The Keeper of Lost Causes Read online

  The homicide chief nodded. He’d noticed his colleagues’ behavior during the briefing that had just ended. Silent and sullen and worn out. Of course they didn’t want someone dumping on them.

  Marcus’s deputy went over to the window and looked out at the buildings across the way. “I think I have a solution to the problem. We might get some flack from the union, but I don’t think so.”

  “Damn it, Lars. I haven’t got the energy to go head-to-head with the union. If you’re thinking of demoting him, they’ll be on our backs in an instant.”

  “No, we’ll kick him upstairs!”

  “Hmm.” This was where Marcus needed to be careful. His deputy was a damned good detective with tons of experience and plenty of solved cases to his credit, but he still had a lot to learn when it came to managing personnel. Here, at headquarters, you couldn’t just kick someone up or down the ranks without a good reason. “You’re suggesting we promote him, is that what you’re saying? How? And who were you expecting to make room for him?”

  “I know you’ve been up almost all night,” Lars Bjørn replied. “And you’ve been busy this morning with that damned murder out in Valby, so you probably haven’t been keeping up with the news. But haven’t you heard what happened in parliament this morning?”

  The homicide chief shook his head. It was true that he’d had too much on his plate ever since the murder of the cyclist in Valby Park had taken a new turn. Until last night they’d had a good witness, a reliable witness, and she had more to tell them—that much was very clear. They were sure they were close to a breakthrough. But then the witness had suddenly clammed up. It was obvious that someone in her circle of friends had been threatened. The police had questioned her until she was completely exhausted; they had talked to her daughters and her mother, but no one had anything to say. The whole family was terrified. No, Marcus hadn’t got much sleep. So apart from seeing the headlines of the morning papers, he was out of the loop.

  “Is it the Denmark Party again?” he asked.

  “Exactly. Their legal spokesperson has presented the proposal again, as an amendment to the police-bill compromise, and this time there’ll be a majority in favor. It’s going to pass, Marcus. Piv Vestergård is going to get her way.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “She stood at the podium and ranted for a good twenty minutes, and the parties in the government supported her, of course, even though the Conservatives were probably squirming.”

  “And?”

  “Well, what do you think? She brought up four examples of ugly cases that had been shelved. In her opinion, it’s not in the best interests of the public for such cases to remain unsolved. And that wasn’t all she had in her goodie bag, let me tell you.”

  “Jesus Christ! Does she think the crime squad puts cases on ice for the fun of it?”

  “She insinuated that might actually be what happens with certain types of cases.”

  “That’s bullshit! What sort of cases?”

  “She mentioned cases in which members of the Denmark Party and Liberal Party have been victims of a crime. We’re talking about cases nationwide.”

  “The bitch is off her rocker!”

  The deputy shook his head. “You think so? Well, she was just getting warmed up. After that, of course she also mentioned cases involving children who had disappeared and ones in which political organizations have been subjected to terrorist-type attacks. Cases that are especially bestial.”

  “OK, OK, she’s fishing for votes, that’s what she’s doing.”

  “Yeah, of course she is, otherwise she would have handled it outside the Folketing chamber. But they’re all fishing, because right now all the parties are in negotiations over at the Justice Ministry. The documents will be in the hands of the Finance Committee in no time. We’ll have a decision within two weeks, if you ask me.”

  “And what, exactly, will be the gist of it?”

  “A new department will be established within the criminal police. She herself suggested it be called ‘Q,’ since that’s the designation of the Denmark Party on the ballot. I don’t know whether that was meant to be a joke, but it’s sure going to end up as one.” He gave a sarcastic laugh.

  “And what’s the objective? Still the same?”

  “Yes. The sole purpose is simply to handle what they’re calling ‘cases deserving special scrutiny.’”

  “‘To handle cases deserving special scrutiny.’” Marcus nodded. “That’s a typical Piv Vestergård expression. Sounds very impressive. And who’s supposed to decide which cases warrant such a label? Did she mention that too?”

