Mercy (32 page)

Slowly she stood up as the shadows merged in the smashed panes.

Lasse’s voice was ice-cold. ‘So maybe you finally understand what hate is! Maybe now you understand, Merete!’ he shouted back.

‘Lasse, don’t you think we should blow up the building now?’ the woman broke in.

Merete listened intently.

There was a pause. He must be thinking. It was her life that was at stake. He was figuring out how best to get away with killing her. It was no longer about her – she was done for. It was about saving their own skins.

‘No, the way things are, we can’t do it. We’ll have to wait. They mustn’t suspect that anything is wrong. If we blow everything up now, it will ruin our plan. We won’t get the insurance money, Mum. We’ll be forced to disappear. For good.’

‘I’ll never manage that, Lasse,’ said the woman.

Then die with me, you witch, thought Merete.

Not since the day when she looked into Lasse’s eyes at their rendezvous at Café Bankeråt had she heard him speak so gently. ‘I know, Mum. I know,’ he said. He almost sounded human for a moment, but then came the question that made Merete press even harder on her wounded wrist. ‘Did you say that she’s blocked the door of the airlock?’

‘Yes. Can’t you hear it? The pressure is being equalized much too slowly.’

‘Then I’m going to set the timer.’

‘The timer, Lasse? But it takes twenty minutes before the nozzles will open. Isn’t there any other solution? She’s stabbed herself, Lasse. Can’t we shut off the ventilation system?’

The timer? Hadn’t they said that they could release the pressure whenever they liked? That she wouldn’t have time to hurt herself before they opened it up? Was that a lie?

Hysteria began rising inside her. Watch out, Merete, she told herself. Don’t over-react. Don’t retreat inside yourself.

‘Shut off the ventilation system? What good would that do?’ Lasse was clearly annoyed. ‘The air was changed yesterday. It will take at least eight days for her to use up the oxygen. No, I’m going to set the timer.’

‘Having problems?’ Merete shouted. ‘Doesn’t your shitty system work after all, Lasse?’

He tried to make it seem he was laughing at her, but she wasn’t fooled. It was obvious that her scorn made him furious.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, controlling himself. ‘My father built this system. It was the world’s most sophisticated pressure testing system in the world. This is where you got the finest and most thoroughly tested containment linings on earth. Most other places pump water into the containment and pressure-test it from the inside, but my father’s company also applied pressure from outside. Everything was done with the utmost precision. The timer controlled the temperature and humidity in the room and set all the parameters, so the pressure couldn’t be equalized too fast. Otherwise the containers would crack during quality control. That’s why it all takes time, Merete! That’s why!’

They were crazy, all of them. ‘You really do have problems’ she yelled. ‘You’re all insane. You’re finished, just like me.’

‘Problems? I’ll give you problems!’ he raged. She heard some clattering outside and quick steps in the hall. Then a shadow appeared at the edge of the glass, and two deafening bangs came through the loudspeaker system before she saw one of the windowpanes change colour again. Now it was almost totally white and opaque.

‘You’d better pulverize this building completely, Lasse, because I’ve left so many calling cards in here that you won’t be able to remove them all. You won’t get away.’ She laughed. ‘You won’t get away with it. I’ve made that impossible for all of you.’

The next minute she heard six more bangs. They were evidently from shots fired in pairs. But both windowpanes held.

A short time later she began feeling pressure in her shoulder. Not too much, but it was still uncomfortable. She also had pressure in her forehead, sinuses and jaw. Her skin felt tight. If this was the effect of the slight equalization caused by the minuscule crack in the door, then what awaited her when they released all the pressure would be absolutely intolerable.

‘The police are coming!’ she yelled. ‘I can feel it.’ She looked down at her bleeding arm. The police wouldn’t arrive in time; she knew that. Soon she’d be forced to lift her thumb away from the wound. In twenty minutes the nozzles would open.

She felt something warm sliding down her other arm, and saw that the first wound had opened itself menacingly. Lasse’s prophecies were going to come true. When the pressure inside her body increased, the blood would come gushing out.

She twisted her body slightly so she could press her other trickling wrist against her knee. For a second she laughed. It felt like some sort of child’s game from the distant past.

