them in.’

‘Now you’re oriented, Marcus. Think of it as a farewell present. Before you know it the case will be solved and you can give yourself another merit badge. You deserve a nice little success story to wrap up your final days. How are you doing, anyway? All right?’

Marcus looked up with a jolt, as if all the nerve endings under his professional exterior had suddenly been exposed. If this was what his retirement was doing to him already, what would he be like in a month or a year? Why the hell was he going through with it? And how old was he, anyway? Sixty?

‘I have to warn you, Carl. I know how you feel about Lars Bjørn, but he’s a good man, so there’s no need to get on the wrong side of him.’

‘Thanks for the warning. But if he can’t take it, he can give me the boot, I couldn’t care less. And then he can have a little think about what he’s going to do with Department Q. He’s not going to run the risk of saying goodbye to all the funding our department brings in for you lot to siphon off, is he? Besides, he hasn’t got a clue what that case is about, believe me.’

The Homicide boss leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Perhaps he had a headache. Carl had never seen him so distracted.

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said, sounding fatigued. ‘But Bjørn could quite easily hand your department over to someone else if that’s what you want, Carl. You built Department Q up, but it was Bjørn who was the architect, not me. So I’d keep a low profile if I were you.’

‘The husband of the woman who died on the boat is upstairs at the duty desk, Carl,’ said Assad, popping his head round the door of Carl’s office. ‘He’s an oil worker on one of the rigs, so we were lucky he was at home.’

Carl nodded. ‘Oil worker’ sounded not half bad. Men like them were used to gritting their teeth in a gale and taking things in their stride. Which was why their secrets weren’t the most difficult to uncover, either.

He’d expected a man with fists like a vice and shoulders as broad as the Storebælt Bridge, but he was mistaken. The man actually looked a lot like Sverre Anweiler. The type of man their victim apparently had a hard time saying no to.

He looked small beside Assad, almost like a person transformed by some inner vacuum. Chest concave, shoulders meagre as a child’s. Only his eyes revealed mettle, the will to do what was required. A man with the right stuff.

‘What kind of hole’s this you’ve dragged me into? Looks like a bloody dungeon.’ He expelled a hollow laugh. ‘I hope you realize torture’s not allowed in Denmark.’ He extended a hand. In spite of its inferior size his handshake was strong. ‘Ralf Virklund, Minna’s husband. What did you want to see me about?’

Carl asked him to take a seat. ‘My assistant and I have taken over the case of the fire in which your wife died. We’ve been going through the details and there seem to be a number of issues outstanding.’

The man nodded. He seemed cooperative enough. If he was nervous he was keeping it well hidden.

‘According to the files, your wife left you immediately prior to the fatal event. She wrote you a letter informing you she’d found something better. Would you like to comment on that?’

Virklund nodded and looked at the floor. Obviously, this wasn’t something he was proud of. ‘Can’t say I blame her. How would you fancy sharing a bed with someone who was only home once in a blue moon?’

Touché! What the hell was he supposed to say to that? Once in a blue moon with Mona would have been a world record. Why did he have to start thinking about that now?

‘That’s not so unusual, many people live like that,’ Assad replied on his behalf, with an exaggerated smile. OK, so this was a good cop/bad cop interrogation, and now it was Carl’s turn to be the bastard. The way he was feeling, he didn’t mind one bit.

He leaned across the desk. ‘Listen, Ralf, you can forget the bollocks, OK? You can’t really believe it makes sense for her to swap you for someone else who was hardly ever home either.’

Virklund stared at him, perplexed. ‘I thought we’d sorted that one out. Dammit, I’ve already told the police several times that Minna didn’t even know the man. She bought his houseboat off him, that’s all. End of story!’

Carl looked at Assad. Like some pensive nomad asked about where best to find shade in the desert, he sat nodding wisely and rather absent-mindedly. What was he up to?

‘Listen here, Mr Virklund. What you’re telling us now isn’t anywhere in the report,’ said Carl. ‘And since any statement like that would have to be included, I don’t believe you ever really told them.’

‘And I know for a fact I did. What’s more, I explained to them I had no idea there’d been a fire on the houseboat and that Minna was dead before the cops told me. It was a shock, and I hope that bloody report says so. I also told them Minna had nothing to do with the bloke besides buying his boat off him. Otherwise I want to see that report. I’m assuming I can?’

Carl gave Assad a look that said Your turn, friend. After all, unlike Carl, Assad had read the report in detail. But what was the man doing? Nothing, apart from sitting there under his palm tree with a daft grin on his face.

