by Lotte Hammer
CHAPTER 35
If the aim was to taunt her, Benedikte Lerche-Larsen’s voluntary assistance in Kirkens Korshær’s soup kitchen in Stengade on Nørrebro represented a success in every possible way.
She was forced to contribute her services for two weeks, and after her first evening, she wanted to scream. Henrik Krag had to put up with her discontent when, after her shift, she drove straight to Ishøj to pay him an unannounced but very urgent visit. Presumably because she had no one else to moan to, he thought, while he pretended to share her opinions about this and that. He was getting used to her habit of coming and going as she pleased. This was her third unannounced visit. She waved her hands about like a ringmaster in a circus and dramatised her experiences to the maximum the moment they entered the living room.
‘I’m telling you, I feel as if I reek of those . . . people. Each more scruffy and greasy than the one before, mega gross, the vast majority of them. Black people, East Europeans, Danes and Greenlanders, of course . . . bottom of the barrel, no use to anyone. I didn’t even know people like that had a place of their own, and you really must be deeply socially responsible or a religious nutter to waste your life helping them. Why we don’t just send them back to where they came from and hand out free meth to the rest, so we can get rid of them quickly, is beyond me.’
She went on and on, and he tried nodding in the right places though it didn’t really matter, she was too deeply immersed in her own troubles. When he finally saw a chance to get a word in edgeways, he asked:
‘Would you like a cup of coffee? I’ve bought proper coffee, but you already know that.’
She would, he went into the kitchen, she followed – still talking. She was now slightly more relaxed.
‘People donate the weirdest things. Today we got a crate of avocados from a greengrocer, and some CEO turned up with five surplus gateaux from Bella Conference Centre, and I’ve cut and brushed the hair of an old crone so riddled with lice you’d think she bred them commercially. I much preferred peeling potatoes. You probably won’t believe me when I tell you that many of the other volunteers are on benefits, and they’re top dog in that cesspit.’
Eventually she ran out of words.
‘So what about tomorrow, are you going to go?’
‘Of course I’m going to go, it’s not that bad, although . . . I’m doing the nightshift tomorrow, and I bet that’s even worse.’
‘Haven’t you anything positive to say?’
‘Nope, what would that be? Oh, yes, the food was halfway decent. We served pork meat loaf for lunch; I haven’t had that for years.’
‘Did you see anyone who could be our blackmailer?’
‘No, but then again, I spent most of my time back in the kitchen where the riff-raff aren’t allowed. It’s one of the few rules they have in that place. And also that you aren’t allowed to drink alcohol, so the dossers politely hand over their bottles to us on arrival, and we put little labels on them and stick them in the fridge. Incredible, isn’t it? OK, no more about that, I don’t want it taking up that much space in my life.’
She flopped onto the sofa, acting as if she were at home. Henrik Krag briefly considered squeezing himself into the other end of the sofa between her feet and the armrest, but dropped the idea when she flung her arms over her head and with a long, lazy yawn stretched out from head to foot, claiming the rest of the space. He sat down in the armchair opposite her, not knowing how to handle her new mood; he found her impossible to understand. Perhaps it would be best if she left.
Benedikte Lerche-Larsen put one hand under her head and looked at him with a curving smile. It was hard to believe this was the same girl who had for half an hour, almost maniacally, entertained him with her antipathies and prejudices.
Her voice was deep and considerably slower when she spoke again.
‘That cheap cow who was here the first time I came . . . the Goth princess with the stupid eyes and the overly developed secondary sexual organs . . .’
She led the sentence hang in the air without finishing it.
‘Do you mean Lone?’
‘Lone, Line, Lene, whatever, who cares? What’s the situation between you and her?’
‘I didn’t know that . . . that you were going to visit me. She doesn’t matter.’
‘No, of course she doesn’t matter, she was born not mattering. Tell me, are you two an item, or what?’
CHAPTER 36
Frode Otto was a strong man. He was on the short side but broad-chested, with long, muscular arms that gave him an ape-like appearance. His face was broad and lethargic, any trace of animation, except for the coarsest kind, submerged in its folds of flesh. His eyes were colourless, reptilian, giving nothing back and constantly scanning their surroundings, slowly and methodically, without pause.
