The 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.

Autorentext
Jussi Adler-Olsen is Denmark's #1 crime writer and a New York Times bestselling author. His books routinely top the bestseller lists in Europe and have sold more than twenty-seven million copies around the world. His many prestigious worldwide crime-writing awards include the Barry Award and the Glass Key Award, also won by Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, and Stieg Larsson.

Klappentext

**INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX SERIES DEPT. Q

In this tenth installment of the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling series, the team must 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.**

When the head of Department Q, Detective Carl Mørck, finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen's Vestre prison, he realizes that a violent case from his past has finally caught up with him. 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.

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. 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.

Leseprobe
1

CARL

Saturday, December 26-Sunday, December 27, 2020

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 pas…