“I have been thinking about Hardy, Carl. How is he doing now?”
Carl took a deep breath. It was a hard one to answer. Since Morten had started kissing and cuddling with his new physiotherapist friend, Mika, and since this Mika had begun to apply his considerable professional insights and equally firm muscle mass to Hardy’s paralyzed limbs, things had been happening to Hardy that in many ways were unfathomable.
A couple of years ago the doctors at the spinal clinics had basically condemned Hardy to a lifetime of lying on his back in bed. But now Carl no longer felt quite so convinced that their conclusions were accurate.
“It’s strange. Before, he used to have these kind of phantom pains, but now it’s something else. I just don’t know what.”
Assad scratched his neck. “I wasn’t thinking about if he can move now, Carl. I was thinking more about his frame of mind.”
There were new posters on Assad’s wall. Maybe it was because he’d been forced to take things easier and had more time on his hands, or perhaps the world situation had been having an influence. Whatever the reason, the exotic scenes bordered with fluttering Arabic letters had now made way for a small poster of Einstein sticking out his tongue and a slightly larger one showing a slim young man with an electric guitar whose name Carl was unable to pronounce. MAHMOUD RADAIDEH AND KAZAMADA PERFORM IN BEIRUT, it read.
“New decorations,” said Carl, with a nod to the posters. It was a comment that should have been followed by a polite inquiry as to its subject matter, but somehow he never got that far.
It was as if Assad wasn’t really all there. His usual keen and expressive face seemed extinguished, and his shoulders sagged pathetically under his checked shirt. But he was like that sometimes.
“I’ve got a CD. Would you like to listen?” Assad asked absently, without waiting for Carl’s deliberations. He pressed a button on his CD player and before Carl had time to react, the microscopic office space was subjected to an auditory blitzkrieg.
“My God,” Carl spluttered, his eyes darting longingly in the direction of the door.
Talk about a wall of sound.
“This is Kazamada. They play with all sorts of musicians from the Arab world,” Assad shouted back.
Carl nodded. He didn’t doubt the man. The only thing was, it sounded like Kazamada were playing with all of them at once.
He cautiously pressed the stop button.
“You asked about Hardy’s frame of mind,” Carl said in the earsplitting silence that ensued. “Mika gets him to laugh a lot, but I don’t think he’s doing that well. He says his thoughts are all over the place. All the things he’s missing out on in life. The things he was planning to do when the time came. He’s helpless now, Assad. Sometimes we’ll hear him crying in the night, but he won’t share his pain with any of us. It can be pretty agonizing to listen to.”
“‘The things he was planning to do when the time came,’” Assad repeated with a pensive nod. “I think I understand. Perhaps better than most.”
Carl’s eyes traced the fine lines of anguish that crisscrossed Assad’s face. “OK, you may be a bit depressed, Assad, but it’s hardly surprising after what happened to you. In my own case I, too, have-”
“No, Carl. I am not thinking of the assault now. It is something else. Something else entirely.”
And with that his mind turned inward again.
If that was the mood he was in, Carl might just as well throw in his hand grenade now. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, Assad. Marcus Jacobsen’s quitting.”
Assad turned his head slowly. “Quitting?”
“Yeah, on Friday.”
“This Friday?”
Carl nodded. Had the man gone into slo-mo or had a couple of chips in his cerebral cortex lost a component or two?
Come back, Assad, wherever you are, he thought as he related his conversation with Marcus. “So unfortunately it looks like we’re saddled with Lars Bjørn.”
“How odd,” Assad replied, staring emptily into space.
It was hardly the reaction Carl would have expected.
“How do you mean, odd? Disastrous, yes. Horrifying, certainly. But odd? What are you getting at?”
For a moment Assad sat chewing on his lip, seemingly once more on another planet. “Odd because he did not tell me,” he said eventually.
Carl frowned. “And why should he do that, Assad?”
“I’ve just been looking after his house while he and his wife were away, so I was there when they came back last night.”
Carl reeled. He what?
Assad’s head jolted suddenly and he gasped as though he had just nodded off and a reflex had snapped him back to reality. His eyes were wide-open, the expression on his face inscrutable. He appeared startled, his mouth half agape.
“You’ve been looking after Lars Bjørn’s house for two months? How come? And why wasn’t I informed? Why would he think he knows you well enough to ask you a favor like that? And what was his wife doing in Kabul? Is she a nurse or something?”
Assad pressed his lips together, his gaze dancing across the floor as though he were trying to cook up a plausible answer. What the hell was going on?
Then his nostrils flared, a sharp intake of breath, and he straightened up in his chair. “I had no place to live and Bjørn helped me. We know each other from the Middle East, that’s all. Nothing special. And yes, his wife is a nurse.”
Nothing special. Who the hell did he think he was he kidding?
“You know each other from the Middle East?”
“Yes. We met by chance, before I came to Denmark. I think he was the one who advised me to seek asylum here.”
Carl nodded. It was quite understandable for Assad to have his secrets, and considering the state he was in, inadvertently expose his vulnerabilities. But it hurt, dammit, that Assad could use words like “by chance” and reckon that Carl’s professional interest and curiosity would thereby be eliminated.
And just as Carl was about to let rip with all his least appealing personality traits, his furious eyes suddenly met Assad’s.
Seldom had he seen his assistant look so attentive, his gaze so piercing and intense. All of a sudden, after months of being apart, the two of them now sat divided by mistrust and all that remained unuttered between them. A moment’s silence where all discussion and evaluation took place without words.
Will you please leave me in peace, Carl? I am back on the job now, Assad’s eyes seemed to plead.
Carl gave him a pat on his thigh and got to his feet. “It’ll work itself out, you old bugger, you’ll see.”
“‘Bugger’?” came the despondent reply.
“Yes, well. For once, Assad, I’ll pass on that one.”
The poor sod needs cheering up, Carl mused, as he headed for Rose’s office. A dose of her unorthodox personality could usually get Assad laughing.
Though her door was half-shut and the builders had just launched a pneumatic assault on a wall somewhere in the vicinity of the stolen-goods depot, it was hard not to overhear the exchange of voices from within.
“Knock it off, Gordon. There’s nothing doing, OK?”
“All I’m trying to say is…”
Carl shook his head. The place was almost falling down around them, and yet here was this young fettuccine trying to get it on with Carl’s next-most trusty colleague, and on his turf to boot.
He reached out and was about to fling open the door with a roar of outrage, only to pause abruptly as Rose’s philanderer upped the ante.
“I’ll do anything for you, Rose, absolutely anything. Just tell me and I’ll do it.”
“In that case, you can go and sit down in the middle of the motorway, or donate your services as a pontoon bridge over Lake Titicaca.”
Nice one, Rose! He could picture her exactly, no messing about. Department Q in your face, mate!