Boxing Day, Saturday, December 26, 2020
“You need to get going, Carl,” said Rose. “Assad and I will call for a cab and go to the hospital to get Gordon checked out.”
Carl looked at their pale colleague sitting there with his head between his knees, trying to overcome the shock and all the torment. It would take time before he was himself again. If ever.
Carl tentatively laid a hand on his back. “You did well, Gordon. It’s over now. After all this, you deserve a few weeks’ leave.”
Apart from being exhausted, there was no sign of weakness in his eyes when he lifted his head toward Carl.
“Hell no,” he said. “With monsters like Sisle Park in the world, you won’t get rid of me so easily.”
“That’s it, get back on the camel,” said Assad.
Rose tried to smile, but it was hard. What was awaiting them now as members of Department Q?
“Get a few hours alone with Mona, Carl,” she said. “We’ll wait until we’ve gone over the crime scene with Marcus and his team before we say where you are. And make sure it isn’t at your place. It’s bound to still be under surveillance.”
He turned off onto the motorway and continued away from the city with all sorts of feelings rushing through his mind.
It had been hard, and it still was. Missing his family, corona, Gordon’s suffering, all the sad people, and now the man they had tried to save was lying dead on a concrete floor.
A few years back, he had had a panic attack brought on by the old case of the nail gun murders, and now that case was part of his reality again. He was being hunted. Would he never be free of it?
He scoffed at himself. Part of his reality again—what an understatement. What was his reality? That he was going to jail? That he was currently on his way to the van Bierbek family home in Gammel Holte to give them the worst news anyone could ever receive?
He had done it before. Breaking a heart with the news that a loved one was dead. Traffic accidents, disasters, suicide, and now murder.
His steps up to the house felt heavy and depressing, and the situation was not improved when it was Laura and her little sister who opened the door.
He did not manage to say a word.
They knew straightaway.
Mona arrived a little later in the evening, and she helped Victoria and the children to calm down.
“You need to fight with all you’ve got, Carl,” said Mona when they were finally alone. “I’ll contact Hardy and we’ll find out what he’s got to say about it all. I’ll let you know.”
“What about Lucia, Mona? When will I see her?”
She smiled and looked at his red hair. “You’re married to me now, and I’m no stranger to visiting prisons, so no doubt I’ll be able to work it out, don’t you think? But you’ll have to wear a hat so you don’t frighten her.”
“Okay, and only if I have to go to prison.”
“Yeah, if.”
“Assad and Rose are still at the crime scene, so we can expect someone here to arrest me anytime now,” said Carl.
She nodded and held him.
After a few minutes, the walls around them were lit up with flashing blue lights and a sea of plainclothes colleagues came rushing toward the front door.
They did not wait to be invited in, and Marcus Jacobsen stepped forward toward him with Sniffer Dog and a multitude of faces Carl did not recognize behind him.
Marcus nodded to Mona and then briefly and reservedly to Carl.
“You solved the case and put an end to it all.”
Carl nodded. “Yeah. We didn’t manage to save van Bierbek’s life, but we tried.”
“Rose and Assad have explained everything to me, and we’ll get back to it. In the meantime, we’d better get the formalities out of the way.”
Carl nodded, and two men grabbed him and handcuffed his hands behind his back.
“Carl’s innocent, Marcus. You ought to know that,” said Mona.
Marcus Jacobsen smiled sarcastically, and at that moment Carl could have spat in his face. But he did not.
“Many things are possible, but hardly that,” he said coldly, looking Carl straight in the eye.
“Carl Mørck. The time is nine seventeen a.m., and you’re under arrest.”