The Purity of Vengeance (6 page)

“What? Børge Bak? I hope you hung up on him, Assad!”

“No, he hung up on himself. But not before he said that if we did not come, it would be worst for yourself, Carl.”

“For me? What was he doing calling you, then?”

Assad shrugged. “I was here last night when he came down and left the folder in Rose’s office. His sister has been attacked, you know that, do you not?”

“You don’t say.”

“He told me he knew who did it, and I said that if it was me I would not stand around and do nothing.”

Carl stared into his assistant’s bleary dark eyes. What was inside that head of his? Camel’s wool?

“For God’s sake, Assad! He’s not on the force anymore. In this country we call that taking the law into your own hands. It’s a criminal offense. Do you know what that means? It means free board and lodging at Her Majesty’s bed and breakfast. And when they let you out again there’s nothing left to go back to. Adios, amigo.”

“I am not familiar with this establishment you mention, Carl. And why are you talking about food now? I cannot eat a thing when I’m so cold.”

Carl shook his head. “When you’ve
got
a cold, Assad. The expression is to
have
a cold.” Had it now gone to his vocabulary?

Carl reached for his phone and pressed the number of the homicide chief, only to discover Jacobsen to be likewise bunged up.

“Yeah, all right,” he said, when Carl informed him of Bak’s call. “Bak was here in my office at eight this morning, wanting his old job back. Just a min—”

Carl counted eight sneezes in quick succession before the poor sod returned to the phone. Yet another infected area Carl would be giving a wide berth.

“The thing is, Bak’s probably right. This Lithuanian, Linas Verslovas, has a conviction for a similar assault in Vilnius, and there’s no doubt his income comes from prostitution. Unfortunately, we can’t prove it at the moment,” Jacobsen went on.

“OK. I heard on the police radio that she’s saying she can’t identify who attacked her, but I suppose we can assume she told her brother.”

“Well, he swears she didn’t. However, she’s had trouble with this Verslovas before, and Bak knew that for certain.”

“So now the former Børge Bak’s snooping around Vesterbro, playing policeman.”

There was another fit of sneezing at the other end. “Maybe you should get out there and talk some sense into him, Carl. We owe that much to an old colleague, at least.”

“Do we?” Carl shot back, but Jacobsen had already terminated the call. Even a homicide chief could be forced to capitulate to nasal congestion.

“What now, Carl?” Assad asked, as if he hadn’t already worked it out. He was already standing there in his mausoleum of a down jacket. “I told Rose we will be away for a few hours, but she heard nothing. She has only this Rita Nielsen in her head.”

Funny bloke, Assad. How could he even consider venturing out on a sopping wet day in November in his state of health? Was there something wrong with his genes? Had the drifting sands of the desert engulfed his senses?

Carl sighed and picked up his coat from the chair.

“Just one thing,” he said, as they trudged up the stairs. “How come you were here so early this morning? Four o’clock, a little bird tells me.”

Carl had been expecting some simple explanation along the lines of: “I was Skyping with my uncle. It’s the best time for him.” Instead he got eyes that implored, like a man about to be subjected to all manner of torment.

“It doesn’t matter, Carl,” he said, but Carl wasn’t the sort to let things go. “It doesn’t matter” was crap people said when things mattered a lot. Along with such effervescent expressions as “Absolutely!” and “Awesome!,” it was more than enough to put Carl in a very bad mood indeed.

“If you want to raise the standard of our future dialogues, Assad, I suggest you prick up your ears. When I ask you something, it
always
matters.”

“Do
what
with my ears, Carl?”

“Just answer me, Assad,” Carl replied with annoyance, pulling on his coat. “What were you doing here so early this morning? Is it to do with your family?”

“Yes, that is it.”

“Listen, Assad. If you’re having trouble with the wife, it’s none of my business. And if it’s because you’re Skyping with that uncle of yours, or whoever the hell he happens to be, there’s no need for you to be here at the crack of dawn, surely? Haven’t you got a computer at home for that sort of thing?”

“Cracker dawn?”

Carl’s arm got stuck in his sleeve. “For Chrissake, Assad! It’s a figure of speech. Have you got a computer at home, or what?”

