Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows

Jon knew that even though it was late, Mehmet was most likely still up, and it wasn't far from the State University Hospital on Blegdamsvej to his flat on Stengade. Besides, three hours of sleep and Iversen's new information had left Jon wide awake, so it wasn't difficult to decide to pay a visit.

Mehmet was still up, just as Jon had thought. Wearing headphones and almost motionless, he was sitting in the pale light from his computer screens while the rest of the room was in darkness. Jon and Katherina had to knock hard on the windowpane before he reacted. When Mehmet finally turned to look at the terrace door, he did so reluctantly, as if his eyes had to be forced to follow the movement of his head. When he saw Jon outside, his face lit up with a smile, and he took off the headphones as he got up from his chair.

'Hi, boss,' Mehmet said in greeting after pushing open the door. Only then did he catch sight of Katherina standing behind Jon in the dark. 'And you must be…?'

'Katherina,' said Jon quickly. 'A friend of mine.'

Mehmet's gaze shifted from Katherina to Jon and then to his watch.

'Right,' he said, stepping aside. 'Come on in.'

'You're working late,' remarked Jon when they entered the room. Mehmet had turned on more lights so they could navigate between the teetering stacks of prizes.

'I don't have a slave job in some office that's open from nine to five,' replied Mehmet as he moved a couple of boxes off the sofa so they could sit down. 'My domain is the whole world and all time zones, so I schedule my work hours accordingly.'

'So it's a twenty-four-hour slave job?'

'Something like that,' admitted Mehmet, with a brief laugh. 'What about you, Katherina? How do you pass the time?'

'Books,' replied Katherina, adding: 'I work in a bookshop.'

'Really?' exclaimed Mehmet, his gaze flying over the boxes in the room. 'I just happen to have-'

'We're not here to buy anything,' said Jon, holding up his hands. 'Katherina works in my father's antiquarian bookshop, which I've now inherited.'

Mehmet gave Jon a searching look. 'I didn't really think you wanted to buy romance novels at three in the morning. You're here about the nerd's PC, right?'

Jon nodded.

Mehmet looked from one to the other of them. 'Was he a close friend of yours?'

'No,' replied Katherina and Jon in unison.

'I only met him once,' Jon went on. 'He was just an acquaintance.'

'Okay,' said Mehmet, relieved. 'Actually, it's wrong to call him a nerd. There's nothing wrong with nerds. At least they have a passion for something, whether it's stamps or aeroplanes or computers – and that's cool. Your… acquaintance, Lee, was a nerd-wannabe. A guy who may have worked with computers, but didn't have the abilities or the stamina to be a real nerd, though he did try to hang out with them by using the right buzzwords and references.' He cleared his throat. 'Lots of people think that nerds are losers, but the real losers are the wannabes, the pretenders, who think they can cheat their way to respect – very uncool.'

'But he had an IT job,' said Jon. 'He couldn't have been completely hopeless.'

'Well, you don't have to be a nerd to get an IT job,' Mehmet pointed out. 'Far from it. Wannabes can be smart enough at their jobs. Nerds are more difficult to control. They want to do their own thing, and they have a hard time taking directions about how to do their work.'

For a long time Jon had thought a nerd was merely someone who spent all his time at a computer – someone who was scruffy and ate pizza and drank Coke and had problems with the opposite sex. For him there was no measure of quality, other than that a nerd could do more than start up a word processing program. It was only lately that 'nerd' had increasingly replaced terms like 'eccentric' or 'fanatic' to express the fascination and mania that infected even stamp collectors. In that sense, Luca and the customers who came to Libri di Luca could be called 'book nerds', though they would undoubtedly prefer 'bibliophiles'.

Meeting Mehmet had expanded the boundaries of what Jon associated with nerds. Mehmet was well groomed and socially adept. He had a large circle of friends who were interested in things besides computers. More overtly, he was the son of Turkish parents, which meant that he looked significantly more healthy than the nerd stereotype, usually a pale, pimply teenager wearing glasses.

'I don't think of myself as a nerd,' said Mehmet, as if Jon had been thinking out loud. 'But I don't try to present myself as one either.' He went back to his desk to get a stack of printouts. 'Lee, on the other hand, did. He subscribed to various "nerdy" blogs on the Internet, and it's obvious he was trying to hustle himself a chance to get down with the cool guys. The answers and the pieces he wrote are banal and show that he didn't really get the terms he threw around.'

'What sort of blogs did he participate in?' asked Jon.

'Mostly computer-related,' replied Mehmet, scanning a piece of paper he was holding. 'Databases, networks, OOP and other programming areas. Plus some bizarre offshoots like brain research, literature and antique books.' He glanced up at Katherina. 'Is that anything you can use?'

'Maybe,' replied Katherina with a shrug.

'He wasn't especially active in the last three groups I mentioned. It was like he just lurked and read the blogs without taking part in the debate himself.' He waved the papers. 'I'll give you the list so you can see what you can work out for yourselves.'

'Okay,' said Jon. 'Is there anything else you can tell us?'

'I looked at what he was doing on the Net lately,' replied Mehmet. 'It follows the same trend as the blogs. He looked at a lot of web pages with computer-related subjects, a number of libraries and literature pages. He also visited various porn sites and a few travel agencies.'

'Travel agencies?' Katherina said.

'Yes, he was looking at trips to Iraq and Egypt, but he didn't buy any tickets.' Mehmet stood up and handed them the stack of papers. 'But that's all in here too.'

Jon took the pages and leafed through a few of them.

'So that's your man,' Mehmet concluded. 'A slightly pathetic loner wannabe without many friends or social skills. Probably in his mid-twenties with a steady but not particularly demanding job in the IT field. Plus a couple of interesting deviations from the profile, which lean towards a romantic fascination with literature and exotic travel destinations.'

'Impressive,' said Katherina.

Mehmet shrugged. 'Do you know the saying: Show me your rubbish bin and I'll tell you who you are? The same can be said about a PC – but it's really much easier. The way we move around when we're surfing the Net says a lot about us, and the tracks are easy to follow if you know where to start.' Mehmet was leaning against his desk with his arms crossed and a satisfied smile on his lips.

'There's something else we'd like your help with,' said Jon, his eyes still fixed on the papers. 'We're looking for a man by the name of Tom Nшrreskov. Can you find us his address?'

'If you can spell his name,' said Mehmet with a grin.

While Mehmet went to work behind his three flat-screens, Jon started going through the printouts from Lee's computer. Katherina sat next to him on the sofa and glanced around the room while he read. He sensed that she was receiving, but he wasn't worried. On the contrary, he found it reassuring, certain that she would pick up on anything he happened to miss. And at the same time, she could sense what information he thought was relevant even if he didn't say so out loud. The idea that she might be able to perceive more than he cared to reveal did cross his mind a couple of times, but he dismissed the thought, realizing that even if she did, it didn't really bother him.