Текст книги "Disgrace"

Автор книги: Jussi Adler-Olsen

Соавторы: Jussi Adler-Olsen
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

She set her hands on her hips. Evidently he wasn’t to ask her any more questions.

‘Now I’m going to remove it and take it to headquarters.’ It wasn’t a question, but a confirmation. Otherwise she would scurry down and wake Kassandra Lassen, and that would probably create a scene.

Then he allowed her to go. She went off, shaking her head, her trust in the intelligence of authority having suffered a setback.

For a moment he considered calling in the crime-scene techs, but thought better of it when he envisioned the miles of plastic crime-scene tape and men in white jumpsuits everywhere. They had enough to do, and he couldn’t wait. Plain and simple.

So he put on his gloves, lifted the box out carefully, put the tile back in place, took the box inside, set it on the table, unwrapped it and opened it – all in one fluid, unconscious movement.

On top was a little teddy bear, not much bigger than a box of matches. It was a very pale colour, almost yellowish, with worn plush on its face and limbs. Maybe it had been Kimmie’s most cherished possession at one time, her only friend. Maybe someone else’s. Then he pulled out a piece of newspaper from beneath the teddy bear. Berlingske Tidende, 29 September 1995, it said in the corner. The same day she moved in with Bjarne Thøgersen. Beyond that, there was nothing of interest. Just endless job announcements.

He looked in the box expecting to find a diary or letters that would shed light on earlier thoughts and deeds. Instead he found six small plastic pockets, the kind used to collect stamps or put recipes in. He hefted the whole lot from the metal box.

Why hide these things so well? he thought to himself, and knew the answer the instant he saw the contents of the bottom two pockets.

‘Fuck me!’ he blurted out.

There were two cards from a Trivial Pursuit game. One in each pocket.

After five minutes of deep concentration, he grabbed his notepad and carefully described the position of the plastic pockets relative to the rest of the box’s contents.

Afterwards he scrutinized each of them carefully, one at a time.

One pocket contained a man’s wristwatch, one an earring, another had something that resembled a rubber band, and finally a handkerchief.

Four pockets in addition to the ones with the Trivial Pursuit cards.

He chewed on his lip.

That made six in all.

22

Ditlev raced up the stairs to Caracas in four strides.

‘Where is he?’ he shouted to the secretary and dashed off in the direction her finger pointed.

Frank Helmond lay in his room alone, having fasted and been prepped for his second operation.

When Ditlev entered the room, Helmond didn’t look at him with respect.

Strange, Ditlev thought, letting his eyes wander up the sheet to his bandaged face. This idiot’s lying here, showing me no respect. Has he learned nothing? Who was it that hurt him, and who patched him together again?

When it came down to it, they had agreed on everything. Treatment of the numerous deep gashes in Helmond’s face would be accompanied by a light facelift and tightening of the skin around the neck and chest. Liposuction, surgery and capable hands – that’s what Ditlev could offer him. And when you added his wife and a small fortune into the bargain, the point had been reached where it was surely reasonable to demand from Helmond, if not appreciation, then at least that he regard their agreement with a certain degree of humility.

But the bargain hadn’t been kept, because Helmond had talked. There were nurses at this moment who must be wondering about what they’d heard, and who needed to be made to see sense.

Because regardless how drugged the patient had been, the words had been uttered: ‘It was Ditlev Pram and Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen who did this.’

He had said that.

Ditlev didn’t bother making an introduction. The man had no choice but to listen to him anyway.

‘Do you know how easy it is to kill a man under anaesthetic without being detected?’ he asked. ‘Oh, don’t you? In any case, you’re now ready for your next operation tonight, Frank. I just hope the anaesthetists have a steady hand. In spite of everything, I am paying them to do their work properly, you know.’ He aimed a finger at Helmond. ‘And just one more, simple matter. I’m assuming that we now agree you’ll keep your trap shut and stick to our agreement? Otherwise you’re risking having your organs end up as spare parts for people who are younger and fitter than you, and that wouldn’t please you very much, would it?’

