The Keeper of Lost Causes Read online

  Morten shrugged as he sliced a couple of carrots and added them to what was cooking in the pot. He didn’t say anything for a moment, which was unusual for him. Carl knew what was coming.

  “Vigga phoned,” said Morten at last with a hint of concern in his voice. In this situation he normally added in English: “Don’t shoot me. I’m just the piano player.” But this time he didn’t say it.

  Carl didn’t reply. If Vigga wanted something from him, she could wait to call until he got home.

  “I think she’s freezing over there in that garden cottage,” Morten ventured as he shoved the spoon around in the pot.

  Carl turned to face him. It smelled damned good, whatever Morten was cooking on the stove. It had been a long time since he’d had such an appetite. “She’s freezing? Maybe she should stuff a couple of her well-fed lovers into the woodstove.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” said a voice in the doorway. Behind Jesper, the cacophony from upstairs was again blasting from his room, making the walls in the hallway vibrate.

  It was a miracle they could hear each other at all.

  Carl spent three days staring alternately at Google and at the walls in the basement room. He’d made himself familiar ad nauseam with the walk down the hall to the toilet, and realized he felt more rested than ever before. Then he counted off the four hundred and fifty-two paces up to the homicide division on the third floor, which was the domain of his former colleagues. He was going to demand that the workmen finish what they were doing in the basement and hang the door back on its hinges so he would at least have something to slam if he was so inclined. And then he would circumspectly remind them that he hadn’t yet received the promised case files. Not because there was any rush, but he had no intention of losing his job before he’d even started.

  Maybe he’d expected his former colleagues to stare at him with curiosity when he entered the homicide premises. Was he on the verge of a breakdown? Had his face lost all color after his sojourn in the eternal gloom? He’d expected inquisitive and also scornful looks, but not that everyone would simultaneously slip inside their offices with such a well-orchestrated closing of doors.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked a man he’d never seen before who was unpacking moving boxes in the first office.

  The man held out his hand. “Peter Vestervig. I’m from City Station. I’m going to be part of Viggo’s team.”

  “Viggo’s team? Viggo Brink?” Carl asked. A team leader? Viggo? He must have been appointed the day before.

  “That’s right. And you are?” the man asked.

  Carl managed a brief handshake and then glanced around the office without replying. There were two other faces he didn’t recognize. “They’re on Viggo’s team too?”

  “Not the one over by the window.”

  “New furniture, I see.”

  “Yes, they just brought it up. Aren’t you Carl Mørck?”

  “I used to be,” he said and then walked the rest of the way over to Marcus Jacobsen’s office.

  The door was ajar, but even a closed door wouldn’t have stopped Carl from barging in. “So you’re bringing in more staff, Marcus?” he said without preamble, interrupting a meeting.

  The homicide chief’s face took on a resigned expression as he glanced at his deputy and one of the office girls. “OK, Carl Mørck has emerged from the depths. We’ll continue in half an hour,” he said, stacking up his papers.

  Carl gave Jacobsen’s deputy a surly smile as the man went out the door; the smile he got in return was equally scathing. Vice-Superintendent Lars Bjørn had always known just how to keep the icy feelings between them warm.

  “So, how are things going down there, Carl? Are you getting a handle on how to prioritize the cases?”

  “You might say that. At least with regard to the ones I’ve received so far.” He pointed behind him. “What’s happening out there?”

  “You might well ask.” Marcus raised his eyebrows and straightened the Leaning Tower of Pisa, as everyone called the pile of newly received cases on his desk. “Due to the overwhelming case load, we’ve had to put together two more investigative teams.”

  “To replace mine?” Carl smiled wryly.

  “Yes, plus two others.”

  Carl frowned. “Four teams? How the hell are you going to pay for them?”

  “A special appropriation. Allocated as a result of the police reform, as you know.”

  “I do? Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Was there anything specific you wanted, Carl?”

  “Yes, but I think it can wait. I need to look into something first. I’ll be back in a while.”

  It was common knowledge that plenty of the members of the Conservative Party were businesspeople who hobnobbed with each other and did whatever the trade organizations asked them to do. But Denmark’s slickest party had always attracted police officers and military personnel as well—only the gods knew why. Right now Carl knew that at least two of the former type were members of parliament, voted in by the Conservatives. One was a real prole who had pushed his way up through the police hierarchy only to find just as swift an exit; but the other was a nice old deputy police commissioner whom Carl knew from his days in Randers over in Jutland. He wasn’t particularly conservative, but the constituency included his home district, and the job was undoubtedly well paid. So Kurt Hansen from Randers became a member of parliament, representing the Conservatives, and a member of the Judicial Committee. He was Carl’s best source for any information of a political nature. Kurt wouldn’t discuss everything, but it was easy to get him started if the issue in question was at all interesting. Carl wasn’t sure whether his would qualify.

  “Mr. Deputy Commissioner Kurt Hansen, I presume,” he said as soon as the man answered the phone.

  His words prompted a deep and genial burst of laughter. “Well, what do you know? It’s been a long time, Carl. Great to hear your voice. I heard you got shot.”

  “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 forward.”

  “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 Center, 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 t
o 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 license 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.

  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 defenses, 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,” the spokesman said afterward, 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 anymore, 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 Center 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 klatch 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 kilometers on it, and was now the sole property of Department Q. What a status symbol it was going to be in the parking lot 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 gotten 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 Defense Forces during the riots that erupted over the closing down of the Youth House. Now the space he
ld 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 understating his case.