The Purity of Vengeance (26 page)

“Yes, but quite often they sterilized people who
weren’t
mentally challenged, and had them committed, too. It was the convenient thing to do if they wanted them out of the way. Gypsy women, for instance. And women with big families who relied on social benefits or else prostituted themselves. If The Cause could coax these women into the surgeries, they often came out again with their tubes tied, and certainly without the unborn children in their womb if they were pregnant.”

“OK, let me get this straight. You’re saying that radical surgical operations were performed illegally on these women without their consent?”

Mie Nørvig lifted her teaspoon and stirred her coffee, regardless that it was long since cold. That was her reply. They’d have to figure out the rest for themselves.

“Does any information exist on this organization, The Cause? Dossiers, reports of any kind?”

“Not as such, no. But I do have Philip’s files and newspaper cuttings in the basement where he had his office.”

“Honestly, Mie, do you think this is wise? Will it help matters?” Herbert inquired. “What I mean is, aren’t we better off letting sleeping dogs lie?”

Mie Nørvig didn’t answer him.

And then Assad raised his hand in the air, slowly and with a pained expression on his face. “Excuse me, may I use the toilet, please?”

 • • • 

Carl didn’t care much for rummaging through piles of documents. He had staff for that. But with one answering a call of nature and the other holding the fort back at HQ, he didn’t have much choice.

“Where should we start?” he asked Mie Nørvig, who stood gazing around the basement office as if she were a stranger in her own home.

Carl gave a sigh as she pulled out a couple of drawers from a filing cabinet to reveal a seemingly endless series of suspension files, all stuffed to bursting point. Poring through all this lot looked like it would take forever. Definitely something he could do without.

Mie Nørvig shrugged. “I haven’t concerned myself with any of this for a great many years. I don’t like to come down here since Philip disappeared. I’ve thought of just getting rid of it all, of course, but these are all confidential documents that need to be disposed of in the proper manner. It’d be such a bother. Much easier to lock the door and forget all about it. It’s not as if we need the space.” She paused and stared vacantly around the room once more.

“It’s a daunting task, I must say,” Herbert ventured. “Perhaps Mie and I ought to sift through and see if there’s anything that might be of interest to you. If anything turns up we could pass it on. Would that be all right? Of course, we’d need to know what we were looking for first.”

“Oh, I know,” Mie Nørvig exclaimed suddenly, indicating a large roll-front cabinet of light-colored wood, on top of which were cardboard boxes heavy with preprinted envelopes, business cards, and an assortment of forms.

She turned the key and the roll-front descended promptly like a guillotine.

“There,” she said, picking out a blue spiral scrapbook in A3 format. “Philip’s first wife kept it. After 1973, when Philip and Sara Julie were divorced, the cuttings were no longer stuck in, just placed between the pages.”

“You’ve been through it, I take it?”

“Certainly. After Sara Julie, I was the one who put the articles in that Philip asked me to cut out of the papers.”

“And what was it you wanted to show me?” Carl asked, noting that Assad had now entered the room, no longer paler than was healthy-looking for the average Arab. Maybe he was in better fettle now he’d been for a groaner.

“You all right, Assad?” he asked.

“Just a minor relapse, Carl.” He patted himself cautiously on the stomach, hinting that his peristaltic woes might not be over.

“Here,” said Mie Nørvig. “A cutting from 1980. And there’s the person I was telling you about,” she went on, pointing at the article. “Curt Wad. I couldn’t stand the man. Whenever he’d been here, or whenever my husband spoke to him on the phone, it was as though Philip was a different person. He could become so callous. No, callous isn’t quite the word. More impassive, as though he had no feelings left inside him. All of a sudden he could be so cold toward my daughter and me, as though he’d taken on a completely different personality. Normally he was kind enough, but often when this happened we would argue.”

Carl studied the article.
Purity Party Sets Up Korsør Branch
, the headline ran. Below it was a press photo. Philip Nørvig in a tweed jacket, the man at his side elegant in a dark suit, a tight knot in his tie.

Philip Nørvig and Curt Wad led the meeting with authority
, read the caption.

“Well, fuck me,” Carl muttered, glancing apologetically in the direction of his hosts. “This is the bloke who’s all over the news. The Purity Party, I recognize the name now.”

