by Lotte Hammer
“No, she can’t.”
“What about me? Can I go to jail for what happened in Hundested? I mean, such a long time after?”
“No.”
“Not for what I did on the shore either.”
Simonsen shook his head insincerely.
“No, you can’t, but we’re covering the same ground without getting anywhere. Tell me, do they cry out from inside the bag, do they scream out their fear, or do they use their last bit of oxygen to beg for mercy? What does a dying woman’s voice sound like, when her air passages are blocked by plastic? Resonant, shrill, distorted? I don’t know, because I’ve never heard it. But you have, and I get hopping mad thinking about it.”
Falkenborg asked in a whimper, “You want to hear about Rikke, right?”
“Yes, I would like that very much. Among other things.”
“So it doesn’t matter that I’m sweating?”
“No, it’s all the same to me.”
Falkenborg’s story about his attack on Rikke Barbara was reasonably consistent with what the woman herself had told Simonsen last Thursday. Almost all the particulars fitted, which was good news, but nothing concrete connected him to the later murders, as the attack—even if brief—had been described on the Dagbladet website in Jeanette Hvidt’s interpretation. Unfortunately also including the bizarre pretend nail clipping, a detail the police otherwise would have withheld. The same did not apply to his use of lipstick, but on the beach in Kikhavn he hadn’t had time to use it before he was interrupted. In addition his strange way of talking had not been disclosed. The problem was that possibly he didn’t know himself how he talked. Simonsen probed, but without much success.
“You dug a grave on the shore. When did you do that?”
“A few hours before I attacked her.”
“And she was going to be buried there?”
“Exactly, but she got away from me.”
“But you intended to kill her?”
“Yes, that was the idea, but it didn’t happen.”
“How did you want to do that?”
“I think in a plastic bag, like the two women that were murdered in Greenland and at Stevns.”
“You think, you say, but wouldn’t you have to know that?”
“So I know that.”
“Did you have a plastic bag with you?”
“Yes, two bags.”
“Where were they?”
“In my pocket, I think.”
“In your pocket, are you sure of that?”
“No, I can’t remember.”
“Where could they have been otherwise?”
“In my other pocket, maybe.”
“No other place?”
“It could be, I can’t remember, it was a long time ago.”
“Why did you have the mask on?”
“Because I like scaring them.”
“Them . . . who do you mean by ‘them’?”
“The ones I scare. I liked to scare Rikke.”
“It’s nice for you to see Rikke, and other women who resemble her, get scared?”
“Very nice, as scared as possible. Really, really scared, that’s nice.”
“You pretended you were clipping her nails, why is that?”
“My mother used to do that to them, I think that’s where it comes from.”
“Explain that to me.”
“Yes, they just had to stand there and get their disgusting claws clipped. It served them right.”
“Where did you have the scissors?”
“In my pocket.”
“Also in your pocket?”
“I think so, couldn’t they be in my pocket?”
“You decide that.”
“Then it was there.”
“Tell me, how did you get Rikke Barbara Hvidt to show you her nails?”
“Out with the claws, stupid girl, he wants to see her nails. I said something like that.”
“Did it work, did she show her nails?”
“No, she didn’t, she was contrary, she didn’t want to obey.”
“What did you do then?”
“Said it again.”
“Said what again?”
“Out with the claws, stupid girl, he wants to see her nails. But she held her hands behind her back and drilled her nails down into the ice and was beside herself.”
“You were patient, you just stood in front of her with the scissors and repeated your sentence?”
“Yes, that’s how it was.”
“But not with the flashlight, that wasn’t necessary.”
“No, no flashlight.”
“Where did you get light from?”
“Maybe the lighthouse, there was a lighthouse.”
“No, there wasn’t, where did you get light from? A fine, sharp light.”
“From the helicopter. The helicopter had lights in front.”
“Exactly, but not all of them held their hands behind their backs, did they?”
“No, you’re probably right. Not all of them.”
“One of them was difficult for you.”
“She didn’t want to behave.”
“In what way didn’t she want to behave?”
“Maybe she clenched her fists, then it’s impossible. And hit.”
“I don’t believe that. It wasn’t impossible, just difficult. Why was it difficult?”
“Maybe she folded her hands.”
“So you had to cut the way she was?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she fold her hands?”
“She was praying to God.”
“Yes, she did that, and what was her name?”
“Liz maybe.”
“There is no Liz, stop lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re sweating and shaking.”
“I’m nervous.”
“Well, what was her name then?”
“Her name was Catherine, she was very religious.”
Simonsen considered taking a break. The man’s accommodating and compliant language would not be convincing in court, if the testimony he’d just given were withdrawn. It was difficult to decide whether he cynically and consciously took refuge in naiveté, or whether he simply was like that. Conversely, Simonsen was afraid that his prisoner would demand a lawyer or refuse further questioning if he had a chance to think it over.
