A Conspiracy of Faith (62 page)

She nodded faintly and made sounds she needed to repeat more than once before her brother straightened his back and looked up. “I think she’s saying the woman’s name is Rachel.”

“That’s right,” said Carl. “She took another name for use in her community. We’re aware of that.”

Isabel responded with a slight nod.

“Am I right in thinking that on Monday you and Rachel were involved in an attempt to save Rachel’s two children, Samuel and Magdalena, and that the car crash you were involved in occurred during this attempt?”

Isabel’s lips quivered. Then another faint nod.

“We’re going to put a pencil in your hand now, Isabel. Your brother’s right here if you need help.” The nurse encouraged her to grasp the pencil, but Isabel’s fingers would not obey.

The nurse glanced up at Carl and shook her head.

“This isn’t going to work,” said her brother.

“Let me try,” said Assad from the rear of the room and stepped forward.

“My father was struck by aphasia when I was ten years old. There was a clot, and all his words were gone. I was the only one who could understand him after that, until the day he died.”

Carl frowned. So the man Assad had been talking to on Skype the other morning hadn’t been his father.

The nurse gave up her chair to Assad.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Isabel. My name is Assad and I am from Syria. I am Carl Mørck’s assistant, and now we shall speak together. Carl will speak and I will listen to your mouth, OK?”

A tiny nod of her head.

“What kind of car was it that ran you off the road?” Carl asked. “Did you see the make or the color? Was it old or new?”

Assad put his ear to Isabel’s mouth. His eyes were wide and lively as he listened to each and every breath that passed over her lips.

“A Mercedes. Dark. Rather old,” he repeated.

“Do you remember the registration number, Isabel?” Carl asked.

If she could, there was hope.

“Dirty number plates. She could hardly see in the dark,” Assad said after a while. “The last three digits may have been 433, though Isabel is not certain they were threes. They could have been eights, or both.”

Carl ran it through in his mind. 433, 438, 483, 488. Only four combinations. That narrowed things down.

“You got that, Karsten?” he said. “Older Mercedes, dark in color, registration ending 433, 438, 483, or 488. That’d be your department.”

Karsten Jønsson nodded. “Well, we can find out pretty quickly how many Mercedes there are on the roads with those final digits, but we still haven’t got a color. And Mercedes is a fairly common make, so there could be quite a few with that combination.”

He was right. Finding the cars was one thing, checking out their owners was quite another. It would take a lot more time than they had.

“Is there anything else you can tell us that might help, Isabel? A name, perhaps?”

She nodded again. Now it took longer for her to speak, and getting her words out required obvious effort. More than once, they heard Assad encourage her to repeat what she said.

Then came the names. Three in all: Mads Christian Fog, Lars Sørensen, Mikkel Laust. Added to the fourth, Freddy Brink, which they knew from the Poul Holt case, and the fifth, Birger Sloth, from the Madsen case, that made a total of eleven first and last names. Not promising.

“My guess is none of these is his real name,” Carl said. “Most likely we can rule them out.”

Meanwhile, Assad was still listening to Isabel’s exertions.

“She says one of the names is on his driver’s license. And she knows where he has been hiding out,” he said all of a sudden.

Carl straightened up. “You mean she’s got an address?” he asked.

“Yes, and one thing more,” Assad replied, after another moment of deep concentration. “He had a light-blue van. She has the number in her head.”

A minute later, they had the registration written down.

“I’ll get cracking,” said Karsten Jønsson, already halfway through the door.

“Isabel says the man has an address in a village in Hornsherred,” Assad went on. He turned once more to Isabel. “I cannot quite understand what you are saying the place is called, Isabel. Does the name end on ‘løv’? Something else then? ‘Slev,’ is that what you are saying?”

Isabel gave an answering nod.

The name of the place ended in “slev.” Assad was unable to decipher the first part.

“We’ll take a break until Karsten gets back. Is that OK?” Carl asked the nurse.

She nodded. A break would be more than welcome.

“I thought Isabel was going to be moved?” Carl added.

The nurse nodded again. “Given the circumstances, I think it’s best to wait a few hours.”

There was a knock on the door, and a woman entered. “Telephone call for a Carl Mørck. Is he here?”

Carl stuck his finger in the air and was handed a wireless phone.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Hello, my name’s Bettina Bjelke. I understand you’ve been trying to get hold of me. I’m the secretary from Intensive Care who was on duty earlier.”

Carl waved Assad over so that he could listen in.

“We need a description of a man who came to visit Isabel Jønsson just before your shift ended,” he explained. “Not the policeman but the other man. Can you describe him to us?”

Assad’s eyes narrowed as he listened. When the call was over, he and Carl exchanged glances, shaking their heads.

The description of the person who had attacked Isabel Jønsson fitted perfectly with the man who had stepped out of the lift on the ground floor when they had been talking to Karsten Jønsson.

Mid-fifties, grayish hair, sallow complexion, glasses, rather stooping. A far cry from the image of a tall, athletic, thick-haired man in his forties that Josef had provided them with.

“This man was in disguise,” Assad concluded.

Carl nodded. They had failed to recognize him despite having stared at the police artist’s likeness of him at least a hundred times. Despite the broad face. Despite the eyebrows that almost met above the nose.

“Goodness gracious,” said Assad at his side.

Carl’s words exactly. Goodness fucking gracious. They had seen him. They could have touched him, apprehended him. They could have saved the lives of two children. Just by reaching out and grabbing hold of him.

“I think Isabel wants to tell you something,” said the nurse. “And then I think we need to have that break. Isabel is exhausted.” She indicated the monitors, which were showing a lot less activity than before.