The photo showed a rather younger version of the Curt Wad he’d seen on TV the day before. Jet-black sideburns, a tall, handsome man in his prime, and by his side a thin, wiry man with sharp creases in his trousers and a smile that seemed false and infrequently used.

She nodded. “Yes, that’s him. Curt Wad.”

“He’s trying to get this Purity Party into parliament at the moment, is that right?”

She nodded again. “It’s not the first time, not by a long way. But this time it seems he might succeed, perish the thought. Curt Wad is a man with a lot of influence and no scruples, and his ideas are sick. One can only hope they’re given short shrift.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mie,” said Herbert, interrupting again.

Officious git, Carl thought to himself.

“Oh, but I do,” Mie Nørvig replied with some annoyance. “And you know fine well I do! You’ve kept up with the papers just as much as I have. Think of what that Louis Petterson was writing at one point; we’ve talked about it. Curt Wad and all his yes-men have been in the thick of all sorts of dreadful cases, abortions he referred to as necessary curettages, and sterilizations. Interventions the women didn’t even know they’d been subjected to.”

Herbert protested more emotionally than seemed called for. “My wife . . . Mie, that is, has got it into her head that Wad is to blame for Philip’s disappearance. Grief can be a terrible thing, and . . .”

Carl frowned and watched the man’s expression closely as Mie Nørvig went on, firm in her conviction. It was as though his arguments had long since worn thin.

“Two years after this photograph was taken, after Philip had put in thousands of hours working for that Purity Party of his, Wad kicked him out. That man, there”—she jabbed a finger at the image of Curt Wad—“came down here personally and kicked Philip out without the slightest warning. They claimed he’d been embezzling funds, but it wasn’t true. Just like it wasn’t true that he’d committed fraud in his law practice. He wouldn’t dream of such a thing. He just wasn’t all that good with figures, that’s all.”

“I really can’t see any obvious grounds for linking Curt Wad and this incident to Philip’s disappearance, Mie,” said Herbert, rather more subdued now. “Bear in mind the man’s still alive. He could sue you for—”

“I’m not afraid of Curt Wad anymore, I’ve told you that!” It was an emphatic outburst, her cheeks flushed beneath the fine layer of powder on her face. “You keep out of this for once, Herbert, and let me speak up. Do you hear me?”

Herbert retreated. It was plain that the matter would be the subject of continued debate behind closed doors.

“Perhaps you are also a member of this Purity Party, Mr. Herbert?” Assad ventured from the corner of the room.

The man’s jaw twitched, though he let the question pass. Carl sent his assistant an inquiring look. Assad nodded toward a framed diploma on the wall. Carl stepped closer.
Diploma of Honor
, it read.
Awarded to Philip Nørvig and Herbert Sønderskov of Nørvig & Sønderskov Lawyers for their sponsorship of the Korsør Scholarship Award 1972
.

Assad’s eyes narrowed as he directed a second discreet nod toward Mie Nørvig’s partner.

Carl returned the gesture. Well spotted, Assad.

“So you’re a lawyer, too, Herbert?” Carl asked.

“Well, used to be,” he replied. “I retired in 2001. But yes, I represented in the High Court until then.”

“And you and Philip Nørvig were partners, is that right?”

Herbert Sønderskov’s voice deepened a notch. “Indeed, we enjoyed a long and fruitful professional partnership until deciding to go our separate ways in 1983.”

“That would be in the wake of the accusations leveled against Philip Nørvig and the rupture between him and Curt Wad?” Carl went on.

Sønderskov frowned. This rather round-shouldered pensioner had years of experience clearing clients of charges brought against them. Experience he was now taking advantage of to protect himself.

“It certainly was, yes. Philip had got himself mixed up in something of which I did not approve, but the dissolution of the partnership was more for practical reasons than anything else.”

“Very practical indeed, it would seem. You got all his clients and his wife in one go,” Assad commented drily. “Were you still friends when he disappeared? And where were you at the time anyway?”

