His attention had been caught by a sound. It was an unexpected sound, of the kind a soldier was trained to hear: faint sounds that could mean death in a second if overlooked.
It was such a sound he heard as he stood outside the house and called her mobile.
The mobile that chimed so faintly inside the walls.
And then he’d snapped shut his own phone and listened. Nothing.
He had dialed Mia’s number one more time and waited for a moment. There it was again. Her mobile was somewhere upstairs behind the closed, slanting window in the roof, responding to his call.
He’d stood there for a second, considering what to do.
She could have left it behind on purpose, but it was unlikely.
She called it her lifeline, and no one would give up a lifeline just like that.
That was something he knew.
He had come one more time since then and heard the mobile chime again inside the upstairs room above the front door. Nothing had changed. Why did he have this enduring suspicion that something was wrong?
Was it the hound in him, sniffing danger in the air? Was it the soldier? Or was it being in love that made him blind to the possibility that he had already become a parenthesis in her life?
And for all the questions, all the possible answers, this nagging suspicion remained.
Behind the curtains of the house across the way, an elderly couple sat watching him. As soon as he called out Mia’s name they were there. Perhaps he should ask them if they had noticed anything untoward.
It took them a while to open the door, and they were hardly accommodating when they did.
Why couldn’t he leave their nice neighbors alone, the woman asked.
He forced a smile and showed them how his hands were shaking. Showed them how frightened he was and how much he needed their help.
Reluctantly, they told him the husband had been home several times during the last couple of days. His Mercedes had been in the drive, but they had not seen his wife or their child for some time.
He thanked them and asked if they would be kind enough to keep an eye out, then gave them his phone number.
When they shut the door again, he knew they would not call. Mia wasn’t his wife. That was the fact of the matter.
He called her number one last time, and one last time he heard her mobile chime inside the room upstairs.
Mia, where are you? he thought to himself with increasing anxiety.
Starting tomorrow, he would come back to the house at regular intervals during the daytime.
If he saw nothing to put his mind at rest, he would go to the police.
Not because there was anything tangible to go on.
But what else could he do?
35
A buoyant step. A face with manly furrows in all the right places. Obviously expensive clothes.
A superior combination of just about everything that could make Carl feel like something the cat dragged in.
“This is Kris,” she said by way of introduction, responding only fleetingly to Carl’s welcoming hug.
“Kris and I were together in Darfur. Kris specializes in war trauma and works more or less permanently for Médecins Sans Frontières. Isn’t that right, Kris?”
She said were together in Darfur. As opposed to worked together in Darfur. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to work that one out. He hated the poncey twat already.
“I’m fairly familiar with the details,” said Kris, revealing a row of implausibly regular, implausibly white teeth. “Mona has confirmed with her superiors that she’s allowed to put me in the picture.”
Confirmed with her superiors. Bollocks, Carl thought to himself, and wondered why no one had confirmed with him.
“I take it we have your consent?”
A bit late in the day, wasn’t it? He gave Mona a look, and she returned his gaze with the sweetest, most underplayed of smiles. Fucking hell.
“Of course,” he answered. “Mona has my fullest confidence.”
He smiled back at the guy, and Mona noticed. Nice timing.
“I’ve been allotted thirty hours to see if we can get you up and running again. I understand from your boss that you’re quite indispensable.” He let out a slight chuckle. Most likely it meant they were paying him more than he was worth.
“Did I hear you say thirty hours?” Was he supposed to keep this puffed-up windbag company for thirty hours? They were having him on, surely?
“Well, let’s assess the extent of the damage first. But thirty hours tends to be more than sufficient in most cases.”
“You don’t say!” In this case, they might be in for a surprise.
They sat down in front of him. Mona smiling that smile of hers.
“When you think about Anker Høyer, Hardy Henningsen, and yourself in that allotment house out in Amager where you were shot, what’s the first feeling you get?” the man asked.
Carl felt an icy shiver go down his spine. What was the first feeling he got?
Trance. Slow motion. Arms that were turned to stone.
“That it was a long time ago,” he said.
The ridiculously named Kris nodded, demonstrating exactly how he had acquired his laughter lines. “Got your guard up, eh, Carl? But I’ve been warned, you see. Just testing.”
Had he come here for a boxing match? It was an interesting prospect.
“Did you know that Hardy Henningsen’s wife has applied for a legal separation?”
“No. Hardy never said a word.”
“As I understand it, she has a certain weakness for you. But you rejected her advances. You paid her a visit to offer your support, I think she said. That tells me something about you, something that goes beyond the hard-boiled exterior. What would you say to that?”
Carl frowned. “What the hell’s Minna Henningsen got to do with this? Have you been talking to people behind my back? If you have, then I’m not fucking happy about it, all right?”
The guy turned to Mona. “There you are, you see. Exactly as I predicted.” They beamed at each other.
One more word out of place, and this twerp was going to get his tongue twisted around his throat. It would look nice alongside the gold chain dangling against his chest.
“And now you’d like to hit me, isn’t that right, Carl? Work me over, punch my lights out. I can tell.” He looked Carl straight in the eye, so the blue of his irises almost engulfed him.
And then he changed. Now he was serious. “Just calm down, Carl. I’m actually on your side, and you’re feeling fucked, I know you are.” He put up his hand to stop the protest. “No need to be on edge. And if what you’re wondering right now is who in this room I’d most like to climb into bed with, the answer is you.”
Carl’s jaw dropped.
The guy had told him not to be on edge. It was a relief, of course, to know which side of the road he was on, but that alone didn’t make everything all right.
They said their good-byes after agreeing how things would proceed from here. Mona nuzzled her head against his shoulder so that he nearly felt his legs give way underneath him.
“See you tonight at mine, OK? How about ten o’clock? Can you get away, or do you have to look after your boys at home?” she whispered in his ear.
In his mind’s eye Carl weighed the image of Mona’s naked body against that of Jesper’s stroppy face.
Decisions, decisions.
“Yes, I thought we’d probably find people working down here,” said the worm from Health and Safety, extending a clerkish, undersized hand. “John Studsgaard, Working Environment Authority.”
Did the man think he was senile or something? It was only a week since he had been here last.
“Carl Mørck,” he replied. “Detective Inspector, Department Q. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s the asbestos problem along there.” He pointed down the corridor toward the makeshift partition wall. “And for another, the spaces here in the basement haven’t been approved as working areas for Police Headquarters staff, and yet here you are again.”