“We need to take into account that the fire investigation was severely inhibited by the boat being totally burned out and having sunk to the bottom. On top of which weather conditions were bad and the current in the harbor was relatively strong. For Christ’s sake, Rose, these technicians know what they’re doing, they’re experts.”
She gave him a surly look.
“And don’t sulk either, because it happens to be true. I’ve been in this job since you were a snotty-nosed kid, remember? And if you don’t acknowledge the fact, then that’s what you are still.”
Assad rasped his hand across the stubble of his chin. It almost drowned out Rose’s sigh.
“OK,” he finally said. “We must speak to Anweiler. We need to know what condition the boat was in. Was it good or bad? Who was the victim? We must investigate her profile.”
“My thoughts exactly, Assad. You might even bring Mona Ibsen in on that one. I think she might need something to get her teeth into.” He smiled to himself. If she thought she could get rid of him just like that, she’d have to relocate to northern Greenland.
“Assad’s right,” he continued. “We need to get all that sorted before we can even think about letting go of the case, and you know that as well as I do, Rose.”
She said nothing but looked like she was counting to ten inside her head. One never knew when the latent explosion she carried inside her was about to detonate.
Carl smiled wryly. He quite fancied trying.
“And yet here you come with another case that tickles your fancy.” He gestured toward her missing persons notice. “What was it that caught your attention? The bloke’s carrot top? Or maybe his bedraggled smile? Something about his eyes, perhaps, that awakens your motherly instinct? Whatever it is, I’ll be buggered if I can see it.”
She nodded, releasing the safety catch on the icy incendiary she was about to discharge. “OK, Carl. But you probably never had the kind of loving relationship to your father as the girl who made this notice had to hers, am I right?”
“Did you, Rose?”
Assad’s eyebrows shot up as though released by a spring.
Of all the things Carl could have said to her, this obviously shouldn’t have been one of them.
Before he even realized his gaffe, Rose had turned on her heel, leaving her coat and bag on the floor, and was gone, a departing “Bye” hanging in the air like an icicle.
“Oops,” ventured Assad quietly.
Carl knew what he was thinking. Rather a boil on the ass than Rose on the warpath. Still, fuck her. Fuck her and the Anweiler case. Fuck Marcus for running out on them, and fuck Bjørn, too. Fuck Vigga and Mona and everything else to boot. Basically, he didn’t give a toss about any of them, as long as they left him in peace.
And then he felt a trembling in his abdomen that spread to his sides. Not exactly uncomfortable, but still pretty spooky. It was as if all the veins and arteries of his torso and limbs contracted at once, then expanded again, and had decided to keep it up.
Then came a tingling sensation that ran along his shoulder blades and under his armpits. He began to sweat, then felt a chill. He didn’t know if he was too hot or too cold.
Was this the prelude to an anxiety attack? He’d had them before.
Or maybe it was just Mona, coming back to haunt him?
With trembling fingers he grabbed Rose’s coffee cup and downed the tepid contents in one gulp.
All his facial muscles twitched as if he’d just bitten into an unripe lemon. The rancid taste of chicory clutched at his throat. For a moment he was gasping for air, and then the sensation left his body.
Embarrassed and bewildered, he sat for a while staring up at the ceiling.
And then he let out a deep sigh.
Assad broke the silence. “I’ve already been upstairs to see Lars Bjørn like you said I should. He said they were completely on top of the Anweiler case and that Rose’s criticism was a mile wide.”
Carl cleared his throat, otherwise he would have been unable to say a word. “Did Bjørn really say that? Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes, he said the case was still on his desk, and they would make sure to nail Anweiler. He had everything under control, Carl.”
Their eyes met for a moment, then Assad expelled a snort from the depths of his respiratory system like the snore of a man with sleep apnoea.
“Just kidding, Carl. The man doesn’t know his ass from his tip.”
Carl smiled. “His tit, Assad. He doesn’t know his ass from his tit. Anyway, I reckon I’ll just pop up and have a word with Marcus Jacobsen. In the meantime, perhaps you wouldn’t mind calling the deceased woman’s ex-husband and ask him to come in as soon as possible? Tell him he can choose between a taxi or a patrol car.”
12
There was an odd mood about the homicide chief’s office. Opening the door of this confetti-strewn hell was like entering a chaotic crime scene. Shredded or torn-up documents, technical reports, photos that ordinary citizens would be unlikely to forget in a hurry, the contents of drawers littered across the desk. Carl could see Marcus was clearing out, but it looked more like the mementos of centuries of discord and strife.
“Who tossed the hand grenade, Marcus?” he ventured, trying to pick out a surface that could be sat upon. He couldn’t find any.
“Lis’ll be here soon with some trash bags. Can’t it wait half an hour, Carl?”
“I just wanted to say that Department Q will be taking on the Anweiler case. We’ve had a breakthrough.”
Jacobsen paused, his hand inserted in a drawer among a mishmash of old erasers, broken pencils, empty pens, and the kind of crud that accumulates in such places by the kilo in the course of a number of years.
“No, Department Q is not, Carl. That case belongs up here. It wasn’t a freebie, just something to give Rose some practice, remember? You must have learned by now that your cases are the ones we formally send down to you. You can’t pick and choose, only decide what order you want to take them in.”
“Now you’re oriented, Marcus. Think of it as a farewell present. Before you know it the case will be solved and you can give yourself another merit badge. You deserve a nice little success story to wrap up your final days. How are you doing, anyway? All right?”
Marcus looked up with a jolt, as if all the nerve endings under his professional exterior had suddenly been exposed. If this was what his retirement was doing to him already, what would he be like in a month or a year? Why the hell was he going through with it? And how old was he, anyway? Sixty?
“I have to warn you, Carl. I know how you feel about Lars Bjørn, but he’s a good man, so there’s no need to get on the wrong side of him.”
“Thanks for the warning. But if he can’t take it, he can give me the boot, I couldn’t care less. And then he can have a little think about what he’s going to do with Department Q. He’s not going to run the risk of saying good-bye to all the funding our department brings in for you lot to siphon off, is he? Besides, he hasn’t got a clue what that case is about, believe me.”
The homicide boss leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Perhaps he had a headache. Carl had never seen him so distracted.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said, sounding fatigued. “But Bjørn could quite easily hand your department over to someone else if that’s what you want, Carl. You built Department Q up, but it was Bjørn who was the architect, not me. So I’d keep a low profile if I were you.”
–
“The husband of the woman who died on the boat is upstairs at the duty desk, Carl,” said Assad, popping his head round the door of Carl’s office. “He’s an oil worker on one of the rigs, so we were lucky he was at home.”