The Absent One (20 page)

He shrugged, glancing down for a moment. Of course it wasn’t.

‘Why was Kimmie expelled from boarding school? Do you recall?’

He put his head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Something about her getting involved with one of the teachers. That wasn’t permitted.’

‘What happened to her afterwards?’

‘She rented an apartment in Næstved for a year. She worked at a grill bar.’ He laughed. ‘Her folks didn’t know anything about it. They thought she was still in school. But they found out, of course.’

‘She was sent to boarding school in Switzerland?’

‘Yes. She was there for four or five years. Not just boarding school, but also the university. What the hell was it called again?’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. I can’t
remember the bloody name. At any rate, she was studying to be a veterinarian. Hey, wait. It was Berne. The University of Berne.’

‘So she spoke very good French?’

‘No, German. Lectures were in German, she said.’

‘Did she finish her studies?’

‘No, not completely. I don’t know why, but she had to quit for some reason.’

Carl glanced at Assad, who jotted it down in his notebook.

‘And then what? Where did she live after that?’

‘She came home. Lived for a while in Ordrup with her parents – that is, with her father and stepmother. And then she moved in with me.’

‘We know she worked at a pet shop. Wasn’t that beneath her level of training?’

‘Why? She never finished her studies to become a vet.’

‘And you, what did you do for a living?’

‘I worked at my father’s lumber yard. That’s all in the report, you know that.’

‘Wasn’t there something in the report about you inheriting the lumber yard in 1995, and then it burned down shortly afterwards? After that you were unemployed, right?’

Apparently the man could also appear hurt. ‘The unloved child has many faces,’ as Kurt Jensen, his old colleague who now sat twiddling his thumbs in parliament, always said.

‘That’s utter rubbish,’ Bjarne protested. ‘I was never accused of starting that fire. And what would I have got out of it? My father’s business wasn’t insured.’

No
, Carl thought.
He should probably have checked that out first.

Carl sat for a while, staring at the walls. He’d sat in this room countless times before. These walls had lent an ear to tons of lies. Tons of tall tales and assurances no one believed.

‘How did she get along with her parents?’ he asked. ‘Do you know?’

Bjarne Thøgersen stretched, already calmer. They’d entered the small-talk zone. The conversation wasn’t about him, and he liked that. He felt safe.

‘Terribly,’ he said. ‘Her folks were a couple of arseholes. I don’t think her father was ever home. And the slag he was married to was a mean bitch.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Yeah, you know. The type of person who only cares about money. A gold-digger.’ He savoured the word. It wasn’t one that was regularly used in his world.

‘They argued?’

‘Yes. Kimmie said they fought like hell.’

‘What was Kimmie doing while you killed the two teenagers?’

The sudden shift back in the sequence of events caused the man’s eyes to freeze on Carl’s shirt collar. If there had been electrodes attached to Bjarne Thøgersen, all the gauges would be flipping out.

For a moment he sat in silence, seemingly unwilling to respond. Then he said: ‘She was with the others at Torsten’s father’s summer cottage. Why do you ask?’

‘Didn’t they notice anything about you when you returned? You must have had blood on your clothes.’

Carl instantly regretted the last question. He hadn’t
meant to be so direct. Now the interrogation would come to a standstill. Thøgersen would say he’d told the others how he’d tried to save a dog that had been hit by a car, just as it stated in the report. Damn it.

‘Did she think it was cool with all that blood?’ Assad asked from the corner, before the man was able to respond to Carl’s question.

Bjarne Thøgersen looked confusedly at the little man. A reproachful glare might have been expected, but not this naked, exposed manner indicating that Assad had hit the mark. He didn’t need to say anything. Whether the story held or not, they now knew that Kimmie had thought the blood was cool. Very unbecoming for someone who later wanted to dedicate herself to saving the lives of small animals.

Carl gave Assad a quick nod that was intended just as much to show Thøgersen that he’d noted his reaction. A reaction that had been too strong – and miscalculated.

‘Cool?’ Thøgersen said, trying to recoup. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘But she moved in with you,’ Carl went on. ‘That was in 1995, right, Assad?’

Assad nodded from his corner.

‘Yes, in 1995. The 29th of September. We’d been seeing each other for a while. An awesome lady.’

He’d said that before.

‘Why do you remember the exact date? It was very many years ago.’

