A Conspiracy of Faith (66 page)

“Surely you know what cars they drive? Don’t you go off to tournaments together?”

He nodded. “Yes, but we always meet up here first. Some of us keep our gear in the lockers upstairs, and Jonas and I have got an old VW camper with room for the six of us. It’s cheaper, going together.”

His answers were plausible and seemed natural enough, even if the man was beginning to look like a poor excuse for himself.

“Who are the other team members, exactly? Can you point them out to me?” Carl said, then thought better of it. “No, hang on a minute. First tell me where you got those bowling-ball key rings of yours. Are they common? The sort of thing you can buy in any bowling alley?”

Brande shook his head. “Not these ones. The number one is because we’re good.” He smiled wryly again. “Normally there’s nothing on them, or just a number indicating the ball size you use. Never a number one, because they don’t make them that small. No, one of the lads brought these home from Thailand.” He produced his own from his pocket. Small, dark, and worn. Nothing special to look at, not even with the number engraved on it.

“The lads here and a couple more from the old team are the only ones
who’ve got them,” he went on. “I think he came home with ten, if my memory serves me right.”

“And who would that be?”

“Svend. Bloke in the blue blazer. Sitting over there chewing gum, looks like a gentlemen’s outfitter. I believe he actually was once.”

Carl eyeballed him. Like the rest of the team, he was keeping a close eye on proceedings, wondering what the police might want with their captain.

“OK. So you’re on the same team. Does that mean you practice together and stuff?” Carl asked. He made a mental note that it would be good to know if any of them made a habit of not being able to turn out.

“Jonas and I do, and one or two others might join us once in a while. Mostly for laughs, though. We used to more in the old days, not so often now.” He smiled again. “A couple of us might get in a bit of practice before a match, but apart from that, we don’t really train at all. Maybe we should, but what the hell. If you’re notching up over two hundred and fifty almost every game, there’s hardly room for improvement, is there?”

“Would any of you have a visible scar?”

Brande gave a shrug. They would have to check each of them individually afterward.

“Is it OK to sit down, do you think?” Carl gestured toward the eating area, where tables were lined up with white tablecloths on them.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Right, I’ll sit down there, then. Would you ask your brother to come over?”

Jonas Brande was plainly confused. What was this all about? Why was it so important they had to change the order of play?

Carl didn’t answer. “Where were you this afternoon between three fifteen and three forty-five? Can you account for your whereabouts?”

Carl considered him. Masculine. Forty-fiveish. Was this the man he had seen outside the lifts at the hospital today? The man in the drawing?

Jonas Brande leaned forward slightly. “Between three fifteen and three forty-five? I couldn’t really say, to be honest.”

“I see. Nice watch you’ve got there, Jonas. You don’t look at it much, then?”

The man laughed unexpectedly. “Well, I do actually. I just don’t wear it when I’m at work. It’s worth about thirty-five thousand, this. I inherited it from our father.”

“So you were at work between three fifteen and three forty-five? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty certain I would have been.”

“So how come you couldn’t say?”

“What I meant was I couldn’t say whether I was in the workshop, outside repairing beehives, or over in the barn putting a new cog in the extractor.”

He wasn’t the brighter of the two brothers. Or was he?

“Do you sell a lot on the side?”

This was a turn he had not been expecting. So obviously they did. Not that it bothered Carl. That was another department altogether. All he wanted was to get a picture of who exactly he had in front of him.

“Have you got a criminal record, Jonas? And I can check as easy as that.” He snapped his fingers in the air. Or tried to.

Jonas Brande shook his head.

“What about the other blokes on the team?”

“Why are you asking?”

“I’d like an answer.”

He withdrew slightly. “I think maybe Johnny Go, Throttle, and Pope.”

Carl leaned his head back. Fucking stupid names. “And who might they be, when they’re at home?”

Jonas Brande narrowed his eyes as he looked over at the men by the bar. “Birger Nielsen, the bald bloke, he plays the piano in a bar. That’s why we call him Johnny Go. Throttle’s the bloke next to him. Mikkel, his proper name is. He’s a motorcycle mechanic in the city. I don’t think either of them ever did anything serious. In Birger’s case I think it was just some
little racket selling booze without the revenue stamps. Mikkel got done for dealing stolen cars. A good many years ago now, though. Why do you want to know?”

“What about the third guy you mentioned? Pope, is that right? That would be Svend, the bloke in the blue blazer?”

“Yeah. Catholic, he is. Hence the nickname. Don’t know much about him apart from that. He was up to something in Thailand, I think.”

“And who’s the one remaining? The guy sitting talking to your brother. Is he the one who’s leaving the team?”

“Yeah, that’s René. He’s our best player, so it’s a bit of a blow. René Henriksen, like the footballer, the central defender who used to play for Denmark. That’s why we call him Three.”

“Because that was Henriksen’s shirt number?”

“It was at some point, anyway.”

“Have you got any ID on you, Jonas? Something with your civil registration number on it?”

He reached obediently into his pocket and produced a driver’s license.

Carl wrote down the number.

“By the way, do any of you drive a Mercedes?”

Jonas Brande shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. You see, we usually meet up…”

Carl didn’t have time to hear the same story twice.

“Thanks, Jonas. Can I ask you to send René over, please?”

