Babylon (28 page)
As if Dorte were an idiot, unaware of the effect the smell of money had on Knud. He suddenly reverted to the man he used to be, his eyes revealing the evasiveness of old. There was a constant tension in his movements, the way he flexed his fists as he talked. It was a long time since she had seen him like this. He babbled as his enthusiasm grew: the plan was so clever, so simple! There would be no way of tracing them. And Alexandr need never even know.
He hired Mads Torsen, a face from the past. It would be a piece of cake for a man like him. Meanwhile, Knud and Dorte would make sure they had an alibi. It was risk-free and hardly even immoral: the artefacts were already stolen goods, after all. But Mads Torsen was crazy – the name sent shivers down Dorte’s spine. Knud maintained Torsen was OK, that he was a man of his word.
But she’d been right. She realised that as soon as he got in touch and claimed they hadn’t found anything in the house, well, just one little clay figure, which was crap – there were supposed to be between twenty-five and thirty figures, and gold.
Dorte remembered the look on Alexandr’s face after Ann-Marie
told him how desperate she was. Dorte had never seen him so agitated; Alexandr was their rock, calm and generous, while she and Knud were like children in adults’ bodies, always in need of forgiveness.
She was weeping now because she had thrown away the only decent job she had ever had, and because she had betrayed a friend. Alexandr had taught her the job. He had ignored her background and given her more responsibility than she thought she deserved. Her post as Alexandr’s assistant had been part of her rehab, a stepping stone to the world of work. She hadn’t really believed that it would lead to a paid job, but if she had refused it she would have lost her benefits.
Dorte couldn’t remember a specific moment when she had decided to stay and give it a go. She discovered to her surprise that she had a talent for planning and structure, unlike her employer. They joked that she was Alexandr Karpov’s PA. They bonded, just like in some soppy film. At first they kept their distance. Dorte, the self-destructive, overgrown teenager whom everyone else dismissed as hopeless. Dressed in black, taciturn and sullen. Alexandr, the good, uncomplicated man. The man who sensed her ability, buried under layers of make-up and swearing, and didn’t give up on it.
He expected her to deal with things right from the start, difficult things. Everyone else she had encountered had assumed she wouldn’t be able to perform even the simplest tasks. She had been born into that frame of mind, after all, and she could play the role in her sleep.
When Alexandr’s remit at the museum was extended, Dorte was given a permanent post. For the first time in her life she had a job, a salary she could live on. And when another post for an assistant came up, she’d suggested Knud. They had split up, but were still friends. He was clean back then, driven. He immediately started to learn more about the artefacts they handled. No, Knud wasn’t stupid; Dorte would never have fallen for him if he had been. He was just easily influenced. Both of them were.
A tap was turned somewhere in the building and water surged through the pipes. If she took a taxi, would she get to the airport before the flight took off? She didn’t have a ticket. What would she say to Knud if she found him? She didn’t know. The words would probably drown in the thickness in her throat, and that would be his last image of her before he walked up the narrow steps to the plane: Dorte, a weeping mess.
She didn’t want that.
There was also a risk that the police might be waiting for him at the airport, that they might have put out a call for him. It was just a matter of time. She wasn’t registered at her home address, but it wouldn’t take them long to find it, and then they’d be on her doorstep.
She had spent almost fifteen minutes smoking and gazing out of the window, but now she stubbed her cigarette out against the glass. It left a black mark surrounded by a misty patch of ash. The bag she had packed was in the hallway. She had to get going.
Alexandr couldn’t help her any more, he would never be able to help her again. She must push the memories of the person she had become to one side, shoulder the old self-loathing like a familiar, well-fitting suit – as if it had been made for her. And she must keep moving. She slipped her bag over her shoulder and gritted her teeth. Yes, she would ring Knud. One last chat, for old times’ sake. So he would know he hadn’t broken her. Then she would set off.
Copenhagen
Gonzales had no intention of trying to find his way through a city which had begun to throb with evening crowds, aided only by a satnav he couldn’t even understand. Not when his heart was thumping so hard against his chest. He hurled himself into a taxi: Lundtoftegade. It was in Nørrebro, on the other side of the canal, at the far end of the city centre.