  The deputy shrugged.

  “OK, she’s asking us to do what we’re already doing. So what? What does it have to do with us?”

  “The department will come under the auspices of the National Police Commission, but administratively there is every reason to believe it will be under the homicide division of the Copenhagen Police.”

  At this, Marcus’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be joking! What do you mean by administratively?”

  “We plan the budgets and keep the account books. We provide the office staff. And the office space.”

  “I don’t understand. You mean now the Copenhagen Police are also going to have to solve ancient cases that are under the jurisdiction of police districts way out in the sticks? The regional districts will never go along with that. They’re going to demand to have representatives in the department here.”

  “Not necessarily. It’s going to be presented as a way of taking some of the burden off the districts. Not as an extra workload.”

  “You realize what you’re saying, don’t you? That now our department is also going to have to provide a flying squad for hopeless cases. With my staff providing backup. No way, damn it, no! You can’t be serious.”

  “Marcus, try and listen to me. It’s only a matter of a couple of hours here and there for just a few staff members. It’s nothing.”

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  “OK, then let me come right out and tell you how I see it. Are you listening?”

  The homicide chief rubbed his forehead. Did he have a choice?

  “Marcus, there’s money attached to this.” He paused for a moment as he fixed his eyes on his boss. “Not a lot, but enough to keep one man on salary and at the same time pump a couple of million kroner into our own department. It’s an extra appropriation that’s not meant to displace anything else.”

  “A couple of million?” He nodded appreciatively. “OK, now you’re talking!”

  “Brilliant, isn’t it? We can set up the department in no time, Marcus. They’re expecting us to dig in our heels, but we won’t. We’ll give them an accommodating response and propose a budget that avoids earmarking any specific tasks. And we make Carl Mørck the head of the new department, but there’s not going to be much to be in charge of, because he’ll be on his own. And at a safe distance from everyone else, I can promise you that.”

  “Carl Mørck as head of Department Q!” The homicide chief could just picture it. A department like that could be easily run on a budget of less than a million kroner a year, including travel expenses and lab tests and everything else. If the police requested five million a year for the new department, there’d be enough left over for a couple more investigative teams in the homicide division. Then they could concentrate mainly on older cases. Maybe not Department Q cases, but something along that line. Fluid boundaries, that was the key to the whole thing. Brilliant, yes. Nothing short of brilliant.

  4

  2007

  Hardy Henningsen was the tallest person who had ever worked at police headquarters. His military records reported his height as six feet, nine and a half inches. Whenever they made an arrest, it was always Hardy who spoke, so that the perps had to lean their heads way back while their rights were read to them. That sort of thing made a lasting impression on most people.

  Right now Hardy’s height was not an advantage.
As far as Carl could tell, his long, paralyzed legs never got stretched out full length. Carl had suggested to the nurse that they cut the footboard off the bed, but apparently that was not within her realm of expertise.

  Hardy never said a word about anything. His TV was on 24/7, and people kept coming and going in his room, but he didn’t react. He just lay there in the Hornbæk Clinic for Spinal Cord Injuries, trying to survive. Attempting to chew his food, to move his shoulder a bit, since that was the only part south of his neck over which he had any control, and otherwise allowing the nurses to wrestle with his unwieldy body. He merely stared up at the ceiling as they washed his groin, stuck needles in him, emptied the bag collecting his waste products. No, Hardy didn’t have much to say anymore.

  “I’m back at headquarters again, Hardy,” said Carl, straightening the bedclothes. “They’re working full blast on the case. They haven’t discovered anything yet, but I know they’re going to find out who shot us.”

  Hardy’s heavy eyelids didn’t even flicker. He didn’t bother to glance at Carl or at the TV news program on Channel 2 that was filling airtime with a hyped-up report about the eviction of the kids squatting at the Youth House. He seemed indifferent to everything. Not even anger remained. Carl understood him better than anyone else. Even though he wasn’t about to show it to Hardy, he didn’t give a fuck about anything either. It was completely irrelevant who’d shot them. What good would it do to find out? If it wasn’t one person, then it was somebody else. There were plenty of assholes like that running around.

