PROLOGUE I
2005
“Again with this crap?” Anker flung open the passenger-side door and reached one arm across the windshield. “Can’t see shit when they put it at that angle.”
“Let me guess,” grunted Hardy from the back seat. He looked at the sticker Anker was waving. “Okay, that’s a new one,” he went on. “‘The Three Musketeers.’ Our colleagues at the station are getting creative.”
“They’re just jealous the three of us make such a good team, Hardy,” said Carl from the driver’s seat. “Hey, look over there.” He pointed across the street. “Those two guys standing back from the road. The one on the left, isn’t that the knifeman we’re after?”
Hardy leaned forward, between the two front seats. “Nah, that’s his brother. Means he’ll probably be along in a minute, though.”
“Well, if we’re the three musketeers, I’m sure as hell not going to be that sanctimonious twat Aramis, even if I am the shortest,” said Anker dryly.
Carl shook his head. “Why not? Aramis was a bit of a charmer too, you know.”
“Nah, that was the big one, the drinker,” interjected Hardy. “Which would be me, obviously.”
The two men in the front seat started chuckling. Hardy and the female sex—that was its own can of worms.
“Hey, come on. You think I don’t know what I’m like?” Hardy groaned. “Women! It’s enough to drive you nuts.”
“It’s not like you actually have anything to complain about, though, do you?” asked Anker. “Minna’s gorgeous.”
Carl kept his eyes on the road, trying not to react. It wasn’t the first time Anker had said exactly what Carl was thinking.
“Yeah, she is, and she knows it.”
There was sudden yelling from the pavement opposite, and Hardy rolled down the window a fraction. “I’m sick of Minna flirting with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who comes her way. You two included.”
Anker turned to look at him. “Aww, boo hoo, poor little Hardy. You’ve got it made. Not like me and Elisabeth. Pretty sure I’ll be needing to borrow a sofa at a friend’s place any day now.”
“You know you’re always welcome at mine, right, Anker?” said Carl. “Or at ours,” Hardy added.
Anker gave Carl’s shoulder a squeeze. “Thanks, lads. Now that’s hospitality for you!”
“I think that’s him now,” Hardy said.
“Are you kidding? That’s his missus. Probably never seen a woman in trousers before, have you?” Anker teased. “Okay, Carl, tell me,” he went on, “how long have you and Vigga been separated? You must be getting a divorce soon, surely?”
Carl stifled a laugh. Vigga was the most puzzling creature on Earth. No man with an ounce of common sense could argue that she was till-death-do-us-part material, but to let go of her completely—that might be a step too far.
“So you’re hoping to be a free agent again, eh, Anker?” said Carl. “Or do you already have another iron in the fire?”
Anker smiled lopsidedly. “Always! I’ve met somebody. Proper wild one, full of surprises. I think you know the type?”
Carl nodded. Surprises were Vigga’s specialty as well.
Anker gave an exaggerated wink. “Let me tell you, this one certainly knows how to make a man an offer he can’t refuse. She’ll be the death of me, if I’m not careful.”
Hardy shook his head at him and opened the door. Something had caught his attention.
Oh really? Carl thought. That particular piece of information from Anker was new to him, but it was always like this when the three of them were on duty together. The only difference between them and teenage boys with bulges in their trousers was age. No other team at the station got on as well as they did, that was for sure.
“She sounds dangerous,” Carl said. “Very intriguing. So who is she, Anker?”
Anker seemed to drift off for a moment, as though he was already in Paradise, nearing the forbidden tree.
Then he smiled the smile that brought down almost every woman’s defenses. “You already know who, Carl!”
Abruptly, Hardy took off running. “Come on, lads, we’ve got him,” he yelled, sprinting across the road.
PROLOGUE II
Saturday, December 26, 2020
“You got the balls to repeat what you just said, Eddie? Do you, you little shit?”
Eddie Jansen lowered his gaze, trying not to provoke the man, but the blow came anyway.
“We had an agreement, didn’t we? So how about sticking to it?” the man said, as the whine in Eddie’s ear rose to a screech.
Eddie nodded cautiously. He sincerely hoped he was hiding his desperation, because the last thing he wanted was to get on the wrong side of the people running the operation—or their representative, the man currently sitting opposite him with the two different-colored eyes.
He had to stick to the deal, said the man, as though Eddie didn’t know that. The truth was he had no choice, unless he wanted things to take a very nasty turn indeed.
That fucking deal!
