The New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling Department Q series comes to a thrilling conclusion when the team must turn inward to solve the cold case that has put their own leader behind bars, a place where his enemies are plentiful and time is quickly running out.
On the day after Christmas, head of Department Q, Detective Carl Mørck, finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen's Vestre prison. After fifteen years, a violent case from his past has caught up with him. Charges of drug trafficking and murder threaten to destroy his life and career. But he is being framed. Someone has a million-dollar bounty on his head to make sure he doesn't talk, putting him in grave danger among the prison's incarcerated criminals and corrupt officers. The question that remains is, Why?
Carl's colleagues at the Copenhagen Police Department instantly turn their backs on him, leaving the ever-loyal Department Q team as his only hope. In search of answers, Rose, Assad, and Gordon must disobey direct orders from way up the chain to try to unravel case. With only one another to trust and Carl's battle against the unknown mastermind's henchmen worsening by the day, they must work faster than ever before if they are to clear his name—and save his life.
Release date:
December 3, 2024
Publisher:
Dutton
Print pages:
512
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The predicament in which Carl now found himself reminded him of childhood, of the moment when its haze of innocence had been cruelly and definitively lifted. When, for the first time, he had come to see everything a little too clearly, to feel the sting of lies. It was the experience of injustice burning itself into his cheek after an unearned slap. Of his younger years, when his love was unrequited, or later in his adult life, when a lover's betrayal loomed suddenly and without warning.
All these emotions came rushing back the second his most valued colleague, Chief of Homicide Marcus Jacobsen, clicked the handcuffs around his wrists-a lot tighter than necessary. They pressed harder still as he was dragged away from Mona and shoved into the waiting patrol car, while she signaled to him from the top of the steps that he wasn't alone.
Cold comfort.
Things went from bad to worse when the officer in the front seat instructed the driver to head not to the police station but directly to Vestre Prison.
"Hey, no, what are you doing? That's not right. Why aren't you driving me to the secure unit at the station?" he asked, but received no answer. He heard only mutters from the front seat, as well as Marcus Jacobsen's name mentioned several times.
Carl leaned gingerly forward between the front seats, trying to find a position where the cuffs behind his back weren't cutting off his circulation. It was blindingly obvious now that although he'd worked like a dog at the station for decades, solving difficult-almost impossible-cases, from this point on, he could forget about receiving any support from his colleagues.
What had he expected, really?
How many times had he escorted someone in custody to that bleak mammoth of a prison? And how many times had the tear-choked detainees in the back seat fought desperately to defend themselves with everything they had . . . or didn't have? Innocence, remorse, a family left behind-always in vain, mind you. The disgrace and humiliation simply had to be endured until the preliminary hearing. Pastoral care wasn't his job. He was just there to get them from A to B. At this point in the process, you were guilty until proven innocent.
Now, the day after Christmas in 2020, as the car drove down dark and frozen streets decorated with now-redundant wreaths and snowflakes, Carl tried to imagine what defense he could possibly muster.
What am I even defending myself against? he wondered. He had been arrested just as they had solved the Sisle Park case and freed Gordon. But had he actually done anything to feel guilty about? How had things gotten this far? Was it his reluctance to investigate the nail gun murders? His naivety when it came to the activities of his colleague Anker Høyer? His suspicion that Anker himself had been using drugs? Or was it that he'd stupidly done him the favor of storing that suitcase without asking what was in it? Left it sitting up in his attic all these years, never giving it a second thought? The suitcase, as it turned out, had been crammed full of hard drugs and a dizzying amount of cash in various currencies. God, if only he'd broken it open before the others got there, he could have handed it in. How silly of him to believe so blindly that when push came to shove, nobody would suspect him, loyal detective that he was, of criminal activity. That was practically a mortal sin in and of itself. And now he didn't have a clue what to say in his defense. All he knew was that his colleagues in the patrol car had no interest in protestations of innocence or invocations of abandoned families. What did that have to do with them? They would listen only to remorse, to confessions and repentance-but they weren't getting that. So Carl said nothing as they drove through the prison gates, nothing as he was escorted toward the intake officer, winter-pale and weary-looking.
