Or had he simply always been like that?
There was the rub. He didn’t know who he was.
God, he had heard so many people blabber on about this classic existential issue over the years. Herein lay the psychoanalysts’ little gold mine, the office despots’ best ammunition, the self-development courses’ cornerstone: self-doubt.
Carl stretched his muscles and clutched at the small of his back, trying to muster the energy to move his body normally.
He looked upward at the seemingly endless winding stairway and decided to leave Laursen in peace. Why burden himself with another flight? William Stark had been in that shallow grave. All they needed to do was send that hair sample to forensics and let them do the rest. He would put Rose on to it straightaway, because all he was fit for right now was shuffling back downstairs and throwing his legs up on his desk. One anxiety attack a day he could manage OK. Two required coffee and a smoke.
He descended the three steps back down to the second-floor landing and almost crashed into Mona.
Unfortunately his mouth fell open and he stood there gawping like a teenager. Had he really heard her voice just before, as he was on his way up? In that case she might well have seen him sliding pathetically up and down against the staircase wall.
Dammit.
“Hey, Mona,” he said, as indifferently as his hanging jaw would allow. “On your way over to detention?”
“Hello, Carl. You’re looking a bit pasty, are you all right?”
He nodded. “In a bit of a rush, that’s all. Not much sunlight down there in the basement, you know, ha-ha. Just stocked up on some self-tanner, though.”
He was prattling away like an effing idiot.
“No, I’ve just come from there,” she eventually said, in reply to his question. “I had to get the department head to back me up with a couple of prison guards before I could talk to the hoodlum. An incorrigible psychopath if ever there was one. I wasn’t going to have him groping me like last time.”
Carl nodded. As gorgeous as she was looking, it was not unthinkable he’d try it on with her himself.
Then she frowned. A lattice of tiny lines appeared on her face that he hadn’t noticed before. She turned her head toward the light and all of a sudden he saw how loose the skin had become around her throat and how indefinable her features seemed for just a brief second. Not that she looked old, just suddenly aged somehow.
“Are you OK, Mona?” he asked tentatively.
She gave him an odd, fleeting smile and before he knew it she stroked his cheek, apologized for being so busy, and strode off, the clack of her high heels fading in the labyrinth of police HQ.
Carl remained standing, oblivious to colleagues sidestepping him with acerbic comments and ill-concealed glee.
Ignored questions burned inside him, and now they were bubbling to the surface like poison gas.
It was obvious she preferred to avoid him. It was as if she stood more firmly on her own two feet with him at a distance. Was it because his presence made her feel uncomfortable, or was it because she was already uncomfortable with herself and didn’t want to be reminded of it in his company?
Was the problem that she suddenly felt she was getting older and he was holding her back at a stage in her life when she needed to fulfil herself before it was too late? Was that it? Could it be because she just didn’t find him attractive enough? Or was it more concrete, the fact that his divorce from Vigga was now a reality? Had he come too close all of a sudden? Had she sussed he was going to propose to her and wanted to preempt him?
He shook his head. Thinking about it was a risky business.
The future prospects for him and Mona were definitely not bright.
Then his mobile rang.
“The two of you have a meeting with René E. Eriksen in his office in an hour and a half,” said Rose.
“OK. But I don’t think Assad’s got time at the moment, and I’m-”
“No, you’ve got it wrong. I mean you and Gordon. Haven’t you spoken to Lars Bjørn?”
Oh, Christ. Would this day’s woes never end?
“And another thing. Your ex-wife asked me to remind you about your agreement to visit her mother once a week and tell you you’re five weeks behind. If you don’t get up there this afternoon you’ll owe her five grand and she’ll be coming by to collect it tonight. She’s already phoned her mum and told her you were on your way. If you get your skates on, I’m sure you can get over to Bagsværd and back to the ministry in time for the interview. In the meantime I’ll make sure Gordon’s there when you arrive.”
Carl swallowed twice.
“Why are you standing there like a zombie, Carl? You’re as white as a sheet,” came a voice from farther up the stairs. It was Laursen in his white kitchen garb.
But there was no time to explain when his ex-mother-in-law, Karla Margrethe Alsing, was already counting the seconds at the nursing home.
–
“Thank goodness you’re here,” said the care assistant, as he led Carl through the dementia ward. “We’ve had to move her out of her old room and into another because she kept smoking indoors and set fire to her duvet. Everything in that room is black with soot, and I mean everything. You should just see the wallpaper.”
He opened the door of her old room. There certainly wasn’t much worth salvaging.
“She was flirting with the firemen, getting in the way. Wearing nothing but her panties, I should add.”
Carl gave a sigh. He had exactly twenty-five minutes before he had to be getting back. Much too much time.
“I hope you’ve put some more clothes on her in the meantime,” he said, attempting a smile.
The caregiver nodded. Maybe that was why he looked so knackered and withdrew so hastily as soon as the guest was delivered.
“You’re not to smoke indoors, Karla,” the man admonished feebly. “You know you’re not, we’ve told you before. Otherwise the whole place might go up again. You’re only allowed to smoke in the garden, so please put it out now or else we’ll have to take all your cigarettes away from you,” was his parting shot. Probably for the twentieth time that day.
“Hello, love,” she said, as though Carl had only been away five minutes. The way she sat there in her once-so-expensive, now-so-threadbare kimono, she was the queen of the Copenhagen nightlife. Elbow on the armrest, cigarette held casually between extended fingers. Nonchalant, in the way elderly women with an overinflated sense of social importance were fond of performing their smoking ritual. Rather than the cigarette being raised to the mouth, it was the mouth that was brought to the cigarette. She took a long, lazy drag through blood-red lips before slowly turning back in his direction, head shrouded in blue-gray clouds of nicotine-filled smoke.
“Only a short visit today I’m afraid, Karla. I have to head back to town in twenty-five minutes. How are you doing, anyway?” he asked, expecting a tidal wave of complaints about her new surroundings and all the furniture she herself had never considered providing.
“Oh, all right, I suppose,” she replied, through heavy eyelids. “The slot’s just a bit dry, that’s all.”
Carl looked at his watch. Fourteen hundred very long seconds to go.
30
Marco was doing pretty well in the circumstances. He had spent most of the day sitting in his little hideout amid all the construction work, wearing a yellow hard hat he’d managed to liberate, just waiting.
He had finally passed on what he knew. Carl Mørck had got his wallet back and he would already have found Marco’s note, provided all had gone according to plan. He would know that it was Zola who had killed William Stark and he would know where the body had been buried.