by Lotte Hammer
Knud Arvidsen, the time is 11.37, and I’m arresting you for sexual assault. Loud and clear so that Mr Arvidsen could be in no doubt as to the seriousness of the situation, then without further discussion, the shocked man was turned around, his arms pulled behind his back, handcuffs clicked in place and then off with their catch, a firm grip on the prisoner’s upper arm. Questions or protests, and there were usually plenty of those, remained unanswered, this wasn’t a debating society, and the prisoner would be allowed one phone call once he reached Police Headquarters.
The officers, service-minded as they were, would also refer the man to the website of the National Police Force, where he could read the replies to frequently asked questions, along with lots of other interesting information.
Of the fifty-four customers who, according to Jan Podowski’s database, had paid for sex with Ifunanya Siasia, forty-three were arrested. Two of the men, a member of the Folketinget and a Swedish diplomat, the Countess and Bertha Steenholt had already decided to disregard. They had no wish to provoke a diplomatic or a constitutional incident.
A further six men were on holiday, two could not be found, and one had that same morning been admitted to hospital with acute appendicitis, so the officers would have to do without him too. The rest were taken to Police Headquarters, where they were herded into the Countess’s borrowed offices in the press centre. Here they were allowed to make their statutory telephone call.
Most of the men were incandescent with rage; they protested vociferously and threatened the police with everything from million-kroner law suits against the state to complaints filed with every possible department, the Ombudsman and the Justice Minister being amongst the most popular. A handful stood out from the crowd by being more or less frightened and cowed, and one treated the whole thing as a joke, laughing out loud and behaving with exaggerated civility towards the officers, until a female sergeant from Vanløse pulled him aside, pinched his arm hard and told him to behave himself.
As the men arrived and had their handcuffs removed so they could make their telephone call, they were lined up on the floor in the manner the officers sometimes used when mass arresting protesters. They sat sandwiched in between the person sitting in front and the person sitting behind, while they waited to be booked in. They were processed with irritating lethargy by an older sergeant, who sat at a desk at the end of the room and with a two-finger typing style laboriously entered their details into his computer, after which he would gather up their personal possessions in a designated storage bag, meticulously list the contents and the name of the prisoner once again, obtain a signature and continue with the taking of fingerprints. Later he would take two mugshots – one in profile and one full face – with an old-fashioned Polaroid camera. Finally he would confiscate their belts, ties and shoelaces, which were also logged before being put into a separate bag. The latter was for the benefit of the prisoner, so that he could do no harm to himself, the sergeant explained amicably. How on earth you could hang yourself with a shoelace when you were sitting on the floor surrounded by twenty officers, he could not explain, but there was no need to get worked up, after all, the shoelaces would be returned in due course. And now, please would you go and sit down at the back of the queue so I can get started on the next one? Two officers stepped up to remove the prisoner should he prove unwilling to leave of his own accord. And do remember to pull up your trousers.
The men suffered, shouting out from time to time, and constantly complained, but overall they were surprisingly obedient. The officers present agreed that they had experienced far more challenging behaviour from other prisoners. The only hint of a collective rebellion arose when Dagbladet’s crime reporter Anni Staal arrived with a photographer. She had – she later insisted – a long-standing agreement with Bertha Steenholt to observe her at work for a day, to get pictures and background material for a feature about the Public Prosecutor’s retirement later that year. And how on earth could it be her problem – she practically screamed at her editor-in-chief – that some old lecher from Dagbladet’s board of directors happened to have got himself arrested on that very same day? And she would really like to know, and here she jabbed a finger directly against the forehead of the editor-in-chief, if he was hinting that she shouldn’t write her front-page scoop for that very reason, because then she was absolutely sure that Dagbladet’s free and independent journalists . . . here the editor-in-chief stopped her nervously by holding up his hands. No, God dammit, Anni, of course we’ll run the story.
The upheaval among the prisoners that began when the press turned up was successfully quelled by the officers, who didn’t need to do much more than take a few steps towards the men sitting on the floor. So the photographer got their pictures and Anni Staal her interviews. Oh, hello, Mr Olesen – you are Torsten Olesen, the famous financier, aren’t you? Tell me, is this the first time you’ve been arrested for rape?
When the prisoners had finally all been logged on the sergeant’s computer and fingerprinted and had their mugshots taken, Bertha Steenholt made her entrance. She held a stack of papers in her hand, which without comment she distributed to every single prisoner. The Countess had had Malte Borup working overtime, and the intern had produced a small dossier for each man with clear pictures of his physical encounter with Ifunanya Siasia. When Bertha Steenholt had finished handing these out, she thundered in a voice that reached every corner of the room that she had distributed evidence to all of them, so they could see for themselves that there was a reason why they had been arrested.
