The Elephant Keepers' Children (29 page)

“Rickardt,” I say, “did you by any chance happen to show Mother this tunnel?”

Rickardt's expression becomes pensive.

“I may have. It's a very romantic place, the tunnel. Tiles on the floor. A whirl of astral activity all around. Wonderful place to smoke a joint. I may have fantasized a little about stealing a kiss. It's not often one gets the chance to be alone with your mother. Don't tell anyone, though. Anyway, she turned me down. Not that I've given up on that account. Some women need to be besieged.”

Rickardt makes himself comfy.

“I shall have a sleepless night, I fear,” he says. “In bed with three delicious plums.”

It's an utterance one can take only as a compliment, though it can hardly be sincere, because a moment later Rickardt is sound asleep with his arms around his lute.

We lie awake in the dark
. Despite our exhaustion, there's something that won't go away.

“Petrus,” says Tilte, “would you say Mother and Father were robbers by nature?”

“No,” I reply.

“Would you say they were obsessed by money?”

I have to think a moment about that one, because it's a question any child would prefer to answer in the negative. They were delirious, of course, when they came home with the Maserati and the mink coat, back when the riches flowed. But if you put their joy under a microscope it seemed mostly to be about my father being able to give my classmates a ride and touch 260 kilometers an hour, or maybe even 280, on the straight out to the landing strip. And in Mother's case it was as if as a child she'd seen films with naked ladies parading about in mink coats in front of roaring fires in manor houses, and now she wanted to see what it felt like herself.

“The Maserati,” I say. “And the mink. I think they were mostly about giving others some kind of religious experience. That's what they live for. The money was just a means, though rather unfortunate.”

“So, Petrus, if Mother and Father are not naturally jewel thieves and are by no means avaricious, are we then to believe that they would sacrifice their work, their home, their children, and their reasonable names and reputations to enter a life of crime, wanted by Interpol in fifty countries, and all for a couple of aquariums full of shiny stones they'd probably never be able to sell anyway?”

We look at each other. Until now, we've been so caught up in events that we've been unable to see things from above. But now we're beginning to do just that.

“And yet they've planned a robbery,” says Tilte. “So they must have been intending something else than to do a runner with the swag.”

Our fatigue is gone. My hair rises.

“The Lost Property Act,” I say. “There must be something in it about rewards.”

We both sit up.

“They could make it look like someone else had stolen the stuff,” Tilte says. “And then give it back. And cash in the reward.”

“They wouldn't even have to open the box,” I say. “All they'd need to do was make it disappear.”

“But it weighs two tons,” says Tilte.

“Mother will have worked something out,” I say.

“They'd get ten percent,” says Tilte. “Rewards are usually ten percent. The crucifixes alone are valued at one billion. Ten percent of that's a hundred million. I think they could make do with that.”

We lie down again
. It's rumored that the great mystics no longer sleep once they've attained a certain level. Their eyes may be shut, but they register everything.

It's not a claim I personally have ever been able to verify, but if I should get the chance, if some great mystic should ever
settle on Finø, for example, then I should certainly want to investigate the matter further before believing—for instance, by sneaking in at night and quietly removing the false teeth from the glass on the bedside table and waiting to see if the saintly individual in question could identify me as the perpetrator the next morning.

Until that happens, I shall consider it merely to be a nice story and a sign that Tilte and I have yet to become fully enlightened, because when we sleep we sleep so heavily that whoever is standing outside hammering on the door of our cabin has most likely been standing there for some time before we realize what's going on and open up to see who it is.

It's Leonora Ticklepalate. In her nightdress, with her laptop under her arm and her eyes wide open.

“Part of the file's been deleted,” she says.

At first, we have no idea what she's talking about. It always takes a few minutes for Tilte and me to reach full intellectual capacity when woken after midnight.

Leonora puts the computer down in front of us and opens one of the files. From within our mental haze we identify what we now know to be the old chapel of Filthøj Castle. The time in the corner says it's seven in the morning, and there's not a soul in sight. The image brightens as daylight comes, workers enter and leave. Evening falls, then night, and in the corner time races away. Leonora slows the film. Now the seconds pass tardily, the time is 2:50 in the morning, 2:58, 2:59, and then a sudden leap forward to 4:00.

“There's an hour missing,” says Leonora.

“A power outage?” Tilte suggests.

“Power outages don't happen on the stroke of the hour,” I say. “And alarm systems always have backups.”

We look at each other.

“They've deleted an hour,” says Leonora. “Your parents have deleted an hour.”

“Leonora,” says Tilte, “didn't you once say that in principle anything that's ever been deleted from a computer can be retrieved?”

“In principle,” says Leonora. “But not at half past twelve at night. And besides, I've got the jitters about this. Knowing your parents like I do. They're nice people, but risky. Nothing personal. I'm just worried about what they might be up to. And it's not nice to lie in bed on your own, tossing and turning and wondering what's going to happen. I was thinking I might sleep with you?”

