Jussi Adler-Olsen - The Keeper of Lost Causes

Then he looked up and identified the four framed rectangles on the ceiling as loudspeakers. That was how they were able to hear the whistling sounds from inside the room, which had become piercingly enervating.

“What is happening now?” shouted Assad, holding his hands over his ears, making it hard for Carl to answer him.

“I think you’ve turned on the intercom,” he shouted back, turning to look up at the rectangles on the ceiling. “Are you inside there, Merete?” he yelled three or four times and then listened intently.

Now he could clearly hear that the sound was air passing through a narrow passage. Like the noise a person makes with his teeth, just as he begins to whistle. And the sound was constant.

He cast a worried glance at the pressure gauge. Now it was almost down to four point five atmospheres. It was dropping fast.

He shouted again, this time at the top of his lungs, and Assad took his hands away from his ears and shouted too. Their combined yelling could wake the dead, thought Carl, sincerely hoping that things hadn’t gone that far.

Then he heard a loud thud from the black box up near the ceiling, and for a moment the room was totally silent.

That box up there controls the pressure equalization, he thought, considering whether to run into the other room and get something to stand on so he could open the box.

It was at that instant they heard groans coming from the loudspeakers. Like the sounds uttered by a cornered animal or a human being in deep crisis or grief. A long, monotonic moan of lament.

“Merete, is that you?” Carl shouted.

They stood still and waited. Then they heard a sound they interpreted as a yes.

Carl felt a burning in his throat. Merete Lynggaard was inside there. Imprisoned for over five years in this bleak and disgusting setting. And now she was possibly about to die, and Carl had no idea what to do.

“What can we do, Merete?” he yelled. At the same instant he heard an enormous bang from the plasterboard on the far wall. He knew at once that someone had fired a shotgun through the plasterboard from behind, scattering buckshot all over the room. He felt a throbbing several places in his body as warm blood began trickling out. He stood paralyzed for a tenth of a second that felt like an eternity. Then he threw himself backward against Assad, who was standing there with one arm bleeding and an expression that matched the situation.

As they lay on the floor, the plasterboard tipped forward to reveal the person who had fired the shot. It wasn’t hard to recognize him. Aside from the lines on his face, which his hard life and tormented soul had produced over the years, Lasse Jensen looked exactly like the boy in the photos they’d seen.

He stepped out of his hiding place, holding the smoking shotgun, inspecting the wounds his shot had made with the same cool indifference as if it had been a flooded basement.

“How did you find me?” he asked, as he cracked the barrel and inserted more shells. He came over to them. There was no question that he would pull the trigger if he felt like it.

“You can still stop this, Lasse,” Carl said, propping himself up so that Assad could get out from under his body. “If you stop now, you might get off with a few years in prison. Otherwise it’s going to be a life sentence for murder.”

The man smiled. It wasn’t hard to see why women fell for him. He was a devil in disguise. “Then there’s a lot you don’t know,” he said, aiming the gun straight at Assad’s temple.

Yeah, that’s what you think, thought Carl as he felt Assad’s hand feel its way inside his jacket pocket. “I’ve called for backup. My colleagues will be here any minute. Give me that shotgun, Lasse, and everything will be OK.”

Lasse shook his head. He didn’t believe it. “I’ll kill your partner if you don’t give me an answer. How the hell did you find me?”

Considering how much pressure he must be under, Lasse sounded far too controlled. He was obviously raving mad.

“It was Uffe,” Carl told him.

“Uffe?” Now the man’s expression changed. That piece of information just didn’t fit into the world he was determined to control. “Bullshit! Uffe Lynggaard doesn’t know a thing,” Lasse said. “He can’t even talk. I’ve been following the news the past couple of days. He didn’t say a word. You’re lying.”

Carl could feel that Assad had grabbed the switchblade.

To hell with regulations and laws about concealed weapons. He just hoped Assad would have time to use it.

A sound came from the loudspeakers overhead as if the woman in the room wanted to say something.

“Uffe Lynggaard recognized you in a photograph,” Carl said. “A photo of you and Dennis Knudsen standing next to each other as boys. Do you remember that picture, Atomos?”

The name stung him like a slap in the face. It was obvious that years of suffering were now surfacing inside Lasse Jensen.

He grimaced and nodded. “So you know about that too! I assume you know everything. Then you also realize that you’re going to have to accompany Merete.”

“You won’t have time. Help is on the way,” Carl said, leaning forward a bit so that Assad could pull out the knife and lunge at the man in one movement. The question was whether the psychopath would be able to press the trigger in time. If Lasse fired both barrels simultaneously at such close range, he and Assad were done for.

Lasse smiled again. He had already regained his composure. It was the trademark of a psychopath: nothing could touch him.

“Oh, I’ll have time. You can be sure of that.”

The jerk in Carl’s jacket pocket and the subsequent click of the switchblade coincided with the sound that flesh makes when you stick a knife into it. Sinews being severed, healthy muscles clipped. Carl saw the blood on Lasse’s leg just as Assad knocked the shotgun upward with his bloodied left arm. The boom from the shotgun next to Carl’s ears when Lasse fired out of sheer reflex blocked out all other sounds. He saw Lasse silently topple over backward, and then Assad threw himself at the man, his knife raised to strike.

“No!” yelled Carl, though he could barely hear the sound of his own voice. He tried to get up but now felt the full extent of the shot he’d taken. He looked down underneath himself and saw blood pouring out onto the floor. Then he grabbed his thigh and pressed hard as he stood up.

Assad sat down, bleeding, on Lasse’s chest, with the knife pressed to the man’s throat. Carl couldn’t hear, but he could see Assad shouting at the man beneath him, and he saw Lasse spitting in Assad’s face with every sentence he spoke.

Slowly Carl regained his hearing in one ear. The relay overhead had again begun releasing air from the chamber. This time the whistling sound was a notch higher than before. Or was it his hearing that was playing tricks on him?

“How do we stop this shit? How do we shut off the ventilators? Tell me!” shouted Assad for the umpteenth time, taking another wad of spit in the face. Only now did Carl notice that each time Lasse spat, the knife was pressed harder against his throat.

“I have cut throats of better men than you!” Assad yelled and made a shallow slice into the skin, deep enough for the blood to trickle down Lasse’s neck.

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” Lasse snarled. Carl looked down at Lasse’s leg, where Assad had stabbed him. It wasn’t bleeding very heavily, not like when the big femoral artery in the thigh is severed. But it was still serious enough.

He looked up at the manometer; the pressure was dropping slowly but steadily. Where the hell was the police backup? Hadn’t the officer at Holmen called his colleagues, as he’d requested? Carl leaned against the wall and took out his cell phone. He punched in the number of the duty officer and was told help would arrive in a matter of minutes. His colleagues and the medics were going to have their hands full.