Ditlev tapped the drip that was already fastened to Frank’s arm. ‘I don’t hold grudges, Frank. So you shouldn’t either, do you understand me?’

He pushed hard on Helmond’s bed and turned away. If that didn’t do it, then the little loser was asking for it.

On his way out he slammed the door so violently that a passing porter examined it when Ditlev had turned his back.

Then he made his way directly to the laundry. It would take more than a verbal lashing to exorcize the ugly feeling that Helmond’s mere presence created in his body.

His newest acquisition, a girl from the part of Mindanao where a man got his head chopped off if he went to bed with the wrong woman, had yet to be tried out. He’d watched her with great satisfaction. She was exactly how he liked them. With shy eyes and a strong sense of her own insignificance. That, combined with her availability, lit a fire in him. A fire that longed to be extinguished.

‘I have the Helmond situation under control,’ he said, later that day. Behind the wheel, Ulrik nodded, satisfied. He was relieved, that much was evident.

Ditlev gazed out across the landscape, where the forest slowly took shape ahead of them. A calm fell over him. All in all, it had been a reasonably good end to an otherwise rather out-of-control week.

‘What about the police?’ Ulrik asked.

‘That, too. This Carl Mørck has been removed from the case.’

They arrived at Torsten’s estate, stopping some fifty yards from the gate and turning their faces up to the cameras. In ten seconds the gate between the fir trees a little further ahead would glide open.

Ditlev dialled Torsten’s number on his mobile as they drove into the courtyard. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Drive down past the breeding house and park there. I’m in the menagerie.’

‘He’s in the menagerie,’ he told Ulrik, already feeling the excitement rising in him. It was the most intense part of the ritual, and definitely the part that Torsten, at least, looked forward to most.

Time and again they had seen Torsten Florin scurrying about among half-naked fashion models. They had seen him bathed in the spotlight and heard the gushing praise of influential people. But never had they seen him exhibit such pleasure as when they visited the menagerie before a hunt.

The next hunt would be on a weekday. Not yet scheduled, but early the following week. On this occasion only those who’d previously won the right to shoot the special prey of the day would be allowed to participate. Only those who had a taste for such experiences, and who had benefitted materially from these hunts. People they could trust; people like them.

Ulrik parked the Rover just as Torsten came out of the building with blood on his rubber apron.

‘Welcome,’ he said, beaming. So he’d just slaughtered an animal.

The hall had been expanded since they’d last been there. It was longer and brighter, with numerous glass partitions. Forty Latvian and Bulgarian workers had done their part, and Dueholt had begun to resemble what Torsten had made his personal ambition for his private home sixteen years earlier, when he’d already made his first millions by the age of twenty-four.

In the hall there were perhaps a hundred or more cages with animals inside them. All of them lit by halogen lights.

For a child, a tour in Torsten Florin’s menagerie would be a more exotic experience than a trip to the zoo. For an adult with even a limited understanding of animal welfare, it would be shocking.

‘Look at this,’ Torsten said. ‘A Komodo dragon.’

He was clearly enjoying himself, as though in the midst of an orgasm, and Ditlev understood why. Seeing as these animals were dangerous, and protected species as well, this wasn’t your ordinary prey.

‘I think we’ll take that one to Saxenholdt’s estate when the snow comes. Down there the hunting area is easier to survey, and these devils are fantastically good at hiding. Can you imagine it?’

‘Their bite is the most infectious on the planet, I’ve heard,’ Ditlev said. ‘So the shot has to be right on target, before it has a chance to lock its jaws on to the shooter.’

They saw Florin tremble as if he had the shivers. Yes, it was very good prey he’d procured for them. How had he managed it?

‘What will it be next time?’ Ulrik asked, curious.

