Mercy (18 page)

‘You should try talking to Jonas.’

‘Jonas who?’ Now there were only a few inches between the thousand kroner and Hyttested’s greedy fingers.

‘Jonas Hess.’

‘Jonas Hess? Yeah, OK. Where do I find him? Is he here in the office right now?’

‘We don’t hire guys like Jonas Hess. You’ll have to look him up in the phone book.’

Carl made a mental note of the name and then in a flash stuffed the thousand kroner back in his pocket. The jerk was going to write about him in the next issue, no matter what. Besides, he’d never in his life paid for information, and it would take somebody of an entirely different calibre than Hyttested before that ever changed.

‘You would have died for him?’ Hyttested yelled after Carl, as he strode between the rows of cubicles. ‘Then why didn’t you, Carl Mørck?’

He got Jonas Hess’s address from the receptionist, and a taxi dropped him in front of a tiny stucco house on Vejlands Allé, which had become silted up over the years with the detritus of society: old bicycles, shattered aquariums, and glass flagons from ancient home-brewing projects, mouldy tarpaulins that could no longer hide the rotting boards underneath, a plethora of bottles, and all sorts of other junk. The owner of the house would be an ideal candidate for any one of those home make-over programmes on TV. Even the most inept of landscape architects would be welcome here.

A bicycle lying in front of the door and the quiet growling from a radio behind the filthy windows indicated that somebody was home. Carl leaned on the doorbell until his finger started to ache.

Finally he heard from inside: ‘Cut that out, damn it.’

A ruddy-faced man displaying the unmistakable signs of a massive hangover opened the door and tried to focus on Carl in the blinding sunlight.

‘What the hell’s the time?’ he asked, as he let go of the doorknob and retreated inside. There was no need for a court order to follow him in.

The living room was of the type shown in disaster movies after the comet has split the earth in two. The homeowner threw himself on to a sagging sofa with a satisfied sigh. Then he took a huge gulp from a whisky bottle as he tried to localize Carl out of the corner of his eye.

Carl’s experience told him this man would not exactly be an ideal witness.

He said hello from Pelle Hyttested, hoping that would break the ice a bit.

‘He owes me money,’ replied Hess.

Carl was about to show the photographer his badge, but changed his mind and stuck it back in his pocket. ‘I’m from a special police unit that’s trying to solve mysteries about some unfortunate people,’ he said. A statement like that couldn’t possibly scare anyone off.

Hess lowered the bottle for a moment. Maybe that was too many words for him to process, considering his condition.

‘I’m here to talk to you about Merete Lynggaard,’ Carl ventured. ‘I know that you sort of specialized in her.’

Hess tried to smile, but acid indigestion prevented it. ‘There aren’t many who know that,’ he said. ‘And what about her?’

‘Do you have any pictures of her that you haven’t published?’

Hess doubled over, trying to suppress a laugh. ‘Jesus, how can you ask such a stupid question? I’ve got at least ten thousand of them.’

‘Ten thousand! That sounds like a lot.’

‘Listen here.’ He held up his hand with the fingers splayed out. ‘Two or three rolls of film every other day for two to three years – how many photos would that make?’

‘A lot more than ten thousand, I would think.’

After an hour, and helped along by the calories contained in neat whisky, Jonas Hess was finally alert enough that he could lead the way, without staggering, to his darkroom, which was in a little building made of breeze blocks behind the house.

Here things were quite different from inside his house. Carl had been in plenty of darkrooms before, but none as sterile and neat as this one. The difference between the man in the house and the man in the darkroom was unsettling.

Hess pulled out a metal drawer and dived in. ‘Here,’ he said, handing Carl a folder labelled: ‘Merete Lynggaard: 13 November 2001 to 1 March 2002.’ ‘Those are the negatives from the last period.’

Carl opened the folder, starting at the back. Each plastic sleeve contained the negatives from a whole roll of film, but in the last sleeve there were only five shots. The date had been meticulously printed on it: 1 March 2002 ML.

‘You took pictures of her the day before she disappeared?’

