“You are stubborn, the nobility often are. Now you will reap what you have sown. But sometimes stubbornness can be an advantage. You will experience that this evening.”
The drive from Høje Taastrup to Søllerød did the Countess good. The metaphysical encounter had not been pleasant, and she was happy to escape from the strange couple. She had little to show for her visit in investigative terms. She called Simonsen and, when she did not get through, left a message about Madame’s white chapel on his answering machine, happy that it was not up to her whether the information should be taken seriously or not. The rest of the way she tried to shake off the memory of the other things she had experienced by letting Bob Marley blow her head clear at full blast.
At home she emptied the mailbox and dumped the bundle of advertising directly into the rubbish bin before she went in. The rest, three letters and a package, she tossed on the kitchen table when she was inside, after which she put on coffee, watered her flowers and quickly packed clothing for herself and Simonsen. After lugging the suitcase to the back of her car she returned to the kitchen. The coffeemaker was still gurgling, and she thought she would either have to buckle down and decalcify it or else buy a new one. While she was waiting she browsed indifferently in her mail.
The letter on top was a statement from one of her banks; she threw that out. The next was a parking ticket, and she remembered that her windscreen wipers had dispatched the first copy on to the street; she was indifferent to that as well. The last letter was a bill from her private detective for ten pictures she had already received by email. She did not bother to open that either. The package remained. In the mailbox it had been under a home-delivered Sunday paper and therefore might have come by courier on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. No sender or recipient address was given, and with a feeling of paranoid suspicion she balanced it in her hands a short while, after which she tore it open.
The book was new, as if it came straight from the printer. The dust jacket showed a bluish-grey Boeing B-52 bomber hovering over a desert of ice, elegant and at the same time powerful with its slender fuselage and the gigantic V-shaped wings, each carrying four potent jet engines. Title and author were printed in capital letters and hatched in the colours of the American flag. On Guard in the North by Clark Atkinson. She opened it to page one and noted that her present was a copy of the very rare first edition from 1983. The non-existent edition. To top it off, it came with a personal greeting from Helmer Hammer. Freehand and not without talent, the under secretary had sketched a pair of magnolias, heavy with flowers, as they appeared in early June. Behind these a few strokes suggested the geometry of the Palm House. The message was brief and personaclass="underline" Dear Countess, I certainly owe you a lot of G. Best, Helmer. For good measure the G was embellished with a pair of eyes on its lower curve, so that it resembled a smiley face.
Under normal circumstances she would be happy, both with the book and this acknowledgment from the under secretary. But these circumstances were not normal, far from it. Her odyssey into recent Danish history seemed very far off and had no significance now. She squeezed Hammer’s present in among her cookbooks, poured coffee into a vacuum jug, looked at her clock and left. To begin with, however, she travelled only a short way up the street, where she stopped parallel to a parked blue Renault and rolled down her window. The driver of the other car did the same while he put a finger to his lips and then indicated behind him towards his female partner, who was sleeping in the back seat. The Countess knew him in passing, but could not remember his name. She handed over the vacuum jug and two mugs to him. He took them, whispering, “You are an angel.”
“How long are you on duty?”
“Don’t know, the plan has not quite fallen into place, but a long time. We’ve only been here a couple of hours.”
“Lousy job to be ordered out to.”
“It’s voluntary now, but it doesn’t matter. Just be sure to catch that mass murderer, and find his hostages alive.”
The Countess promised to do as he asked. Just!
CHAPTER 49
The drive from Søllerød to Police Headquarters was unpleasant. The Countess ran into rush-hour traffic and had far too much time to see how life in Copenhagen continued as it always had, despite the kidnappings of Pauline Berg and Jeanette Hvidt. Even though she knew she was being stupid, it made her angry and even more depressed than she was before. She tried to dismiss her anger before she went into Konrad Simonsen’s office. It was difficult.
Her boss was sitting on a chair above an over-sized map of Zealand, which he had set down on the floor in front of him, and barely said hello when she came in. The map was divided with red ink into a series of quickly and carelessly marked-off areas, which she did not immediately recognise. She started by opening a window; he had been smoking.
Simonsen said, “Do you know how many churches there are in Zealand?”
“No idea. Quite a few, I presume.”
“Exactly. There are an awful lot of churches with districts that don’t follow municipal boundaries, or other worldly boundaries for that matter.”
He rattled off facts about parishes, deaneries and dioceses. The Countess recognised his mood well. Pent-up irritation meant that he had a tendency to make lists, without realising it himself.
“The white chapel? Is that what you have in mind?”
He ignored her.
“And furthermore cemeteries, crematoria, parish halls and a wealth of private chapels in various castles and estates. Not to mention all the various Catholic monastic orders, which no Christian soul can tell apart-Capuchins, cappuccinos, whatever they call themselves. The whole mess combined in a perfect hodgepodge… but naturally each with their pestilential cloisters… at least one pestilential cloister that is, often several.”
He was talking fast, frantically, and his normal caution not to lose himself in detail had obviously been cast aside. She was worried to see that his face was flushed, beads of sweat visible on his forehead. She commented quietly, “You’re sweating.”
He wiped his face with a handkerchief. Then he said, sounding more under control, “You shouldn’t be nervous, I’m not about to submerge myself in details. I am just so confoundedly angry, which by the way I don’t have time to be. At least I was able to let off a little steam.”
“I’m not afraid of you losing yourself in the details, more about your health, Simon.”
Simonsen allowed himself a little smile.
“You shouldn’t worry about either. That sweating is only when I don’t breathe deeply and regularly, and it passes quickly. This afternoon I had a definite attack, and then I was a little unsure, but now I’ve discovered that I can provoke it myself by… what the hell is that called, when you make yourself short of breath on purpose?”
“Hyperventilation.”
“Exactly. As soon as I do that, I start sweating like a pig.”
“That’s not normal.”
“No, I agree. But it’s not something we have time to worry about now either. There are more important matters, don’t you think?”
“I think that you should breathe properly, and then tell me what made you so angry.”
“A meeting in forty-five minutes at the Ministry of Justice. And I’m sure you can guess who called it.”
“Helmer Hammer?”
“Nice! And I naively believed that the whole menagerie of them could be ignored after our press conference last Friday, but no. I have to go to a meeting with the police commissioner and the national chief of police and director this and chief administrative officer that and general commander bleepity-bleep, not to mention the head of the intelligence service, however he comes into the picture. But they’re not telling me what to do. I intend to shift responsibility for the meeting to you, and if you don’t care to go-for which I would not blame you for a second-I’ll send Poul. And if he doesn’t care to go either, I’ll send Pauline’s dead cat. Then Grand Duke Hammer will maybe realise that we have more important work to do than playing press secretary for him and all his dignitaries.”