A Conspiracy of Faith (20 page)

“Am I right, would you say? Would a lad like Poul be the sort to do something like that? And would it be the kind of thing a couple of young Jehovah’s Witnesses would get up to? What do you reckon?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that they are allowed to lie, only not to each other.”

“You mean you know someone who’s a member?”

“No, but that is how it is with these highly religious people. The members of the Church will shield each other against the world by whatever means. Also with lies.”

“True. But the kidnapping thing can’t have been a necessary lie. That’d be overstepping the boundaries. I’m sure all Jehovah’s Witnesses would be able to see that.”

Assad nodded. On that point they agreed.

So what now?

Yrsa was like an army of ants on the march back and forth between her own office and Carl’s. For the moment, the kidnapping case was hers and she wanted to know everything, preferably in small installments. What did this Laura Mann look like? What did she have to say about Poul? What was the house like that they had lived in? What more did they know about the family, besides that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses?

“Take it easy. Assad’s checking the Civil Registration System. We’ll find them before long.”

“Come out here into the corridor with me for a minute, would you, Carl?” she said, dragging him with her to the blowup on the wall. Now she had added Poul’s name at the bottom, as well as filling in a couple of the smaller words in the main body of the text.

“Right then! He was kidnapped along with his brother,” Yrsa summed up. “His name is Poul Holt, and he says they drove nearly an hour, my guess being that they drove to some water.” She planted her fists on her narrow hips. Now, clearly, she was going to present her own standpoint.

“If this lad had Asperger’s or something like it, I don’t think he would be making that kind of thing up, about them driving out to the water.” She turned to face Carl. “Would he?”

“Maybe his younger brother’s behind it. So far, we’ve no way of knowing, strictly speaking.”

“No, but think about it, Carl. Laursen found a fish scale on the original message. If the younger brother had written it, would he go to the bother of sticking a fish scale on just to make his story more believable? Not to mention fish
slime
?”

“Maybe he’s as bright as his brother. Only in another way?”

At this point, she stamped her foot, causing a resounding echo to clatter through the basement rotunda. “Carl, you’re not listening. Put your thinking cap on. Where were they kidnapped?” She patted him on the shoulder as though to soften the harshness of her tone.

Carl noted how a few flakes of dandruff were sent whirling into the air in the process. “In Ballerup,” he answered.

“Right, so what do you think if they were kidnapped in Ballerup and yet drive for nearly an hour to get to some water? It wouldn’t take them an hour to Hundested, would it? How long does it take to Jyllinge from Ballerup? Half an hour at the most, I’d say.”

“Stevns would be a possibility, yeah?” He growled slightly under his breath. No one liked to have their intellectual capacities dragged through the mud. And that included Carl Mørck.

“
Exactly!
” She stamped her foot again. If there had been rats in the crawl space beneath them, they were there no longer.

“But if the message is just a flight of fancy,” she went on, “why make it all so difficult? Why not just write that they drove for half an hour to get to the water? Surely that’s what any young lad making up a story would do? That’s why I don’t believe it’s made up. We should be taking this letter very seriously, Carl.”

He inhaled deeply. He hadn’t the energy to share his take on the gravity of the situation. Maybe he would have done so with Rose, but not Yrsa.

“Yeah, OK, no need to get worked up,” he said, trying to talk things down to a sensible level. “Let’s see how things are looking once we’ve got hold of the family.”

“What is going on?” Assad popped his head out of his pygmy-size office. It was obvious he was trying to weigh up the mood. Was this a proper argument, or what?

“I have the address, Carl,” he announced, thrusting a piece of paper into Carl’s hand. “Four times they have moved since 1996. Four addresses in thirteen years, all in Sweden.”

Shit, Carl thought to himself. Sweden, the country with the world’s largest mosquitoes and dullest cuisine.

“Let me guess,” he said. “They moved up north to where even the reindeer get lost? Luleå or Kebnekaise, somewhere like that?”

“Hallabro. The place is called Hallabro, and it’s in Blekinge. Approximately two hundred and fifty kilometers from here.”

Two hundred and fifty kilometers. A jaunt, unfortunately. He saw the weekend disappear before his eyes.

He tried to wangle his way out. “OK, but they won’t be in when we get there. And if we call them beforehand, they won’t be in, either. And if by chance they’re in, all they’ll speak is Swedish, and how the hell’s anyone from Jutland to understand a word? Am I right?”

Assad frowned, as if this were slightly too much information for him to process all at once. “But I already called. And they
were
in.”

“You did what? Chances are they’ll be out tomorrow, then.”

“Not at all, Carl, because I did not tell them who I was. I slammed down the receiver at once.”

A crabby pair, these two assistants of his. And such a flair for sound effects.

Carl shuffled back into his office and called home, giving brief instructions for Morten on what to do if Vigga turned up while he was away. Who knew what she was capable of next?

