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Authors: Jussi Adler-Olsen

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BOOK: Mercy
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‘It was nothing. I’m OK, Kurt.’

‘Didn’t go so well for two of your colleagues, though. Any progress in the case?’

‘It’s moving forwards.’

‘I’m glad to hear that. Really, I am. Right now we’re working on legislation that will expand the sentencing parameters by fifty per cent for assaults on civil servants while on the job. That ought to help matters. We need to support you guys who are out on the barricades.’

‘Sounds good, Kurt. I hear that you’ve also decided to support the homicide division in Copenhagen with a special appropriation.’

‘No, I don’t think we’ve done anything like that.’

‘Well, maybe not the homicide division, but something else over here at police headquarters. It’s not a secret, is it?’

‘Do we have any secrets here when it comes to funding appropriations?’ asked Kurt, laughing heartily, as only a man with a big fat pension could do.

‘So what exactly have you decided to fund, if I might ask? Does it come under the National Police?’

‘Yes, the department actually comes under the auspices of the Danish Criminal Investigation Centre, but we didn’t want the same people to be investigating the same cases all over again, so it was decided to establish an independent department, administered by the homicide division. It’s going to handle cases deserving “special scrutiny”. But you know all about that.’

‘Are you talking about Department Q?’

‘Is that what you’re calling it over there? That’s an excellent name for it.’

‘How much funding was allocated?’

‘Don’t quote me on the exact figure, but it’s somewhere between six and eight million kroner annually for the next ten years.’

Carl looked around at the pale green walls of his basement office. OK, now he understood why Jacobsen and Bjørn were so intent on exiling him to this no-man’s-land. Between six and eight million, he’d said. Straight into the pockets of the homicide division.

This was damned well going to cost them.

The homicide chief gave Carl a second look before taking off his reading glasses. It was the same expression he wore whenever he was studying a crime scene and the clues were indecipherable. ‘You say you want your own car? Need I remind you that the Copenhagen Police Force doesn’t provide vehicles assigned to specific individuals? You’ll have to get in touch with the motor-pool office and request a car whenever you need one. Just like everybody else, Carl. That’s the way it is.’

‘I don’t work for the Copenhagen Police. You’re just acting as the administrator for my department.’

‘Carl, you know full well that the officers up here are going to raise a real stink if we give you that sort of preferential treatment. And you say you want six men for your department? Are you crazy?’

‘I’m just trying to build up Department Q so it will function according to its mandate. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? It’s a big job to take all of Denmark under my wings; I’m sure you understand that. So you won’t give me six men?’

‘No, damn it.’

‘Four? Three?’

The homicide chief shook his head.

‘So I’m the one who’s going to do all the work?’

He nodded.

‘Well, then I’m sure you realize I’m going to need a vehicle at my disposal at all times. What if I have to go to Aalborg or Næstved? And I’m a busy man. I don’t even know how many cases are going to end up on my desk, do I?’ He sat down across from his boss and poured coffee into the cup left behind by the deputy. ‘But no matter what, I’m going to need to have an assistant down there, a jack of all trades. Somebody with a driver’s licence who can take care of things for me. Send faxes and stuff like that. Do the cleaning. I’ve got too much to do, Marcus. And we need to show results, right? The Folketing wants value for its money, don’t you think? Was it eight million kroner? That’s a hell of a lot of money.’

7

2002

No calendar was big enough to hold all the appointments for the vice-chair of the Democrats’ parliamentary group. From seven in the morning until five in the afternoon Merete Lynggaard had fourteen meetings with special-interest groups. At least forty new people would be introduced to her in her position as chairperson of the Health Committee, and most of them would expect her to know their backgrounds and positions, their hopes for the future, and their professional support base. If she’d still had Marianne to provide assistance, she would have had a reasonable chance of managing it all, but her new secretary, Søs Norup, wasn’t as sharp. On the other hand, she was discreet. Not once over the course of the past month since Søs had been hired as secretary had she broached any subject of a personal nature. She was a born robot, although lacking in RAM memory.

The organization representatives now sitting in front of Merete had been making the rounds. First with the ruling parties and after that with the largest of the opposition parties, which meant it was Merete’s turn. The reps seemed pretty desperate, and rightfully so, since not many in the government were concerned with anything other than the scandal in Farum and the mayor’s diatribe against various ministers.

The delegation did its utmost to inform Merete about the possible negative health effects of nanoparticles, magnetic guidance of particle transport in the body, immune defences, tracking molecules, and placenta studies. The latter, in particular, was their key issue.

