Even so, he was worried.
He found a video presentation of the Trauma Center on the hospital’s website, studied what they did and where, and then checked the map showing the locations of the hospital’s various departments. He would know where to find them.
For the time being, however, he would simply monitor the two women’s condition.
Next, he picked up the note with the bowling logo on it and read the handwritten message:
Stopped by today, but nobody in. Team tournament on Wed moved from 7:30 to 7 p.m. Remember winning ball afterward. Or maybe you’ve got balls enough as it is, ha ha? Maybe you’ll both come? Ha ha, again! Cheers, The Pope.
He looked up at the ceiling, toward the room where his wife lay. If he waited a couple of days before taking the body up to the boathouse, he would be able to get rid of all three of them at once. A couple more days without water and the kids would be dead anyway. Who cared? They could thank their parents.
Pure idiocy. All that trouble for nothing.
33
He had heard some disturbance downstairs during the night, but hadn’t realized that the doctor had been there again.
“Hardy’s got some fluid on his lungs,” said Morten. “He’s having difficulty breathing.” He looked concerned. His cheerful, chubby face seemed almost to have collapsed in on itself.
“Is it serious?” Carl asked. It’d be a tragedy, if it was.
“The doctor wants Hardy admitted to the Rigshospital for observation, so they can check his heart and stuff. He was worried about pneumonia, too. That could be fatal for a man in Hardy’s condition.”
Carl nodded. Clearly, they should be taking no chances.
He smoothed his hand over his friend’s hair.
“Christ, Hardy, what are you playing at? You should have woken me up.”
“I told Morten not to,” Hardy whispered with a despondent look on his face. More despondent than usual. “You’ll have me back, I hope? Once I’m discharged again?”
“Course we will, mate. The place wouldn’t be the same without you.”
Hardy smiled weakly. “I don’t think Jesper would agree with you there. He’d love it if everything was back to normal when he got home this afternoon.”
This afternoon? Carl had forgotten.
“Anyway, I won’t be here when you get home from work, Carl. Morten’s going with me to the hospital, so I’ll be in good hands. Who knows, maybe I’ll be back in a few days…” He tried to smile as he gasped for breath. “Carl, something’s been bothering me,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Do you remember that case of Børge Bak’s, a prostitute found dead underneath the Langebro Bridge? It looked like a drowning accident, maybe even a suicide. Only then it turned out not to be.”
Carl nodded. He remembered it well. A black girl, not much more than eighteen years old. Naked, apart from a bracelet of twisted copper wire around her ankle. Nothing out of the ordinary, a lot of African women wore that kind of thing. More interesting were the needle marks on her arms. Typical for a junkie prostitute, but not for the African girls who worked the streets of Vesterbro.
“She’d been killed by her pimp, wasn’t that it?” Carl said.
“More likely by those who sold her to her pimp.”
Hardy was right, he remembered now.
“That case reminds me of the one you’ve got now. Those bodies in the fires.”
“You mean the bracelet around her ankle?”
“Exactly,” Hardy said. “The girl wanted out. Wanted to go home. But she hadn’t earned enough, so they wouldn’t let her.”
“And that’s why they killed her.”
“Yeah. The African girls believe in voodoo. Only this one didn’t. She was a threat to the system. They had to get rid of her.”
“So they used the bracelet to remind the other girls of the repercussions of going against their masters or the voodoo.”
“That’s right. Someone had woven feathers and hair and all sorts of crap into the bracelet. None of the other African girls was in any doubt as to what it meant.”
Carl stroked his chin. Hardy was definitely on to something.
Jacobsen stood with his back to Carl, looking out across the street. He did this often when he needed to focus. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying Hardy thinks the bodies in the fires were debt collectors entrusted with the collection of payments from the three firms involved, and that they hadn’t been doing their jobs properly. The payments weren’t forthcoming, and for that reason they were bumped off?”
“Right. The syndicate makes an example of them for everyone else on the payroll. And the firms use the insurance payout after the fires to settle their debts. Two birds with one stone.”
“If the insurance money went to the Serbs, presumably one or more of the firms hit would then be lacking funds with which to reestablish their businesses,” Jacobsen mused.
“Yeah.”
The homicide chief nodded. Simple explanations often yielded simple solutions. These were vicious crimes indeed, but the Eastern European gangs and those from the Balkans were hardly known for their compassion.
“Do you know what, Carl? I think we’ll go with that.” He nodded. “I’ll get on to Interpol straightaway. They can give us a hand getting some answers out of these Serbs. Do thank Hardy for me, won’t you? How’s he doing, anyway? Has he settled in all right at your place?”
Carl shook his head deliberately. Settled in would be stretching things somewhat.
“Oh, by the way. A tip-off for you.” Marcus Jacobsen stopped him in his tracks in the doorway. “Health and Safety will be looking in on you sometime during the day.”
“Yeah? How do you know? I thought that sort of thing was meant to be a surprise.”
The homicide chief smiled. “We’re not the police for nothing, you know. We know things.”
“Yrsa, you’re on the third floor today, OK?” Carl said.
But Yrsa wasn’t listening. “Rose said to thank you for the note you left yesterday,” she said.
“OK. What’s her answer, then? Will she be back with us soon?”
“She didn’t say.”
Which was answer enough in itself.
He was stuck with Yrsa.
“Where’s Assad?” he asked.
“In his office making phone calls to former sect members. I’m doing the support groups.”
“Are there many?”
“Not really, no. I’ll have to start ringing up ordinary ex-members soon, like Assad’s doing.”
“Good idea. Where are you finding them?”
“Old newspaper articles. There’s plenty to be getting on with.”
“When you go upstairs, take Assad with you. Health and Safety will be around in a while.”
“Who?”
“Health and Safety. About the asbestos.”
Obviously, it rang no bells. Yrsa stared vacantly into space.
“Hello, anyone there?” He snapped his fingers. “Wakey, wakey!”
“Hello, yourself. Let me say this like it is to your face, Carl. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. Don’t you think you might be mixing me up with Rose?”
Had he really got her confused with her sister?
Jesus Christ, he couldn’t even tell them apart anymore.
Tryggve Holt rang just as Carl was wondering if he should put a chair out ready in the middle of the room so he could clobber the fly next time it decided to settle in its favorite spot on the ceiling.
“Were you satisfied with the drawing?” Tryggve asked.
“Yes, were you?”
Tryggve said he was. “I’m calling you because there’s a Danish policeman, Pasgård, who keeps ringing me up all the time. I’ve already told him everything I know. Can’t you get him off my back? He’s a real pain.”
My pleasure, Carl thought to himself.