by Lotte Hammer
“What if they sentence and jail me?”
“They won’t. They simply don’t have enough evidence to hold you.”
“And what about after that? What about our demands?”
“They will be made public immediately following the interview.”
“They aren’t up on the home page already?”
“No, until now there isn’t anything up there except vague formulations about combating child abuse. No one can disagree with that. In the final analysis all this comes down to politics and here we will have some heavy hitters, but apart from the fact that the people’s sentiment supports our populist-minded minister of justice, none of the others have shifted. They are leaning back, winning time, and hoping that things get back to normal in a couple of weeks. And of course that we will be found. Those are the ones we need to shake up, but believe me—they aren’t losing any sleep over a couple of days of a school strike. That isn’t enough to get them to act.”
“Then they’ll be indifferent to a demonstration and also to my interview.”
“Of course they are. But the situation is in our favor. We’re only missing the last little bit. Unfortunately, this bit will negatively influence public opinion. That can’t be helped. So we’ll have to create the illusion that public opinion hasn’t changed and I think that is possible to a degree. At least for a couple of days and that is sufficient. It’s mainly a question of angles and timing.”
Stig Åge Thorsen stopped and put a hand on the shoulder of his comrade.
“I know that you and Per Clausen discussed these things in great detail but you sometimes forgot to inform the rest of us. You’re talking as if I know what the next step is but I don’t. To be perfectly honest, I don’t always understand what you are talking about.”
Mørk made a disarming gesture and said, “I’m sorry, I should have said as much, but the next step was taken this morning. The pedophile database has been distributed to our category-three members.”
Stig Åge Thorsen’s face showed that he was still not following. Mørk had to spell it out: “Violence.”
Chapter 48
The entries in Erik Mørk’s database fell hard over the country and created much unhappiness. Jylland was heavily overrepresented since the client base of the Ditlevsen brothers was a significant source.
Thus, a handful of people were gathered outside a property in Kvaglund in Esbjerg. They all stood with their heads tilted back and were looking antagonistically at a man on the fifth floor who was half sitting, half standing in a window far above them. In one hand he was holding on to the transom that separated the lower panes from the upper, and he was crying. From time to time he looked down in terror. A middle-aged woman whose blue-fox-fur coat indicated that she did not live in the neighborhood shouted, “Jump, you beast. Come on, get on with it, we don’t have all day.”
A younger man chimed in. He sat on a moped, slightly apart from the others. “Yes, come on, dammit. Get it over with, you sissy.”
A kitchen window in the building opened and an agitated woman with dyed red hair and a checkered apron leaned out and looked up. The fur lady explained without prompting, “He’s a child molester. He molested two small children in Nakskov eighteen years ago. It’s outrageous that our children have been living with someone like him in their midst.”
“Our children, you mean. I don’t believe you have any children here.”
The fur lady didn’t reply but a comrade answered in her stead. His Danish was halting. “I have four children outside his door.”
The woman gave the group the finger and slammed her window shut. The shouting continued. Shortly thereafter a patrol car pulled up and two officers got out, a man and a woman. After making their way through the crowd that had now swelled in number, they disappeared into the entrance. On the fifth floor, the door to the apartment was covered with slurs such as “animal dung,”
“child fucker,” and “perverse shit.” Above these was some Arabic writing that most likely did not contain the friendliest sentiments. The male officer enabled their entry with a well-directed kick that broke the door handle and forced the door open. The woman walked in. She stopped a couple of steps from the wouldbe suicide and after a little while her colleague turned up behind her.
The man in the window was clearly desperate. “If you get any closer, I’ll let go.”
The female officer grabbed a nearby chair and calmly sat down. Cries from the street flowed together into a rhythmic, roaring choir. Jump, jump, jump. The cry was picked up all along the block and the echo came rolling with a slight delay, like a distorted bass.
“We’ll stay where we are, we just want to talk with you.”
The man did not react.
“It’s not worth it. Things can change and get better again.”
The officer spoke slowly and persuasively but her words were drowned out by the chanting from the street, so she ordered her colleague to go down and put a stop to the shouting. The man in the window glanced pleadingly at her, as if she could eliminate the evil of the world, but in this he was severely mistaken. As soon as they were alone she abruptly changed her attitude. As a child she had been her father’s little doll, until he drank himself to death. Little one, little doll—the last days had opened the door to a room inside her. She stood up and walked toward him.
“Jump or climb back in. It makes absolutely no difference to me.”
He stared at her in disbelief for one long second before he relaxed his grip. Cries of jubilation from the crowd accompanied his fall.
The shop owner in Arnborg, south of Herning, was not jubilant, in fact he was concerned. Three of his regulars had come into his shop but none of them greeted him. Now each one was standing there silent and very serious, without a shopping basket. One of them was standing by the marmalades and jams, the other by the wine, and the last one by the counter. The silence was broken by the sound of shattering glass as a jar of jam broke against the stone floor of the shop.
“Oops, that was clumsy of me.”
