The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [100]
They had shown him pictures. They had meant to shock him, he knew, and it had worked. Even though he had seen her at the Institute of Forensics, it was somehow worse to see her in the place where she had died, crouched on a bed, blood in her hair. Crime scene photos. It made the violence of what had been done to her too real and unclinical. You could see the power behind those blows, the force that had killed her. He thought of the Lithuanian and his huge hands, and the words on the phone when he had tried to end it. Not until you pay. Fear tore at his stomach.
Nor had the police lost interest in him. He hadn’t told them about the Lithuanian or about Aleksander and the kidney he so desperately needed. Even though Jan had rid himself of the stolen Nokia, the photo of the boy, and the blood sample with the perfect DNA match, he still clung to hope, irrationally and beyond all realism.
Perhaps they sensed the lie and all the things he left unsaid. Perhaps that was why they kept coming at him for such a long time, even after he had sacrificed his self-respect and told them about Inger’s visit. And of course, they had sent someone to the villa in Tårbæk to check the usefulness of this alibi. Thinking about it was almost unbearable. He imagined Keld frowning and putting down his pipe. Getting up to perform polite handshakes with the cop. Hearing about Karin and the fact that Jan was a suspect. For a wild moment, he even thought that Keld might get into his old black Mercedes and drive directly to the house by the bay to take Anne away from him.
But of course, he wouldn’t do such a thing. They were married, and Keld had a lot of respect for that institution. Which didn’t mean he also had to respect the man his daughter had consented to marry, and Jan knew that that respect would now have evaporated. If it had ever really been there. In the midst of his general misery, that knowledge hurt with its own specific pain.
“You’ll be all right,” said the lawyer, patting him on the shoulder. “You have at least a partial alibi, and they have no physical evidence linking you to the scene. Almost the opposite, I believe. And the other thing … well, it will be very difficult for them to lift the burden of proof on that one.”
Jan nodded, and got quickly into his car.
“See you tomorrow,” he said, slamming the car door shut before the man had time to say anything else.
The other thing.…
It was the man in the blue pullover who had said it. The one that looked like a railway clerk. “People like you, Mr. Marquart. People like you don’t have to kill anyone themselves. After all, it’s so much easier to pay someone else to do it.”
That was an accusation that clung worse than a direct murder charge. Not least because it was much too close to the truth. He had tracked Karin. And he had offered the man money to go and get her. That he had never meant for the man to kill her—how does one prove that when she did in fact die?
THE WAY HOME felt long, even though he didn’t actually want to get there. After several weeks of clear skies and sunshine, clouds had begun to roll in from the west, darkening the twilight. A strong wind made the pine trees sway so that it looked as if they were trying to fall on top of the house. The automated garage door failed to work, again. He was too tired to get annoyed and merely left the car on the gravel outside. He could smell the sea even though he had smoked three cigarettes during the drive. The sea, and something else—the ozone-heavy damp smell of rain that hadn’t quite arrived.
He had barely inserted his key in the lock when the door slammed open, so abruptly that it tore the bunched keys from his hand. Something hit him in the face, and he was knocked backwards, ending up on his back in the gravel at the foot