The producer disappeared for a long time and the officers grew nervous that he had become lost in the building corridors. He returned, his face flushed. He had a seasonal beer with him that he’d picked up somewhere and that he unselfconsciously started to drink. The alcohol gave him strength to join in the fray, which turned out to be an advantage. If one could see past the man’s foul smell and pedantic manner, he was a brilliant project leader. Everyone fell in line and agreed that the title should be “The Man with the Video Camera.” This was as far as they could agree and everyone knew it.
Simonsen began, “Aka Frank Ditlevsen’s secret friend? Aka the killer and tree feller from Allerslev? Aka Stig Åge Thorsen’s stranger? Aka the driver of the minivan and the executioner from Bagsværd?”
It was a question. The Countess remained firm in her belief and was quick to answer, “Yes.”
Pedersen again played devil’s advocate: “Maybe, but very much a maybe. This is much too uncertain to put this out there. We risk derailing the whole investigation. Guesses and speculations-that’s simply too thin.” Simonsen nodded thoughtfully while Pedersen continued. “Particularly with respect to Stig Åge Thorsen’s stranger, who we aren’t sure even exists. It could be one man, it could be five or ten women for that matter. That country bumpkin is not the most reliable witness, to put it mildly, and his motives are unclear in every way. He’ll probably turn out to be another media stunt. We don’t even know if the remains of the minivan are at the bottom of his pit.”
The Countess countered, “The technicians have established a match between the last film clip and the view seen from his land.”
Pedersen replied, “A preliminary match, and even if it were true it would not necessarily mean that the minivan ended up there.”
Simonsen jumped in: “Let us take this from the beginning-that is, Frank Ditlevsen’s secret friend. Pauline, give us a summary.”
Berg would have preferred that he had turned to the Countess. Her secret knowledge that Frank Ditlevsen’s secret friend was one of his so-called old boys stuck in her throat and today she would have a given a great deal for a do-over of yesterday. She sat straighter in her chair. The producer stared lustfully at her breasts and the production assistant tapped away at her keyboard.
“The only thing we have are the accounts of two neighbors, of which only one has any substance. The next-door neighbors have seen a man in his thirties visit the brothers on a few occasions over the past year. They say he has his own key. But the description is incomplete: light-haired, above average height, slender and well proportioned, always arriving on foot or by car with Frank Ditlevsen.”
Simonsen suddenly interrupted: “Give me a summary of the murder of Allan Ditlevsen and focus on the tree felling.”
His voice sounded unusually sharp and Berg looked at him in bewilderment. Neither of the two others said anything but she could tell from their expressions that they were as much at a loss as she was. She followed his order. Anything else would have been inconceivable when her boss was acting like this, but his shifts in mood were strange, almost bizarre. Luckily she knew the facts of the tree felling almost by heart.
“The perpetrator felled the tree in eight blows at around four to four fifty during the night between Wednesday and Thursday of last week, and the tree finally came down at five thirty-eight A.M… Shortly before this, Allan Ditlevsen was killed by blunt trauma caused with a beech stick. The hot-dog stand was shattered by the tree. The perpetrator gathered up his things and disappeared into the front door of the building at Ved Torvet 18. Here he goes down into the basement and out through the back entrance to Garvergade. Traces of sawdust have been found all along this path but after this point we don’t know where he went. Our best find is a series of four footprints from the stairwell in number 18. As it happens, the building has no residents. It is ready to be demolished.”
The Countess finally got it. She stood up and left, while Berg continued her recap. She even managed an account of the forensic report without a manuscript. The Countess quickly returned with a disoriented Malte Borup in her wake.
Simonsen stopped Berg as abruptly as he had ordered her to start. Then he turned to the producer and said, “Your assistant is very hardworking. Tell me, what is she writing?”
The producer’s surprised, somewhat puffy face removed any suspicion of conspiracy for the moment.
“I’ve been wondering that too. Why are you writing this all down, Marie?”
The movement on the keyboard stopped and Marie instantly reached for the mouse. The Countess gripped her wrist a couple of centimeters away from it; Borup took over her keyboard.
Pedersen was the first to comment on the situation.
“Dammit.”
The meeting was adjourned and set for the following morning, at which time the producer promised to return with a new assistant. He was endowed with a truly professional spirit, and unless he was an excellent actor he had not prompted his assistant into these subversive activities. He had no idea whom she had been reporting to online. The feeling among the investigative team was depressed. It was not so much that the assistant had caused any real damage. It was of course unpleasant that their conversations were now circulating on the Internet but they could deal with that. What was so shattering was the firsthand demonstration that a part of the general public was simply working against the police. In case any of them had been harboring any doubts in this regard, they were finally set straight.
Simonsen tried to breathe some fire into his team: “The damage is negligible. The situation is constantly changing and if the media get a little more background information it isn’t the whole world. In any case we have to keep working and forget this.”
Unexpectedly, it was Malte Borup who spoke up.
“I don’t think it’s for the media, more likely to one of the many anticop pages that are constantly popping up on the Web. Some of the sites are pretty big.”
The others stared at him in astonishment. Pauline Berg asked for them all, “Anticop pages? What do you mean?”
“You mean you aren’t following this at all?” slipped out of him. He regretted it as soon as he’d said it, and apologized, slightly pink: “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Of course you follow. With everything else that is…”
Simonsen came to his aid: “No, Malte, I’m afraid that we aren’t following at all but perhaps we should. Can’t you give us a quick synopsis?”
“All right. There are sites like Pillory.dk and SeksSyvSytten.com and then of course the one who put an ad in the paper about being… abused as a child. He is far and away the biggest. That one is WeHateThem.dk.”
He stopped. Oral reports were not his strong suit.
Berg helped him along: “What do they do, Malte? Can you tell me about that?”
“Well, you can join them as a supporter, and what they want is that it should be punishable to be… that is, to be… mean to children.”
He blushed and stopped. Berg had an urge to grab his hand. After a brief pause he started up again of his own accord.
“That is, really punishable, like in the USA, where you really can’t get away with it.”
Now it was the Countess’s turn.
“What else do they do, Malte?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t know.”
Pedersen appeared in the doorway. He was holding a stack of papers and radiated urgency. “What they’re doing is making sure that defenseless people are assaulted or driven to their deaths. Twenty-three incidents, over the entire country. From Gedser to Skagen, and not as a figure of speech-completely literally.”