It was enough to get on your nerves. His frustration needed an outlet.

‘I reckon you did your wife in because she was being unfaithful, and you started that fire –’

‘Erm, Ralf,’ Assad interrupted. ‘How much crude oil does one of those rigs pump out of the sea bed on a good day?’

The man gawped quizzically. He wasn’t the only one.

‘You see, I’m asking because then we can work out how much gas and other shit comes up with it. Like the crap you just fed us, yeah?’

A furrow appeared on Virklund’s brow.

‘I called your employers,’ Assad went on, still smiling inscrutably. ‘They are very happy with you, Ralf. This was my impression.’

Virklund nodded and grunted an acknowledgement. The look on his face said he was curious as to what was coming next.

‘However, since I was asking, they also felt obliged to tell me you have a bit of a temper. And that you like to show people you aren’t afraid of anything. Am I right?’

The man gave a shrug. The interview was taking a turn in the wrong direction and he clearly sensed as much. ‘OK, that’s true, but I’ve never been violent with Minna, if that’s what you’re implying. There might have been the odd punch-up in a bar now and again, but I’ve never been done for violence, as I’m sure you well know.’

‘I’m thinking now that the inspector and I will go round to the building you and Minna lived in and have a chat with some of your neighbours about this. What do you think about that?’

Virklund snorted. ‘Do what you fucking well like. They were never any friends of mine anyway. Muslims and country bumpkins from Jutland and other forms of dross.’

Country bumpkins from Jutland? Was this his way of picking a fight? Pretty ingenious.

Assad got to his feet, still smiling broadly, and punched the bloke in the face.

An action as astonishing as it was wrong and mean, especially here on HQ turf.

But Assad stilled Carl’s protests with a nod of his head. He leaned calmly over the man with his hands planted firmly on his knees, and peered into Virklund’s nose-bleeding face.

Less than ten centimetres separated their eyes.

What the hell was happening? Any second now, Virklund would be on his feet and going berserk. His rage was unmistakable. Was Assad planning on throwing him in the slammer for assaulting a police officer? Were they going to have to lie about who threw the first punch?

Then, to Carl’s utter surprise, both men burst out laughing. Assad straightened up and gave the man a pat on the shoulder, reached into his pocket and handed him a handkerchief.

‘He has a sense of humour, Carl, did you see it?’ Assad grinned.

Virklund nodded. His nose was throbbing, but he seemed pleased they’d got that sorted, at least.

‘As long as you don’t do it again,’ he said.

‘As long as you don’t say I’m from Jutland,’ Assad replied.

And then they broke out laughing again. Christ on a bike.

Carl had been completely sidelined, but that wasn’t what bothered him. It was like a wedge had been driven through his impression of Assad. On the one hand, the resolute nature of Assad’s intervention made him feel oddly enlivened, for it was a sign that his assistant was getting back to his old self again. But on the other hand it raised the issue of what there might be about Assad’s nature, or perhaps his past, that made him capable of using violence in such a controlled manner. In any case, it definitely wasn’t something one saw every day.

‘One more question before we throw you out,’ said Assad.

What was he doing? Virklund wasn’t going to get off that lightly, surely? They’d only just started.

‘Your wife was, how do you say, all thumbs, yes?’

Virklund jerked his head back as if another jab from Assad’s calloused fist was on its way.

‘How the hell do you know that?’ he asked, astonished.

‘She was, then?’

‘Minna was so damn clumsy, my mother didn’t want us coming round. You’ve never seen as much broken china as the first time she was there.’ Virklund nodded. ‘Yeah, it didn’t take much to get her into a right dither.’

Assad looked at Carl inquiringly.

‘To get into a dither means to become flustered or confused, Assad,’ he explained.

It didn’t seem to clear matters up.

‘So what you’re saying is she was no good with electronic gadgets and machines, and stuff like that?’ Assad went on.

Virklund suppressed a chuckle. ‘I’ll put it this way: if she used a toaster it was the toaster that got burned, not the bread. But …’

He stopped in mid-sentence.

They all looked at each other.

‘I need to say to you, Assad, that I can’t condone your beating people up in my office,’ Carl said, after the man had gone. ‘I hope you realize that one more incident like that and you’ll be out on your arse. Explain yourself.’

‘Come on now, Carl, you saw how it lightened up the mood. You know, when a camel farts there can be two reasons.’

Oh, God, not those bloody camels again.

‘Either they have eaten too much grass or else it’s just to hear some music beneath the desert sun.’

