Assad nodded again.
How on earth had they missed it?
Unless some worldwide craze for flecking one’s fingernails with black felt pen was sweeping the country, there was no doubt about it.
Yrsa and Rose were one and the same person.
37
“Look what I’ve got here for you lot,” said Lis, handing Carl an enormous bunch of roses wrapped in cellophane.
Carl put down the phone. What the hell was this all about?
“Are you proposing to me, Lis? It’s about time you began to appreciate my qualities.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “They were sent to Department A, but Marcus thought you should have them.”
Carl frowned. “What for?”
“Oh, come off it, Carl. You know what for.”
He gave a shrug and shook his head.
“They found the last little finger bone with a groove in it. They went over the site of the blaze again and there it was in a pile of ashes.”
“So we get roses?” Carl scratched his neck. Maybe they’d been found in the ashes, too?
“No, that’s not the reason. Marcus’ll tell you all about it. The flowers are from Torben Christensen, the investigator from the insurance company. Our work on the arson cases saved them a pile of money today.”
She pinched his cheek like an aunt not knowing any more appropriate form of appreciation and waltzed back to where she’d come from.
Carl leaned sideways for a glimpse of her gorgeous backside.
“What is going on?” Assad inquired from the corridor. “We must leave in only a moment.”
Carl nodded and dialed the number of the homicide chief.
“I’m to ask from Assad how come we get roses?” he said, straight to the point, when Jacobsen answered.
There was a brief noise that might have been mistaken for an expression of glee. “Carl, we’ve interviewed the three owners of the firms that burned down, and we’re now in possession of three magnificent statements. You and your team were absolutely right. They were pressured into taking out high-interest loans and then, when they were unable to make the payments, the debt collectors turned nasty and demanded the entire sum. Intimidation, threats over the phone. Serious threats. The collectors became increasingly desperate, but what good was it going to do? There’s nowhere else for firms with liquidity problems to go these days to borrow money.”
“So what happened to the debt collectors?”
“We don’t know for sure, but our theory is they were simply bumped off on orders from higher up. The Serbian police have seen it all before. Big bonuses for those who collect and deliver on time, and good night to those who can’t.”
“Surely they could just have burned the places down, without having to kill their own men?”
“Well, another angle is that they send their less successful collectors to Scandinavia, since the market here is supposed to be easier to handle. Then when that turns out not to be the case, they make an example of them and grab some attention in Belgrade. There’s no bigger liability for a loan shark than a bad debt collector or someone who can’t be managed or trusted. A few killings here and there can work wonders for discipline.”
“Hmm. So they do away with their inefficient workers in Denmark. And if the perpetrators get caught, then at least they’ll be tried in a country with lenient sentencing. Is that it?”
He could almost see Jacobsen’s thumbs-up at the other end.
“Anyway, Carl,” said the chief, “what we’ve achieved today ensures that the insurance companies won’t have to make the full payout. We’re talking about some considerable amounts of money here, hence the roses. And who deserves them more than Department Q?”
This was probably not an easy admission.
“OK, so now you’ve got some hands idle,” said Carl. “Send them down here. I could use them.”
Something like a chuckle came from the other end. So Jacobsen had other plans. “Nice try, Carl. We’ve still a lot more work to do on it. Now we need to find those responsible. But I see your point. There’s the gang conflict still going on, so perhaps we should be diverting resources in that direction.”
Assad appeared in the doorway as Carl put down the phone. For once, he looked like he was beginning to anticipate the Danish climate. His down jacket was the thickest garment Carl had ever seen worn in March.
“I’m ready now,” said his assistant.
“Be with you in a sec,” Carl replied, dialing Brandur Isaksen’s number. Halmtorvet’s Icicle, they called him, with reference to his extraordinarily thinly apportioned charm. Isaksen was the man in the know at Station City, the police station at which Rose had been employed before she was sent to Department Q.
“Yes?” Isaksen said curtly when he answered the call.
Carl explained his business, and before he had even finished, the man at the other end was in hysterics.
“Rose? Priceless, she was. Not that I’d want to hazard a guess at what’s wrong with her. She was just odd, that’s all. Too much boozing, jumping into bed with all the young cadets from the police college. A wildcat with an insatiable appetite, do you know what I’m saying? Anyway, why do you want to know?”
“No reason,” said Carl, and hung up. Then he logged on to the Civil Registration System and typed an address into the search field: Sandalparken 19.
The result was unequivocal. Rose Marie Yrsa Knudsen, it read, along with a civil registration number.
Carl shook his head. All they needed now was for bloody Marie to turn up and they’d have the full house. Two versions of Rose was plenty to be getting on with.
“I can hardly believe this, Carl,” Assad said, peering over his shoulder.
“Get her in here, would you, Assad?”
“You will not confront her straight in her face, will you, Carl?”
“What? You must be joking. I’d rather climb into a bathtub with a bagful of cobras,” Carl replied. If they let on now that they knew Yrsa was Rose, there was no telling what might happen.
When Assad returned with Yrsa, she was already wrapped up in coat, mittens, scarf, and woolen hat. Standing before him now were two individuals who could each make a valiant challenge to the burka-clad in a competition to conceal the human body.
Carl glanced at the clock. End of the day. Yrsa was on her way home.
“You wouldn’t believe…!” She stopped abruptly on seeing the flowers Carl was holding out in front of him. “Where did you get them from? They’re lovely, they are!”
“They’re for Rose, from Assad and me,” Carl said, thrusting the whole bunch into her hands. “Tell her to get well, and that we hope she’ll soon be back. Say they’re roses for a rose. We’ve really thought about her a lot.”
Yrsa stiffened and stood quite still for a moment, seeming almost humble, though she was probably just overwhelmed.
And then they shut up shop for the day.
“Is she really ill then, Carl?” Assad asked as the traffic piled up on the Holbæk motorway.
Carl gave a shrug. He had seen a lot of things in his time, but the only case of dissociative identity disorder he knew about was the ten-second transformation of his own stepson from an amiable young lad short of a hundred kroner into a stroppy teenager who refused to tidy up his room.
“We’ll keep this to ourselves, Assad,” was all he said.
They sat in silence for the rest of the way, immersed in their own thoughts, until the sign for Tølløse appeared. A place best known for its railway station, a cider factory, and the pro cyclist who was kicked out of the Tour de France while wearing the yellow jersey.
“Just a little way along here,” said Assad, pointing down the main street, the absolute center of Tølløse and the vital artery of any small provincial town. Only here the blood seemed to have stopped pumping. Maybe the town’s inhabitants were clogged up in the bottleneck of Netto’s checkout line, or maybe they had all just moved away. At any rate, the place had seen livelier times.