Florin spread his hands. That meant he had an idea, but they would have to discover it for themselves.

‘Our choices are over here,’ he said, pointing at cage after cage containing small animals with big eyes.

It was as clean as a clinic inside the building. With their vast, collective miles of digestive system and correspondingly enormous quantities of metabolic waste, it was thanks to Torsten’s excellent, dark-skinned staff that the animals did not leave an overwhelming stench of urine and shit in the hall. Three Somalian families lived on his estate. They diligently swept, prepared food, dusted and cleaned the cages, but disappeared whenever guests arrived. You couldn’t risk people talking.

In the last row, six tall cages stood side by side, silhouettes huddled inside.

Ditlev smiled when he looked into the first two. The chimpanzee was well proportioned, but it had a pair of aggressive eyes that were trained on the animal in the next cage: a wild dingo that stood with its tail between its legs, shaking, while saliva flowed from its bared teeth.

He was just so incredibly creative, Torsten. Far beyond the pale of what society deemed acceptable. If animal rights organizations ever caught a glimpse of his world, he would face prison and fines in the millions. His empire would collapse overnight. Self-respecting women of means had no problem wearing animal fur, but a chimp frightened half to death by a dingo or forced to run screaming for its life through a Danish deciduous forest – that would make them opt out.

The final four cages held more ordinary animals. A Great Dane, a giant billy goat, a badger and a fox. Except for the fox, these animals lay in the hay, staring out at them as if they had understood their fate. The fox simply stood in the corner, trembling.

‘Of course you’re thinking, What’s going on here? But I’ll explain.’ Florin put his hands in his apron’s side pockets and nodded at the Great Dane. ‘You see, that one there has a pedigree going back one hundred years. It cost me the tidy sum of two hundred thousand kroner, but with those nasty, slanty eyes, I don’t think it should be allowed to continue passing on its ugly genes.’

Ulrik laughed, as could be expected.

‘And you should know about this special creature, too.’ He nodded at the next cage. ‘You probably recall that my greatest hero is the barrister Rudolf Sand, who kept a strict record of his trophies for almost sixty-five years. He really was a legendary killer.’ He nodded to himself and drummed on the bars so the animal pulled away, its head lowered and its horn threatening. ‘Sand dropped 53,276 wild animals, exactly. And a buck like this one was his most important and biggest trophy. It’s a corkscrew goat, perhaps better known as a Pakistani Markhor. You see, Sand hunted a male Markhor in Afghanistan’s mountains for nearly twenty years until finally, after one hundred and twenty-five days of intensive tracking, he managed to bring down a monstrous, ancient buck. You can read about his experience on the Internet. I recommend it. You’d have to search far and wide to find a hunter his equal.’

‘And this is a Markhor?’ Ulrik’s smile was murderous in itself.

Torsten was revelling in it. ‘It sure as hell is, and just a few kilos lighter than Rudolf Sand’s. Two and a half kilos, to be exact. A fine specimen. That’s what you get from having contacts in Afghanistan. Long live the war.’

They laughed and turned to the badger.

‘This one lived for years just south of the estate here, but the other day it came too close to one of my traps. I have quite a personal relationship with this little troll, I’d like you to know.’

So that means it’s off limits, Ditlev thought. Torsten will take care of it himself one day.

‘And then there’s this one, Fantastic Mr Fox. Can you figure out what makes him special?’

They studied the quivering fox for a long time. It seemed frightened, but nevertheless stood looking at them, its head completely still, until Ulrik kicked at the cage door.

It bolted at them so fast that its snapping jaws got hold of the toe of Ulrik’s boot. Both he and Ditlev jumped. Then they noticed the froth around its mouth, the crazy eyes and recognized that death was about to claim this creature.

