A Conspiracy of Faith Read Online Free PDF

with interest, his gaze fixed on the brown cube. “Who has opened the box?”
    Carl jerked his thumb upward in the direction of the third floor.
    “Rose, come here a minute, will you?” Carl yelled into the corridor.
    Five minutes passed before she appeared: enough time in her view to signal just who was in charge. You got used to it.
    “What would you say to being assigned your first proper case, Rose?” He nudged the cardboard box gently across the desk toward her.
    He was unable to see her eyes beneath the jet-black fringe of her punk hairdo, but he felt sure they were hardly sparkling with enthusiasm.
    “Let me guess,” she said. “It’s to do with child porn or trafficking, am I right? Something you couldn’t be arsed with. In that case, the answer’s no. If you don’t fancy it yourself, you can give it to our little camel driver to amuse himself with. I’ve got other things to be doing.”
    Carl smiled. She hadn’t really sworn, and she hadn’t kicked the door frame. And describing Assad as a camel driver was almost a compliment, coming from her. Anyone would think she was in a good mood. He nudgedat the box again. “It’s a letter. A message in a bottle. I haven’t seen it yet. We could unpack it together.”
    She wrinkled her nose. Distrust was her partner in life.
    Carl pulled the flaps of the box apart, removed handfuls of polystyrene packing, and retrieved a folder that he placed on the desk. Then he rummaged around in more polystyrene and found a plastic bag.
    “What’s that inside?” Rose asked.
    “Shards from the bottle, I suppose.”
    “You mean they broke it?”
    “No, they took it apart. There’s a set of instructions in the folder telling you how to put it together again. Should be a piece of cake for a handywoman like you.”
    She stuck her tongue out at him and weighed the bag in her hand. “It’s not very heavy. How big was it?”
    He shoved the case file toward her. “Read it yourself.”
    She left the box where it was and went off down the corridor. Peace at last. In an hour it would be time to go home. He would take the train back to Allerød, buy a bottle of whisky, anesthetize himself and Hardy with a glass each, one with a straw and one with ice. A quiet night in.
    He closed his eyes and dozed for all of ten seconds until Assad suddenly made his presence felt in front of him.
    “I have found something, Carl. Come and have a look on the wall.”
    Funny how being off in the land of nod for only a few seconds always impacted so forcefully on one’s sense of balance, Carl thought to himself, clutching dizzily at the corridor wall as Assad proudly indicated one of the case documents that was affixed to the notice board.
    Carl dragged himself back to the real world. “Say that again, Assad. My thoughts were somewhere else.”
    “I asked only if you thought the chief might not consider this case in light of all the fires in Copenhagen.”
    Carl tested the floor beneath his feet to make sure it was steady, then went up to the wall upon which Assad’s index finger was now planted. The case was fourteen years old. A fire in which a body had been found.Murder, perhaps, in the area close to the city lake called Damhussøen. A case concerning the discovery of a body so badly burned that neither time of death nor gender could be established. All genetic material had perished. No missing person matched the body. Eventually, the case had been shelved. Carl remembered it well. It had been one of Antonsen’s.
    “What makes you think it has anything to do with the arsons going on now, Assad?”
    “Arsons?”
    “The fire-raising.”
    “Because!” said Assad, pointing eagerly at a photograph detailing skeletal remains. “This round groove in the bone of his short finger. It says something about it here, too.” He removed the plastic folder from the notice board and found the page from the report. “Here it is described. ‘As though made by a signet ring over a period of many