Babylon (27 page)
‘He owed money to a lot of other people.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘Did Henrik have a drug problem?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Come on, you were his best mate. You’d know about something like that.’
‘In that case, no he didn’t. Who says?’
‘Come again?’
‘Who says I was his best mate?’
‘One thing I’m wondering, Axel . . . How long had you actually known Henrik? Did you get to know each other on the course, or before?’
‘On the course.’
‘In the archaeology department?’
‘The Department of Archaeology and Ancient Civilisations.’
‘I couldn’t give a toss about its proper name.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘You’re lying. But why?’
‘I’m not lying, I just told you . . . the proper name. But OK, if you’re asking where we met for the first time, it was . . .’ He seemed to be thinking back. ‘A few years ago now. We were both doing a course in RE. No, hang on. We’d seen each other at Nefertiti.’
‘And what the fuck is that?’
‘It’s a jazz club.’
‘And you got acquainted?’
‘Yes, you could say that.’
‘Started hanging out?’
Donner shook his head firmly. ‘No. We didn’t hang out. But we
ended up choosing some of the same modules, there was . . . RE, social anthropology and—’
‘When did you become friends?’
‘When we started archaeology, I suppose.’
‘Isn’t that a bit odd? That you kept choosing the same courses just by chance but still you didn’t talk to each other?’
‘That’s not what I said. I said we didn’t hang out together.’
Bärneflod stared unashamedly at Axel Donner, who squirmed.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘You.’ He changed tack. ‘You’re from the country, aren’t you? From somewhere up north?’
‘Is this an interrogation? If so, I have the right to remain silent.’
Bärneflod let out a loud laugh.
‘You’re a funny bugger, make no mistake. I ask you questions about your dead friend, and you answer nice as pie. And then I start making small talk, and
that’s
when you kick off!’
‘I don’t see why I have to talk to you about where I come from.’
Bärneflod straightened up.
‘Indeed you don’t. You don’t have to say a single bloody word to me. For the time being. But you are not leaving this place, not until I say: Now you can go. Until then, you are to be on hand, in case I or one of my colleagues wishes to bring you in for a more formal interview. And if that happens, my friend, you will have to answer all our questions.’
Was the little bastard smirking? Yes, he was. He wasn’t a fan of the police, Bärneflod had clocked that straight away.
‘Thanks for the drink.’
Copenhagen
Gonzales was on his way back through the city after a bewilderingly short meeting with his boss. Tell’s mood, upbeat and frazzled in equal
measure, had proved infectious and Gonzales was now finding it extremely difficult to manoeuvre his car through the busy city centre streets.
The tip-off about Karpov’s assistants had had the expected effect on Tell: he wanted to act on that lead immediately. He had given Gonzales a brief summary of his progress so far in the interview with Enrique Pedersen.
‘He must have made contact with Mads Torsen through his older sister. She’s well known to the police – she’s been on the game for years. The question is, should we ask the police here to trace those links and any possible intermediaries so that we can get a full picture? That would leave us free to concentrate on Iversen and Sørbækk.’
The colour in Tell’s cheeks had risen with the heat and excitement. ‘We need to check out all known associates of Mads Torsen.’
Gonzales agreed. ‘Karpov wanted to see you in person. I presume he wanted to explain why his assistants broke into Samuelsson’s house.’
‘You mean, why they seem to have hired Torsen and Pedersen to break in, you mean?’
‘Alexandr just said that his assistants knew that Samuelsson had valuable stolen goods at home.’
Tell threw his arms wide. ‘I think we have to consider all the possibilities. Enrique Pedersen has confessed to the break-in, and said they were looking for specific objects, to order. He said he didn’t know who they were working for, and that everything had gone through Torsen. I didn’t have time to push him on this but, according to Karpov, Iversen and Sørbækk are most likely the masterminds.’
‘That’s what I understood, but Karpov was fairly cryptic.’
‘And he’s in London?’
Gonzales looked at his watch. ‘He’s actually due back at Glyptoteket this afternoon. Any moment now, in fact.’
‘The alternative is to get Pedersen to confess to the murders. If he’s guilty, that is. Or see if he can point us in the direction of the murderer,’ said Tell. ‘They were definitely in the house on Kungsladugårdsgatan; we’ve got proof.’
