Mercy (26 page)

The fax from the Godhavn teacher was the first thing that managed to haul Carl out of his self-imposed torpor.

As expected, Rasmussen was a polite man, and he took the opportunity to offer his thanks and praise to Carl for taking the time to show him around headquarters. The other pages were the promised documents, and in spite of their brevity, they were a gold mine.

The real name of the boy called Atomos was Lars Henrik Jensen. His CR number was 020172-0619, so he was born in 1972. Today he would be thirty-five, which meant that he and Merete Lynggaard were approximately the same age.

Lars Henrik Jensen – what an insanely ordinary name, thought Carl wearily. Why the hell hadn’t Bak or one of those other clowns on the original investigative team been smart enough to print out the crew list from the
Schleswig-Holstein
? Who knew if it was even possible to dig up the duty roster from so long ago?

He pursed his lips. It would be a huge step forward if it turned out that this guy had worked on the ferry back then, but hopefully that could readily be revealed by making an inquiry to Scandlines. He read over the faxes one more time and then grabbed the phone to call the main Scandlines office.

A voice started speaking even before he had punched in the number. For a moment he thought it was Lis, but then Mona Ibsen’s wax-coated, velvety voice rolled into his ear, leaving him holding his breath.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘The phone didn’t even ring.’

Yes, that was a good question. She must have been transferred to his phone at the same instant that he picked it up.

‘I saw today’s issue of
Gossip
,’ she said.

He swore under his breath. Not her too. If that shitty tabloid only knew how many readers he’d brought in this week, they’d probably put his likeness under their masthead permanently.

‘This is a rather unusual situation, Carl. How has it made you feel?’

‘Well, it’s not the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I have to admit,’ he told her.

‘You should come and see me again soon,’ she said.

Somehow the offer didn’t seem quite as attractive as it had before. Most likely because of the signal-disrupting wedding ring that had caused interference with his antennas.

‘I have a feeling that you and Hardy won’t be free, in a psychological sense, until the killers have been caught. Do you agree, Carl?’

He felt the distance between them grow. ‘No, not at all,’ he said. ‘It has nothing to do with those bastards. People like us have to live with danger all the time.’ He tried hard to recall Marcus’s lecture from earlier that day, but this erotic individual’s breathing on the other end of the line wasn’t helping. ‘You have to consider that there are plenty of times in a cop’s professional past when things didn’t go wrong. Sooner or later its bound to happen.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ she replied. Hardy must have said something similar. ‘But you know what, Carl? It’s pure bullshit! I’m going to expect to meet with you on a regular basis, so we can figure this whole thing out. Next week there won’t be anything more about you in the tabloids, so we should be able to work in peace and quiet.’

The man Carl talked to at Scandlines was very accommodating. As with similar cases of missing persons, the company had a case file on Merete Lynggaard at hand, and they were able to confirm that the personnel list from that sad day had indeed been printed out back then, with a copy delivered to the police Rapid Response Team. All crew members, both above and below decks, had been interviewed, but unfortunately no one had any information that might indicate what had happened to Merete during the crossing.

Carl felt like banging his head against the wall. What the hell had the police done with that list in the meantime? Used it for a coffee filter? To hell with Bak & Company, and everyone like them.

‘I have a CR number,’ he told the secretary. ‘Could you run a search on it?’

‘Not today,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry, but the whole accounting department is away taking a course.’

‘OK. Is the list in alphabetical order?’ Carl asked. It wasn’t. The captain and his closest subordinates had been listed first; that was common procedure. On board a ship, everyone knew his or her place in the hierarchy.

‘Could you check for the name Lars Henrik Jensen?’

The man on the other end of the line gave a weary laugh. Apparently the list was a real whopper.

In the time that it took Assad to finish yet another prayer, splash his face with water from a little bowl in the corner, blow his nose with an expressive blast, and then put on yet another pot of candied water to boil, the clerk in the Scandlines office managed to complete his search. ‘No, there’s no Lars Henrik Jensen,’ he said, and with that the phone call was over.

It was damned depressing.

