A Conspiracy of Faith (13 page)

“How come you can’t do it again, then?”

“I don’t really know how I did it, but it was a controlled movement. Not just a spasm.”

Carl put his hand on his crippled friend’s brow. “From what I know, what you’re saying is close to impossible. But OK, I believe you. I just don’t know what to do about it, that’s all.”

“I do,” said Morten. “Hardy still has this little area of his shoulder where he’s got some feeling. That’s where the pain’s coming from. I think it needs stimulating.”

Carl shook his head. “Hardy, are you sure this is a good idea? Sounds like bullshit to me.”

“So what?” Morten intervened. “I’m here with him, so what harm can it do?”

“We’ll run out of saucepans, for a start.”

Carl glanced toward the hallway. One jacket short on the coat hooks again. “Won’t Jesper be here for dinner?”

“He’s with Vigga in Brønshøj.”

That didn’t sound right. What would he be wanting in that freezing garden shed? Besides, Jesper didn’t get on with Vigga’s new boyfriend. Not because the guy wrote poetry and wore thick-rimmed specs, more because he insisted on reading it out loud and being the center of attention.

“What’s he doing there? He’s not skipping school again, is he?” Carl shook his head in despair. The lad only had a couple of months to go before his final exams. With that pathetic new grading system and the government’s miserable reform of upper secondary education, he would have to hang in there and at least pretend to be learning something, otherwise he’d be fucked.

Hardy interrupted his train of thought. “Relax, Carl. Jesper and I go through his homework together every day when he gets home from school. I test him before he goes off to see Vigga. The lad’s doing all right.”

Jesper doing all right? It sounded almost surreal. “Then what’s he doing with his mother?”

“She called him and asked if he’d go and see her,” Hardy replied. “She’s not happy, Carl. She’s fed up with her life and wants to come home again.”

“Home? You mean
this
home?”

Hardy nodded. Carl had never felt closer to shock-induced collapse.

Morten had to bring the whisky twice.

The night was sleepless, the morning weary and subdued.

Carl was a lot more tired by the time he eventually sat down behind his desk at the office than he had been when he went to bed the night before.

“Any word from Rose?” he inquired as Assad put down a plate in front of him, on which were assembled lumps of some indeterminate substance. Apparently, the man was trying to pep him up a bit.

“I called her last night, but she was out. That is what her sister told me.”

“You don’t say.” Carl wafted away his trusty old friend the fly and then endeavored to pick up one of the syrupy objects from his plate, only to find it surprisingly resistant. “Did this sister of hers say if she would be in today?”

“The sister, Yrsa, will come, but not Rose. Rose has gone away.”

“What? Where’s she gone? Her sister’s coming, you say? Are you winding me up, Assad?” He extracted his fingers from the sticky fly trap on his plate. It felt like he lost skin in the process.

“Yrsa said Rose sometimes goes away for a day or two, but that we should not worry. Rose will return like she always does. This is what Yrsa told me. And in the meantime, Yrsa will come and look after Rose’s job. They cannot afford to lose the money. This is what she said.”

Carl tossed his head back. “You’re kidding? So full-time employees can just swan off whenever it takes their fancy, eh? Not bad, is it? Rose must have lost her marbles.” He would make sure to tell her as much in no uncertain terms as soon as she got back. “And this Yrsa! She won’t get past the desk upstairs, not if I can help it.”

“Oh, but I have already sorted this with the duty officer and Lars Bjørn, Carl. It’s no problem. Lars Bjørn is not arsed, as long as her wages are still paid out to Rose. Yrsa is the temp while Rose is off sick. Bjørn is very happy we were able to find someone so quickly.”

“Not arsed, you say? And Rose is off sick?”

“This is what we call it, am I right?”

It was tantamount to mutiny.

Carl picked up the phone and pressed Lars Bjørn’s number.

“Hello, gorgeous,” said Lis’s voice on the other end.

What now?

“Hi, Lis. I’m trying to get through to Bjørn.”

“I know. I’m taking his calls. He’s in a meeting with Jacobsen and the commissioner about the staffing situation.”

“Can you put me through? I just need to speak to him for five seconds.”

“About Rose’s sister, you mean?”

The muscles in his face tensed up. “This wouldn’t by any chance have anything to do with you, would it?”

“Carl, you know I’m in charge of the temp lists.”

As a matter of fact, he didn’t.

“Are you telling me Bjørn gave the go-ahead for a temp to fill in for Rose, without asking me first?”

“Hey, take it easy!” she exclaimed in English, and snapped her fingers at the other end as though to wake him up from a stupor. “We’re short-staffed. Bjørn’s approving everything at the moment. You should see who we’ve got working in some of the other departments.”

Her laughter did nothing to alleviate his frustration.

K. Frandsen Wholesalers was a limited company with equity amounting to little more than two hundred and fifty thousand kroner but whose value was estimated to be in the region of sixteen million. In the last financial year, ending in September, its paper stocks alone were set at eight million, so at first blush the company hardly seemed to be in financial difficulties. The only problem was that the company’s clients were primarily weeklies and free newspapers, a sector that had taken a hammering during the current financial crisis. Which, as far as Carl could see, might well have impacted rather suddenly and with considerable force on K. Frandsen’s coffers.

