Tuesday, December 1, 2020
Carl opened the file and scrutinized the many photos of the bodies from the repair shop. Neither the investigations from the site nor the findings from the autopsies made him any the wiser. The coroner who had carried out the autopsies wrote about one of the bodies:
Since the deceased was found under a steel table and therefore had not suffered serious injury apart from the one to the back of the head, it can be concluded that the object that hit his head also killed him. Subsequently, this object most probably fell to the ground intact, given that we did not find fragments of it in the skull, which was also the case with two of the other bodies. It is conspicuous that in three of the cases, the lesions are almost identical and have only injured the back of the head, which may indicate that the explosion took place at a certain height and that all three victims were standing close to it with their backs turned.
Carl read the intricate explanation several times while studying the photographs. The last two bodies also had head wounds, but they were located closer to the temple, and, apart from these, there were numerous other lesions on their bodies. One of the victims even had so many pieces of metal lodged in his body that it resembled a nail board.
He leafed ahead to the photos of the excavation from which the victims had been recovered. That could not have been a pleasant task.
Just as he reached the photo documentation of the state of the repair shop courtyard, he heard footsteps in the hallway, so he closed the file and waited.
It was the cousin of the deceased woman, Maja, who had arrived, and she was clearly very affected by the situation.
“Oh, it’s so horrid that Maja took her own life on her birthday. She’d actually invited me, but, unfortunately, I had to decline the offer at the last moment. I can hardly bear the thought. I’m a nurse and, as usual in these corona times, they needed a hand on the ward, so I had to . . .” She pursed her lips, trying to compose herself. “If only I’d gone, then maybe . . .”
She looked imploringly at Carl, as if in hope that he might let her off without further discussion.
Carl considered taking her hand in his, but the face mask hanging under her nose made him think better of it. “You can’t blame yourself; it can’t be your fault that things turned out the way they did. It’s my experience that people who want to kill themselves usually make sure that it doesn’t take long before they’re found. Even in death, most people cannot bear it if the sight of them becomes too grotesque and horrible. So Maja would’ve done it before you arrived anyway. I’m sure of it. You would just have found her a little earlier.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ve thought the same, but thank you for saying it. Maja was very difficult to understand and predict. Since her little boy died, she never quite returned to her old self again. She managed, yes, was actually quite good at her work, but I could sense how life tormented her.”
“You were close to her, I understand. You were the one who wrote the obituary.”
“Yes, I’m the only one left who really knew her. She never really socialized with her colleagues, and she didn’t have any contact with her ex-husband either, who was the father of her son, Max. That relationship was broken before the accident, and he was never there to support her in her grief. I think that also affected her deeply.”
“But you and Maja saw each other?”
She nodded. “Yes, but for all these years, we’ve never really talked about the accident. Well, maybe to begin with, of course. That was all we talked about. But not since then. Not really.”
She wiped away the clear mucus running from her nose, exuding resolve even in that.
“Oh, there was so much troubling her. She especially cursed herself for choosing that repair shop to save a few hundred kroner. And for having bought such a crap car. She blamed herself for wanting to drive it even in the winter, and being so keen to know how much a rear shaft would set her back. You should know how much her self-blame controlled her life. She couldn’t talk about snowsuits, strollers, old cars, or lots of other things without breaking down in tears. They must’ve been very tolerant at her work to have dealt with her. They really must have.”
“I can see from the coroner’s report that the little boy had a splint on one of his legs. What was the problem? Do you know?”
“Yes. Max was born without a functional knee joint in his right leg, so he had to undergo a lot of surgery in his first years.”
“But he could walk?”
“He made the best of it, yes, but that was all down to Maja. That was the reason why her husband left her a few months after Max was born. He couldn’t live with a disabled child and a wife who couldn’t think of anything else. He was just one of those weak bastards who leave their wives and start over again when the going gets tough.”
He got the cousin’s work number so he could call if new questions came up, but Carl sensed that he probably should not expect any vital leads from her.
His brain would have to work with multiple theories for now, the most important being the young Maja’s claim that she had seen a pair of legs sticking out from the entrance to the repair shop even before the first explosion. Even though she might have been wrong and the legs could have been protruding from under the car, not behind it, he chose to believe her statement. After all, she said that she had noticed that in particular, so why shouldn’t it be right? And if it was right, then why was the man lying there? Was it possible that he was already dead before the explosions?
