Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [49]
“Wrong,” Bruiser says. “If you tell the police I did the mortgages, I’ll tell them you stole them. Theft is a crime.”
“You’re the one who’s got it wrong,” Sleipner answers. “Theft, according to the penal code, is a crime involving something of value. If the stolen goods have no value, there’s no crime. Since the mortgages are forgeries they’re invalid, and therefore worthless.”
“It’s like this,” Bruiser says. “The police won’t believe you if you tell them I did the forgeries.”
“They’ll figure it out soon enough. They have fingerprint and handwriting experts.”
The decisive words have now been spoken by Sleipner. Bruiser is silent. He resembles a masculine version of the goddess of revenge as he pulls out forty-nine thousand kroner. He slides them and the previously shown thousand-kroner note over to Sleipner, who slips them into his inside pocket and stands up.
“You’ll bring them to me now,” Bruiser says. His tone is menacing.
“If I’m not delayed or find something better to do,” Sleipner says, and leaves.
Outside, Sleipner makes sure he is not being followed, then walks to a supermarket and goes to customer service to request the return of a full grocery sack that earlier in the day he dropped off for safekeeping. He is given the sack, which contains groceries and mortgages.
Sitting on a park bench, he pulls out the mortgages. Later he walks into a post office and mails a thin envelope with fifty thousand kroner to an address in Jutland.
He walks back to his table, where Bruiser sits with four empty and one half-full whiskey glasses and waits for him.
“There,” Sleipner says, and lays thirty-one mortgages on the table.
Bruiser counts them. “There’s one mortgage missing,” he says. He speaks slowly, almost lifelessly, yet with a threatening undertone, as if he is the quiet before the storm.
“Of course. Naturally, I’ve kept one,” Sleipner says. “Otherwise I’d be walking around scared that you’ll take revenge on me. That won’t happen, now that you understand—I’m telling you now, anyway—that should anything bad happen to me, one of my friends you don’t know and never will know will send the final mortgage to the police, with the message that you forged it. I can send it to the police myself, if I think you’re beginning to act naughty.”
Bruiser can’t believe his ears. Then he thinks it’s too crazy to really be true. Not until later does he realize the battle is lost.
Sleipner and Bruiser never again sit at the same table. It seems as if they both prefer the company of others, should they desire company.
But when Sleipner and Bruiser run into each other—something that cannot always be avoided, being part of the same crowd—Bruiser is always quite friendly, in fact very polite.
And that is worth taking note of. Politeness, you don’t see much of that in their crowd.
DEBT OF HONOR
BY KLAUS RIFBJERG
Amager
The wind drove the rain in over the market’s flat roof in gusts, and the sidewalk from Elbagade to Parmagade floated. The streetlights still retained some of their half-blind poverty from during the war, though by now it had been several years since the last Prussian had dragged his boots and himself southward. But maybe it was just his imagination, maybe it was just his inner light, turned down so low that it resembled a pilot light. Maybe that was it, that he, Aage Baldersen, was on pilot light.
He pulled up his coat collar and felt its clammy chill against his neck hair. Despite the blackouts and everything else, there had been more action during what some called the evil years, but what he thought of as the good years. There had been lots to do, and while most felt something was left missing when the police were nabbed on September 19, 1944, and sent to Germany, others—he included—felt a certain relief. Not because he was a German sympathizer, but no one would deny that it had taken a certain amount of pressure off the underworld