‘Yes. Nothing special. Just a couple of shots in the parliament courtyard. I often stood in the gate, waiting.’

‘Waiting for her?’

‘Not just for her. For all the Folketing politicians. If you only knew what surprising groupings I’ve seen appear on that stairway. All it takes is waiting, and one day it happens.’

‘But there were apparently no surprises that day, as far as I can see.’ Carl took the plastic sleeve out of the folder and placed it on the light table. So these pictures were taken on Friday, when Merete Lynggaard was on her way home. The day before she disappeared.

He leaned down to get a closer look at the negatives.

There it was: she had her briefcase under her arm.

Carl shook his head. Incredible. The very first picture he looked at, and he already had something. Here was the proof in black and white. Merete had taken the briefcase home with her. An old, worn-out case with a rip on one side and everything.

‘Could I borrow this negative?’

The photographer took another gulp of whisky and wiped his mouth. ‘I never lend out my negatives. I don’t even sell them. But we can make a copy; I’ll just scan it. I assume the quality doesn’t have to be fit for a queen.’ He took in a big breath, then hawked a bit as he laughed.

‘Thanks, I’d really appreciate a copy. You can send the bill to my department.’ Carl handed the man his card.

Hess looked at the negatives. ‘Yeah, well, that day there wasn’t anything special. But there hardly ever was when it came to Merete Lynggaard. The biggest deal was in the summertime if it got cold and you could see her nipples through her blouse. I got good money for those shots.’

Again there was that hawking laughter as he went over to a small red refrigerator propped up on a couple of containers that had once held darkroom chemicals. He took out a beer, and seemed to offer it to his visitor, but the contents vanished before Carl even had time to react.

‘Of course the scoop would be to catch her with a lover, right?’ Hess said, looking for something else to toss down his throat. ‘And I think that’s what I caught on film a few days earlier.’

He slammed the fridge shut and picked up the folder to leaf through it. ‘Oh yeah, then there are the ones of Merete talking to a couple of members of the Denmark Party outside the Folketing chambers. I’ve even made contact prints of these negatives.’ He chuckled. ‘I didn’t take the pictures because of who she was talking to but because of the woman standing over there, behind them.’ He pointed to a person standing close to Merete. ‘I guess you can’t see it very well when the image is this size, but just take a look when it’s blown up. That’s the new secretary, and she’s totally gaga about Merete Lynggaard.’

Carl leaned closer. It was definitely Søs Norup. But with an entirely different air about her than there had been in her dragon’s lair in Valby.

‘I have no idea whether there was anything going on between them, or whether it was just all in the secretary’s imagination. But what the hell! Don’t you think that photo would have brought in a nice sum one day?’ Hess mused as he turned the page to the next set of negatives.

‘Here it is,’ he said, placing a moist finger in the middle of the plastic sleeve. ‘I remembered it was on the 25th of February, because that’s my sister’s birthday. I thought I could buy her a nice present if that picture turned out to be a goldmine. Here it is.’

He took out the plastic sleeve and placed it on the light table. ‘See, that was the shot I was thinking about. She’s talking to some man out on the steps of the parliament building.’ Then he pointed at the photo just above it. ‘Take a look at that picture. I think she looks upset. There’s something in her eyes that shows she’s uncomfortable.’ He handed Carl a magnifying glass.

How the hell could anyone see something like that in a negative? Her eyes were nothing but two white dots.

‘She noticed me taking pictures, so I split. I don’t think she got a good look at me. Afterwards I tried to photograph the man, but the only shot I got was from behind because he left the courtyard in the other direction, towards the bridge. But it was probably just some random guy who tried to accost her as he went by. There’d be plenty of others if they thought they could get away with it.’

‘Do you have contact prints of this series too?’

Hess swallowed a couple more acid eruptions, looking as if his throat was on fire. ‘Prints? I can make you some if you run down to the off-licence and buy me some beer in the meantime.’

Carl nodded. ‘But first I have a question for you. If you were so obsessed about getting a picture of Merete Lynggaard with a lover, you must have taken photos of her at her house in Stevns. Am I right?’

