The Library of Shadows (11 page)

'What sort of task did you have in mind?'

'The receivers deny all knowledge of this, but they've agreed to an investigation. Just as we have no idea whether there might be a traitor among us, they're in the same situation. For that reason, both parties are interested in an impartial investigation, carried out by an outsider – an individual who isn't influenced by the milieu, so to speak. You're that person, Jon.'

Jon stared in astonishment at the man in the wheelchair.

'How am I supposed to ...' he began without finishing the sentence.

'You're the perfect choice, Jon. The goodwill felt towards your father will help you with both groups. You're still not involved enough in the Society to take sides, and as a barrister you must be used to a certain degree of detective work.'

'But when it comes to Luca's death, you might say that I am anything but impartial,' Jon countered.

'I should think it gives you even more motivation to find the murderer, the
real
murderer.'

It was hard for Jon to find an argument against this. His immediate reaction was that he didn't want anything to do with the matter. He should sell the bookshop as quickly as possible, then forget all about Lectors and get on with his own life. He already had plenty of tasks on his desk. Finally a clear career opportunity had presented itself in the form of the Remer case, but on the other hand it took all his time except when he was sleeping. His inbox was full.

And yet he had a feeling that this was his last chance to find some real answers. Maybe the investigation of Luca's death would provide him with the explanation he'd been lacking for so many years: why his father hadn't wanted anything to do with him after his mother's death. As he sat there surrounded by books in the inner sanctum of the Bibliophile Society, bombarded by conspiracy theories, it occurred to him that it was all connected – Luca's death, his own life, and everything that had happened to him over the past twenty years – they were all pieces in a puzzle which until now he'd been too young to put together. 'For ages thirty-three and older,' it might say on the box.

'I'd have no idea even where to start,' Jon objected after no one said a word for a while.

'First you have to meet the rest of the Bibliophile Society members,' said Kortmann. 'Both the transmitters and the receivers. Perhaps the receiver you brought along can be of use. Apparently she enjoyed Luca's trust, so use her if you can. It's possible that she can arrange something with the receivers. After that you can work out a strategy, assuming that they accept you.'

'He'll probably need a bodyguard, don't you think?' suggested Pau, pointing both thumbs at himself. 'Like me, for instance?'

'As I said before,' explained Kortmann with poorly concealed annoyance in his voice, 'it's important for both sides to have faith in the person or persons who undertake this investigation. They have to be as impartial as possible, and we can't exactly accuse you of that.'

'Okay, okay,' said Pau, disappointed. 'Just trying to help.'

'Besides, there's another obvious qualification that Jon possesses, unlike yourself. Jon is not an active Lector.'

Pau shrugged.

'There's no doubt that you have potential,' said Kortmann, turning to Jon. 'But at the moment your powers are dormant. It would be an advantage to keep them that way until the investigation is completed. The people you're going to deal with need to be certain that you're not manipulating them. The disadvantage, however, is obvious – you won't be able to sense when someone is trying to manipulate you.'

'That makes me feel a lot better,' said Jon, unconvincingly.

'It's not that bad. Your advantage is that you know who you're dealing with. If you stick to a few very simple rules, you shouldn't have any problems.'

'And they are?'

'Don't read anything in the presence of a receiver, and avoid any reading given by a transmitter.'

Jon nodded. 'But I'd still feel more confident if I had someone with me. Call it a bodyguard or a guide. As a stranger in this environment, I could use some guidance on how I should act.'

'I understand,' said Kortmann. 'But the receivers would never accept Pau as an investigator.'

'It wasn't Pau I was thinking of,' said Jon quickly. 'I'd like to take Katherina along.'

Pau sniggered while Kortmann calmly clasped his hands and leaned his chin on them. After giving Jon a long, inquisitive look, he laughed. 'You're truly Luca's son. That's exactly the sort of thing he would have done. All right, have it your way. As long as you realize that there are certain places she can't go, and that some people won't be happy with the arrangement, you're welcome to take her along.' His expression turned serious again. 'So, what do you say?'

