He hung his head. “If you don’t plan to arrest us, then the best thing that could happen for me is that all this comes out in the open. You might think that Rose is the only one who has been suffering after what happened. But that’s not the case at all. I haven’t been able to sleep for years, and the others also had their own problems. Your conscience nags away at you when it isn’t clean. I told my wife, as did a few of the others. Benny here was divorced, and you can see what that led to.” He pointed around at all the rubbish and mess, which didn’t seem to bother Benny. “And the supervisor, who was otherwise a really plucky and good guy, committed suicide. You can’t run away from the sort of thing we did. And so when you turned up, I was split between wanting to clear my conscience, on the one hand, and hoping to avoid punishment, on the other.” He looked imploringly at him. “Does that make any sense?”
“It does,” said Assad. He looked away for a moment as if he just needed some distance before he could react to the two men. “How do you propose we convince Rose that she isn’t guilty? Give us a solution.”
As if he had been waiting for a cue, Benny Andersson stood up and edged his way past a couple of man-size piles of newspaper and junk, stopping in front of a sideboard and pulling out a drawer stuffed full of cardboard and plastic wrapping.
He rummaged around in the drawer and finally pulled out a small object.
“Here,” he said, placing a pager in Carl’s hand. “It’s the pager used that day. She dropped it on the floor when she saw her dad being crushed. If you give it to her and tell her that Benny Andersson says hello, you can tell her the rest of the story yourselves. Okay?”
55
Tuesday, May 31st, 2016
“Hello, it’s Olaf Borg-Pedersen,” said the man on the telephone. There was no need for further introduction.
Assad rolled his eyes, which made them look even bigger.
“I’m sorry, Borg-Pedersen,” said Carl. “We can’t speak just now.”
“Lars Bj?rn tells me that you’ve made a lot of progress, so we’d like to get some footage of you and Assad bringing our viewers up to date.”
That Bj?rn never gave up.
“Okay, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“We’re airing tomorrow and will need some time to edit before then. So . . .”
“We’ll see,” said Carl, about to hang up.
“We’ve heard that the car that was involved in the crash yesterday has been reported stolen by the owner. So we tried to contact Anne-Line Svendsen at her address to ask her about it, but she wasn’t there. And they told us at her work that she’s signed off sick. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”
“Who did you say?”
“The woman who owns the Ka from yesterday.”
“No, we don’t know anything about her. Should we? As you said, the car has been reported stolen.”
“Yeah. But as you know, Carl M?rck, this is TV, so we need footage and interviews, and when the crime affects ordinary people like Anne-Line Svendsen, who lost her car in this violent accident, it’s bound to interest our viewers. In a sense, Anne-Line Svendsen is also a victim, right?”
Assad shook his head and, pretending to slit his throat with his hand, indicated to Carl to end the call.
“If we discover anything important, you’ll be the first person to know, Borg-Pedersen.”
Assad and Carl roared with laughter for half a minute about their lie. Who the hell did the man think he was?
Carl put the cell phone back in his pocket and watched in amazement as they drove past the extensive building project around the University Hospital on Blegdamsvej. Had it really been so long since he had driven past here?
“Where the hell have they moved the radiation therapy section to? The entrance should be just over there.” He pointed at a chaos of portable buildings and temporary fencing.
“I think it’s in that maze somewhere. I think I can see the sign,” said Assad.
Carl pulled in and parked halfway up on the sidewalk.
“We’re in good time. Anne-Line won’t be here for another fifteen minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “It’ll be as easy as taking candy from a baby.”
They entered the labyrinth of portable buildings and followed the signs toward entrance 39, where radiation therapy was located.
“Have you been here before, Carl?” asked Assad. The situation seemed to make him feel uncomfortable as they walked a few floors down the spiral staircase to the X-ray section. Carl understood him. It felt like the word “cancer” was hanging ominously in the air.
“You only come here if you really have to,” he answered. And he hoped he never would.
They pulled the string to open the automatic door and entered the large reception area. If you could disregard the reason why people were here, it was almost cozy. A large aquarium on the end wall, mint-green concrete pillars, beautiful plants, and lots of natural light softened the impression. Carl and Assad walked up to the reception desk.
“Hello,” Carl said to the nurses and produced his badge. “We’re from Department Q at police headquarters and are here to arrest one of your patients who has an appointment in a few minutes. It will be a subdued affair to make sure we don’t cause any unnecessary stress. But now you know.”
The nurse looked at him as if to say that he had no business coming down here and bothering their patients.
“We’ll have to ask you to do it outside the radiation therapy section,” she said. “We’re dealing with patients in a critical condition, so if you wouldn’t mind obliging.”
“Er, I’m afraid it’ll have to be here. We can’t allow the patient to catch sight of us from a distance.”
She summoned a colleague, and they whispered together for a minute.
Then the other nurse turned toward them. “Which patient are we talking about?”
“An Anne-Line Svendsen,” answered Carl. “She has an appointment at one o’clock.”
“Anne-Line Svendsen is already having her treatment. We had a cancellation, so we took her in as soon as she arrived. She’s in room 2, so I’ll have to ask you to wait. I suggest that you wait over by the entrance and do what you need to do very discreetly.”
She pointed at the door where they had entered.
During the following ten minutes the nurses glanced over at them frequently with stern expressions on their faces. Maybe he should have told them what they were arresting Anne-Line Svendsen for. That might have changed their tune.
She came out of the room with a large canvas bag over her shoulder and continued directly toward the entrance. A completely ordinary, frumpy woman with uncombed hair and no charisma. The type of woman you could walk past on the street without knowing if it was a man or a woman, or whether you had even seen her at all. They couldn’t know for sure how many lives she had taken, but it was at least five.
The woman looked directly at them without a clue who they were, and if it hadn’t been for the commotion behind the reception desk and the nervous looks the nurses sent her, it would all have gone smoothly.
She suddenly stopped ten meters away from them and frowned, looking back and forth between the reception desk and them.
Assad was about to walk over to her to make the arrest, but Carl stopped him. She had killed with firearms before, and the way she looked at the moment, she might do it again.
Carl slowly pulled his badge out of his pocket and held it up so she could see it from a distance.
Then a strange thing happened. She smiled at them.
“God, have you found my car?” she asked with an expression that was intended to convey happiness and anticipation.