“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
“Who is an ugly cutting?”
“That I can’t say. Maybe the ones I’m afraid of.”
“Are you thinking about anyone in particular?”
“Rikke, I was afraid of her.”
“No others?”
“Yes, others too, but mostly Rikke, since we’re talking about her.”
Simonsen observed him coldly. Falkenborg squirmed, but said nothing.
“How could you have been afraid?”
“I don’t know, I was young then, maybe I didn’t really know what I was doing.”
“Stuff and nonsense, you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“Sorry.”
“But I think I know why you are afraid of women who resemble Rikke Barbara Hvidt.”
Simonsen took out another photograph and set it in front of the suspect. Falkenborg looked and said, “Ugh.”
“You say ‘ugh’, so you recognise the picture?”
“Yes, it’s Belphégor.”
“Explain.”
“It’s a demon from TV.”
“The Ghost from the Louvre played by Juliette Gréco, broadcast in the summer of 1965?”
“Yes, that was it.”
“Have you ever owned such a Belphégor mask?”
“No, never.”
Again a shudder and the nose by the armpit. Finally Simonsen got the point.
“You shiver when you’re lying.”
“Yes, I’ve always done that. Or if I get nervous. I can’t help it.”
“You lied just now.”
“Yes, I'm sorry about that.”
“So you have owned such a demon mask?”
“Yes, when I was a kid. I made it myself, it took a long time.”
“Where is the mask now?”
“I’d rather not tell you, it’s a secret.”
“Well, then, let’s wait a little and see if we don’t find it some place or other when we search your apartment. I would bet we do.”
Simonsen reached across the table and moved the photograph of Rikke Barbara Hvidt over to the left of the man and the demon correspondingly to the right. Then he placed a picture of Agnete Bahn in the middle before him. Andreas Falkenborg started shaking.
“Who is she?”
“Her name was Agnete. She was our maid when I was a child. She was an evil person.”
“One night you tried to scare her with your mask, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it was a Sunday. I would prefer not to talk about it, if I can avoid it.”
“You sneaked up outside her window with your demon mask on and shone a flashlight on your head so that she would be scared. What happened then?”
“Can I avoid saying anything about that?”
“No, you can’t.”
“I didn’t kill Agnete.”
“I know that, did she get too old?”
“She didn’t look like that any more when I grew up.”
“And she wasn’t scared that night in the summer of 1965 when you were peeking in her window. The whole thing turned out quite different from the way you expected, right?”
“She screamed when she saw me.”
“Tell me!”
“She was sitting on top of my dad, she shouldn’t have been doing that, and I wasn’t supposed to see that, definitely not. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Your father got your mother and hit her, because you behaved as you did.”
“My mother screamed, it was awful, I dream about it at night.”
“While you were still pressed against the window with your mask on and all.”
“I didn’t know what I should do. You mustn’t say anything else, my whole body is shaking and sweating. I can’t help it that I sweat.”
“What did Agnete Bahn do in the meantime?”
“It was terrible, I’ll never forget it, it’s stored inside me… deep, deep inside me. She pretended that she was kissing me, she thought the whole thing was very funny, her lipstick was on the windowpane for days. Should she have done that? I was just a kid.”
“No, she shouldn’t have done that.”
“I hoped that she was dead, but you’ve spoken with her?”
“Yes, I have spoken with her.”
“Can she go to jail for what she did?”
“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?”