This line of inquiry became all the more interesting when similar pictures emerged for the companies owning the premises that had burned down in Emdrup and on Stockholmsgade. The firm in Emdrup, JPP Fittings A/S, turned over some twenty-five million kroner a year supplying mainly DIY stores and major timber outlets. Most likely a thriving business last year, and a struggling one now. The same seemed to be true of the Østerbro company, Public Consult, which earned its money generating tendering projects for leading firms of architects, and which had probably also felt the effects of hitting that nasty concrete wall called recession.

Besides the obvious vulnerability of all three companies in the present financial climate, however, they seemed to have little else in common. Different owners, different clients.

Carl drummed his fingers on the desk. What about the Rødovre blaze in 1995? Would that fit the picture? A business suddenly finding itself struggling against a headwind? This was where he needed Rose. Fucking woman.

“Knock, knock,” said a husky voice at the door.

That’ll be Yrsa, Carl thought to himself, glancing at his watch. It was a quarter past nine. She was even on time.

“What time do you call this?” he said with his back turned. It was something he had learned once. The boss who addressed minions with his back turned reigned supreme.

“I didn’t know we had an appointment,” a rather nasal male voice replied.

Carl whirled around in his chair so fast he carried on half a turn too far.

It was Laursen. Good old Tomas Laursen, forensics officer and rugby player. The man who won a fortune in the lottery, only to lose it again and end up working in the cafeteria on the top floor.

“Tomas. Fucking hell! What are you doing here?”

“Your kind assistant asked me down to say hello.”

Assad put his cheeky face around the door. What was he up to? Had he really been upstairs to the cafeteria? Weren’t his spicy specialties and culinary colon busters enough for him anymore?

“I popped up to buy a banana, Carl,” Assad said, waving the curviform fruit in front of him. Who was he kidding? All the way to the top floor for a banana?

Carl nodded. Assad was a monkey. He’d known all along.

He and Laursen greeted each other with a handshake and squeezed as hard as they could. The same excruciatingly painful joke as always.

“Funny you should turn up, Laursen. I’ve just been hearing about you from What’s-his-face, Yding from Albertslund. I gather your return to the madhouse isn’t entirely voluntary?”

Laursen shook his head deliberately. “Well, it was my own fault, I suppose. The bank put one over on me, told me it was a good idea to borrow with a view to investment. The capital was there, so all I had to do was sign. And now there’s fuck all left.”

“They should cover your losses, the bastards,” said Carl. He had heard it said on the news.

Laursen nodded. There was no doubt that he agreed, but here he was back again. Last man in. Buttering
smørrebrød
and washing up. One of the finest forensics officers on the force. What a waste.

“Still, I’m happy enough,” he said. “I see a lot of people I know from when I was out in the field, without having to get back out there with them again.” He smiled awkwardly, just like in the old days. “I got sick of it, Carl. Picking at corpses at all hours of the day and night. Not a single day went by the last five years when I didn’t think of jacking it all in. So the money got me out, even if I did lose it all again. That’s how I choose to look at it, anyway. Nothing’s ever so bad as not to be good for something.”

Carl nodded. “You won’t know Assad, of course, but I’m sure he didn’t drag you down here to discuss the cafeteria menu with an old colleague over a cup of peppermint tea.”

“He told me about the message in the bottle. I think I got the gist of it. Can I see the letter?”

The crafty little—!

Laursen sat down as Carl gingerly removed the document from the
folder. Assad came waltzing in with a chased brass tray with three minuscule cups on it.

The smell of peppermint thickened the air. “You will most definitely like this tea,” said Assad as he poured. “It will do wonders for all sorts of things.” He grasped his crotch and winked. The message was abundantly clear.

Laursen switched on another Anglepoise lamp and drew the light up close to the document.

“Do we know who preserved this?”

“A lab in Scotland,” Assad replied. He produced the investigation sheet before Carl had even remembered where he had put it.

“The analysis is here.” Assad placed it in front of Laursen.

“OK,” said Laursen after a few minutes. “I see it was Douglas Gilliam who took care of business there.”

“You know him?”

Laursen gave Carl the kind of look a five-year-old girl would when asked if she knew who Britney Spears was. Hardly respectful, but certainly enough to kindle Carl’s curiosity. Who was this Douglas Gilliam when he was at home, apart from some bloke on the wrong side of the border with England?

“You’re not likely to get very far on this,” said Laursen, picking up his cup of peppermint tea between a thick finger and thumb. “Our Scottish colleagues seem to have done everything in their power to preserve the paper and recover the text by means of various forms of light treatment and chemicals. They’ve found minute traces of printer’s ink, but as far as I can see nothing’s been done to determine the origins of the paper itself. In fact, most of the physical investigation seems to be down to us. Have you run this through the Center of Forensic Services out in Vanløse?”

“No, but then I had no idea the technical investigations were incomplete,” said Carl reluctantly. The mistake was his.

“It says so here.” Laursen indicated the bottom line of the lab report.

Why the hell hadn’t he noticed that? Shit!

“Actually, Carl, Rose did tell me this. But she did not think we needed to know where the paper came from,” Assad chipped in.

“Well, on that count she was most certainly wrong. Let me have another look.” Laursen got up and squeezed his fingers into his pocket. It was no easy task. Rugby thighs in tight jeans.

The type of magnifying glass Laursen now produced was one Carl had seen on many occasions. A small square that could be folded out to stand on top of the object. It looked like the lower part of a little microscope. Standard issue for stamp collectors and similar loonies, but the professional version, equipped with the finest of Zeiss lenses, was most certainly a must for a forensics expert such as Laursen.