‘Jesus Christ, Torsten, this here is definitely diabolical. This is the one, isn’t it? The animal we’re hunting next week, am I right? We’re going to set free a fox with advanced rabies.’ He laughed jovially, so that Ditlev also had to laugh. ‘You’ve found an animal that knows the forest inside out, and with rabies no less. I can hardly wait until you tell the other hunters. Damn, Torsten. Why didn’t we think of this before?’

At this Torsten joined in the laughter until the hall resounded with the rustling and hissing of animals seeking safety in their prison’s deepest corners.

‘It’s good you’re wearing those thick boots, dear Ulrik,’ he laughed and pointed at the teeth marks that had imprinted themselves in his custom-sewn Wolverine. ‘Otherwise we’d have to take a trip to Hillerød Hospital, and that would be hard to explain, don’t you think?

‘One more thing,’ Torsten said, leading them to the part of the hall with the brightest light. ‘Have a look!’

He pointed at a shooting range built as an extension of the building. It was a cylindrical tunnel, almost seven feet high and at least fifty yards long. Well marked, yard by yard. With three targets. One for a bow and arrow, one for a rifle and finally one with a steel-plated accumulation box for heavier calibres.

They also inspected the walls inside the tunnel, impressed. At least fifteen inches of soundproofing. If anything outside was capable of hearing shots, it could only be a bat.

‘There are air nozzles all the way round, so we can simulate all types of wind conditions in the shooting tunnel.’ He pushed a button. ‘This wind force gives a deviation that demands a correction of two to three per cent with a bow. You can see the table over there.’ He pointed at a small computer screen on the wall. ‘All types of weapons and wind simulations can be keyed in.’ He stepped into the lock. ‘But first you need to know how it actually feels. We can’t very well take all this equipment out into the forest, now, can we?’

Ulrik followed him. His thick hair didn’t move an inch. On that point Torsten probably had a scalp better-suited as a wind-force indicator.

‘Now we’re getting to the good part,’ Torsten continued. ‘We’ll let the rabid fox loose in the forest. It’s insanely aggressive, as you both saw, and the beaters will be well equipped with leathers all the way up to the groin.’ He gestured with his hands to illustrate. ‘We, the hunters, will be the ones exposed. Of course I’ll see to it that there’s vaccine near by, but even the flesh wounds it can deliver in its crazy frenzy are enough to kill a man. A torn femoral artery! You know what that’ll do.’

‘When are you going to tell the others?’ Ulrik asked gleefully.

‘Just before we begin. But here’s the best part, my friends. Look at this.’

He ducked behind a bale of straw and pulled out a weapon. Ditlev was immediately wild about his selection. It was a crossbow with a scope. In no way was this legal in Denmark following the weapons law reform of 1989, but it was truly murderous and superb to aim with. If you could, that is. And you had only one chance to hit the target, because it took time to reload. It would be a hunt with many great, unknown risks. Just as it should be.

‘The Relayer Y25, it’ll be called. Excalibur’s anniversary model, out this spring. Only one thousand will be produced, plus these two. It doesn’t get any better than this.’ He scooped another crossbow from its hiding spot and handed one to each of them.

Ditlev took his with outstretched arm. It weighed next to nothing.

‘We managed to sneak them into the country in disassembled pieces. Each part was sent separately. I thought one of the pieces had been lost in the mail, but it turned up yesterday.’ He grinned. ‘One year in transit. What do you think?’

Ulrik snapped the string. It sounded like a harp. Sharp and clear-toned.

‘The manual states it can pull two hundred pounds, but I think it’s more. And with a 2219 bolt, even large animals can’t survive a shot at up to ninety yards. Watch this.’

Torsten grabbed a crossbow, set the stirrup on the floor and placed his foot on it. Then he pulled hard, tightened and locked it. They knew he’d done it many times before.

He pulled a bolt from the quiver under the bow and carefully locked it, accomplishing the task in a single long, lithe and silent movement, so unlike the explosive force he was about to unleash at the target forty-five yards ahead.