‘We’re fully aware of the ethical questions that need to be addressed,’ said the head of the delegation. ‘For that reason we also know that the government parties represent population groups that are particularly opposed to wholesale collection of placentas, but we still need to discuss the matter.’ The spokesperson was an elegant man who had long since earned millions in the field. He was the founder of the renowned pharmaceutical company Basic-Gen, which primarily conducted basic research for other, larger pharmaceutical corporations. Every time he had a new idea, he appeared at the offices of the Health Committee. Merete didn’t know the rest of the delegates, but she noticed a young man standing behind the spokesman, staring at her. He wasn’t supplying his boss with very much data, so maybe he was merely there to observe.

‘Oh yes, this is Daniel Hale, our best collaborative partner on the laboratory front. His name may sound English, but Daniel is Danish, through and through,’ said the spokesman afterwards, as Merete greeted each delegate in turn.

She shook Hale’s hand, noticing at once the blazing heat of his touch.

‘Daniel Hale, is that right?’ she asked.

He smiled. For a moment her gaze wavered. How embarrassing.

She glanced over at her secretary, a neutral entity in the office. If Marianne had been there, she would have hidden a gleeful smile behind the papers she was always holding. There was not a hint of a smile from the new secretary.

‘You work in a laboratory?’ Merete asked.

At that point the spokesman broke in. He needed to make use of the few precious seconds allocated to him. The next delegation was already waiting outside Merete Lynggaard’s office, and no one ever knew when there’d be another chance. It was a matter of money and a costly investment of time.

‘Daniel owns the finest little laboratory in all of Scandinavia. Well, it’s not really little any more, since you acquired the new buildings,’ he said, turning to speak to his colleague, who shook his head with a smile. It was a delicious smile. ‘We’d like to be allowed to submit this report,’ the spokesman continued, turning back to Merete. ‘Perhaps as chair of the Health Committee you’d be willing to study it in depth when time permits. It’s tremendously important for posterity that the issue be given the most serious consideration at once.’

She hadn’t expected to see Daniel Hale down in the Snapstinget restaurant. She was even more surprised to see that he seemed to be waiting for her. On every other day of the week she ate lunch in her office, but each Friday over the past few years, she would join the chairpersons from the health committees of the Socialist and Radical Centre parties. All three of them were feisty women who could make the members of the Denmark Party see red. The mere fact that they so openly cultivated their coffee klatsch didn’t sit well with a lot of people.

He was alone, half hidden behind a pillar, perched on the very edge of his Kasper Salto chair, with a cup of coffee in front of him. Their eyes met for a second as she came through the glass doors, and it was all Merete could think about the whole time she was there.

When the women got up after finishing their conversation, he came over to her.

She saw people looking at her and murmuring to each other, but she felt mesmerized by his gaze.

8

2007

Carl was more or less satisfied. The workmen had been busy all morning in the basement room, while he’d stood outside in the corridor, making coffee on one of the rolling tables and tapping one cigarette after another out of the pack. Now carpeting covered the floor of his so-called office in Department Q, and the paint cans and everything else had been tossed into gigantic plastic rubbish sacks. The door was back on its hinges, a flat-screen TV had been brought in, a whiteboard and a bulletin board had been hung up, and the bookshelves were filled with his old law books, which other people had thought they could commandeer. In his trouser pocket was the key to a dark blue Peugeot 607, recently decommissioned by the Intelligence Service because they didn’t want their bodyguards riding behind the queen’s royal vehicles in a car with scratches in the paint. The Peugeot had only forty-five thousand kilometres on it, and was now the sole property of Department Q. What a status symbol it was going to be in the car park on Magnolievangen. And no more than twenty yards from his bedroom window.

In a couple of days he’d have the assistant they’d promised him. Carl had got the workmen to clear out a small room directly across the corridor. The room had been used for storing the battered helmets and shields used by Civil Defence Forces during the riots that erupted over the closing down of the Youth House. Now the space held a desk and chair, a broom cupboard, and all the fluorescent tubes that Carl had thrown out of his own office. Marcus Jacobsen had taken Carl’s request literally and hired a man to do the cleaning and any other necessary tasks, but Marcus required that his assistant clean the rest of the basement as well. This was something Carl was going to get changed at some later date, which Jacobsen was no doubt expecting. It was all part of a tug of war to decide who was going to handle what – and, more specifically, when it would all get done. No matter how one looked at it, it was Carl who was sitting in the dark depths of the basement while the others were upstairs with a view of Tivoli. There needed to be a series of trade-offs, in order to strike a balance.

