The guy who opened the door blended in naturally in this hopeless jumble of bad taste. Never had a tracksuit been more in need of a wash. Never had an unkempt mane of hair looked greasier. There was no doubt that keeping a distance would be better for their health.
“Who are you?” said the man with breath that could kill. Carl took a step back, giving the man the opportunity to slam the door in their faces if he wanted to.
“I’m the man you called”—Carl looked at his watch—“exactly fifty-two minutes ago.”
“Called? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Your name is Benny Andersson, and Assad here is recording your voice for the voice-recognition program as we speak. Show him the recorder, Assad.”
He nudged Assad with his elbow, and Curly was resolute enough to conceal his confusion and produce his smartphone from his pocket.
“Just a second; it’s just processing,” he said while the skunk looked at the cell with obvious skepticism.
“Yes, it’s a match. He is the guy we recorded at HQ,” said Assad with his eyes fixed on the empty phone display. “You’ve been caught out, Benny,” he said without looking up from the phone. He pressed a few buttons, pretending to exit the program, and put the cell phone back in his pocket.
“Well, Benny,” said Carl with a rare authority in his voice. “We’ve established that it was you who made an anonymous call to an investigator at police HQ an hour ago. We have come to determine whether there was any criminal intent behind your call. May we come in so we can have a chat, or would you rather come with us now to police HQ in Copenhagen?”
He didn’t have a chance to answer, as Assad was already pushing at the door with all his weight.
—
Carl had gasped for breath a couple of times when he walked into the extremely stuffy house, but as soon as he had grown accustomed to the stench, he came down hard on Benny Andersson. Within the space of two minutes he had made the situation crystal clear. The accusations of malicious intent, a hidden agenda, and insinuations and secrets that could all come back to bite him. Only then did Carl change tack.
“You say that you liked Rose? But what’s that got to do with her dad’s death? Can you explain?”
The man stretched out his grubby fingers, fumbling for a cigar butt in a full ashtray, and lit it.
“Can I ask if an inspector like you has ever worked in a steel plant?”
“Of course I haven’t.”
“No, I thought not. So you can’t possibly understand what it’s like. The stark contrasts the work exposed us to every day: the huge buildings where small, vulnerable people were trying to master the powerful machines; the struggle against the heat, which was sometimes so strong that it felt suffocating and you had to go outside to cool down in the wind from the fjord; the knowledge that the work was dangerous and could destroy you in a matter of seconds, contrasted with the feeling of your sleeping child’s soft cheek against your hardened fingertips. It’s impossible to understand how savage it can be when you haven’t tried it yourself. And of course some of us turned hard like the steel we were working with while others turned soft like butter.”
Carl was surprised by the articulate monologue. Had the guy studied rhetoric in his youth?
“I don’t think you should underestimate everyone else’s work, Andersson. Police work can be quite savage too, so of course I can relate to what you’re saying.”
“Yes, or being stationed as a soldier. Or being a paramedic or fireman,” interjected Assad.
“Maybe, but it’s still not the same, because in that line of work you have to be prepared for what might happen, but not everyone is at a plant like this. And I don’t think Rose was. In that work environment it was a blessing for the rest of us to have her there. There’s the contrast again, you see? Because when a young, vulnerable girl like Rose ends up in such a brutal place, where everything is so savage—the steel, the mill, the heat—and where the men are so hardened and hardy, the contrast can become too much. Rose was too young and unprepared for that place; that’s all I’m saying.”
“What was your job at the plant, Benny?” asked Carl.
“Sometimes I was sitting in the control cabin managing the rolling mill at the old control desk. Other times I was in charge of inspecting the workstations.”
“That sounds like a very responsible position to hold.”
“All employees have responsible positions. A workplace like that can be very dangerous if someone screws up.”
“And Rose’s dad screwed up?”
“You’ll have to ask someone else about that. I didn’t see what happened.”
“But what exactly did happen?”
“Ask someone else. I said I didn’t see it.”
“Shouldn’t we just take him with us to HQ, Carl?” asked Assad.
Carl nodded. “I know that you and others have been informed by Leo that we’re investigating this case and that we would like to know more about the accident. I just don’t understand your interest in it. Why you made an anonymous call and why you’re being so uncooperative. So now my suggestion to you, Benny Andersson, is that you either start cooperating with us here in the lovely odor of your home or you put your jacket on, come with us, and wave good-bye to home sweet home for the next twenty-four hours. Which do you prefer?”
Please don’t choose the latter, thought Carl, thinking about how this guy would ruin his backseat.
“Are you going to arrest me? For what?”
“We’ll work that out. No one makes an anonymous call in the way you did without trying to cover something up. You hinted on the phone that Rose was involved in her dad’s death. But what did you mean by that?” he pressed him to answer.
“I certainly did not.”
“That’s not how we see it.” Assad leaned fearlessly forward over the sticky coffee table. “You should understand that Rose is a well-liked colleague of ours and we don’t wish her any harm. So now I’m going to count down from six, and if you don’t tell us what you know before I get to zero, I’ll take that old chicken bone lying over there in a layer of stale sauce and stuff it down your throat. Six, five, four . . .”
“Ha-ha, you sound ridiculous. Do you think you can threaten me with that, you . . . ?”
He obviously had something racist on the tip of his tongue when Assad finished the countdown and got up to grab the chicken bone.
“Hey!” shouted Benny Andersson as Assad picked up a jagged wing bone. “Stop right there. You’ll have to ask someone else what really happened because, as I said, I don’t know. All I can say is that Arne Knudsen was standing under the overhead crane in the old section when one of the magnets failed while lifting a ten-ton steel slab.”
“I thought he was pulled into a machine.”
“No, that’s what they wrote in the newspapers, wherever the hell they got that information from. But it was the magnet that failed.”
“So the steel slab fell on him?” asked Carl while Assad dropped the bone and returned to his grubby seat.
“Yes, and it completely crushed him from here down.”
He pointed at a spot just beneath his breastbone.
“And he died on the spot?”