  Carl nodded curtly to the nurse who came in with a fresh IV drip. The last time he’d been here, she had asked him to step outside while she tended to Hardy. She didn’t get the response she was expecting, and it was clear that she hadn’t forgotten.

  “So, you’re here again?” she said sullenly, glancing at her watch.

  “This is a better time for me, before I go to work. Is that a problem?”

  Again she looked at her watch. Yeah, so what if he showed up for work later than most people?

  The nurse extended Hardy’s arm and inspected the IV attached to the back of his hand. Then the door to the corridor opened, and the first physiotherapist of the day came in. She had hard work ahead of her.

  Carl patted the sheet where the contour of Hardy’s right arm was visible. “These harpies want to have you all to themselves, so I’m going to take off now, Hardy. I’ll come back a little earlier tomorrow so we can have a talk. Keep smiling, man.”

  The smell of medicine followed him out in the corridor, where he stopped to lean against the wall. His shirt was sticking to his back, and the sweat stains under his arms were plowing their way farther down his shirt. After the shooting incident, it didn’t take much.

  Hardy, Carl, and Anker, as was their custom, had arrived at the murder scene in the suburb of Amager ahead of the others, and they were already wearing the white disposable coveralls, masks, gloves and hairnets that procedures prescribed. It was only half an hour since the old man had been found with the nail in his head. The drive from police headquarters took no time at all.

  That day they had plenty of time before the body would be examined. As far as they knew, the homicide chief was at some sort of reorganization meeting with the police commissioner, but there was no doubt that he would arrive as soon as he could, along with the medical examiner. No office hassles were going to keep Marcus Jacobsen away from a crime scene.

  “There’s not much outside the house for the crime-scene techs to go on,” said Anker, jabbing his foot at the ground, which was soft and sludgy after the rain the night before.

  Carl looked around. Aside from the marks left by the neighbor’s wooden clogs, there weren’t many footprints around the barracks building, which was one of those that the military had sold off in the sixties. Back then the barracks had all probably looked great, but by now, for this particular building at any rate, those days were over. The rafters had fallen in, the tar paper on the roof was riddled with holes, not a single plank on the facade was still in one piece, and the dampness had done its job. Even the sign, on which the name “Georg Madsen” had been printed with a black marker, was half rotted off. And then there was the stench of the dead man, seeping out through the cracks. All in all, a real shithouse.

  “I’ll go and talk to the neighbor,” Anker said, turning toward the man who had been waiting half an hour. It was no more than five yards to the porch of his small cottage. Once the barracks were knocked down, his view was guaranteed to improve significantly.

  Hardy was good at tolerating the stench of corpses. Maybe because he was taller and towered over the worst of it, or maybe because his sense of smell was decidedly less acute than most people’s. This time the odor was especially bad.

  “Damn, what a stink,” Carl grunted, as they stood in the hallway, pulling on the blue plastic booties.

  “I’ll open a window,” said Hardy, stepping into the room next to the claustrophobic entrance.

  Carl went over to the doorway leading to the small living room. Not much light was coming through the blinds that had been pulled down, but there was enough to see the figure sitting in the corner with the grayish-green skin and deep fissures in the blisters that covered most of his face. Reddish fluid trickled from his nose, and the buttons of his shirt were threatening to pop off from the pressure of the swollen torso. His eyes were like wax.

  “The nail was fired into the head with a Paslode pneumatic framing nailer,” said Hardy from behind. “It’s lying on the table in the next room. There’s also a power screwdriver, and it’s still charged. Remind me that we need to find out how long it can lie around before it needs recharging.”

  They’d been standing there surveying the scene for only a moment when Anker joined them.

  “The neighbor has lived out here since January sixteenth,” he said. “So that’s ten days, and he hasn’t seen the deceased come out of the house even once.” He pointed to the body and looked around the room. “The neighbor was sitting outside on his porch, enjoying the global warming, and that’s when he noticed the smell. He’s really shaken up, the poor man. Maybe we should get the medical officer to take a look at him after he examines the body.”

