A Conspiracy of Faith (11 page)

The number of businesses and institutions that had not at some point been based somewhere along the six-hundred-meter stretch of tarmac that was Dortheavej could be counted on the fingers of one hand. At present, the street housed crisis support centers, a recording studio, a driving school, arts and cultural activity centers, ethnic associations, and lots more besides. A former industrial neighborhood, seemingly indomitable, unless razed to the ground as in the case of K. Frandsen Wholesalers.

The bulk of the clearance work had been completed in the yard, but the work of the investigation unit had barely begun. Several colleagues walked past without even a nod, but Carl wasn’t surprised. He took this to be a sign of envy, knowing deep down that it probably wasn’t. It didn’t matter, because he didn’t give a shit.

He stood in the middle of the courtyard in front of the entrance to the building and scanned the remains. It was hardly the kind of construction on which a preservation order would be slapped, but the galvanized fencing that surrounded the place was new. A glaring contrast.

“I have seen this kind of thing in Syria, Carl. The paraffin stove overheats, then
boom
…” Assad mimed an explosion with his hands in the air.

Carl gazed up at the first floor. It looked like the roof had lifted and then fallen into place again. Broad fingers of soot extended halfway up the fiber-cement roof cladding from beneath the eaves. The skylights had been blasted to smithereens.

“This didn’t take long,” he mused, then pondered on what might possess anyone to voluntarily spend even the briefest amount of time in such a charmless and godforsaken place as this. But maybe that was the operative word. Maybe it hadn’t been voluntary at all.

“Carl Mørck, Department Q,” he announced to a passing investigator of the younger generation. “Mind if we have a look? Are the SOCOs done?”

The lad gave a shrug. “I don’t think anyone’s going to be done here until the fucking place has been pulled down,” he said. “But mind where you’re going. We’ve put boards down to stop anyone going through the floor, but there’s no guarantee.”

“K. Frandsen Wholesalers? What did they import?” Assad inquired.

“All sorts of stuff for the printing business. All on the level,” said the investigator. “They had no idea someone had occupied the attic, so everyone who works here was pretty shocked. They were lucky the whole place didn’t go up in smoke.”

Carl nodded. Firms of this kind ought always to be located within six hundred meters of a fire station, like this one. By some stroke of luck, the local fire services had survived the idiotic tendering exercise enforced on the public authority by the EU.

As expected, the entire first floor was wiped out. The sheets of plasterboard used to clad the sloping ceilings hung in tatters, and the partition walls that remained upright were jagged peaks reminiscent of the iron constructions of Ground Zero. It was a world laid waste, black with soot.

“Where was the body?” Carl asked an older man who introduced himself as a representative of the insurance company’s own fire investigation team.

The insurance man indicated a stain on the floor, an obvious answer to the question.

“It was a violent explosion, staggered in two separate blasts with only
the briefest interlude between,” the man explained. “The first sparked off the blaze, the second drained the room of oxygen and put it out again.”

“So we’re not talking about the usual relatively slow-burning fire where the victim dies of carbon monoxide poisoning?” Carl said.

“No.”

“Could the man have been rendered unconscious by the first explosion, do you think? And then simply have burned to death in the flames?”

“I can’t say. The remains are so few I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. It’s unlikely we’ll find anything left of the respiratory passages in a case like this, so chances are we’re going to be in the dark as to levels of soot concentration in the lungs and trachea.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to believe the body could be so badly damaged in such a short space of time in this particular fire. I mentioned it to your colleagues over in Emdrup the other day.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Well, my take was that the fire had been arranged so as to hide the fact that the victim had died in a different blaze altogether.”

“You mean the body was moved? What did they say to that?”

“They were in complete agreement, as far as I could tell.”

“So we’re dealing with a murder here? A man is murdered, incinerated, and then moved to another fire.”

“Well, we don’t actually know that he was murdered in the first instance at all. But otherwise, I’d consider it highly likely that the body had been moved here. I just can’t see how such a short-lived blaze, albeit a very violent one, could do that kind of damage to a human body. I mean, we’re talking skeleton here.”

“Have you investigated all three fire scenes?” Assad asked.

“I could have done in principle, as I work for more than one insurance company, but Stockholmsgade was given to a colleague of mine.”

“Were the other fire scenes similar to this one?” Carl asked. “I’m thinking about the actual spaces in which the fires were started.”

“No, apart from them all being unused areas. Hence the suggestion that the victims were homeless.”

“You think all the fires are the same? That all the dead bodies were put inside an empty room and then burned all over again?” Assad inquired.

The insurance man considered this unusual investigator with an unruffled stare. “I think we can proceed from that assumption, yes.”

Carl lifted his gaze and looked up at the blackened collar beams. “I’ve got two questions for you, and then I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“Fire away.”

“Why the two explosions, why not just let the whole place burn to the ground following the first? Any ideas?”

“The only thing I can think of is that the arsonist wanted to limit the extent of the damage.”

“Thanks! My second question is, can we call you if we have any further questions?”

The man smiled and produced a business card. “Of course. My name’s Torben Christensen.”

Carl fumbled around in his pocket for a card of his own, fully aware that none existed. This would be another job for Rose when she came back.

“I do not understand.” Assad stood slightly detached, drawing lines in the soot that covered the sloping wall. Apparently, he was the type who with just the smallest dab of paint on his finger could succeed in getting it all over his clothes as well as on just about every object in his immediate surroundings. At any rate, his face and clothing were now smeared in enough soot to cover a medium-size dining table. “I do not understand the significance of what you are talking about. It must all hang together. The ring on the finger, or the finger that is no longer, and then the bodies and the fires, and everything else as well.” He turned abruptly to face the insurance investigator. “How much money does the company want from you for this place? It is a shitty, old place.”

