Was it the same thing now?
“Think your way through what happened. It’ll give you some distance,” Mona had told him during his counseling.
He clenched his fists and recalled the impact that traveled through the floorboards when Hardy had been hit and he himself had felt the graze of the bullet against his temple. The feeling of body against body when Hardy pulled him down as he fell, covering him in blood. Anker’s heroic attempt to stop the gunmen, despite being badly injured. And then the final, fatal shot that emptied Anker’s blood so definitively onto the filthy wooden floor.
He went through it, over and over again. Recalling the shame of having done nothing and Hardy’s bewilderment as to why it had all happened.
And his heart continued to pound.
“Bastards, bastards,” he snarled, repeating himself as he reached for the light and a smoke. Tomorrow, he would call Mona and tell her he’d come unstuck again. He would be as charming as he could, though with a smidgeon of added despair. Then, maybe, she’d give him more than a consultation. He could always hope, anyway.
He smiled at the thought and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs. Then he closed his eyes, only to feel his heart carrying on like a pneumatic drill again. Was he really ill this time?
He got out of bed with difficulty and edged his way down the stairs. If he was having a heart attack, he didn’t want to be up there all on his own in bed.
And that was where he fell, to be woken up by Morten gently shaking him, a painted Iraqi flag fading on his forehead.
The raised eyebrows of the on-call doctor signaled that Carl had wasted his time. The verdict was short and to the point: overexertion.
Overexertion! An insult, followed by some standard wording about stress and a couple of tablets to take that hammered Carl into the land of nod until way past church time.
By the time he woke up on Sunday, it was half past one in the afternoon and his head was throbbing with all manner of unpleasant thoughts. His heart, though, was beating normally.
“Jesper wants you to call him,” Hardy said from his bed when Carl finally tottered down the stairs. “Are you OK?”
Carl gave a shrug. “There’s some stuff inside my head I can’t control,” he answered.
Hardy forced a smile, and Carl could have bitten off his own tongue. That was the thing about having Hardy around. You always had to think before opening your gob.
“I’ve been thinking about Assad, seeing him on telly last night,” Hardy said. “What do you actually know about him, Carl? Don’t you think you should meet that family of his? Maybe it’s about time you paid him a visit.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Isn’t it normal to take an interest in your partner?”
Partner! Was Assad now his partner all of a sudden? “I know you, Hardy,” he said. “You’re on to something. What is it?”
Hardy drew back his lips in something resembling a smile. It was always gratifying to be properly understood.
“It’s like I saw him in a different light. As if I didn’t know him. Do you know Assad, do you think?”
“Ask me if I know anyone. Who really knows who, at the end of the day?”
“Where does he live?”
“Heimdalsgade, I think.”
“You think?”
Where does he live? What’s his family like? Was this some kind of interrogation? But Hardy was right. He knew fuck all about Assad.
“What did Jesper want?” he asked, changing the subject.
Hardy raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t finished with Assad. For whatever reason.
“Hardy says you called,” Carl said into his mobile a moment later.
“I did, yeah,” said Jesper. “You can get your savings out of the bank now, Carlo.”
Carl blinked uncontrollably. The lad sounded sure of himself.
“Carl! The name’s Carl, Jesper. If you call me Carlo once more I shall be forced to momentarily go deaf at very decisive moments in your potentially short life, do you get my drift?”
“Got you, Carlo.” He could almost see Jesper laughing at the other end of the connection. “Hope you can hear me now. I’ve found Vigga a bloke.”
“You don’t say. Is he worth two thousand kroner, or is she going to chuck him out with the bathwater tomorrow like she did with her man of letters? Because if she is, you can forget all about your dosh.”
“He’s forty years old. Owns an Opel Vectra and a convenience store. Nineteen-year-old daughter.”
“Well, I never. And where did you dig him up?”
“I put a flyer up in his shop. It was the first one.”
Easy money.
“And what makes you think this Grocer Jack can sweep Vigga off her feet? Does he look like Brad Pitt?”
“Try again, Carlo. Not unless Brad Pitt fell asleep in the sun for a week or two.”
“You mean he’s black?”
“Not black, exactly, but not fucking far off!”
Carl held his breath as the rest of the story was delivered in detail. The man was a widower, endowed with the kind of soulful brown eyes that Vigga was almost bound to find irresistible. Jesper had dragged him down to the house on the allotment, where the man had heaped praise on Vigga’s paintings and exclaimed with obvious delight that her little place was the most charming he had seen in all his life. And that, apparently, had sealed it. At that very moment, they were having lunch together at some restaurant in the city.