Pauline Berg was overcome by a suffocating feeling of helplessness when she saw him. Her cheeks and neck started to quiver, fine tremors that might be the forewarning of a panic attack or which might fade and settle instead into a harsh muscular contraction in her stomach. She never knew in advance, so she took a pill from her handbag and kept it in her hand, just in case. She was sitting, ready to observe the interview, which had yet to begin, through the large one-way mirror. To her right sat the Countess, to her left Klavs Arnold and two other officers attached to the investigation. At the far end, close to the door, in the worst seat, was Public Prosecutor Bertha Steenholt. She was the last to arrive, and it took some time before the others noticed her presence.
‘He gives me the creeps. Have you seen his arms and hands? He looks like a gorilla,’ Pauline Berg said.
‘He’s a former wrestler, and you need to watch yourself around them. Once they get hold of you, they’ll tear you to pieces, no matter how strong or quick you are. You must always keep your distance, attack quick as lightning, strike at their weak spot and then retreat,’ Klavs Arnold replied.
‘Be quiet.’
The Jutlander peered down the row of spectators, then looked quizzically at the Countess; he didn’t recognise the woman by the door. The Countess whispered something in his ear. Pauline Berg, too, had noticed Klavs Arnold’s confusion, and said out loud:
‘That’s Big Bertha. You’d better shut up, Klavs, or you’ll be torn to pieces in more than ways than one.’
In the interview room Konrad Simonsen and Arne Pedersen had been through the preliminaries. They had expected Frode Otto to arrive with a legal representative of some kind, but the man had come alone. And this gave the officers greater scope in their questioning.
Konrad Simonsen had decided to open with the sexual assault cases. Firstly, because they were of such a serious nature that the interview could hardly allow them to be reduced to a minor point. Secondly, because he was hoping that Frode Otto, having been confronted with such serious charges, would be more motivated to admit his presumably less serious offences relating to the dead African girl. This argument was based on the theory that he didn’t kill the girl, because Konrad Simonsen didn’t think he had, and in this opinion he was backed by all of his close colleagues. He started the interview.
‘Are you interested in football?’
If Frode Otto was surprised at the question, he didn’t show it.
‘Not in the least.’
‘I thought not. The twenty-second of June nineteen ninety-two was a Monday, and I can help you with the sporting details: Denmark played the Netherlands during the European Championship in Sweden.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m not terribly interested in sport either. But I am interested in crime, or more precisely, in making sure that people who commit crimes are held accountable.’
Konrad Simonsen fell silent, as was Frode Otto: strictly speaking, he hadn’t been asked a question, and the Homicide chief’s announcement wasn’t exactly earth-shattering. Arne Pedersen took over.
‘As am I, and I don’t really mind whether they’re committed in Denmark, Sweden or Finland. As long as it’s a country with a decent
legal system, where vermin like you get a fair trial, well, that’s all right with me.’
Frode Otto jumped slightly when Arne Pedersen spoke up. The Countess frowned behind the mirror; she was surprised, she would have expected it to take much more to rattle the estate bailiff, but this boded well.
Konrad Simonsen took a photograph from the pile of papers in front of him, turned it over and slid it across the table. It was a colour picture showing a smiling Hannelore Müller. It was taken diagonally from the side, with her holding up a medal she wore around her neck; in the background you could make out PE equipment, including a vaulting horse with two girls on top of it, waving.
‘Her name is Hannelore Müller, and she’s a German national. On the twenty-second of June nineteen ninety-two, you beat her up and sexually assaulted her. She had just turned fifteen.’
‘Yes.’
It was exceptionally rare for Konrad Simonsen to be wrong-footed during an interview, especially on his own turf at Police Headquarters, but it happened now. He was almost dumbstruck when he asked:
‘I beg your pardon, what did you just say?’
‘I said that I raped her. It’s true.’
