Bollocks to it.
Carl glanced up at a job opening he had lightheartedly pinned to the notice board a couple of months before: National Commissioner of Police. Just the ticket, he’d thought. What could be better than a job with minions bowing and touching their forelocks, an order of chivalry from the Queen, cheap travel, and a salary that would reduce even Vigga to silence? Seven hundred and two thousand, two hundred and seventy-seven kroner per annum, no less. Plus perks. Just uttering the figure took up half the morning.
Should have put in for it, he thought to himself. And then Assad was standing in front of him.
“Carl, do we need to talk about what happened just now?”
About what? That he’d been Skyping with someone? That he was on the job so early? That Carl’s sudden appearance had scared the shit out of him?
The question was decidedly odd.
Carl shook his head and looked at the time. Still an hour until his shift officially began. “What you do here so early in the morning is your own business, Assad. I’ve no problem with you keeping in touch with people you don’t see that often.”
Assad looked almost relieved. Curiouser and curiouser.
“I have been studying the accounts of Amundsen and Mujagic A/S in Rødovre, K. Frandsen Wholesalers, JPP Fittings A/S, and Public Consult.”
“OK. Find anything you want to tell me about?”
Assad scratched the barren patch in his black curls. “They seem to be rather solid companies most of the time.”
“But?”
“In the months surrounding the fires they are not.”
“How can you tell?”
“They borrow money. Their orders go down.”
“You mean, first the orders go down, and then they borrow the money they’ve lost?”
Assad nodded. “Yes, that’s it.”
“OK, then what?”
“Well, we can see that only in the Rødovre case. The other fires are all so new.”
“What happened there, then?”
“First there is the fire, then the company receives the insurance payout, and afterward the loan is gone.”
Carl reached for his cigarettes and lit up. It sounded like copybook stuff. Insurance fraud. But where did the bodies with the finger rings come in?
“What kind of loans are we talking about?”
“Short term. One year at a time. In the case of Public Consult, the company that burned down on Stockholmsgade last Saturday, only six months.”
“The loans fell due and they hadn’t the funds to pay?”
“That is what it looks like.”
Carl blew smoke into the room, prompting Assad to step back and flap his hands. Carl ignored him. This was his domain and his smoke. If Assad didn’t like it, tough shit.
“Who lent them the money?” he asked.
Assad gave a shrug. “Various. Bankers in central Copenhagen.”
Carl nodded. “Get me the names and tell me who’s behind them.”
Assad’s shoulders sagged.
“All right, no need to get depressed about it. Do it when the offices open, Assad. That’s a couple of hours away yet. Relax.”
Carl’s words did not appear to cheer him up at all. In fact, they almost seemed to make things worse.
The pair of them were getting on Carl’s nerves with all their jabber and recalcitrance. It was like Assad and Yrsa were infecting each other. As if they were the ones who did the deciding around here. If they kept it up, he would give them each a pair of rubber gloves and have them scrubbing the basement floor on their hands and knees until they could see their faces in it.
Assad lifted his head and nodded silently. “Anyway, I will not keep you anymore, Carl. You can come to me when you’re finished.”
“What do you mean?”
Assad winked and flashed him a wry little smile. The transformation was utterly baffling. “Soon you will have both hands full,” he added, winking again.
“Let me try that one more time. What the fuck are you going on about, Assad?”
“I am referring to Mona, of course. Do not try to tell me you had no idea she was back.”
14
Like Assad had said, Mona Ibsen was back. Exuding tropical sunshine and an excess of experiences that had left unmistakable albeit graceful traces in the narrow creases around her eyes.
Carl had sat for a long time on his own in the basement that morning, trying to come up with gambits that might effectively counter any defensive steps on Mona’s part. Words that might soften her gaze if she should happen to drop by.
It didn’t happen. The only female presence in the basement that morning was Yrsa, heralded by the trundle of her shopping cart and her doubtless kindly intended but nonetheless earsplitting descant in the corridor five minutes after clocking in: “Bread rolls from Netto, ready for toasting, lads!”
It was one of those moments that brought home to him how far removed the basement was from the oblivious world above it, where people went about carefree and happy.
After that, it took him a couple of hours to realize that if he was planning on ever finding happiness himself he would have to get off his arse and go looking for it.
Having asked around, he eventually located Mona over by the Magistrates’ Court in quiet discussion with the court clerk. Clad in a leather waistcoat and a pair of faded Levi’s, she resembled anything but a woman who was done with taking on new challenges in life.
“Hello, Carl,” she said, rather remotely. The look in her eyes was professional, making it abundantly clear that for the moment there was nothing more between them. All he could do was smile back at her, unable to muster a single word.
The rest of the day he could have spent in ever-decreasing circles, frustration mounting in the disintegrated ruin of his emotional life. But Yrsa had other plans.
“We might have something to go on in Ballerup,” she announced with ill-concealed glee and a bit of Netto’s bread roll stuck between her front teeth. “I’m an angel of good fortune this week. It says so in my horoscope.”
Carl looked up at her with hope in his eyes. In that case, her wings could whisk her away into the stratosphere so he could be left to ponder his cruel fate in peace.
“I had such a job getting anything out of them,” she went on. “First, I had to speak to the head teacher at Lautrupgård School, but he’d only been there since 2004. Then they sent me on to a teacher who’d been there since the school started, and she didn’t know anything, either. Then I got hold of the caretaker, and he was just as blank, so then-”
“Yrsa! If there’s a point to all this, then I’d like to hear it, please. I’m a busy man,” Carl interrupted, trying to rub some life back into a sleeping arm.
“Well, as I was just about to say, afterward I called the College of Engineering, and that’s where we got lucky.”
The blood rushed back to his limb at once. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Go on.”
“It was quite by chance, really. One of the teachers, a woman by the name of Laura Mann, was in the office when I called. She’d just started back this morning after being off sick. She’s taught there since the place opened in 1995, and as far as she could remember there’s only ever been one case that would fit.”
Carl straightened up in his chair. “And what was that?”
Yrsa cocked her head and looked at him. “Oh, so you are interested, then?” She gave his hairy forearm a playful slap of her hand. “Bet you’re dying to know now, aren’t you?”
How in God’s name had it come to this? He’d solved at least a hundred burdensome cases over the years, and here he was, reduced to playing guessing games with a temp in bright-green tights.