Hess didn’t look up as he studied the pictures they’d been looking at.

‘Of course. I was down there lots of times.’

‘So there’s something I don’t understand. You must have seen her with her handicapped brother, Uffe. Yes?’

‘Oh sure, plenty of times.’ Hess put an ‘X’ on the plastic sleeve next to one of the negatives. ‘Here’s a really good shot of her and that guy. I can give you a copy. Maybe you’ll know who he is. Then you can tell me, OK?’

Carl nodded again. ‘But why didn’t you take any good pictures of Merete and Uffe together, so the whole world would know why she was always in such a hurry to get home from Christiansborg?’

‘I didn’t do it because a member of my own family is handicapped. My sister.’

‘But you take photographs for a living.’

Hess gave him an apathetic look. If Carl didn’t go and get those beers soon, he wasn’t going to get any copies.

‘Hey, you know what?’ replied the photographer, looking Carl right in the eye. ‘Just because somebody is a shit, it doesn’t mean he has no integrity. Like yourself, for example.’

Carl walked along the pedestrian street from Allerød Station, noting with annoyance that the street scene was looking more and more miserable. Concrete boxes camouflaged as luxury flats were already towering over the Kvickly supermarket, and soon even the snug old, one-storey houses on the other side of the road would be gone. What had previously been a picturesque feast for the eyes had now turned into a tunnel of dolled-up concrete. A few years ago he wouldn’t have thought it possible, but now it had reached his own town. Thanks to politicians like Erhard Jakobsen in Bagsværd, Urban Hansen in Copenhagen, and God only knew who in Charlottenlund. Homey, precious townscapes shattered. An abundance of mayors and town councils with no taste. These hideous new buildings were clear proof of that.

The barbecue gang at Carl’s house in Rønneholt Park was in full swing, thanks to the continuing good weather. It was 6:24 p.m. on 22 March 2007 – and spring had officially arrived.

In honour of the day, Morten had donned flowing robes that he’d bartered for during a trip to Morocco. Dressed in that outfit, he could have easily started up a new sect in ten seconds flat. ‘Just in time, Carl,’ he said, dumping some spare-ribs on to his plate.

His neighbour Sysser Petersen already seemed a bit tipsy, but bore it with dignity. ‘I just don’t feel like doing this any more,’ she said. ‘I’m going to sell my dump and move.’ She took a big gulp of red wine. ‘Down at Social Services we spend more time filling out stupid forms than helping citizens. Did you know that, Carl? Let those smug government ministers give it a try. If they had to fill out forms to get their free dinners and free chauffeurs and free rent and their enormous salaries and free junkets and free secretaries and all that other shit, they wouldn’t have any time left for eating or sleeping or driving or anything else. Can’t you just picture it? If the prime minister had to sit down and tick off a list of what he wanted to discuss with his ministers before the meeting even got started? In triplicate, printed out from a computer that only worked every other day. And first he’d have to get it approved by some government official before he was even allowed to speak. It would wear the man out.’ And with that, she threw back her head and howled with laughter.

Carl nodded. Soon the discussion would turn to the cultural minister’s right to muzzle the media, or whether there was anyone who remembered the arguments for breaking up the counties of Denmark, or the hospitals or the tax system, for that matter. And the talk wouldn’t end until the last drop had been drunk and the last spare-rib sucked clean.

He gave Sysser a little hug, patted Kenn on the shoulder, and took his plate up to his room. They were all more or less in total agreement. More than half of the country wished the prime minister would go to hell, and they would keep wishing the same thing tomorrow and the day after, until finally all the misfortune that he’d brought flooding in over Denmark and its citizens had been rectified. It would take decades.

But Carl had other things on his mind at the moment.

28

2007

At three o’clock in the morning Carl opened his eyes to pitch darkness. In the back of his mind he had a vague memory of red-checked shirts and nail guns and a clear sense that one of the shirts in Sorø did have the right pattern. His pulse was racing and his mood was glum; he was definitely not feeling good. He simply didn’t have the energy to think about the case, but who could stop the nightmares or keep his sheets from getting clammy?