The shop owner reassured him, “That’s all right, Karsten, these things happen.”
“It’s just—oops—it just happened again. And again, and again and look at this.”
A crash punctuated each observation.
“Tell me, what the hell are you doing? Can you please leave my shop?”
The man by the wine section had carefully selected two bottles.
“These two look good, I think I’d like to have them tonight. Oh no, now I’m being clumsy too, what a mess.”
The taciturn customer by the counter leaned forward and laid a hand on the shop owner’s shoulder. The shop owner was large and strong, but the man by the counter was bigger.
“That tall guy from Sørvad works here, doesn’t he?”
“No, not anymore. Is that why you’re breaking my wares? I fired him this morning. I had no idea that he was… well, you know.”
This piece of information brought a smile to all three gentlemen and one of them took out his wallet.
“Now that paints an entirely different picture. We heard that you intended to keep him on in spite of his behavior. I think we had five jars of marmalade, two bottles of red wine, and I’m going to have twenty King’s. Plus we should have a round of cold ones in the next room.
The shop owner allowed himself to be placated when he saw the money and heard about the beer.
“Yes, why not.”
He called out to the back room, “Magda, can you make yourself useful with a floor mop and a bucket of water?”
Then he turned to the men.
“Dammit, you could have asked me first, you know me.”
They nodded somewhat sheepishly as what he said was right—they did know him.
Chapter 49
The lady in red is definitely an interesting factor in Per Clausen’s life. The difference in age and social status alone shows that there was something special about their relationship. The problem is, of course, that we don�
�t have any reasonable idea about where to look for her. The make of car, her red clothes, and two meetings in a certain location—and all this from over two years ago—is simply two thin a basis to work on.”
Simonsen grunted impatiently but this did not affect Poul Troulsen. A good presentation took time.
“According to Kasper Planck, the kiosk owner, Farshad Bakhtîshû, and his sons now recall that that the woman in red had a slight limp.”
“So what if she did?”
“It could be nothing, but there’s something else, and this time it has to do with the piece of paper with the woman’s name and address. One of the sons thought of a detail that struck him as unusual. The address that the woman wrote down was a street, so it ended in vej. That’s of course too common to be helpful in itself but the unusual thing is the dot over the j, which was shaped like a heart.”
“Which means?”
“Well, I grew up in Jægersborg and I know that in Gentofte County there is a distinctive detail in the street signs. If the street sign ends in vej then the dot over the j is printed as a little red heart. Other js or is for that matter are printed with a regular dot. This information is public but in practice it is only people from Gentofte who recognize the heart. Some find it so cute and appealing that they reproduce it in writing their addresses. My mother, for example, always wrote hearts over her j when sending a postcard. To this you can add the fact that the woman in red is most likely wealthy, which fits very well with the profile of that county.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that it seems reasonable to assume that our mysterious woman is from Gentofte. Go on.”
“Per Clausen had two connections to Gentofte in his life. In part through his own childhood and in part through his daughter’s schooling. The woman’s age indicates that the connection between the two of them originated through his daughter.”
“Sounds plausible enough, but now you are building a maybe on another maybe.”
Poul Troulsen ignored the objection and continued: “After her return to Sweden in January 1993, Helene Clausen entered ninth grade at the Tranehøj School in Gentofte. The following school year she started the first year at Auregaard Gymnasium, which lies right next door. That she was admitted in a school in Gentofte County when she lived in Gladsaxe should immediately have raised questions. It isn’t very common.”
“I know the story as well as you,” Simonsen interrupted.
Troulsen glanced skeptically at him. There were now hundreds of reports in the case files and he had realized the connections only yesterday. Simonsen caught his disbelief and said quickly and sourly, “We were inattentive, yes, but after a couple of days these connections were revealed by Arne’s trip to Sweden. When Helene Clausen came back to Denmark she refused therapy. Her father did the next best thing. He had a colleague whose wife worked with traumatized children in Copenhagen and was also tied to the Tranehøj School as a psychologist. Per Clausen looked her up and she promised to help. She talked to a friend about cross-county flexibility regarding the girl’s schooling. The friend was married to the mayor of Gentofte at the time. Unfortunately, Helene Clausen never received professional counseling. It may have cost eight people their lives. And in future, kindly refrain from doubting me when I say that I know.”
“I’m sorry, I just figured that with the volume of paper …”
“Let’s move on. Poul. Where do you want to start? We have had a team at the school and one at the gymnasium and they have done a reasonable bit of work. What can you add to the investigation?”
“Maybe nothing, but their task was primarily to shed light on whether or not Helene Clausen had been sexually abused during her time in Sweden as well as to clarify the circumstances surrounding her death. What they did not look into was any ties between Per Clausen and his daughter’s classmates.”
Simonsen nodded. “Hm, you have a point there.”
“Exactly, and the work already done gives me an excellent point of departure. It is clear from the reports that the girls in room one-A, class of 1993, at Auregaard Gymnasium had an informal leader of sorts. Today she owns a small temp agency in Hellerup and I have an appointment with her.”
