A Conspiracy of Faith (50 page)

“You mean, they’re actually closing down?” he said incredulously.

“Yeah. But the commissioner says there has to be a cafeteria, so now they’re putting it out to tender. They’ve got us buttering bread until some twat or other kicks us out on to the dole queue in the name of the free market or else takes us on to chop lettuce all day.”

“So you’re sodding off now, before it happens?”

Laursen managed a crumpled smile that briefly lit up his weathered face. “Sodding off? You must be joking. I put in for this course so I’ll be eligible to take over the place. That’ll show the bastards.”

They walked part of the way up the stairs together, before Carl found Yrsa on the third floor engaged in animated chat with Lis about who was the hotter, George Clooney or Johnny Depp. Whoever the fuck they were.

“Hard at work, then?” he commented tersely and caught sight of Pasgård darting from the coffee machine into his office.

“Thanks for your work, Pasgård,” he said, catching up with him. “You’re hereby off the case.”

Pasgård gave him an uncertain look. He always assumed everyone else was just as full of shit as he was himself.

“Just one small job, Pasgård, then you and Jørgen can get back to knocking on doors in Sundby. Would you be good enough to make sure Poul Holt’s father is brought to HQ for questioning? It seems Martin Holt is at this moment to be found at the national headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses at Stenhusvej 28 in Holbæk, just in case you didn’t know.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’d suit me to interview him in exactly two hours’ time. He’ll probably kick up a fuss, but this is a murder investigation and he’s a Crown witness.”

Carl turned on his heel. He could almost hear the howls of protest from the Holbæk Police. Marching into the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ most hallowed halls! Christ on a bike! But Martin Holt would come along of his own accord. Of the two evils, the greater would be having to admit to lying to his fellows in the community about his son being ostracized.

It was one thing to have lied to people outside the sect, quite another to have done so to the initiated.

He found Assad at his desk in the corridor outside Jacobsen’s office. A computer of the kind that had been thrown into storage five years before whirred loudly. On the other hand, they had given him a relatively new mobile so he could retain contact with the outside world. No expense spared.

“Any luck, Assad?”

He raised his hand, a hold-on-a-second gesture while he finished the sentence he was in the middle of writing, committing his thoughts to paper before they disappeared. Carl was the same.

“It’s odd, Carl. When I speak to people who have run away from a sect, they think I am trying to make them join a new one. Do you think it has to do with my accent?”

“What accent’s that, Assad?”

Assad glanced up with a gleam in his eye and a grin on his face. “Ahh, you are making fun with me now. I understand, Carl.” He waggled an admonishing index finger in the air. “But my piss cannot so easily be taken out of me.”

“Yeah, right, Assad. So anyway, you mean there’s nothing for us to go on?” Carl continued. It certainly wouldn’t be Assad’s fault if that were the case. “But Assad, maybe there just
is
nothing to go on. We can’t be certain the kidnapper ever committed any crime other than this one. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Assad smiled. “There you take my piss again, Carl. Of course the kidnapper did this more than one time. I see in your eyes that you know this.”

He had to be right. A million kroner was a lot of money, but it wasn’t that much. Certainly not if kidnapping was your chosen profession.

Their man must have done it more than once. What reasons were there for assuming he hadn’t?

“Keep at it, Assad. There’s nothing else to do for the time being, anyway.”

When he got back to the front desk, where Lis and Yrsa were still immersed in shockingly sexist drivel about what a proper man should look like, he tapped discreetly on the counter with his knuckles.

“I understand Assad’s running the show on his own as regards the former sect members, so I’ve got something else for you to do, Yrsa. And if it’s too much, Lis will help you out, won’t you, Lis?”

“No, you won’t, Lis,” came the sound of Ms. Sørensen’s caustic voice from the corner. “Detective Inspector Mørck here belongs to a different department. It’s not in your job description to run errands for him.”

“Well, I’d say that depends,” said Lis, sending him one of those looks her husband seemed to have got her to specialize in during their libidinous road trip across the States. It was a look he wished Mona could have seen. Then maybe she would start fighting a bit harder to keep him on the hook.

In self-defense, he focused his gaze on Yrsa’s red lips.

“Yrsa, I want you to check and see if you can find that boathouse on an aerial photo. Get hold of everything they’ve got in the property registration archives in Frederikssund, Halsnæs, Roskilde, and Lejre municipalities. You’ll most likely find them via the official websites for each local authority, otherwise ask them to send us what they’ve got by e-mail. High-definition aerial photos showing the entire shoreline all the way around Hornsherred. And while you’re at it, ask them to send us some maps detailing the position of every wind turbine in the area.”

“I thought we agreed they were shut down during the storm?”

“We did, but it needs to be checked anyway.”

“A poxy little job like that won’t take her long,” said Lis. “What have you got for me?” She fluttered her eyes directly at his crotch. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that in public? His double entendres were falling over each other in the rush.

“Erm. Maybe you could get on to the technical departments of those local authorities and ask if they gave planning permission for boathouses along the shoreline in the period prior to 1996, and if so, where.”