Carl shook his head. He ought to be as pleased as punch, and instead all he felt was an ache in his stomach.
When Jesper was finished, he snapped his mobile shut in slow motion and turned his gaze on Morten and Hardy, who were gawping at him like a pair of stray dogs waiting for some leftovers.
“We’re saved, so it seems. Let’s cross our fingers, anyway. Seems Jesper’s got Vigga paired off with the man of her dreams, so maybe we can stay on here for a while longer.”
Whereupon Morten’s jaw dropped and he clapped his hands with glee. “Oh, how sweet!” he exclaimed. “Who’s the lucky white knight?”
“White?” Carl tried to force his mouth into a smile, but his muscles seemed to be stuck. “According to Jesper, Gurkamal Singh Pannu is the darkest thing north of the equator.”
Did he hear them gasp?
The whole of the outer Nørrebro district was blue and white that day and populated by utterly miserable faces. Carl had never seen quite so many FC Copenhagen supporters looking so down in the dumps as they milled through the streets. Flags trailed along the ground, cans of beer seemed almost too heavy to be raised to the lips, and the chants had all but died away, only now and then to be superseded by roars of frustration that echoed through the city like the pained cries of gnu succumbing to lions.
Their heroes had gone down 2-0 to Esbjerg. Fourteen home victories on the trot, and then beaten by a team who hadn’t won a single away match for a year.
The city was defeated.
He parked halfway along Heimdalsgade and glanced around. Since his patrolling days here, immigrant stores had sprouted all over the place. The area was alive, even on a Sunday.
He found Assad’s name on a doorplate and pushed the buzzer. Better to be snubbed on the spot than turned down over the phone. If Assad wasn’t in, he would drive out to Vigga’s place and check out what new version of reality she was now operating in, just to make sure he knew what he was up against.
After twenty seconds, there was still no answer.
He stepped back and peered up at the balconies. It wasn’t quite the ghetto he had been expecting. He saw no visible laundry and surprisingly few satellite dishes.
“Are you wanting in?” asked a chirpy voice behind him, and a young blond girl, the type whose eyes alone were enough to render a man speechless, stepped past him and unlocked the door.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, following her into the stairwell of the concrete block.
He found the flat on the third floor, discovering that, unlike the densely populated nameplates of his two Arab neighbors, Assad’s had only his own name on it.
Carl pressed the bell a couple of times, sensing already that he was out of luck. Then he bent down and flipped open the letter box.
The place looked empty. Apart from some junk mail and a couple of bills on the floor, he could see nothing but a pair of timeworn leather armchairs against the far wall.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Carl turned his head to see a pair of baggy white tracksuit bottoms with stripes down the leg.
He straightened up to face a powerhouse whose tanned upper arms looked like sides of beef. “I’m looking for Assad. Do you know if he’s been home today?”
“The Shiite? No, he hasn’t.”
“What about his family?”
The man cocked his head slightly. “You sure you know him? Or maybe you’re the fucker who’s been doing the break-ins around here? What’s with all the peering through people’s letter boxes?”
He thrust his chest against Carl’s.
“All right, hold on a minute, Rambo.”
He put a hand against the man’s complex of abdominal muscles and fumbled around in his own inside pocket.
“Assad’s my friend, and so are you if you can answer some questions for me.”
The man stared at the police badge Carl held up in front of his face.
“Who’d want to be friends with one of you lot?” he snarled, lips retracted.
He made to turn and go, but Carl grabbed his sleeve.
“Maybe you’ll answer me anyway. It’d be a help…”
“Stick your questions up your arse, you fucking wanker.”
Carl nodded. In about three and a half seconds, he would demonstrate to this overgrown, protein-powder monster who the real wanker was. The guy may have been built like a brick shithouse, but he wasn’t so big he could ignore the firm grip of the law on his collar and the threat of arrest for insulting an officer on duty.
But then a voice came from behind him.
“Hey, Bilal, whassup? The man’s got a badge.”
Carl turned to see an even bigger individual, whose main occupation was clearly lifting weights. He was a window display of sports clothing. If his enormous T-shirt had been bought in a normal shop, then the place had certainly been well stocked.
“Sorry about my brother. He’s on steroids,” he said, extending a mitt the size of a provincial market town. “We don’t have anything to do with Hafez el-Assad. In fact, I’ve only ever seen him twice. Funny-looking guy. Round face and big eyes, yeah?”
Carl nodded and let go of the giant’s sleeve he was still clutching.
“Tell you the truth,” the brother continued, “I don’t think he even lives here. And if he does, it’s not with any family, that’s for sure.” He smiled. “Just as well, it’s only a one-room flat.”