“Something new? No, nothing like that. But the case has reached the point where certain questions need to be resolved once and for all.”
Hyttested nodded, obviously unimpressed. “Five years after she disappeared? Come on, you’ve got to be kidding. Why don’t you tell me what you know instead, and then I’ll tell you what I know.”
Carl waved the banknote again so the man’s attention would be drawn to what was essential.
“So you have no knowledge of anyone who might have been especially angry with Merete Lynggaard at the time? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Everybody hated the bitch. If it hadn’t been for her fucking beautiful tits, she would have been tossed out long ago.”
Not a supporter of the Democrats, Carl gathered. It could hardly come as a surprise. “OK, so you don’t know anything.” He turned to the others in the room. “Do any of you know anything? Anything at all. It doesn’t have to be related to Christiansborg. Maybe some wild rumors. Or people who were seen around her while your paparazzi were on the prowl. Vague impressions. Ring any bells?” He looked at Hyttested’s colleagues. It would be easy to diagnose at least half of them as brain-dead. They looked at him with blank eyes that said they didn’t give a shit.
He turned around to look at the rest of the office. Maybe one of the younger journalists who still had some life in his skull would have something to say. If not from first-hand experience, then maybe third- or fourth-hand. This was gossip central, after all.
“Did you say that Hardy Henningsen sent you here?” asked Hyttested as he crept closer to the thousand-kroner note. “Maybe it was you who fucked things up for him. I remember very clearly reading something about a Carl Mørck. Isn’t that your name? You’re the one who took cover under one of your colleagues. The guy who lay underneath Hardy Henningsen and played dead. That’s you, right?”
Carl felt the Greenland ice cap creeping up his spine. How in the world had the guy come to that conclusion? All of the internal hearings had been closed to the public. No one had ever even hinted at what this shithead was now insinuating.
“Are you saying that because you want me to grab you by the collar, crush you flat, and then shove you under the carpet so you’ll have something to write about next week?” Carl moved in so close that Hyttested chose to fix his eyes on the banknote again. “Hardy Henningsen was the best colleague anyone could ever have. I would have died for him, if I could. Do you get me?”
Hyttested looked over his shoulder to give his coworkers a triumphant look. Shit. Now the headline for the next issue was in the bag, and Carl was the casualty. Now all they needed was a photographer to immortalize the situation. He’d better get out while he could.
“Do I get the thousand kroner if I tell you which photographer specialized in taking pictures of Merete Lynggaard?”
“What good would that do me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would help. You’re a cop, aren’t you? Can you really afford to ignore a tip?”
“Who is it?”
“You should try talking to Jonas.”
“Jonas who?” Now there were only a few inches between the thousand kroner and Hyttested’s greedy fingers.
“Jonas Hess.”
“Jonas Hess? Yeah, OK. Where do I find him? Is he here in the office right now?”
“We don’t hire guys like Jonas Hess. You’ll have to look him up in the phone book.”
Carl made a mental note of the name and then in a flash stuffed the thousand kroner back in his pocket. The jerk was going to write about him in the next issue, no matter what. Besides, he’d never in his life paid for information, and it would take somebody of an entirely different caliber than Hyttested before that ever changed.
“You would have died for him?” Hyttested yelled after Carl, as he strode between the rows of cubicles. “Then why didn’t you, Carl Mørck?”
He got Jonas Hess’s address from the receptionist, and a taxi dropped him in front of a tiny stucco house on Vejlands Allé, which had become silted up over the years with the detritus of society: old bicycles, shattered aquariums, and glass flagons from ancient home-brewing projects, moldy tarpaulins that could no longer hide the rotting boards underneath, a plethora of bottles, and all sorts of other junk. The owner of the house would be an ideal candidate for any one of those home makeover programs on TV. Even the most inept of landscape architects would be welcome here.
A bicycle lying in front of the door and the quiet growling from a radio behind the filthy windows indicated that somebody was home. Carl leaned on the doorbell until his finger started to ache.
Finally he heard from inside: “Cut that out, damn it.”
A ruddy-faced man displaying the unmistakable signs of a massive hangover opened the door and tried to focus on Carl in the blinding sunlight.
“What the hell’s the time?” he asked, as he let go of the doorknob and retreated inside. There was no need for a court order to follow him in.
The living room was of the type shown in disaster movies after the comet has split the earth in two. The homeowner threw himself onto a sagging sofa with a satisfied sigh. Then he took a huge gulp from a whisky bottle as he tried to localize Carl out of the corner of his eye.
Carl’s experience told him this man would not exactly be an ideal witness.
He said hello from Pelle Hyttested, hoping that would break the ice a bit.
“He owes me money,” replied Hess.
Carl was about to show the photographer his badge, but changed his mind and stuck it back in his pocket. “I’m from a special police unit that’s trying to solve mysteries about some unfortunate people,” he said. A statement like that couldn’t possibly scare anyone off.
Hess lowered the bottle for a moment. Maybe that was too many words for him to process, considering his condition.
“I’m here to talk to you about Merete Lynggaard,” Carl ventured. “I know that you sort of specialized in her.”
Hess tried to smile, but acid indigestion prevented it. “There aren’t many who know that,” he said. “And what about her?”
“Do you have any pictures of her that you haven’t published?”
Hess doubled over, trying to suppress a laugh. “Jesus, how can you ask such a stupid question? I’ve got at least ten thousand of them.”
“Ten thousand! That sounds like a lot.”
“Listen here.” He held up his hand with the fingers splayed out. “Two or three rolls of film every other day for two to three years — how many photos would that make?”
“A lot more than ten thousand, I would think.”
After an hour, and helped along by the calories contained in neat whisky, Jonas Hess was finally alert enough that he could lead the way, without staggering, to his darkroom, which was in a little building made of breeze blocks behind the house.
Here things were quite different from inside his house. Carl had been in plenty of darkrooms before, but none as sterile and neat as this one. The difference between the man in the house and the man in the darkroom was unsettling.
Hess pulled out a metal drawer and dived in. “Here,” he said, handing Carl a folder labeled: MERETE LYNGGAARD: NOVEMBER 13, 2001 TO MARCH 1, 2002. “Those are the negatives from the last period.”
Carl opened the folder, starting at the back. Each plastic sleeve contained the negatives from a whole roll of film, but in the last sleeve there were only five shots. The date had been meticulously printed on it: MARCH 1, 2002 ML.
“You took pictures of her the day before she disappeared?”
“Yes. Nothing special. Just a couple of shots in the parliament courtyard. I often stood in the gate, waiting.”
“Waiting for her?”
“Not just for her. For all the Folketing politicians. If you only knew what surprising groupings I’ve seen appear on that stairway. All it takes is waiting, and one day it happens.”
“But there were apparently no surprises that day, as far as I can see.” Carl took the plastic sleeve out of the folder and placed it on the light table. So these pictures were taken on Friday, when Merete Lynggaard was on her way home. The day before she disappeared.