And now he had to deal with that slimy journalist Pelle Hyttested. Was he going to start digging around? Was one of the headlines in the next issue of
Gossip
really going to be about a police detective who had fucked up?

What a mess. Just the thought of it made his abdominal muscles contract so they felt like armour plate for the rest of the night.

‘You look tired,’ said the homicide chief.

Carl dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. ‘Have you told Bak that he needs to be here?’

‘He’ll be here in five minutes,’ said Marcus, leaning forward. ‘I noticed that you haven’t signed up for the management course yet. The deadline is coming up soon, you know.’

‘I guess I’ll just have to wait until next time, won’t I?’

‘You know we have a plan here, don’t you, Carl? When your department starts showing results, it would be only natural that you got help from your former colleagues. But it won’t do any good if you don’t have the authority that the title of police superintendent would give you. You don’t really have a choice, Carl. You
have
to take that course.’

‘It won’t make me a better investigator, sitting in a classroom sharpening pencils.’

‘You’re the head of a new department here, and the title goes along with the baggage. You’re taking the course – or you’ll have to find somewhere else to do your investigating.’

Carl stared out of the window at the Golden Tower in Tivoli Gardens, which a couple of workmen were making ready for the new season. Four or five times up and down on that monstrous ride and Marcus Jacobsen would be begging him mercy.

‘I’ll take that into consideration, Mr Superintendent.’

The mood was a bit chilly when Børge Bak came in with his black leather jacket draped neatly over his shoulders.

Carl didn’t wait for the homicide chief to initiate the conversation. ‘So, Bak! That was a hell of a job you lot did on the Lynggaard case. You were up to your necks in signs that everything wasn’t as it should be. Had the whole team caught sleeping sickness, or what?’

Bak’s eyes were like steel when their eyes met, but Carl was damned if he was going to look away.

‘So now I want to know if there’s anything else in the case that you’re keeping to yourself,’ Carl went on. ‘Was there someone or something that put the brakes on your excellent investigation, Børge?’

At this point the homicide chief was clearly considering putting on his reading glasses so he could hide behind them, but the scowl on Bak’s face demanded some sort of intervention.

‘If we just ignore the last couple of remarks that Carl delivered in his inimitable style’ – Marcus raised his eyebrows as he glanced at Carl for a moment – ‘then it’s easy to understand his point of view, since he’s just discovered that the deceased Daniel Hale was not the man that Merete Lynggaard met at Christiansborg. Which is something that should have been uncovered during the previous investigation. We have to give him that.’

Bak’s hunched shoulders produced a couple of folds in his leather jacket, the only sign of how tense this information was making him feel.

Carl went for the jugular. ‘That’s not all, Børge. Did you happen to know, for example, that Daniel Hale was gay? Or that he was out of the country during the period when he presumably was in contact with Merete Lynggaard? You should have taken the trouble to show Hale’s photo to Merete’s secretary, Søs Norup, or to the head of the delegation, Bille Antvorskov. Then you would have known at once that something wasn’t right.’

Bak slowly sat down. Thoughts were clearly swirling around in his head. Of course he’d been involved in tons of cases since then, and the workload in the department had always been onerous, but damned if Bak wasn’t feeling an urge to squirm.

‘Do you think we can still rule out the possibility that some sort of crime was committed?’ Carl turned to look at his boss. ‘What do you think, Marcus?’

‘We assume that you’re going to investigate the circumstances surrounding Daniel Hale’s death. Am I right, Carl?’

‘We’re already working on that.’ Again he turned to Bak. ‘I’ve got a former colleague up in Hornbæk in the Clinic for Spinal Cord Injuries who’s really on the ball and knows how to think.’ He tossed the photos on the desk in front of Marcus. ‘If it hadn’t been for Hardy, I wouldn’t have come in contact with a photographer by the name of Jonas Hess and acquired a couple of photos. They prove that Merete Lynggaard brought her briefcase home with her from Christiansborg on her last day there; they catch her lesbian secretary showing a great interest in her boss; there are ones of Merete having a conversation with someone on the stairs of Christiansborg a few days before she disappeared. A meeting that apparently upset her.’ He pointed to the photo of her face and the uneasy look in her eyes. ‘It’s true that we only have a picture of the guy from the back, but if you compare his hair and posture and height, he actually looks a lot like Daniel Hale, even though that’s not who he is.’ Carl then placed one of the photos of Hale from the InterLab brochure next to the others.