She swayed her hips. “Is that all? I was hoping for a bit more.” And then she turned her magnificently attractive, denim-clad backside toward him and strode off toward her phone.

Absolutely priceless.

The Helmand region had
been Kenneth’s personal hell, the desert dust his nightmare. One tour of Iraq, two of Afghanistan. It was more than enough.

His mates sent him e-mails every day. A lot of words about comradeship and great times together, but nothing about what was actually going on. Everyone just wanted to stay alive. That was all that mattered.

And for that reason he was done with it. He was clear about that. A pile of debris on a roadside. The wrong place in the dark. The wrong place in the daytime. The incendiaries were everywhere. An eye put to a telescopic sight. Luck wasn’t the kind of companion on whom one could rely.

So here he was in his little house in Roskilde, trying to blunt his senses and forget. Trying to get on with his life.

He had killed a person and had never told anyone. It had happened very quickly, in a brief exchange of fire. Not even his comrades had noticed. A corpse, slightly apart from the others. His corpse. A direct hit in the windpipe. No more than a boy, the terrifying whiskers of the Taliban warrior little more than fluff on his chin.

He had told no one, not even Mia.

It wasn’t the kind of thing to drop into a conversation when you were breathlessly in love.

The first time he saw Mia, he knew he would be hers unconditionally.

She had looked deeply into his eyes when he took her hand. Already
then, it had happened. Total surrender. Pent-up longing and hope, suddenly liberated. And they had listened to each other with senses agape, knowing it was only the start.

She had trembled as she told him when her husband might be back. She, too, was ready for a new life.

The last time they saw each other had been Saturday. He had turned up on the spur of the moment, the newspaper in his hand as they had agreed.

She was alone but in a state. Let him in reluctantly but wouldn’t say what was wrong. She clearly had no sense of what the day might bring.

If only they had had a few more seconds, he would have asked her to come with him. To pack some things, pick up Benjamin, and take off.

She would have said yes if her husband hadn’t turned up, he was sure of it. And at his place, they would have had time together to unravel the knots of their ill-spent lives.

But instead he had to go. She’d been insistent. Out through the back door. Off into the dark like a timid dog. And without his bike.

He had thought about nothing else since. Not for a second.

Now three days had passed. It was Tuesday, and he had been to the house several times since Saturday’s unwelcome surprise. So what if he ran into Mia’s husband? So what if things came to a head? He no longer feared other people, only himself. What he might do to the man, if it turned out he had harmed Mia.

But when he returned the first time, he found the house empty, likewise when he came again. And still he felt compelled to come back. A suspicion, rooted in instinct, grew inside him. The same instinct that had taken hold of him the time one of his comrades had pointed down an Afghan side street where ten local citizens were later killed. He had just known they should stay away from that street, the same way he knew this house contained secrets that would never see the light of day without his help.

He stood at her front door and called out her name. If the family had
been going on holiday, she would have told him. If she no longer wanted him, her radiant eyes would have avoided his gaze.

She
did
want him, but now she was gone. Even his calls to her mobile remained unanswered. For some hours he had reasoned that she was too frightened to answer, because her husband was there. Then he convinced himself her husband had taken the phone away from her, and that he knew everything.

If he did, he was welcome to come and confront him, he told himself. It would not be an equal fight.

And then on Monday, for the first time, he began to think that the answer might lie elsewhere.

His attention had been caught by a sound. It was an unexpected sound, of the kind a soldier was trained to hear: faint sounds that could mean death in a second if overlooked.

It was such a sound he heard as he stood outside the house and called her mobile.

The mobile that chimed so faintly inside the walls.

And then he’d snapped shut his own phone and listened. Nothing.

He had dialed Mia’s number one more time and waited for a moment. There it was again. Her mobile was somewhere upstairs behind the closed, slanting window in the roof, responding to his call.

He’d stood there for a second, considering what to do.

She could have left it behind on purpose, but it was unlikely.

She called it her lifeline, and no one would give up a lifeline just like that.

That was something he knew.

He had come one more time since then and heard the mobile chime again inside the upstairs room above the front door. Nothing had changed. Why did he have this enduring suspicion that something was wrong?

Was it the hound in him, sniffing danger in the air? Was it the soldier? Or was it being in love that made him blind to the possibility that he had already become a parenthesis in her life?

And for all the questions, all the possible answers, this nagging suspicion remained.

Behind the curtains of the house across the way, an elderly couple sat watching him. As soon as he called out Mia’s name they were there. Perhaps he should ask them if they had noticed anything untoward.

It took them a while to open the door, and they were hardly accommodating when they did.

Why couldn’t he leave their nice neighbors alone, the woman asked.

He forced a smile and showed them how his hands were shaking. Showed them how frightened he was and how much he needed their help.

Reluctantly, they told him the husband had been home several times during the last couple of days. His Mercedes had been in the drive, but they had not seen his wife or their child for some time.

He thanked them and asked if they would be kind enough to keep an eye out, then gave them his phone number.