Christ, he was careful with those pauses.
Eventually she seemed softened and more compliant. As though the whole sorry situation had been caused by some kind of midlife crisis and all she had needed was to hear him talk. And so in this hour of reckoning he ventured to smile, making sure by way of conclusion to leave her the opening that all dealings between adults of equal standing required.
“So I’m one hundred percent open to any suggestions you might want to make, Mona.” And for one tiny moment he had the delicious feeling of being back in business. Any second now she would take it all back and climb down, and then he would be ready with the reward: a small, but very expensive ring.
She gave him a rather odd smile in return and nodded. But instead of meeting him halfway where they promised to do their utmost for the good of their relationship and allow each other space for spontaneity, she seized her chance and turned his words against him.
“Thanks, Carl. In that case, my suggestion is that from now on we concentrate on leading our own separate lives.”
Her words slammed into his stomach like a battering ram. His self-image, his sense of reality, were in tatters. He simply no longer knew the woman sitting across from him.
And the ring remained in its silk pouch.
It was too late.
–
It was one of those mornings when it took ages to become Carl again. How on earth he managed to make his way into the city he had no idea. The rear lights of cars in front and the recollection of Mona’s eyes as she swept him out of her life were the only things he was aware of.
He made room among the piles of folders on his desk so he could put his feet up and resume the night’s failed attempts at sleep. His body and soul needed it more than anything. But Rose appeared in front of him in full gear the moment he sat down, squawking something about the missing persons notice she’d shown him the day before.
As if he wanted to think about anything that had to do with yesterday.
He tried to shake some life into his cerebrum. He was supposed to be at work, after all, but his thoughts refused to get out of the rut that kept circling around Mona. A mere three hours of sleep was all the shock had allowed him. Even Hardy’s remarkable progress that he had witnessed on Tuesday had completely receded into the background.
“Here, Carl.” A dark hand shoved a pair of cups the size of thimbles over the desk toward him and Rose, and the stench of something decidedly other than coffee rose up from the clay-colored substance.
“I’m not so sure,” he said, peering into the cup while Assad assured him that as far as he knew no one had ever died from drinking chicory coffee, and that its beneficial effects were well documented. It was something he remembered his grandmother telling him.
Chicory coffee? Wasn’t that what they’d tricked innocent citizens with during the war? Had this affront to centuries of careful refinement of the noble bean really survived such a definitive, universal holocaust? What horrible injustice.
“It’s like I say: weeds and cockroaches will be the only things left when we finally press the button,” he said with a sigh.
They stared at him as if he’d suffered an acute brain hemorrhage. He was able to sense it, but so what if he had skipped a couple of steps in making his deduction?
He let it be and studied Rose’s sunburned nose instead. She looked almost human all of a sudden. “Why is that notice so important to you, Rose? We’ve still got the Anweiler case, you know.”
“The Anweiler case needs a name change if you ask me. Hopefully we agree that the man’s innocent, don’t we? I’ve written Lars Bjørn a report giving the department’s investigation a good kick in the nuts. Assad and I have reached the conclusion that either the bloke the dead woman ran out on is worth having a chat with, or else maybe we should try and find out if she was technologically illiterate.”
“‘Technologically illiterate’? Don’t know the expression. What the devil does it mean?”
“Someone dysfunctional in matters electronic. A person who’s unable to operate devices that have more than one handle or button. Thick as a half-wit when it comes to understanding a manual, switching from a dial telephone to a mobile or from sink to dishwasher. You know the type?”
Assad nodded attentively. No doubt it was he who’d coined the expression in the first place.
“You don’t say. So you reckon the fire on the houseboat could have been an accident, is that it? And all the experts who’ve been involved are no more than a bunch of superficial chuckleheads who never bothered to let that possibility sink in and pursue it?”
Assad raised a finger in the air. Carl stared at it, fascinated. Where did all those hairs on it come from? Chicory coffee?
“That was good, Carl. Letting the possibility sink in. Just like the boat, yes? Very clever.”
Carl closed his eyes and gave a sigh. Had his two most trusted and only colleagues been downing soda all night in a kindergarten, or what? Christ on a bike. If only they’d leave him in peace.
He turned to Assad. “What do the fire investigation boys have to say about this accident?”
“It seems they do not believe there was anything on the boat to cause such a very big explosion. Neither the gas bottle, nor-”
Rose interrupted. “When you’re a lamebrain all sorts of accidents can happen. The right combination of hair spray on the kitchen counter, the stove leaking gas because she forgot to light it. Lamp oil to get the heating stove going, nail polish remover on the shelf. And how did Anweiler make his living? Think about it. He was a roadie and lighting man, wasn’t he? Don’t they have all sorts of things that get dead hot when they’re in use? A spotlight, maybe, that he’d left behind, and the woman turned it on by mistake, and then it falls on to the sofa where she’s left a couple of bottles of household spirits. There are so many possibilities, we just don’t know. And basically I don’t care, because it’s not our case, is it? I was just told to ring doorbells, right? That lot on the third floor can work out all the answers.”
Carl took a deep breath. With an imagination like that, Rose had no need to worry about her future. A new Agatha Christie was born.
“And Carl, you’d do well to think back on yesterday. Wasn’t there something you couldn’t be arsed about with this Anweiler case?”
Carl straightened up in his chair and donned his mental work clothes. It was high time he quelled his emotional hangover and reminded this cheeky shrew whose door had a shiny brass plate on it and whose didn’t.
“I dunno, was there? Anyway, I know perfectly well where you’re heading with this, and the answer is that today I can’t be arsed with dealing with missing persons, so you might just as well get it into your head. You don’t kick off a new case until you finish the one you’re on, especially when not all its aspects have been investigated thoroughly, right? Besides, we’ve got any amount of cold cases as it is.”
Assad gave a shudder of delight. Like when you realize your backside is freezing off because it’s sticking out from your duvet on an ice-cold winter’s night, and then you draw it back it again. His eyes sparkled in anticipation of Rose’s reaction.
“So tell me, why would we need another case on our hands?” Carl went on. “Or have you forgotten the ones still up on the board out there in the corridor? All those cases joined up with Assad’s red and blue strings? How many have we got at the moment, Assad?”
“What? Strings?”
“No, cases!”
Rose’s mascara glare rumbled in his direction. “Sixty-two cases in all, don’t you think I keep count? But this one’s-”
“Listen, Rose. They may have done a shoddy piece of work upstairs on the Anweiler case, but so will we if we don’t get our act together and tie up the loose ends we’ve uncovered.”
Assad nodded zealously in agreement. Obviously some element of syntax had gone over his head.