“Yeah, and this girl, Birthe, as you call her, is sitting right here next to me, so you can speak to her yourself if you like.”
Good Lord, how indiscreet of him, but judging by the knowing grin now spreading across Assad’s face, he found it funny, at least.
“I’m sure you can manage on your own, but thanks anyway. How come Anweiler was staying with her? Were all three of them there at once, or what?”
“No, Birthe’s playing flute in the Malmö Symphony Orchestra at the moment, so they just swapped apartments for a couple of days while she’s over for rehearsals. It’s a very demanding concert, apparently.”
“Whoooaa, just hold on a minute, will you, Rose? This is going too fast for me. Have you told Birthe there’s a warrant out on Anweiler?”
“Yeah, and she didn’t know. Neither does Anweiler, she says.”
“She must be damn naive if she believes that.”
“Do you want me to tell her? Like I said, she’s sitting-”
“No, thanks, I’d rather you didn’t. Just tell her we’d very much like to get in contact with the man.”
“I’ve got his phone number.”
Jesus! This was almost too much.
“Full report as soon as you get back, OK? And we’ll keep an eye on this Birthe. She’ll have to inform us of her whereabouts the next few days.”
“I’ve already told her.”
Assad emitted a suppressed grunt. It wasn’t helping Carl’s mood.
“One more thing, Carl,” Rose continued. “We’re sitting here at a table outside the Park Café, and next to us there’s this ladder leaned up against a poster column. It looks kind of strange. Like whoever was up it suddenly did a bunk. Left his scraper stuck there and everything.”
“No, you don’t say. Man leaves job. Do you want me to phone it in to the Work Authority?”
Carl let out a sigh. What the hell was she doing, sitting at a café instead of back at Birthe Enevoldsen’s apartment? If she thought he was going to get her latte refunded, she had another thing coming.
“Just listen, Carl. I’m about to get to the point. Just where his scraper’s stuck in the layers of posters there’s a notice about a missing person, a man. I’m pretty sure it’s one of our cases, so I’ve taken it down to bring back with me. Just so you’re warned.”
Christ! No sooner had he let Rose loose than she was digging up more work for Department Q. If she reckoned every missing persons case in Denmark was best off on his desk, he might just as well book his bypass operation now.
He concluded the conversation, expecting to see a glimmer of irony in Assad’s crumpled face, but the man’s thoughts seemed to be buried in the folder he’d placed on the other side of the desk.
“I’ve been reading the Anweiler report, Carl,” he said. “There are many things I do not really understand, especially now that Rose tells us this about the man.”
What the hell? Had Assad started on a new case off his own bat? Was he picking up Rose’s bad habits? What a fucking pair they were! Under normal circumstances Carl would have sent up a couple of blimps to ward them off, but right now he could hardly conceal his delight. Not in regards to the Anweiler case, which as far as he was concerned they could chuck into the Mariana Trench, but because Assad appeared to have mobilized an interest in something. What a welcome miracle.
Since yesterday’s blunder about his relationship with Lars Bjørn, it was as if Assad had suddenly woken up, and Carl, for one, definitely didn’t want him spacing out again.
“What exactly don’t you understand, Assad?”
“The houseboat had no motor.”
“No engine. Really? And so what?”
“It was quite a big boat, Carl, with lots of rooms and everything, almost like a little house. A living room with furniture, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. Cheap rugs and bookcases. Reproductions on the walls.”
Carl shook his head. This was brilliant. If Assad kept going on like this he’d probably end up confiding that he used to be an interior designer.
“There was even a stereo they found among the wreckage.”
Oh, boy, more details. Next thing, Assad would be telling him what sort of music they left in the CD player.
“And there was a Whitney Houston CD in the CD player.”
There it was. Of course. Carl nodded and gave him a look that said, Get to the point, Assad.
“There are so many things that do not fit in with this fire on the houseboat, Carl. Especially the insurance.”
Carl frowned. He knew what it meant when Assad’s round eyes suddenly transformed into fathomless pools. It looked like this was going to take more time than he’d bargained for.
“The policy had been canceled. Yeah, I know that. And you think that’s odd?”
“Yes, because only a week before, the boat was fully covered. Home contents, third-party liability, hull coverage, everything. Sverre Anweiler must have liked that boat and all the things inside it very much, don’t you think, Carl?”
“Yes, maybe. Insurance fraud was my first thought, too, until I started reading up. If you read closely, the police report faults him exactly on that count, Assad, for the insurance having been canceled. The theory is that the woman’s death was planned and the lack of any insurance payout would make sure no one suspected him of anything. The policy would have given him a hundred and fifty thousand for the boat and a hundred thousand for the contents if it hadn’t been canceled. Not exactly a fortune, but a tidy little sum. Since Anweiler’s got a record for fraud, linking the death with another insurance fiddle would have been the first thing to spring to mind if the barge had been insured. Some reckon he might have canceled the policy to give himself an alibi, and that the woman was killed for reasons other than economic.”
Assad nodded. “Yes, I know this, Carl. But what is then the motive behind the killing? And the music in the CD player, what about that? I don’t think a man like this Anweiler would listen to Whitney Houston, so most likely he did not put it there himself.”
“Maybe. But what are you getting at? And what on earth makes you think a man like him wouldn’t listen to Whitney Houston? Because he looks like a skinhead? You don’t have to have hair to listen to pop, surely?”
Assad gave a shrug. “Have a look at this police photo.”
He pulled it out of the folder and handed it over the desk to Carl. Anweiler was definitely an unappealing, anemic sort by the looks of him. Indeed, it was hard to imagine why anyone would want to have anything to do with this withered creature.
Assad jabbed a finger at the man’s open-necked shirt. “There’s a tattoo visible here. You can read about it in the reports on the other cases Anweiler was involved in. He had it done during his first stretch in prison.”
“I’m guessing it doesn’t read ‘Whitney Houston.’”
“No, it reads ‘Aria’ in Russian letters. Look: A, and then a P that is an R, an upside-down N that is an I, and a back-to-front R, which in this case is an A.”
“OK, easy as pie, I can see. I didn’t know you knew Cyrillic script. ‘Aria,’ you say. Opera buff, is he?”
Assad’s lip twitched. “Ha, ha, not exactly. One can hear you’re a little stuck in the mud, Carl. Aria is a heavy metal band from Russia. Quite well-known.”
A heavy metal band! Jesper had most probably given him a barrage of their decibels at some point.
Carl nodded. He could see that Assad’s reasoning made some kind of sense. A devoted heavy metal freak was hardly likely to go soppy over Whitney Houston’s cuddly vibrato.
“OK, so you think it was the victim, Minna Virklund, who put the CD in the player. But so what? There must have been loads of time between her arriving and the explosion that killed her. Why shouldn’t she have put some music on? You probably reckon that if she’d just done a bunk from her husband, Whitney Houston probably wasn’t the first thing she made sure to bring with her. Is that it?”