“Oh. And you married a S?rensen and ended up being called the same just without the other part?”
“Yes, that’s how my husband wanted it. He felt it was too posh with the other part.” She momentarily tutted. “Or it was just because he was a miserable alcoholic and didn’t want to have a nickname.”
Gordon looked confused, obviously not understanding her last remark.
“Underberg is a German bitter, Gordon,” she informed him surlily, as if it was of any interest to a man who rarely drank and could get plastered from aftershave fumes.
—
Just finished with a report of the sort that would put the police commissioner in his place, and which could also create an enemy for life, Carl leaned back and looked around. This humble basement corridor was his base until they carried him out in a box. He had everything here that he needed: an ashtray, a flat-screen with all the channels, and a desk with drawers you could put your feet up on. Where else could you find these necessities at police HQ?
Carl imagined the police commissioner’s difficulty in explaining himself to the judicial committee and burst out laughing until the telephone rang.
“Is that Carl?” asked a bland voice, which he felt he ought to recognize but couldn’t quite place.
“It’s Marcus. Marcus Jacobsen,” said the voice when the pause became too long.
“Marcus! Well, I’ll be damned! I almost didn’t recognize your voice,” he blurted out.
Carl couldn’t help but smile. Marcus Jacobsen, his old boss in homicide on the other end of the phone! A living example that Denmark was once led by people who were both serious and knew what they were doing like the back of their hand.
“Yeah, I know. The voice is a little hoarse, but it is me, Carl. I’ve just had my share of cigarettes since we last met!”
It must be three to four years since they had last spoken, so there was a slight sense of bad conscience creeping through the line. Carl knew Marcus had been through the mill of it lately, just not how it had all ended. That was the real mistake, because he ought to know.
After five minutes, the full extent of the catastrophe was explained. Marcus had been made a widower and was marked for life.
“I am really sorry to hear that, Marcus,” Carl said, trying to find words of comfort in a brain that didn’t normally deal with that sort of thing.
“Thanks, Carl, but that’s not why I’m ringing. I think we need each other right now. I’ve just come across a case that I think we ought to talk about. Not because I’m trying to set you up on the case—the people on the Walk of Fame would be against it—but because the case reminds me of another one that has been niggling away at me for years. And maybe inadvertently because I’ve been reminded of how grateful I am that there is still someone at HQ who keeps their eyes open for cases that would otherwise be pushed in a corner.”
—
Café Gammel Torv was where they had agreed to meet fifty minutes later.
Marcus was already sitting at his old table. He had grown older and was looking more tired, but maybe that wasn’t so strange after the awful years before his wife eventually succumbed.
Now he was alone, and Carl knew firsthand what loneliness and a feeling of being abandoned could do to a man.
Not that their experiences were comparable.
Marcus took his hand as if they had been old friends and not colleagues at different stages of the career ladder.
Perhaps out of politeness and perhaps because of a desire to immerse himself in the reality of police headquarters, he asked Carl how things had been recently with Department Q.
The question was like fuel to Carl’s fire, causing him to burst out with such frustration that it almost made the jelly on the paté wobble.
Marcus Jacobsen nodded; no one knew better than him that the constellation of Carl’s and Lars Bj?rn’s totally different personalities could easily result in something explosive.
“But Lars Bj?rn is actually an all right guy, Carl. I can’t imagine that he’s behind this number. Even though old e-mail addresses normally are forwarded to a new one. Could the police commissioner be behind this?”
Carl couldn’t see the logic. What on earth would the commissioner get out of it?
“But what does an old former head of homicide know about politics? Still, I’d look into it if I were you.” He nodded to the waiter, indicating that he could pour another schnapps, downed it in one, and cleared his throat. “What do you know about the murder of Rigmor Zimmermann?”
Carl followed Marcus’s lead, downing his drink in one. It was one of those types of schnapps that tied the intestine in knots.
“Just the right schnapps for my mother-in-law,” Carl said, coughing and drying away the tears from the corners of his eyes. “What do I know? Not too much, actually. They’re investigating the case up on the second floor, so it’s outside my remit. But the woman was murdered in the King’s Garden, right? Was it three weeks ago?”
“Er, almost. Tuesday, the 26th of April, at approximately quarter past eight in the evening, to be more precise.”
“She was in her midsixties, as far as I remember, and it was a robbery murder. Wasn’t there a few thousand kroner missing from her purse?”
“Ten thousand, according to the daughter, yes.” Marcus nodded.
“The murder weapon wasn’t found, but it was a blunt instrument, and that’s just about all I know. I’ve had enough to do with my own cases, but I might just know what you’re thinking. I almost got goose bumps when you called, Marcus, because it was just a couple of hours after I’d spoken with a certain Mogens Iversen. Maybe you remember him as the guy who confessed to all sorts of crimes?”
After the slightest of pauses, Marcus nodded. There was no one at headquarters—well, apart from Hardy—who could match his total recall.
“And Iversen also confessed to the murder of that substitute teacher, Stephanie Gundersen. I’m sure he got the idea after reading about the attack on Rigmor Zimmermann because I can imagine how the papers have drawn the connection between the two attacks. Of course, I threw the idiot out afterward.”
“The papers? No, no one has seriously connected the two cases, as far as I know, but we didn’t release many details at the time about the murder of Stephanie.”
“Okay. Then let’s just say that you and I know that there are a few similarities between the two cases. But you ought to know that the Stephanie Gundersen case hasn’t been passed on to me. I do have a slim case file about it, but the bulk of the material is up with Bj?rn.”
“Do you still have Hardy living with you?”
Carl smiled at the change of topic. “Yeah, I won’t be rid of him until the day he finds a woman who is turned on by wheelchairs and wiping saliva and snot.” He regretted the joke straightaway—it was a bad call.