Disgrace Read Free

pale green case file and stood as still as a pillar of salt, an expectant expression on his face.
    ‘Are you planning on standing there while I read?’
    ‘Yes, thanks,’ he said, setting his cup down on Carl’s desk.
    As he opened the file, Carl puffed his cheeks with air and slowly exhaled.
    The case was quite old. From the summer of 1987, to be exact. The year he and a mate had taken the train to the Copenhagen Carnival and a red-headed girl who couldn’t get the rhythm out of her loins had taught him how to samba – which, when they ended the evening on a blanket behind a bush in Rosenborg Castle Gardens, was heavenly. He had been twenty-odd years old then, and nothing was virgin territory after that.
    It had been a good summer, 1987. The summer he was transferred from Vejle to the Antonigade Police Station.
    The murders had to have been committed eight or ten weeks after the carnival, at roughly the same time as theredhead decided to throw her samba body across the next country bumpkin. Yes, it was precisely the period when Carl was making his first nightly rounds in Copenhagen’s narrow streets. Actually, it was odd that he didn’t recall anything about the case; it was certainly bizarre enough.
    Two siblings, a girl and a boy aged seventeen and eighteen respectively, were found beaten to a pulp in a summer cottage not far from Dybesø, near Rørvig. The girl’s body was badly bruised and she had suffered terribly during the beating, as evidenced by the defensive wounds.
    He scanned the text. No sexual assault, nothing stolen.
    Then he read the autopsy report once more and riffled through the newspaper clippings. There were only a few, but the headlines were as large as they could get.
    ‘Beaten to death,’ wrote Berlingske Tidende, providing a description of the bodies that was unusually detailed for this old, highbrow newspaper.
    They were found in the living room, by the fireplace, the girl in a bikini and her brother naked, a half-bottle of cognac gripped in his hand. He had been killed by a single blow to the back of his head, with a blunt object later identified as the claw hammer discovered in a tuft of heather somewhere between Flyndersø and Dybesø.
    The motive was unknown, but suspicion quickly fell on a group of young boarding-school pupils who were staying at the lavish summer residence of one of their parents near Flyndersø. On numerous occasions they had been involved in skirmishes at the local nightclub, The Round, where a few locals got seriously hurt.
    ‘Have you caught up to where it says who the suspects were?’
    From beneath his eyebrows, Carl glanced up at Assad. That ought to be enough of an answer, but Assad wouldn’t give up.
    ‘Yes, of course you have. And the report also suggests that their fathers were all the kind who earned lots of money. Didn’t many do that in the gold-eighties, or whatever it was called?’
    Carl nodded. He’d now reached that part of the report.
    Yes, Assad had it right. Their fathers were all well known, even today.
    He skimmed the group’s names a few times. It was enough to produce beads of sweat on his brow, because it wasn’t just their fathers who’d earned enormous sums and become well-known figures. Years later some of their offspring had become famous, too. Born with a silver spoon in their mouths, they now held the golden spoon. They were Ditlev Pram, founder of numerous exclusive private hospitals, Torsten Florin, internationally recognized designer, and stock market analyst Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen. All stood on the top rung of Denmark’s ladder of success, as had the now deceased shipping magnate Kristian Wolf. The final two members of the gang stood out from the rest. Kirsten-Marie Lassen had also been a part of the jet set, but no one knew where she was today. Bjarne Thøgersen, the one who’d pleaded guilty to killing the siblings and now sat in prison, came from more modest means.
    When Carl was done reading, he tossed the file on the