A Conspiracy of Faith (19 page)

“Who lent them the money?” he asked.

Assad gave a shrug. “Various. Bankers in central Copenhagen.”

Carl nodded. “Get me the names and tell me who’s behind them.”

Assad’s shoulders sagged.

“All right, no need to get depressed about it. Do it when the offices open, Assad. That’s a couple of hours away yet. Relax.”

Carl’s words did not appear to cheer him up at all. In fact, they almost seemed to make things worse.

The pair of them were getting on Carl’s nerves with all their jabber and recalcitrance. It was like Assad and Yrsa were infecting each other. As if they were the ones who did the deciding around here. If they kept it up, he would give them each a pair of rubber gloves and have them scrubbing the basement floor on their hands and knees until they could see their faces in it.

Assad lifted his head and nodded silently. “Anyway, I will not keep you anymore, Carl. You can come to me when you’re finished.”

“What do you mean?”

Assad winked and flashed him a wry little smile. The transformation was utterly baffling. “Soon you will have both hands full,” he added, winking again.

“Let me try that one more time. What the fuck are you going on about, Assad?”

“I am referring to Mona, of course. Do not try to tell me you had no idea she was back.”

Like Assad had said
, Mona Ibsen was back. Exuding tropical sunshine and an excess of experiences that had left unmistakable albeit graceful traces in the narrow creases around her eyes.

Carl had sat for a long time on his own in the basement that morning, trying to come up with gambits that might effectively counter any defensive steps on Mona’s part. Words that might soften her gaze if she should happen to drop by.

It didn’t happen. The only female presence in the basement that morning was Yrsa, heralded by the trundle of her shopping cart and her doubtless kindly intended but nonetheless earsplitting descant in the corridor five minutes after clocking in: “Bread rolls from Netto, ready for toasting, lads!”

It was one of those moments that brought home to him how far removed the basement was from the oblivious world above it, where people went about carefree and happy.

After that, it took him a couple of hours to realize that if he was planning on ever finding happiness himself he would have to get off his arse and go looking for it.

Having asked around, he eventually located Mona over by the Magistrates’ Court in quiet discussion with the court clerk. Clad in a leather waistcoat and a pair of faded Levi’s, she resembled anything but a woman who was done with taking on new challenges in life.

“Hello, Carl,” she said, rather remotely. The look in her eyes was professional,
making it abundantly clear that for the moment there was nothing more between them. All he could do was smile back at her, unable to muster a single word.

The rest of the day he could have spent in ever-decreasing circles, frustration mounting in the disintegrated ruin of his emotional life. But Yrsa had other plans.

“We might have something to go on in Ballerup,” she announced with ill-concealed glee and a bit of Netto’s bread roll stuck between her front teeth. “I’m an angel of good fortune this week. It says so in my horoscope.”

Carl looked up at her with hope in his eyes. In that case, her wings could whisk her away into the stratosphere so he could be left to ponder his cruel fate in peace.

“I had such a job getting anything out of them,” she went on. “First, I had to speak to the head teacher at Lautrupgård School, but he’d only been there since 2004. Then they sent me on to a teacher who’d been there since the school started, and she didn’t know anything, either. Then I got hold of the caretaker, and he was just as blank, so then—”

“Yrsa! If there’s a point to all this, then I’d like to hear it, please. I’m a busy man,” Carl interrupted, trying to rub some life back into a sleeping arm.

“Well, as I was just about to say, afterward I called the College of Engineering, and that’s where we got lucky.”

The blood rushed back to his limb at once. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Go on.”

“It was quite by chance, really. One of the teachers, a woman by the name of Laura Mann, was in the office when I called. She’d just started back this morning after being off sick. She’s taught there since the place opened in 1995, and as far as she could remember there’s only ever been one case that would fit.”

Carl straightened up in his chair. “And what was that?”

Yrsa cocked her head and looked at him. “Oh, so you
are
interested, then?” She gave his hairy forearm a playful slap of her hand. “Bet you’re dying to know now, aren’t you?”

How in God’s name had it come to this? He’d solved at least a hundred burdensome cases over the years, and here he was, reduced to playing guessing games with a temp in bright-green tights.

“Tell me about the case she recalled, Yrsa,” Carl persisted, nodding briefly to Assad, who had put his head around the door. He looked pale.

“Well, Assad called the office yesterday asking the same questions. They’d been talking about it this morning over coffee, and the woman overheard,” she continued.

Assad pricked up his ears and suddenly seemed to be back to his old self again.

“It all came back to her straightaway,” said Yrsa. “They had this elite student once. A young lad with some kind of syndrome, she said, but absolutely brilliant at maths and physics.”

“A syndrome?” Assad looked puzzled.

“Yeah, like very gifted at one thing and hopeless at everything else. Not autism, but something like it. What did she call it, now?” Yrsa wrinkled her brow. “Oh, I know. Asperger’s syndrome, that was what he had.”

Carl smiled. Most likely she had her own personal insights into what it was like.

“So what happened to this lad?” he went on.

“He took the first term and got flying marks in everything, and then he dropped out.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“He was there the last day before the winter break with his younger brother, showing him around the place, and after that they never saw him again.”

