Lene Kaaberbol - Invisible Murder

“Hey, I thought you were retired?” Jansen said with a smile, which Skou-Larsen hurriedly returned.

“Old habits,” he said. “Sorry. Of course it’s none of my business.” But now the asbestos rules were swirling around in his head; there were so many potential oversights and minor legal violations. If a seventeen-year-old apprentice so much as walked through the site, for example.…

“I understand. But you can sleep soundly. The site manager knows his stuff, and … well, I’m not exactly an amateur, either.”

“No, of course not.…”

They walked down a long, dark passage, where the windows were still covered by black plastic sheeting, and into the dome itself.

Skou-Larsen loved buildings. Even though his job had mostly consisted of making sure they obeyed local plans and regulations, he had a love of bricks and mortar, too, of space and architecture and craftsmanship. Maybe that was why it hit him so hard.

He stood still. And remained still. For a small eternity.

The dome was the heavens. It soared above him as if stone and copper weighed nothing at all, and the mosaics on the walls glowed with the bright colors of creation itself. He tried to make himself think about emergency exits and soil pipes and ordinances, but it was no use. The light enveloped him, and his aging heart swelled in his chest so that in that moment awareness of his impending death left him.

Oh, he sighed. They have built a cathedral.

“Mr. Skou-Larsen? Is something wrong?”

He shook his head. “It’s just.…”

“Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? Makes you envy those Muslims, huh?” Jansen grinned knowingly, with an admiration that Skou-Larsen assumed he otherwise reserved for expensive cars or the highlights of the soccer games he watched on TV. There was no sign he was having his foundation rocked.

“What are you doing here?”

The man’s voice was angry and tense, in a stressed-out way that might also be covering a certain amount of fear.

When Skou-Larsen turned around, he spotted a well-dressed older gentleman—well, twenty years younger than you are, he corrected himself—clutching a length of copper piping in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.

“Everything’s under control, Mr. Hosseini,” Jansen said quickly. “My firm is responsible for the ceilings in the entrance hall. Preben Jansen. We’ve met.”

“And him?” The suspicion had not completely left the man, but his grip on the pipe relaxed somewhat.

“This is Mr. Skou-Larsen, from the city,” Jansen said, conveniently forgetting to mention that Skou-Larsen’s tenure in that role had ceased a number of years ago. “We’re just taking a look around.”

The man set down the copper pipe and held out his hand.

“Forgive me,” he said, formally. “But the site is closed now, and we’ve had our fair share of vandalism and the like.… It puts one on one’s guard.”

“Of course,” Skou-Larsen said, clasping the outstretched hand.

“Mahmoud Hosseini. I’m the chairman of the organizing committee.”

“Jørgen Skou-Larsen,” said Skou-Larsen, and then added, because it had to be said: “You are building a beautiful place, Mr. Hosseini.”

Back home the coffee still sat untouched and a sugar-drunk housefly was crawling around on the marble cake. Helle wasn’t home. He didn’t know if he should take that as a good sign. It was hard for her to go out alone, even in the middle of the day when her anxiety was at its lowest ebb. On the other hand, it probably meant she was still mad at him about that business with the coffee. He started clearing the table, and while he was rinsing the Arabia cups before loading them into the dishwasher—she always insisted on that, as if they needed to avoid sullying the inside of the dishwasher—she came slowly up the garden path with her old Raleigh bicycle. He could just make out a grocery bag in the bike’s basket.

“Where have you been?” he asked when she walked in the front door.

“Out buying slug bait,” she said grumpily, setting a five-kilo package of Ferramol on the kitchen counter. “You keep promising, but you never actually manage to get anything done, do you?”

ORVÁTH IS ONthe move.”

Károly Gábor spoke excellent, but slow, English, and that gave Søren’s brain time to leave its vegetative state and come up to speed. Horváth. That was the name of the Hungarian student, the one the NBH had hauled in for questioning. He fished around in his bag, flipping through the case folders he had brought home, and found his Hungary notes. Yep. Sándor Horváth.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“Germany. His phone was activated near Dresden yesterday and again this morning in the Potsdam area.”

Søren knew that the NBH had let the young man keep his phone so they could keep track of his whereabouts if he should happen to use it again. Which he obviously had. Not exactly a hardened, professional operative, this Horváth.

Dresden and then Potsdam.

“You think he’s on his way to Denmark?”

“Could be.”

Søren looked at the sickly house plant in the pot on his kitchen windowsill without actually seeing it. Gábor had caught him right in the middle of his muesli, with a shoe on one foot and just a sock on the other. After having worked eleven days straight, he had treated himself to a calm, quiet morning and hadn’t actually been planning on going in until around noon. That might have to change now.

He thanked Gábor for the message and called Mikael Nielsen, who was keeping tabs on the surveillance of Khalid Hosseini.

“Where is he now?” Søren asked.

It took just a second too long before Mikael answered.

“Um. He’s actually sitting in Bellahøj police station.”

“He’s what ? What’s he doing there?”

“He was arrested an hour ago. For assaulting and threatening an officer on duty.”

“What happened?”

“Apparently he got into an argument with one of our surveillance people. I was just about to call you. Bellahøj wants to know what they should do with him.”

K HALID HOSSEINI SATlow in the chair, with his jeans-clad legs stretched out in front of him and his hands buried in the pockets of a black bomber jacket. When he saw Søren, he leapt up like a spring being released.

“I knew it was your lot,” he hissed. “This is fucking harassment, that’s what it is. I bet it’s not even legal!”

“As far as I’ve gathered,” Søren said, “you attacked a police officer, who is now receiving treatment at the ER.”

“No!” The denial came instantly and with the force of conviction. “It’s a fucking lie, man. I didn’t even touch that guy. You should be asking him why he ran over my little brother in his fucking car!”

What? There hadn’t been anything about a traffic incident in the reports Søren had received from Bellahøj’s uniformed officers. According to them, they had gone to Mjølnerparken in response to a distress call from the officer tailing Hosseini and had found the officer holed up in his patrol car, bleeding from a laceration over one ear and surrounded by a crowd of enraged residents who were rocking the car, hitting its roof, and screaming insults in a mixture of Danish, Arabic, and Urdu. The shocked police officer had been taken to the emergency room at Bispebjerg Hospital for treatment for the cut and a possible concussion. There had been no mention of a younger brother.

Søren put a neutral look on his face and hoped his surprise wasn’t visible.

“What I would really like to hear now.…” he said, sitting down on one of the desk chairs, “… is your side of the story. What happened out there?”