Jon shifted his gaze to Pau, who stared back with an offended expression. Kortmann sat with his hands clasped in front of him, regarding Jon expectantly. Again a sense of powerlessness slipped into Jon's mind. It was clear what he had to do, even if he didn't want to. He felt he'd been stripped of the right to choose. But what surprised him was that he
did
want to do it. The opportunity to find out what had happened in the past countered all sensible arguments about career and unfounded conspiracy theories. Something told him that there had to be a connection between the present events and what had happened twenty years earlier.

Jon sat up straight and threw out his hands.

'Okay, when do we start?'

Even though it was dark, Katherina could see that something was different about the two men as they came walking towards her. Jon came first, taking resolute strides, while Pau scuffed along behind him. They'd been gone for an hour. An hour in which Katherina had roamed around the courtyard in front of the house in the autumn chill. The cold hadn't bothered her, but Kortmann's arrogant dismissal had, and she'd been kept warm by her anger and frustration at not knowing what he was going to say, or what version of the story he would choose.

'Well, what did he say?' asked Katherina when they reached the car. Jon didn't say anything, just got in behind the wheel without looking at her. She shifted her gaze to Pau, who scowled back.

'Congratulations,' he muttered. 'You get to be the tour guide for our friend here.' He opened the car door and threw himself onto the back seat, where he crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

Katherina got into the passenger seat. 'What's that all about?'

Jon took a deep breath. With his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes staring at the darkness beyond the windscreen, he replied, 'I've been asked to undertake an investigation into the circumstances surrounding my father's ... death. Kortmann thinks that Luca was murdered.' He paused for a second before turning to face her. 'I'm going to need your help, Katherina.'

She lowered her gaze and nodded. 'Of course.'

Her worries were suddenly gone and she had to make an effort not to show her relief. After an hour of misgivings and uncertainty, she could now relax. Because didn't this mean that she was still welcome at Libri di Luca? And that there was still hope of a reconciliation between the transmitters and receivers? She hardly dared believe it.

'You don't look surprised,' said Jon. 'Did you realize he'd been killed?'

'There are plenty of indications,' replied Katherina evasively. She could understand it if Jon was feeling left out. 'We can't be a hundred per cent positive, but Iversen is absolutely sure of it.'

'It sounds like everyone except me knew about this.' Jon started the car. 'There also seems to be agreement that a receiver was behind it,' he went on as the car rolled towards the gate which, as if by a secret signal, had begun to open. 'Everybody has warned me against you receivers. Your powers seem to make people nervous, and if that's really how Luca was murdered, then their fears are certainly justified. So the question is whether I can trust you.'

Katherina sensed that Jon was looking at her as they waited for the gate in front of them to open all the way so that they could leave Kortmann's property. If she'd known what to say in order to reassure Jon, she would have said it, but the only thing she could think of was that she felt safe with him.

From the back seat Pau began snoring loudly. Katherina didn't say a word.

'I think I can,' Jon concluded. 'Since the man whose death we're going to investigate trusted you. I suppose that's the best recommendation.'

'What about the others?' asked Katherina. 'Not many people trust a receiver these days.'

'They're going to have to accept it, if I have anything to say about the matter. I'm going to need someone the receivers know and trust. Someone who can decipher the signals coming from both sides. And as I understand it, you've had contact with both receivers and transmitters by virtue of your connection with my father and Libri di Luca.'

Katherina nodded. Suddenly it seemed to her that the time she'd spent with Luca, as well as his efforts to reunite the two factions, had actually prepared her for investigating his murder. As if the whole thing had been planned from the start, and she could now step into the role. She hoped she had the strength for it.

'I wish Iversen were here,' she said quietly.

'We're going to need him,' Jon acknowledged, then paused for a moment. 'He's the one who knew Luca best, after all.'

The undertone of this last remark made Katherina give him a sidelong glance. For the first time she seemed to detect a touch of regret in Jon's voice. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead, but they seemed to be looking further. When his face was lit up by the headlamps of oncoming cars, she could see the muscles of his jaw moving slightly, and if she listened closely the sound of his teeth grinding was audible. There was anger and sorrow in his expression, and she wished she could make these feelings vanish. Maybe he noticed she was looking at him because he turned his face towards her. She immediately looked away.

'There's a lot I need to catch up on with regard to my father,' he said. 'It's been years since I last had any contact with him, and things didn't go very well on that occasion, to put it mildly.'

