The Library of Shadows

'Banishing? That sounds a little harsh,' said Katherina.

Iversen shrugged. 'It was a matter of repeated offences, and in a group like ours it's essential that we trust each other.'

'But wasn't it more dangerous to have him running around loose?' asked Jon. 'What if he gave himself away? What if he revealed his powers, or even put an end to the Bibliophile Society?'

'Luca thought it was best,' replied Iversen. 'And back then no one ever questioned his word. At that time Luca was the head of the Society, and apparently he succeeded in persuading Tom that he was in the wrong. Partly because no one but your father trusted him, and also because, according to Luca, Tom was so embarrassed by how he'd behaved that he could no longer look us in the eye. We never saw him again.'

'It doesn't sound as though he was particularly vindictive,' Katherina pointed out.

'No, that was my impression too,' said Iversen. 'Luca, who was the last person to speak to him, didn't say that Tom was especially angry or bitter, but the timing seems almost too coincidental.'

'So what would he want today?' asked Jon. 'He may have felt disappointed back then, but what about now? Why would he suddenly stop the attacks, only to start them up again twenty years later?'

They looked at each other, but none of them had an answer.

'Nшrreskov,' Iversen exclaimed so suddenly that Katherina gave a start. 'His name was Tom Nшrreskov.'

'We'll have to see if we can locate him,' said Jon. 'There can't be many guys in Denmark with that name.'

'It's even possible you might recognize him when you see him,' said Iversen. 'He spent a lot of time at Libri di Luca when you were still living with your parents.' He turned to look at Katherina. 'He was gone long before you came into the picture. What surprises me is why Clara didn't say anything about him. She must remember what happened.'

'I've never heard any mention of people being banished,' said Katherina. 'Maybe it's just one of those things that people don't talk about, like the family's black sheep.'

Iversen nodded. He suddenly looked tired as he sat there in bed with his arms crossed on his stomach and his head resting on the pillow. Jon sat up straight.

'Maybe we should let you get some sleep, Iversen.'

He tried to protest but Katherina agreed with Jon and they both stood up.

'We'll be right next door,' said Jon, pointing to the wall.

'Absolutely not,' retorted Iversen. 'Get out of here, both of you. You've got more important things to do than keep watch over a tired old man.' He raised his hand as if swearing an oath. 'I promise not to open a book until you get back.'

Jon knew that even though it was late, Mehmet was most likely still up, and it wasn't far from the State University Hospital on Blegdamsvej to his flat on Stengade. Besides, three hours of sleep and Iversen's new information had left Jon wide awake, so it wasn't difficult to decide to pay a visit.

Mehmet was still up, just as Jon had thought. Wearing headphones and almost motionless, he was sitting in the pale light from his computer screens while the rest of the room was in darkness. Jon and Katherina had to knock hard on the windowpane before he reacted. When Mehmet finally turned to look at the terrace door, he did so reluctantly, as if his eyes had to be forced to follow the movement of his head. When he saw Jon outside, his face lit up with a smile, and he took off the headphones as he got up from his chair.

'Hi, boss,' Mehmet said in greeting after pushing open the door. Only then did he catch sight of Katherina standing behind Jon in the dark. 'And you must be…?'

'Katherina,' said Jon quickly. 'A friend of mine.'

Mehmet's gaze shifted from Katherina to Jon and then to his watch.

'Right,' he said, stepping aside. 'Come on in.'

'You're working late,' remarked Jon when they entered the room. Mehmet had turned on more lights so they could navigate between the teetering stacks of prizes.

'I don't have a slave job in some office that's open from nine to five,' replied Mehmet as he moved a couple of boxes off the sofa so they could sit down. 'My domain is the whole world and all time zones, so I schedule my work hours accordingly.'

'So it's a twenty-four-hour slave job?'

'Something like that,' admitted Mehmet, with a brief laugh. 'What about you, Katherina? How do you pass the time?'

'Books,' replied Katherina, adding: 'I work in a bookshop.'

'Really?' exclaimed Mehmet, his gaze flying over the boxes in the room. 'I just happen to have-'

'We're not here to buy anything,' said Jon, holding up his hands. 'Katherina works in my father's antiquarian bookshop, which I've now inherited.'

Mehmet gave Jon a searching look. 'I didn't really think you wanted to buy romance novels at three in the morning. You're here about the nerd's PC, right?'

Jon nodded.

Mehmet looked from one to the other of them. 'Was he a close friend of yours?'

'No,' replied Katherina and Jon in unison.

'I only met him once,' Jon went on. 'He was just an acquaintance.'

'Okay,' said Mehmet, relieved. 'Actually, it's wrong to call him a nerd. There's nothing wrong with nerds. At least they have a passion for something, whether it's stamps or aeroplanes or computers – and that's cool. Your… acquaintance, Lee, was a nerd-wannabe. A guy who may have worked with computers, but didn't have the abilities or the stamina to be a real nerd, though he did try to hang out with them by using the right buzzwords and references.' He cleared his throat. 'Lots of people think that nerds are losers, but the real losers are the wannabes, the pretenders, who think they can cheat their way to respect – very uncool.'

'But he had an IT job,' said Jon. 'He couldn't have been completely hopeless.'

'Well, you don't have to be a nerd to get an IT job,' Mehmet pointed out. 'Far from it. Wannabes can be smart enough at their jobs. Nerds are more difficult to control. They want to do their own thing, and they have a hard time taking directions about how to do their work.'

For a long time Jon had thought a nerd was merely someone who spent all his time at a computer – someone who was scruffy and ate pizza and drank Coke and had problems with the opposite sex. For him there was no measure of quality, other than that a nerd could do more than start up a word processing program. It was only lately that 'nerd' had increasingly replaced terms like 'eccentric' or 'fanatic' to express the fascination and mania that infected even stamp collectors. In that sense, Luca and the customers who came to Libri di Luca could be called 'book nerds', though they would undoubtedly prefer 'bibliophiles'.

Meeting Mehmet had expanded the boundaries of what Jon associated with nerds. Mehmet was well groomed and socially adept. He had a large circle of friends who were interested in things besides computers. More overtly, he was the son of Turkish parents, which meant that he looked significantly more healthy than the nerd stereotype, usually a pale, pimply teenager wearing glasses.

'I don't think of myself as a nerd,' said Mehmet, as if Jon had been thinking out loud. 'But I don't try to present myself as one either.' He went back to his desk to get a stack of printouts. 'Lee, on the other hand, did. He subscribed to various "nerdy" blogs on the Internet, and it's obvious he was trying to hustle himself a chance to get down with the cool guys. The answers and the pieces he wrote are banal and show that he didn't really get the terms he threw around.'

'What sort of blogs did he participate in?' asked Jon.

'Mostly computer-related,' replied Mehmet, scanning a piece of paper he was holding. 'Databases, networks, OOP and other programming areas. Plus some bizarre offshoots like brain research, literature and antique books.' He glanced up at Katherina. 'Is that anything you can use?'