A Conspiracy of Faith (63 page)

The neighbors on the farm a few hundred meters away from what remained of the cottage invited them in. They were in the middle of dinner. An indulgence of potatoes and pork with all the trimmings, mostly their own produce, Carl assumed. Big, hearty people, with big, hearty smiles. Clearly, they had made a nice life for themselves.

“Mads Christian? To be honest, I’ve not seen the old bugger for years. He did have some woman on the go in Sweden, so I reckon that’s where he’ll be,” said the man of the house. He looked like he’d been born wearing a lumberjack shirt.

“We do see that van of his sometimes, that blue thing,” the wife interjected. “And the Mercedes. He earned his money in Greenland, so he can afford it. Tax-free, I imagine.” She smiled.

Tax-free was something she obviously knew all about.

Carl leaned across the solid wooden table, planting both elbows on its surface. If he and Assad didn’t find somewhere to eat soon, they would be driven by the irresistible aroma of roast pork to confiscate it in the name of the law.

“Old bugger, you say. Are we talking about the same man?” he asked, almost drooling. “Mads Christian Fog, yeah? According to our information he’d be forty-five at the most.”

The man and his wife laughed.

“Maybe that’d be a nephew or something,” said the man. “But you people can get all that sorted in a jiffy at the computer, can’t you?” He nodded at his own insight. “Maybe he lends the place out to someone. We’ve wondered a few times, haven’t we, Mette?”

The wife nodded. “It was the van coming, you see, and then the Mercedes leaving shortly after. Then there’d be no sign of life for a long time, until the Mercedes would turn up again and the van would drive away.”
She shook her head. “Mads Christian’s too old for that sort of carry-on. I say that every time.”

“The man we’re thinking of looks like this,” said Assad, producing the drawing from his pocket.

The couple stared at the likeness without a hint of recognition.

“That isn’t Mads Christian. He must be knocking on for eighty now,” she said. “And looks like something fished out of a slurry tank. This man’s well groomed. Noble-looking, almost.”

“OK. What about the fire, then? Did you see it?” Carl went on.

They smiled. It was an odd reaction.

“They could see it as far away as Orø or Nykøbing Sjælland, I shouldn’t wonder,” said the man.

“I see. Did you notice anyone drive up to or away from the cottage that evening?”

They shook their heads. “I’m afraid not,” said the man with a smile. “We’d gone to bed. We country folk get up early in the mornings, you know. Not like you lot in Copenhagen, sleeping in until six o’clock.”

“We need to stop off at a petrol station,” said Carl once they were back at the car. “I’m starving, aren’t you?”

Assad shrugged. “I’ve got my nibbles.”

He thrust a hand into his pocket and produced a couple of garish packets of something clearly Middle Eastern. From the decoration on the paper, it seemed they contained mainly dates and figs. “Would you like one?” he asked.

Carl sighed with satisfaction as he got into the car and began munching. Fucking all right, they were, Assad’s nibbles.

“What do you think happened to the man who lived there?” Assad gestured toward the scene of the blaze. “Nothing good, if you ask me.”

Carl nodded and swallowed. “That place needs sifting through with a fine-toothed comb,” he replied. “If the SOCOs do their job properly, I reckon they’ll find what’s left of an octogenarian, assuming he hadn’t already shuffled off the coil.”

Assad put his feet up on the dashboard. “My feelings exactly,” he said, albeit looking slightly perplexed. “What now, Carl?” he went on.

“Don’t know, really. We need to get hold of Klaes Thomasen and ask him if he’s managed to have a word with the sailing clubs and that forest officer at Nordskoven. Then maybe we could call Karsten Jønsson and get him to check if any Mercedes fitting the description got caught in any of the speed traps around here. Like Rachel and Isabel were.”

Assad nodded. “Perhaps they will find the Mercedes from the license plate number. Perhaps we will be lucky, even if Isabel Jønsson wasn’t certain.”

Carl started the car. He doubted things would be that easy.

And then his mobile chimed. Couldn’t it have rung thirty seconds earlier, he thought to himself with a sigh, thrusting the gearshift into neutral.

It was Rose, and she was excited.

“I called all the bowling centers, and no one knows the man in the drawing.”

“Shit,” said Carl.

“What is the matter?” Assad wanted to know, returning his feet to the floor.

“But that’s not all, Carl,” Rose went on. “Like we reckoned, there was no one answering to any of the names we’ve got, apart from Lars Sørensen. There were a couple of Lars Sørensens.”

“It figures.”

“But then I spoke to this bloke in Roskilde. Very keen to help, he was. He was new to bowling, but he handed me on to one of the other players who happened to be there having a drink. They’ve got a game on tonight, apparently. Anyway, he reckoned there were several players he knew who looked like the man in the drawing. But there was one thing in particular he noticed.”

“And what was that, Rose?” Why did she always have to drag things out?

“Mads Christian Fog, Lars Sørensen, Mikkel Laust, Freddy Brink, and Birger Sloth. He almost fell about laughing when I told him the names.”

“
How do you mean?”

“Well, he didn’t know anyone with the exact names. But on the team he’s playing with tonight, they’ve got a Lars, a Mikkel, and a Birger. He was the Lars. And what’s more, there’d been a Freddy, too, a few years ago, who used to bowl with them at another center, but he got too old. No Mads Christian, mind, but still a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Carl put the uneaten half of something figgy on the dashboard. He was all ears now. It was by no means unusual for a perpetrator to be inspired by the names of those around him. Names in reverse order. A “K” becoming a “C.” First and last names mixed together. The psychologists could most likely account for the underlying mechanism, but Carl called it lack of imagination.