Assad gave a shrug. “Not at the moment. It’s all difficult to explain, Carl. Can we not move on to Børge Bak now?”

 • • • 

Back at the beginning of time, when Carl would put on his white gloves and set off on his beat in that same part of Vesterbro, people would hang out of the windows of run-down tenements, baiting him in their flat Copenhagen dialect. Coppers like him from Jutland could get back in their wooden shoes and sod off to the hinterland where they belonged. At the time it had been a shock to him, but now he yearned for it. As he stood there, looking around at the neighborhood where talentless architects had deluded brainless local politicians into plastering the streets with ugly concrete blocks not even social class 5 could think of as home, it was an era that seemed light-years away. These days, people only lived here as a last resort. It was as simple as that. The residents of former times had been forced out into something even less desirable in Ishøj and other godforsaken outposts, where they now sat reminiscing about the good old days.

No, if you wanted to see classic redbrick buildings with cornices and sooty chimneys, you’d have a bloody job these days in the side streets off Istedgade. But if what you were looking for were concrete shells, baggy-arsed tracksuits, and junkies with empty sockets for eyes you’d come to the right place. Here were Nigerian pimps alongside East European con artists, and even the most humble and bizarre forms of crime found a fertile breeding ground.

More than anyone else in the homicide division, Børge Bak had served his time in these streets. He knew the dangers, the pitfalls, and the rules, one of which was that you never on any account entered an enclosed space around here without backup.

Now Carl and Assad stood in the pissing rain, analyzing this miserable, barren cityscape, and Bak was nowhere in sight. Which indicated he must have fallen foul.

“He said he would wait for us,” said Assad, pointing to the basement steps of what had once been a shop and was now a vandalized ruin with whitewashed windows.

“Are you sure of the address?”

“As sure as eggs is eggs, Carl.”

Carl stared at him incredulously, wondering where the hell he could have picked up a saying like that, then collected himself and turned to read the sun-bleached note in the window of the basement.
Kaunas Trading/Linas Verslovas
, it read. Innocuous enough, but firms like that tended to die as quickly as they were born, and more often than not their owners were shadier than a hundred-year-old tree in summer.

In the car Assad had quoted from Linas Verslovas’s record. He had been pulled into HQ on several occasions, only to be released again. The man was described as a ruthless psychopath with a remarkable ability to talk gullible Eastern Europeans into taking the blame for his scummy activities in exchange for a pittance. Vestre Prison was full of them.

Carl tried the handle and gave the door a shove. A bell jingled as it opened to reveal a rectangular room containing absolutely nothing but packing materials and crumpled newspaper left behind by the previous occupant.

As they entered, they heard a dull thud from the back room. It sounded like the thump of a fist, but without the usual groan that followed.

“Bak,” Carl called out, “are you in there?” He put his hand to his holster and made ready to draw his pistol and disengage the safety.

“I’m OK,” said a voice from behind the flimsy, battered door.

Carl pushed it open with caution and assessed the sight he encountered.

Both men were beaten up, but the wiry Lithuanian was the worse off. The dragon tattoo that snaked around his throat and neck was set off by bruising, making it seem almost three-dimensional.

Carl felt his face contract into a grimace. He was glad someone else had been on the receiving end.

“What the hell are you doing here, Bak? Have you lost your mind, or what?”

“He stabbed me.” Bak jerked his head toward the floor where a knife lay, its blade covered in blood. One of those vicious switchblades, the kind of thing that made Carl’s stomach turn. If it was up to him, getting caught with one of those would cost a bundle in fines.

“You OK?” he asked, and Bak nodded.

“Flesh wound in the arm, I’ll be all right. Fending off attack, so you can call it self-defense in the report,” he said, then hammered his fist so suddenly against the bridge of the Lithuanian’s nose that it made Assad jump.

“Arh, fuck you!” the pimp groaned, with an obvious accent. Carl stepped forward to intervene. “You saw that! I didn’t do fuck all. Like when he came barging in. He came up and hit me. What was I supposed to do?” the Lithuanian lamented. He was hardly more than twenty-five years old and already up to his neck in shite.

Additional stuttered sentences from the mouth of the sinewy man proclaimed his total innocence. He knew nothing about any attack on anyone in any brothel. Indeed he had already told this to the police a thousand times.