‘Why do you look so gloomy, Carl?’ asked Assad with a smile. ‘Do not think any more about that stupid picture in that stupid paper. Just think about if you had broken all your arms and legs – that would have been much worse then.’

Undeniably a strange consolation.

‘I found out that boy Atomos’s real name, Assad,’ said Carl. ‘I had a feeling that he worked on board the ship Merete disappeared from, but he didn’t. That’s why I look like this.’

Carl received a well-placed thump on the back. ‘But you found out about the list of the ship’s crew anyway then. Good job, Carl,’ said Assad, using the same tone of voice as when a toddler has successfully used the potty.

‘Well, it didn’t really lead to anything, but we’ll keep plugging away. His CR number was in the fax from Godhavn, so I’m sure we’ll find the guy. Thank God we’ve got access to all the official registries we have use for.’

He typed in the number on the computer, with Assad standing behind him, and felt like a child about to open a Christmas present. The best moment for every police detective was when the identity of a prime suspect was about to be revealed.

But instead came disappointment.

‘What does that mean, Carl?’ asked Assad, pointing at the computer screen.

Carl took his hand off the mouse and stared up at the ceiling. ‘It means the number can’t be found. No one in the whole kingdom of Denmark has that particular CR number. It’s that simple.’

‘Didn’t you write it wrong then? Are you sure that is what the fax says?’

Carl checked. Yes, he’d copied the number correctly.

‘Maybe it is then not the right number.’

Good guess.

‘Maybe somebody changed it.’ Assad took the fax from Carl, frowning as he studied the number. ‘Look at this, Carl. I think someone changed one number or two. What do you think? Isn’t it like scratched in there and there?’ He pointed at two of the last four digits. It was hard to see, but on the fax copy there did seem to be a faint shadow surrounding two of the typed numbers.

‘Even if only two numbers were changed, Assad, there would be hundreds of possible combinations.’

‘Yes, and so what? Mrs Sørensen can type in the CR numbers in a half, fast hour, if we send some flowers upstairs to her.’

It was unbelievable how the guy had wormed his way into the good graces of that shrew. ‘As I said, there could be hundreds of possibilities, Assad. And if somebody changed two numbers, maybe they changed all ten. We need to get the original document from Godhavn and examine it more closely before we start trying out number combinations.’

Carl called the institution immediately and asked them to send the original document to police headquarters by messenger, but they refused to comply. They didn’t want the original to get lost.

Then Carl explained how important it was. ‘It’s likely that you’ve had a counterfeit document in your archives for years.’

His assertion had no effect. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ came the self-confident reply. ‘We would have discovered it when we reported the information to the authorities to renew our funding.’

‘I see. But what if the counterfeiting occurred a long time after the client left the institution? Who on earth would discover it then? You have to consider the possibility that this new CR number didn’t appear in your books until at least fifteen years after Atomos left.’

‘I’m sorry, but we still can’t let you have the original document.’

‘OK, then we’ll have to get a court order. I find your attitude less than cooperative. We’re investigating a possible murder here. Keep that in mind.’

Neither the fact that they were investigating a murder nor the threat of court involvement was going to do any good; Carl knew that from the start. Appealing to a person’s ego was far more effective. Because who wanted to be saddled with a derogatory label? Not people in the Social Services system, at any rate. The phrase ‘less than cooperative’ was such an understatement that it packed a lot of punch. ‘The tyranny of the quiet remark’, as one of Carl’s instructors at the police academy liked to call it.

‘You’ll need to send us an email first, with a request to see the original,’ said the staff member.

Finally he’d hit home.

‘So what was the real name then of that Atomos boy, Carl? Do we know how he got a nickname like that?’ asked Assad afterwards, his foot resting on the open drawer of Carl’s desk.

‘They told me it was Lars Henrik Jensen.’

‘Lars Henrik. Strange name. Not many people could be called that.’

Probably not where Assad comes from, thought Carl. He was considering making a sarcastic remark when he noticed the oddly pensive expression on Assad’s face. For a moment he looked completely different than usual. More present, more focused. More of an equal, somehow.

‘What are you thinking, Assad?’ he asked.