Then he instructed Assad on the continuing investigation into the arsons and told him to keep an eye on what Yrsa was up to. “Give her a good long list of religious sects to look into. And then go upstairs to Laursen and ask him to get on to Forensic Genetics, see if he can hurry them up a bit on those DNA tests, eh?”

After that, he stuffed his service pistol into his bag. You never knew with the Swedes.

At least not the ones from Denmark.

The next night, he
made sure he brought his hostess and temporary lover to the brink of climax. In the seconds before she threw back her head and drew in breath to the very bottom of her lungs, he removed his fingers from her crotch and left her lying there, muscles quivering, eyes flickering.

He rose quickly, leaving Isabel Jønsson alone with the issue of how best to discharge her arousal. She looked bewildered, which was exactly his intention.

Above her little row house in Viborg, the moonlight contended with thick, downy clouds. He stood naked on the patio and looked up at them, exhaling cigarette smoke through his nostrils.

From now on, the hours would proceed according to a familiar pattern.

First the arguments. Then she would demand some explanation for why their relationship had to end, and so suddenly. She would plead and they would argue, and then she would plead again. He would spell it out to her and she would tell him to pack his things and go, after which he would be out of her life for good.

At ten o’clock the next morning he would be leaving the hills of Dollerup Bakker with the children next to him on the front seat, and when they asked why they had turned off the road too soon, he would chloroform them. He knew exactly where this could be done without fear of discovery. His research had been thorough. A dense copse of trees that
would conceal the van and his activities during the few minutes it would take for him to neutralize them and transfer their sedated bodies into the back of the vehicle.

Four and a half hours after this took place, having crossed the Storebælt Bridge and stopped off for lunch at his sister’s on Fyn, he would be back on Sjælland, at the boathouse by the woods of Nordskoven, north of Jægerspris. Just twenty paces through the thicket to the low-ceilinged space with the chains. Twenty paces, shoving two cowering figures on in front of him.

He knew the sound of urgent invocations from previous times crossing that little stretch of ground. He would hear it again.

Only then could negotiations with the parents begin.

He emptied his lungs of smoke and stubbed the cigarette out on the tiny lawn. He had a busy night and day ahead of him.

He was compelled to put aside his unpleasant suspicions that something was awry at home, something that threatened to turn everything on its head. If his wife was being unfaithful, it would be the worse for her.

He heard the patio door squeak behind him and turned toward Isabel’s confused face. Her bathrobe barely concealed her trembling nakedness. In a moment, he would tell her it was over on account of her being too old, though she was nowhere near. Her body was exciting and piquant, her presence made him hungry for her. It was a shame, in more ways than one, that their relationship had to end, though the feeling was by no means new to him. It had happened so many times before.

“You’ll catch your death out here with no clothes on. It’s freezing cold.” She tilted her head, not focusing on him. “What’s happening between us?”

He stood in front of her and took hold of the collar of her robe. “You’re too old for me,” he said without feeling, drawing the garment around the bareness of her throat.

For a second, she seemed to be paralyzed. Ready to either lash out at him or scream her anger and frustration into his face. Invective surged, only to stall on her tongue. He knew she would say nothing. Respectable
divorced public servants such as she would never make a scene with a naked man on their patio.

People would talk. They both knew that.

By the time he awoke early next morning, she had already gathered up his things from around the house and thrown them into his bag. There was no breakfast, not even coffee, just a barrage of rather pertinent accusations and questions indicating to him that she was still on her feet.

“You’ve been into my computer,” she said, composed, though her face was bleached with anger. “You did a search on my brother. Fifty great big, elephant-size footprints in my data. Couldn’t you have gone to the trouble of finding out what I actually do in the local authority while you were at it? Don’t you think that was rather disrespectful of you? Rather stupid, perhaps?”

As she spoke, his mind was on the fact that he needed to use her shower, no matter what she said. The family out at Stanghede would surely not leave their children in the hands of an unshaven man smelling of sex.

What she said next, however, mobilized all his senses.

“I work in IT. I’m an expert. In charge of data security and IT solutions for Viborg Municipality. So I know what you’ve been up to. What the hell do you take me for? Don’t you think I can read the log files on my own laptop?”

She looked him directly in the eye. She was quite calm now. The first crisis was over. She had aces up her sleeve, could rise above self-pity, tears, and hysteria.

“You found my passwords,” she said. “But only because I put them there for you to find. I’ve been watching you. To see what you might get up to. There’s always something not right about a man who tells so little about himself. Something not right at all. You see, what men love more than anything else is to talk about themselves. Obviously, you had no idea!” She smiled wryly, sensing his alertness. “How come he never says
anything about himself, I wondered. And to be honest, it was rather intriguing.”

He knitted his eyebrows in a frown. “So now you think you know me, because I’m silent about my own life and curious about yours?”

“Curious, that’s an understatement. I can see why you might want to check my dating profile, but why would you want to know about my brother?”