“Listen, Studsgaard, let me be frank with you. Since you were here last, ten shooting incidents have occurred in this city. Two people have died as a result. The hash market has gone ballistic. The justice minister has ordered two hundred nonexistent police officers onto the streets. Two thousand jobs have gone down the drain, the government’s tax reform has shafted the most economically vulnerable of this country’s inhabitants, schoolteachers are getting their heads kicked in by the kids they’re supposed to be teaching, young lads are getting blown up in Afghanistan, people’s homes are being repossessed, pensions are worth fuck all anymore, and banks are collapsing all around us, unless they’re busy screwing their customers for every penny. And in the midst of all this mayhem, our prime minister’s running around trying to find himself a better job on the taxpayers’ money. How, then, in fuck’s name, can you be bothered about whether I’m sitting here or two hundred meters away in another basement room where everything imaginable is allowed? Is it not…” and at this point he inhaled deeply “…COMPLETELY FUCKING IMMATERIAL where I happen to sit, as long as I’m doing my job?”
Studsgaard had stood impassively listening to this bombast. When it was over, he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. “May I sit down?” he asked, pointing to a chair on the other side of the desk. “Naturally, I shall have to make a report,” he said drily. “It may well be that the rest of the country has gone off the rails, but fortunately some of us keep on going.”
Carl sighed heavily. The man had a point.
“OK, Studsgaard. I’m sorry for shouting at you like that. Too much on my plate. You’re right, of course.”
The bureaucrat lifted his head.
“I’d very much like to cooperate with you. Perhaps you could tell me what we need to do to get this place approved?”
Studsgaard put down his pen. Now he’d probably be given a lecture, Carl thought, about how unfeasible it was and how much hospital capacity was taken up due to the effects of poor working environment.
“It’s very simple. You ask your superior to put in an application. Then someone else will come, make an inspection, and issue instructions.”
Carl thrust his head forward in astonishment.
“And would you be able to assist with that application?” Carl inquired, more humbly than he had intended.
“Well, let’s see what else I have in my briefcase, shall we?” Studsgaard smiled and handed him a form.
“How did you get on with Health and Safety?” Assad asked.
Carl shrugged. “I gave the bloke a dressing down, then he went tame on me.”
He could see that dressing down was an expression that failed to click with Assad. What did dressing gowns have to do with it, he was probably thinking.
“What about you, Assad. Any headway?”
He nodded. “Yrsa gave me a name who I then called. A man who used to belong to the House of Christ. Are you familiar with the House of Christ, Carl?”
Carl shook his head. Not exactly, no.
“They are very strange, I think. They believe that Jesus will come back to Earth in a spaceship with beings from other worlds that we humans are supposed to re-create with.”
“Procreate. I think you mean procreate, Assad.”
Assad shrugged. “This man said that many people had left the Church of their own accord this last year. There was a lot of fuss about it. No one he knew personally had been kicked out, but then he said he had heard of a couple who were still members and whose child had been expelled. He thought maybe it was five or six years ago.”
“And what’s so special about that information?”
“The boy was only fourteen years old.”
Carl pictured his stepson, Jesper. He’d been headstrong at that age.
“OK, that’s probably unusual. But I can tell you’ve got more you want to share with me, Assad.”
“I don’t know, Carl. This is just a gut feeling.” He patted his paunch. “Did you know that ostracism is very uncommon in religious sects in Denmark, apart from Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
Carl shrugged. Ostracized or merely shunned, what difference did it make? He knew quite a few people where he came from who were anything but welcome in their own evangelical homes. So what was Assad getting at?
“But it happens, one way or another,” he said. “Officially or otherwise.”
“Yes, unofficially.” Assad raised an index finger into the air. “The House of Christ is very fanatical and threatens people with all sorts of things, but they never expel anyone officially. This is what I was told.”
“And?”
“In this case it was the mother and father themselves who ostracized the child. The parents were criticized for it by the congregation, but they didn’t care.”
Their eyes met. Carl had his own gut feeling now.
“Did you get an address for these people, Assad?”
“I was given an old address where they no longer live. Lis is looking into it now.”
At a quarter to two, Carl received a call from the duty desk. The Holbæk Police had brought in a man he wanted for questioning, and what were they supposed to do with him? It was Poul Holt’s father.
“Send him downstairs to me, only make sure he doesn’t do a bunk.”
Five minutes later, two slightly bewildered young officers were standing in the corridor with the man in front of them.
“No easy job, finding this place,” one of them said in a dialect that had West Jutland written all over it in capital letters.
Carl nodded to them both and waved Martin Holt in. “Please take a seat,” he said.
He turned to the two young officers. “My assistant’s office is just across the corridor there. He’ll be happy to make you a cup of tea, though I wouldn’t recommend his coffee. I’m assuming you’ll be waiting here until we’re finished. You can take Mr. Holt back with you once we’re done.”
Neither the prospect of tea nor of hanging around seemed to fill them with enthusiasm, he noted with Jutlandish understatement.
Martin Holt was not like he had been at his front door in Hallabro. There he had been obstinate, now he was different, rattled even.
“How did you know I was in Denmark?” was the first thing he said. “Am I under surveillance?”
“Mr. Holt, I can only imagine what you and your family have been through these last thirteen years. I’d like you to know that you, your wife, and your children have the full sympathy of all of us in this department. I don’t wish to make this hard for you, because you have suffered enough as it is. However, it’s important for you to know that we will spare no effort in our attempts to apprehend the man who killed Poul.”
“Poul isn’t dead. He’s in America somewhere.”
If this man had known how obvious it was that he was lying, he would undoubtedly have remained silent. The clenched hands, the head thrust backward, the pause just before he said America. That, and four or five other things of the kind Carl had learned to notice after years of experience with that segment of the population for whom telling the truth was not a natural choice.
“Has it ever crossed your mind that there might be others in the same situation as you?” Carl inquired. “That Poul’s killer may still be at large? That he may have other murders on his conscience, before and after Poul’s?”
“I told you. Poul is in America. If I had any contact with him, I would tell you where. Can I go now?”
“Listen to me, Martin. Let’s forget all about the outside world for a moment, shall we? I know you people have your dogmas, your rules, and I’m perfectly aware that if you could get me off your back once and for all, you would. Am I right?”