It was the strangest lineup Carl had ever taken part in. Which of these shirts did it? That was the question. It was almost a joke. Shirts had never been his specialty. He wouldn’t even be able to recognize his own.
“I realize it’s difficult after such a long time, Carl,” said Jørgensen wearily. “But it would be a big help if you could try.”
“Why the hell do you think the perp would be wearing the same shirt months later? Even you lot must change your gear once in a while out here in the sticks.”
Jørgensen ignored the remark. “We just want to try everything.”
“And how can you be sure that the witness who saw the alleged killer from a distance and, to cap it all, at night, would be able to remember how a red-checked shirt looked with such accuracy that you could use it as a lead in the investigation? These shirts look like four peas in a pod, damn it! OK, they’re not identical, but there must be thousands of other shirts that look just like them.”
“The guy who saw the shirt works in a clothing shop. We believe him. He was very precise when he drew a picture of it.”
“Did he also draw a picture of the man inside it? Wouldn’t that have been better?”
“As a matter of fact, he did. Not a bad drawing, but not great either. It’s not as easy to draw a person as it is to draw a shirt.”
Carl looked at the sketch they now placed on top of the shirts. An ordinary-looking guy. If he didn’t know better, the man could be a photocopier salesman in Slagelse. Round glasses, clean-shaven, innocent-looking eyes, with a boyish set to his mouth.
“I don’t recognize him. How tall did the witness say he was?”
“At least six feet, maybe more.”
Then the detective took the drawing away and pointed at the shirts. Carl studied each of them. Offhand, they all looked pretty much the same.
Then he closed his eyes and tried to picture the shirt in his mind.
“What happened then?” asked Assad on the way back to Copenhagen.
“Nothing. They all looked the same to me. I can’t really remember that damn shirt anymore.”
“So maybe then you got a picture of them to take home?” Carl didn’t answer. He was far away in his thoughts. At the moment he was seeing Anker lying dead on the floor next to him, and Hardy gasping on top of him. Why the fuck hadn’t he shot those men? All he’d had to do was turn around when he heard them on their way into the barracks, and then none of this would have happened. Anker would be sitting next to him behind the wheel of the car instead of this strange being named Assad. And Hardy! Hardy wouldn’t be chained to a bed for the rest of his life, for fuck’s sake.
“Could they not just send you the pictures right away first, Carl?”
He looked at his driver. Sometimes those eyes of his had such a devilishly innocent expression under the inch-thick eyebrows.
“Yes, Assad. Of course they could have.”
He checked out the signs posted above the motorway. Only a couple of kilometers to Tåstrup.
“Turn off here,” he said.
“Why?” asked Assad as the car crossed the solid lines and took the exit ramp on two wheels.
“Because I want to take a look at the place where Daniel Hale died.”
“Who?”
“The guy who was interested in Merete Lynggaard.”
“How do you know about that, Carl?”
“Bak told me. Hale was killed in a car crash. I have the police report with me.”
Assad gave a low whistle, as if car wrecks were a cause of death reserved only for people who were very, very unlucky.
Carl glanced at the speedometer. Maybe Assad should let up a little on the speed, before they ended up in the statistics as well.
Even though it was five years since Daniel Hale lost his life on the Kappelev highway, it wasn’t hard to see traces left by the accident. His car had crashed into a building, which afterward had undergone rudimentary repairs; most of the soot had been washed off, but as far as Carl could tell, the majority of the insurance money must have gone to other uses.
He looked down the long expanse of open road. What bad luck for the man to drive right into that ugly building. Only thirty feet to either side and his car would have sailed into the fields.
“Very unlucky. What do you say, Carl?”
“Damned unlucky.”
Assad kicked at the tree stump still standing in front of the scarred wall. “He drove into the tree, and the tree snapped like a stick, and then he rammed into the wall and the car started to burn, right?”
Carl nodded and turned around. He knew that farther along was a side road. It was apparently from that road that the other vehicle had pulled out, as far as he could remember from the police report.
He pointed north. “Daniel Hale came from that direction, driving his Citroën from Tåstrup. According to the other driver and the police measurements, they crashed at that spot there.” He pointed at the line in the middle of the road. “Maybe Hale fell asleep. In any case, he drove over the center line and ran right into the oncoming vehicle. Then Hale’s car was flung back, right into the tree and the building. The whole thing didn’t take more than a split second.”
“What happened to him, the man in the other car?”
“Well, he landed out there,” said Carl, pointing to a flat piece of land that the EU had allowed to go fallow years ago.
Assad gave another low whistle. “And him nothing happened to?”
“No. He was driving some sort of gigantic four-by-four. You’re out in the country now, Assad.”
His partner looked as if he knew exactly what Carl was talking about. “There are also many four-by-fours in Syria,” he said.
Carl nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. “It’s strange, isn’t it, Assad?” he said then.
“What? That he drove into the building?”
“No, that he happened to die the day after Merete Lynggaard disappeared. The man that Merete had just met and who might have been in love with her. Very strange.”
“You think maybe it was suicide? That he was so sad because she disappeared down into the sea?” Assad’s expression changed a bit as he looked at Carl. “He killed himself maybe because he was the one who murdered Merete. It has happened before, Carl.”
“Suicide? No. Then he would have rammed the building on purpose. No, it definitely wasn’t suicide. And besides, he couldn’t have killed her. He was on a plane when Merete disappeared.”
“OK.” Assad touched the scarred surface of the wall. “So maybe it could not be him either who brought the letter that said, ‘Have a nice trip to Berlin.’”
Carl nodded and looked at the sun, which was about to settle in the west. “You could be right.”
“What are we doing then here, Carl?”