The Keeper of Lost Causes (34 page)

A car slowed down on the road. The people inside couldn’t see him in the ditch, but he could hear them. “That looks odd,” said a voice, and then the car drove on. If I had their license number, I’d show them, all right. That was the last thought Carl had before everything went black.

When he came to, he was holding his phone pressed to his ear, with an awful lot of dirt around his mouth. He licked his lips, spat out some grime, and looked around in confusion. He put his hand to his chest; the pressure was still there but not as bad, and he concluded that things may not be as dire as he’d thought. Then he hauled himself to his feet, staggered back to the car, and tumbled into the driver’s seat. It wasn’t even one-thirty, so he hadn’t been out for long.

“What’s going on, Carl?” he asked himself. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt twice as thick as normal. His legs were like ice, while his torso was drenched in sweat. Something had gone very wrong with his body.

“You’re about to lose control,” he heard a voice bellow inside of him. And then his mobile rang.

Assad didn’t ask him how he was feeling. Why should he? “We have now a problem, Carl” was all he said as Carl swore to himself.

“The technicians do not dare remove the crossed-out line in Merete Lynggaard’s phone book,” Assad continued, undaunted. “They say that the number and the crossed-out line were made with the same ballpoint pen, so even though they have dried up different, there is much too big a risk that both layers disappear.”

Carl put his hand on his chest again. Now it felt as if he’d swallowed air. It hurt like hell. Was he really having a heart attack? Or did it just feel like he was?

“They say we have to send it all to England. Something about combining some kind of digitalizing process with a chemical emersion, or whatever they said.” He was probably waiting for Carl to correct the terms that he’d used, but Carl wasn’t correcting anything at the moment. He had enough to deal with as he squeezed his eyes shut and summoned all his willpower to get rid of the awful spasms that were pumping through his torso.

“I think it takes too long, the whole thing. They say that we will not have the results until three or four weeks. Don’t you agree?”

He tried to concentrate, but Assad didn’t have the patience to wait.

“Maybe I should not tell you this, Carl, but I think I can count really good on you, so I will tell you anyway. I know a guy who can do this for us.” Assad paused for some sort of acknowledgment, but he waited in vain. “Are you there now still, Carl?”

“Yes, damn it,” he snapped. Then he inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs to the limit. It hurt like hell for a moment before the pressure eased. “Who is he?” Carl asked, trying to relax.

“You do not want to know that, Carl. But he is very good. He is from the Middle East. I know him real well enough, and he is good. Should I set him on the job?”

“Just a minute, Assad. I need to think.”

Carl stumbled out of the car and stood there for a moment, doubled over, his head hanging and his hands on his knees. That sent the blood flowing back to his brain. His face was ablaze but the pressure in his chest faded. Oh, that felt good. In spite of the stench from the farmer’s field that wafted past him like a disease, the air out there felt almost refreshing.

When he straightened up, he felt fine.

He picked up his cell. “OK, Assad, I’m back. We can’t have a passport counterfeiter doing work for us. Do you hear me?”

“Who says he is a passport counterfeiter? I did not say that.”

“So what then?”

“He was just good at doing this kind of thing, where he came from. He can remove stamp marks so you cannot see them. It should be simple for him to remove a little ink. You do not need to know more then. And I will not tell him what he is doing this for. He is fast, Carl. And it will cost nothing. He owes me favors.”

“How fast?”

“We have it on Monday if we want.”

“Then go ahead and give him the shit, Assad. Go ahead.”

Assad muttered something on the other end of the line. Presumably “OK” in Arabic.

“Just one more thing, Carl. Mrs. Sørensen from upstairs in the homicide department wants me to tell you that the witness, that woman in the cyclist case, has started to talk a little bit. And she—”

“Stop right there, Assad. That’s not our case.” Carl got back in the car. “We have enough to do as it is.”

“Mrs. Sørensen did not say it exactly to me, but I think upstairs they want your opinion, I mean without asking you, like directly.”

