The Purity of Vengeance (36 page)

It was at that moment she thought of Curt Wad’s towering frame and what it might weigh. And then she noticed Rita’s coat still hanging on the hook in the hallway.

She grabbed it and tossed it onto the bed where Rita’s handbag lay. Her cigarettes fell out of the pocket.

She stared at them for a moment.

Damned things, she thought to herself. How costly Rita’s filthy habit had been.

28

November 2010

“Just to let you
know, the maintenance supervisor says you gents aren’t allowed to use the men’s room in the corridor until Wednesday, when he’s got time to come and fix it,” Rose informed them, hands on hips. “
Someone
used so much paper yesterday, they blocked it up. Which one of you was it?”

She turned from Assad and glared at Carl, eyebrows raised to the vicinity of her jet-black hairline.

Carl threw up his hands in self-defense. In international body language it translated as “How should I know?” In his own personal lingo it meant “What fucking business is it of yours?” He wasn’t about to share his toilet habits and gastric maladies with an underling of the opposite sex. No way.

“So when you use the ladies,” make sure you either sit down when you’re having a pee, or else lift the seat and put it down again when you’re finished. You with me?”

Carl frowned. This was getting a bit personal for his liking.

“Check everything we’ve got on Nete Hermansen and put it down for me in a list. But first you can give me the number of this journalist of yours, Søren Brandt,” was his riposte. If she wanted to wind him up, she could do it any other time but on a weekend. There was a fucking limit, surely.

“I have actually just spoken to this Brandt, Carl,” Assad said, putting a steaming cup of sickly smelling, caramel-like substance to his lips.

Carl looked at him askew. Amazing.

“You just spoke to him?” He frowned again. “You didn’t tell him we’d nicked all those files, did you?”

Now it was Assad’s turn to put his hands on his hips. “Do you think a camel dips its toes in the lake from which it drinks?”

“You did, didn’t you?”

Assad sagged visibly. “Perhaps only slightly. I told him we had something on Curt Wad.”

“And what else?”

“A little bit about this Lønberg from the Purity Party.”

“What have we got on him?”

“It was filed under L. Nørvig, who conducted some cases for him.”

“OK, we’ll get back to that. What did Søren Brandt have to say?”

“He said he had heard about The Cause. He had actually spoken to Nørvig’s first wife and she told him nurses and doctors had for years referred pregnant women with unsuitable backgrounds for gynecological examination by members of the organization. The women did not know what was happening, and very often it ended in abortion. Søren Brandt has information and is willing to exchange it for copies of what we have ourselves.”

“Christ Almighty, Assad! Do you realize what you’re playing at? We’ll be out of here on our arses if it gets out we’ve been burgling for evidence! Give me his number.”

Carl dialed with trepidation.

“Yeah, I just spoke to your colleague,” Søren Brandt said, after introductions. He sounded young and keen. They were always the worst.

“I believe you and Assad discussed some kind of trade-off.”

“We did, and I’d be grateful indeed. I’m still looking for links between members of the Purity Party and The Cause. Imagine if we can put a clamp on these lunatics before they gain real influence.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid Assad has promised more than he can deliver. We’ll be passing our material on to a state prosecutor.”

The journalist snorted. “Fat lot of good that’ll do, but I can understand you wanting to look after number one. It’s not as if jobs hang on trees these days, is it? You can breathe easy, though. Wild horses wouldn’t make me give you away.”

It was almost like listening to himself.

“Listen, Mørck. Wad’s people are militants. They kill unborn children without batting an eyelid. They’ve got a system, fine-tuned, to cover up all traces. Millions of kroner from funds and foundations. Gorillas on the payroll, the kind of people you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. Do you think I’m living at my registered address these days? No way. I look out for myself, because these guys will stop at nothing if anyone casts aspersions on their depraved view of humanity and the politics they pursue, believe me. Look at that doctor, Hans Christian Dyrmand. He didn’t OD on sedatives voluntarily, if you ask me. So I keep my mouth shut, you understand?”

“Until you go public, is that it?”

“Until then, yeah. And I’m prepared to go to prison to protect my sources, don’t you doubt it for a minute. As long as I bring down Wad and that lowlife mob of his.”