‘I’m activating the timer now, Merete,’ he said. ‘In twenty minutes the nozzles will open and release the pressure in the room. It will take about another half-hour before the room is back down to one atmosphere. It’s true that you have time to kill yourself now, before that happens. I don’t doubt that. But I won’t be able to watch any more, Merete, understand? I can’t see you because the glass is totally opaque. And if I can’t see you, nobody else can either. We’re going to seal up the pressure chamber, Merete. We have lots of plasterboard out here. So, you’re going to die in the meantime, one way or the other.’

She heard the woman laugh.

‘Come on, brother, help me with this,’ she heard Lasse say. His voice sounded different now. In control.

There was a scraping sound, and slowly the room got darker and darker. Then they turned off the floodlights and more plasterboard was piled against the panes until at last it was pitch dark.

‘Good night, Merete,’ he said softly out there. ‘May you burn in hell for all eternity.’ Then he switched off the loudspeaker, and everything went quiet.

38

The same day

The traffic jam on the E20 was much worse than usual. Even though the police siren was about to drive Carl crazy, the people sitting in their cars didn’t seem to hear a thing. They were immersed in their own thoughts, with the radio turned up full blast, wishing they were far away.

Assad sat in the passenger seat, pounding the dashboard with impatience. They drove along the verge for the last few kilometres before they reached the exit, while the vehicles ahead of them were forced to squeeze close together to let them pass.

When they finally stopped outside the farm, Assad pointed accross the road. ‘Was that car there before?’ he asked.

Carl caught sight of it only after scanning the landscape from the gravel road into no-man’s-land. The vehicle was hidden behind some shrubbery about a hundred yards away. What they saw was presumably the bonnet of a steel-grey four-wheel-drive.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, trying to ignore the ringing of his mobile in his jacket pocket. He pulled the phone out and looked at the number displayed. It was police headquarters.

‘Yeah. This is Mørck,’ he said as he looked at the farm buildings. Everything seemed the same. No sign of panic or flight.

It was Lis on the line, and she sounded smug. ‘It’s working again, Carl. All the databases are functioning. It was the interior minister’s wife. She finally coughed up the antidote to all the trouble she’d set in motion. And Mrs Sørensen has already entered all the possible CR combinations for Lars Henrik Jensen, as Assad asked her to do. I think it was a lot of work, so you owe her a big bouquet. But she found the man. Two of the digits had been changed, just as Assad assumed. He’s registered on Strøhusvej in Greve.’ Then she gave him the house number.

Carl looked at some wrought-iron numbers affixed to one of the buildings. Yes, it was the same number. ‘Thanks, Lis,’ he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘And give Mrs Sørensen my thanks too. She did a really great job.’

‘Wait, Carl, there’s more.’

Carl took a deep breath as he saw Assad’s dark eyes scanning the property in front of them. Carl felt it too. There was something really strange about the way these people had set up home here. It was not normal. Not at all.

‘Lars Henrik Jensen has no criminal record, and he’s a ship’s steward by trade,’ he heard Lis continue to talk. ‘He works for the Merconi shipping company and mostly sails on ships in the Baltic. I just talked to his employer, and Lars Henrik Jensen is responsible for the catering on most of their ships. They said he was a very capable man. And by the way, they all call him Lasse.’

Carl shifted his eyes away from the property. ‘Do you have a mobile number for him, Lis?’

‘Only a landline.’ She rattled it off, but Carl didn’t write it down. What good would it do them? Should they call to say that they’d be arriving in two minutes?

‘No mobile number?’

‘At that address the only one listed is for a Hans Jensen.’

OK. So that was the name of the thin young man. Carl got the number and thanked Lis again.

‘What did she say?’ asked Assad.

Carl shrugged and took the car’s registration certificate out of the glove compartment. ‘Nothing we don’t already know, Assad. Shall we get going?’

The gaunt young man opened the door as soon as they knocked. He didn’t say a word, just let them in, almost as if they’d been expected.

Apparently it was supposed to look as if he and the woman had been eating a meal in peace and quiet, sitting about thirty feet from the door at a table covered with a floral oilcloth. Their meal was presumably a tin of ravioli. But Carl was sure that if he checked, he’d find the food ice-cold. They couldn’t fool him. They should save that game for amateurs.

‘We’ve brought a search warrant,’ he said, pulling the car registration out of his pocket and briefly holding it up for them to see. The young man flinched at the sight of it.

‘May we take a look around?’ With a wave of his hand Carl sent Assad over to the monitors.

‘That, apparently, was a rhetorical question,’ said the woman. She was holding a glass of water in her hand, and she looked worn-out. The obstinate look in her eyes was gone, but she didn’t seem scared. Just resigned.