It was as if a film of oil slid over his eyes, and their colour changed. He frowned and grabbed the Lynggaard file. It took only a second for him to find what he was looking for.

‘Can that be a coincidence?’ he asked, pointing to a line on the top document.

Carl looked at the name and then realized which report Assad was holding.

For a moment Carl tried to picture everything in his mind, and then it happened. Somewhere inside of him, where cause and effect were not weighed against each other, and where logic and explanations never challenged consciousness, in that place where thoughts could live freely and be played out against each other – right there in that spot, things fell into place, and he understood how it all fitted together.

34

2007

The biggest shock was not to look into the eyes of Daniel, the man to whom she had been so attracted. Nor was it the realization that Daniel and Lasse were one and the same person, even though that made her legs weak. No, the worst thing was knowing who he really was. It simply drained everything out of her. All that remained was the heavy weight of guilt that had rested on her shoulders her entire adult life.

It wasn’t really his eyes that she recognized – it was the pain she saw in them. The pain and the despair and the hatred, which in a split second had taken over this man’s life. Or rather, the boy’s life. She knew that now.

Because Lasse was only fourteen on that frosty clear winter day when he looked out of the window of his parents’ car and saw in another car a girl, full of life and thoughtless, teasing her brother so vigorously on the back seat that she diverted her father’s attention. Diverted for a few milliseconds her father’s sense of judgement and prevented him from gripping the steering wheel. Those precious fractions of a second of lapsed vigilance, which could have spared the lives of five people and prevented three others from being maimed. Only Merete and the boy named Lasse had escaped from the accident with their lives and health intact. And precisely for that reason, it was between the two of them the account now had to be settled.

She understood that. And she surrendered to her fate.

During the next months the man whom she’d once been attracted to under the name of Daniel, and now detested as Lasse, appeared in the outer room every single day to look at her through the porthole. Some days he merely stood there, observing her as if she were a civet cat in a cage, about to fight to the death with a superior force of cobra snakes; on other days he spoke to her. Only rarely did he ask her any questions. He had no need to. It was as though he knew what her answers would be.

‘When you looked into my eyes from your car, at the moment when your father was passing us, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my whole life,’ he said one day. ‘But the next second when you grinned at me, and didn’t bother to notice what a ruckus you were causing in your own car, I knew even then that I hated you. That was the instant before our car spun around, and my little sister sitting next to me broke her neck against my shoulder. I heard it snap, do you realize that?’

He stared at her intently, trying to make her look away, but she refused to avert her eyes. She did feel shame, but that was all. The hatred was mutual.

Then he told his story about the moments that had changed everything. About how his mother tried to give birth to the twins in the wreck of the car, and how his father, whom he had loved and admired so much, stared at him with a loving expression as he died with his mouth agape. About the flames that crept up along his mother’s leg, which was jammed fast under the front seat. About his beloved little sister, so sweet and playful, who lay crushed beneath him; and about the second twin to be born, who lay in such an awkward position, with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck; and the other one, who lay on the windscreen wailing as the flames approached.

His words were terrible to hear. She remembered all too clearly their desperate screams as his story savaged her with guilt.

‘My mother can’t walk; she’s been crippled ever since the accident. My brother never went to school; he was never able to learn what other children learn. We all lost our lives because of what you did back then. How do you think it feels to have a father, a sweet kid sister, and the prospect of two little brothers, and then all of a sudden nothing is left? My mother always had a fragile psyche, but even so, she was sometimes able to laugh light-heartedly. Until you came into our lives, that is, and she lost everything. Everything!’

By that point the woman had come into the room, and she seemed clearly upset by his account. Maybe she was crying. Merete couldn’t be sure.

‘How do you think I felt during those first few months, all alone with a foster family that beat me? A boy like me, who had never experienced anything but love and security in his life. There wasn’t a single moment when I didn’t want to strike back at that shithead who insisted that I call him “Dad”. And the whole time I could see you before me, Merete. You and your lovely, irresponsible eyes that annihilated everything I ever loved.’ He paused for so long that the words he spoke next were shockingly clear. ‘Oh, Merete, I promised myself that I would take revenge on you and all the others, no matter what the cost. And you know what? Today I feel good. I’ve exacted revenge on all of you fuckers who took our lives away. You should know that once I even considered killing your brother. But then one day while I was watching you, I saw what a hold he had on you. How much guilt there was in your eyes when the two of you were together. How much his presence clipped your wings. Did I really want to lighten that burden for you by killing him, too? And besides, wasn’t he another one of your victims? So I let him live. But not my foster-father, and not you, Merete. Not you.’

