A Conspiracy of Faith (49 page)

“I told Morten not to,” Hardy whispered with a despondent look on his face. More despondent than usual. “You’ll have me back, I hope? Once I’m discharged again?”

“Course we will, mate. The place wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Hardy smiled weakly. “I don’t think Jesper would agree with you there. He’d love it if everything was back to normal when he got home this afternoon.”

This afternoon? Carl had forgotten.

“Anyway, I won’t be here when you get home from work, Carl. Morten’s going with me to the hospital, so I’ll be in good hands. Who knows, maybe
I’ll be back in a few days…” He tried to smile as he gasped for breath. “Carl, something’s been bothering me,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Do you remember that case of Børge Bak’s, a prostitute found dead underneath the Langebro Bridge? It looked like a drowning accident, maybe even a suicide. Only then it turned out not to be.”

Carl nodded. He remembered it well. A black girl, not much more than eighteen years old. Naked, apart from a bracelet of twisted copper wire around her ankle. Nothing out of the ordinary, a lot of African women wore that kind of thing. More interesting were the needle marks on her arms. Typical for a junkie prostitute, but not for the African girls who worked the streets of Vesterbro.

“She’d been killed by her pimp, wasn’t that it?” Carl said.

“More likely by those who sold her to her pimp.”

Hardy was right, he remembered now.

“That case reminds me of the one you’ve got now. Those bodies in the fires.”

“You mean the bracelet around her ankle?”

“Exactly,” Hardy said. “The girl wanted out. Wanted to go home. But she hadn’t earned enough, so they wouldn’t let her.”

“And that’s why they killed her.”

“Yeah. The African girls believe in voodoo. Only this one didn’t. She was a threat to the system. They had to get rid of her.”

“So they used the bracelet to remind the other girls of the repercussions of going against their masters or the voodoo.”

“That’s right. Someone had woven feathers and hair and all sorts of crap into the bracelet. None of the other African girls was in any doubt as to what it meant.”

Carl stroked his chin. Hardy was definitely on to something.

Jacobsen stood with his back to Carl, looking out across the street. He did this often when he needed to focus. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying
Hardy thinks the bodies in the fires were debt collectors entrusted with the collection of payments from the three firms involved, and that they hadn’t been doing their jobs properly. The payments weren’t forthcoming, and for that reason they were bumped off?”

“Right. The syndicate makes an example of them for everyone else on the payroll. And the firms use the insurance payout after the fires to settle their debts. Two birds with one stone.”

“If the insurance money went to the Serbs, presumably one or more of the firms hit would then be lacking funds with which to reestablish their businesses,” Jacobsen mused.

“Yeah.”

The homicide chief nodded. Simple explanations often yielded simple solutions. These were vicious crimes indeed, but the Eastern European gangs and those from the Balkans were hardly known for their compassion.

“Do you know what, Carl? I think we’ll go with that.” He nodded. “I’ll get on to Interpol straightaway. They can give us a hand getting some answers out of these Serbs. Do thank Hardy for me, won’t you? How’s he doing, anyway? Has he settled in all right at your place?”

Carl shook his head deliberately. Settled in would be stretching things somewhat.

“Oh, by the way. A tip-off for you.” Marcus Jacobsen stopped him in his tracks in the doorway. “Health and Safety will be looking in on you sometime during the day.”

“Yeah? How do you know? I thought that sort of thing was meant to be a surprise.”

The homicide chief smiled. “We’re not the police for nothing, you know. We
know
things.”

“Yrsa, you’re on the third floor today, OK?” Carl said.

But Yrsa wasn’t listening. “Rose said to thank you for the note you left yesterday,” she said.

“OK. What’s her answer, then? Will she be back with us soon?”

“She didn’t say.”

Which was answer enough in itself.

He was stuck with Yrsa.

“Where’s Assad?” he asked.

“In his office making phone calls to former sect members. I’m doing the support groups.”

“Are there many?”

“Not really, no. I’ll have to start ringing up ordinary ex-members soon, like Assad’s doing.”

“Good idea. Where are you finding them?”

“Old newspaper articles. There’s plenty to be getting on with.”

“When you go upstairs, take Assad with you. Health and Safety will be around in a while.”

“Who?”

“Health and Safety. About the asbestos.”

Obviously, it rang no bells. Yrsa stared vacantly into space.

“Hello, anyone there?” He snapped his fingers. “Wakey, wakey!”

“Hello, yourself. Let me say this like it is to your face, Carl. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. Don’t you think you might be mixing me up with Rose?”

Had he really got her confused with her sister?

Jesus Christ, he couldn’t even tell them apart anymore.

Tryggve Holt rang just as Carl was wondering if he should put a chair out ready in the middle of the room so he could clobber the fly next time it decided to settle in its favorite spot on the ceiling.

“Were you satisfied with the drawing?” Tryggve asked.

“Yes, were you?”