The accompanying paperwork handed over by one of the police officers was examined carefully through matte-framed glasses, and the guard glanced up to confirm that they were not requesting protective custody. This seemed to surprise him, since the prisoner in question was a high-profile police officer.
Carl too was taken aback. No protective custody-what did the man mean?
"Hey, listen," he said. "I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people in here are locked up because of me. So-"
"You'll take what you're given," the guard interrupted.
That didn't bode well. And as Carl was led away and asked to strip, his colleagues didn't nod goodbye.
The wizened guard conducting the search eyed Carl with the same contempt as Jacobsen had when reading him his rights.
"Well, well, well! The revered Carl Mørck. Well, well, well," he repeated, tossing the clothes into a pile. "I'd say there are a few lads on the wing who are going to enjoy this. Doubt there's a single inmate in this whole establishment who'd want to be in your shoes right now," he went on, dumping a change of clothes into Carl's arms.
Although Carl had been anticipating them, the words still hit harder than he'd have liked. Perhaps he'd been expecting some magical portal to open up and drop a solution into his lap? But none seemed to be forthcoming.
As he was led down the familiar narrow, colorless corridors and past peeling bars into the East Wing itself-an imposing jumble of stairs, railings, safety netting, and countless cell doors-and toward cell 437, his last protective layer of armor fell away, and Carl began to sweat. He knew for a fact that any naïve remnant of a sense of justice he might have had would vanish the moment the heavy door slammed behind him with its irrevocable click.
Carl's eyes darted around the large, sterile prison wing, which was lit coldly from above, before he was led into the cell and the key was turned on the other side of the door. He'd seen hundreds of prison cells in his time, of course, but never before had a narrow black mattress like the one before him been his bed. The bed where he would have to try to get some rest without Mona by his side. Where he would not be woken early next morning by his daughter crashing into him headlong, would not wake up hoping that the dawning day would hold good things in store for him.
Carl surveyed the damaged gray noticeboard above the bed, reading the words a former inmate had written in pen, the letters gradually fading.
All of them depressing. No small light in the darkness.
He had just drifted into a kind of sleep, having spent most of the night racking his brain over what was going to happen next and what he ought to do, when someone hammered on the door and a rough male voice yelled that they fucking knew who he was in there, that they were going to get him. Then the voice fell silent, evidently due in part to a couple of guards bundling the aggressive man away.
But the words could not be unsaid: "We're going to get you, pig."
Propping himself up on his elbows, Carl took a deep breath. So. The harassment had begun, throwing reality on the inside into sharp relief. "Get" meant "kill." "Pig" meant he deserved it. From now on, being him was deadly. As he thought back to all the times he'd seen things go badly for an officer on the inside, he swallowed a lump. His only hope now was to get a court-appointed lawyer who could yank him out of the firing line, either by getting him released after the preliminary hearing or by obtaining protective custody, which surely he had a right to as a police officer.
Plus he'd have to find some way to talk to Rose, Assad, and maybe also Gordon, if the poor guy wasn't still too shaken up by the nightmare that had unfolded over Christmas, when he'd been held captive for several days and come within a hair's breadth of being executed by the serial killer Sisle Park. The three of them would have to knuckle down and uncover the truth behind the nail gun murders, now that things had so suddenly and radically gone into overdrive. Finally, it was crucial that Mona, in her capacity as a police psychologist, be given permission to visit him more often than was normal for close relatives.
The case they seemed to be trying to pin on him was rooted fifteen years in the past. The chief witness-also the prime suspect, his former colleague Anker Høyer-had died in Amager in 2007, and another colleague, Hardy Henningsen, had been paralyzed during the same incident by a bullet through the spine. So who was left to testify, then, apart from the third person involved in the shooting-Carl himself? Could Hardy? Would he? Was he even on Carl's side?