Carl pondered the scene. If the man was already dead, then the natural next assumption would be that a crime had been committed, which led to several new questions.
What had caused the head and neck lesions on the bodies? Did the man in the entrance to the repair shop try to get away? Why had none of them managed to get out—was it because they had already been killed before the explosions? According to the floor plan of the shop, four of the bodies were positioned in close proximity to the changing room in the middle of the building. But then how had someone managed to kill them all without them putting up a fight? Or had there been fighting? And what caused the explosion? There were theories that the first explosion came from tanks of toluene, a strong solvent, but was that the case? And why was there a small pile of salt outside the building? Had it been left there on purpose or had someone walked past with a bag with a hole in it—and why on earth would anyone walk past this godforsaken place with a bag of salt? Most of these questions would probably never be answered, but Carl could already understand why Marcus did not want to stop his investigation and why he had never managed to get the case out of his system.
For Carl and the other investigators, there was just one significant question left if they were dealing with a crime: What was the motive?
Apparently, Ove Wilder’s Auto brought in more than the usual. But how? Was it drugs, money laundering, or some kind of scam?
Carl shook his head and looked at the photos in the file once more. It had been more than thirty years, so how were they supposed to make progress on the case?
“Did you manage to get anything out of the ladies I brought in for you?” asked Gordon eagerly. “Did they bring anything new to the table?”
Carl’s head moved from side to side. “Well . . . at least now I know a good deal more about the woman who lost her child in the . . . explosion,” he said, his voice faltering. He would have said “the accident,” but he could not bring himself to.
“Cases like that can really get you down. Imagine how an entire life can be ruined by something like that. Just a spark and then . . . Booooom!” Gordon shook his head but then suddenly frowned at the sight of the top photo in the file. He dragged the chair by the wall over and sat down slowly, with his eyes fixed on the photo.
“That’s Maja’s upturned Citroën Dyane lying there, isn’t it?”
Carl nodded. It was clearly written on the bottom of the photo.
“That photo was not in our copy file!” said Gordon in a suspicious voice.
“I see. You seem to think there’s something special about it.”
“Do you have a magnifying glass in your drawer?”
Carl rummaged around and handed it to him.
Gordon moved the magnifying glass over the photo a couple of times. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
He grabbed the file and leafed systematically through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
Then he read the passage a couple of times to be entirely sure, put it down, shook his head in disbelief, and pushed the page over to Carl.
“Look at this, Carl. This is from when Marcus questioned Maja about a month after the incident.” He tapped the text.
“Yes, I’ve just read it. She was told by the foreman of Wilder’s that her rear shaft needed changing because it was corroded.”
“Exactly. And now look at the photo of her upturned car. What do you see?”
Carl moved the magnifying glass back and forth a few times.
“I see that they’ve changed the rear shaft like they said they would. Not that it looks brand-new, but at least it isn’t corroded. They probably used a spare part they already had.”
“Okay. But then allow me to refresh your memory. The repair shop calls this Maja only forty-five minutes after she dropped the car off, telling her that they’ll probably have to change the rear shaft.”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me for saying so, but you don’t know much about cars if you think that a rear shaft can be changed so quickly.”
“So, you think that they’d already done it before they called. So what’s the problem?”
“It’s not a new rear shaft. Take a look again. It looks like the original. So, if you ask me, it didn’t need changing at all.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” said Carl, glancing at his cigarettes. Why the hell could a man not just have a smoke inside if it helped him think?
He sighed and looked at Gordon. “They lied to her and wanted to make a repair that wasn’t necessary. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Yes. Or they didn’t want to make the repair at all—just take the money for it. And regardless of whether they did one or the other, they very consciously wanted to con the woman out of a lot of money.”
Carl nodded and looked at the photo again.
“So, you’re telling me that Ove Wilder’s Auto conned their customers?”
“Hell yes. Do you have any idea what kind of money they could earn like that if they had enough customers? And I think they did, given the cheap prices they advertised. I bet they always invented some kind of problem with the cars that were brought in, which the customers didn’t question and had fixed. Can you imagine it?”
Carl frowned. Maybe they needed to get an overview of the finances of all the mechanics.
Had they also had so much cash in their hands that they bought holiday homes and the like?