Buried (Department Q #5)

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

BURIED

I don’t often write reviews, that’s what I I figure Kindle notes & Goodreads are perfect for, feel something right in the moment and post it, otherwise you’ll forget it come the end. I call my rather unique mental scaffolding ‘the spidey web’, it, along with a Olympic sized swimming pool full of ‘little red fishies’ (red herrings) & of course myself, The Ego, spend the entirety of any book being read battling over a plethora of plot twists, guesstimating, maybes & hopefully semi hilarious puns & diatribe, although, be warned before you read, that sometimes I even scare myself. So without further ado…

This is how they make the natives toe the line and keep their mouths shut, he thought. Just give them alcohol and drugs and they’d be in the palm of your hand.

I guess it’s a step up from when the white men wanted to take America they found the easiest way was to give the Indians infected blankets etc so they got sick & died as they had no antibodies to fight off the diseases. Oh yeah & they shot & killed them & rounded them up & pushed them all into reservations’ White men & women, of which I am one, have a lot to be sorry for…

Why had he come? Where was the money? Why had they not begun to plant? And who was the white man Mbomo had been with? That’s what he wanted to know.

I’d say because of the almighty $$ in one way or another, there’s something there they want, diamonds?…

Kondengui prison.

A real place

The doctors had been in no doubt: without Assad’s armour-plated skull and his iron constitution, the blow he had received to the back of his head would have turned him into a vegetable if it hadn’t killed him outright. A few more burst capillaries in his brain and that would have been it. Apart from a tendency to depression, headaches, a rather crab-like gait and the slight sagging of the right side of his face, plus a host of other more minor things, the man was on his way to full recovery. It was close to a miracle, or whatever you wanted to call it.

I wish my work had been so kind, especially as I worked in a bloody hospital! Granted I was having balance issues, I still am, but you know what my work did?… They made me go to a psychologist so he could rate me for if I could still do my job, over a 4hr appointment & asked so many personal questions & put through all these tests to see if I was ‘normal’ enough to continue working, I left stunned & held it together until I got home & then had a breakdown as I’ve been judged during my life in so many ways, but this was judging ME, the core of me & it hurt like you’d never understand if you haven’t lived it. Oh yeah & I had to do a physical testing too, not as bad, they just wanted to see me walk, how fast I could, what weights I could lift etc etc, that wasn’t a big deal.

For a moment it was superseded by hatred and anger, though he couldn’t say towards whom it was directed. Was the family here at fault for loving each other? And could he be certain that his father, or even Zola, had not at some point loved him? How will I ever know? he wondered, again feeling overcome by solitude. What use were such thoughts, anyway? He dried his eyes. He promised himself that one day he would make a family of his own and he would be certain what they felt for him.

Awhile ago now, but all I had was a job & a crappy room in a crappy house rented out to two sisters who I should have never even dreamt were good flatmate material. I can recall riding the bus home, I’d look out at the houses with their windows lit up & wonder if I’d ever have a place of my own, I was never going to of afforded it on my own. Then my parents bought a unit right near where I worked & rented it out to me, I can still remember the first time I was brought here after work by my Dad, all I could think was “all of this just for me?” I could never explain how much my home means to me, it’s not just a place, it IS a home. It’s also a good buy as I believe they paid around 150K for it back then, it’s now worth between $800K to $1M, it’s not the actual unit, although it’s now totally renovated & looks amazing, guess I have to thank the flood for that, & all my new everything as I lost all my old everything, but anywhos, it’s the land here that’s the money spinner.

‘Fifteen years old but looks younger. Approximately one metre sixty-five, but still growing. Black curly hair, green-brown eyes, rather dark skin. No distinguishing marks, I’m afraid.

Add a few years to that, & you’d have a very good looking young man. I’ve always thought those of mixed race can have the most strikingly beautiful/handsome looks & anyone who spouts evil off about it just needs to shut it.

Yes, Zola definitely understood. Marco mustn’t have a chance. It was imperative.

& us readers can take from this it’s to do with background story of the African tribes & why they’re essentially being drugged/drinking to death. It’s obviously the land, diamonds? Oil? Gold? Something else?… but diamonds has my kinda vote

Carl took a sip of his wine and scrutinized Hardy’s long frame. Two hundred and seven centimetres of ill fate under a duvet cover as white as only a home health-care nurse could procure. The shape of his immobile size-47½ feet and bony legs that had once been so muscular. A torso that in days gone by could press anyone resisting arrest into submission. Arms as thin as spaghetti that were once more than a match for the flailing haymakers of weekend drunks. Yes, this was but the shadow of a whole person lying before him. The lines of his face, etched by endless days and nights of grief and worry, were ample evidence.