‘What are you using those monitors for?’ he asked after Assad checked out the bathroom. He pointed at the green light visible through the cloth draped over the screens.

‘Oh, that’s something that Hans set up,’ said the woman. ‘We live way out here in the country, and we hear about so many bad things happening these days. We wanted to put up some cameras so we could monitor the area around the house.’

He watched Assad pull off the cloth and shake his head. ‘They’re blank, Carl. All three of them.’

‘May I ask you, Hans, why the screens are on if they’re not connected?’

The man looked at his mother.

‘They’re always on,’ she told them. ‘The power comes from the junction box.’

‘The junction box? I see! And where is that?’

‘I don’t know. Lasse would know.’ She gave Carl a triumphant look. She’d led him into a dead end. There he was, peering up at an insurmountable wall. Or so she thought.

‘We heard from the shipping company that Lasse isn’t on board a ship at the moment. So where is he?’

She smiled easily. ‘When Lasse isn’t out sailing, he keeps company with the ladies. It’s not something he tells his mother about, nor should he.’

Her smile got bigger. Those yellow teeth of hers were just itching to make a lunge at him.

‘Come on, Assad,’ said Carl. ‘There’s nothing for us to do in here. Let’s go look at the other buildings.’

He caught a glimpse of the woman as he headed for the door. She was already reaching for her pack of cigarettes, the smile gone from her face. So they were on the right track.

‘Keep a close eye on everything, Assad. We’ll take that building first,’ said Carl, pointing to the one that towered high above all the others. ‘Stay right here and let me know if anything happens down by the other buildings. OK, Assad?’

He nodded.

As Carl turned away, he heard a quiet but all too familiar click behind him. He swung around to find Assad with a shiny, four-inch-long switchblade in his hand. Used correctly, it presented serious problems for an opponent; use it incorrectly, and everybody was in trouble.

‘What the hell are you doing, Assad? How’d that get here?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s magic, Carl. I will then make it disappear like magic afterwards. I promise.’

‘You’d better do that, damn it.’

Having his mind blown by Assad was apparently turning into a permanent condition. Possession of an illegal weapon? How the hell had he come up with something so stupid?

‘We’re on duty here, Assad. Do you understand? This is as wrong as it gets. Give me the knife.’

The expertise with which Assad instantly closed up the switchblade was worrisome.

Carl weighed the knife in his hand before he stuck it in his jacket pocket, accompanied by Assad’s look of disapproval. Even Carl’s big old Scout knife weighed less than this one.

The enormous hall was built on a concrete floor foundation that had been cracked from frost and water that had seeped in. The gaping holes where the windows should have been were black and rotting around the edges, and the laminated beams supporting the ceiling had also suffered from the weather. It was a huge space. Aside from some debris and fifteen or twenty buckets like the ones he’d seen scattered about the grounds, the room was completely empty.

He kicked one of the buckets, which spun round, sending up a putrid stench. By the time it stopped, it had cast off a ring of sludge. Carl leaned down to take a closer look. Were those the remains of toilet paper? He shook his head. The buckets had probably been exposed to all types of weather and then filled up with rain water. Anything would stink and look like this, given enough time.

He looked at the bottom of the bucket and identified the logo of the Merconi shipping company stamped into the plastic. The buckets were probably used for bringing home leftover food from the ships.

He grabbed a solid iron bar from the junk pile and went to get Assad. Together they walked over to the furthest of the three adjacent buildings.

‘Stay here,’ said Carl as he studied the padlock on the door that supposedly only Lasse had a key to. ‘Come and get me, Assad, if you see anything strange,’ he added, then stuck the iron bar under the padlock. In his old police car he’d had an entire toolbox that could have sprung something like this lock in a flash. Now he had to clench his teeth and try brute force.

He kept at it for thirty seconds before Assad came over and quietly took the iron bar away from him.

OK, let the young gun give it a try, thought Carl.

It took only a second before the broken lock lay in the gravel at Assad’s feet.

A few moments later, Carl stepped inside the building, feeling both defeated and on high alert.

The room was similar to the one where Mrs Jensen lived, but instead of furniture, a row of welding cylinders in various colours stood in the middle of the space, along with maybe a hundred yards of empty steel shelves. In the far corner sheets of stainless-steel had been piled up next to a door. There was not much else. Carl took a closer look at the door. It couldn’t lead out of the building or else he would have noticed.

