The secretary smiled at Carl, but she didn’t really mean it. He had summarily forced his way into her appointment book; she just hoped he wouldn’t do it again.
Her boss received Carl with a characteristically wry smile and asked politely if he’d ever been in this part of the office complex on the edge of Copenhagen’s harbor. Then he gestured toward the huge picture windows that stretched from one wall to the other, sketching a glass mosaic of the multifarious state of the entire world: the ships, harbor, cranes, water, and sky, fighting for attention in all their grandiosity.
The view from Carl’s office wasn’t quite as good.
“You wanted to talk to me about the meeting at Christiansborg on February 20, 2002. I have it here,” Antvorskov said, typing on the computer keyboard. “Well, look at that: it’s a palindrome. How funny.”
“Say what?”
“The date: 20.02.2002. It’s the same whether you read it backward or forward. I can also see that I was visiting my ex-wife at precisely 8:02. We celebrated with a glass of champagne.” And then he added in English, “Once in a lifetime!” After which he smiled, and that part of the entertainment was over.
“I take it you wanted to know what the meeting with Merete Lynggaard was about?” he went on.
“Yes, that’s right. But first I’d like to hear something about Daniel Hale. What was his role at the meeting?”
“Hmm. It’s funny that you should mention it, but he didn’t actually have a role there. Daniel Hale was one of our most important developers of laboratory techniques. Without his lab and his excellent coworkers, a great number of our projects would have just hobbled along.”
“So he didn’t participate in project development?”
“Not the political or financial side of development, no. Only the technical side.”
“Then why was he at the meeting?”
Antvorskov bit his cheek for a moment, a conciliatory habit. “As far as I remember, he phoned and asked to attend. I no longer recall the reason, but apparently he was planning to invest a lot of money in new equipment, and he needed to keep up to date with political developments. He was a very diligent man; that may have been why we worked so well together.”
Carl caught the man’s self-admiration. Some businessmen made it a virtue to hide their light under a bushel. Bille Antvorskov was of a different breed.
“What was Hale like as a person, in your opinion?”
“As a person?” Antvorskov shook his head. “I have no idea. Reliable and conscientious as a subcontractor. But as a person? I have no idea.”
“So you didn’t have anything to do with him privately?”
This provoked the famous Bille Antvorskov growl that was supposed to pass for laughter. “Privately? I never set eyes on him until the meeting at Christiansborg. Neither he nor I had time for that. And besides, Daniel Hale was never at home. He would fly from Herod to Pilate in an instant. One day in Connecticut, the next day in Aalborg. Back and forth, constantly. I’ve probably scraped together a few free miles myself, but Daniel Hale must have left behind enough to fly a class of schoolkids around the world at least a dozen times.”
“So you’d never met him before that meeting?”
“No, never.”
“But there must have been meetings, discussions, price negotiations. Things like that?”
“You know what? I have staff to handle those things. I knew Daniel Hale by reputation, we had a few phone conversations, and then we were in business. The rest of the collaborative work was handled by Hale’s people and mine.”
“OK. I’d like to talk to someone here at the company who worked with Hale. Is that possible?”
Bille Antvorskov sighed so heavily that the tightly upholstered leather chair he was sitting on creaked. “I don’t know who’s still here. That was five years ago, after all. There’s a lot of turnover in our business. Everyone’s always looking for new challenges.”
“I see.” Was the idiot really admitting that he couldn’t hold on to employees? He couldn’t be. “Could you possibly give me the address of his company?”
Antvorskov frowned. He had staff to handle that.
Even though the buildings were six years old, they looked as if they’d been constructed only a week ago. “InterLab A/S” it said in three-foot-tall letters on the sign in the middle of the landscape of fountains in front of the garage. Apparently the business was doing just fine without its helmsman.
