The Absent One A Department Q Novel - By Jussi Adler-Olsen Page 0,2
suburb of Rungsted.
This time he’d set his sights on a woman with soft hair gathered at the nape of her neck and glasses with heavy black frames that made her look unapproachable.
It aroused him.
He’d tried speaking to her, with no luck. Offered her his copy of The Economist, the cover of which featured a backlit nuclear reactor, only to be met with a dismissive wave. He ordered her a drink that she didn’t touch.
By the time the plane from Stettin landed on the dot at Kastrup Airport, the entire ninety valuable minutes had been wasted.
It was the kind of thing that made him aggressive.
He headed down the glass corridors in Terminal 3 and upon reaching the moving walkway he saw his victim. A man with a bad gait, headed determinedly in the same direction.
Ditlev picked up his pace and arrived just as the old man put one leg on the walkway. Ditlev could imagine it clearly: a carefully placed foot would make the bony figure trip hard against the Plexiglas, so that his face—glasses askew—would slide along the side as the old man desperately tried to regain his feet.
He would have gladly carried out this fantasy in reality. That was the kind of person he was. He and the others in the gang had all been raised that way. It was neither invigorating nor shameful. If he’d actually done it, in a way it would have been that bitch’s fault. She could have just gone home with him. Within an hour they could have been in bed.
It was her bloody fault.
His mobile rang as the Strandmølle Inn appeared in the rearview mirror and the sea rose once again, blindingly, in front of him. “Yes,” he said, glancing at the display. It was Ulrik.
“I know someone who saw her a few days ago,” he said. “At the pedestrian crossing outside the central train station on Bernstoffsgade.”
Ditlev turned off his MP3 player. “OK. When exactly?”
“Last Monday. The tenth of September. Around nine P.M.”
“What have you done about it?”
“Torsten and I had a look around. We didn’t find her.”
“Torsten was with you?”
“Yes. But you know how he is. He wasn’t any help.”
“Who did you give the assignment to?”
“Aalbæk.”
“Good. How did she look?”
“She was dressed all right, from what I’m told. Thinner than she used to be. But she reeked.”
“She reeked?”
“Right. Of sweat and piss.”
Ditlev nodded. That was the worst thing about Kimmie. Not only could she disappear for months or years, but you never really knew who she was. Invisible, and then suddenly alarmingly visible. She was the most dangerous element in their lives. The only one who could truly threaten them.
“We’ve got to get her this time, do you hear me, Ulrik?”
“Why the hell do you think I phoned?”
3
Not until he stood outside Department Q’s darkened offices in the basement of police headquarters did Carl Mørck fully realize his holiday and summer were definitively over. He snapped on the light, letting his gaze fall on his desk, the top of which was covered in swollen stacks of case files; the urge to close the door and get the hell out of there was powerful. It didn’t help that, in the midst of all this, Assad had planted a bunch of gladioli big enough to obstruct a medium-size street.
“Welcome back, boss!” said a voice behind him.
He turned and looked directly into Assad’s lively, shiny brown eyes. His thin black hair flared in all directions in a sort of welcoming way. Assad was ready for another round at the police station’s altar, worst luck for him.
“Well, now!” Assad said, seeing his boss’s blank look. “A person would never know you’ve just returned from your holiday, Carl.”
Carl shook his head. “Have I?”
Up on the third floor they’d rearranged everything again. Bloody police reform. Carl would soon need a GPS to find his way to the homicide chief’s office. He had been away for only three lousy weeks, and yet there were at least five new faces glaring at him as if he were an alien.
Who the hell were they?
“I’ve got good news for you, Carl,” Homicide Chief Marcus Jacobsen said as Carl’s eyes skated over the walls of his new office. The pale green surfaces reminded him of a cross between an operating room and a crisis-control center in a Len Deighton thriller. From every angle, corpses with sallow, lost eyes stared down at him. Maps, diagrams, and personnel schedules were arranged in a multicolored confusion. It all seemed depressingly efficient.