Their eyes were fixed on each other from the moment he stood up in the bar to the moment he sat down in front of Carl.

On the face of it, an agreeable sort. Not that one should ever be taken in, but decently dressed, well groomed, and with a firm, affable gaze.

“René Henriksen,” the man said by way of introduction, tugging at the creases of his trousers as he sat down. “I understand from Lars Brande that you’ve got some kind of investigation on the go. Not that he said anything. I’m surmising, that’s all. Has it got something to do with Svend?”

Carl considered the man closely. Perhaps rather too narrow in the face, though maybe it was just the chubby cheeks of youth falling away as the years advanced. High temples, hair recently trimmed. But a hairpiece would cover all that. There was something about his eyes that gave Carl a funny feeling. Those fine wrinkles weren’t just smile lines.

“Svend? You mean Pope, I suppose?” Carl smiled, though it was the last thing he felt like doing.

The man raised his eyebrows.

“Why would you think this has to do with Svend, I wonder?” Carl said.

The man’s expression changed. No longer keen and on his guard, now almost the opposite. A shameful, caught-in-the-act kind of look, like being found out to be ignorant instead of clever.

“Oh,” he said. “My mistake. It was wrong of me to mention Svend like that. Can we start again?”

“OK. You’re leaving the team, I understand. Planning on moving?” Carl asked.

Again, that same look, as if the man suddenly felt naked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve been offered a job in Libya, in charge of a project. Huge solar panels in the desert, generating power through one central unit. It’s quite revolutionary. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“Sounds interesting. What’s the company called?”

“Ah, that’s the dull part.” He smiled. “For the time being, it’s nothing but the company’s registration number. The people behind it haven’t been able to agree yet whether the name should be in Arabic or English, but I can tell you that the company presently goes under the name 773 PB 55.”

Carl nodded. “How many on the team here drive a Mercedes, besides you?”

“Who says I’ve got a Mercedes?” The man shook his head. “As far as I know, Svend’s the only one with a Merc. Usually, though, he comes here on foot. He hasn’t that far to go.”

“How would you know Svend drives a Mercedes? Jonas and Lars gave me the impression you drive to the tournaments together in their camper.”

“And so we do. But Svend and I see each other privately. Have done for some years now. Or used to, at least. I haven’t been around to his place for some time, though, obviously. But before that, we used to see quite a bit of each other. He’s still driving the same car, I know that for sure. A disability pension doesn’t go far.”

“What’s ‘obviously’ supposed to mean?”

“Well, his trips to Thailand, you know? Isn’t that what this is about?”

This had all the hallmarks of a diversionary maneuver. “What trips? I’m not from the Drug Squad, if that’s what you think.”

Now the man looked like he was at a total loss. Was he play-acting?

“Drugs? No, that wasn’t what I was thinking,” he said. “Listen, I don’t want to land him in it. It’s probably just me getting the wrong idea, that’s all.”

“Maybe you ought to elaborate on these suspicions of yours? Unless you prefer to be taken in for questioning at Police HQ?”

The man cocked his head. “No, thanks, anything but. What I mean is, Svend let it slip once that these trips of his to Thailand were all about organizing local women to accompany infants to Germany. Babies selected for adoption by approved childless couples. He takes care of all the paperwork and reckons he’s doing people a favor. The thing is, I don’t think he’s that bothered about where the kids are coming from, if you understand what I’m getting at?” He shook his head. “He’s a great tenpin bowler, so I’ve no qualms about being on the team with him, but since I found out what he was up to with those children I’ve not been over to his place once.”

Carl looked across at the man in the blue blazer. Could it be a smokescreen to cover up for something else? Stick to the truth but not too closely was the code of most criminals. Maybe he didn’t go to Thailand at all. Maybe he was the kidnapper and needed an alibi for his bowling mates while carrying out his despicable trade.

“Does anyone on the team sing particularly well, or badly?”

The man cracked up laughing. “I’m afraid we don’t sing that much.”

“What about yourself?”

“Oh, I’m a good singer. I was a verger once, at the church in Fløng. In the choir, too. Do you want to hear me?”

“No, thanks. What about Svend, is he a singer?”

He shook his head. “No idea. Is that why you’re here?”

Carl forced a crooked smile. “Does any one of you have a visible scar?”

The man gave a shrug. Carl couldn’t eliminate him yet. He sensed it. Definitely not.

“Have you got any ID on you? Something with your civil registration number on it?”

The man said nothing but reached into a pocket and produced a thin wallet of the kind meant only for credit cards and the like. Lars Bjørn at Police HQ had one, too. Maybe it was a status symbol of some sort. What would he know?

Carl wrote down the man’s details, noting his age. Forty-four years old, which fitted their assumptions.

“What was the number of your new company again?”

“It’s 773 PB 55. Why?”

If Carl himself had made up such a ridiculous name on the spur of the moment, he would have forgotten it again two minutes later. So the man was probably telling the truth.

Carl shrugged.

“One more thing. What were you doing between three and four o’clock this afternoon?”

The man pondered.

“Let me see. Between three and four. Getting my hair cut at a place on Allehelgensgade. I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow, so I need to look presentable.”

The man smoothed a hand over his temple to demonstrate. It certainly looked like it had just been cut. But they would have to check as soon as they were done here.