When something out of your control knocks you sideways & forces you into a new reality where your not you anymore, you can’t do the things you used to, so many things to be affected & all of them sting. That will be why he cries in the night, when he thinks nobody can hear him, & why he acts mostly, as positive as he can. You cannot ever get this if it hasn’t happened to you, no matter how much you want to.

By the time they got to the hundred and tenth house, Carl was more than ready to step into the role of Rose’s boss and let her get on with it on her own. ‘OK, this is going to be the last one,’ he said, his eyes following a figure pottering about behind the panes of the front window. ‘You can do the flat upstairs, then carry on with the next streets.’

Umm, that makes no sense… They get to the 110th house, he says it’s the last one… Then says for her to do a flat upstairs, still all good… Then out of nowhere he says… Then carry in with the next street! Umm… okkk, so is it the last one? Or what? Because you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever

‘All of us live with a certain number of words inside us,’ Kaj told him, time and again. And in Marco’s case the number of words was growing all the time.

If you asked my Mum that about me, she’d say I was born writing a book. I know I do this, I can’t just toss out a couple of words to explain something etc, I have to write a story, she hates it, well not hates, but just thinks I don’t need to do it, that it probably annoys other people, to which I say it’s me, I love words, I like poetry, I like knowing where words come from, etc etc & if someone doesn’t like it, they don’t need to read it. & all of that ^ really proves my point quite perfectly

the lie of the land.

Weird, here in NZ we’d say ‘the lay of the land’ I actually googled it because I thought the book was wrong, but it turns out this version is the original saying & ‘lay’ came along later. Have to say though ‘lie’ seems accurate for another reason

Out here in Østerbro he never saw anyone from the clan.

He shouldn’t stay there, he should move to another country

Mariana Trench,

As we say: A single camel at the trough cannot yield a calf.’

Is the author making all of these up? I rather suspect he may be, if so, he’s bloody brilliant & utterly hilarious

Bit of a nerd, really. Know what I mean?’ Assad nodded eagerly, always glad of a good cliché.

I don’t think that comes across the translation ditch very well as it’s not one, a cliche I mean, she’s just saying the women’s a nerd like person, for a cliche she’d have to say for example “she’s a typical nerd, totally dresses like a librarian & her bookcases were full of books on subjects I can’t even say let alone, read, & that’s before she even opens her mouth!”

Getting away from Copenhagen was certainly easy enough. The journey to Karlshamn only required a ticket available at any railway ticket office, no ID needed. In merely a few hours Anweiler could be at the ferry terminal, two hundred and fifty kilometres away in southern Sweden.

My neighbor & me were just talking about that the other night, how lucky people in England, Europe etc are, they can just hop, skip & jump to a holiday in another country.

The next postcard was obviously a bought one. A little map of Russia on which a line had been traced with a blue felt-tip pen from St Petersburg through Arkhangelsk, Magadan, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok and Irkutsk, where a ring had been drawn around Lake Baikal. From there, the onward route was marked by a dotted line going through Novosibirsk, Volgograd, Novgorod and Moscow.

Jeez, that’s one hell of a detailed postcard, how the heck did they fit all that on just one?!

Pumpehuset

I thought that meant what I thought it did, confused? Me too! Seriously though I did, it stood out as there’s a place called The Pump House right near me, it’s a cafe/restaurant & they do plays there, art shows etc, it’s not big enough for bands though, it’s not quite the area’s style.

Carl looked at the time. He was meeting Mona in half an hour. At a posh café, for once. Not exactly her style, but for him the choice of venue was excellent, for otherwise he risked the bonus of having to deal with her unmanageable, eternally snot-nosed grandson.

Whose choice?

he resolved nonetheless to see if he could get near Kaj and Eivind’s flat when the day drew to a close.

Oh I’ve got a really bad feeling here

All of them had been threatened with having their businesses burned to the ground if they refused to spit out what they knew about Marco, so they had. The mini-mart’s counter had been smashed and the manager punched in the face.