Carl sank back onto the thin mattress, feeling the weight of his powerlessness. A bullshit case, that was what this was, and all roads led back to Anker Høyer, the man who had once been a good friend and colleague. If it wasn't for Anker, Carl wouldn't be lying here now, he was sure of that. Anker had been one of those cops who didn't see himself in the same role as Carl and Hardy for the rest of his life-that much had been obvious even then. He had ambitions, and for Anker, Anker and Anker's needs always came first. It was the reason why his wife had kicked him out, why he was always on the lookout for opportunities to climb another rung up the social ladder. To Anker, social climbing meant getting his hands on money, and lots of it. Why hadn't Carl foreseen that that might eventually become a problem? Still, the idea that Anker was corrupt, that he was complicit in drug dealing-and worse-it had never crossed his mind. Nor that it would lead to Anker's death in some godforsaken hovel in Amager. And now here he was, suspected of being his accomplice. The truth was, Carl couldn't remember a damn thing about almost anything that had happened back then.
He had never wished more fervently that his old friend Hardy was by his side, so that together they could try to figure out what had happened in 2007, in what everybody had called "the Nail Gun case." Carl sighed again. He knew perfectly well that it was wishful thinking. Hardy was currently undergoing several months of alternative and probably pointless rehab in Switzerland. There wasn't much chance of his getting involved.
In the hours that followed, Carl took up the fragments of the past and tried to piece them together. When he looked at them arrayed like that, he realized what an idiot he'd been. He'd kept Anker's stolen goods hidden in a suitcase in his attic. He and Hardy had allowed themselves to be lured out to Amager, ignoring Anker's erratic behavior. He had neglected to delve further into what had happened afterward, when those mechanics in Sorø were killed with a nail gun in exactly the same way as an uncle of one of them, Georg Madsen, the old man in Amager. Neglected to take sufficient interest in what the victims had actually done, given that their lives had ended so ignominiously, with nails buried in their skulls.
Carl fixed his gaze on a spot on the ceiling and tried to hold it steady as he marshaled his excuses. First and foremost, that Anker's death and Hardy's terrible injuries had almost destroyed him. He'd had two breakdowns in succession and a bad case of PTSD, which he obviously hadn't wanted to admit. And on top of that he'd just been so fucking gullible, even though that wasn't usually like him.
On Sunday morning at eight thirty a.m., after a miserable night, Carl was driven to court in the city center and placed in a holding cell. Barely fifteen minutes before the session was due to start, he was led up to a side room where his unknown defense counsel was waiting.
As soon as he set eyes on the man, Carl sighed. One quick glance at his shabby green overcoat and unshaven face was enough for Carl to know he couldn't expect much help from that quarter. Clearly one of those court-appointed lawyers who had abandoned hope of a glorious career as a star defense counsel, the sort of trajectory crappy TV series led law students to believe awaited them after university. Still, what else did he expect? No doubt there wasn't exactly a huge selection of lawyers who were both available and highly motivated, not two days after Christmas. And on a Sunday, to boot.
"Has my wife been informed that my preliminary hearing is up first today?"
The lawyer shrugged. "I don't know, actually. Seems like it's only just been decided." He smoothed his glistening hair. "Name's Adam Bang," he said, gripping Carl's hand. "I have my two kids with me this weekend, three and five, and I had to twist my sister's arm into coming over to babysit. So you'll have to excuse my appearance." He tried to straighten his crooked tie. "Didn't even have time for a shower, actually."
Nice of him to admit it.
In the courtroom where the preliminary hearing was being held, Carl realized from a single sweeping glance that none of his relatives or friends from Department Q were present. There were, however, ranks of journalists from the Copenhagen dailies, as well as the police officers who had been present at his arrest. Among them, presumably, were members of the Police Complaints Authority, or PCA. They would be the ones responsible for the investigation going forward, since the assumption was that Carl, like Anker Høyer, had broken the law during his time on the force. Carl scanned for friendly faces among the black chairs in the public gallery but found only one, Sergeant Bente Hansen. She caught his eye and nodded quickly at him with a cautious smile, but Carl dropped his gaze awkwardly. He was genuinely touched to think that she was there for him. Maybe he should tell Rose that the Q team could count on her for a helping hand.
"What the hell is going on?" he whispered to his lawyer. "Why are there journalists here? We need to get rid of those hacks. Do you know how they found out about my arrest?"
Carl leaned toward Marcus Jacobsen, who was sitting behind him in the front row of the gallery. "Is this your doing, Marcus?" he asked, nodding in the direction of the already scribbling journalists.
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