“Oh, yes, Carl.” Assad dropped a pile of transaction slips onto the desk in front of him. “It’s all there. Stark had his bank transfer the amounts from his account.”
“OK. So what am I supposed to deduce from this?”
Rose smiled. “That Stark was a wizard at poker, or got exceptionally lucky at the casino. What else?”
Carl frowned. “I detect some sarcasm, Rose. But can you actually prove he didn’t get the money like that?”
“Let’s just say that Stark raised a lot of capital that he channeled on without accounting for where he got it,” Rose replied.
Carl turned to Assad. “What about the tax authorities? Rose says you’ve been in touch with them. They must have known about all this income.”
Assad shook his head. “Negative, Carl. They had nothing registered in the way of increased income during the period in question, and Stark was never called to explain. So it seems they knew nothing about these transactions because the deposits were only in his account for a few days before the exact amount was paid out again. The balance at the end of the year was never higher than at the end of the year before.”
“And because he was a regular wage earner he was never picked out for a routine spot check, I imagine. Am I right?”
Assad nodded. “There was something else that bothered me, too. The safe-deposit box he rented. I began to wonder why he canceled it. Malene Kristoffersen told me he took home some jewelry from it, his parents’ wedding rings and some other items. But then Rose asked her what had become of these things.”
“Yeah, I asked her if she had them in her possession. But she said she’d never actually seen them, and I believe her. That was why the items were never reported stolen when they had the break-in. She was simply unable to describe them. She wasn’t sure they even existed, let alone had been stolen.”
“Stark could have rented a safe-deposit box in another bank and stored them there.”
Assad shook his head deliberately. “I think not, Carl. Malene believed that the jewelry existed, and if it wasn’t stolen, he must have found a really good spot to hide it in the house. She said she was still hoping he would come back and retrieve them.”
Carl noted the first wrinkle of a frown being born between Assad’s eyebrows. His assistant had never been one for blind optimism.
“Can you see what we’re getting at, Carl?” said Rose. “The whole thing stinks!”
Was she gloating, or was it commitment that made her face light up like that? Carl had never quite been able to tell the difference.
“This case is like a spiderweb,” she went on. “Malene loved William Stark, and he certainly loved her and her daughter. He’d have done anything for them. Then all of a sudden he disappears just like that, and Malene says he hadn’t the slightest reason for doing so.”
“Then what makes her think he might come back? If he really had no reason to vanish, then most probably he’s dead, in which case he’s hardly likely to come back, is he?” said Carl. “Maybe she’s got a screw loose, or else the opposite. Maybe she’s the one who made him disappear. We don’t know for certain if he actually made it all the way home the day he came back from Africa. Are we quite sure of her movements leading up to his disappearance?”
Assad sat fidgeting and looked like he was miles away, so it was Rose who answered.
“Forensics went through the house with a fine-toothed comb. Dog units were out and everything. The garden hadn’t been dug up for ages and there was no sign of recent home improvements or DIY jobs. So if his body was there, or still is, it means something must have really gone wrong for them two and a half years back.”
“Y’know what?” said Assad suddenly. “Unless he had ten million lying around in a cardboard box and Malene nicked it all, he’d be worth more to her alive. As far as I can see, this is about something else entirely. This is about a man who should have been in Africa for several days, but then he changes his plane ticket and flies back to Denmark ahead of time. Why did he do this? Did he have something to sell? Did his money come from illegal diamond trafficking and he was supposed to meet someone here in Denmark who then did away with him? Or was it an accident? Did he take ill and fall in the marsh? This I do not believe, because it was trawled thoroughly.” He shook his head. “There are too many possibilities here, I think. Another thing is that he was afraid of water, it says so in the report, so he wouldn’t have ventured too close under any circumstances. So what happened after he left the airport? If only we could find out where he went.”
Carl nodded. “Rose, next time you speak to Malene I want to be there, OK? Until then I want you to check out her background. Talk to her colleagues. Ask around at the hospital where Tilde was being treated when Stark went missing. What were these people’s impression of Malene? Stark, too, for that matter.”
He turned to Assad. “And, Assad, I want you to go through those bank slips and check if the dates when Danske Bank transferred large sums for Stark can be connected with any criminal activities that occurred just before the withdrawals, that can’t otherwise be linked to Stark. I’m talking about all kinds of things: narcotics, robberies, smuggling, whatever.
“Any other piffling, little jobs we can assist you with?” asked Rose. “How about we sort out Kennedy’s assassination or maybe square the circle while we’re at it?”
Assad smiled and dug his elbow into Rose’s side. Pair of effing comedians.
“There is actually one more thing I’d like to say before I ride out to Bellahøj and have a chat with the lads who investigated the break-in at Stark’s place.”
Rose gave Carl a look of resignation. What now?
“Dear friends. This is a festering boil of a case you’ve got your teeth into. Well done, both of you.”
One could have heard a pin drop.
–
“Rattlesnake” was what they called Deputy Chief Inspector Hansen. He received Carl with a pair of piercing, slanting eyes and a characteristic whistle of air issuing from between his front teeth. Totally without enthusiasm. They had patrolled together for two weeks back in the days of yore and it was two weeks too many.
Now Hansen was the man they sent out when ten cars had had their paint jobs scratched on some quiet residential street, or at best when someone had done a couple of decent break-ins in the district. “Decent” was hardly the word to describe the job that was done on Stark’s place, but since the house had been sealed at the time in connection with an ongoing investigation, Hansen had been instructed to be meticulous so any indications of the burglary and Stark’s disappearance being linked could be properly uncovered.
“Why didn’t you just use the phone?” Hansen asked, without taking his eyes off the report he was reading.
“If I’d known it was you who was working this case, I’d have sent a telegram.”
A smile of microscopic dimensions creased Hansen’s lips. “My name’s on the damn report, or haven’t you read it?”
“There are a whole lot of nice people who are called Hansen. Who could have suspected it was you?”
Hansen looked up. “Still the charmer, eh, Carl?”
“Joking aside, Hansen, I’ve got the report here from the first search of the house after Stark’s disappearance. Comparing it to yours, it strikes me there apparently wasn’t so much as a butter knife taken in the later break-in. But that can’t be right, can it? Straight up, just how thorough were you when you went through the place after that break-in? Are you sure there was nothing missing? A shoebox, a sheet of paper off a notice board, a basket from the shed?”
“As you can see in the report, I brought along William Stark’s lady friend and one of the lads from HQ who’d been there the first time. We went through the place together, yes, quite thoroughly I’d call it. The attic, all the drawers, the basement, the garden, all over. There wasn’t a thing missing. They could have nicked a decent pair of speakers and some silver cutlery and the lawnmower, too, but it was all left untouched.”