‘But as far as we know they weren’t in the apartment on Linnégatan.’
‘No.’
After a brief discussion they decided that Gonzales should drive over to Glyptoteket to catch up with Karpov’s assistants.
The risk was that Iversen and Sørbækk might suspect something was wrong and do a runner, or jeopardise the investigation in some other way.
‘Don’t give much away at first, just talk to them about their professional relationship with Karpov,’ Tell decided. ‘You’ll be on your own, after all. I’ll talk to Dragsted about bringing them in for questioning later. That way we’ll save time. I’ll go back and talk to Pedersen again. Whoever finishes first joins the other. We’ll keep in touch by phone.’
Gonzales had nodded, his facial muscles twitching and a hurricane brewing in his stomach. He’d hit the big time. Just him and Tell in a critical situation. They would solve the case and return to Gothenburg triumphant. Gonzales was delighted with his decision to drive down to Copenhagen; it had thrown him right into the middle of things, side by side with Tell.
He could feel himself blushing at his own hubris. He was glad Tell couldn’t read his mind.
There was no way of parking legally near Glyptoteket. Gonzales left his car on the pavement and hoped the Swedish police badge on his windscreen would act as a permit.
Gonzales didn’t know whether Karpov’s assistants would be prepared to talk to him. In fact, he had absolutely no idea how he was going to conduct the conversation.
Play it cool, Tell had said. Just check out the lie of the land. Did he mean Gonzales shouldn’t let them know that the police were on their trail? But how the hell was he supposed to ask them about their involvement in this antiques business without giving the game away? It was impossible, surely.
The receptionist was unable to help him locate either Iversen or Sørbækk. However, one of the guards thought he knew where they worked, and fifteen minutes later Gonzales found himself outside the door of an underground room, in a wing of the museum closed to the public.
‘Michael Gonzales, Gothenburg police. I’d like to ask you a few questions with regard to a case involving valuable stolen goods.’
He thought it was a relatively innocuous introduction.
Knud Iversen was older than Gonzales had expected – perhaps the
title ‘assistant’ had misled him – and seemed to hesitate before stepping back to let Gonzales in. He was wearing black jeans and a short-sleeved pale-blue shirt. His face was large and square with a prominent hook nose and deep-set eyes; he was tanned, with unevenly coloured, acne-scarred skin.
The storeroom wasn’t very big, and didn’t look the way Gonzales had imagined. Broad shelves lined three of the walls from floor to ceiling and contained labelled cardboard boxes.
Iversen closed a drawer in the bank of filing cabinets propped against the other wall, as if he wanted to hide its contents from Gonzales. Then he stood motionless.
‘Sit down.’ Gonzales pointed to a chair. ‘I believe you have a colleague, Dorte Sørbækk?’
‘She’s off sick today.’
‘OK.’
Gonzales thought for a moment.
‘We’re investigating an incident which took place in Gothenburg on May 7th. I can’t go into detail, but a number of clues lead to Glyptoteket and . . . other places in Copenhagen. We’ve been in touch with the Danish police.’
‘May 7th?’
At that moment they heard footsteps in the corridor. With a barely perceptible shift in his posture, Knud Iversen braced himself.
There was a hesitant knock at the door. Gonzales went to open it, but stopped and spun around when the man behind him shouted, ‘No! Wait!’
It was over in seconds. Gonzales had no time to react before Iversen was on his feet. The door opened and Iversen shoved past Karpov, who lost his balance and fell backwards in the confusion.
‘What the . . .’
Gonzales came to his senses and made an impressive leap over the professor. Something crunched beneath his right shoe.
‘Stop, you bastard!’
He was halfway up the stairs when a door slammed shut in front of him. It was locked.
‘Open this fucking door! Give me . . .’
Karpov was whimpering; he groped for his glasses and found them broken by his side just as Gonzales snatched the pass hanging on a
cord around his neck. When the door leading to the upper level opened, after long seconds of fiddling, the staircase was deserted.
‘Fuck!’
Gonzales took the stairs up to the next door in a couple of long strides. He found himself in one of the exhibition halls. Having pushed a bewildered family to one side, he reached the foyer.
