Jussi Adler-Olsen - The Keeper of Lost Causes

“I’m not sure,” he said, trying to ignore the ringing of his cell phone in his jacket pocket. He pulled the phone out and looked at the number displayed. It was police headquarters.

“Yeah. This is Mørck,” he said as he looked at the farm buildings. Everything seemed the same. No sign of panic or flight.

It was Lis on the line, and she sounded smug. “It’s working again, Carl. All the databases are functioning. It was the interior minister’s wife. She finally coughed up the antidote to all the trouble she’d set in motion. And Mrs. Sørensen has already entered all the possible CR combinations for Lars Henrik Jensen, as Assad asked her to do. I think it was a lot of work, so you owe her a big bouquet. But she found the man. Two of the digits had been changed, just as Assad assumed. He’s registered on Strøhusvej in Greve.” Then she gave him the house number.

Carl looked at some wrought-iron numbers affixed to one of the buildings. Yes, it was the same number. “Thanks, Lis,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “And give Mrs. Sørensen my thanks too. She did a really great job.”

“Wait, Carl, there’s more.”

Carl took a deep breath as he saw Assad’s dark eyes scanning the property in front of them. Carl felt it too. There was something really strange about the way these people had set up home here. It was not normal. Not at all.

“Lars Henrik Jensen has no criminal record, and he’s a ship’s steward by trade,” he heard Lis continue. “He works for the Merconi shipping company and mostly sails on ships in the Baltic. I just talked to his employer, and Lars Henrik Jensen is responsible for the catering on most of their ships. They said he was a very capable man. And by the way, they all call him Lasse.”

Carl shifted his eyes away from the property. “Do you have a mobile number for him, Lis?”

“Only a landline.” She rattled it off, but Carl didn’t write it down. What good would it do them? Should they call to say that they’d be arriving in two minutes?

“No cell phone number?”

“At that address the only one listed is for a Hans Jensen.” OK. So that was the name of the thin young man. Carl got the number and thanked Lis again.

“What did she say?” asked Assad.

Carl shrugged and took the car’s registration certificate out of the glove compartment. “Nothing we don’t already know, Assad. Shall we get going?”

The gaunt young man opened the door as soon as they knocked. He didn’t say a word, just let them in, almost as if they’d been expected.

Apparently it was supposed to look as if he and the woman had been eating a meal in peace and quiet, sitting about thirty feet from the door at a table covered with a floral oilcloth. Their meal was presumably a tin of ravioli. But Carl was sure that if he checked, he’d find the food ice cold. They couldn’t fool him. They should save that game for amateurs.

“We’ve brought a search warrant,” he said, pulling the car registration out of his pocket and briefly holding it up for them to see. The young man flinched at the sight of it.

“May we take a look around?” With a wave of his hand Carl sent Assad over to the monitors.

“That, apparently, was a rhetorical question,” said the woman. She was holding a glass of water in her hand, and she looked worn-out. The obstinate look in her eyes was gone, but she didn’t seem scared. Just resigned.

“What are you using those monitors for?” he asked after Assad checked out the bathroom. He pointed at the green light visible through the cloth draped over the screens.

“Oh, that’s something that Hans set up,” said the woman. “We live way out here in the country, and we hear about so many bad things happening these days. We wanted to put up some cameras so we could monitor the area around the house.”

He watched Assad pull off the cloth and shake his head. “They’re blank, Carl. All three of them.”

“May I ask you, Hans, why the screens are on if they’re not connected?”

The man looked at his mother.

“They’re always on,” she told them. “The power comes from the junction box.”

“The junction box? I see! And where is that?”

“I don’t know. Lasse would know.” She gave Carl a triumphant look. She’d led him into a dead end. There he was, peering up at an insurmountable wall. Or so she thought.

“We heard from the shipping company that Lasse isn’t on board a ship at the moment. So where is he?”

She smiled easily. “When Lasse isn’t out sailing, he keeps company with the ladies. It’s not something he tells his mother about, nor should he.”

Her smile got bigger. Those yellow teeth of hers were just itching to make a lunge at him.

“Come on, Assad,” said Carl. “There’s nothing for us to do in here. Let’s go look at the other buildings.”

He caught a glimpse of the woman as he headed for the door. She was already reaching for her pack of cigarettes, the smile gone from her face. So they were on the right track.

“Keep a close eye on everything, Assad. We’ll take that building first,” said Carl, pointing to the one that towered high above all the others. “Stay right here and let me know if anything happens down by the other buildings. OK, Assad?”

He nodded.

As Carl turned away, he heard a quiet but all too familiar click behind him. He swung around to find Assad with a shiny, four-inch-long switchblade in his hand. Used correctly, it presented serious problems for an opponent; use it incorrectly, and everybody was in trouble.

“What the hell are you doing, Assad? How’d that get here?”

He shrugged. “It’s magic, Carl. I will then make it disappear like magic afterward. I promise.”

“You’d better do that, damn it.”

Having his mind blown by Assad was apparently turning into a permanent condition. Possession of an illegal weapon? How the hell had he come up with something so stupid?

“We’re on duty here, Assad. Do you understand? This is as wrong as it gets. Give me the knife.”

The expertise with which Assad instantly closed up the switchblade was worrisome.

Carl weighed the knife in his hand before he stuck it in his jacket pocket, accompanied by Assad’s look of disapproval. Even Carl’s big old Scout knife weighed less than this one.

The enormous hall was built on a concrete floor foundation that had been cracked from frost and water that had seeped in. The gaping holes where the windows should have been were black and rotting around the edges, and the laminated beams supporting the ceiling had also suffered from the weather. It was a huge space. Aside from some debris and fifteen or twenty buckets like the ones he’d seen scattered about the grounds, the room was completely empty.

He kicked one of the buckets, which spun around, sending up a putrid stench. By the time it stopped, it had cast off a ring of sludge. Carl leaned down to take a closer look. Were those the remains of toilet paper? He shook his head. The buckets had probably been exposed to all types of weather and then filled up with rain water. Anything would stink and look like this, given enough time.

He looked at the bottom of the bucket and identified the logo of the Merconi shipping company stamped into the plastic. The buckets were probably used for bringing home leftover food from the ships.

He grabbed a solid iron bar from the junk pile and went to get Assad. Together they walked over to the farthest of the three adjacent buildings.

“Stay here,” Carl said as he studied the padlock on the door that supposedly only Lasse had a key to. “Come and get me, Assad, if you see anything strange,” he added, then stuck the iron bar under the padlock. In his old police car he’d had an entire toolbox that could have sprung something like this lock in a flash. Now he had to clench his teeth and try brute force.