A Conspiracy of Faith by Jussi Adler-Olsen Read Free Book Online Page B

dancing the fandango.
    “All right, boys?” said a delightfully familiar voice on the other side of the counter. Lis was back! Lis, forty years of eminently well-preserved flesh and brain cells. A true gift to the senses, in stark contrast to Ms. Sørensen, who smiled benevolently at Assad while rearing her head toward Carl like a cobra poked with a stick.
    “Tell the detective inspector what a lovely time you and Frank had together in the States, Lis.” The heron smiled ominously.
    “It’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,” Carl replied swiftly. “Marcus is waiting for us.”
    He pulled in vain at Assad’s sleeve.
    Thanks for fuck all, Assad, he thought to himself as Lis’s glowing red lips gleefully related the events of a whole month spent in America in the company of a wilted husband who had suddenly turned into a bison in the double bed of their rented motor home. These were images Carl tried with all his might to erase from his mind’s eye, along with thoughts of his own involuntary celibacy.
    “Bloody old hag,” he muttered under his breath. Assad wasn’t much better, either. Not to mention the lucky bastard who had ensnared Lis. And then there was Médecins Sans Frontières or whatever they called themselves, who had enticed Mona, the focus of his desire, and dragged her away to darkest Africa.
    “When does that psychologist of yours come home again, Carl?” Assad asked as they stood outside the door of the briefing room. “What was her name, now? Mona, is that right?”
    Carl chose to ignore Assad’s cheeky smile and opened the door. Most of Department A were there already, rubbing their eyes. They had spent a couple of exhausting days on the outside, up to their ears in society’s quagmire, but now Assad’s discovery had hauled them back to the surface again.
    It took Marcus Jacobsen ten minutes to brief his team, and both he andLars Bjørn seemed more than a little excited. Assad’s name was mentioned several times. His beaming smile was met by the narrowed eyes of his colleagues, clearly puzzled as to how this monkey of a cleaning assistant had suddenly appeared in their midst.
    But no one had the energy to ask questions. Essentially, Assad had discovered a highly plausible link between old and new cases of arson. All the bodies found in the remains of the blazes shared the same groove in the bone of the little finger of the left hand, apart from the one body on which that finger was missing. It transpired that the pathologists had made a note of it in each case, though no one had made the connection.
    The autopsies indicated that two of the deceased had worn a ring on their little finger. The cause of the groove in the bone had not been the heat of the blaze, the pathologists stated. A more likely conclusion was that the deceased had worn these rings since youth and that they had thus left their indelible mark on the osseous tissue. Such rings could have had cultural significance along the lines of the binding of feet in China, one pathologist had suggested, whereas another noted that some ritual might have been involved.
    Marcus Jacobsen nodded. Something like that. Some kind of brotherhood could not be ruled out, either. Once the ring was on, it was never removed.
    The fact that one of the bodies was missing a digit was another matter altogether. There could be any number of reasons for this, including someone having chopped it off.
    “All we have to do now is tie up the whys and wherefores,” the deputy chief, Lars Bjørn, concluded.
    Almost everyone nodded, some with a sigh. What could be simpler?
    “Department Q will notify us as to any similar cases they might turn up,” added the chief, and Assad received a pat on the back from one of the detectives who most definitely wouldn’t be doing any of the donkey work.
    And then they were out in the corridor again.
    “What was it now you were saying about this Mona Ibsen, Carl?” saidAssad, continuing terrier-like from where he’d left off.