In this overpopulated bed, I fold my hands together. Tonight, my prayers are all about being spared farther visitors in need of nocturnal comfort.

“Copenhagen is a global spiritual center,”
says count Rickardt Three Lions. “She's the City of Gods, and I can smell it.”

The
White Lady
is on her way into the Port of Copenhagen. We are standing on the foredeck with the count and a handful of other passengers who've managed to haul themselves out of bed and through the after-effects of the buffet at Finøholm and Bullimilla's canapés and champagne.

It's a crisp, clear morning, the sun is shining, the sky and the water are blue, and all of it is dotted with white seagulls.

“It all begins up north,” says the count. “With the wellness centers of northern Sjælland, macrobiotics, yoga, Dr. Bach's flower remedies, and Balinese massage. Toward the city, it picks up speed with the centers of Tibetan Buddhism, the Sufi Academy, and the private Catholic schools at Hellerup. The Swedenborg Institute and the Martinus Institute, and the theosophists of Frederiksberg. The center is a vibrant, ecstatic thrum: Copenhagen Cathedral, the Faculty of Theology, the Catholic church in Bredgade, the Russian Orthodox church, the yoga schools of the old city, the mosques, the synagogues. In the southern districts, it all
veers off into occultism: the Occult School of Christiania, the Satanic Consortium on Amager Strandvej, the astrological institutes on Gammel Køge Landevej. And then the majestic finale with Asa-Thor and the great sacrificial site of Amager Fælled.”

The count snatches his breath.

“I can smell it. The incense. The aroma of
sattvic
cuisine. The unleavened bread. The halal butchers of Nansensgade. The votive candles for the Virgin Mary. The sacrificial smoke rising from the fields of Kløvermarken. And I hear it, too. The sound of colonic irrigation, the glugging of the neti pots. The church mode, and the bells. The prayers delivered to Mecca. I've even composed a song about it.”

We've already taken cover when the archlute appears above the railing.

The morning has otherwise been pleasant
. We've slept like logs and have woken early, refreshed and feeling almost new. We've showered, and this has been nothing at all like at home in the rectory, where time and again one must pause to wonder whether heredity or environment is to blame for female showering never taking less than an hour and always emptying the hot-water tank, because the
White Lady
has endless amounts of hot water, and our cabin has two shower rooms, one for Tilte and one for Basker and me, as well as stacks of white towels, and two hair dryers, both of which I use at once on Basker, who seems to have resolved the great
theological issue of where Paradise is to be found, if it exists at all. In Basker's opinion Paradise is right there, positioned between two hair dryers turned up on full.

After showering, we put on our ceremonial robes and trip along to the clinic to wish Maria good morning. She's still nice and cold. We wheel her along to Rickardt's cabin and get her back into her coffin, and once the lid's been secured we heave a sigh of relief and make our way to the ship's restaurant.

Many of the great religions
take the view that if only one leans back in one's seat everything will be all right. This is a school of thought for which Tilte and I share a large measure of sympathy, and on this particular morning a great many things indeed seem to fall into place on their own. On our way to the restaurant, Tilte checks her text messages and is able to announce that one of her acquaintances is letting us borrow her flat so we won't have to sleep in cardboard boxes on the city streets, and when we enter the restaurant we find ourselves standing before a breakfast buffet of the kind that makes you wish you were wearing a hat in order that you might kneel down and remove it.

Indeed, it is because of this breakfast that our attention fails. As we lift our gaze from the fruit salad and the butter croissants and the crisp pancakes with maple syrup and whipped cream, and the coffee whose aroma is like the spice markets of all Arabia and for that reason may have been left behind by the
White Lady
's previous owner, we notice that the
restaurant has quietly filled up and that in front of us is the nape of Anaflabia Borderrud's neck.

Not that there's anything wrong with Anaflabia's neck. On the contrary, both it and her hair, which is swept up, would be an encouraging sight indeed, though in contrast to Conny's not one for which I would be prepared to risk my life. The problem is that next to Anaflabia sits Vera, and next to Vera sits Thorkild's wife, and next to her Thorkild himself, and at the very moment I happen to look up our eyes meet and his gaze is fixed directly upon us, and not only that but Tilte has lifted her veil to shovel pancakes into her mouth unencumbered.

“Aha,” says Thorkild. And then rather louder: “Aha!”

Had he been allowed a third
Aha
, I'm sure he would have attracted the attention of those around us. But at that moment something unexpected occurs.

Alexander Flounderblood comes staggering across the room like a drunk, knocking over chairs and overturning tables and finally slumping down next to Thorkild.

“A crime has been committed,” he announces.

Alexander Flounderblood is a person capable at any time of commanding the full attention of others. In addition to this natural gift comes the fact that on this occasion his eyes are as wide as plates, his hair is sticking up as though he just removed his fingers from an electric socket, and he has Baroness with him, and Baroness's coat is sticking up too, making her look like a porcupine.

So now he has the full attention of the entire saloon, including Lars and Katinka, because the two detective constables
of the Police Intelligence Service are seated at the adjoining table.