They had expected Torsten would hit the bull’s eye, but not the sizeable arc the bolt first described through the air, nor that it would hit the target so forcefully that it disappeared from view.

‘When you hit the fox, make sure you’re standing higher up, so the bolt doesn’t strike one of the beaters when it tears through the fox’s body, because unless you hit the shoulder blades, it will. And it would probably be best not to, since it won’t die from the wound; it’ll just keep running.’

He gave them a slip of paper.

‘Here’s a link online to directions on assembling and using the crossbow. I recommend you watch all the videos very thoroughly.’

Ditlev glanced at the link:

http://www.excaliburcrossbow.com/demo/listings.php?category-id=47.

‘Why?’ he then asked.

‘Because you two are going to win the draw.’

23

Carl returned to the basement to find a single height-adjustable table assembled on wobbly legs. Next to it he found Rose on her knees, cursing at a screwdriver. Nice rump, he thought, stepping over her without a word.

He cast a sidelong glance at the table, and saw with foreboding at least twenty yellow notes in Assad’s characteristic block letters. Five of them were messages saying that Marcus Jacobsen had called. He crumpled those up immediately. The rest he gathered in a sticky mass and shoved in his back pocket.

He peeked into Assad’s little cubbyhole of an office and discovered the prayer rug on the floor and the chair empty.

‘Where is he?’ he asked Rose.

She didn’t bother to respond. Simply pointed behind Carl’s back.

He looked into his own office and saw Assad sitting with his legs planted on the paper forest on his desk, reading eagerly and appearing lost in thought, his head bobbing in rhythm to the buzzing music of indefinable origin streaming from his headphones. A steaming glass of tea sat in the centre of a stack of papers that Carl had labelled ‘Category 1: Cases without perpetrators’. It all looked very cosy and organized.

‘What the hell are you doing, Assad?’ he barked. So brusquely that the man jerked like a marionette, sending file pages floating silently through the air and splashing tea all over the desk.

Assad threw himself across the desk in a flurry, using his sleeves like a tea towel. Not until Carl put a reassuring hand on Assad’s shoulder did his look of surprise disappear, replaced by his usual, mischievous grin that implied he was sorry but couldn’t help it and besides he had exciting news to share. Only then did he remove his headphones.

‘Yes, I’m sorry I’m sitting here, Carl. But inside my office I heard her all the time then.’

He motioned with a thumb towards the corridor, where Rose’s oaths created as constant a flow of noise as that of all the interesting substances flushing through the basement’s sanitation pipes.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be helping her assemble the tables, Assad?’

Assad put a shushing finger to his full lips. ‘She wants to do it herself. I did try.’

‘Come in here a moment, Rose!’ Carl shouted, dumping the most tea-soaked stack of papers on the floor in the corner.

She stood herself before them with a hateful stare and such a savage grip on the screwdriver that her knuckles showed white.

‘You get ten minutes to make room for your two chairs in here, Rose,’ he said. ‘Assad, you help her unpack them.’

They sat before him like two school kids with eager faces. The chairs were OK, though he wouldn’t have chosen green metal legs. Those, too, he would probably have to get used to.

He told them about his discovery at the house in Ordrup and put the open metal box on the table before them.

Rose seemed disinterested, but Assad’s eyes looked as though they were about to pop out of his skull.

‘If we find fingerprints on the Trivial Pursuit cards that match one or both of the victims in Rørvig, then I’d stake everything on the other effects also having fingerprints of others who’ve been subjected to similar violent experiences,’ he said, waiting a moment until they appeared to understand what he’d just said.

Carl lined up the little teddy bear and the six plastic pockets. Handkerchief, watch, earring, rubber band and two cards, each in individual pockets.

‘Oh, how cute,’ Rose said, eyes fastened on the teddy bear. Typical, thought Carl.

‘Do you two see the most remarkable thing about these pockets?’ he asked.

‘There are two plastic pockets with Trivial Pursuit cards in them,’ Rose said, without hesitation. So she was present after all. He could have sworn she wasn’t.