He should of gotten hold of people sooner, & he could of said his family was involved in cult thing & that’s why he left, he wanted a better life for himself, a ‘good’ life, people would be more understanding, & actually thinking about it, he should of warned people way before this. Anyways though, how big is this place, as you can’t tell me these cult people , for lack of a better term, & it’s actually an apt term, they can’t of gone into every single shop/business & threatened people like this, the police would of been called way before now…

Forced to leave behind the most important thing of all.

I would of said the most important thing would if been the new life he had created for himself, not money & I don’t mean the moneys not important, but… anyways he’d be clever enough to get himself back in there & grab the money Lastly, I don’t like how Eivind’s character changed, it would if been better for him to of helped him, not act out like that, it doesn’t seem true to the characters traits.

Café Bohème had not been Carl’s choice,

Yes it was, that below is c&p from the end of the last chapter, & it certainly makes it seem it’s his choice, at least it read that way, until rereading it a few times now & thinking, it could of been her choice, it was just very ambiguous & read more like his perspective… Carl looked at the time. He was meeting Mona in half an hour. At a posh café, for once. Not exactly her style, but for him the choice of venue was excellent, for otherwise he risked the bonus of having to deal with her unmanageable, eternally snot-nosed grandson.

Was that really the way she felt about him?

In all honesty, the therapy issue alone should have let him know she was a bit… controlling?…

‘That was good, Carl. Letting the possibility sink in. Just like the boat, yes? Very clever.’

Heh I know!

Mona had moved her practice a couple of months earlier into a shared clinic, the only snag being that callers always had to go through the secretary, a young woman who apparently considered herself as competent a psychologist as those who conducted their therapy in the rooms behind her desk.

Omg, this could seriously of been written about a girl that worked reception at my doctors! She once refused to put me through to him or the nurse saying SHE knew what she was doing, & surprise surprise, she messed it up! Oh yeah & when I got told my Mum out of the blue was going in for immediate surgery regarding her possibly having what they thought was cancer, I needed to arrange immediately medication for me as I was going to have to go to her place, I explained this to this girl, said it was an emergency situation & to please put me through to the doctor or nurse & she refused & said “It may be an emergency to you, but it’s not to us” .The gall of this girl! In the end I had to get my chemist involved & eventually she put them through, & I stress eventually, as she wouldn’t do it for them at first either!

But perhaps you can tell me what might have been on that houseboat that could have caused such a huge explosion? A bit hard to account for, isn’t it?’

Pyrotechnics for the concerts?…

Ms Sørensen, the formidable Department A secretary, had risen to the occasion and baked cakes of such leaden substance that only those truly ravaged by hunger would dare set their teeth into them. Lis had inserted little Danish flags into the icing. And underneath all the disposable tumblers with hardly anything to fill them – it was during working hours, after all –

When I first started working at the hospital they did good staff Xmas parties, a BBQ salads, dessert etc along with free beer, wine & soft drinks, a DJ or live music & you actually got a little gift. You could even bring a friend/family member/partner They held them starting Friday afternoon & they lasted as long as the people did. By the time I left there was no booze, no gifts, there was a BBQ where you were allowed to have one piece of meat & then the bare basic salad, no dessert, there was no music, you had to show staff ID to get in, weren’t allowed to bring anyone with you, there was only sugar free drinks & they held them in the middle of the day for a 2 hour period. That was it.

Thus came twenty years of service at police HQ to an end. There was no big fuss. One day they were here, the next they were gone. It all went a little too smoothly.

I medically retired on the exact day I started, 20yrs on & my farewell was even more worse than this!

‘I think this calls for some Turkish delight,’ he announced, with a nod towards the coloured blobs of sugar on the tray as if they were the contents of the Holy Grail.

Yumm, I for one like Turkish delight

Carl nodded. If anyone would know, she would.

Lost in translation … In the way this reads in English, it’s almost like he’s saying SHE likes young boys & girls, c&p below reads exactly like that, there’s no other way to really take it. I realize it’s not meant this way, but I think the author needs a better translator. ⬇️ If anyone would know, she would

Now he was gone from this world. No more than a face on a poster.

& a body in the ground, & as well as a person who someone loved & is looking for them. It’s more than you’ll be able to say about me when I die.

He had to go back and get into that house.

Well for the book, yes he does, but he could have just ignored all of this from the get go, got himself over into another country, even England & started again putting all this behind him.

‘Whoever he was, he didn’t look pleased to see us here, that’s for sure.’

