“Marcus Jacobsen’s packing in his job as chief of homicide on Friday. I need to get back,” he said abruptly. She could ponder on it, if the information even sank in. But then she hardly knew the man.
“Not exactly the coolest way of showing someone the ropes, if you ask me,” she muttered, then pressed the doorbell.
Carl listened. It sounded like the person he’d seen through the window was pacing up and down behind the door before eventually opening up.
“Yes?” inquired a heavily powdered version of his former mother-in-law. She was at least twenty years older than anyone else they had interviewed so far.
“Just a minute,” she added, removing a pair of rubber gloves of the same sort Assad used when he cleaned their basement once in a blue moon.
“Just a minute,” she repeated, dipping a hand into the pocket of her apron and stepping out into the sunlight of the entrance. She produced a pack of smokes, lighting up and inhaling with such contentment that her shoulders quivered. Carl nearly salivated.
“Right,” she said. “I’m ready now. What do you want?”
Carl produced his ID.
“No need for that,” she said. “You can put that piece of plastic away. We all know who you are and what you’re going around asking about. Don’t you think people talk?”
Their jungle drums must have been in damn good working order. They hadn’t been here three hours yet.
“Are you trying to bother us, or help us?” she asked, a defiant look in her eye behind drooping eyelids.
Carl studied the list of Brumleby’s residents. “As far as I can see, no woman your age is registered at this address. There’s a Birthe Enevoldsen, aged forty-one, so who might you be then? Let’s get that cleared up first, shall we?”
“What do you mean, my age?” the woman snorted. “You think I’m old enough to be your mother, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Carl shook his head accommodatingly, but the truth was another story. Going by the layers of wrinkles, he’d have said she could have been his granny if anyone asked him straight-out.
“I do the housecleaning,” she said. “What does it look like I’m doing in there? Creating haute couture in a pair of rubber gloves?”
Carl smiled awkwardly. The sarcasm and use of French had disturbed his overall impression.
“We’re investigating a case of arson in which a person was killed,” Rose explained, making her first mistake. “In that connection we’re looking for this woman here,” she added, making her second. She held the photo up in front of the woman’s face.
With that, all their cards were already on the table. If this woman did know the woman they were looking for, she’d be keeping her mouth shut now.
“Oh, my goodness. Arson, you say? And a person killed? What would this lady here have to do with it?”
“I’m sorry,” Carl interrupted. “Obviously, the case isn’t quite as clear-cut as that. The woman we’re looking for isn’t under suspicion, we’d simply like to speak-”
“Do you mind not interrupting just because a lady’s doing the talking? You pipe down, mister, I prefer to deal with your punk rocker here. It might teach you not to be such a male chauvinist worm in the future,” the woman responded amid a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Carl avoided Rose’s gaze. If there was a grin on her face, the war between them that was always lurking latently would break out with an almighty explosion.
“Do you know her?” Rose went on impassively. People could call her a punk rocker or whatever they liked, she didn’t care. Carl wouldn’t have either, if he possessed her inclination to change identity.
“Know her? I wouldn’t go that far. But perhaps I do recognize her. As far as I recall, she’s in here on the desk.”
She didn’t ask them in, but there was little doubt she expected them to follow her, so they did.
“She’s over here,” she said, as they stepped into the living room.
She picked up a framed photograph showing a small group of women standing with their arms around one another and handed it to Rose. “Yes, I thought so; that’s her on the far right. Nothing wrong with my memory, if I say so myself. Probably one of Birthe’s friends from the conservatory.”
Carl and Rose bent forward at once, squinting their eyes at the photo. It certainly looked like it could be her.
“She doesn’t seem that tall in this photo,” Rose noted.
“Which one’s Birthe Enevoldsen, the woman you work for?” Carl asked.
She pointed to the girl in the middle. A smiling blonde-haired woman who also seemed to be in most of the other photos on the desk.
“I’m assuming Birthe actually lives here?” said Carl.
The cleaning woman glared at him, then turned to Rose.
“I started working for her just after she moved in, when Carlo was still alive. So it must be ten years ago now.”
“Carlo was her husband?” inquired Carl.
“Good God, no. Carlo was my dog. A Small Münsterländer, lovely brown color he had.”
Yeah, and the same to you, lady.
Carl frowned. “How tall is Birthe Enevoldsen, would you say?”
“Good God again. You’ll be wanting her shoe size next.”
“I’m sorry, please excuse my assistant,” Rose broke in. “But is she taller than me, for instance?”
The woman hesitated for a moment, cigarette in hand, giving Rose the once-over. Then she turned triumphantly to Carl, who just stood there, wide-eyed and speechless.
Had Rose just called him her assistant?
“I’d say Birthe’s about the same height as your boss here, Mr. Plod.”
Carl ignored the smirk on Rose’s face as they got back in the car. “Two things, Rose. One: never again refer to me as your assistant. I have a sense of humor, but it stops right about there, OK? And two: try running those half-baked thoughts of yours through a filter before you spout them out like that. You were lucky today, but if you’re just as careless another time, you’ll have people shutting up on you like clams.”
“Yeah, yeah, Carl, I’m with you. But let me ask you this: which of us has got a hundred percent success rate and which of us hasn’t? Besides, I’m quite partial to clams, so try again.”
Carl took a deep breath. “For the moment, things are going fine, and that’s good. We know the woman they were looking for last week isn’t as tall as six-two, more like five-nine, if we compare the height of those women in the photo. So there must be an error in Sverre Anweiler’s height as stated in the police report. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was standing on tiptoes the first time he got hauled in and measured. But if we look at the still we got off the CCTV footage and compare the girlfriend’s height with Anweiler’s, he comes out more like five-five than five-nine in his shoes. A fairly short guy, in other words.”
“Quite a guy all round, if you ask me.” Rose snapped the folder shut. “If what the cleaning lady says is right, Birthe lends her apartment out to friends and other people she knows whenever she’s away. If this girlfriend of hers needed a place to crash for only a couple of days, then it’s hardly surprising if no one in Brumleby noticed her.”
Carl started the car. “OK, so far so good. Now you can get out again, Rose, and stay here until Birthe Enevoldsen gets home. We don’t want her slipping away from us, now, do we? Chin up, and get yourself a bratwurst over on Sankt Jakobs Plads if you’re feeling peckish. I’ll entertain Gordon while you’re away.”
He watched her black-plastered face in the mirror as he pulled out of the parking space.
That mascara would come to a boil if she didn’t watch out.
8
Winter 2010 and Spring 2011