It was strange to be sitting there talking about Luca with his own son. In many situations Luca had been like a father to Katherina, and in that sense Jon was like a brother, but they had both known him for only part of their lives. Jon for the first part of his, and Katherina for a later part of hers. Together they might be able to form a more complete picture of the man to whom they both, each in different ways, owed their life.

'What happened the last time you saw Luca?' she asked cautiously.

'He rejected me,' said Jon. 'I had just turned eighteen at the time and was no doubt surly and irritating, but we didn't talk long enough for him even to find that out.' He cleared his throat before he went on. 'First I called the bookshop. I'd never understood why he had sent me away when I was in my early teens. Now that I was all grown up, in my opinion, I thought I had a right to an explanation. So I rang him up, with my heart pounding, my hands sweaty, the whole business. At first there was a long silence on the other end of the line, and for a moment I thought we'd been cut off. But then he said there must be some mistake because he didn't have a son. Then he slammed down the receiver.'

Pau grunted drowsily from the back seat, but a more regular snoring soon started up again.

'It had taken me months to muster enough courage to make that phone call,' Jon continued. 'So when I heard the dial tone on the other end, I went berserk. I took the next bus to Vesterbro and crashed open the door to the shop. Iversen was there that day. He was standing behind the counter, helping a customer, but when he saw me, his whole face lit up with a big smile and he gave me a friendly greeting. That made me calm down a bit, and when the customer left the shop, Iversen patted me on the shoulder and said that he'd go and get my father. Then he disappeared downstairs. It took a long time for Luca to appear. He came walking slowly towards me with a kind, inquisitive look in his eyes. For a second I thought that everything was going to be all right again, but then his expression changed and he asked me what I was doing there. I had no reason to be there, he said, and I should never come back.'

Katherina shifted position uneasily. This description of the man whom she had considered her foster father for so long was light-years from her own experience. It sounded like two totally different people.

'I can't understand that at all,' she said, shaking her head.

'Me neither. It made me stubborn and I wanted to know why. After all, he couldn't deny that he was my father, since Marianne was my mother. I suppose I said a number of stupid things and hurled a lot of accusations at him, but he remained utterly calm and just let me vent my rage before he played his trump card.'

They had reached the bookshop. Jon parked the car at the kerb and turned off the engine. He sat there with his eyes fixed on the shop.

'What did he do?' asked Katherina.

Jon grimaced.

'He said he couldn't stand the sight of me. I reminded him too much of my mother. Every time he looked at me, he was reminded of how she died, and that he hadn't been able to prevent it.'

Katherina had heard about Marianne's suicide from Iversen, but Luca himself had never said a word about it.

'Whew,' she exclaimed. 'What can you say to that?'

'As an eighteen-year-old, nothing,' said Jon, taking a deep breath. 'I shut up and walked out of the shop – and out of his life.'

They sat there for a moment, listening to Pau's snoring. As if on cue, it became erratic and he woke up, uttering a grunt, followed by a loud yawn.

'So, are we there yet?' he asked, stretching as best he could in the cramped space.

'We're back,' Jon confirmed.

Pau leaned forward between the seats and looked first at Jon, then at Katherina.

'So aren't we going to get out?'

Katherina opened the door and climbed out, followed by Pau.

'I'll drop by tomorrow,' said Jon before they said goodbye and slammed the doors shut.

Pau shivered in the cold, while Katherina watched Jon's car drive away.

'Are we going the same way?' asked Pau, heading for his bicycle.

'No, I'm staying here tonight.'

'Is that a good idea?' he asked. 'They might come back.'

'Exactly,' she replied.

Pau shook his head.

'Go ahead and play the hero, if you want. But I've really got to get some sleep,' he said, sounding apologetic. 'Will you be okay on your own?'

Katherina nodded in reply.

When she woke the next morning, it was dark all around her, and it took several minutes for her to figure out where she was. The boards over the windows of Libri di Luca kept out the morning light. The folding camp bed under her creaked at the slightest move, but that hadn't stopped her from sleeping. She recalled wrestling with the bed the night before, but she didn't remember taking off her shoes or climbing in.

