Free A Conspiracy of Faith by Jussi Adler-Olsen Page B

whatever that was.
    “Is that furnace of yours on the go, Assad?” he asked, pointing to the tea urn.
    “You can have the last cup, Carl. I’ll make fresh for myself.” He smiled, his eyes lighting up in gratitude.
    “As soon as What’s-his-face has cleared off again, you and I are going out, Assad.”
    “Where to?”
    “Nordvest. To see a building that’s been all but burned to the ground.”
    “But that’s not our case, Carl. The others will be angry with us.”
    “To begin with, maybe. But it’ll blow over.”
    Assad looked anything but convinced. Then his expression changed. “I have found another letter in our message,” he announced. “And now I have a very bad suspicion, too.”
    “You don’t say. What is it, then?”
    “Now I won’t tell you. You will only laugh.”
    That sounded like the best news he’d had all day.
    “Cheers, thanks,” said Yding. He was poking his head around the door, his eyes fixed on the cup decorated with dancing elephants from which Carl was drinking. “I’ll pop this up to Jacobsen, if that’s all right with you?” He held up a couple of documents in his hand.
    They both nodded.
    “Oh, and by the way, I said I’d say hello from an acquaintance of mine. I bumped into him just now in the cafeteria. Laursen, from Forensics.”
    “Tomas Laursen?”
    “That’s him, yeah.”
    Carl frowned. “But he won ten million in the lottery and packed it all in. Sick and tired of dead bodies, that’s what he used to say. What’s he doing here? Back in the bunny suit, is he?”
    “Sadly, no. Forensics could certainly do with him. The only funny garment he’s got on now is an apron. He’s working in the cafeteria.”
    “That’s a joke, right?” Carl pictured the brick shithouse of a rugby player in his mind’s eye. If the slogan on that apron didn’t say something masculine along the lines of
BIG DADDY’S SWEAT RAG
, it would be a comical sight indeed. “What happened? I thought he’d invested in companies all over the shop.”
    Yding nodded. “He did. And got cleaned out. Bit of a downer, I’d say.”
    Carl shook his head incredulously. That’s what you got for trying to be sensible. It was a good thing he didn’t have a penny himself.
    “How long’s he been back?”
    “About a month, so he said. Don’t you ever eat in the cafeteria?”
    “Do I look like a half-wit? There are ten million stairs to that soup kitchen from down here. I suppose you noticed the lift’s out of order?”

    The number of businesses and institutions that had not at some point been based somewhere along the six-hundred-meter stretch of tarmac that was Dortheavej could be counted on the fingers of one hand. At present, the street housed crisis support centers, a recording studio, a driving school, arts and cultural activity centers, ethnic associations, and lots more besides. A former industrial neighborhood, seemingly indomitable, unless razed to the ground as in the case of K. Frandsen Wholesalers.
    The bulk of the clearance work had been completed in the yard, but the work of the investigation unit had barely begun. Several colleagues walked past without even a nod, but Carl wasn’t surprised. He took this to be a sign of envy, knowing deep down that it probably wasn’t. It didn’t matter, because he didn’t give a shit.
    He stood in the middle of the courtyard in front of the entrance to the building and scanned the remains. It was hardly the kind of construction on which a preservation order would be slapped, but the galvanized fencing that surrounded the place was new. A glaring contrast.
    “I have seen this kind of thing in Syria, Carl. The paraffin stove overheats, then
boom
…” Assad mimed an explosion with his hands in the air.
    Carl gazed up at the first floor. It looked like the roof had lifted and then fallen into place again. Broad fingers of soot extended halfway up the fiber-cement roof cladding from beneath the eaves. The skylights had been blasted to