He spread his hands. ‘Right, and what’s been happening in my life since then? For me, it’s still one of the last things that happened before I was sent here.’

‘I see.’ Carl tried to appear obliging. And then he changed his expression. ‘Were you the father of her child?’

Thøgersen glanced at the clock. His fair skin flushed slightly. Apparently one hour suddenly seemed endless to him.

‘I don’t know.’

Carl considered flaring up in anger, but he checked himself. It was neither the time nor the place. ‘You say you don’t know. What do you mean by that, Bjarne? Was she seeing others besides you when you lived together?’

He tilted his head to the side. ‘Of course not.’

‘So it
was
you who got her pregnant?’

‘She moved away, didn’t she? How the hell would I know who she went to bed with?’

‘From what we’ve determined, she miscarried at around eighteen weeks. Wasn’t she living with you when she became pregnant?’

Thøgersen lurched up from his seat and spun the chair round. This was the kind of jaunty attitude prison taught its inmates. Strolling nonchalantly through the central building. The laid-back waving of limbs to indicate indifference. Holding fags loosely between the lips out on the pitch. And then this habit of turning the chair round and taking the next questions with arms on the backrest, legs spread.
Ask me your bullshit, I don’t care
, the posture said.
You’ll get nothing from me anyway, dumb copper pig
.

‘Does it really make any fucking difference who the father was?’ he asked. ‘The kid died, after all.’

Ten to one he knew it wasn’t his.

‘And then she disappeared.’

‘Yeah, she just took off from the hospital. Really stupid.’

‘Was it like her to do such a thing?’

He shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know? She’d never had a miscarriage before, as far as I know.’

‘Did you go looking for her?’ came Assad’s voice from the corner.

Thøgersen glowered at him as if it were none of his business.

‘Did you?’ Carl asked.

‘It had been a while since we split up. So no, I didn’t.’

‘Why weren’t you together any more?’

‘We just weren’t. It didn’t work out.’

‘Was she unfaithful?’

Thøgersen glanced once more at the clock. Only a minute had passed since the last time he’d checked. ‘Why do you think she was the one who was unfaithful?’ he said, and gave his neck a couple of stretch exercises.

They discussed the relationship back and forth for five minutes. It was fruitless. He was slippery as an eel.

Meanwhile, Assad had been slowly edging his chair closer. Each time he asked a question, he inched forward, until he was nearly beside the table. No doubt about it, he was irritating Thøgersen.

‘We see you’ve had a bit of luck on the stock market,’ Carl said. ‘According to your tax documents you’re a wealthy man. Isn’t that right?’

He curled his lips. Smugly. This was something he would love to discuss. ‘I can’t complain,’ he said.

‘Who gave you the investment capital?’

‘You can see that in the tax documents.’

‘I’ve not actually been carrying your tax documents in
my back pocket for the last eleven years, so I think you should just tell me yourself, Bjarne.’

‘I borrowed the money.’

‘Well done. Especially considering you were behind bars. Someone who wasn’t afraid to give a risky loan, that’s for sure. One of the drug kingpins in here, perhaps?’

‘I borrowed the money from Torsten Florin.’

Bingo
, Carl thought. He would have loved to see Assad’s face at this moment, but he kept his eyes trained on Thøgersen.

‘Well, well. So you were still friends, despite your secret? That it was you who killed those kids. The abominable crime that Torsten, among others, had been suspected of committing. That’s what I’d call a friend, I must say. But perhaps he owed you a favour?’

Bjarne Thøgersen realized where this line of questioning was headed and fell silent.

‘You are good at stocks then?’ Assad had pulled his chair right next to the table. As imperceptibly as a reptile, he’d slithered into position.

Thøgersen shrugged. ‘Better than many, yes.’

‘Fifteen million kroner it’s turned into.’ Assad looked dreamy. ‘And still growing. Maybe I should get tips from you then. Do you give tips?’

‘How do you follow the market, Bjarne?’ Carl added. ‘Aren’t you rather limited in communicating with the outside world, and vice versa?’

‘I read newspapers and send and receive letters.’

‘So you know the buy-and-hold strategy, maybe? Or the TA-7 strategy? Is that how you do it?’ Assad asked calmly.

Carl slowly turned his head towards Assad. Was that poppycock, or what?