Simonsen folded his hands and stared up at the ceiling. Then he made up his mind. “You are probably out hunting ghosts. Start with a renewed search for a silver-colored Porsche now that the area can be limited to Gentofte and then keep your cell phone on. Good luck.”
Chapter 50
The investigation had been given a longish piece in the Nyhedsjournalen, which was positive. What was less positive was that Monday’s preparatory meeting between the Homicide Division and the TV station almost stalled. Simonsen, Arne Pedersen, the Countess, and Pauline Berg were there from the police. The TV station sent a producer and producer’s assistant. The work took place in the police headquarters in Copenhagen and everyone was tired and irritable.
The producer had signed off from the start. First he held an unnecessarily longwinded and partly incoherent introduction in which he stressed to the police investigators the importance of a clear message. After that he said almost nothing. He looked like someone after a long weekend of drinking, his breath had a foul smell of old beer, and both chairs on either side of him were vacant. His assistant concerned herself only with the keyboard on her laptop. She wrote down every word, which made the others selfconscious even though no one said anything.
Three reconstructed scenes had been prepared for the program, each of them about one minute in length. The first depicted the transportation of the victims, the second showed the murders, and the third, which was the shortest and most fabricated, showed the minivan on its way from the school to the field in Kregme at Arresø. The only thing lacking was narration. All the film clips were computer animated with puppets as actors, which lessened the realism but had the obvious advantage that the scenes could be easily modified. After each film scene the police had the opportunity to comment and ask for witnesses of the event to come forward. The problem was, what comments and witnesses to what.
Simonsen grabbed the remote and pointed it at the television. They were still on the first scene. “Should we watch it again?”
The three others protested in a rare show of unison. The producer looked relieved, the assistant kept typing. Everyone speculated about what to say. Arne Pedersen held steadily to his opinion.
“I’m leaning most to the woman. The film doesn’t show that she’s giving injections or measuring out doses of Stesolid according to the body weight of the victims. Her presumed medical background also doesn’t emerge. Physician, nurse, nursing assistant, midwife, veterinarian, medical student—we should make sure to get that in.”
It was nothing new, merely a rewrite of his own argumentation, version twenty. Or so the Countess thought, and injected, “I still think that the minivan is a better angle. Only six adult witnesses have come forward. There must be more, and maybe we can get a make, year, or even a license plate; I mean, that minivan had to come from somewhere. It must have been sold, bought, registered, and owned. The alternative is that we wait until the technicians come up with something from Kregme and we only just received a court order. It almost seems like sabotage.”
Pauline Berg parroted the Countess’s point but used twice as many words, as if she wanted to give innocent men a headache. Or so Arne Pedersen thought while he prepared to take up his own line of argumentation again.
Simonsen asked Pedersen, “How are things going with the minivan? When can we get a forensic report?”
Pedersen gave a pessimistic answer: “There have been problems keeping people away. Someone is tossing all kinds of garbage down into the pit to get it to burn even longer but we’re finally closer to getting a handle on that. The problem is that the technicians want the fire to die down of its own accord so that they don’t destroy any more evidence. The earliest we can hope for is that in about three days they should be able to say if they will have something to say, if that makes sense. It could be weeks if
not months before we get something usable and even that is uncertain. We have to assume it’s been over a thousand degrees for a number of days down in that pit.”
Simonsen shook his head as if he wanted to chase the bad news away. He was sweating, his legs ached, and he shuttled back and forth between the Countess’s and Arne Pedersen’s points of view. Now he tried to reach a compromise: “We’ll mention the minivan and call for witnesses, but concentrate on the woman.”
Everyone was satisfied, with the exception of the production assistant, who knew that she was destined for a glorious career in the media world. For a brief moment she abandoned her keyboard and involved herself in the debate. It was the first time she said something, so her thin voice attracted their undivided attention.
“Keep the messages simple.”
And then they were back to the beginning.
Berg stared speculatively at her white throat and wanted to throttle her. Simonsen wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, the producer yawned openly, and Pedersen started yet another variant of his argument.
The work proceeded at a snail’s pace. After a long time they finally agreed on the message that would follow the first video. The simple message. Simonsen had finally taken Pedersen’s side: they would focus on the woman with the anesthesia. She had been observed climbing into the minivan when it paused at the outskirts of a rest stop on the freeway between Slagelse and Ringsted. The witness had later retracted his statement but no one put much stock in that. The next sequence was played back four times and a couple of smaller corrections were made, then they tackled the question of what the message should be.
The producer disappeared for a long time and the officers grew nervous that he had become lost in the building corridors. He returned, his face flushed. He had a seasonal beer with him that he’d picked up somewhere and that he unselfconsciously started to drink. The alcohol gave him strength to join in the fray, which turned out to be an advantage. If one could see past the man’s foul smell and pedantic manner, he was a brilliant project leader. Everyone fell in line and agreed that the title should be “The Man with the Video Camera.” This was as far as they could agree and everyone knew it.