“Go up there and pump her for information, Assad. And then go and visit Hardy on Monday morning and tell him about it. I’m sure it would amuse him more than me. Take a cab out there, and then I’ll see you back at headquarters later. OK? In the meantime, keep your chin up, Assad. Say hello to Hardy for me and tell him I’ll be out to visit him sometime next week.”

Carl ended the conversation and peered out the windshield, which looked as though it had been through a shower. But it wasn’t rain; he could smell what it was from inside the car. It was pig’s piss, à la carte. The springtime country menu.

Sitting on Carl’s desk was a sumptuously decorated monster of a tea apparatus, sputtering away. If Assad had thought that the oil flame would keep the mint tea good and hot until his boss returned, he was mistaken, because by now all the water in the kettle had boiled off and the bottom was making creaking noises. Carl blew out the flame and dropped heavily onto his chair, noticing the pressure in his chest again. He’d heard it all before. A warning, then relief. Then maybe another brief warning and after that: you’re dead. Bright prospects for a man who had buckets full of years that had to be poured out before he could retire.

He took out Mona Ibsen’s business card and weighed it in his hand. Twenty minutes next to her soft, warm body and he’d probably feel much better. The question was whether he’d feel just as good if he had to make do with the company of her soft, warm eyes.

He picked up the phone and punched in her number; as it rang, the pressure in his chest returned. Was it a life-affirming heartbeat or a warning of the opposite? How could he tell?

He was gasping for air as she answered the phone.

“Carl Mørck here,” he said awkwardly. “I’m ready to make a full confession.”

“Then you’d better go over to St. Peter’s Church,” she said drily.

“No, honestly. I had a panic attack today; at least I think that’s what it was. I’m not feeling well.”

“All right then. Monday at eleven o’clock. Should I phone in a prescription for a sedative, or can you make it through the weekend?”

“I can make it,” he said, although he wasn’t too sure about that as he put down the phone.

Time kept ticking away mercilessly. In less than two hours Morten would be home from his afternoon shift at the video shop.

Carl took Merete Lynggaard’s phone out of the charger and switched it on. It said: “Enter PIN code.” At least the battery was still working. Good old reliable Siemens.

He punched in 1-2-3-4 and got an error message. Then he tried 4-3-2-1, and got the same message. After that he had only one shot left before he’d have to send the phone off to the experts. He opened the case file and found Merete’s birth date. Of course, she might just as well have used Uffe’s birth date. He leafed through the documents until he found it. Then again, it might also be a combination of the two, or something else altogether. He decided to combine the first two digits of their birth dates, starting with Uffe’s. He punched in the numbers.

When the display showed a smiling Uffe, with his arm around Merete’s neck, the pressure in Carl’s chest vanished for a moment. Someone else might have uttered a triumphant cheer, but Carl didn’t have the energy for that. Instead, he leaned back and hauled his feet up on the desk.

As the constriction in his chest returned, he opened the list of incoming and outgoing calls and went through all the numbers from February 15, 2002, until the day Merete Lynggaard disappeared. It was a long list. Some of them he’d have to look up in the companies’ archives. Numbers that had been changed and then changed again. It sounded tedious, but after an hour, a clear pattern emerged: during the entire period, Merete had communicated only with colleagues and spokespersons for various special-interest groups. Thirty calls alone were from her own secretary, including the very last call, made on March 1.

That meant that any calls from the fake Daniel Hale must have gone through the landline at Christiansborg. If there had been any calls, that is. Carl sighed and used his foot to push a stack of papers to the middle of his desk. His right leg was itching to give Børge Bak a good kick up the backside. If the original investigative team had ever had a call list for Merete’s office phone, it must have been lost, because there was nothing like that in the case file.

Well, he’d just have to leave that issue for Assad to take care of on Monday morning, while he went to see Mona Ibsen for a therapy session.

The selection of Playmobil toys in the toy shop in Allerød wasn’t bad; on the contrary. But the prices sure were steep. He couldn’t fathom how the local citizenry could afford to bring kids into the world. He chose the absolute cheapest set he could find with more than two figures — a police car with two officers for two hundred sixty-nine kroner and seventy-five øre, and asked for the receipt. He was pretty certain that Morten would want to come in and exchange the set, anyway.