The sound of traffic outside penetrated the darkness, and she lay listening to it for a while before she untangled herself from the blanket and sat up. After putting on her shoes and woollen sweater, she went over to switch on the light in the ceiling lamp.

The shop was a sorry sight. The missing piece of carpet was like an open wound, and the barricaded windows and bed made the room look like an improvised hiding place for antiquities during a bombing raid rather than a bookshop.

She unlocked the door and went outside. Not a cloud in the sky, but the shop was still in the shadows of the other buildings, so it was bitterly cold. For the first time since spring she could see her own breath, and for a moment she jumped about on the pavement in front of the shop to stay warm. It was past eleven, and Libri di Luca should have opened two hours ago, but the pitiful state of the facade had no doubt kept any potential customers far away.

Katherina left the door ajar and began cleaning up inside. The books that were normally displayed on tables just inside the entrance had been tossed on the floor further back in the shop, so she started by setting up a table where she could put them. Unable to sort them by author or title, she indiscriminately piled them into stacks.

She spent the rest of the day cleaning and waiting for customers, with a lunch break at a nearby pizzeria. Only two braved the barricades to have a look inside, but it was clear to see that the devastation bothered them, and they left the shop without buying anything.

Jon turned up late in the day. He had dark circles under his eyes and it didn't look as if he had shaved. His clothes, on the other hand, were impeccable, up until he took off his tie and opened the top button of his blue shirt.

'Hard day?' asked Katherina after they exchanged greetings and Jon plopped down in the leather chair, heaving a big sigh.

'I suppose you could call it that,' he said and closed his eyes. 'What about here? Any problems?'

Katherina gave him a summary of her day, which took less than a minute.

'All right,' said Jon, opening his eyes. 'We have to see about having the windows replaced. I'll try to get hold of a glass company tomorrow.'

'Have you heard from Kortmann?' asked Katherina.

'He rang just as I was leaving. There's a meeting in ...' He glanced at his watch. 'Half an hour.'

'Here?'

'No, some place in Østerbro. A library,' replied Jon, adding with a smile: 'Where else?'

The library was on Dag Hammarskjölds Allé across from the American Embassy. Big picture windows faced the street, and passers-by could freely look in at the rows of shelves holding books and boxes of comics. Even from outside they could see that there were still quite a few people in the library, despite the fact that the official business hours would end in ten minutes.

Katherina followed Jon inside through a five-metre-long foyer to the actual front doors. It had been a long time since she was last inside a library. Her powers made it a taxing experience. Even though she was good at blocking out all the input, she could still sense a roaring background noise that refused to go away. The books gave her no joy. The bindings were often merely glued, and the quality of the covers was standardized and impersonal.

Right inside the doors was a counter where a lone female librarian was helping the last borrowers. She was about fifty with long blonde hair and a pair of round glasses that were too big for her narrow, pale face. Katherina thought she looked familiar, and when their eyes met, the librarian broke out in a smile and gave her a brief nod. They continued on past the counter to the stacks.

To the right of the counter was the periodicals department, a glass enclosure where newspapers and magazines were displayed along the walls. In the middle of the glass enclosure were chairs and tables where readers could leaf through the daily papers or selected periodicals.

'Kortmann,' whispered Jon, staring at a man who was sitting at one of the tables with his back turned to them. Upon closer inspection, Katherina discovered that the man was sitting in a wheelchair.

'What now?' she whispered back.

'I think it starts after the library closes,' said Jon in a low voice. 'Let's split up.'

Katherina nodded and began moving slowly past the room with the periodicals and towards the children's section. Jon headed in the opposite direction. It had grown dark outside, and the reflection from the fluorescent lights on the ceiling made the big picture windows look like surfaces of opaque black glass. Katherina had a feeling that someone was watching her from outside in the dark as she strolled past the boxes of comic books. She passed the time by leafing through a few of the comics while out of the corner of her eye she observed the other library patrons. In the fiction section a man in his forties stood with his nose in a thick book –
The Name of the Rose,
judging by the small snippets she was receiving. Katherina cautiously focused her powers on him and had a clear sense that he was also just killing time. When she turned her head to study him, he immediately looked up and she thought she caught a spark of recognition in his eyes. He quickly lowered his gaze, put the book back and continued along the shelves.