“And then I asked him if he knew anyone who had a bowling ball with the number one on it on their key ring, and he cracked up laughing again. They all have them on their team, he said. Seems they’ve been playing together for years, in various places.”

Carl sat staring at the beam of the car’s headlights. First the coincidence of the names, now the bowling ball.

He turned his gaze to the GPS. How far were they from Roskilde? Thirty-five kilometers?

“Hey, are you still there, Carl? Do you think there might be anything in it? Like I said, Mads Christian wasn’t among the names he mentioned.”

“No, he wasn’t, Rose. But that name’s from a different place entirely, and we know where now. And yes, I do think there might be something in it. Of course there is. Fucking hell, Rose, we’re on to something here. What’s the address of that bowling center?”

She sifted through some papers in the background. Carl gestured toward the GPS, so Assad would be ready to enter the address.

“Right,” he said, as she read it out. “Well done, Rose. I’ll call you back later.”

He turned to Assad.

“Københavnsvej 51, Roskilde,” he said and thrust his foot down immediately on the accelerator. “For fuck’s sake, Assad, get it on the GPS!”

Use your brains, he
kept telling himself. Do the right thing. Nothing hasty you might regret.

He drove the car slowly up the road. Returned the nods of his neighbors, then turned into the driveway with the weight of disaster bearing down on his shoulders.

He was out in the open, where keen-eyed birds of prey could watch all his movements from a distance. What had happened at the hospital could hardly have gone more wrong.

He glanced at the child’s swing dangling loosely on its ropes. Less than three weeks had passed since he put it up in the birch tree. His image of a lazy summer at play with their little boy had been snatched away. He picked a small, red plastic shovel out of the sandpit and felt welling grief threatening to overpower him. It was a feeling unknown to him since boyhood.

He sat down on the bench in the garden for a moment and closed his eyes. Only months before, he would have been inhaling the scent of roses and a woman’s nearness.

He could still sense the quiet joy of the child’s arms around his neck, the gentle breath against his cheek.

Stop it, he told himself, and shook his head. It was all in the past now. Like everything else.

His parents were to blame for his life having turned out like it had. His parents and his stepfather. But he had hit back on many occasions since
then. How often had he struck against men and women like them? What was he supposed to regret?

Any struggle would claim its victims. He would have to live with that.

He tossed the toy shovel onto the lawn and stood up. There were new women out there. He would find Benjamin a good mother. If he realized all his assets now, he could make a good life for the two of them somewhere in the world, until the time came for him to carry on his mission and bring in money again.

But right now, there were realities to deal with.

Isabel was alive and recovering. Her brother was in the police and had been at the hospital when he had come to eliminate his risk. That was the greatest threat. He knew these people. They would make it their personal goal to find him. But they would not succeed. He would make sure of it.

The nurse he knocked out would remember him. From now on, every time she encountered a stranger with an unfathomable gaze, she would recoil. The shock of the blow he had delivered to her throat would remain deep inside her. Her confidence in others would be shattered. He would be the last person on earth she would be likely to forget. The secretary, too, would remember him. Nevertheless, he was not afraid of these two women.

When it came down to it, they had no idea what he looked like.

He stood in front of the mirror, considering his reflection while he removed his makeup.

He would be all right. More than most, he was familiar with people’s ability to observe. A sufficiently furrowed face and people would notice nothing else. And a stiff gaze behind a pair of glasses was always enough for a person not to be recognized without them.

A conspicuous wart, however, would be seen and noted, though oddly enough its absence after being removed would go unseen.

Some things served to disguise, others did not. Yet one thing was certain: the best disguise was one that made a person look ordinary, ordinary being unremarkable. And the unremarkable was his area of expertise. Putting wrinkles in the right places, applying shadow to the face and around the eyes, arranging the hair in a different way, manipulating the eyebrows,
allowing complexion and hair condition to indicate age and state of health. He used all these things to achieve the perfect result.

Today, he had been the average man in the street. They would recall his age, his accent, and the glasses. But they would be in doubt as to whether his lips were narrow or full, his cheekbones vague or distinct. He knew this, and it made him feel safe. Naturally, they would not forget what had happened, and certain of his features would remain salient, but they would not recognize him the way he really looked.

Let them pursue their investigations. They knew nothing. Ferslev and the van were gone, and he would be, too, before long. Exit the average man, from this average residential street in Roskilde. A man in a comfortable detached home, one of a million others in this small country.

In a few days, when Isabel was able to talk, they would know what he had been up to all these years, but would still have no idea of his identity. That was something known only to him, and that was the way he wanted it to remain. But there would be mention in the media. A lot, even. Warnings would go out for potential victims to be aware, and for that reason alone he would have to suspend his activities for some time. He would live modestly on his savings and find himself new bases from which to operate.

He looked around his tidy home. Although his wife had looked after the place and they had spent a fair amount of money on repairs and improvements, the financial crisis meant it was a bad time for selling property. Still, it would have to go.

Experience told him that if a person was compelled to disappear, burning selected bridges would always be insufficient. There could be no half-measures: new car, new bank, new name, new address, new circles. As long as there was a good explanation, so friends and neighbors understood why you were going, things would work out. A new job abroad, good money, pleasant climate. Anyone could understand that. No one would bat an eyelid.

In other words: no sudden, irrational behavior.