The insurance man wrinkled his brow. The idea of insurance swindle had now been duly presented, though he was by no means necessarily in agreement. “True, the building itself is somewhat lacking, but the company
is certainly entitled to be compensated. We’re talking about fire insurance here. As opposed to coverage for rot and fungus.”

“How much?”

“Oh, somewhere in the region of seven, perhaps eight hundred thousand kroner, I’d say.”

Assad whistled. “Will they rebuild on top of the damaged ground floor?”

“That would be entirely up to the policyholders.”

“So they can pull it all down if that is what they want?”

“Certainly.”

Carl looked at Assad. He was definitely on to something.

As they walked back to the car, Carl got the feeling that they were about to blindside their opponent on the very next bend, and that this time the opposition was not the usual villain but the Homicide Division of the Copenhagen Police.

What a triumph it would be to get an advantage over them.

Carl nodded aloofly to the investigators who were still assembled in the courtyard. Why should he even give them the time of day?

Whatever he and Assad needed to know, they could find out for themselves.

Assad stopped for a moment to decipher a row of graffiti: green, white, black, and red letters daubed across an otherwise neatly rendered wall.

Israel out of Gaza Strib. Palestine for the Palestinians
, it read.

“They cannot spell,” Assad commented as he got into the car.

Wonders never cease. I didn’t think you could, either, Carl thought, but kept it to himself.

He started the car and glanced at his assistant, whose gaze was now firmly fixed on the dashboard. Assad was somewhere very far away.

“Hey, Assad, anyone home?”

His eyes didn’t flinch. “Yes, I am right here, Carl,” he said.

After that, not a word passed between them until they were back at Police HQ.

The windows of the
little congregation hall were glowing like molten metal. So the cretins were well under way.

He pulled off his coat in the vestibule, greeted the so-called unclean menstruating women who stood listening to the exalted songs of praise from outside, and then entered as discreetly as he could through the double doors.

The meeting had reached the point where excitement mounted toward a climax. He had been there before, several times, and the ritual was always the same. The pastor was standing in his homemade vestments at the altar performing the Comfort, as they called the Eucharist. Shortly, everyone, children and adults alike, would rise on his command and shuffle together, converging in their lily-white robes, heads bowed.

This communion every Thursday evening was the highlight of the week. Here, the congregation received the bread and the wine from the Mother of God, personified in the pastor. Presently, those assembled here in the Mother’s Hall would break into joyous dance and cascading words of praise for the Mother of God, who with the help of the Holy Spirit gave life to the Lord Jesus Christ. Their voices would overflow with the gift of tongues, they would pray for all the unborn children, embrace each other warmly, and recall the sensuality with which the Mother of God had abandoned herself to the Lord, and lots more in the same vein.

It was drivel, all of it, like everything else that went on in here.

He tiptoed quietly to the far end of the room and stood against the wall.
People smiled at him devoutly. The smiles told him everyone was welcome here. And in a few moments, when the congregation had gone into raptures, they would offer thanks for his coming to them in his yearning for the Mother of God.

In the meantime, he watched the family he had selected. Mother, father, and five children. Families were seldom smaller in these circles.

The father stood partly hidden behind the two boys, and in front of them the three girls swayed rhythmically from side to side, their long hair untied and flicking with their movement. Foremost among the women stood their mother, with lips parted, eyes closed, and hands loosely holding her breasts. All the women were standing like this. Lost to the world, pitching in the collective consciousness, trembling in the presence of the Mother of God.

The majority of the young women were pregnant. One, seemingly as close to giving birth as was possible, had lactated through her robes, which now were stained with her milk.

The men looked upon these fertile women in rapt submission. Apart from when she was menstruating, a woman’s body was the most hallowed of objects for any disciple of the Mother Church.

In this assembly of fertility worshippers, the adult males stood with hands folded at their crotches, the smaller boys giggling and trying to imitate them, presumably possessing barely the slightest insight into what it was all about. They sang and did as their parents did. The thirty-five people in the congregation were as one. This was the togetherness so elaborately detailed in the Mother’s Decree.

Togetherness in their faith, in their belief in the Mother of God, the very foundation of life itself.…He had heard it all until he was sick to the back teeth.

Each sect its own unassailable, unfathomable truth.

He watched Magdalena, the second of the family’s three girls, as the pastor flung bread at the closest members of the congregation and jabbered in tongues.

The girl seemed far away, immersed in thought. Was she thinking of
the Eucharist? Or of what she was hiding in the garden at home? Perhaps her mind was on the day they would initiate her as a servant of the Mother, when they would undress her and douse her in fresh sheep’s blood? Or the day they would select a husband for her and sing praise to her womb that it might bear fruit? It was hard to tell. What goes on in the mind of a twelve-year-old girl, anyway? Only she would know. Perhaps she was frightened, and no wonder if she was.

Where he came from, it was the boys who had to pass through initiation rites, obliged to relinquish their free will, hopes, and dreams to the Church. They were the ones who bore the brunt. He remembered it all too well. All too well indeed.

Here, though, it was the girls.

He tried to catch Magdalena’s eye. Perhaps her mind was on whatever it was she was hiding in the garden, after all? Perhaps the thought of this unmentionable secret niggled at forces within her that were stronger than her faith?

Most likely she would be harder to break than her brother. And for that reason, he was as yet uncertain which of them he would choose.

Which one he would kill.