One of the men protested, ‘There’s no legal basis for your charge,’ but was immediately cowed by her authoritative: ‘Quiet! We’ll get to that later.’ Then Bertha Steenholt took her time recounting for them Ifunanya Siasia’s life and tragic fate, regularly referring to one or more of the pictures on the wall. Despite hardly any of the men looking at them, she soon got into her stride. Her next point was the legal aspect, and here she made no attempt to hide that what she was undertaking was a test case, which would hopefully extend the application of the sexual assault legislation. There could be little doubt that the case would ultimately end up in the Supreme Court, and she had decided that the time had come for her to try and see if she could get a conviction based on the probability, bordering on certainty, that they all knew Ifunanya Siasia was under duress when they had sex with her.
And in that respect Bertha Steenholt could inform everyone present that none, none of the very best experts in the Justice Ministry, had disputed her assessment. The Public Prosecutor took her time, she was thorough, but when she was done, the men were quiet. There could be no doubt: she had scared the living daylights out of every single one of them.
The next and final point had been carefully choreographed between the Countess and Bertha Steenholt. A female officer arrived with a dog and initially waited at the back of the room, but then the devil got into the animal; it strained on its leash towards the row of sitting men, barking fiercely and loudly. It was a Labrador and it wasn’t particularly aggressive despite its performance, so none of the men felt very scared. Most ignored it; they felt they had more important things to worry about. Bertha Steenholt, however, was furious with the animal, it had interrupted her speech, although she had almost finished. She commanded angrily: ‘Get that dog out of here now, so I can hear myself speak.’
The dog fell silent, but the Countess interrupted her with a ‘But . . . but . . .’ Bertha Steenholt made no attempt to hide her irritation.
‘What do you want this time?’
‘It’s a sniffer dog.’
There could be no doubt: one or more of the prisoners was in possession of banned substances. And at Police Headquarters, of all places! This was totally unacceptable. The Public Prosecutor tried the carrot.
‘Would the man in possession of cannabis make himself known immediately?’
But the criminal held firm, and so there was no other way. A thorough, physical examination of every prisoner would just have to
be carried out. Luckily there was a police surgeon in the building, in the department next door, as it happened, and he was willing to offer his expertise, he really didn’t mind. The examinations would be carried out in the adjacent room with suitable respect for each man’s modesty. Bertha Steenholt apologised. Such examinations were obviously never pleasant, but based on the police’s legitimate suspicion it was, according to section this, that and the other, entirely legal and unfortunately pressingly urgent to . . . The men’s names were called and they were taken individually to see the doctor.
It took a long time before the performance ended. The five women who had met in Konrad Simonsen’s living room had been very creative. The action had been carefully chosen to take place on a day where the National Police Commissioner was attending a conference in Aalborg, and the Assistant Commissioner was on holiday in Norway. The result was that the many telephone calls that came in, especially from the Justice Ministry, were put through to the Deputy Commissioner, but she was happy to reassure the agitated civil servants that it must be a baseless rumour; she had never ordered a mass arrest for rape, and she had personally visited every possible location where she could imagine such a group of men might be held and had not found the slightest trace of any such activity. Perhaps it was another police force, she couldn’t comment on that, but it wasn’t hers.
Eventually the telephone calls subsided; the Justice Minister had received a tip-off. Rumour had it that, politically speaking, it would be career suicide to intervene in what was going on, if indeed anything was, and soon the lowest clerk knew that they were unlikely to advance up the ladder if they poked their nose into what was happening. The result was that the many outraged lawyers who rang the Ministry were passed from pillar to post, as no one wanted to take responsibility for the conversation.
Only one person could effectively put a stop to this abuse of power, and that was the Director of Public Prosecutions. He had taken a day off to do some gardening and sort out his flowerbeds, but was eventually forced to concede that he had to leave his home in Snekkersten and drive to Copenhagen. But he had barely driven one kilometre before he was stopped by a police patrol car for speeding. He was furious, he had been four kilometres above the permitted speed limit, what overzealousness in their job! And not only that, his car was then inspected from top to bottom, even though it was leased and in superb condition. But there was nothing he could do about it.
CHAPTER 97
Benedikte Lerche-Larsen stretched out on the bed, then rolled her shoulders a couple of times, first one way then the other, before interlocking her fingers behind her head. She was naked, her body sweaty, and felt in need of a shower. Bjarne Fabricius lay by her side resting on one elbow, while he tickled her nipple with his fingertip. There was nothing sexual in his touch, he was distracted, lost in his own thoughts and hardly aware of what he was doing. She freed one of her hands and removed his finger, which was irritating her. It appeared to bring him back to the present. He caught her eye, evaluating her as if it were the first time he had seen her.
‘This is a one-off, it won’t happen again.’
She tried to match his tone of voice.
‘If you say so.’
‘I say so.’
He didn’t elaborate, nor had she expected him to. She sat up, as did he.
‘I have a suitcase of money that belongs to you. I don’t know how much, but it’s quite a lot.’
‘From Svend and Karina?’
He confirmed that, yes, it was from them. She asked him cautiously:
‘Will you tell me if it was quick?’