‘Exactly. Excellent Rose. And that means … ?’

‘Well, logically it means then that each pocket kind of represents a person and not an event,’ Assad said. ‘Otherwise the Trivial Pursuit cards would have been put in the same plastic thingy, right? The Rørvig murders had two victims. So two plastic pockets.’ He spread out his hands in a broad, panoramic sweep. Just like his smile. ‘That is, one plastic pocket to each person then.’

‘Precisely,’ Carl said. Assad was a guy one could count on.

Rose put her palms together and slowly raised them to her mouth. Recognition or shock, or both. Only she knew.

‘So, are you saying we might be looking at six murders?’ she asked.

Carl pounded his desk. ‘Six murders. Bingo!’ he cried. Now they were all on the same page.

Rose stared again at the cute little teddy bear. Somehow she couldn’t make it fit with everything else. Nor was it easy to do.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This little guy here most likely has his own significance, since it’s not displayed like all the other effects.’

They all stared at it for a moment.

‘We don’t know, of course, whether all the effects are related to a murder, but it’s a possibility.’ He extended his hand across the table. ‘Assad, give me Johan Jacobsen’s list. It’s hanging on the board behind you.’

He put it on the table so they both could see it, and pointed at the twenty events that Jacobsen had listed.

‘It’s far from certain that these cases have anything to do with the Rørvig murders. In fact, there might not even be any connection between these, either. But if we explore these cases systematically, maybe we’ll find just one among them that we can connect to just one of these effects, and that’s enough. We’re looking for one more crime the gang could be connected to. If we find it, we’re on the right track. What do you say, Rose, are you the one who’s going to take on this assignment, or what?’

She let her hands drop and suddenly didn’t look too friendly. ‘You give off incredibly mixed signals, Carl. One moment we’re not allowed to talk, the next we’re in full swing. Then I’m supposed to assemble tables, and suddenly I’m not. What am I supposed to think? What will you say in ten minutes?’

‘Hey, wait. There’s something you’ve misunderstood, Rose. You will assemble the tables. You’re the one who ordered them.’

‘It’s really too bad that two men make me do it all by myself –’

At this Assad interrupted. ‘Oh, I wanted to, sure, did I not say it?’

But Rose went on. ‘Carl, do you have any idea how much it hurts, wrestling with all those metal table legs? There’s always some kind of problem with them.’

‘You ordered them, and they’ll be standing in the corridor tomorrow. All put together! We’re having guests from Norway. Have you forgotten?’

She cocked her head back as though he had bad breath. ‘Here we go again. Guests from Norway?’ She looked around. ‘How are we going to have guests from Norway? This place looks like a junkshop. And Assad’s office would shock anyone.’

‘So do something about it, Rose.’

‘Hello? You want me to do something about that, too? That’s quite a few tasks all at once. So I guess you expect us to stay here all night long?’

He tipped his head from side to side. It was of course a possibility.

‘No, but we can start at five, tomorrow morning,’ he responded.

‘Five in the morning!’ This just about knocked her over. ‘Man, you’ve got to be kidding. Honestly! You must have been born with a screw loose!’ she scolded, as Carl wondered whom he could ask at Station City to find out how they’d been able to stand this pain in the neck for more than a week.

‘Please, Rose,’ Assad said, trying to smooth things out. ‘It’s only then because the case is now moving forward then.’

At this, she leaped to her feet. ‘Assad, you bloody well can’t butt in and destroy a good row. And stop with all those “thens”. Take ’em out, mate. I know you can. I’ve heard you on the telephone. You do fine.’

She turned to Carl. ‘Him,’ she said, pointing at Assad. ‘He can assemble the tables. I’ll take care of the rest. And I’m not coming until five thirty tomorrow morning, because the bus doesn’t run earlier than that.’ Then she picked up the teddy bear and stuffed it in Carl’s breast pocket.

