Søren pricked up his ears.
“What do you mean by lover?”
Bøje was quiet for a while.
“You’re right, I’m not sure about that,” he said, surprisingly timid all of a sudden. “The victim had a pierced penis, through the urethra and out on the underside of the head, which makes him a bit out of the ordinary, don’t you think? Ordinary men, real men, I mean men like us, don’t sport a Prince Albert, do we? The victim must have been queer.”
Søren was tempted to agree with him.
After his conversation with Bøje, Søren dealt with a few things in his office and ate his lunch behind a newspaper in the cafeteria, so no one would be tempted to join him. Just before two o’clock he drove to Charlottenlund to pay Mrs. Kampe a visit.
The Kampe family home looked like a mansion, and when Søren drove up the poplar-lined avenue he couldn’t help thinking of Johannes’s shabby apartment. Could this really be the place where little Johannes had grown up? It was a three-story house with a broad two-winged staircase that led to the main entrance.
It was as silent as the grave.
Søren rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a woman who looked at him with Johannes’s intelligent eyes. She shook his hand and invited him in. There were ornaments and furniture, rugs and stuffed animal heads, and hides from floor to ceiling in the three rooms Søren managed to see before they reached a large drawing room where a fire was burning in the fireplace. Two royal-blue sofas faced each other and Søren noticed a woolen blanket and a hastily folded newspaper on one of them. Janna Kampe gestured toward the other sofa and sat down opposite him. Søren began by telling her that the preliminary autopsy report didn’t suggest there was a link between the murder of her son and the death of Professor Helland three days earlier. Mrs. Kampe looked momentarily skeptical. Then he changed the conversation to the cause of Johannes’s death. His training had taught him to say as little as possible without being downright obstructive. Mrs. Kampe looked away when her eyes welled up.
“It’s very important for the investigation that we form as clear a picture of Johannes’s social life as possible. His circle. People he spent time with, his friends. That’s why I’m here.”
Mrs. Kampe looked at him for a long time, before she said, “I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I didn’t know Johannes very well. This Christmas, it’ll be two years since we last saw each other. I’ve no idea who his friends are. Or I should say…” She got up and returned with a scrapbook. Søren watched her face. Maintain the façade, it told him, keeping up appearances matters more than anything. She handed him the scrapbook.
“I know a little. I saved some newspaper clippings.”
Søren opened the book. The pages were covered with various items featuring Johannes. Søren studied a picture of a beaming Johannes who had just received a distinction for his dissertation. He was holding several bouquets and, as far as Søren could see, the article was from the university’s newsletter. In another piece, Johannes was part of a crowd and Søren read about a seminar in the caption; a third article was about the communication of science and had been published in the journal, Dagens Medicin. Here, Johannes had been photographed with his colleagues from the department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology and Søren was startled when he recognized Anna. She looked straight into the camera. Johannes was standing next to her, smiling gently, and behind them was Lars Helland, distracted and looking at something outside the photo. Søren carried on. There were roughly forty articles in the scrapbook, cut out and filed like prized stamps.
“May I ask why your relationship was so strained?” he said. Mrs. Kampe looked at him for a long time.
“I married into all of this,” she said, gesturing toward the elegant drawing room. “My late husband, Jørgen, wasn’t the children’s real father. Their father died when they were very young. My daughter wasn’t even a year old and Johannes barely four. We became financially secure for the rest of our lives,” she said, not looking happy at all.
“My children have never really appreciated their good fortune,” she continued. “Of course, my daughter could be excused, but Johannes… Johannes has always seemed…” She searched for the right word. “Uninterested. As if he were trying to prove something. Jørgen was a strict stepfather, but he also offered Johannes the chance of a very privileged life. Johannes, however, simply rejected it. Johannes could have been more…” She frowned and decided to change tack.
“With money comes responsibility,” she stated. “And the plan was that Johannes would join the firm. Jørgen had taught Johannes everything about the business. Everything. And suddenly, he wanted out.” She gave Søren a dark look. “He was adamant he wanted to be an academic, just like his biological father. It was very difficult for Jørgen to accept. It caused deep rifts between my husband and Johannes. They had huge arguments, but Johannes had made up his mind.
“When their feud was at its peak, Johannes started to deliberately provoke Jørgen. He showed up in a skirt and wearing eye makeup for dinner on St. Martin’s Eve—would you believe it—I don’t know what he was thinking. His appearance had been becoming increasingly bizarre: the black boots in the hall, which I nudged behind the coats, and his hair, of course. He dyed it red. I noticed other details. The edge of some item of jewelry. His pierced ears, which he had the decency to keep unadorned when he visited us. I regarded this as a concession because Johannes knew his stepfather would fly into a rage. Jørgen didn’t approve of people being different.” Mrs. Kampe shook her head. “But that night, he showed up in a leather skirt and wearing eye makeup. At first I thought he must be drunk, but he wasn’t. His hands were shaking, I remember, but his eyes were challenging, as if he had decided to declare war. I knew there would be trouble.” Mrs. Kampe looked at Søren, her eyes filled with the trepidation and defiance she had previously attributed to her son.
“Jørgen always saw Johannes in his study. That evening, I waited in the kitchen for an eternity. I solved a crossword. The food grew cold.” She smiled sheepishly. “Suddenly I noticed the door to my husband’s study was open. Jørgen was behind his desk, flicking through a hunting magazine. I asked him where Johannes was, and he said, ‘He’s gone and he won’t be coming back.’”
“And did he?”
“No,” Mrs. Kampe replied. “He didn’t. Not while Jørgen was alive. I called him many times. I missed him. Johannes wanted me to get a divorce. He said it as if visiting me depended on it. But, of course, I wasn’t going to. I loved Jørgen. So he started saying all sorts of vile things.” She hesitated.
“Such as?” Søren wanted to know.
“Things like I was a prisoner in my own home. That Jørgen was a tyrant, and I wore an invisible ball and chain. That if this was my idea of love, then I was blind.” She looked down.
“Jørgen left Johannes nothing when he died. Or rather, he left him one of the stag heads in the corridor. It’s still there. Johannes refused to collect it. He was furious, but what did he expect? My husband had heard nothing from him for the better part of a year, not even when he was admitted to hospital and had only weeks to live. When Johannes found out he would inherit nothing, he was furious.”
Her exasperation flared up, then her façade cracked.
“I wish Johannes was still a little boy. He was a wonderful little boy. Gentle and industrious. He did as he was told and he was never any trouble. Neither of my children was. But as adults… I don’t know. We must have done something wrong. And now it’s too late.” She straightened up.
“Why could Johannes’s sister be excused?” Søren asked.