‘Now I ask you, Børge Bak: Don’t you think it’s rather odd for her briefcase to disappear somewhere between Christiansborg and Stevns? Because you never did find it, did you? And don’t you think it’s also odd that Daniel Hale should die the day after Merete’s disappearance?’

Bak shrugged. Of course he thought so; the idiot just didn’t want to admit it.

‘Briefcases go missing,’ he said. ‘She could have left it at a petrol station or somewhere else on her way home. We searched her house and her car, which was still on the ferry. We did what we could.’

‘Oh, right. OK, you say she might have forgotten it at a petrol station, but are you sure about that? As far as I can tell from her bank statement, she didn’t take care of any errands on her way home that day. You didn’t do your homework very well, did you, Bak?’

By now Bak looked ready to explode. ‘I’m telling you that we put a lot of effort into searching for that briefcase.’

‘I think both Bak and I realize that there’s more work for us to do here,’ the boss tried to mediate.

More work for ‘us’, he’d said. Was everybody suddenly going to start meddling in the case?

Carl looked away from his boss. No, of course Marcus Jacobsen didn’t mean anything by it. Because no help was ever going to be forthcoming from upstairs. Carl knew all too well how things were run in this place.

‘I’m going to ask you again, Bak. Do you think we’ve covered everything now? You didn’t include Hale in your report, and there was nothing about Karen Mortensen’s observations regarding Uffe Lynggaard. Is there anything else missing, Børge? Can you tell me that? I could use some support right now. Do you get it?’

Bak stared down at the floor as he rubbed his nose. In a second he’d raise his other hand to stroke his comb-over. He could have jumped up and made a hell of a ruckus, considering all the insinuations and accusations being levelled at him. That would have been perfectly understandable, but when it came right down to it, Bak was a detective with a capital
D
. And right now his mind was far away.

Jacobsen gave Carl a look that said ‘take it easy’, and so Carl kept his mouth shut. He agreed with Marcus. Bak should be given a little time to think.

They sat like that for a whole minute before Bak raised his hand to touch his comb-over. ‘The skid marks,’ he said. ‘The skid marks from the Daniel Hale accident, I mean.’

‘What about them?’

Bak looked up. ‘As it says in the report, there were none on the road from either of the vehicles. I mean not even a shadow of a mark. It seemed as if Hale wasn’t paying attention and simply veered over the line into the other lane. Then: Kapowwww!’ He clapped his hands together. ‘No one managed to react before the collision occurred. That was the assumption.’

‘Yeah, that’s what it says in the police report. Why are you mentioning this now?’

‘I was driving past the accident site a few weeks later and remembered where it happened, so I stopped to take a look.’

‘And?’

‘As the report said, there were no skid marks, but it was easy to see where the accident occurred. They hadn’t yet removed the shattered, scorched tree or repaired the wall, and tracks from the other vehicle were still visible in the field.’

‘But? You’re leading up to something here, right?’

Bak nodded. ‘But then I discovered that there actually were some marks seventy-five feet further along the road towards Tåstrup. They were already rather blurry, but I could see they were quite short, only about a foot and a half long. And I thought to myself: What if these marks were from the same accident?’

Carl was having trouble following Bak and was annoyed when his boss beat him to it. ‘So they were marks left by someone trying to avoid a collision?’ Marcus asked.

‘They could have been, yes.’ Bak nodded.

‘So you mean Hale was about to collide with something – and we don’t know what that was – but then he put on the brakes and swerved around it?’ Marcus went on.

‘Yes.’

‘And then there was a vehicle in the oncoming lane?’ Jacobsen nodded. It sounded plausible.