He’d been sent to the children’s home after the first time he tried to kill his foster-father. The family never told the authorities what he’d done, or that the deep gash in the foster-father’s forehead had come from the blade of a shovel. They just said that the boy was sick in the head, and that they could no longer take responsibility for him. That way they could get another foster-child from the state, to make money off.

But the wild beast inside Lasse had been awakened. No one would ever take control of him or his life again.

After that episode, five years, two months and thirteen days passed before the insurance claims were paid, and his mother felt well enough to allow Lasse, now an adult, to move back home to live with her and his handicapped brother. One of the twins had been burned so badly that his life couldn’t be saved, but the other had survived in spite of the cord wrapped around his neck.

Lasse’s infant brother had been placed with a family while their mother was in the hospital and the rehabilitation centre, but she brought him home before he turned three. His face and chest had scars from the fire, and he had very poor motor control because of the oxygen deprivation he’d suffered. But he was his mother’s solace for a couple of years while she regained her strength so that Lasse could come home. The family received a million and a half kroner in compensation for their ruined lives. A million and a half for the loss of his father and his successful business, which no one else was able to run; for the loss of a little sister and the infant twin brother, along with his mother’s loss of mobility and the whole family’s well-being. A paltry million and a half kroner. When Merete was no longer their daily focus of attention, Lasse was going to direct his revenge at the insurance people and the lawyers who had cheated his family out of the compensation they deserved. That was something Lasse had promised his mother.

Merete had a great deal to pay for.

Time was about to run out; she knew that. Anxiety and relief grew inside of her at the same time. The almost five years in this loathsome captivity was consuming her, but eventually it would have to come to an end. Of course it would.

By the time New Year’s Eve arrived in 2006, the pressure in the room had long since been increased to six atmospheres, and since then all of the fluorescent lights but one had flickered constantly. A festively clad Lasse appeared, together with his mother and brother on the other side of the mirrored panes to wish Merete a Happy New Year, adding that this would be the last New Year of her life.

‘We know the date of your death, if we think about it, don’t we, Merete?’ he’d said at the time. ‘It’s so logical. If you add up the years and months and days that I was forced to be away from my family until the day when I captured you like the animal you are, then you’ll know when you’re going to die. You must suffer in loneliness exactly as long as I did, but no more. Figure it out, Merete. When the time comes, we’ll open the airlock. It will be painful, but it probably won’t last long. The nitrogen has been accumulating in your fatty tissues, Merete. Of course you’re very thin, but you have to remember that there are pockets of air everywhere inside your body. When your bones expand and the bone fragments start bursting inside your tissues, when the pressure under your fillings makes them explode in your mouth, when you feel the pain whistling through your shoulder and hip joints, then you’ll know that the time has come. Figure it out. Five years, two months and thirteen days, starting on the 2nd of March 2002, then you’ll know what it will say on your tombstone. You can always hope that the blood clots in your lungs and brain will paralyse you, or that your lungs will explode and knock you unconscious or kill you fast. But don’t count on it. And who says that I’ll let it happen quickly?’

So she was going to die on the 15th of May 2007. If she was right in calculating that today was February 13th, then it would be ninety-one days from now – exactly forty-four days since the start of the new year. She had lived every day since New Year’s Eve in the awareness that she would put an end to things before they ever reached that date. But until that time, she was determined to carry on, ignoring all gloomy thoughts and cherishing the best of her memories.

This was how she was mentally preparing herself to say goodbye to the world. She often held up the tongs to look at the sharp jaws, or pick up the longer plastic stiffener from her jacket and consider snapping it in half and sharpening the two pieces on the cement floor. It was going to have to be one of these tools. She would lay down in the corner under the mirrored panes and puncture the arteries in her wrists. Thank God they were easy to see, since her arms were so thin.

