The handler patted the animal and answered, “I really don’t think so, but we can try from the other side, just to be sure.”
He ordered his dog around the tree, shouted an unintelligible command, and the animal’s reaction was repeated from the opposite side.
“And that means?” Poul Troulsen enquired.
“That there is a body inside the tree, unless Cathy is wrong.”
“Is she often wrong?”
“She’s never wrong.”
Pedersen set up a ladder which he had borrowed from the teachers, who were following the course of events tensely from their kitchen window not far away. He climbed up and with difficulty swung through the many unpollarded branches, aiming his powerful flashlight down into the trunk. Troulsen asked from below, “Is there anything to see?”
“Nothing, only detritus and withered leaves, but it’s hollow, like we thought. Should I try to go down? It won’t be easy.”
“No, let’s leave the rest to the technicians. If anyone is going to destroy evidence, it should be them and not us.”
A few hours later a chainsaw was powering into the old poplar. A technician dressed in what looked like a spacesuit operated the saw. The branches quickly disappeared, the trunk itself put up more resistance, but block by block the tree was cut down. The process was slow. Every time a piece of trunk was sliced off, two other technicians carefully removed twigs, leaves and humus from the hollow space. Only towards afternoon, when the tree was barely two metres tall, did anything finally happen. One technician said quietly, “Okay, now we have her. I can see a hand.”
Gently, almost solemnly, he gathered a portion of composted leaves, which he let fall behind him, then said, “Yes, she’s in a plastic bag, the poor girl.”
Pedersen already had his cell phone out. It was the news he and Troulsen had been waiting for all day. He called Konrad Simonsen and was connected immediately. With triumph in his voice, which he made no effort to conceal, he said, “She’s been found, and there is no doubt that it’s him. Same murder method.”
Then he listened for a long time. After a while Troulsen began to feel worried. Something was wrong, his colleague’s facial expression had lost every trace of optimism. Pedersen ended the call, looking unhappy.
“What’s happened, Arne? You’re completely pale.”
“Falkenborg is gone. He fooled his surveillance team yesterday evening, but we only found out this morning because some blockheads from Glostrup made a total mess of it. Since then everyone has been searching for him, but with no result.”
“Shit.”
“There’s more. Jeanette Hvidt has disappeared, and several witnesses saw Falkenborg at her uncle’s house in Helsingør.”
Troulsen took hold of Pedersen’s arm and turned him around, shouting, “What the hell are you saying?”
“He overpowered her in a bicycle shed in her uncle’s garden. That was the only thing Simon told me. You’ll have to wait to hear more until we get to Copenhagen.”
“But how could that happen? We were going to watch her. Didn’t she have anyone to protect her?”
Pedersen released himself from his colleague’s grasp and repeated slowly, “That was all Simon told me. I don’t know anything else.”
Troulsen folded his hands behind his neck and bent his head. Then he cursed bitterly and impotently.
CHAPTER 45
While in Præstø Arne Pedersen’s moment of triumph was transformed into defeat, Pauline Berg was lying on a reclining chair on her terrace, trying once again to figure out what she should do with herself. The initial shock of the fiasco on Saturday afternoon had subsided. With a little luck maybe the episode would remain undiscovered. She had talked with her boss yesterday and twice today with Pedersen, when she had asked for news while faking a heavy head cold. After all, Andreas Falkenborg was under intensive surveillance so she was in no danger, and with her police training she was in an excellent position to protect herself, especially considering that besides her course in hand-to-hand combat she was also in possession of a 9mm Heckler & Koch, the standard issue pistol.
“I’ll have to get my hair dyed back again as soon as possible.”
No one answered Pauline, who was talking to herself. She repeated the sentence in slightly varied form and concluded that unfortunately she would have to withdraw some of her savings to cover the outrageous eight hundred kroner the hair treatment cost. Pauline Berg yawned. She was comfortable here but really ought to think about starting on dinner. Last night she had slept poorly, and fatigue was gradually starting to get the better of her. Maybe it didn’t matter. She could have a couple of sandwiches for once, and if Asger Graa simply kept his mouth shut and came to dinner and shared the sandwiches with her…
She heaved her head up with a start, aware that she was about to fall asleep. Then she set the alarm on her cell phone, which lay on the garden table beside her, and closed her eyes while a cuckoo called from the forest, as if it could not come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t night-time either. She was soon out like a light. A quiet little snore escaped from her nostrils, barely audible unless you were close by.
When she woke up, she was immediately aware that she had slept much longer than planned. It was dusk already and she felt cold even though she had a blanket over her, which surprised her. She didn’t remember bringing it. She picked up her phone. The battery was flat. She had been asleep for almost three hours. She cursed to herself, even though there was nothing wrong with taking an unplanned long nap other than that she might have to postpone her planned painting project until tomorrow. She got up, stretched to get the sleep out of her body, folded up the blanket and went inside. With the blanket over her arm, she locked her garden door and pulled on the handle a few times; the door seemed solid. She thought that she must get a curtain she could close so as to screen off the terrace. Sometime when she had the money.
In the house she briefly considered changing her routine around. She was hungry, but usually did her daily ballet exercises before dinner and not after. She went to her practice room, which was one of the first she had furnished. Here she changed into a leotard, placed herself at the bar and expertly went through her drill. Outside it had grown dark and she observed her own reflection in the window until a twinge of discomfort took hold of her. She was unused to seeing herself with black hair, and the sight reminded her of Saturday’s fiasco with Andreas Falkenborg.
After her exercises she took a quick bath. She was in a strange mood, as if the day was somehow out of sync. She had put the blame on her black hair, but there was something else too. Something was wrong. Maybe it had been a bad idea to call in sick. She seldom took time off for no good reason, and usually had a bad conscience when she did. She was starving besides, which was her own fault, of course, but that didn’t make her any less hungry. She tried to remember what she had in the refrigerator to put in her sandwiches while, feeling oddly ill at ease at being naked, she hurried out of the bath and into her bedroom to get dressed. At the same time she decided to call Ernesto Madsen and ask whether he felt like visiting her. That would be nice, really nice. Then she realised that for that she would need to find the charger for her phone, which was not in its usual place in the socket below the night stand by her bed. She tried in vain to remember where she had put it, and at the same time cursed her customer-unfriendly telecoms company for having a four-week waiting time for a landline connection.