“The problem is,” Skou-Larsen said, “that the apartment my wife thinks she bought hasn’t even been built yet. And in addition, it’s already been sold to someone else. She keeps saying that there must have been some mistake, but I’m convinced the whole thing was a scam.”
“I see. So the money was a down payment or a deposit?”
“Yes. A deposit.”
“Mr. Skou-Larsen, we’ve no record of the money having been transferred to any other account, either here in Denmark or abroad. It was just cashed from the loan account the bank set up.”
“I’m afraid my wife was so careless as to pay the sum in cash to a so-called agent in their sales office. I called them, but they claimed they had never heard of him. They said they don’t even have agents in Denmark, just in Spain and one location in England. I think it was Brighton.”
“So, sir, you believe your wife was the victim of a fraud?”
“I most certainly do. Wouldn’t you call that a con job?”
“If it happened the way you describe, sir, I certainly would. We’ll have to look into it more closely. In the meantime, perhaps you could tell me if you can remember what you were doing Saturday, May second, between 6 and 11 P.M.?”
Skou-Larsen was brought out of his rightful indignation with a jerk.
“What I was doing …?” he said hesitantly. It sounded just like something one of those godawful mystery-novel detectives would ask the murder suspect. And he didn’t see how it could be related to the fraud case. Unless the con man had met with some kind of accident? They had asked about the car, after all.
“I should think I was watching TV,” he said hesitantly. “We usually do on Saturday. My wife likes those prime time dramas.” Then he happened to think of something. “No, wait. I think that might be the Saturday I had to go to the clinic because I fainted. Doctors hardly ever make house calls anymore, you know, not even if you’re practically dying. But once I got there, they changed their mind, and ended up admitting me to the hospital for the night.”
“Which hospital?”
“Bispebjerg.”
“And what was wrong with you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Blood pressure. It was too low.” At the hospital they claimed that he must have taken too many of his Fortzaar pills, but he was sure he hadn’t. “They kept me in until Sunday, so I wasn’t home that night.”
The second policeman, Nielsen, returned from the carport with a yellow device that reminded Skou-Larsen of the blood pressure monitor the doctor used, maybe because they had just been talking about that night at Bispebjerg Hospital. Instead of the blood pressure monitor’s inflatable cuff, it had a stethoscope-like object connected to it by a spiral cord. Skou-Larsen noticed the two officers exchange a look and an infinitesimal shake of the head.
“We also need to check the house,” the one named Nielsen said.
“Mr. Skou-Larsen was kind enough to give us permission to check anything we needed to,” Gitte said quickly, and Skou-Larsen already regretted his rash words. Were they going to go rooting around in his closets and drawers and gape at his folded underwear now? But that wasn’t what the young man was doing. Instead, he plugged a pair of headphones into his yellow box and started walking around waving the stethoscope-like instrument.
“I’m sorry, but what on earth is he doing?” Skou-Larsen asked. “What kind of device is that?”
At first he wasn’t sure if Gitte was going to answer him. But after a brief pause, it came.
“It’s a Geiger counter,” she said. “Or more accurately, a Geiger-Müller counter. Mr. Skou-Larsen, does anyone besides you ever use your car? Your wife, perhaps?”
“Helle doesn’t drive,” he responded absentmindedly. A Geiger counter? In his house? “Does this have anything to do with that business in Valby? Why in the world would you think there’s radioactivity in our home? Do we need to be evacuated?” His muddled brain reached all the way back to the safety drills from the ’50s, and he started contemplating what he would need if he were going to spend the night in the air-raid shelter under Emdrup School. No, wait, it wasn’t called that anymore. What was it now, Lundehus School? Did they even still have the bomb shelter? He could picture the old brochure clearly. IN THE EVENT OF WAR, it was called, with a foreword by former Prime Minister Viggo Kampmann, and gave information about “the destructive range of the new weapons” and the recommendation to keep enough emergency rations on hand for eight days. But this wasn’t a nuclear war, this was … this was something else. You can’t make an atomic bomb out of cesium, he told himself. But a Geiger counter—in his house?
“What is he looking for?” he managed to ask.
“Try to concentrate now, Mr. Skou-Larsen. Has anyone else used your car? Has it ever been stolen?”
“No,” he said. “Never.”
“Do you own a computer, sir?” Gitte asked.
“Uh, yes. Our son … he’s good at sending e-mails and that kind of thing.”
“We would like permission to copy the contents of your hard drive.”
“Yes. But.…” Suddenly he discovered that he had put his hand on her wrist, a move that took both of them by surprise. “Won’t you tell me what’s going on?” he asked, letting go of her again even though he actually wanted to keep holding on until she responded. It was unbearable, all of it. It was as if his home on Elmehøjvej were suddenly transformed into the setting for one of those absurdist 1960s dramas. They had been to see one, he recalled. With a title like Happy Days, he had expected it to be entertaining, but it was mostly sad, and Helle got angry and said it wasn’t right to waste people’s time with stuff like that. That was actually the last time they had been to the theater, apart from a musical or two.
Gitte gave him a look that was not entirely devoid of compassion, or so he thought.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Skou-Larsen. But as I said, we have to follow up on every lead. Even the more unlikely ones.” She stood up. “Mikael?”
“Yes,” came the muffled response from upstairs.
“Are you about done?”
“Just about.”
A moment later, the policeman with the Geiger counter came back down to the living room.
“Clean,” he said. “Just background radiation.”
She nodded as if that was just what she had been expecting.
“There, you see now, Mr. Skou-Larsen. There’s no reason to worry. We have to take your hard drive with us, or would you rather have us wait here until someone from IT can come out and make a copy?”
“Take it,” he said hoarsely. The sooner he got them out of the house, the better. “We almost never use the computer. Not since Helle learned how to send text messages.”
They left, after a polite goodbye—even from the rude young male officer. But Skou-Larsen was shaken and dazed, not sure that anything made sense anymore.
Thank God Helle hadn’t been home.…
The carport was empty. According to the motor vehicle registry, Tommi Karvinen was supposed to be the proud owner of a four-year-old BMW M6 Coupe, and that, at any rate, was nowhere to be seen.
Søren had managed to wangle two men from the evening shift’s overworked staffing roster. Kim Jankowski had just turned forty but was still the less experienced of the two—he hadn’t applied to the police academy until he was thirty-one, just before the age limit disqualified him, but had been extremely focused since then. Jesper Due Hansen was a couple of years younger and had just transferred to counterterrorism from the personal protection unit. He had inevitably been nicknamed “the Dove,” not due to any particulary pacifist tendencies, but because of his avian middle name.