It was this state of mind that had kept her going until today. After the airlock delivered the food bucket, she once again heard the voices of Lasse and his mother outside. Both sounded irritable, and their argument took on a life of its own.

So the bastard and the bitch don’t always see eye to eye, she thought. This cheered her up.

‘What’s the matter, little Lasse, can’t you keep your mother under control?’ she shouted. Of course she knew that an insolent remark like that would bring reprisals; she knew what the witch out there was like.

But it turned out that she didn’t know her well enough. She’d thought the woman’s spitefulness would mean she’d get little or no food for a couple of days. Merete had no idea it would rob her of the right to determine her own life.

‘Watch out for her, Lasse,’ snarled the old woman. ‘She’ll turn us against each other, if she can. And she’ll cheat you, believe me. You’d better watch out for her. She’s got a pair of tongs in there, and she could easily try to use them on herself if need be. Do you really want her to have the last laugh? Do you, Lasse?’

There was a pause that lasted only a couple of seconds, then the sword of Damocles was hanging over her head.

‘You heard what my mother said, didn’t you, Merete?’ His voice sounded cold coming through the loudspeakers.

What good would it do for her to reply?

‘From now on, you’re keeping back from the windows. I want to be able to see you at all times. Get it? Move the toilet bucket over to the far wall. Now! If you in any way try to starve yourself or hide or injure yourself, I promise you that I’ll lower the pressure in the room faster than you can react. Then if you stab yourself, the blood will gush out of you like a waterfall. You’ll feel everything exploding inside before you black out, I promise you. I’m going to set up cameras so we can observe you night and day from now on. We’ll aim a couple of floodlights at the windows at full power. And I can change the air pressure by remote control, by the way. So you can go to the guillotine now, or you can wait until later. But who knows, Merete? Maybe we’ll all drop dead tomorrow. Maybe we’ll be poisoned by the lovely salmon we’re going to have for dinner. You never know. So just hold on. Maybe one day a prince will arive on a white horse and give you a lift. Where there’s life, there’s hope – am I right? So hold out, Merete. But stick to the rules.’

She looked up at one of the panes. She could just barely make out Lasse’s silhouette. A grey angel of death – that’s what he was. Hovering out there in life, nursing a sick, sinister mind that she hoped would torture him for ever.

‘How did you kill your foster-father? The same bestial way?’ she shouted, expecting to hear him laugh. But she didn’t expect to hear the other two laughing as well. So all three were out there now.

‘I waited ten years, Merete. And then I went back, with forty pounds more muscle weight, and with so much contempt for the man, I thought that, alone, might be enough to kill him.’

‘And you figured that would get you some respect?’ she retorted and then laughed at him.

Anything that might rain on his victory parade was worth dishing out.

‘I beat him to death. That made him respect me, don’t you think? Not exactly a refined method, but so what? I took my time bashing him to pieces. I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine – nothing else would satisfy me.’

Merete felt her stomach turn over. The man was completely insane. ‘You’re just like him, you ridiculous sick animal,’ she whispered. ‘It’s too bad you weren’t caught back then.’

‘Caught? Did you say caught?’ Again he laughed. ‘How would that happen? It was harvest time, and his old, piece-of-shit reaping machine was standing ready, out in the field. It wasn’t hard to tip him into the machinery once it was going. He’d always had lots of peculiar ideas, the prick– such as going out to work in the fields at night. So no one was surprised when he died that way. And he wasn’t missed, let me tell you.’

‘Oh, you’re really a big man, Lasse. I’m so impressed. Who else have you killed? Do you have something more on your conscience?’

She hadn’t figured he would stop there, but she was still deeply shocked when he told her how he’d exploited Daniel Hale’s profession to get close to her, and how he’d impersonated the man and then murdered him. Daniel Hale had never done anything to Lasse; he just needed to be eliminated so that Lasse’s real identity wouldn’t be revealed by chance. And the same went for Lasse’s helper, Dennis Knudsen. He too had to die. No witnesses. Lasse was cold as ice.