Wednesday, December 2, 2020
“You should open your window and air it out in here before Rose comes storming in,” said Assad. Carl looked at him wearily and waved his hand in the air to clear the smoke. That would have to suffice. Now that Assad had been put on the case, Carl proceeded to fill him in.
“I’ve asked Gordon to make calls to the mechanics’ widows and ask whether their husbands spent significant amounts of money before they died. I’ve told him to say that they can come clean if anything illegal has taken place, since the deadline for prosecuting that has expired. We’re only asking them so we can establish a possible cause for the repair shop explosion and the death of their husbands.”
Assad shook his head. “Don’t we know that already, Carl?”
“No. Back when the investigation took place, they searched intensely for a motive for the killings—if they even were killings. They investigated whether there was a gang-related motive or something drug related, and they also investigated fraud with number plates and trading of stolen cars with Eastern Europeans. But everything led to a dead end. The company only existed for six, seven months, and, apart from the first two VAT returns, which showed significant deficits, we found nothing about their income because they weren’t in business long enough to file tax returns. And because everything had gone up in flames—computers, customer records, order sheets, records of spare-part purchases, et cetera—it was another dead end. Some people at police headquarters were willing to believe that if it wasn’t an accident, the actual target could’ve been somewhere else and it was all a mistake. But that was as far as they got.”
Assad scratched his stubble. “You told me Gordon discovered this morning that they swindled their customers, so there must’ve been someone fishing. And so the question is whether it was with a rod or a net.”
“You mean there must have been something fishy, Assad.” Carl smiled. Assad often misunderstood idioms and created new ones. “But even if the shop conned their customers into paying for repairs that they didn’t do or that were unnecessary, they may have done much worse things too,” said Carl. “Do you have any suggestions?”
“Have we asked the boss’s widow if they also bought and sold cars?”
“We know they did. There were several adverts in the free ads and local newspapers.”
“Stolen cars with their vehicle identification numbers changed and a spray job, that can easily lead to trouble. For example, Eastern Europeans get very cross if you cheat them. We’re talking mileage counters that are turned back, false service books, stuff like that. Were there traces of explosives?”
“No.”
“Why is this case troubling Marcus so much, Carl? Do you know?”
Carl looked away for a second. He knew all too well.
“It’s probably a combination of many things. The dead boy, the boy’s mother who took her own life, and all the questions that were left unanswered.”
“If you ask me, I think Marcus promised the mother of the dead child that he’d find those responsible for the explosions.”
Carl nodded. That was highly likely. It wasn’t the first time that a police officer had had to go back on their word. In a case like that, you were willing to promise anything if it offered solace. But you can never walk away from a broken promise. That was a fact.
“You were right, Carl,” sounded a loud voice from the hallway. Why could the guy not just wait until he was in the office so they could keep their business from all the busybodies on the floor?
Gordon’s milky-white baby cheeks still sported neat red spots. He was all worked up.
“Yes, you heard me right. All the mechanics had made large investments in the time leading up to the accident. A hell of a lot of money exchanged hands in that small business.”
“Okay. Good, Gordon. Like what?”
“Cars, electronics, travel. And to top it off, the widows told me that they always paid cash.”
“Under the table,” mumbled Assad.
“Sure. And the mechanics all knew one another from college, and they were all lads up to no good when they were together. Scoundrels, the lot of them, one of the wives told me. But she didn’t care because she had left her husband before he died. She was very candid and said that they never missed an opportunity to cook the books at the repair shop. The cars they sold were old junk they had given a superficial makeover. She knew for a fact that they always went to used-car auctions and bought cars that no one else would touch with a ten-foot pole. She reckoned that they probably sold four, five of these painted carcasses a week.”
“Christ, that’s more than a hundred cars in the brief time the shop existed. Did she also know who they sold them to?”
“To everyone who was gullible enough, she said. A lot of immigrants.”
Assad and Carl looked at each other. They were thinking the same thing.
“She said that they never said anything about how things were going, and if she asked her husband, he always told her to shut up and mind her own business.”
“And she didn’t report it to the police?”
“By the time of the explosions, she’d already left him and had been living with a Swedish restaurateur on the Costa del Sol for three months. She only heard about the accident when she returned home. So, no, she didn’t talk to the police.”
“Did she mention any of the other scams they had?”
The red spots on Gordon’s cheeks became even more visible. They were about to hear his big finale.
“She told me that she heard from one of the other wives that they cheated with the repair bills—and they didn’t hold back. So I was right, Carl. Every bill had a couple of thousand kroner added for repairs of so-called very serious faults that they found on the cars.” He was bursting with pride and almost hopping up and down on the spot.
“Good, Gordon. A picture of vengeful customers is starting to emerge. Now we’re just waiting for Rose to see if she can locate some of the cases where a pile of salt has been found close to the crime scene.”
“A pile of salt?” Assad looked puzzled.
Carl pushed the file over to him. “Bring yourself up to speed. You can read this yourself because I have to pick up Lucia from the nursery today.”
He felt a tinge of tenderness.
If Carl was honest, this was the best time of his life despite the corona pandemic. Everything had come up roses. He and Mona had the sweetest little daughter. They lived together and spoke about getting married. For the last few weeks, Ludwig had been staying with a friend every other week and was currently staying with Carl until Christmas. When it sometimes became difficult to coordinate picking up Lucia after Mona had started working again, there was a young girl in the apartment next to them who was keen to earn a little extra. The only snake in paradise was that Mona’s oldest daughter had turned her back on them entirely after Lucia was born, and that Assad’s work was clearly affected by his new home life. In fact, Carl had several times seen the otherwise robust and strong man with tears in his eyes when he thought he was alone.
“Assad has been assigned to the case,” he told Mona after having related the details of the case over their post-dinner coffee. “You had a session with him last week. How is he doing?”
She shook her head and concentrated on getting their daughter to take the spoon of baby food in her mouth.
“Ah, I see. A psychologist has to respect patient confidentiality. So let me ask you in a different way. Am I wrong in thinking that he can manage a normal investigation now? I think this will be a complicated one because Marcus and I suspect that there’s a connection with other unsolved cases, so I have to delegate the tasks. Assad can’t continue ringing doorbells and doing routine tasks when we have a case like this on our hands.”
She still just smiled as if she were wearing earplugs and could not think beyond the next spoonful of banana purée.
Carl sighed. “Mona, I need to know if I risk harming him by expecting too much.”
She looked at him. “You’ll work it out, don’t you think, Carl?”