‘For Pete’s sake, Assad. Is that supposed to justify you punching the man?’

‘I am only trying to say that being out on an oil rig so much of the time must be a little dull.’

‘I’m sure it is. So you were demonstrating that brawls are just a form of entertainment for the man, is that it?’

‘Yes, he fights for the fun of it, Carl. You saw what happened. He knew he was insulting us and I showed him how one deals with it and that afterwards there need be no hard feelings. I punched him and we were even. He understood this.’

‘So, like the camel, he lets go of his inhibitions for the sake of bringing a bit of music into his life, and that’s why he’s always getting into fights. But why shouldn’t he let loose on his wife for the same reason?’

‘Because beating up your wife is not half as much fun as beating up your friends, that’s why.’

‘I’d say that was a very wobbly basis on which to write him off as a killer, Assad.’

‘I am not writing him off. But, Carl, he who prods the camel’s arse may find himself with a hoof in the gonads. That is how it is.’

Christ!

‘So this time the camel’s female, or what? And your point is that there’s no fun in punching someone if the other party doesn’t think it’s fun as well. Is that it?’

Assad smiled. ‘You understand it then. Well done, Carl.’

Back when Carl was a young officer, reports could be written in twenty minutes with two fingers on a typewriter. Nowadays it required ten fingers and fifteenth-generation word-processing software and took two and a half hours if you were lucky. Reports were no longer conclusions, but more like conclusions of the conclusions’ conclusions.

Under normal circumstances, Carl detested the bureaucracy of it, but today it suited him fine to hole up in front of the computer, even though he had difficulty focusing his thoughts.

He heard Rose and Gordon’s voices in the corridor.

As far as he could make out, she was bragging about how close she was to solving the Anweiler case for Department Q, and it was impossible to overlook Gordon’s consuming adoration. If there was anything down in the archive he needed to check, his strategy appeared to involve getting into Rose’s knickers first.

Carl tried to ignore them. Who wanted to listen to that, the way he was feeling?

‘All right, Gordon,’ he called out, as they passed his door. ‘Got the mower into the shed yet?’

Rose gave him an icy glare and slammed the door in his face.

Carl frowned. Had that lanky bugger, who’d hardly been weaned off baby food, actually succeeded in turning Rose’s head?

He turned back to his flickering screen and began his summary of the Rotterdam debacle. It was no easy job. If truth were told, the investigators who had gone through the nail-gun killings in Schiedam had a surprisingly poor command of the English language compared to other Dutch people he’d met.

Two pages was all it came to. Probably not enough. Again, he was having difficulty concentrating. Maybe it would help once he received the supplementary material from the meeting in Rotterdam. There had to be someone at HQ who could translate that bristly language.

He shook his head.

Help? Like hell it would.

The only way he was going to get any peace of mind was to raise the curtain on the second act of his Mona drama. And it had better be more constructive than the first.

He dialled her work number. Predictably, someone else answered. In a fit of innovation Mona had moved her practice a couple of months earlier into a shared clinic, the only snag being that callers always had to go through the secretary, a young woman who apparently considered herself as competent a psychologist as those who conducted their therapy in the rooms behind her desk.

‘I’m afraid Mona Ibsen isn’t available at the moment. She’s with a client. Well, maybe he’s not a client, but the fact is, the sign on her door says she’s in a session.’

He’d give her some facts next time he stood leaning against her counter.

The fact is! He had hardly put the phone down before the ugly and inappropriate feeling came over him that Mona might have had a hidden agenda in giving him his marching orders.

Could she have been running around with other men while he’d been trawling the streets in search of a wedding ring? Had he missed the signals?

No, Mona wasn’t like that. If she’d met someone else she would have told him.

Nevertheless, a nasty sense of betrayal crept over him. It was a feeling he hadn’t known since he was twelve. Not since that blistering summer day when he had caught sight of his one and only childhood flame, Lise, posing at the water’s edge at the outdoor swimming baths. All of a sudden, there she was in a low-cut bathing suit with taut, suntanned thighs, and was light years away from him. They had grown up together, been blushing almost-sweethearts, and suddenly her beckoning smile was turned in the direction of others. And when finally she noticed him, her smile changed. In one second she had become a woman and he had been left behind, humiliated, still imprisoned within the body of a boy.

It had taken him at least ten years to rid himself of the feeling of desolation in which she had left him, and now here he was again, sidelined, left on his own. It wasn’t jealousy, but something deeper, more painful.

‘For Christ’s sake, man,’ he said to himself. ‘You can’t do without her. And when did that happen?’