I have a feeling there will be a time when he will be…

He stood up, went over to an old Hewlett-Packard computer and switched it on. The hard drive whirred and groaned for a minute or so until a grey-green image appeared on the bulky screen. No password. Nothing but old games for kids. He turned it off again.

Oh but the best things are always hidden in plain sight, & an old computer with nothing really on it’s about as good as you could get, what do you bet if you type that passcode into the right area on that computer a wealth of information will open up. That’s what I’d of done anyways. Have a hidden drive that doesn’t show up unless you do the right thing, not hard to do but very hard for someone to imagine, too impatient… hell just use a pixel in an image even to flip up what’s hidden from sight.

The basement offered no hiding place, he knew that, and the ground floor contained no built-in wardrobe or cubbyhole.

The safe

The more Zola thought about it, the more probable it sounded.

That’s the one catch fall of people like him, they often see others as they see themselves as they don’t like to admit how low they really are, so they put everyone else on the same playing field

Were they going to make off with all the proceeds and disappear? How could he be certain they respected his interests and that his share wouldn’t suddenly vanish into thin air?

Have they just been doing money laundering? Or misappropriating funds? Or is there more to it? Diamonds are a girl’s best friend after all, I’m not entirely sure why I added that last bit, been watching too many silly YouTube shows! However I’d never turn any down…

Since the fraud

So it’s just run of the mill fraud? … b o r I n g …

good kitchen appliances

Kitchen gadgets are my thing, well shopping in general is fun, but I love kitchen stuff, since moving back home & having to replace everything, I just got 3 new toys, a blender/smoothie maker, an actual blender for baking with special heat able blades to cream butter better than anything else out there, well that’s what they say & the reviews look good, & lastly a stick mixer, purée, chop, whisk etc etc all at 1/2 price. Now I need a food processor, with dough hooks… I’m not addicted, you’re only an addict if it causes problems & so far the only problem is my bank!

No one wanted analogue TV sets any more, or computer towers or hi-fi systems,

I agree with the tv, although if you can use a dongle in an old tv, for some people who can’t afford at it may be an option, Same with computers, there’s always people who don’t have the funds to buy new things & are grateful for what they can get. Me I love my smart tv & my iPad is the child I never had, music/stereos however, besides the same as I’ve said above, any true audiophile us going to want a kickass stereo system including a record player, yes, they still make them. & I’m SO glad my little Bose stereo survived the flood, it was this close >< to being thrown out, as the cord would of been underwater, but unbelievably it works still, more unbelievably I only found it’s cord by a pure fluke. Which is good as for some reason you can’t buy these anymore, & it’s only a few years old, it’s not a full hifi, just a WiFi /bluetooth stereo, but it packs a punch & sounds great, as all Bose stuff does, just ask my neighbours ;)

Tivoli Gardens,

Tycho Brahe

Interesting

Crohn’s disease.

Somehow I managed to date 2 different guys who both had this, lord only knows the odds of it, also they were friends, which maybe explains it or makes it even more odd. One of them had it a lot worse & I know he really suffered from it big time, the other not so much when I met him, I think he’d come a bit right & over it. But after having had surgery taking a good part of my own bowel out, I can now truly sympathize with a lot of the same effects.

He even paid to have her infected by living parasites from the intestines of pigs.

I had to google that, as in HAD to, surely not I naively thought, but nope, it’s a thing, there’s nothing, read it NOTHING that I would do that for, to have worms purposely put into my body! It’s not exactly a temple anymore, could do with a lick of paint & a tidy up, but still, nope, no, no & no again… & it’s so SO safe, that you can’t even get it done in a western country, nope go to Mexico & let them give you worm smoothies, no I’m not kidding… Like WTH is wrong with people that they’d ever, EVER do that to themselves?! Consider my mind officially blown… If yours isn’t, go google it, preferably an image search, then get back to me…

illegal diamond trafficking

Ding ding Ding Well ok it’s not a real one, but I take what I can, regarding scoring on guesses I mean

He deserved to be skewered on a stick and toasted in boiling oil, he did.

You can’t toast in oil, you fry, either way though, still probably a little bit on the painful side.

pigeons

I hate those birds, like seriously hate flocking pigeons!

‘It was a very brief examination,’ Assad responded.

That’s made me think, I was never followed up after my neurosurgery, except going to my doctor to get the staples & stitches out of my head, there was absolutely nothing. Really strange that I never thought about this myself, & also that they never did see how I was coping.