“I’d like to ask you about Merete’s personal life. Was there any reason to think that she might have been pregnant when she disappeared?”
Søs frowned and drew back.
“Pregnant?” She said the word as if it were in the same category as contagion, leprosy, and the bubonic plague. “No, I’m positive that she wasn’t.” She glanced over at her lover and rolled her eyes.
“How can you be so sure?”
“How do you think? If she was as together as everybody thought, she wouldn’t have had to borrow tampons from me every time she got her period.”
“You’re saying that she had her period just before she disappeared?”
“Yes, the week before. We always got our periods at the same time when I was working for her.”
He nodded. That was something she would know. “Do you know if she had a lover?”
“I’ve already been asked that a hundred times before.”
“Refresh my memory.”
Søs took out a cigarette and tapped it firmly on the table. “All the men stared at her as if they wanted to throw her down on the table. How would I know if one of them had something going on with her?”
“In the report it says that she received a valentine telegram. Did you know it was from Tage Baggesen?”
She lit her cigarette and disappeared behind a blue haze. “No, I didn’t.”
“So you don’t know whether there was something going on between them?”
“Something going on? This was five years ago, as I’m sure you’ll recall.” She blew a cloud of smoke right at Carl’s face, eliciting a wry smile from her lover.
Carl moved back a bit. “Now, listen here. I’m going to take off in four minutes. But before I do, let’s pretend that we want to help each other out, OK?” He looked Søs right in the eye; she was still trying to hide her selfloathing behind a hostile expression. “I’ll call you Søs, OK? I’m usually on first-name terms when I share a smoke with someone.”
She moved the hand with the cigarette to her lap.
“So now I’m going to ask you this, Søs. Do you know about any incidents that happened just before Merete disappeared? Anything we ought to investigate further? I’m going to rattle off a list of possibilities, so just stop me if I come to anything relevant.” The nod he gave her wasn’t returned. “Phone conversations of a personal nature? Little yellow notes that were left on her desk? People who behaved toward her in an unprofessional manner? Boxes of chocolates, flowers, new rings on her fingers? Did she ever blush while staring into space? Was she having a hard time concentrating during those last few days?” He looked at the zombie sitting across from him. Her colorless lips hadn’t moved a millimeter. Another dead end. “Did her behavior change in any way? Did she go home earlier? Did she leave the parliament chamber to make calls on her cell phone out in the corridor? Did she arrive later than usual in the morning?”
Again he looked up at Søs, giving her an emphatic nod, as if that might wake her from the dead.
She took another puff of her cigarette and then ground the butt out in the ashtray. “Are you done?” she asked.
He sighed. Stonewalled! What else did he expect from this cow? “Yeah, I’m done.”
“Good.” She raised her head. For a moment he saw a woman who possessed a certain gravitas. “I told the police about the telegram and about her meeting someone at Café Bankeråt. I saw her write that down in her appointment diary. I don’t know who she was going to meet, but it did make her cheeks flush.”
“Who could it have been?”
She shrugged.
“Tage Baggesen?” he asked.
“It could have been anybody. She met so many people at Christiansborg. There was also a man who was part of a delegation who seemed interested. But there were lots of men who were interested.”
“A delegation? When was that?”
“Not long before she disappeared.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“After five years? God, no.”
“What sort of delegation?”
She gave him a surly look. “Something to do with research on the immune system. But you interrupted me,” she said. “Merete also received a bouquet of flowers. There was no doubt she had some sort of relationship that was quite personal. I have no idea what was connected with what, but I’ve told the police all this before.”
Carl scratched his neck. Where had this information been recorded?
“Who did you talk to about this, if I might ask?”
“I don’t remember.”
“It wasn’t Børge Bak from the Rapid Response Team, was it?”
She pointed her index finger at Carl, as if to say “Bingo.”
That damned Bak. Did he always leave out so many details when he wrote up his reports?
Carl looked over at Søs’s chosen cellmate. She wasn’t exactly lavish with the smiles. Right now she was just waiting for him to disappear.
Carl nodded to Søs and stood up. Between the bay windows hung various tiny studio photographs in color, as well as a couple of large black-and-white pictures of Søs’s parents, taken in better days. They must have been quite attractive at one time, but it was hard to tell, given the way Søs had scratched and scored all the faces in the photos. He leaned down to look at the small framed pictures. From the clothes and posture, he recognized one of the many PR photos of Merete Lynggaard. She too had lost most of her face in a network of scratches. So Søs collected pictures of people she hated. Maybe he could have won a place for himself if he’d made an effort.
For once Børge Bak was alone in his office. His leather jacket was even more creased than usual. Indisputable proof that he was working hard, day and night.
“Didn’t I tell you not to come barging in here, Carl?” He slammed his notepad on the desk and glared at him.
“You fucked up, Børge,” said Carl.
Whether it was the use of his first name or the accusation, Bak’s reaction was instantaneous. All the furrows on his forehead went vertical, reaching right up to his comb-over.
“Merete Lynggaard got a bouquet of flowers a few days before her death. And from what I’ve heard, she never used to receive flowers.”
“So what?” Bak’s expression couldn’t have been more condescending.
“We’re looking for someone who might have committed a murder. Has that slipped your mind? A lover could be a likely candidate.”
“We looked into all that.”
“But it wasn’t included in your report.”