Falkenborg’s next statement decided the dilemma.
“It was Liz who hit, you have to excuse that. But I would prefer not to talk about her.”
The new name triggered a spontaneous outburst from Simonsen.
“Oh, no.”
“I’m sorry about that, but you mustn’t get angry with me.”
The latest turn the interview had taken, combined with the casual way Andreas Falkenborg had leaped from the attack in Kikhavn in 1977 to the murder of Maryann Nygaard in 1983, meant that Simonsen did not feel he had control of this encounter, which as time passed was moving randomly in all directions. He wrote a message to Ernesto Madsen, who was following the interview through a one-way mirror in the adjacent room, and held up the paper to the mirror. Shortly afterwards the Countess came in and retrieved it. Then he pushed Agnete Bahn’s photograph over next to Rikke Barbara Hvidt and placed a picture of Maryann Nygaard in front of Andreas Falkenborg.
“Her name is Maryann Nygaard, and she was murdered in 1983.”
“I know her well. That’s Maryann.”
“Were you the one who killed her?”
“It almost must have been.”
“Was it or wasn’t it?”
“It was me, I’m sure of that. Who else could have done it?”
“Where did you know her from?”
“From Greenland.”
“And where did you meet her the first time?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Stop these evasions. Tell me how you met her.”
“She took care of my grandmother at the nursing home. Maryann was a nurse, but then she went to Greenland. I
t was at the American military base in Søndre Strømfjord. It’s not there any more, they’ve closed it.”
“And you followed her to Greenland?”
“All the way to Greenland, yes.”
“You learned to fly a helicopter up there.”
“Yes, I became a helicopter pilot, the Americans were very nice.”
Simonsen struck his hand on the table and said slowly, “On September the thirteenth, 1983 you flew Maryann Nygaard to a radar station on the ice cap called DYE-5. There you attacked her, bound and gagged her, put her in your helicopter so no one could find her, and on your way back you landed on the ice, killed her and buried her. Is that correct?”
“I guess I did.”
“I’ve been to Greenland to see the place where you killed her.”
“It’s an amazing country, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely, but there is one thing that puzzles me. How you made her grave in the ice. It’s very hard.”
“You can hack down into it with a pneumatic drill, then it’s easy.”
“And you had such a pneumatic drill with you in the helicopter?”
“Otherwise it’s impossible, the ice is hard as stone.”
“Did you have a mask on when you hauled her out on the ice?”
“Yes, to scare her.”
“Did she watch while you made her grave?”
“She was scared, you better believe she was. It was nice. That’s the way it should be.”
“What did you do with her, right before you pulled the plastic bag over her head?”
“Cut her nails.”
“You did something else.”
“Said that he wanted to cut her nails. That was just to scare her even more.”
“Who is he?”
“Belphégor, the demon from TV.”
“But you did one other thing. Tell me about it.”
Falkenborg made a dismissive gesture, but did not answer.
“What else did you do? I want to know!”
“We’re not going to talk about that.”
“Yes, we are. Out with it.”
“No, please, no. I don’t want to.”
Simonsen got a message in return, it was blessedly brief. Pressure him about the breasts, and nail him with the lipstick. He’s not play-acting, but knows full well what he shouldn’t talk about specifically. N.B.: Arne Pedersen has found a bust of Mozart in his apartment.”
Andreas Falkenborg asked, “What kind of notes are those? I don’t like them, they make me uncertain.”
“There won’t be any more. See, now we’ll put the picture of Maryann Nygaard over by your demon and let her wait a moment. I have another picture here, who is that?”
“Catherine, we’ve talked about her. She was the one we thought was praying.”
Simonsen ignored the evasion.
“I am wondering about what you look at most when they are dying. Is it their half-naked breasts, or is it their lips, which are stuck to the plastic? Tell me where the bag came from, the one you used to smother Catherine Thomsen, and stop lying to me.”
This time the intimidation did not work. Falkenborg’s answer was almost dismissive.
“From my backpack.”
“But where did you get the bag from?”
“I don’t know, it was just a bag. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Her father was a removals man, and he moved once for you. A completely impossible move that you arranged purely to ensnare him.”
“I can’t remember, it’s a long time ago.”
“You stole a plastic bag from his garage and packed it around a bust of Mozart, why did you do that?”
“Where did you get that from? You can’t know that.”
“We know a lot about you, make no mistake about it.”
“Yes, and you’re very clever when you can think so clearly.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I can’t remember. Maybe because he was stupid.”
“What had he done to you?”
“Some people maybe say vulgar things about other people to their daughters.”
“Did he say vulgar things?”
“He might very well have. Because you’re afraid when they visit someone for the second time and want someone to join the church.”
“What did he say specifically?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You’re shaking, and you’re lying. Every time we get to something that only you know, and that you therefore can’t retract later, you wriggle out of it.”