‘And this one, you’ll find the owner yourself. Agreed?’

Assad and Carl had their eyes trained on the desk as she thundered out of the room. She reminded Carl of some dippy feminist in a TV series.

‘Are we then …’ Assad made a rhetorical pause to assess his use of the word ‘then’. ‘Are we then officially back on the case, Carl?’

‘No, not yet. We’ll find out tomorrow.’ He held the stack of yellow notes in the air. ‘I can tell from these that you’ve been busy, Assad. You’ve found someone we can talk to at the boarding school. Who?’

‘It was what I was doing then when you came, Carl.’ He leaned across the desk and located a couple of photocopies of the old boarding-school students’ membership magazine.

‘I called the school, but they weren’t so happy when I asked to talk to someone about Kimmie and the others. It was the part about the murders they didn’t like, I think. I also think they considered throwing Pram, Dybbøl Jensen, Florin and Wolf out of school back then on account of the investigation against them.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t get much out of that then. But afterwards I got the idea to go after someone who was in the same class as the guy who fell down and died at Bellahøj. And then on top of that I think I’ve found a teacher who was at the school at the same time as Kimmie and the others. He would maybe like to talk to us, since he hasn’t been there so long.’

It was almost eight o’clock in the evening when Carl found himself staring at Hardy’s empty bed up at the spinal clinic.

He grabbed the first person in white that walked past. ‘Where is he?’ he asked, with foreboding.

‘Are you a relative?’

‘Yes,’ he said, having learned from past experience.

‘Hardy Henningsen has water in his lungs. We’ve moved him in here where we can assist him better.’ She pointed to a room with a sign on the door that read INTENSIVE CARE. ‘Make it quick,’ she said. ‘He’s very tired.’

There was no doubt that Hardy had taken a turn for the worse. The respirator was running at full throttle. He lay half supine in the bed: naked torso, arms resting atop the blanket, a mask covering most of his face, tubes in his nose, IV and diagnostic equipment everywhere.

His eyes were open, but he was too tired to smile when he saw Carl.

‘Hi there, old buddy,’ Carl said, putting his hand carefully on Hardy’s arm. Not that Hardy would feel anything, but still. ‘What happened? They say you have water in your lungs.’

Hardy said something, but his voice vanished behind the mask and the incessant humming of the machines. So Carl leaned closer. ‘Can you repeat that?’ he said.

‘I got gastric acid in my lungs,’ he said in a hollow voice.

Christ, how disgusting, Carl thought, squeezing Hardy’s limp arm. ‘You’ve got to get better, Hardy, you hear me?’

‘The feeling in my upper arm has spread,’ he whispered. ‘Sometimes it burns like fire, but I haven’t told anyone.’

Carl knew why, and he didn’t like it. Hardy hoped to have an arm mobile enough that he could raise it, take the gauze scissors and puncture his carotid artery. So the question was whether one should share his hope.

‘I’ve got a problem, Hardy. I need your help.’ Carl pulled a chair over and sat beside him. ‘You know Lars Bjørn much better than I do from the old days in Roskilde. Perhaps you can tell me what’s really going on in my department.’

Carl briefly explained how his investigation had been brought to a halt. That Bak thought Lars Bjørn was part of it. And that the police chief backed up the decision all the way.

‘They’ve taken my badge, too,’ he said in conclusion.

Hardy lay staring at the ceiling. If he had been his old self, he’d have lit a cigarette.

‘Lars Bjørn always wears a dark blue tie, right?’ he said after a moment, and with great difficulty.

Carl closed his eyes. Yes, that was correct. The tie was inseparable from Lars Bjørn, and yes, it was blue.

Hardy tried to cough, but hawked instead, a sound like a kettle about to boil dry.

‘He’s an old alum from the same boarding school, Carl,’ he said weakly. ‘There are four tiny scallops on the tie. It’s their school tie.’