As soon as Morten arrived home, Carl confessed what he’d done. He took the pieces that he’d borrowed out of the plastic bag and handed his lodger the newly purchased set as well. He told Morten he was more than sorry, and he would never do it again. In fact, he would never set foot in Morten’s domain when he wasn’t home. Morten reacted as Carl had expected, but it was still a surprise to see how this big, flabby example of how destructive a fatty diet and the lack of exercise could be was able to tense up his body with such physical rage. How the human body could quiver so much with indigation or that disappointment could be expressed with so many different words. Not only had he stepped on Morten’s mega-long toes, he had apparently flattened them totally on the laminated parquet floor.

Carl was looking with dismay at the little plastic family standing on the edge of the kitchen table, wishing that this had never happened, when the pressure in his chest returned in a whole new form.

Morten was so busy declaring that Carl would have to find himself a new lodger that he didn’t notice Carl’s distress. Not until he collapsed on the floor with cramps from his neck to his navel. This time the pains were not confined to Carl’s chest. His skin felt too tight, his muscles were surging with blood circulation, and he had stomach-muscle spasms that forced his internal organs up against his spine. It didn’t really hurt, but he almost couldn’t breathe.

In a matter of seconds Morten was bending over him, his eyes wide, asking Carl if he needed a glass of water. A glass of water? What good would that do? Carl thought as his pulse danced to its own irregular beat. Was Morten planning to pour the water over him so his body would have a nice little reminder of a sudden summer shower? Or was he thinking of forcing the water down his throat between his clenched teeth, which at the moment were whistling from the low pressure in his pinioned lungs?

“Yeah, thanks, Morten,” Carl forced himself to say. Anything so they could at least meet halfway, there in the middle of the kitchen floor.

By the time Carl had recovered enough to settle into the most squashed corner of the sofa, Morten’s sense of alarm had been replaced by a more pragmatic attitude. If an otherwise level-headed guy like Carl could accompany his apology with such a dramatic breakdown, then he must have really meant it.

“OK. So we agree to forget all about this little episode, right, Carl?” said Morten, looking solemn.

Carl nodded. He’d agree to anything that would give him some peace and quiet and a few hours to recover before Mona Ibsen started digging around inside him.

Carl had hidden a couple
of half-empty bottles of whisky and gin behind some books on the living-room bookshelf — booze that Jesper hadn’t yet sniffed out and magnanimously contributed to one of his improvised parties.

Carl drank most of both bottles before a sense of calm finally descended over him, and the weekend’s endless hours were spent in a deep, deep sleep. Only three times in two days did he get up to grab from the fridge whatever it had to offer. Jesper wasn’t home, and Morten had left to visit his parents in Næstved, so who cared if the food was past its expiration date and the menu was an awkward mishmash of ingredients?

When Monday arrived, it was Jesper’s turn to try to rouse Carl out of bed for a change. “Get up, Carl. What’s with you? I need money for food. There’s nothing left in the fucking fridge.”

Carl looked at his stepson with eyes that refused to comprehend, let alone accept, the daylight. “What time is it?” he mumbled. For a moment he couldn’t even remember what day it was.

“Come on, Carl. I’m going to be late as hell.”

He glanced at the alarm clock that Vigga had so generously left for him. This was a woman who had no respect for the extent of the nighttime hours.

He stared at the clock, suddenly wide awake. It was ten minutes past ten. In less than fifty minutes he needed to be sitting in a chair, looking into the exquisite eyes of psychologist Mona Ibsen.

“So you’re having a hard time getting out of bed these days?” she ascertained, casting a quick glance at her watch. “I can see that you’re still sleeping badly,” she went on, as if she’d been corresponding with his pillow.

He was annoyed. Maybe it would have helped if he’d had time for a shower before he rushed out the door. I hope I don’t stink, he thought, turning his face slightly toward his armpit.