Free The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen Page B

he didn’t have a clue where she should search. And yes, possibilities abounded. Whom should she ask first? She would have to figure that out on her own – just as long as she was quick about it.
    ‘Who was that, Carl?’ Assad asked.
    ‘It was your competitor, Assad. Be careful she doesn’t nudge you back to wearing green rubber gloves and driving a mop bucket.’
    But Assad wasn’t listening. He’d already squatted down to inspect the blood splatter on the game board.
    ‘Isn’t it strange there isn’t more blood on the board, Carl? After all, she was beaten to death right here,’ he said, pointing at the stain on the rag rug beside him.
    Carl pictured the bodies in the crime-scene photographs he’d seen earlier at headquarters. ‘Yes,’ he said, and nodded. ‘You’re absolutely right.’
    She’d been struck so many times, and had lost so much blood, yet there was very little of it on the game board. Christ, it was a shame they hadn’t brought the case file
with them so they could compare the photographs with the scene of the crime.
    ‘As I remember, there was a lot of blood on the board in the photos,’ Assad said as he poked the hexagonal mark at the board’s centre.
    Carl kneeled beside him, carefully inserted a finger under the board and lifted it. Sure enough, it’d been moved a tad. Contrary to the laws of nature, additional splatters of blood had stained the floor an inch or so in under the board.
    ‘It’s not the same game, Assad.’
    ‘No, I don’t think so, also.’
    Carl gingerly let the board fall back to the floor and then cast a glance at the box and the light outline of fingerprint powder around it. Twenty years ago it’d been a shiny box. The powder could be just about anything, now that he really saw it. Flour, white lead – anything.
    ‘I wonder who put that game here then,’ Assad said. ‘Do you know the game, Carl?’
    Carl didn’t respond.
    He was looking at the shelves bordering the room, just below the ceiling, where Eiffel Towers of nickel and Bavarian steins with pewter lids recalled a time when such objects were typically brought home from travels abroad as trophies. At least a hundred souvenirs bore witness to a family with a caravan and familiarity with the Brenner Pass and the wild forests of Harzen. Carl pictured his father, who would have gone into nostalgia overdrive.
    ‘What are you looking for, Carl?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘But something tells
me we ought to pay close attention. Can you open the windows, Assad? We need more light.’
    Carl stood up and once more studied the entire floor surface while his hand searched his breast pocket for his pack of cigarettes and Assad banged on a window frame.
    Except for the fact that the bodies were gone, and that someone had tampered with the game, everything was apparently as it had been.
    As he lit his fag his mobile rang. It was Rose.
    The game was in the archives at Holbæk, she said. The file was gone, but the game was still there.
    So she wasn’t completely hopeless after all.
    ‘Call them again,’ Carl said, inhaling a deep drag of smoke into his lungs. ‘Ask them about the pies and wedges.’
    ‘Wedges?’
    ‘Yes, that’s what they call the tiny thingamabobs you get when you answer correctly. You put them in the pies. Just ask them which wedges are in which pie. Note which, pie for pie.’
    ‘Pies?’
    ‘Yes, damn it. They’re also called wheels. Wheels or pies, it’s all the same thing. The round pieces that the small triangles fit into. Don’t you know Trivial Pursuit?’
    She emitted that ominous laughter again. ‘Trivial Pursuit? Today, in Denmark, it’s called Bezzerwizzer, Gramps!’ Then she hung up.
    They would never be best friends.
    He took another puff to calm his racing pulse. Maybe he could exchange Rose for Lis. Lis probably wouldn’t
mind gearing down to his speed. Punk hair or not, she sure would be a major aesthetic improvement to the basement, next to the