“It seems that the American Army has gotten a move on, as they say. My friend at Slotsholmen has pulled a few strings, and the Americans have promised to expedite the investigation into the helicopter trip to DYE-5. It’s far from certain that this will result in anything, but we’ll get an official letter detailing the usual procedure with helicopter overflights at that date. That should be helpful in court.”
While he was speaking, he found a package of hand towels in a cupboard and started drying his trousers by pressing the towels against his thighs one after another, and then tossing them in the wastebasket when they could absorb no more water.
“Now, Poul, I’m anxious to hear how things went with you.”
Troulsen shook his head phlegmatically.
“Pauline was right, she was completely impossible. Spotted right away that I was from the police, and before I even introduced myself had fired a whole arsenal of swear words at my head. I finally had to shout to have any chance at all of telling her why I was there, but it made no impression on her. She is truly not a person with a well-developed sense of civic duty.”
“What did she say specifically?”
“That I could run and shit and fart back home to my sod house in Jutland. I’ve been living here over thirty years, so her ear for dialect must be good.”
“That was all?”
“Well, then I gave her my card, in case she changed her mind.”
Pauline Berg broke in.
“Give me one guess… she tore it to pieces and then gave you hers and offered you employment?”
“Yes, exactly as you say. She was very impudent.”
Simonsen asked, “So you received no impression of whether she had anything to tell us about her time with the Falkenborg family?”
“Yes, I did actually, because right before she slammed the door in my face, she made us an offer. If the tax authorities repay her the thirty-six thousand kroner they unfairly robbed her of four years ago, she had salacious things to tell about Andreas Falkenborg and his pestilential family. Something along those lines-it’s not word for word, but almost.”
Simonsen thought about it. The towels were used up, and he had folded the plastic packaging into a roll that now resembled a conductor’s baton, as if orchestrating his thoughts. The tempo was andante. After a while he asked, “Did you see whether or not she was open for business?”
“I saw a few scattered customers, but it wasn’t rush hour. She lives on the second floor besides, with a separate entrance, so I didn’t have the opportunity to inspect the establishment.”
Simonsen turned to Pauline Berg.
“And you say she’s very money-driven?”
“Greedy is an understatement.”
“Okay, we’ll probably crack down on her, but that will have to wait until Monday.”
Berg remained doubtful.
“I’m ready to bet a bottle of good red wine that you can’t.”
Her boss gestured towards the photographs of the three dead women displayed on his bulletin board.
“I don’t think they would like it if we took things easy.”
Pauline felt humiliated and instantly apologised. She missed the guiding presence of the Countess, who should have arrived long ago.
Simonsen gave up the topic of the brothel owner then and asked, “What about the other housemaids? I assume they weren’t quite as impossible as Agnete Bahn.”
Pauline Berg answered tonelessly, “No, they weren’t. The majority remember their time with the Falkenborg family well, and paint quite a uniform picture of the household. Alf Falkenborg, Andreas’s father, was a domestic tyrant, in a big way. He and he alone ruled the home, and the mother was completely cowed. He didn’t hesitate to give her a good thrashing occasionally, whereas he never laid a hand on his son. He also degraded his wife by openly having relationships with other women, even in their home, including with at least three of the maids we contacted, but I’ll return to that later. Elisabeth Falkenborg was hardly a lovable person either. Her husband’s infidelity, and perhaps simple jealousy too, resulted in her taking out her anger on whichever maid was employed at the time. Nothing they did was good enough. She’d peck around after them, just to find something to complain about.”
Troulsen asked, “Why didn’t they leave? It must have been unbearable.”
“There were a few who did. But for many of them it was not that easy. Two, for example, came from Funen and had no desire to go home any time before they had to. Besides, the Falkenborgs paid well, at least fifteen per cent above the norm for those days, and beyond that several of the maids were duped.”
She took a sip of water from a bottle, glanced through her notes and continued.
“Andreas Falkenborg feared his father but at the same time looked up to him. He was what the boy aspired to be, but also a potential threat-first and foremost to Andreas’s mother. At school Andreas got by reasonably well, but no more than that. He often brought friends home to play but the maids describe him as prissy, soft and childish for his age. In other respects the boy’s treatment of the maids was arrogant and snooty, a reflection of his parents’, and he told tales on the women to his mother at the slightest excuse. In general he was most attached to Elisabeth and slept in her bed until he was almost eight years old. The parents had separate bedrooms, by the way, I forgot to mention that.”
Troulsen said, “Yes, it sounds like a recipe for a psychopath.”
“And it gets worse. If Andreas did not live up to the demands his father placed on him, especially when it came to doing well at school, Alf took it out on his wife. He considered their son’s schoolwork to be her responsibility, so she had to pay when Andreas did badly. On at least two occasions the boy had to witness his mother being punished after he came home with mediocre marks in a couple of subjects.”
Pauline Berg stopped speaking briefly and took another sip of water.
“Yes, there are certainly goodies here for the psychologist. But I have another little gem too-Elisabeth Falkenborg was obsessed with the household staff having short nails, and if they couldn’t keep them in check themselves, then she did it for them. One of Andreas Falkenborg’s favourite tricks, which he learned as a little boy, was to maintain that they’d scratched him, and then his mother was right there with the scissors, to his great delight.”
Simonsen looked at his watch, a sure sign for them to speed things up. “A picture is beginning to form, you might say. How were the maids duped?”
Pauline Berg closed her notebook. She knew that part by heart.
“Into having sex with their boss. Well, that applies to three of them, and possibly more. None of them was specific about it over the phone so we’ll go out and visit them to get the whole story. Maybe Agnete Bahn was also taken in.”
“We’ll have to find that out on Monday,” said Simonsen, disappearing from his office without so much as a goodbye.
CHAPTER 25
Pauline Berg was enjoying her dinner with the psychologist. His surname was Madsen, but for some reason he would not reveal his first name. She got no further with him than E. Madsen, and as the evening progressed was running out of Christian names starting with E. During dessert she thought of two more.
“Ebert or Esben?”
“Why don’t you just enjoy your ice cream while you tell me a little more about yourself?”
“But is that correct?”
“No.”
“Neither of them?”
“Neither of them.”
“Hey, what about Emmerik?”
“Good Lord, you can’t be called that unless you’re a canary.”
“I promise not to laugh.”