‘Step on it!’ he said to the driver, the endorphins shooting through his blood like flashes of lightning. He forgot how nervous he was and, just for a while, he allowed himself to enjoy the moment, the heat, the excitement. To his left a local produce market slipped by, the stall-holders packing up for the evening, and a shabby archway leading into a park. Then a churchyard surrounded by an old, high wall, as if the people of Copenhagen were afraid of losing their dead.
Gonzales recognised the ruins of the youth centre from a TV report.
He wondered whether Tell would come alone or whether he would bring back-up. Had Tell thought to bring his gun when he came down to interview Pedersen? Probably not. Gonzales was wearing his; he wasn’t used to the feeling, it chafed against the side of his chest. Was he even allowed to carry his service weapon abroad? His mind was blank as the taxi pulled into a parking space twenty or so metres from Iversen’s address.
Gonzales got out. There was no sign of Tell’s car, nor a police car. But he had heard Tell barking out that order after Iversen did a runner: send a car there straightaway in case he’s stupid enough to go home, and another to Dorte Sørbækk’s address. They were both wanted, with immediate effect.
An overweight man pushed a trolley out of a grocer’s on the other side of the street. Gonzales experienced a creeping sense of anti-climax when a black BMW screeched to a halt right in front of him. In the passenger seat next to Tell sat a tall, middle-aged man whom Gonzales assumed was their contact in Copenhagen CID.
‘Evening.’ A quick handshake and then they ran towards number ten. Since Iversen’s address was on the ground floor, Dragsted crouched down as he passed the window.
‘Shit. It’s locked.’
They waited for two or three long minutes, then an elderly lady came out and they were in. They moved silently to the door marked Iversen and listened carefully. There was a thud.
‘He’s in there,’ Tell mouthed. ‘Gonzales, go outside. Watch the window, I don’t want him getting out that way.’
Gonzales nodded. ‘This might be a stupid question,’ he whispered, ‘but I’m just wondering whether—’
‘Ssh!’ Tell placed his ear against the door, rigid with tension. They heard footsteps inside, and an agitated voice. A woman’s voice.
‘Of course they’re bloody well going to arrest me . . . That’s not what this is about . . . Go outside . . . Wait there. You stupid bastard . . . Have a nice day.’
She was standing in the hallway, just inside the door.
‘I’ve got to hurry. I’m going now.’
Ten seconds later, Dorte Sørbækk walked straight into the arms
of Tell and Dragsted. She’d confessed before they had even left the building.
Copenhagen
At Inspector Dragsted’s station, Tell was taking in Dorte Sørbækk’s bewildered expression.
‘You work for Alexandr Karpov. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that his ex-wife has been murdered, along with her boyfriend. Did you and Knud Iversen initially believe the artefacts were in her apartment? Or did Mads Torsen take it upon himself to kill them?’
Sørbækk’s face was ghostly white. She shook her head slowly, over and over again, trying to get rid of what she had just heard.
‘I haven’t spoken to Alexandr about . . . he didn’t say . . . He hasn’t been in work and neither have I. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know they were dead.’
Her head drooped between her shoulders and her body jerked. At first Tell thought she was crying, which she probably was, until the convulsions became more and more violent. Only when Dorte Sørbækk threw back her head, revealing a thin white foam at the corners of her mouth, did Tell move behind her, pulling her down onto the floor. She was wearing a tag on a chain under her sweater.
‘She’s having an epileptic fit,’ he shouted to Dragsted.
An hour later, Sørbækk was lying on a bed in another, smaller room. She had refused to let Dragsted call a doctor and had slept for fifty minutes.
They had just heard that Knud Iversen had been picked up at the airport, checking in for a flight to Bangkok, when Sørbækk asked to see Tell.
She was sitting up in bed with her back against the wall, her face pale and streaked with mascara, her eyes red from weeping.
‘Thank you for coming back,’ she said as he closed the door behind him. ‘Are you going to talk to Alexandr now?’
‘I will as soon as you and I are done here. You know you have the right to legal representation?’