At one o’clock in the afternoon that day, two secretaries from Admin finally arrived with the case files. They told Carl they contained only the general documents, and if he wanted more extensive background materials, he’d have to send in a requisition form. At least now he had two people from his old department that he could consult. Or at least one of the secretaries: Lis, a warm, fair-haired woman with provocative, slightly overlapping front teeth. With her he would have liked to exchange much more than ideas.

He asked the secretaries to set their stacks of folders on either end of the desk. ‘Do I happen to see a twinkle in your eye, or do you always look so fantastic, Lis?’ he asked the blonde.

The brunette gave her colleague a look that could have made even Einstein feel like a fool. It had probably been a long time since she herself had been the recipient of such a remark.

‘Carl, dear,’ said the fair-haired Lis, as she always did. ‘The twinkle in my eye is reserved for my husband and children. When are you going to accept that?’

‘I’ll accept it the day the light vanishes and eternal darkness swallows me up along with the rest of the earth,’ he replied, not exactly understanding his case.

Even before the two secretaries had turned down the corridor and headed for the stairs, the brunette was voicing her indignation.

For the first couple of hours Carl didn’t even glance at the case files. But he did muster the energy to count the folders; that was a form of work, after all. There were at least forty, but he didn’t open any of them. Plenty of time for that. At least another twenty years before retirement, he figured, as he played a couple more games of Spider Solitaire. If he won the next game, he’d consider taking a look at the pile of folders on his right.

After he made his way through at least two dozen games, his mobile rang. He looked at the display but didn’t recognize the number: 3545-and-something. It was a Copenhagen number.

‘Yeah,’ he said, expecting to hear Vigga’s overwrought voice. She was always able to find some sympathetic soul to lend her a mobile. ‘Get your own phone, Mum!’ Jesper was always saying. ‘It’s fucking annoying that I have to call your neighbours to get hold of you.’

‘Yes, hello,’ said the voice, and it sounded nothing like Vigga. ‘This is Birte Martinsen. I’m a psychologist at the Clinic for Spinal Cord Injuries. I’m just ringing to inform you that when one of the assistant nurses gave Hardy Henningsen some water this morning, he tried to suck it down into his lungs. He’s OK, but very depressed, and he’s been asking for you. Could you possibly come and visit? I think it would help him.’

Carl was allowed to be alone in the room with Hardy, even though the psychologist clearly would have liked to listen in on their conversation.

‘So, did you just get sick and tired of it all, old boy?’ he said, taking Hardy’s hand. There was a tremor of life in it. Carl had noticed that before. Right now the tips of his middle and index fingers curled slightly, as if they wanted to beckon Carl closer.

‘What is it, Hardy?’ he said, bending his face down to his colleague’s.

‘Kill me, Carl,’ he whispered.

Carl pulled away and looked him right in the eye. His tall partner had the bluest eyes in the world, and at that moment they were filled with sorrow and doubt and an urgent plea.

‘For God’s sake, Hardy,’ he whispered. ‘You know I can’t do that. You need to get back on your feet. You need to get up and walk again. You’ve got a son who wants his father home. Don’t you realize that, Hardy?’

‘He’s twenty years old. He’ll be fine,’ whispered Hardy.

That was just like him. He was perfectly lucid. And Hardy meant what he said.

‘I can’t do it, Hardy. You’re going to have to tough it out. You’re going to get well.’

‘I’m paralysed, and that’s how I’m going to stay. They gave me the prognosis today. No chance of recovery. Not a chance in hell.’

‘I imagine that Hardy Henningsen probably asked you to help him take his own life,’ said the psychologist, inviting Carl’s confidence. Her professional demeanour required no reply. She was convinced she was right. She’d seen it before.

‘No, he didn’t!’

‘Oh really? I was positive he would.’

‘Hardy? No, that wasn’t what he wanted.’

‘I’d be most interested to hear what he did say to you, if you wouldn’t mind telling me.’

‘I could do that.’ Carl pursed his lips and looked out the window at Havnevejen. Not a soul in sight. Damned strange.

‘But you’re not going to?’

‘It would make you blush if you heard what he said. I can’t repeat something like that to a lady.’

‘You could try.’

‘I don’t think so.’

BOOK: Mercy
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