Frode Otto sounded almost bored, and nothing made sense. Konrad Simonsen looked at Arne Pedersen, but he was gawping and no use at all. Then he quickly, almost feverishly, took out another two photographs. They also showed young women. He placed the pictures in front of Frode Otto and said, while pointing:
‘Susanna Laine, she’s Finnish, and you raped her on Tuesday the third of August two thousand and four. Randi Hansson, who is Swedish, you raped on Saturday the twenty-third of June two thousand and seven. Both assaults were carried out on the Tallink Silja Line ferries that sail between Stockholm and Helsinki.’
Frode Otto briefly studied the girls’ pictures, then said:
‘No, not them, just her.’
He placed his hand on Hannelore Müller and stroked her portrait with his fingers, while he looked at her with a smile. His behaviour was deeply offensive, and Konrad Simonsen had to stop himself from snatching the picture away.
‘Then let’s focus on her to begin with. Arne, please would you?’
Arne Pedersen took over and for the next half hour Frode Otto told him sullenly, but quite willingly, how he had met the German girl in a shop in Vammen in Jutland, and later overpowered her on the road and forced her into the boot of his car. He also accounted for the subsequent rape and abuse, and though he was speaking in short sentences, and often needed cues or probing questions from Arne Pedersen, it was clear that he enjoyed recalling the event. He showed no remorse for his own perverted actions, rather the opposite, which was revolting to witness, but in the circumstances made the interrogation much easier.
His confession was lacking in only two particulars. Firstly, he refused to give up the name of the man whom Arne Pedersen already knew he had worked with when he robbed a savings bank in Struer three days before the sexual assault. Frode Otto simply denied that there even was an accomplice, which was illogical but effective. The other point where his confession was unsatisfactory came when Frode Otto was unable to describe in detail the location where he had committed the rape. He claimed that he had no idea, which probably was true. Nevertheless, the description of the act itself was so detailed – including on crucial points that had been kept from the public by the police – that the estate bailiff in all likelihood would be convicted, whether or not he later withdrew his confession.
When Arne Pedersen had finished, he looked quizzically at Konrad Simonsen, who shook his head. Arne Pedersen got up and his attitude changed. Up until now, his behaviour had been controlled and proper, now he snarled maliciously:
‘You obviously think that your crime is . . .’
He got no further. Konrad Simonsen harshly interrupted him, and then, sounding almost conciliatory, spoke to the estate bailiff:
‘You’ve done your homework, which is your right, of course, and your crime falls under the statute of limitation, which I regret naturally, but that’s the law, and you know it better than anyone. The statute of limitation for rape is ten years, plus another five if the circumstances are particularly brutal, and they are here, there can be no doubt about it, but we’re unfortunately still a few years late to charge you. I suggest we break for an hour, and I’ll make sure you get a lawyer whether or not you want one. Afterwards, we’ll take a written statement and we need you to sign it, so you should expect to be here most of the day. Let’s say that we’ll see you again at twelve-thirty.’
In the room next door Pauline Berg practically screamed:
‘Simon’s letting him go? He can’t do that. Shit!’
She looked beseechingly at Bertha Steenholt, and Klavs Arnold agreed with her. What the hell was going on? It couldn’t be true. Besides, their boss was wrong. They could add one year to the statute of limitation for each year under eighteen that Hannelore Müller was when she was raped, so Frode Otto’s crime wasn’t covered by the ordinary statute of limitation. The Public Prosecutor hardly deigned to look at him, but grunted in her deep bass:
‘Listen and learn.’
In the interview room Frode Otto was almost as agitated. He stared at Konrad Simonsen.
‘You’re releasing me?’
‘You’re not even under arrest. Pull yourself together, man.’
‘But I’m free to go?’
‘I don’t make the laws in this country. But I appreciate your confession, it could mean a lot to Hannelore. I was in Germany last week and she’s still in hell, after what you did . . .’
The estate bailiff interrupted him, clearly uninterested in the German woman’s condition.
‘Can I serve my time for these in Denmark?’