“That’s right, but it’s not nice to hear you say it.”
“Now we’ll move Catherine Thomsen over to Maryann Nygaard and Belphégor. What about this one, you know her too, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“She lived less than five kilometres from your summer house in Præstø.”
“So I almost must have known her.”
“I’m tired of your ‘almost’ and ‘maybe‘ and ‘probably’.”
“Yes, I knew her, her name was Annie.”
“Annie Lindberg Hansson?”
“Yes, that’s what it was.”
“Where should we put her, do you think? With the living or the dead?”
“The dead, Annie is dead.”
“You killed her, like you killed the others?”
“I probably didn’t do that, she was never found.”
“She resembled the other women to a T.”
“So it must be me. Yes, I would think that.”
“Where did you bury her?”
“I didn’t.”
Simonsen struck his hand on the table and raised his voice considerably.
“Then see about finding your tongue. Where did you bury Annie Lindberg Hansson?”
Falkenborg shrank back in fear and answered timidly, “Will you please stop yelling at me?”
“Where did you bury Annie Lindberg Hansson?”
“I didn’t. I don’t want to talk about it, see how I’m shaking?”
“We’ll get to that. And Liz, did she die in the same way?”
“I think in the same way, that was why I bought my deserted farm. To get close to her. That was in 1992, the year Denmark won the European Championship in soccer. That was in Sweden too.”
“What was Liz’s surname?”
“Liz Suenson.”
“How did you meet her the first time?”
“In a lift. It was stuck, it was only me and her and an old man. I couldn’t get out, none of us could get out. It was on Vesterbrogade, right across from the small buildings that are in front of a museum. Copenhagen City Museum, I think it’s called. I was going to the dentist.”
“Where did you kill her?”
“In the forest, somewhere in the forest. We drove a long way.”
“And you buried her there?”
“Yes, in the forest too. There are big forests in Sweden.”
“What’s the name of that forest?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think it has a name.”
“Where is it?”
“In Sweden, I don’t know exactly where.”
Simonsen leaned across the table and snarled angrily, “Do they jerk back and forth when they can’t get any air? Like Agnete Bahn, when she was whoring with your father?”
“You mustn’t talk that way.”
“What happened when you sat there by the window, Andreas? While your mother got a beating because of you, what was it you saw?”
“Her breasts. I looked down in Agnete’s undershirt. There were her bare breasts . . . you could see down to her breasts.”
“When should you be able to do that?”
“When they are dying; you should look down at their breasts when they’re dying.”
“Agnete Bahn kissed you on the other side of the windowpane, to mock you while your mother was screaming.”
“This is not nice.”
“What do you do with their mouths? Tell us that.”
“No, but you do something else, something that only the two of us know. What is it?”
“I don’t want to talk to you any more. This is disgusting.”
“Tell me first, what it is you do.”
“You mustn’t tell it to anyone.”
“I won’t say a thing. Come on, out with it, what do you do?”
“Can I get into a regular prison then?”
“Yes. Say it then.”
“I want to be in one of the regular prisons, I can’t take the hard ones, I don’t deserve that.”
The woman who came into the interview room then interrupted them authoritatively.
“Let’s see first if you’re going to jail at all. It’s not the chief inspector who decides that. Good day, Simon, I would like to speak to my client alone, and this interrogation has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?”
Simonsen agreed reluctantly.
“Yes, it has. May I ask one final, simple thing?”
She gave permission with a nod, but added, “It has to be brief.”
Simonsen asked Falkenborg, “Are there more than the ones we have talked about?”
“No, I swear. Only those three.”
“Three, you say, what about Liz Suenson? Did you invent her?”
“No, but she wasn’t Danish. So is she number four after all?”
Andreas Falkenborg looked as if he was honestly in doubt.
CHAPTER 33
After the questioning of Andreas Falkenborg the mood in the Homicide Division was guardedly optimistic. It would soon change, however. For the rest of the day misfortunes rained down on Police Headquarters in Copenhagen in general, and Konrad Simonsen’s unit in particular, in one long, unbroken chain of news that seemed to go steadily from bad to worse.
With Ernesto Madsen’s assistance, Simonsen and Arne Pedersen went over the questioning of Falkenborg, and in no way did the psychologist share the detectives’ relative satisfaction with the results of the interview.
“This is not going to be easy for you. His childishness and spontaneous honesty, which he knows exactly when to use and when not to, provide him with effective protection. I am convinced that this is how he has managed his whole life when he’s faced difficulties. We are talking about deeply embedded habits that he doesn’t need to think about, not even in stressful situations. I assume you noticed how he glaringly avoided saying anything that he could not take back later.”
The question was aimed at Simonsen, who was well aware of the problem, but did not care for the word “glaringly” and thought there were bright spots besides.