“OK. In that case, let me tell you we’re investigating a series of disappearances that look like they’re linked to women from that home that used to be on Sprogø. Would it be reasonable to assume that Curt Wad might have been involved somewhere along the line? Goes back fifty years, but maybe you know something anyway?”

He listened to the man’s breathing for a moment before all went quiet.

“You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Brandt replied. “Just needed to get myself together for a sec. My mother’s aunt was a Sprogø girl. Told the most hair-raising stories. Not about Curt Wad specifically, but others like him. I don’t know how he might be involved in that shit, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he was.”

“OK. I spoke to another journalist, bloke called Louis Petterson. He did some critical articles on Curt Wad at one point. Do you know him?”

“I know his name. And I’ve read his stuff, of course. He’s the kind of guy proper journalists don’t like. Worked freelance and seemed like he was actually on to something, but then it looks like Wad turned him round by getting him involved in Benefice, that tendentious little news agency of his. Most likely they pay him a bundle. Anyway, the critical stuff dried up overnight.”

“Anyone ever make you an offer like that?”

Søren Brandt laughed. “Not yet, but you never know with those hyenas. I did piss Curt Wad and Lønberg off at the Purity Party congress yesterday, though.”

“This Lønberg, what’ve you got on him?”

“Wilfrid Lønberg. Wad’s right-hand, his little pet. Father of Benefice’s puppet chairman, cofounder of the Purity Party, and highly active in The Cause. So, yeah, I’d give him some bother, if I were you. Put Lønberg and Wad together and you’ve got Josef Mengele reincarnated.”

 • • • 

They saw the glow of the bonfire long before they reached the house. On a dark November afternoon, it was hard to miss.

“A well-to-do neighborhood,” Assad observed, nodding at the posh houses.

Lønberg’s wasn’t that different from the others that lined the quiet road, white and imposing, with large casement windows and a roof of black glazed tiles. It was set slightly farther back than its neighbors’, and the walk up the crunching gravel path was sufficient to announce their arrival.

“What are you doing on my property?” a voice demanded.

They rounded a hedge and saw an elderly man wearing a brown apron and heavy-duty gardening gloves.

“What’s your business?” he barked angrily, stepping in front of the flaming oil drum he was in the process of feeding with sheets of paper from the wheelbarrow at his side.

“I ought to inform you that burning rubbish like that in the open is against the law,” Carl said, squinting to see if he could determine its more specific nature. Files and documents, most likely, relating to all the shit Lønberg and his ilk stood for.

“Really? And what law would that be, then? There’s not exactly a drought on, is there?”

“We’d be happy to go to the trouble of calling the Gentofte Fire Department in order to clarify the local authority’s regulations.” He turned to Assad. “Would you like to take care of that, Assad?”

The man tossed his head. “Oh, come on, it’s only paper. How can that bother anyone?”

Carl produced his badge. “I imagine it would bother quite a few people, actually, if it turns out what you’re destroying here is evidence that could answer a lot of questions relating to your and Curt Wad’s activities.”

What happened in the seconds that followed was something not even Carl in his wildest imagination would have believed a man of Lønberg’s age and skeletal stature could effectuate so quickly and with such resolve.

In one seamless movement he lifted the entire heap of documents from the wheelbarrow and deposited them in the oil drum, grabbed a plastic bottle of paraffin at his feet, removed the top, and tossed the whole thing onto the pyre.

The effect was astonishing and immediate. Carl and Assad leaped back as a column of flame exploded into the air, almost reaching the crown of the tall copper beech that stood majestically in the middle of the garden.

“There,” said the man. “
Now
you can call the fire brigade. What’ll it cost me? Five thousand? Ten? See if I care.”

He was about to turn and go back up to the house when Carl stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Does your daughter, Liselotte, know what sort of nauseating enterprises she’s lending her name to, Lønberg?”

“Liselotte? Nauseating enterprises? If you’re thinking of her chairmanship of Benefice, then I can tell you she has reason only to be proud.”