Carl raised his hand. ‘The report says that the collision occurred in the oncoming lane. But it sounds like you’re saying that wasn’t necessarily the case. You think it happened in the middle of the road, and at precisely that spot the oncoming vehicle had nothing to do with it. Am I right?’

Bak took a deep breath. ‘That’s what I thought for a moment, but then I decided otherwise. But now I can see it might have been a possibility, yes. Something or someone could have come into his lane, so Hale had to swerve, and then an oncoming vehicle rammed into his car at full speed right near the central line. Maybe even deliberately. Maybe we could have found signs of acceleration further along in the oncoming lane if we’d gone another hundred yards down the road. Perhaps the other vehicle sped up in order to be in the perfect position to ram Hale’s car as he swerved into the centre of the road to avoid colliding with someone or something.’

‘And if that something was a person who stepped into the lane, and if that person and the individual who ran into Hale were in cahoots, then it’s no longer an accident. It’s homicide. And if that’s true, there’s also reason to believe that Merete Lynggaard’s disappearance was part of the same crime,’ concluded Jacobsen, jotting down a few notes.

‘It’s possible.’ Bak was frowning. He wasn’t feeling very good about things at the moment.

Carl stood up. ‘There were no witnesses, so we’re not going to find out anything more. Right now we’re looking for the driver of the other vehicle.’ He turned to face Bak, who seemed to have shrunk inside his black leather jacket.

‘I had a suspicion things might have happened the way you just described, Bak. So I just want you to know that you’ve been a big help, in spite of everything. Be sure to come and see me if you remember anything else, OK?’

Bak nodded. He was looking solemn. This had nothing to do with his personal reputation; it had to do with a professional assignment and resolving it properly. The man deserved some respect for that.

Carl almost felt like giving him a pat on the back.

‘I have the good and the bad news after my drive to Stevns, Carl,’ said Assad.

Carl sighed. ‘I don’t care which I hear first, Assad. Just go ahead and fire away.’

Assad perched himself on the edge of Carl’s desk. Before long he’d be sitting on Carl’s lap.

‘OK, the bad first.’ If it was normal for him to accompany bad news with that kind of smile, then he was really going to split his sides laughing when he delivered the good news.

‘The man who drove into Daniel Hale’s car is dead too,’ Assad said, clearly eager to see Carl’s reaction. ‘Lis phoned and said it. I have written it just down here.’ He pointed to a number of Arabic symbols that could just as well have meant it was going to snow in the Lofoten Islands in the morning.

Carl didn’t have the energy to react. It was so annoying and so typical. Of course the man was dead. Had he really expected anything else? That he was alive and kicking and would immediately confess that he’d impersonated Hale, murdered Lynggaard, and then killed Hale afterwards? Nonsense!

‘Lis said that he was a thug from out in the sticks, Carl. She said that he was in prison several times for dumb driving. Do you know what she means by “thug” and “sticks”?’

Carl nodded wearily.

‘Good,’ said Assad, and continued reading aloud from his hieroglyphics. At some point Carl was going to have to suggest that his assistant write his notes in Danish.

‘He lived in Skævinge in northern Zealand,’ he went on. ‘They found him dead then in his bed with quite a lot of vomit in his windpipe and with an alcohol of at least a thousand. He had also taken pills.’

‘I see. When did this happen?’

‘Not long after the accident. In the report it says that the whole shit with him came from that.’

‘You mean he drank himself to death because of the accident?’

‘Yes. Because of post-dramatic stress.’

‘It’s called post-
traumatic
stress, Assad.’ Carl drummed his fingers on the desk and closed his eyes. There may have been three people out on the road when the collision took place; if so, it was most likely murder. And if it was murder, then the thug from Skævinge really did have something to drink himself to death over. But where was the third person, the man or woman who had waded out in front of Daniel Hale’s car, if that was what actually happened? Had he or she also killed themselves with booze?

‘What was the man’s name?’

‘Dennis. Dennis Knudsen. He was twenty-seven when he died.’