Thøgersen smiled curtly. ‘I follow my nose and KFX stocks. Nothing can go too wrong then.’ He smiled again. ‘I’ve had a good stretch.’

‘Do you know what, then, Bjarne Thøgersen?’ Assad said. ‘You should have a chat with my cousin. He started with fifty thousand kroner, and now, three years later, he
still
has fifty thousand kroner. He’d like you, I think.’

‘I’d say your cousin should refrain from trading stocks,’ Bjarne said, annoyed, and turned back to Carl. ‘I thought we were supposed to be talking about Kimmie? What does she have to do with my stock trading?’

‘That is true, but I have just one more question, for my cousin,’ Assad insisted. ‘Is Grundfos a good stock in KFX?’

‘Yes, it’s decent.’

‘OK. Thank you then. I didn’t think that Grundfos was traded at all, but you probably know better.’

Touché
, Carl thought, as Assad blinked overtly at him. It wasn’t hard to imagine how Bjarne Thøgersen felt right now. It was Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen who invested for him. No doubt about it. Thøgersen didn’t know jack about stocks, but he needed enough to live on once he was out of prison. Quid pro quo.

They didn’t really need to know any more than that.

‘We have a picture we’d like you to see,’ Carl said. He put Assad’s photo on the table. They’d altered the image a bit, and now the focus was sharp as a knife.

They both watched Thøgersen. Of course they’d anticipated a certain kind of curiosity. It’s always a special
moment to see how an old flame looks after so many years. What they hadn’t counted on, however, was the depth of reaction from a guy who had been living among the worst criminals in Denmark. Eleven years of debasement surrounded by all kinds of wretchedness: the pecking order, the homosexuality, assaults, threats, blackmail, brutalization. The man who had made it through all that, looking five years younger than his contemporaries, now turned ashen-faced. His eyes shifted back and forth – from Kimmie’s face to the wall, and back again. Like a spectator at an execution who doesn’t want to watch, but can’t resist, either. A terrible inner conflict that Carl would give anything to understand.

‘You’re not happy to see her. She looks pretty good,’ Carl said. ‘Don’t you think?’

Bjarne nodded slowly, his Adam’s apple gliding visibly up and down. ‘It’s just strange,’ he said.

He tried to smile as though he were feeling sad. But it wasn’t sadness.

‘How can you have a picture of her if you don’t know where she is?’

In and of itself the question was reasonable enough, but his hands shook. His words came slowly. His eyes darted back and forth again.

He was afraid. That’s what it was.

Simply put, Kimmie scared him to death.

‘You have to go and see the homicide chief,’ the duty officer said, as Carl and Assad passed his cage at headquarters. ‘The police chief is there, too,’ he added.

Carl took the stairs, formulating his arguments with
each step. He was damn well going to give as good as he got. They all knew the police chief. And what did she amount to other than a run-of-the-mill solicitor who’d simply stumbled on the path to a judgeship?

‘Uh-ohhh,’ Mrs Sørensen muttered encouragingly from behind the front desk. He’d return her ‘uh-ohhh’ right back some other time.

‘Good that you’ve come, Carl. We’ve just been discussing everything,’ the homicide chief said, pointing at an empty seat. ‘It doesn’t look good, you know.’

Carl frowned, wondering if Marcus had laid it on a little too thick. He nodded at the police chief, who was sitting in full regalia and sharing a pot of tea with Lars Bjørn. Tea, for God’s sake.

‘You’re probably aware of what this is about,’ Marcus said. ‘I’m just a little surprised you didn’t mention it yourself when we met this morning.’

‘What are you talking about? That I’m still investigating the Rørvig murders? Isn’t that what I’ve been asked to do? To choose the cases I wish to work on? What about letting me run my own show?’

‘Damn it, Carl. Be a man and stop evading the point.’ Lars Bjørn straightened his slender frame in his chair, so that the police chief’s imposing corpus didn’t overshadow him. ‘We’re talking about Finn Aalbæk, the proprietor of Detecto, who you assaulted on Gammel Kongevej yesterday. We have his solicitor’s breakdown of the incident, so you can read for yourself what the matter is.’

The incident? What were they talking about? Carl grabbed the piece of paper and glanced at it. What the hell was Aalbæk up to? In black and white it said Carl had
assaulted him. Did they really believe that dumb piece of shit?