For years he’d been dazzled by the size of the bribes, and who could blame him? The salary of a detective on the Rotterdam police force was a drop in the ocean compared to what these powerful men had offered him for his services and information. Eddie had jumped at the chance, and, as expected, it was easy money. It had paid for a cushier life: gifts for his girlfriend and later for their daughter, payments on the summer cabin, installments on the boat and the cars. From that point on, there’d been no more money worries, no more anxious nights.
And yet, the moment of reckoning had come. Of course it had.
He had been dithering for some time over the job the man opposite was now demanding he finish. Compared to the other stuff, there was something indisputably uncompromising about this one. It was on another level. And although God knew he’d been lax over the years, sloppy, he had always muddled along, and his employers’ demands had seemed to be lessening. So what, he’d thought, was there to be afraid of?
Eddie tried to steady his trembling hands. Was the real problem that he’d gradually lost the courage to carry out his orders? No, it was no good—his hands continued to shake uncontrollably. This could cost him everything.
He took a deep breath and almost whispered, his eyes still downcast, “We . . . no, I mean, I promise I’ll get him. It’ll be just like we agreed, you can count on it.”
Raising his head, he found himself looking straight down the barrel of a gun, which a second later was pressed to his forehead.
The tall man held the gun firmly. His face was expressionless, his voice ice-cold. “You’ve been sitting on this for thirteen years, and then just when our product turns up in a suitcase in the man’s attic, you aren’t ready. Now you tell us the man’s been arrested, acting like it’s no big deal that he’s in the custody of the Danish police at this very moment. Do you have any idea how dead fucking serious this is going to be for all of us if he suddenly decides to get chatty?”
“Yes, but—” The click as the trigger was pulled made Eddie’s body jerk.
The man laughed. “Bit of a shock, eh, Eddie? Like the Chinese fellow I heard about in a story: they put all the prisoners on their knees in a row, lined up waiting for a bullet to the back of the neck, and this poor bloke jumps clean into the air when the man next to him gets shot. Not a very nice thought, I know, but you could end up the same way, Eddie. That’s the reality now. If we’re ever in this situation again, you’re not going to know if there’s a cartridge in the chamber or not, you follow me?
So. Get off your arse and show us what you can do. We’re not taking any chances about what Carl Mørck knows—or what he might decide to do next.”
Eddie looked out the window, gazing across the darkened city of Schiedam and Louis Raemaekersstraat, where the traffic lights at the bottom of the high-rise block had turned green. In a few minutes, his wife, Femke, would be back in their apartment with their little angel, having spent all day with Siri, a former colleague. She would smile at his guest, and afterward Femke would ask Eddie who he was, this man who had come to visit so late. But she could have no involvement in that part of his life. None.
“Yes, of course! I understand.” He nodded, gingerly nudging the barrel of the gun away from his face. “I’ll make contact with the Danes tonight.”
1
CARL
Saturday, December 26–Sunday, December 27, 2020
The predicament in which Carl now found himself reminded him of childhood, of the moment when its haze of innocence had been cruelly and definitively lifted. When, for the first time, he had come to see everything a little too clearly, to feel the sting of lies. It was the experience of injustice burning itself into his cheek after an unearned slap. Of his younger years, when his love was unrequited, or later in his adult life, when a lover’s betrayal loomed suddenly and without warning.
All these emotions came rushing back the second his most valued colleague, Chief of Homicide Marcus Jacobsen, clicked the handcuffs around his wrists—a lot tighter than necessary. They pressed harder still as he was dragged away from Mona and shoved into the waiting patrol car, while she signaled to him from the top of the steps that he wasn’t alone.
Cold comfort.
Things went from bad to worse when the officer in the front seat instructed the driver to head not to the police station but directly to Vestre Prison.
“Hey, no, what are you doing? That’s not right. Why aren’t you driving me to the secure unit at the station?” he asked, but received no answer. He heard only mutters from the front seat, as well as Marcus Jacobsen’s name mentioned several times.
Carl leaned gingerly forward between the front seats, trying to find a position where the cuffs behind his back weren’t cutting off his circulation. It was blindingly obvious now that although he’d worked like a dog at the station for decades, solving difficult—almost impossible—cases, from this point on, he could forget about receiving any support from his colleagues.
What had he expected, really?
How many times had he escorted someone in custody to that bleak mammoth of a prison? And how many times had the tear-choked detainees in the back seat fought desperately to defend themselves with everything they had . . . or didn’t have? Innocence, remorse, a family left behind—always in vain, mind you. The disgrace and humiliation simply had to be endured until the preliminary hearing. Pastoral care wasn’t his job. He was just there to get them from A to B. At this point in the process, you were guilty until proven innocent.
