Carl pointed his finger at him. “Exactly! You’re not as dumb as you look, and that’s saying something.”
Gordon smoothed out his notes with his spindly fingers, which were long enough to easily hold a basketball in one hand. The little weight he had managed to put on over the past few years had disappeared almost overnight since Rose had been admitted. The formerly pink bags under his eyes had turned dark, and his freckled skin was as white as whipped cream. No one could claim that it was a particularly aesthetic look.
“As we already know,” Gordon continued in an attempt to sound like he had things under control, “Rigmor Zimmermann’s husband had a shoe shop in R?dovre with the monopoly on a fancy brand in Denmark. When he died in 2004 he left a large sum of money. Rigmor Zimmermann sold the business, the house, cars, and everything else, and moved into an apartment. After that she moved around a bit, and strangely enough is registered at her daughter’s address. I think it’s just a case of her never having updated her details.”
Carl looked at Gordon. “Why are you investigating Rigmor Zimmermann? Weren’t you supposed to find Rose’s friend Karoline? Wasn’t this Assad’s assignment?”
“We’re mixing things up a bit, Carl. We have to now that Rose isn’t on the team. Assad is looking into Fritzl Zimmermann’s background, and we’ve asked the national register to check up on the Karoline woman. We should get an answer later today.”
“Why is Assad checking up on the husband? He hasn’t got anything to do with the bloody case.”
“That’s exactly what Assad is checking. He thinks it seems a bit strange that he died exactly one day after Stephanie Gundersen was found murdered in ?stre Anl?g.”
“He what?”
“Exactly, Carl. That was Assad’s reaction when he found out. Look here.” There came those spindly fingers again. “Stephanie Gundersen was found murdered on June 7th, 2004, and Fritzl Zimmermann drowned on June 8th, 2004.”
“Drowned?”
“Yes, in Damhus Lake. Fell on his face sitting in his wheelchair, eighty-six years old. He’d been using it since he suffered a blood clot six months earlier. As far as we know, he was fine upstairs but didn’t have the energy to maneuver the chair himself.”
“So how did he get there?”
“His wife went out with him every night, but that evening she’d nipped home to fetch him a sweater. When she came back she found the wheelchair in shallow water and her husband a few meters farther out.”
“How the hell do you drown in shallow water in Damhus Lake? The place must be swarming with people at that time of year.”
“The police report doesn’t mention anything about that. But given that she went home for a sweater, it must have been cold that night. So maybe it was too cold for people to be out walking.”
“Find out.”
“Er, okay. But I have already. Summer 2004 was really cold and rainy. In fact, it wasn’t until the beginning of August that we had the first real day of summer. A depressing record!”
Carl tried to recall that summer. It was the year before Vigga left him. They were supposed to have gone on a camping holiday to Umbria, but a case popped up, meaning that Carl had to stay in the country, so he had booked a summerhouse down by K?ge instead, much to Vigga’s annoyance. He remembered that summer well, and there was nothing romantic about it. If there had been, he might have been able to make her stay.
“Carl, are you listening?” said Gordon.
He looked up at Gordon’s pale face.
“The wife said she left him down by the lakeshore, like she had done so often before. She couldn’t rule out that her husband might have somehow managed to release the brake, and so the police couldn’t rule out suicide. After all, he was eighty-six and could no longer run his business. In that situation, it isn’t hard to imagine that someone could grow tired of life.”
Carl nodded, but what the hell did this have to do with anything? They seemed to have gone off on something of a tangent.
The telephone saved him from continuing with this conversation.
“M?rck,” he said authoritatively, waving Gordon out of the room.
“Are you the police guy?”
“I should think so. Who am I speaking to?”
“You might not want to speak with me if I tell you who I am.”
Carl leaned forward. The voice was gruff and dark, almost as if he had put something over the receiver.
“That depends on what you have to tell me.” Carl grabbed a notepad. “Try me.”
“I hear you’ve spoken to Leo Andresen about Arne Knudsen’s accident at the plant, and I just want to say that there is nothing suspicious about it. Even though we all hated the bastard Arne Knudsen and all laughed under our breath when he was squashed, it doesn’t change the fact that it was an accident.”
“Have I led you to believe that we think otherwise?” answered Carl. But now his suspicion was aroused. “You see, we’re just investigating the case to help one of our colleagues, who was very affected by it.”
“You’re talking about Rose Knudsen, right?”
“I can’t tell you as long as I don’t know who you are or why you’re calling.”
“Rose was a lovely and sweet girl. She really was. She was everyone’s Rose, except for her dad’s, that is, the nasty bastard.”
“Now, just a minute—”
“Of course it was a shock for her. She saw it happen. No number of investigations can change that, as I’m sure you’ll agree. That was all I wanted to let you know.”
Then he hung up.
Damn it. Why was the man trying to convince him that it was an accident? Carl’s experience told him that people did that when the opposite was true. Had he just spoken to a man who had something to hide? Was he afraid that Rose would be implicated? Or was he more involved in the case than he was willing to admit?
Damn it. He could do with Rose here just now. No one knew the many mysteries of the HQ internal telephone system like she did.
He had to make do with calling Lis in admin. “I know it’s normally Rose’s job, but can you find out who just called me, Lis?”
She seemed stressed, but it took her only three minutes to get back to him.
“The telephone is registered in the name of one of my idols, Carl.”
“Ah, so his name is Carl M?rck. What a coincidence.”
Her laugh gave Carl butterflies. There was nothing as sexy as a woman laughing.
“Nooo. His name is Benny Andersson, like that guy from ABBA. He’s a bit tubby today, but back then when he was still playing, my God, he was charming. All he had to do was drop me a line back then when he and Anni-Frid split up, and I’d have been there in a flash.”
She gave Carl the man’s number and address while Carl tried to shake off the image Lis had given him.
“We’re going for a drive, Assad!” he shouted down the corridor.
—