‘Iversen!’
Gonzales stood panting on the steps in front of Dante Alighieri’s statue, resting his hands on his knees.
If Gonzales had intended not to give the game away, he had failed miserably. But he had extracted a confession of sorts in less than five minutes; you could hardly interpret Iversen’s behaviour in any other way.
Gonzales gradually became aware of the distant screams from the Tivoli theme park as the roller coaster rose and fell. He grabbed his mobile and rang Tell.
Copenhagen
Dorte Sørbækk didn’t have time to have a cigarette, but if there was one thing she had learnt the hard way over the years, it was to take things slowly. Much better to compose herself and decide on her next move.
She sat by the window and came to the conclusion that there was no way out for her. She had walked into a trap, but she wasn’t going to stand back and wait for the consequences.
Deep breaths.
Iversen’s apartment had only two windows. One was in the room which looked onto Lundtoftegade, where people strolled along chatting, never thinking that someone could be sitting on the ground floor, by a window that was barely ajar, listening to what they said. If you sat there you were in direct contact with the outside world, with the sun-dappled
pavements and the soles of people’s shoes. Not much else was visible from where she sat, apart from tree trunks. Not like higher up in the building, where light flowed in freely and dark-green leaves muffled the noise of the traffic. And yet the room felt fresh. She usually sat in this alcove when she was feeling upbeat, seeking inspiration from other people’s lives.
When she was feeling low she would sit in the kitchen, gazing out over the grubby courtyard, a patch of asphalt which the sun never reached. The narrow flowerbeds beside the frame for beating rugs had yielded nothing for years. Dead twigs protruded from the solid earth. Only the rats were alive. Rats so bold they hardly bothered to run away if you stepped over them. She found their slanting eyes so penetrating. Calculating, somehow; she was convinced that rats were intelligent, that they had been forced to develop intelligence to survive side by side with man. And the evil expression in their eyes was almost human.
It was cold, as always. The cold was what she hated most about Knud’s apartment. Regardless of the temperature outside, the stairwell was cold, as were the tiny rooms. In the past they had never been able to afford wood for the stove, which was still the only source of heat; instead they had collected fallen branches in the park, loading them onto Knud’s old Christiana bicycle. When developers renovated and rebuilt large parts of the area – there weren’t many apartments like this one left now – she and Knud would clamber over barriers and take the waste timber, tumbling back down onto the pavements with their arms full of wood. Otherwise the gas hob was the best way of warming up red, frozen hands; they would gather round its straggling flame until their energy returned.
She clasped her hands tightly. Her mobile battery was low, and her charger was at home. Knud would soon be boarding the plane to Bangkok. Bastard. He’d booked his ticket in advance, just in case everything went wrong. There was no ticket for her. For the past week he had been tetchy and evasive – he would barely respond when she spoke. He had carried himself with a vague air of regret, which had become more and more obvious in his body language. Even though she didn’t know the reason behind it, she was almost certain. He had blown her out.
If only she had the courage to ring Alexandr! To hear his voice telling her that he forgave her for this too.
She was ashamed; that was the only reason she had stayed away from work.
Dorte rested her head against the window frame. It was a double betrayal. Her eyes burnt: it was the only time Alexandr had come to
them
to ask for help. Dorte had been so happy that he trusted them – so often he was the one helping them, when the baggage of their pasts weighed them down and reason flew out of the window. Alexandr always allowed their outbursts to pass like a patient uncle, his dignity and wisdom eventually penetrating their fucked-up minds.
As she’d expected, Ann-Marie was the root of his trouble. It was clear that Alexandr still hadn’t got over the divorce. That he still nurtured a hope that they might get back together. Dorte thought Alexandr would walk over coals for the sake of his ex-wife.
Knud had maintained that it was Alexandr who had first hinted at the break-in even though Dorte knew that wasn’t true. Knud said the plan was simple: steal the immensely valuable artefacts Henrik Samuelsson was using to threaten and blackmail Ann-Marie. He insisted that it was a way of repaying the debt of gratitude they owed Alexandr. To take a risk and
defend
Ann-Marie would be the ultimate proof of loyalty.