He pointed to the pictures of his Swedish and Finnish victims. Konrad Simonsen flung out his arms as if the matter wasn’t terribly interesting to him.
‘You won’t go to prison for something you didn’t do.’
‘But if I did do it, can I do my time in Denmark?’
‘I really don’t know. I believe the ruling on cross-border criminal activity is quite complicated, and we’re not lawyers. I can always ask, should I happen to bump into a lawyer, and give you a call if I remember, but this isn’t the Citizens Advice Bureau, if that’s what you’re thinking. Right, let’s finish for now, I’m bored with looking at you.’
Frode Otto gave up. He put his hands on the pictures of the two other girls.
‘All right, they were mine too.’
‘Yours? How were they yours?’
‘I raped them, both of them.’
Arne Pedersen had sat down again; he had finally cottoned on to Konrad Simonsen’s strategy. He assumed the same indifferent attitude as his boss, as if the whole thing was of little importance, merely an incidental the Homicide Department could barely be bothered to waste its time on. He asked wearily:
‘Why would we believe you now, when you’ve been lying to us the whole time?’
‘I stuffed a remote control up the arse of that Swedish bitch . . .’
He pointed to the picture of Randi Hansson.
‘. . . and I bit the Finn with a set of false teeth . . .’
He grinned horribly, then continued:
‘. . . all over her tits, her nose, her cheeks, her stomach and her toes. And no one except me and the cops know that, so I’m not lying.’
CHAPTER 37
It took most of the week before Frode Otto’s confessions had been written down and investigated properly.
The Homicide Department was ably aided by both the Swedish and the Finnish police, who both dispatched staff to Copenhagen, and everyone was delighted when the cases were finalised on Thursday afternoon, ready to be submitted to the Public Prosecutor. The Deputy Commissioner herself made an appearance. She had a tendency to turn up whenever she got a whiff of success, and a case where the Public Prosecutor was involved, well, need she say more? Bertha Steenholt ignored the Deputy Commissioner’s exaggerated ve
neration of her, but as usual took the time to study the woman’s outfit. The Deputy Commissioner was famous for her individual and appalling dress sense. Like a colourful, almost festive insect, Big Bertha thought to herself, and apart from that took no notice of her.
Konrad Simonsen, however, did take notice of the Deputy Commissioner. Firstly, she was his immediate superior, and secondly, he liked her, although he preferred her to stay in her office. On the other hand, she didn’t interfere in his investigations; she demanded only to be kept informed and was utterly grateful when she was, almost irrespective of what he told her. The Deputy Commissioner said:
‘You don’t look happy, Simon. And I thought everything was going so well.’
‘No, when it comes to the Hanehoved case, he clams up like an oyster.’
It was the truth. Frode Otto refused consistently to discuss anything other than the three rapes. By now Konrad Simonsen was persuaded by Klavs Arnold’s argument that the hunting lodge in Hanehoved Forest hadn’t been built at the time the estate bailiff had claimed. That had prompted several valid questions, all of which remained unanswered. Nor would the man talk about his Saturday trips, which took place every two months, nor was he willing to help them with the telephone numbers he had called or the calls he had received in recent years. And then they mustn’t forget the greatest mystery of them all: why had Frode Otto confessed to the rapes now? No one had any constructive suggestions about this, although everyone, possibly with the exception of the Countess, would regularly launch into more or less credible speculations.
The estate bailiff himself said nothing, but smiled unpleasantly and claimed he wanted to unburden his conscience, nothing more, and he wasn’t even prepared to listen to follow-up questions.
‘Has he worked out yet that you tricked him?’ the Deputy Commissioner asked.
Konrad Simonsen shrugged his shoulders, he didn’t know. She was referring to the very first interview where Konrad Simonsen had realised that, for some inexplicable reason, Frode Otto wanted to be found guilty of something, and didn’t really mind what. Simonsen had therefore let the estate bailiff think that the statute of limitation for his rape of Hannelore Müller had expired, which it hadn’t, whereupon the man, almost out of desperation, had confessed to a further two crimes since he believed he could no longer be punished for the one he had committed in Denmark.