Tryggve said he was. “I’m calling you because there’s a Danish policeman, Pasgård, who keeps ringing me up all the time. I’ve already told him everything I know. Can’t you get him off my back? He’s a real pain.”

My pleasure, Carl thought to himself.

“Can I ask you a couple of questions first, Tryggve?” he said. “Then I’ll make sure he leaves you alone, OK?”

Tryggve didn’t sound entirely enthusiastic, but he wasn’t protesting, either.

“We’re having doubts about the wind turbines. Can you describe that sound for us again, in more detail perhaps?”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“How deep was it?”

“I couldn’t say. I don’t know how to describe it.”

Carl hummed a tone. “Was it
that
deep?”

“Yeah, thereabouts, I’d say.”

“Not very deep at all, then?”

“If you say so. I would have called it deep.”

“Did it sound metallic in any way?”

“How do you mean?”

“Was it a soft tone, or was there more of an edge to it?”

“I can’t remember. More of an edge, maybe.”

“Like an engine?”

“Maybe. But all the time, for days on end.”

“And it didn’t go away in the storm?”

“A little bit, perhaps, not much. Anyway, I’ve been through all this with Pasgård. Most of it, at least. Can’t you just ask him? I can hardly bear to think about it anymore.”

Carl thought of suggesting therapy. “I understand, Tryggve.”

“Anyway, there’s another reason I’m calling. My dad’s in Denmark today.”

“Really?” Carl grabbed his notepad. “Where?”

“He’s at a meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses, at their headquarters in Holbæk. Something about him wanting to be stationed somewhere else. I think maybe you put the wind up him. He doesn’t want all this brought up again.”

Like father, like son, Carl thought to himself. “I see. And what can the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Denmark do about that?” he asked.

“They could send him to Greenland or the Faroe Islands, for a start.”

Carl frowned. “How do you know this, Tryggve? Are you and your father on speaking terms again?”

“No, my younger brother, Henrik, told me. And you’re not to tell anyone, otherwise he’ll be in trouble.”

After they had hung up, Carl sat for a moment and gazed at the clock. In an hour and twenty minutes Mona would be with him in the company of her super shrink, but why was she putting him through it? Maybe she thought he was going to leap to his feet all of a sudden like the first lamb of spring and declare: Hallelujah, I’m not traumatized anymore about my mate getting shot before my eyes while I did fuck all about it! Was that it?

He shook his head. If it wasn’t for Mona, he would make short shrift of that quack of hers.

There was a gentle knock on the door. It was Laursen, with a little plastic bag in his hand.

“Cedar,” he said, chucking the bag containing the splinter onto Carl’s desk. “You’re looking for a boathouse made of cedarwood. How many of them do you think were put up in Nordsjælland before the kidnapping? Not many, I can tell you. It was all pressure-treated timber back then. Before Silvan and all the other DIY chains convinced Mr. and Mrs. Denmark it wasn’t good enough anymore.”

Carl stared at the scrap in the bag. Cedarwood!

“Who says the boathouse is made of the same material as the splinter Poul Holt found to write with?” he asked.

“No one. But the possibility exists. If I were you, I’d ask around the timber merchants in the area.”

“Excellent work, Tomas. But there’s no telling how old that boathouse might be. The law only requires firms to keep copies of their accounts for five years in this country. No timber merchant or DIY store is going to be able to tell us anything about any amount of cedarwood they sold even ten years ago, not to mention twenty. That only works in films. Reality’s a different thing altogether.”

“Should have saved myself the bother, then.” Laursen smiled. Shrewd
as he was, he could doubtless already see the thoughts now bouncing around inside his former colleague’s head. How to make use of the information? Where did it put them now?

“By the way, you might like to know Department A’s in a frenzy upstairs,” Laursen added.

“What for?”

“They’ve pulled in the owner of one of those firms that got hit by arson recently. Seems the bloke’s cracked. He’s in an interview room shitting himself. He thinks that lot he borrowed money from are going to bump him off.”

Carl pondered the information. “I don’t blame him. He’s got every reason.”

“Anyway, Carl. You won’t be hearing from me for the next couple of days. I’m off on a course.”

“You don’t say. Cafeteria cuisine, is it?” He laughed, perhaps rather too heartily.

“As a matter of fact, yes. How did you guess?”

Now he caught the look in Laursen’s eyes. It was a look he had seen before. Out there with the dead bodies, white SOC suits all over the place.

That pained look Laursen ought to have put behind him by now was back again.

“What’s up, Tomas? Did they kick you out or something?”

Laursen nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yeah, but not the way you think. The cafeteria isn’t paying its way. We’ve got eight hundred people working in this building and none of them are eating with us. So now they’re packing it in.”

Carl frowned. He had never been one of the privileged few who on account of their loyalty to the cafeteria had always been rewarded with an extra slice of lemon to go with their fish. But still, things were going totally down the plughole if they were closing the nosh house, the pig trough, the luncheonette, the greasy spoon, the staff restaurant, or whatever the hell else they chose to call the joint with the sloping walls its diners were always banging their heads against.