“Come on, Bak, we’re leaving. NOW!” Carl commanded, prompting Bak to follow up with another fist in the Lithuanian’s face, knocking him backward over a table.

“He’s not getting away with what he did to my sister.” Bak turned to Carl, every fiber in his face tensed. “Do you realize she’s going to lose her sight in one eye? That one side of her face is going to be scar tissue? This little scumbag’s coming with us. Do you read me, Carl?”

“If you keep this up, Bak, I’m going to call City for assistance. In which case you’ll have to take the punches as they come,” Carl cautioned, and meant it.

Assad shook his head. “One moment,” he said, stepping around his superior and yanking Bak aside so violently that a seam burst in the man’s ubiquitous leather jacket.

“Get this crazy Arab away from me!” the Lithuanian screamed as Assad grabbed him and hauled him toward another door at the rear of the room.

The Lithuanian filled the air with threats. Everyone in the room was as good as dead if they didn’t get the hell out immediately. Their stomachs would be split open and their heads torn off. Threats that would normally be taken seriously when issued by a man like him. Threats that were enough on their own to get him thrown into jail.

But Assad gripped the man’s collar so hard that his invective could no longer escape his throat. He flung open the door of the back room and bundled the Lithuanian inside.

Bak and Carl exchanged glances as Assad kicked back his heel and the door slammed shut.

“Assad! You’re not to kill him in there, do you understand?” Carl shouted, just to be on the safe side.

The silence was deafening.

Bak smiled, and it was obvious why, for Carl’s options were all gone. There’d be no brandishing of the pistol now, no calls to Station City. He wasn’t about to risk putting his assistant in an awkward position, and Bak knew it.

“Worried now, are you, Carl?” Bak nodded smugly to himself, then rolled up his sleeve to inspect the gash in his lower arm. He’d need a couple of stitches, but that was all. He produced a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and tied it tightly around the wound. Carl thought that probably wasn’t a good idea, but who was he to intervene? A bout of blood poisoning might teach Bak some hygiene.

“Don’t forget I know all about your past, Carl. You and Anker knew better than anyone how to squeeze shite out of swine. You were a right pair, the two of you. If Hardy hadn’t joined you, you’d have ended up in the shit sooner or later, so leave out the holier-than-thou crap, all right?”

Carl glanced toward the back room. What the hell was Assad up to in there? He turned to Bak. “You know fuck all, Bak. I don’t know what you’re basing your assumptions on, but be sure of one thing: you’ve got it all wrong.”

“I’ve been asking around, Carl. It’s a miracle how you got away without disciplinary proceedings. Got to hand it to you, though, the two of you certainly knew how to get results out of your interrogations. Maybe that would explain it.” He rolled his sleeve down. “I’d like my job back at HQ. I think you should help me on that one,” he said. “I know Marcus is a bit reluctant, but it’s common knowledge he listens to you. Christ knows why.”

Carl shook his head. If sense of occasion was hereditary, the gene was completely absent from Bak’s DNA.

He walked forward and opened the door of the back room.

The sight that met him was tranquil, to say the least. The Lithuanian was seated on the edge of a table, staring at Assad as though hypnotized. The face that had been so twisted and embittered now exuded the utmost gravity. It was a face washed clean of blood, and the man’s shoulders had assumed a more normal latitude.

He got to his feet on a nod from Assad and walked past Bak and Carl without so much as a glance. Silently, he picked up a duffel bag from the floor, went over to a cupboard, and pulled out a drawer from which he took a few items of clothing, shoes, and a small bundle of banknotes, all of which he tossed into the bag.

Assad watched the man without speaking, red-nosed and runny-eyed, not obviously a sight that would frighten anyone.

“Can I have it now?” the Lithuanian asked.

Two photos and a wallet changed hands.

Verslovas opened the wallet and searched its compartments. They contained a fair amount of money as well as credit cards.

“Give me the driving license as well,” he said, but Assad shook his head. The matter was already closed.

“Then I’m gone,” said the Lithuanian. Bak was about to intervene, but Assad shook his head. He had this under control.

“You’ve got thirty hours, and not one second more! Do you understand?” Assad said with composure. The Lithuanian nodded.