  Later Carl was only able to provide a very sketchy description of what happened next, and the top brass would just have to make do with that. According to most people, he hadn’t been fully conscious anyway. But that wasn’t true. He actually remembered all too well what occurred. He just didn’t feel like going into detail.

  He’d heard someone come in the kitchen door, but he hadn’t reacted. Maybe it was the stench, maybe he thought it was the crime-scene techs arriving.

  A few seconds later, out of the corner of his eye, he registered a figure wearing a red-checked shirt who launched himself forward into the room. Carl thought that he should draw his weapon, but didn’t. His reflexes failed him. On the other hand, he did notice the shock waves when the first shot struck Hardy in the back so that he fell, pulling Carl down and trapping him underneath. The enormous pressure of Hardy’s bullet-pierced body wrenched Carl’s spine hard to one side and jammed his knee.

  Then came the shots that struck Anker in the chest and Carl in the temple. He recalled with great clarity how he lay there with a frantically hyperventilating Hardy on top of him, and how Hardy’s blood seeped out through the coverall to mix with his own on the floor beneath them. And as the perpetrators’ legs moved past him, he kept thinking he better get hold of his gun.

  Behind him, Anker was lying on the floor, trying to wriggle his body around as the assailants talked to each other in the small room beyond the entrance. Only a few seconds passed before they were back in the living room. Carl heard Anker ordering them to halt. Later he found out that Anker had drawn his gun.

  The reply to Anker’s command was yet another shot, which shook the floor and struck Anker right in the heart.

  That’s all the time it took. The shooters slipped out the kitchen door, and Carl
didn’t move. He lay there totally motionless. Not even when the ME arrived did he give any sign of life. Later both the ME and the homicide chief said that at first they thought Carl was dead.

  Carl lay there a long time, as if he’d fainted, with his head full of desperate thoughts. They took his pulse and then drove off with him and his two partners. Only at the hospital did he open his eyes. They told him that his eyes had a dead look to them.

  They thought it was the shock, but it was from shame.

  “Can I help you with something?” asked a man in his mid-thirties wearing a white coat.

  Carl stopped leaning on the wall. “I’ve just been in to see Hardy Henningsen.”

  “Hardy, yes. Are you a family member?”

  “No, I’m his colleague. I was Hardy’s team leader in the homicide division.”

  “I see.”

  “What’s Hardy’s prognosis? Will he be able to walk again?”

  The young doctor made a barely perceptible move away. The answer was clear. The state of his patient’s health was none of Carl’s business. “I’m afraid I can’t give out information to anyone other than his family. I’m sure you understand.”

  Carl grabbed the doctor’s sleeve. “I was with him when it happened, do you understand that? I was shot too. One of our colleagues was killed. We were in it together, so that’s why I’d like to know. Is he going to be able to walk again? Can you tell me that?”

  “I’m sorry.” He brushed off Carl’s hand. “I can’t give you that information, but in your line of work I’m sure you’ll be able to find out. Each of us has to do our job as we see fit.”

  That little note of authority acquired by all physicians, the measured enunciation of vowels on the tip of the tongue, and the slightly raised eyebrows were all to be expected, but they still felt like gasoline poured over Carl’s process of spontaneous ignition. He could have knocked the doctor upside the head, but instead he chose to seize him by the collar and yank him forward. “Do our job?” he snarled. “You’d better watch that smarmy suburban mug of yours before you get too full of yourself, pal. Get it?” He tightened his grip on the man’s collar, and the doctor started to look frantic. “When your daughter doesn’t come home at ten o’clock, we’re the ones who go out looking for her; and when your wife is raped or your shitty beige-colored BMW is missing from the parking lot, we’re the ones you call. We show up every time, even if it’s only to offer consolation. Get it, you asshole? So I’m going to ask you one more time: Will Hardy be able to walk again?”