‘Yes. I just want to say that I haven’t killed anyone. I didn’t hire anyone to murder Henrik Samuelsson and Ann-Marie Karpov. I would never do such a thing. Please tell Alexandr that, if I’m not allowed to speak to him myself. Knud was planning to sell on the artefacts. But we’re not murderers. You have to believe that.’
‘But there’s one thing you can explain to me.’
Dorte Sørbækk’s fit felt like an eternity ago. Tell had sent for Karpov, who had just arrived at the police station. The interview with the professor would probably be Tell’s last job before he handed over to the Copenhagen police.
‘You said earlier that Alexandr came to you. That he was desperate. So was it Alexandr who wanted you to break into Henrik Samuelsson’s house?’
‘No.’ She pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead. ‘He was tired and fragile. Unhappy, stressed. He was worried about Ann-Marie; she had come to him in confidence and told him about that boyfriend of hers. The thing is . . . her boyfriend wanted to get rich by selling the stolen goods, and he was trying to drag Ann-Marie into it. She was panicking about her career, and about his behaviour too. He’d been threatening her – apparently he was determined to go public with their relationship, and . . . Well, Alexandr still loved her. He couldn’t stand the thought of anything bad happening to her. But he would never have asked us to break the law.’
‘One more question.’ Tell could smell the cigarette smoke on her clothes. ‘Do you think Knud Iversen is capable of murder?’
Sørbækk opened her mouth but no sound came out. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t like him, but I don’t think he would ever kill anyone. And why would he murder those two people? Knud would never hurt Alexandr on purpose. And he was very careful to make sure he had an alibi for the night Torsen broke into the house.’
‘Yes, but that wasn’t the same—’
‘. . . that was the whole point.’
Tell contemplated the woman on the bed. It was going to take a lot more work before Sørbækk’s testimony could be confirmed, and
Iversen and Sørbækk eliminated from the murder inquiry. But another interview with Pedersen, and one with Iversen, would hopefully verify parts of Dorte’s story.
Tell was convinced she had told him the truth. Perhaps not about everything, but about the murders on Linnégatan. Suddenly his job seemed pointless, like trying to swim in a strong undertow.
Because as far as the murders were concerned, they were back to square one.
Gothenburg
Karlberg was sitting in the police station yard, scratching at the paving stones with a stick next to a group of admin staff who were chatting and smoking away.
Beckman couldn’t help cursing the fact that Karlberg just happened to be out here. She had taken this roundabout route from the toilets because she wanted to be alone. She didn’t have the energy to talk.
But he was absorbed by the paving stones, and didn’t appear to have noticed her. Beckman had her bag slung over her shoulder, burning against her hip, as if the contents were shining through for all to see. She was afraid that if Karlberg looked up he would immediately know what she had been up to in the toilets. And what the result had been.
She hadn’t dared to do it at home. For some bizarre reason, she had thought it would be more difficult to get a negative – or in this case positive – result when she was alone. She had been wrong, of course. And she hadn’t realised quite how hard it would be to see her colleagues behaving as though nothing had happened: Bärneflod in his office, absorbed in the paper, Karlberg sitting out here . . .
So it was official: she was pregnant. How many years had she worked as a member of the team? She couldn’t remember off hand, but she knew that she and Göran had been in the process of breaking up for the past five or six years. She hadn’t brought her private life into work –
quite the opposite, in fact. Beckman had always drawn a veil over her chaotic home life. And yet still. People
knew
. People always realised more than you thought; they knew about the frequent trial separations, the rows, the way their children had been buffeted from hope to despair and back again. It was as though they could smell the shameful, shameful weakness that meant she always went back to Göran and his bloody house, because she just didn’t have the courage to take that last step and start again from scratch.
But now she had done it. One day the strength had simply been there. She packed her things and the children’s, answered an ad for a sub-let and hired a van. Göran helped to carry the boxes, his expression grim.
He stroked her cheek before she drove off to return the van. The sensation was like fingernails scraping down a blackboard, but she gritted her teeth.
Afterwards, she was surprised by the positive reaction of her friends. And it quickly became clear to Beckman that her colleagues had opinions on the matter too. Renée had given her a big hug when she had mentioned in passing that she was looking for somewhere permanent to live with her children.