In the reception area Carl’s police badge was scrutinized as if it were something he’d bought in a practical-joke shop, but after a ten-minute wait a secretary arrived to speak with him. He told her that he had questions of a private nature, and with that he was immediately escorted out of the lobby and into a room with leather chairs, birchwood tables, and several glass cabinets full of beverages. Presumably it was here that foreign guests first encountered InterLab’s efficiency. Proof of the laboratory’s high status was everywhere. Awards and certificates from all over the world covered one whole wall, while another two displayed diagrams and photographs of various projects. Only the wall facing the Japanese-inspired driveway leading up to the building had any windows, and the sun was blazing in.
Apparently it was Daniel Hale’s father who founded the firm, but this was long ago, judging by the photos on the wall. Daniel had successfully followed in his father’s footsteps in the short time that he’d been boss, and clearly he’d done so with pleasure. There was also no doubt that he’d been loved and given plenty of incentives in the right direction. A single photo showed father and son standing close together, smiling happily. The father wore a jacket and waistcoat, symbolizing the old days that were on their way out. The son had not yet come of age, which was obvious from his smooth cheeks and big smile. But he was ready to make his mark.
Carl heard footsteps approaching.
“What was it you wanted to know, sir?” said a plump woman wearing flats.
The woman introduced herself as the public relations manager. The name on her ID badge, which was clipped to her lapel, was “Aino Huurinainen.” Finns had such funny-sounding names.
“I’d like to talk to someone who worked closely with Daniel Hale in the time before he died. Someone who knew him well privately. Someone who knew what his thoughts and dreams were.”
She looked at him as if he’d assaulted her.
“Could you put me in touch with someone like that?”
“I don’t think anyone knew him better than our sales director, Niels Bach Nielsen. But I’m afraid he doesn’t wish to speak with you about Mr. Hale’s personal life.”
“And why not? Does he have something to hide?”
She gave him another look as if he were making a serious attempt to provoke her. “Neither Niels nor Daniel had anything to hide. But Niels has never recovered from Daniel’s death.”
He caught the undertone. “You mean they were a couple?”
“Yes. Niels and Daniel were together through thick and thin, both in private and at work.”
For a moment Carl stared into her pale blue eyes. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she suddenly doubled over with laughter. But that didn’t happen. What she had just said was no joke.
“I didn’t know that,” he said.
“I see,” she replied.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a photograph of Daniel Hale, would you? One that you could spare?”
She stretched out her arm a few inches to the right and grabbed a brochure lying on the glass counter next to half a dozen bottles of Ramlösa mineral water.
“Here,” she said. “There ought to be at least ten of them.”
He didn’t get through to Bille Antvorskov on the phone until he’d had a lengthy discussion with the billionaire’s grumpy secretary.
“I’ve scanned a picture that I’d like to e-mail to you. Have you got a couple of minutes to take a look at it?” he said, after identifying himself.
Antvorskov acquiesced and gave Carl his e-mail address. Carl clicked the mouse and looked at the computer screen as he transferred the file.
It was an excellent picture of Daniel Hale that he’d scanned from the brochure the public relations woman had given him. A slender blond man, quite tall, suntanned and well dressed, as everyone had noticed over in the MPs’ restaurant. There was nothing about his appearance to indicate he was gay. Apparently he had other sexual inclinations. About to come out of the closet as a heterosexual, thought Carl, as he pictured the man, crushed and burned to death on the Kappelev highway.
“OK, the e-mail has arrived,” said Bille Antvorskov on the other end of the line. “I’m opening the attachment now.” There was a pause that seemed to go on for a very long time. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Can you confirm that it’s a photo of Daniel Hale? Was this the man who took part in the meeting at Christiansborg?”
“This man? I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
26. 2005
When she turned thirty-five
, the sea of light from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling returned, thus causing the faces behind the mirrored panes to vanish.
