“That’s right, but it’s not nice to hear you say it.”
“Now we’ll move Catherine Thomsen over to Maryann Nygaard and Belphégor. What about this one, you know her too, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“She lived less than five kilometres from your summer house in Præstø.”
“So I almost must have known her.”
“I’m tired of your ‘almost’ and ‘maybe‘ and ‘probably’.”
“Yes, I knew her, her name was Annie.”
“Annie Lindberg Hansson?”
“Yes, that’s what it was.”
“Where should we put her, do you think? With the living or the dead?”
“The dead, Annie is dead.”
“You killed her, like you killed the others?”
“I probably didn’t do that, she was never found.”
“She resembled the other women to a T.”
“So it must be me. Yes, I would think that.”
“Where did you bury her?”
“I didn’t.”
Simonsen struck his hand on the table and raised his voice considerably.
“Then see about finding your tongue. Where did you bury Annie Lindberg Hansson?”
Falkenborg shrank back in fear and answered timidly, “Will you please stop yelling at me?”
“Where did you bury Annie Lindberg Hansson?”
“I didn’t. I don’t want to talk about it, see how I’m shaking?”
“We’ll get to that. And Liz, did she die in the same way?”
“I think in the same way, that was why I bought my deserted farm. To get close to her. That was in 1992, the year Denmark won the European Championship in soccer. That was in Sweden too.”
“What was Liz’s surname?”
“Liz Suenson.”
“How did you meet her the first time?”
“In a lift. It was stuck, it was only me and her and an old man. I couldn’t get out, none of us could get out. It was on Vesterbrogade, right across from the small buildings that are in front of a museum. Copenhagen City Museum, I think it’s called. I was going to the dentist.”
“Where did you kill her?”
“In the forest, somewhere in the forest. We drove a long way.”
“And you buried her there?”
“Yes, in the forest too. There are big forests in Sweden.”
“What’s the name of that forest?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think it has a name.”
“Where is it?”
“In Sweden, I don’t know exactly where.”
Simonsen leaned across the table and snarled angrily, “Do they jerk back and forth when they can’t get any air? Like Agnete Bahn, when she was whoring with your father?”
“You mustn’t talk that way.”
“What happened when you sat there by the window, Andreas? While your mother got a beating because of you, what was it you saw?”
“Her breasts. I looked down in Agnete’s undershirt. There were her bare breasts… you could see down to her breasts.”
“When should you be able to do that?”
“When they are dying; you should look down at their breasts when they’re dying.”
“Agnete Bahn kissed you on the other side of the windowpane, to mock you while your mother was screaming.”
“This is not nice.”
“What do you do with their mouths? Tell us that.”
“I don’t kiss them.”
“No, but you do something else, something that only the two of us know. What is it?”
“I don’t want to talk to you any more. This is disgusting.”
“Tell me first, what it is you do.”
“You mustn’t tell it to anyone.”
“I won’t say a thing. Come on, out with it, what do you do?”
“Can I get into a regular prison then?”
“Yes. Say it then.”
“I want to be in one of the regular prisons, I can’t take the hard ones, I don’t deserve that.”
The woman who came into the interview room then interrupted them authoritatively.
“Let’s see first if you’re going to jail at all. It’s not the chief inspector who decides that. Good day, Simon, I would like to speak to my client alone, and this interrogation has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?”
Simonsen agreed reluctantly.
“Yes, it has. May I ask one final, simple thing?”
She gave permission with a nod, but added, “It has to be brief.”
Simonsen asked Falkenborg, “Are there more than the ones we have talked about?”
“No, I swear. Only those three.”
“Three, you say, what about Liz Suenson? Did you invent her?”
“No, but she wasn’t Danish. So is she number four after all?”
Andreas Falkenborg looked as if he was honestly in doubt.
CHAPTER 33
After the questioning of Andreas Falkenborg the mood in the Homicide Division was guardedly optimistic. It would soon change, however. For the rest of the day misfortunes rained down on Police Headquarters in Copenhagen in general, and Konrad Simonsen’s unit in particular, in one long, unbroken chain of news that seemed to go steadily from bad to worse.
With Ernesto Madsen’s assistance, Simonsen and Arne Pedersen went over the questioning of Falkenborg, and in no way did the psychologist share the detectives’ relative satisfaction with the results of the interview.
“This is not going to be easy for you. His childishness and spontaneous honesty, which he knows exactly when to use and when not to, provide him with effective protection. I am convinced that this is how he has managed his whole life when he’s faced difficulties. We are talking about deeply embedded habits that he doesn’t need to think about, not even in stressful situations. I assume you noticed how he glaringly avoided saying anything that he could not take back later.”
The question was aimed at Simonsen, who was well aware of the problem, but did not care for the word “glaringly” and thought there were bright spots besides.
“This is only the start, he will be questioned again and again. Besides, I think he said things that were incriminating. He did confess his guilt several times.”
“He almost confessed, but each time in a submissive manner, so the truth value depends to a high degree on whose eyes are looking at it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are his strict father, and he wants to please you in this situation. If I were called in for the defence, I would have some really good angles to exploit here.”
“You almost sound as if you think that’s how it was.”
“I do think so. He’s not play-acting, but just because he is infantile, he’s not unintelligent. He concentrates on not telling you at any point in time those very few things that only he and perhaps you know. The rest he lets go simply by reacting, as he feels compelled to at the moment. An extremely effective strategy, which also gives him a certain advantage during the questioning, because he does not need to focus on anything other than concealing his knowledge of the lipstick and then naturally where he buried Annie Lindberg Hansson.”
Simonsen looked downcast. Pedersen asked the profiler, “You sound like it’s guaranteed that he will retract his statement. Are you sure of that?”
“I firmly believe that he has calculated that, or else his lawyer will advise him to do so when she has familiarised herself with the tape. But you know the drill better than I do.”
Pedersen asked Simonsen, “I don’t know her, is she any good, Simon?”
“Absolutely, but she is also very honest. Tell me, where did she really come from? She showed up almost out of a clear blue sky. He can’t be the one who called her, because if so we would know that.”
Pedersen answered, “He didn’t, he didn’t even use his phone call.”
Simonsen asked, perplexed, “So it must be the press who informed her. They don’t usually get involved in that sort of thing. But there’s another thing I don’t understand: it may well be that his defences in an interrogation situation are more effective than I was immediately aware of, but on the other hand it would be far more sensible for him simply not to talk to us. However we twist and turn it, we now have a taped statement that does not exactly put him in a positive light.”