“Oh, you think so, do you? Is she proud of The Cause and all its illegal abortions, or haven’t you told her about that? Does she share your sick views on humanity? Does she sympathize with your murdering innocent children? Is she proud of that, or have you just been keeping her in the dark?”

Lønberg glared. His eyes were ice that no flame could melt.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you’ve anything at all of substance that you wish to discuss, I suggest you call my lawyer first thing Monday morning. His office opens at eight thirty. Caspersen’s the name. He’s in the book.”

“Ah, yes, Caspersen,” said Assad, in the background. “We know this man from the television. One of the people from the Purity Party, yes? We would very much like to have his number. Thank you very much, indeed.”

Assad’s breeziness seemed momentarily to take the wind out of Lønberg’s arrogance.

Carl leaned into the man’s face and almost whispered his parting shot:

“Thanks a lot, Lønberg. I think we’ve got enough now to be getting on with. Say hello to Curt Wad and tell him we’re off to see one of his old acquaintances in Nørrebro. The Hermansen case, wasn’t that what they called it back then?”

 • • • 

Nørrebro was a war zone. Concrete tenements knocked up overnight had provided ideal conditions for a complex of social problems, spawning crime, violence, and hatred. Not like the old days, when social work in the district had been all about helping hard-grafting workers keep a grip on a decent life. Only when you came strolling into the neighborhood along the City Lakes did the grandness of former times become visible in all its glory.

“The Lakes are still the best place in the city,” Antonsen out in Rødovre always claimed. It was true. Standing there, looking at the rows of magnificent buildings nestling behind chestnut trees with their views across the gentle water, swans gliding over the surfaces, the thought seemed absurd that only a few hundred meters away the immigrant gangs and the bikers ruled the roost, and a person would do well to keep a watchful eye out when passing through after dark.

“I think she is in, Carl,” said Assad, pointing up at the windows on the top floor.

Carl nodded. Like all the others in the gray apartment building, they were lit up.

“Nete Hermansen? It’s the police,” he said into the entry phone. “I’d like to ask you some questions. Would you be kind enough to let me in?”

“What sort of questions?” came the reply.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Routine, that’s all.”

“Is it to do with the shooting incident on Blågårdsgade the other night? I did hear something going on, yes. If you’d be so good as to step back and hold up your badge so I can see it. One has to be careful.”

Carl gave a sign to Assad to stay by the door, then stepped backward into the space between the ground floor’s tiny flower beds so the light illuminated his features.

A moment passed before a window opened at the top and a head appeared.

Carl held his badge as high as he could.

Thirty seconds later the entry phone buzzed.

After a seemingly endless and increasingly breathless ascent to the fourth floor, they found the door of the apartment already wide open, so she obviously wasn’t
that
careful.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, startled as Carl stepped into the slightly musty hallway with Assad lurking behind his shoulder. The ongoing menace of Nørrebro’s immigrant gangs had left its mark here, too.

“Ah, I’m sorry, but you’ve no need to be alarmed by my assistant. Salt of the earth, he is,” Carl lied.

Assad extended a hand in greeting. “How do you do, Ms. Hermansen.” He bowed like a schoolboy of old asking for a dance at the end-of-term ball. “Hafez el-Assad, but you can call me Assad. A pleasure to meet you.”

She hesitated a moment before accepting the gesture.

“Would you care for a cup of tea?” she asked, seemingly oblivious to Carl vigorously shaking his head.

The living room was like most others belonging to a lady of her age and standing. A vibrant jumble of heavy furniture and reminders of a long life. Only the absence of framed family photos seemed conspicuous. Carl recalled Rose’s brief outline of Nete Hermansen’s life. There were reasons enough for such portraits to be missing.

She came in with the tea on a tray, limping slightly, but good-looking for all her seventy-three years. Blonde hair, presumably dyed, and rather elegantly cut. It was obvious that money had rubbed off well in spite of the misfortunes that had befallen her. Money generally did.

“What a lovely dress,” said Assad.

She said nothing, but poured his tea first.

“This is about the shooting on Blågårdsgade last week, isn’t it?” she asked, sitting down between them and nudging a small plate of cookies in Carl’s direction.