Both Assad and Carl narrowed their eyes at once. This was it. “What was his name?” Carl asked.

“His name was Poul.”

Carl felt his insides turn to ice.

“Yes!” Assad exclaimed, and proceeded to wave his arms and legs about like a jumping jack.

“The teacher said she remembered him so vividly because Poul Holt
was the closest thing to a Nobel candidate they would ever be likely to see anywhere near that college. And besides that, there had never been a single student there, before or after, who had that kind of Asperger’s. He was all on his own in that respect.”

“So that’s why she remembered him?” Carl went on.

“Yeah, that’s why. And because he was in the first year of students they ever had.”

Half an hour later, Carl repeated the same questions in person at the College of Engineering and received exactly the same answers.

“It’s not the kind of thing you forget,” Laura Mann explained, flashing an ivory smile. “I imagine you remember your first arrest in much the same way?”

Carl nodded. A scrawny little alky who had lain down in the middle of Englandsvej. Carl could still see the glob of spit as it sailed through the air and stuck itself to his police badge while he tried to bundle the fool back to safety. So it was true: that first arrest remained indelible. With or without the spit.

He considered the woman sitting at the other side of the table. Sometimes she was on television when they needed an expert on alternative energy sources.
Laura Mann, PhD
, it read on her business card, and a lot more titles besides. Carl was glad he didn’t have one of his own.

“He had some form of autism, is that right?”

“Well, sort of, but rather a mild form, I believe. People with AS are often highly gifted. Nerdish is how most people would think of them, I suppose. Einsteins. But Poul had practical talent as well. He was very special in all sorts of ways.”

Assad smiled. He too had noted the horn-rimmed glasses and the hair gathered in a bun. She seemed to be just the right teacher for someone like Poul Holt. Nerdish minds think alike, as they said.

“Poul had his younger brother with him that day, the sixteenth of February
1996, you say, after which you never saw him again. How can you be so sure of the date?” Carl inquired.

“We kept a register of attendance in the first years. So we checked back to see when he’d been here last. He never came back after the holiday. Would you like to see the registers? They’re all filed away in the office next door.”

Carl glanced at Assad. He didn’t seem that interested, either. “No, thanks, I think we can take your word for it. I understand you contacted the family when Poul failed to show up again, is that right?”

“Yes, but they were very standoffish. Especially when we suggested a meeting at home to talk things over with Poul.”

“Did you speak to him on the phone?”

“No, the last time I spoke to Poul Holt was here at the college, and that would have been a week before the winter break. Later, when I called his home number, his father said Poul wouldn’t come to the phone. And that was that. Poul had just turned eighteen, so of course he was free to decide for himself what he wanted to do with his life.”

“Eighteen? Are you sure he wasn’t older than that?”

“Yes, he was very young. He completed his upper secondary at seventeen and went straight on from there.”

“Have you kept any data on him?”

She smiled. Naturally, she had come prepared.

Carl read aloud with Assad hovering at his shoulder.

“Poul Holt, born 13 November 1977. Maths and Physics major from Birkerød Gymnasium School. Final average 9.8.”

And then came the address. Not far away, forty-five minutes by car at the most.

“Bearing in mind this would be the old grading system with thirteen as top of the scale, I’d say that wasn’t a particularly impressive average for a genius,” Carl mused.

“True, but that’s how it pans out across the board with thirteen science and seven arts subjects,” she replied.

“Are you saying, then, that he was poor in Danish?” Assad chipped in.

She smiled. “In written Danish, certainly. His reports left a lot to be desired in terms of his writing skills. But we often see that. Even in his spoken language he expressed himself rather primitively if the subject at hand failed to interest him.”

“Is there a copy of this I could take with me?” Carl asked.

Laura Mann nodded. If it hadn’t been for her tobacco-stained fingers and greasy skin, he would have given her a hug.

“Fantastic, Carl,” Assad enthused as they approached the house. “We solved our problem within a week. We know who wrote the letter. This is the way to go! And now we are outside the family’s home.” He thumped the dashboard as if to underline their success.

“Yeah.” Carl nodded. “Now we just have to hope it was all a joke.”

“If so, then we must give this Poul a bollocking, Carl.”

“And what if it wasn’t, Assad?”

Assad nodded. If it wasn’t, they would have a job on their hands.

They parked outside the garden gate and noted immediately that the name on the nameplate wasn’t Holt.

When they rang the bell and the door was opened by a small, crumpled man in a wheelchair claiming to be the only person who had lived in the house since 1996, Carl clenched his teeth together on instinct and felt himself growing irritable.

“You’ll have bought the place from the Holts, then?” he said.

“No, as a matter of fact it was from some Jehovah’s Witnesses. The man of the house was a priest of some sort. The main room had been a kind of meeting place. You can come in and have a look, if you like.”

Carl shook his head. “So you never met the family who lived here?”

“That’s right, I never met them,” the man replied.

Assad and Carl thanked him and went away.

“Do you get the feeling all of a sudden, Assad, that we’re not dealing with boyish pranks here?” Carl said.

“Carl, just because people move house…” He stopped on the garden path. “OK, perhaps I know what you are thinking, Carl.”