A Conspiracy of Faith Read Online Free PDF Page A

funeral procession through the streets of Copenhagen to honor one of the victims merely inflamed matters further. People were braying about how come the police didn’t just take the troublemakers by the scruff of the neck so the streets could be safe again.
    Marcus Jacobsen was indeed a worried man.
    “OK, if you move us up here, you can shut down Department Q right now, this very second.”
    “Don’t tempt me, Carl.”
    “Meaning you lose eight million a year in funding. Wasn’t that what we were allotted, eight million? Hell of a price for petrol for that old wreck we drive around in. Oh, yeah, and three salaries, of course, for me and Rose and Assad. Eight million. Not exactly plausible, is it?”
    The homicide chief gave a sigh. Carl had him by the short and curlies. Without that funding, his own department would be short of at least five million a year. Creative redistribution. A bit like a government support scheme for outlying regions. Robbery made legal.
    “Solutions, please,” he said eventually.
    “Where were you thinking of putting us up here, anyway?” Carl asked.“In the bathroom? In the window alcove where Assad was yesterday? Or maybe here, in your office?”
    “There’s room in the corridor.” Marcus Jacobsen winced noticeably as he spoke. “We’ll find somewhere better soon. That’s been the idea all along, Carl.”
    “OK, fine by me. We’ll be needing three new desks, then.” Carl stood and extended his hand as though it was a done deal.
    The homicide chief backtracked slightly. “Just a minute,” he said. “I sense something fishy going on here.”
    “Fishy? You get three extra desks, and when Health and Safety come back, I’ll send Rose upstairs to pretty up the empty chairs.”
    “They’ll never buy it, Carl.” He paused a moment and looked like he might be taking the bait. “Then again…Sit down a minute, will you, Carl? There’s something I want you to have a look at. Remember three or four years ago we assisted our colleagues in Scotland?”
    Carl nodded hesitantly. Was Marcus now about to impose bagpipes and haggis on Department Q? It was bad enough with Norwegians once in a while, but Scots!
    “We sent them some DNA from a Scot doing time in Vestre, I’m sure you remember. It was Bak’s case. They solved a murder on that count, and now they’ve sent us something in return. A police expert in Edinburgh, Douglas Gilliam, has sent us this parcel. There’s a letter inside. A message in a bottle, apparently. They’ve had a linguist take a look at it and discovered it must be from Denmark.” He picked up a brown cardboard box. “They want to know the upshot, if we ever get a handle on it. It’s all yours, Carl.”
    He handed him the box and gestured dismissively, plainly finished with him.
    “What do you expect me to do with it?” Carl inquired. “How about passing it on to the post office instead?”
    Jacobsen smiled. “Very funny, Carl. Sadly, Post Danmark aren’t exactly specialists in solving mysteries, more in creating them, I’d say.”
    “We’re busy enough as it is,” Carl countered.
    “I don’t doubt it, Carl. But see what you can do. It’s probably nothing. Besides, it meets all the criteria for Department Q. It’s old, it’s unsolved, and no one else could be arsed.”
    Something else to stop me putting my feet up, Carl mused to himself, weighing the box in his hand as he descended the stairs.
    But then again.
    An hour’s shut-eye was hardly going to be detrimental to Danish–Scottish relations.

    “I’ll be finished with it all by tomorrow. Rose is helping me,” said Assad as he considered where the case he now stood with in his hand might originally have fitted into Carl’s three-pile filing system.
    Carl growled. The Scottish box was on the desk in front of him. Premonitions tended to stick, and he had a bad feeling about the cardboard box with the broken customs authority seal on it.
    “This is a new case, perhaps?” Assad inquired