Now, the day after Christmas in 2020, as the car drove down dark and frozen streets decorated with now-redundant wreaths and snowflakes, Carl tried to imagine what defense he could possibly muster.
What am I even defending myself against? he wondered. He had been arrested just as they had solved the Sisle Park case and freed Gordon. But had he actually done anything to feel guilty about? How had things gotten this far? Was it his reluctance to investigate the nail gun murders? His naivety when it came to the activities of his colleague Anker Høyer? His suspicion that Anker himself had been using drugs? Or was it that he’d stupidly done him the favor of storing that suitcase without asking what was in it? Left it sitting up in his attic all these years, never giving it a second thought? The suitcase, as it turned out, had been crammed full of hard drugs and a dizzying amount of cash in various currencies. God, if only he’d broken it open before the others got there, he could have handed it in. How silly of him to believe so blindly that when push came to shove, nobody would suspect him, loyal detective that he was, of criminal activity. That was practically a mortal sin in and of itself. And now he didn’t have a clue what to say in his defense. All he knew was that his colleagues in the patrol car had no interest in protestations of innocence or invocations of abandoned families. What did that have to do with them? They would listen only to remorse, to confessions and repentance— but they weren’t getting that. So Carl said nothing as they drove through the prison gates, nothing as he was escorted toward the intake officer, winter-pale and weary-looking.
The accompanying paperwork handed over by one of the police officers was examined carefully through matte-framed glasses, and the guard glanced up to confirm that they were not requesting protective custody. This seemed to surprise him, since the prisoner in question was a high-profile police officer.
Carl too was taken aback. No protective custody—what did the man mean?
“Hey, listen,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that a lot of the people in here are locked up because of me. So—”
“You’ll take what you’re given,” the guard interrupted.
That didn’t bode well. And as Carl was led away and asked to strip, his colleagues didn’t nod goodbye.
The wizened guard conducting the search eyed Carl with the same contempt as Jacobsen had when reading him his rights.
“Well, well, well! The revered Carl Mørck. Well, well, well,” he repeated, tossing the clothes into a pile. “I’d say there are a few lads on the wing who are going to enjoy this. Doubt there’s a single inmate in this whole establishment who’d want to be in your shoes right now,” he went on, dumping a change of clothes into Carl’s arms.
Although Carl had been anticipating them, the words still hit harder than he’d have liked. Perhaps he’d been expecting some magical portal to open up and drop a solution into his lap? But none seemed to be forthcoming.
As he was led down the familiar narrow, colorless corridors and past peeling bars into the East Wing itself—an imposing jumble of stairs, railings, safety netting, and countless cell doors—and toward cell 437, his last protective layer of armor fell away, and Carl began to sweat. He knew for a fact that any naïve remnant of a sense of justice he might have had would vanish the moment the heavy door slammed behind him with its irrevocable click.
Carl’s eyes darted around the large, sterile prison wing, which was lit coldly from above, before he was led into the cell and the key was turned on the other side of the door. He’d seen hundreds of prison cells in his time, of course, but never before had a narrow black mattress like the one before him been his bed. The bed where he would have to try to get some rest without Mona by his side. Where he would not be woken early next morning by his daughter crashing into him headlong, would not wake up hoping that the dawning day would hold good things in store for him.
Carl surveyed the damaged gray noticeboard above the bed, reading the words a former inmate had written in pen, the letters gradually fading.
All of them depressing. No small light in the darkness.
He had just drifted into a kind of sleep, having spent most of the night racking his brain over what was going to happen next and what he ought to do, when someone hammered on the door and a rough male voice yelled that they fucking knew who he was in there, that they were going to get him. Then the voice fell silent, evidently due in part to a couple of guards bundling the aggressive man away.
But the words could not be unsaid: “We’re going to get you, pig.”
Propping himself up on his elbows, Carl took a deep breath. So. The harassment had begun, throwing reality on the inside into sharp relief. “Get” meant “kill.” “Pig” meant he deserved it. From now on, being him was deadly. As he thought back to all the times he’d seen things go badly for an officer on the inside, he swallowed a lump. His only hope now was to get a court-appointed lawyer who could yank him out of the firing line, either by getting him released after the preliminary hearing or by obtaining protective custody, which surely he had a right to as a police officer.
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