“Can I ask you a couple of questions first, Tryggve?” he said. “Then I’ll make sure he leaves you alone, OK?”
Tryggve didn’t sound entirely enthusiastic, but he wasn’t protesting, either.
“We’re having doubts about the wind turbines. Can you describe that sound for us again, in more detail perhaps?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“How deep was it?”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t know how to describe it.”
Carl hummed a tone. “Was it that deep?”
“Yeah, thereabouts, I’d say.”
“Not very deep at all, then?”
“If you say so. I would have called it deep.”
“Did it sound metallic in any way?”
“How do you mean?”
“Was it a soft tone, or was there more of an edge to it?”
“I can’t remember. More of an edge, maybe.”
“Like an engine?”
“Maybe. But all the time, for days on end.”
“And it didn’t go away in the storm?”
“A little bit, perhaps, not much. Anyway, I’ve been through all this with Pasgård. Most of it, at least. Can’t you just ask him? I can hardly bear to think about it anymore.”
Carl thought of suggesting therapy. “I understand, Tryggve.”
“Anyway, there’s another reason I’m calling. My dad’s in Denmark today.”
“Really?” Carl grabbed his notepad. “Where?”
“He’s at a meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses, at their headquarters in Holbæk. Something about him wanting to be stationed somewhere else. I think maybe you put the wind up him. He doesn’t want all this brought up again.”
Like father, like son, Carl thought to himself. “I see. And what can the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Denmark do about that?” he asked.
“They could send him to Greenland or the Faroe Islands, for a start.”
Carl frowned. “How do you know this, Tryggve? Are you and your father on speaking terms again?”
“No, my younger brother, Henrik, told me. And you’re not to tell anyone, otherwise he’ll be in trouble.”
After they had hung up, Carl sat for a moment and gazed at the clock. In an hour and twenty minutes Mona would be with him in the company of her super shrink, but why was she putting him through it? Maybe she thought he was going to leap to his feet all of a sudden like the first lamb of spring and declare: Hallelujah, I’m not traumatized anymore about my mate getting shot before my eyes while I did fuck all about it! Was that it?
He shook his head. If it wasn’t for Mona, he would make short shrift of that quack of hers.
There was a gentle knock on the door. It was Laursen, with a little plastic bag in his hand.
“Cedar,” he said, chucking the bag containing the splinter onto Carl’s desk. “You’re looking for a boathouse made of cedarwood. How many of them do you think were put up in Nordsjælland before the kidnapping? Not many, I can tell you. It was all pressure-treated timber back then. Before Silvan and all the other DIY chains convinced Mr. and Mrs. Denmark it wasn’t good enough anymore.”
Carl stared at the scrap in the bag. Cedarwood!
“Who says the boathouse is made of the same material as the splinter Poul Holt found to write with?” he asked.
“No one. But the possibility exists. If I were you, I’d ask around the timber merchants in the area.”
“Excellent work, Tomas. But there’s no telling how old that boathouse might be. The law only requires firms to keep copies of their accounts for five years in this country. No timber merchant or DIY store is going to be able to tell us anything about any amount of cedarwood they sold even ten years ago, not to mention twenty. That only works in films. Reality’s a different thing altogether.”
“Should have saved myself the bother, then.” Laursen smiled. Shrewd as he was, he could doubtless already see the thoughts now bouncing around inside his former colleague’s head. How to make use of the information? Where did it put them now?
“By the way, you might like to know Department A’s in a frenzy upstairs,” Laursen added.
“What for?”
“They’ve pulled in the owner of one of those firms that got hit by arson recently. Seems the bloke’s cracked. He’s in an interview room shitting himself. He thinks that lot he borrowed money from are going to bump him off.”
Carl pondered the information. “I don’t blame him. He’s got every reason.”
“Anyway, Carl. You won’t be hearing from me for the next couple of days. I’m off on a course.”
“You don’t say. Cafeteria cuisine, is it?” He laughed, perhaps rather too heartily.
“As a matter of fact, yes. How did you guess?”
Now he caught the look in Laursen’s eyes. It was a look he had seen before. Out there with the dead bodies, white SOC suits all over the place.
That pained look Laursen ought to have put behind him by now was back again.
“What’s up, Tomas? Did they kick you out or something?”
Laursen nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yeah, but not the way you think. The cafeteria isn’t paying its way. We’ve got eight hundred people working in this building and none of them are eating with us. So now they’re packing it in.”
Carl frowned. He had never been one of the privileged few who on account of their loyalty to the cafeteria had always been rewarded with an extra slice of lemon to go with their fish. But still, things were going totally down the plughole if they were closing the nosh house, the pig trough, the luncheonette, the greasy spoon, the staff restaurant, or whatever the hell else they chose to call the joint with the sloping walls its diners were always banging their heads against.
“You mean, they’re actually closing down?” he said incredulously.
“Yeah. But the commissioner says there has to be a cafeteria, so now they’re putting it out to tender. They’ve got us buttering bread until some twat or other kicks us out on to the dole queue in the name of the free market or else takes us on to chop lettuce all day.”
“So you’re sodding off now, before it happens?”
Laursen managed a crumpled smile that briefly lit up his weathered face. “Sodding off? You must be joking. I put in for this course so I’ll be eligible to take over the place. That’ll show the bastards.”
They walked part of the way up the stairs together, before Carl found Yrsa on the third floor engaged in animated chat with Lis about who was the hotter, George Clooney or Johnny Depp. Whoever the fuck they were.
“Hard at work, then?” he commented tersely and caught sight of Pasgård darting from the coffee machine into his office.
“Thanks for your work, Pasgård,” he said, catching up with him. “You’re hereby off the case.”
Pasgård gave him an uncertain look. He always assumed everyone else was just as full of shit as he was himself.
“Just one small job, Pasgård, then you and Jørgen can get back to knocking on doors in Sundby. Would you be good enough to make sure Poul Holt’s father is brought to HQ for questioning? It seems Martin Holt is at this moment to be found at the national headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses at Stenhusvej 28 in Holbæk, just in case you didn’t know.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’d suit me to interview him in exactly two hours’ time. He’ll probably kick up a fuss, but this is a murder investigation and he’s a Crown witness.”
Carl turned on his heel. He could almost hear the howls of protest from the Holbæk Police. Marching into the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ most hallowed halls! Christ on a bike! But Martin Holt would come along of his own accord. Of the two evils, the greater would be having to admit to lying to his fellows in the community about his son being ostracized.
It was one thing to have lied to people outside the sect, quite another to have done so to the initiated.
He found Assad at his desk in the corridor outside Jacobsen’s office. A computer of the kind that had been thrown into storage five years before whirred loudly. On the other hand, they had given him a relatively new mobile so he could retain contact with the outside world. No expense spared.