He went over and tried to open it. The brass handle was shiny, and the door was locked. He looked at the Ruko lock; it too was shiny from recent use.

‘Assad, come in here,’ he shouted. ‘And bring that iron bar!’.

‘I thought you told me to stay outside,’ said Assad as he joined Carl.

Carl pointed to the bar Assad was holding and then to the door. ‘Show me what you can do.’

The room they entered was filled with the heavy scent of cologne. A bed, desk, computer, full-size mirror, red Wiltax blanket, an open wardrobe containing suits and two or three blue uniforms, a sink with a glass shelf and plenty of bottles of aftershave. The bed was made, the papers were stacked up neatly. There was nothing to indicate that the person who lived here was unbalanced.

‘Why do you think he locked the door, Carl?’ asked Assad as he lifted up the desk blotter to glance underneath. Then he knelt down and looked under the bed.

Carl inspected the rest of the room. Assad was right. There didn’t seem to be anything to hide, so why lock the door?

‘There
is
something, Carl. Or there then would not be a lock.’

Carl nodded and began poking around inside the wardrobe. The smell of cologne was even stronger. It seemed to be clinging to the clothes. He knocked on the back wall, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In the meantime Assad lifted up the carpet. No trapdoor.

They examined the ceiling and the walls and then both of them stared at the mirror, hanging there so alone. The wall around it was painted a dull chalk-white.

Carl knocked on the wall with his knuckles. It seemed solid.

Maybe we can take the mirror off, he thought, but it was fastened securely. Then Assad pressed his cheek against the wall and peered behind the mirror.

‘I think it hangs on a hinge on the other side. I can see some kind of lock here.’

He stuck his finger behind the mirror and coaxed the latch out of the lock. Then he grabbed the edge and pulled. The whole room panned past in the mirror as it slid aside to reveal a pitch-black hole in the wall, as tall as a man.

The next time we’re out in the field, I’m going to be better prepared, thought Carl. In his mind he saw the pencil-sized pocket torch lying on top of the piles of paper in his desk drawer. He stuck his hand inside the hole in the wall, fumbling for a light switch and longing for his service revolver. The next instant he felt the pressure in his chest.

He took a deep breath and tried to listen. No, damn it, there couldn’t be anybody inside. How could they have locked themselves in with a padlock on the outer door? Was it conceivable that Lasse Jensen’s brother or mother had been told to lock Lasse in his hiding place if the police came back and started snooping around?

He found the light switch further along the wall and pressed it, ready to jump back if anyone was inside, waiting for them. It took a second for the scene in front of them to stop flickering as the fluorescent lights came on.

And then everything became clear.

They had found the right person. There was no doubt about it.

Carl noticed how Assad slipped silently into the room behind him as he moved closer to the bulletin boards and the worn steel tables along the wall. He stared at the photos of Merete Lynggaard, taken in all sorts of situations. From her first appearance on the speaker’s podium to the cosy home setting on the leaf-covered lawn in Stevns. Carefree moments captured by someone who wished to do her harm.

Carl looked down at one of the steel tables and understood at once the systematic way in which this Lasse, aka Lars Henrik Jensen, had worked his way towards his goal.

The first papers were from Godhavn. He lifted up a corner of a few documents and saw the original case files on Lars Henrik Jensen, the files that had disappeared years ago. He’d used some of the sheets of paper to practise, making clumsy attempts at altering his CR number. Along the way he got better at it, and by the top sheet of paper, he’d done a good job. Yes, Lasse had tampered with the documents at Godhavn, and that had won him time.

Assad pointed at the next pile of papers, which contained the correspondence between Lasse and Daniel Hale. Apparently InterLab hadn’t yet been paid the balance for the buildings that Lasse’s father had taken over so many years ago. In the beginning of 2002, Daniel Hale had sent a fax stating that he intended to file a lawsuit. He was demanding two million kroner. Hale was bringing about his own demise, but he could never have known the determination of his adversary. Maybe Hale’s demands had set off the entire chain reaction.

Carl picked up the paper on top. It was a copy of a fax that Lasse Jensen had sent on the very day that Hale was killed. It was a message and an unsigned contract:

I have the money. We can sign the papers and conclude the deal at my home today. My lawyer will bring the necessary documents; I’m faxing over a draft of the contract. Enter your comments and corrections and then bring the papers with you.