‘I will, and yes, it was. They never knew what happened to them, but don’t ask me again.’
She accepted this, and what more was there to know? She made a quick decision.
‘I think you should keep the money. You’ve lost a great deal recently, and it’s partly because of me.’
The smile he gave her never reached his eyes.
‘You’re a clever girl, Benedikte. That’s a deal. And while we’re on the subject, how long do you think it will be before we’re up and running, according to your new model?’
‘I intend to present a detailed plan to you next week. There will be things you’ll need to decide.’
‘Fine, but could you give me an idea of it now?’
Benedikte Lerche-Larsen quickly went through the main points. Four to five ordinary brothels, preferably in the provinces where competition was less intense. Billing once a month where the ‘hosts’ would pay them a fixed amount, and what money they made above and beyond that was theirs to keep. No involvement in the operation from his or her side, ideally; a monthly payment to be made to a Caribbean account from which money would be transferred to international poker players. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and continued talking:
‘The only restrictions are: no children, no unnecessary violence, and the girls will be bought through you. How quickly and how many can you deliver?’
‘As many and as quickly as necessary. Expected profits?’
‘You’ll have to wait for that, it would be irresponsible of me to pluck a figure out of the air before I have the full picture. But, in no more than six months, at least the same as you used to get from Svend – and please note, all of that money would be laundered. And that’s a conservative figure, I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.’
He was about to praise her for her cleverness once more, but stopped himself. Business over and done with, he asked:
‘Are you going to take a shower?’
‘Yes, will you be joining me? Or does that come under your comment about this being a one-off?’
He laughed, no, it didn’t. That wouldn’t apply until tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER 98
At the height of the summer of 2009, Benedikte Lerche-Larsen’s departure, on her parents’ behalf, from the beautiful three-storey house with a view of the Øresund, was undramatic. The neighbours watched the event with excitement, twitching hand-embroidered kitchen curtains or glancing quickly over privet hedges, and saw the young woman walk out through the garden having locked up behind her.
Once outside on the pavement, she carefully closed the wrought-iron gate and glanced back at the house, which had been the scene of hectic activity that whole morning as its contents had been cleared and driven away in large removal vans. None of the neighbours knew to where. She walked at a leisurely pace up to the Volvo that had arrived half an hour ago. The car’s tinted windows were open. Everyone craned their necks to catch a first glimpse of the new owners of the house. Rumours had spread like wildfire. The estate agent, a local firm from Usserød, had sold the house to a retired couple from Horsens. He was a former sales director in the meat industry, and she was – and here the estate agent had smiled mischievously – well, she was his wife.
The meat salesman got out of the car and his wife followed suit. Benedikte Lerche-Larsen handed him the keys and handshakes were exchanged, while a dachshund with a slipped disc, belonging to a high-ranking barrister, barked angrily. It had spent enough time sniffing the same lamppost and was ready to move on. The neighbourhood’s verdict was positive. At first sight, the couple seemed like decent people. Judging by their clothes, possibly a little provincial, but that would hopefully pass in time. Besides, anything was better than Benedikte Lerche-Larsen and her parents. Even a hippy commune would have been preferable to that.
The street’s hidden audience divided its attention when Benedikte Lerche-Larsen, smiling and courteous as always, said goodbye to the couple, but rather than get into her car, or rather her father’s car, started chatting to a man who had appeared by her side. Some turned to focus on the new arrivals, others continued to follow the young woman’s departure.
The man who had turned up so unexpectedly was about sixty, a little chubby, tall and with a slightly stooping posture. A few recognised him from the television as a senior police officer of some kind; most insisted he was a reporter, probably from
one of the more popular tabloids, as his charcoal grey suit could easily be identified, despite the distance, as having been bought off the peg. As if the road hadn’t already had its fair share of that type.
Konrad Simonsen looked around uncomfortably. He felt he was being watched. Benedikte Lerche-Larsen read his mind. She looked around.
‘Yes, it’s like living in a goldfish bowl. I imagine my dear neighbours want to be absolutely sure I have gone for good.’
‘Can you blame them?’
She gave a light shrug.
‘I didn’t think the two of us would meet again. Incidentally, you don’t look at all well, are you ill?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it is and ultimately I don’t care. Are you here to arrest me?’
There was no hint of fear in her voice. She knew the answer.
‘No, sadly not.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘To tie up loose ends. Call it curiosity, if you like.’
Her short, ironic burst of laughter was predictable.
‘How stupid do you think I am?’
‘Bright enough to express yourself in hypothetical phrases, which will prove nothing if I’m wearing a wire . . . which, by the way, I’m not.’
‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you. You have five minutes, then I’m leaving. I have things to do.’
Konrad Simonsen had calculated that she would be intrigued if he turned up for an informal chat, and he would appear to have been right.
‘I’ve spent many evenings with your husband, and I must say, he really does care about you. He sends his love, by the way.’