“I didn’t find out. I just made that up.” He dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief.
Carl shook his head. All the same, Assad was definitely on to something. If people hadn’t actually committed a crime, there was nothing like the taxman to put the wind up them.
“When’s our appointment, and where?”
“A small place called Tølløse. The wife said her husband would be home at half past four.”
Carl glanced at his watch. “OK, we’ll go together. Nice work, Assad, very nice indeed.”
Carl flashed him a smile that lasted a millisecond, then pointed at the fly convention gathering on Assad’s poster. “Come on, Assad. Are you keeping something in here that might have caused these little bastards to start calling this place home?”
Assad threw up his arms. “I do not know where they are coming from.” His face froze for a moment. “But I do know where that one is coming from,” he added, pointing to a singular insect of smaller proportions than the flies. A frail, foolhardy creature that ended its days suddenly and at that very instant between the palms of Assad’s brawny brown hands.
“Gotcha!” Assad exclaimed in triumph, wiping the remains of the little moth onto his notepad. “I have discovered many of these ones just there.” He indicated his prayer mat, only to see with horror its death sentence pop up in Carl’s eyes.
“But Carl, now there are not so many of these insects left in the prayer mat. This is a mat that belonged to my father, and I am so very attached to it. I beat it only this morning before you arrived. Behind the door by the asbestos.”
Carl lifted a corner of the mat. Assad’s rescue attempt was obviously a last-ditch effort. There was hardly anything left but the fringes.
For a brief moment, Carl pictured the police archives in asbestosland and wondered whether the reputations of one or two offenders might now be saved should these ravenous moths take a liking to yellowed parchment.
“Have you sprayed it with something?” he asked. “It stinks to high heaven in here.”
Assad smiled. “Petroleum does the trick.”
Apparently, the smell didn’t bother him. Perhaps it was one of the incidental advantages of having grown up in a place where crude oil was bubbling out of the ground. If they actually had any oil in Syria.
Carl shook his head and fled the fumes. Tølløse in two hours. Still time to get to the bottom of that fly business.
He stood quite still for a moment in the corridor. A gentle hum seemed to emanate from somewhere above the pipes on the ceiling. He looked up and again caught a glimpse of his alpha fly, spotted with correction fluid. The bloody thing was everywhere.
“What are you doing, Carl?” Yrsa’s voice rasped behind him. “Come with me a minute, will you?” she said, tugging at his sleeve.
The surface of her desk was hidden beneath a deluge of nail polish, cuticle remover, hairspray, and a lot more little bottles of the same kind containing strong solvents. All of which she now swept aside to make room.
“Have a look at this,” she said. “These are your aerial photos, right? And I’m telling you now, it was all a waste of time.” She raised her eyebrows, looking remarkably like his miserable aunt Adda. “Same thing all the way along the shoreline. Nothing new at all.”
Carl’s attention was diverted by a fly buzzing in through the open door to do a few laps beneath the ceiling.
“Same with the wind turbines.” She pushed aside a coffee cup with crusty rings on the inside. “If you’re saying low-frequency sound waves can be heard within a twenty-kilometer radius, then this is no use to us at all.” She indicated a series of crosses on the map.
He knew what she was getting at. This was wind-turbine territory, and there were far too many of them to help narrow down the search.
A fly passed quickly before his eyes and settled on the edge of Yrsa’s coffee cup. The same little bastard that had gone off with his correction fluid. It certainly got around.
“Shoo,” said Yrsa. And casual as anything, she flicked the insect into her coffee with a long, bloodred nail. “Lis has been in touch with the local authorities,” she went on as if nothing had happened, “and no one has given planning permission for any boathouse in the areas we’re focusing on. Preservation orders, that sort of thing, you know?”
“How far back did she go?” Carl asked as he watched the fly doing the backstroke in caffeine purgatory. Yrsa could be amazingly efficient. There he was, getting more and more flustered, and all she did was…
“Back to the local authority reform in 1970.”
1970! But that was eons ago. He could forget all about running around trying to find cedar suppliers, that was for sure.
Not without sadness, he observed the final death throes of the correction-fluid fly, and found closure.
Yrsa slapped her hand hard against one of the aerial photos on the desk. “If you ask me, this is where we should be looking!”
Carl looked down at the circle she had drawn around a house at Nordskoven. Vibegården, the place was called apparently. A nice little cottage, so it seemed, not far from the road leading through the woods, but no boathouse as far as he could tell. The location, though, was certainly perfect, tucked away among the trees and right at the shoreline of the fjord. But still, there was no boathouse.
“I know what you’re thinking, but it could definitely be there,” she said and tapped her finger insistently on the green area at the extremity of the property.
“What the blazes…?” Carl spluttered. They were surrounded by flies. Yrsa must have disturbed them with all her tapping and slapping.
He thumped his fist hard against the desk, and the air around them came alive.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Yrsa protested with annoyance, splatting a couple of flies on her mouse mat.
Carl bent down and peered underneath the desk. Seldom had he seen so much teeming life in such a small area. If these flies had decided on it, they could almost have lifted the wastebasket in which they were hatching.
“What the hell have you been putting in your bin?” he inquired, shocked.
“Nothing, I never use it. It must be something of Rose’s.”
Right, he thought. At least now he knew which of them didn’t do the tidying up at home, if indeed either of them ever did.
He studied Yrsa, who now sat with a concentrated look on her face, squashing flies left, right, and center with the palms of her hands and with remarkable precision. Assad would have his work cut out cleaning this place up afterward.
Two minutes later, he was there, with his green rubber gloves on and a big, black bin liner in his hand to which the flies and other contents of the wastebasket were to be consigned.
“Disgusting!” exclaimed Yrsa, staring at the splatter of squashed flies on her hands. Carl was inclined to agree.
She pulled one of her bottles of cellulose thinner toward her, soaked a cotton wool ball in the stuff, and began to disinfect her hands. Instantly, the place smelled like a ship-varnish factory after a prolonged mortar attack. He only hoped this wasn’t the day Health and Safety were thinking of paying them a visit.
It was then he noticed how the red nail polish on the index and middle fingers of Yrsa’s right hand began to dissolve, and more specifically, what was revealed underneath.
He sat for a moment, mouth agape; then, as Assad emerged from the den of flies below the desk, he caught his gaze.
Now they both had eyes as big as saucers.
“Come with me,” he said, pulling Assad out into the corridor as his assistant tied a secure knot in the bin liner.
“You noticed too, didn’t you?”
Assad nodded, his mouth twisted up as if he were suffering from acute bowel trouble.
“Her nails were speckled with black felt marker underneath the red. Rose’s felt marker from the other day. Did you see that?”