This time not all of the tubes in the reinforced-glass fixtures went on. One day they’re going to have to come in and change them or the room will end up in eternal darkness, she thought. They’re still standing there, spying on me, and they don’t want to have to stop. One day they’ll come inside and change the tubes. They’ll bleed off the pressure ever so slowly, and then I’ll be waiting for them.
They’d increased the pressure again on her last birthday, but that no longer worried her. If she could handle four atmospheres, she could also handle five. She didn’t know what the limit was, but they hadn’t come anywhere near it yet. Just like the previous year, she had hallucinations for a couple of days. It felt as if the background of the room was spinning around while the rest remained in sharp focus. She had sung and felt lighthearted; reality had become meaningless. This time everything returned to normal after only a couple of days. Then she began noticing a howling sound in her ears. At first it was very faint, so she yawned and tried to equalize the pressure as best she could, but after two weeks the sound became permanent. An utterly clear tone, like the one accompanying the test pattern on TV. Higher in register, purer, and a hundred times more enervating. It’ll go away, Merete, you’ll get used to the pressure. Just wait, one morning it’ll be gone when you wake up. It’ll be gone, it’ll be gone, she promised herself. But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing. When the high-pitched tone had lasted for three months and she was about to go crazy from lack of sleep and the constant reminder that she was living in a death chamber at the mercy of her executioner, she began working out in her mind how she would take her own life.
She knew now that it would all end with her dying anyway. The woman’s face had not displayed the slightest grounds for hope. Those piercing eyes were a clear indication they would not allow her to escape. Not ever. So it would be better to die by her own hand. To decide for herself how it would happen.
The room was completely empty aside from the toilet bucket and the food bucket, the flashlight, the two plastic stiffeners from her down jacket — one of which she’d made into a toothpick — a couple of rolls of toilet paper, and the clothes she was wearing. The walls were smooth. There was nothing to which she could tie the sleeves of her jacket, nothing from which her body could dangle until it was delivered from this life. The only possibility left to her was to starve herself to death. Refuse to eat the monotonous diet, refuse to drink the small amount of water they allowed her. Maybe that was what they were waiting for. Maybe she was part of some sick wager. Since time immemorial, human beings had always transformed the suffering of fellow humans into entertainment. Each stratum of human history had revealed an infinitely thick layer of callousness. And the sediment forming new layers was constantly piling up; she was finding that out for herself now. That was why she made the decision.
She pushed the food bucket aside, stood in front of one of the portholes, and declared that she would no longer eat any of the food. She’d had enough. Then she lay down on the floor and wrapped herself in her ragged clothes and her dreams. According to her calculations, it had to be October 6. She figured she’d last a week. At that time she would have lived for thirty-five years, three months, and one week. To be more precise: twelve thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four days, although she wasn’t entirely sure. She would have no headstone. There would be no birth date or death date to see anywhere. Not a thing left after her death that might link her to the time she’d spent in this cage, where she’d spent this last long period of her life. Other than her killers, she was the only one who would know the date of her death. And she alone would know it beforehand, with more or less accuracy. On approximately October 13, 2005, she intended to die.
On the second day of her refusal to eat, they shouted to her to trade out the buckets, but she refused. What could they do? Either leave the bucket in the hatch of the airlock door or take it back. It was all the same to her.
So they left the bucket in the hatch and repeated the same ritual over the next couple of days. The old bucket out and a new one in. They yelled at her. Threatened to increase the pressure and then let all the air out. But how could they use death as a threat when it was death she desired? Maybe they would come in, maybe they wouldn’t, she didn’t care. She let her mind run amok with thoughts and images and memories that could push the howling in her ears away, and on the fifth day, everything merged into one. Dreams of happiness, her political work, Uffe standing alone on the ship, love that had been shoved aside, the children she’d never had,
Mr. Bean
and quiet days in front of the television. And she noticed how her body slowly loosened its grip on its unfulfilled needs. Gradually she lay lighter on the floor; a strange stagnation took over, and time passed as the food in the bucket next to her began to rot.