“Look at this. We’re all in agreement as to the first few lines.”
HELP
The 16 febrary 1996 we were kidnaped he got us at the bus sdop on Lautropvang in Ballerup-The man is 18. tall with short hair
“Right?”
Carl nodded.
“After that, Tryggve suggests the following.”
dark eyes but blue-Hes got a scar on his rite…
“Yeah, and we still don’t know where that scar is,” Carl interjected. “Tryggve never saw it, and Poul never mentioned it to him. But it was exactly the kind of thing Poul would have taken note of, according to Tryggve. Maybe other people’s little peculiarities offset his own. Anyway, go on.”
Yrsa nodded.
drives a blue van Mum and Dad know him-Freddy and somthing with a B-He thretned us he gave us electric shocks-Hes going to kil us-
“All seems plausible to me.” Carl peered up at the ceiling where another fly suddenly appeared to be laughing at him. He studied it more closely. Was that a spot of white on its wing? It was! This was the same fly he had attempted to obliterate with that bottle of correction fluid. Where the hell had it been hiding?
“So we agree that Tryggve was present when all this was going on, and that he was conscious,” Yrsa went on, unperturbed. “This passage here is about the kidnapper’s distinguishing marks, and if we put it together with Tryggve’s description of him, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what he looks like. All we need now is the artist’s impression from Sweden.”
She pointed at the lines that followed. “I’m not that sure about the next sentences. The question is whether it really says what we think it does. Read it out loud, would you, Carl?”
“Read it out loud? What for, have you lost your tongue?” Who did she think he was, Mads Mikkelsen?
She slapped him playfully on the shoulder, then pinched his arm for good measure. “Come on, Carl. It’ll give you the feel of it.”
He shook his head in despair and cleared his throat. She was off her head. He read.
He pressd a rag in my face first then my brothers-We drove nearly 1 hour and now we are by warter There are some wind turbins close by It smels here-hurry up and come My brother is Tryggve-13 and I am Poul 18 years
POUL HOLT
She applauded his performance soundlessly with the tips of her fingers.
“Very nice, Carl. Now, I know Tryggve is pretty sure about most of it, but do you think the bit about the wind turbines is right? Some of the other words seem like they might be wrong, too. What if there’s more hidden behind those dots than we’re able to imagine?”
“Poul and Tryggve never spoke about sounds at all. They couldn’t anyway, with gaffer tape over their mouths. But Tryggve does recall a deep rumbling sound every now and then,” Carl said. “What’s more, he said Poul would have been good at coupling sounds and machinery. But the fact of the matter is it could have been anything at all.”
Carl pictured Tryggve reading the message from the bottle for the second time, eyes moist with tears in the growing light of a Swedish dawn.
“The message made an enormous impression on Tryggve. He said it was just like his brother not to bother with punctuation apart from a few dashes, and that Poul always wrote the way he spoke. He said that reading the letter was like hearing him say it out loud.”
Carl released the image from his mind. Once Tryggve had had time to settle down again after the shock, they would have to get him over to Copenhagen.
Yrsa frowned. “Did you ask Tryggve whether there was any wind while they were there in that boathouse? Did you or Assad check with the Met Office?”
“You mean you want to know if it was windy in the middle of February? When isn’t it? Anyway, turbines are on the go even in a breeze.”
“Nevertheless, did you check?”
“Hand it on to Pasgård, Yrsa. He’s the guy we’ve got checking up on the wind turbines. I’ve got another job for you now.”
She sat down on the edge of the desk. “I know what you’re going to say. You want me to talk to those support groups for people who used to be involved in religious sects, am I right?” She drew her handbag toward her and produced a packet of crisps. And even before Carl had formed his reply, she’d burst a hole in it and was busy devouring its contents.
He couldn’t work her out.
As soon as he got back to his office, he checked the weather service’s archive on the Internet and found that it only went back as far as 1997. He called them, explained his business, and put forward what he thought was a simple inquiry, expecting to receive an equally simple answer.
“Can you tell me what the weather was like during the days following the sixteenth of February 1996?” he asked.
The reply came after only a few seconds.
“There was a fierce snowstorm on the eighteenth of February that brought the country practically to a standstill for three or four days. Even the border to Germany was closed. It was that bad,” said the woman at the other end.
“Really? That would include Nordsjælland, then?”
“The whole country, but worst in the south. In the north, roads were passable in widespread areas.”
Why the hell hadn’t they asked about the weather before now?
“So it would have been windy, then?”
“I’ll say.”
“What about wind turbines in weather like that?”
The woman paused for a moment. “Are you asking whether the wind was too strong to have them running?”
“Erm, I suppose so, yeah. Would they shut the turbines down in that kind of wind?”
“I’d certainly think so, though I’m not an expert on that. But yes, they’d have been shut down during the period, otherwise they’d have been wrecked.”
Carl tapped a cigarette from the packet with his free hand as he offered his thanks. What on earth had the children heard, then, if it hadn’t been wind turbines? Some of the noise would have been the storm itself, of course. They’d have been sitting there freezing inside the boathouse, unable to see out, so it was certainly possible that all they had heard was the wind. They might not even have known about the snow at all.
Carl found Pasgård’s mobile number and called him.
“Yeah,” came the reply. Unaccommodating even in a single syllable. Some people were like that.
“It’s Carl Mørck. Did you check up on the weather during the days the children were being held?”
“Not yet, but I’ll look into it.”
“Save your energy. There was a snowstorm that lasted for three of the five days they were imprisoned.”
“You don’t say.”
A typical Pasgård comment.
“Forget the wind turbines, Pasgård. It was blowing up a gale.”
“What about the other two days?”
“Tryggve told me he heard the rumbling sound all the time. Maybe more subdued the last three days. That would be explained by the storm drowning it out.”
“Maybe.”
“Just thought you should know.”
Carl chuckled silently. Pasgård was probably kicking himself.
“You’ll need to be looking for another source of the noise than wind turbines,” he continued. “Though still some kind of rumbling sound. What about that fish scale, anything turned up there?”
“One step at a time. It’s with the Department of Biology for microscopy. Aquatic Biology Section.”
“Microscopy?”
“Yeah, or whatever it is they do. I’ve already found out it’s from a trout. The issue seems to be whether it’s a sea trout or a fjord trout.”
“Aren’t they different altogether?”
“Apparently not. It seems a fjord trout is just a sea trout that can’t be arsed to swim any farther, so it stays put.”
Carl felt exasperated. Yrsa, Assad, Rose, and now Pasgård.