“Oh, so we’re shifting the focus now, are we?” Sønderskov turned to face Carl. “I think you should inform your assistant here that I have come across a great many policemen in my time and am more than accustomed to hearing exactly this kind of insinuation and scurrilous suggestion on an almost daily basis. I am not on trial here, nor have I ever been, is that understood? And besides, I was in Greenland during the time in question. I had a practice there for six months and didn’t return home again until after Philip disappeared. A month after, as I recall. I can prove it, of course.”

Only then did he turn back to Assad, anticipating the appropriately sheepish expression this eloquent counter must surely have brought to the man’s face. Assad, however, was nonplussed.

“And of course Philip Nørvig’s wife had become available in the meantime, isn’t that right?” Assad continued.

Oddly, Mie Nørvig refrained from commenting on Assad’s audacity. Had the same thought occurred to her, too?

“Now you listen here, this is outrageous!” Herbert Sønderskov seemed suddenly to age, though the venom that had no doubt made him a formidable opponent in former years was plain enough. “We open the doors of our home and welcome you inside, only to be met by insult. If this is the way the police do their job these days, then it seems I shall have to look up the commissioner personally and have a word with him. What was it you said your name was? Assad, was it? And the surname?”

Buttering-up time, Carl thought to himself. With the shit he was in at the moment the last thing he needed was an irate lawyer putting his oar in.

“I do apologize, Mr. Sønderskov, my assistant overstepped the mark. He’s on loan from another department and used to dealing with individuals less upstanding than your good self.” He turned to Assad. “Would you mind waiting for me by the car, Assad? I’ll be along in just a minute.”

Assad gave a shrug. “OK, boss. But remember to check if there’s anything on a Rita Nielsen in all these drawers.” He gestured toward a filing cabinet. “This one here says ‘L to N.’” Then he turned on his heel and walked stiffly out, looking like he’d either just spent twenty hours on horseback or else wasn’t quite finished on the crapper.

“That’s right,” said Carl, looking now at Mie Nørvig. “As Assad just said, I’d very much like to see if your archives here might include information concerning a woman who disappeared on the same day as your husband. A woman by the name of Rita Nielsen. May I?”

Without waiting for an answer he pulled out the drawer marked “L to N” and peered at its contents. There were an awful lot of Nielsens.

At the same instant, Herbert Sønderskov came up from behind and closed the drawer.

“Here we are going to have to stop, I’m afraid. These documents are confidential and I cannot under any circumstances allow you to breach the anonymity of the company’s clients. I must ask you to leave at once.”

“Well, I’ll just have to get a warrant, then, won’t I?” Carl countered, pulling his mobile from his pocket.

“By all means. But first you are to leave.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. If there
is
a file on Rita Nielsen in that drawer, who knows if it’ll still be there in an hour’s time? You’d be surprised how things like that can sprout wings all of a sudden.”

“I’m asking you to leave now, do you understand me?” Herbert Sønderskov reiterated in an icy voice. “You might be able to secure a warrant, but we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it. I know the law.”

“Oh, stop it, Herbert,” Mie Nørvig broke in firmly, making it abundantly clear which of them wore the trousers. Carl pictured Sønderskov exiled in front of the telly, dreaming about the dinners she definitely wouldn’t be serving him for the next week at least. Here was proof that cohabitation was the form of human interaction that involved by far the most numerous opportunities of sanction.

She pulled out the drawer, flicking through the files with the digital dexterity that came from years of practice.

“Here,” she said, extracting a folder. “This is the closest we get to a Rita Nielsen.” She showed Carl the front cover. It read
SIGRID NIELSEN
.

“OK, so now we know. Thanks.” Carl sent a nod in the direction of Herbert, who glared at him. “Could I ask you, Mie, to check and see if there’s anything on a woman by the name of Gitte Charles, too, by any chance? And a man called Viggo Mogensen? That’ll be all for now, I promise.”

Two minutes later he was out of the door. No Gitte Charles and no Viggo Mogensen.

 • • • 

“I don’t think Herbert’s going to remember you too fondly, Assad,” Carl grunted, as they turned the car toward Copenhagen.

“Maybe not. But when a man like him starts to panic, he acts like a hungry camel eating thistles. He keeps on chewing without daring to swallow. You saw how uncomfortable he was? I think he was acting strange.”

Carl looked at him. Even in profile it was easy to see the smile that reached to his ears.