field methodology

hjørnet bakery — 10:40

kasper is in his usual seat by the window. almond croissant. black coffee. the inspection clipboard is on the table, angled so it’s visible from the street if anyone from the bureau happened to walk past, which nobody ever has.

he’s on the phone.

kasper: yes, mor. the optician building. next to us. … no, synscenter. the glasses place. … yes, the one with the cat in the window. there was never a cat in the window. … okay, maybe there was a cat.

he takes a bite of croissant. chews. listens for a long time.

kasper: henrik graa. right. and you said he moved? … frederikshavn. when? … no, i don’t think it’s any of my business either, but someone at work asked. … no, not gorm. a new girl. … she’s fine, mor. she wears scarves.

the bakery door opens. line walks in. she is wearing an orange scarf. she sees kasper and stops with the expression of someone who has discovered a coworker in a place that doesn’t match the coordinates on his inspection form.

kasper waves her over without hesitation. a man with nothing to hide, or a man who has never considered hiding.

kasper: to phone i have to go. … yes, i’ll bring the bread. … rye. i know. bye.

he hangs up.

line: you’re here.

kasper: i’m here a lot.

line: your inspection form says you’re at the optician site.

kasper: i can see it from here.

he points out the window. the bureau building is visible sixty metres away. next to it, the dead optician. the closed sign has faded to a ghost of itself.

line: that’s not how inspections work.

kasper: it’s how mine work. sit down. you want something? the kanelsnurrer here are criminal.

line sits. she doesn’t order. she has her notebook. of course she has her notebook.

line: gorm sent you to inspect the exterior.

kasper: gorm sent me to “assess ambient conditions within a tactical perimeter.” direct quote.

line: and you came to the bakery.

kasper: i assessed the ambient conditions. they’re bad. it smells. you can smell it from the street. i don’t need to go closer to confirm that something in that building is wrong.

line: did you take photos?

kasper: of what?

line: the building. the exterior. evidence of the smell source. ventilation points. windows. signage.

kasper looks at her the way a golden retriever looks at a chess board.

kasper: i took a photo of my croissant for instagram but i can crop it.

line opens her notebook. flips past protocol 7 notes, past per vang’s name, to a blank page.

line: i’ll come with you. we can do the exterior together. ten minutes.

kasper: or we could sit here and i could tell you what my mother just told me about henrik graa.

line’s pen stops.

line: the optician?

kasper: former optician. moved to frederikshavn after the license thing. 2020. his wife left before he did — ruth. she went to her sister’s in holbæk. they didn’t sell the building. or they couldn’t.

line: because of tvp holdings.

kasper: pause — how do you know about tvp holdings?

line: i looked it up.

kasper: why?

line: because i was writing a letter to them and i wanted to know who they were. people keep acting like that’s unusual.

kasper: around here it is.

he finishes his croissant. wipes his hands on a napkin. something shifts in him — not urgency, kasper doesn’t do urgency, but a mild rearrangement of attention.

kasper: my mother says per vang used to come to tiny valley once a month. always on a tuesday. always parked behind the laundromat on havnegade. drove a grey van. no signage.

line: used to?

kasper: she hasn’t seen the van since autumn. october, she thinks. the facebook group had a thread about it. “mysterious van on havnegade.” forty-seven comments. no conclusions.

line: forty-seven comments and nobody figured out who it was?

kasper: my mother knew. she always knows. she just doesn’t post it. she says posting information on facebook is “giving it away for free.”

line writes all of this down. her handwriting is getting smaller, which it does when she’s concentrating.

line: so per vang stopped coming in october. and the smell started — when? last week?

kasper: preben says the wren arrived wednesday. yrsa says she could smell it thursday.

line: so something changed recently. in a building that’s been empty for years. owned by a man who used to visit monthly and then stopped.

kasper: you’re doing the thing.

line: what thing?

kasper: the thing where you think something matters.

line: doesn’t it?

kasper looks out the window at the dead optician. he doesn’t answer right away, which is unusual for him. kasper answers everything right away because thinking too long about anything has never seemed worth the effort.

kasper: probably not. probably it’s a busted pipe or a dead raccoon or somebody’s old freezer.

line: denmark doesn’t have raccoons.

kasper: i know. i’m making a point about probability.

line: with an animal that doesn’t exist here.

kasper: standing up fine. let’s go look at the building. ten minutes. but i’m bringing the rest of my coffee.

they leave. kasper takes his clipboard. line takes her notebook. the bakery woman watches them go. she has seen kasper come here four days a week for two years. she has never seen him leave before noon.

outside, the february air is sharp. the smell meets them halfway across the parking lot — sweetish, heavy, wrong in a way that sits in the back of the throat.

line walks toward the building. kasper follows. he still has his coffee.

the front window is cracked, like line said yesterday. the crack runs diagonally from the bottom left corner. the glass behind it is dark. not tinted — something is blocking the light from inside.

kasper takes a photo. an actual photo. of the actual building.

line: what’s covering the window?

kasper: could be paper. could be plastic. can’t tell from here.

line steps closer. she’s almost at the glass. the smell is a wall now.

kasper: line.

she stops.

kasper: that’s close enough.

line: i just want to—

kasper: i know. but whatever’s in there, it’s not our job to open the door. we document, we report, we let someone with a hazmat suit figure it out.

line steps back. looks at him.

line: you’ve never actually said anything useful on an inspection before, have you?

kasper: no. this is very new for me. i don’t care for it.

he takes a photo of the crack. then the front door. then, for some reason, the gutter where preben’s wren is still nesting. the wren watches them with the irritated focus of something that was here first.

kasper: let’s go write this up. the real way.

line: you know how?

kasper: i’ve seen the forms.

line: seen them.

kasper: i contain multitudes, line. some of those multitudes have read a form.

they walk back toward the bureau. kasper looks at the bakery as they pass it. the look of a man leaving shore.