Assad returned to the bed and placed his ear to Isabel’s lips for what seemed like a minute, perhaps two.

“Yes,” he said eventually and nodded. “Yes, I will tell him, Isabel.”

He turned to face Carl.

“Some clothes belonging to the kidnapper were on the backseat of the car they crashed. Clothes with his hair on them. What do you reckon now, Carl?”

He said nothing. It sounded good in the long run, but not much use to them at the moment.

“And she says the kidnapper has a small bowling ball with a number one on his key ring together with his car keys.”

Carl thrust out his lower lip. The bowling ball! So he still had it. After more than thirteen years, it was still on his key ring. Was it special to him in some way?

“I’ve got the address.” Karsten Jønsson came in with a notepad in his hand. “Place called Ferslev, north of Roskilde.” He handed the address to Carl. “Owner registered as Mads Christian Fog, one of the names Isabel gave us.”

Carl stood up immediately. “Let’s get going,” he said, waving Assad into action.

“I don’t think you need to hurry,” said Karsten Jønsson hesitantly. “Emergency services were called out to the premises on Monday evening. According to the fire service in Skibby, the place burned to the ground.”

Burned to the ground! The bastard was ahead of them.

Carl exhaled sharply. “Any idea if this place is by the fjord?”

Jønsson pulled an iPhone out of his pocket and typed the address into the map function. A moment passed, and then he shook his head. He handed the phone to Carl and indicated the spot. Clearly, the boathouse was somewhere else. Ferslev was several kilometers from any body of water.

But if it wasn’t there, then where was it?

“We should get over there anyway, Assad. Someone in the local area must know something about him.”

He turned back to Karsten Jønsson.

“Did you happen to notice a man who stepped out of the lift just as we got in, after we ran into each other on the ground floor earlier on? Gray hair and glasses. He was the one who attacked your sister.”

Jønsson looked shocked. “Jesus Christ. No, I didn’t. Are you sure?”

“Didn’t you say they kicked you out because Isabel was going to be moved? He was probably the one who spoke to you. Did you happen to get a good look at him?”

Jønsson shook his head and seemed genuinely distressed. “No, I’m sorry. He was bent over the other woman. I had no idea. He had a white coat on.”

They stared in unison at the figure beneath the sheet on the adjoining bed. This was dreadful, indeed.

“Well, thanks anyway, Karsten,” Carl said, extending his hand. “I only wish we could have run into each other under more pleasant circumstances. But it’s a good thing you were here.”

They shook hands.

A thought flashed through Carl’s mind. “Hey, Assad and Isabel. One more question. Apparently, our man has a visible scar. You wouldn’t know where, would you?”

He looked at the nurse at Isabel’s bedside. She shook her head. Isabel Jønsson was already asleep. His question would have to wait.

“We must do three things now, Carl,” said Assad as they left the room. “We must drive around and check out all the places Yrsa picked out for us. Perhaps also think about what Klaes Thomasen said, don’t you think? And also the bowling issue. We must take our drawing to places where people go bowling. And we must make inquiries with the locals at the place where the house burned down.”

Carl nodded. He had just spotted Rose still leaning against the wall by the lifts. That was as far as she had got.

“Are you all right, Rose?” he asked as they approached.

She gave a shrug. “Having to tell him about his mother was hard,” she said in a quiet voice. Judging by the black streaks down her cheeks, she had been having a good cry.

“Oh, Rose. There, there,” said Assad. He put his arm around her gently, and they stood like that for a while until Rose withdrew, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and looked up at Carl.

“We’re going to get this bastard, all right? I’m not going home. Just tell me what I can do, and I’ll frigging well make sure he won’t do it again.” Her eyes were ablaze now.

Rose was back.

After instructing Rose to pinpoint bowling centers in Nordsjælland and fax them the artist’s likeness along with the various names the killer might be using, Carl went back to the car with Assad and entered Ferslev into the GPS.

It was already late afternoon, time most people would be going home. But he and Assad weren’t most people.

At least not today.

They reached the scene of the fire just as the sun was giving up. Half an hour more and it would be dark.

The blaze had been fierce. Not only was the house completely razed, with only the outer walls remaining upright, the same was true of the barn and everything else within a range of thirty to forty meters from the house. The trees reached toward the darkening sky like charred totem poles, and the neighbor’s winter cereals in the adjoining field were scorched.

No wonder fire services had been called in from Lejre, Roskilde, Skibby, and Frederikssund. It could have turned into a disaster.

They walked around the house a couple of times, and the wreck of the van jutting out of the living room prompted Assad to say it all reminded him of the Middle East.

Carl had never seen the like.

“We’re not going to find anything here, Assad. He’s covered his tracks. Let’s go over to the neighbors’ and hear what they have to say about this Mads Christian Fog.”

His mobile rang. It was Rose.

“Do you want to hear what I’ve got?” she asked.

He didn’t get a chance to answer.

“Ballerup, Tårnby, Glostrup, Gladsaxe, Nordvest, Rødovre, Hillerød, Valby, Axeltorv, and the DGI leisure center in central Copenhagen, Bryggen in Amager, Stenløse Shopping Center, Holbæk, Tåstrup, Frederikssund, Roskilde, Helsingør, and Allerød, where you live. Bowling centers located in the area you said to check. I’ve sent faxes out to all of them, and in a
minute I’ll start calling them on the phone. I’ll get back to you later. Oh, and don’t worry, I won’t be taking no for an answer.”

Poor bastards.