His exclusive audience concurred: it wouldn’t do any harm, at least. He clapped his hands together, feigning optimism.
‘Well, that’s it. Does either of you have any bright ideas as to how we might proceed?’
No startlingly original thoughts were forthcoming. The silence was oppressive. Arne Pedersen was the first to give up:
‘Perhaps we can think about it, Simon?’
The next day, Pauline Berg came up with something new to go on in the case of Jørgen Kramer Nielsen. It wasn’t earth-shattering by any means, but by then Simonsen was glad of anything he could get. She was sitting in his office when he arrived on the Thursday morning and announced proudly that she’d got a present for him, even if it wasn’t gift-wrapped.
Following her unfortunate outing to Nordsjælland the week before, she had turned up for work on the Monday as if nothing had happened, and neither of them had mentioned the episode at all. She had returned the documents he had given her without comment and now they languished in the bottom drawer of Simonsen’s desk, waiting for him to pull himself together and get in touch with Professor Arthur Elvang and ask him to read the autopsy report, just as he had promised her on the grasslands of Melby Overdrev almost a week ago. She hadn’t pressed the matter, in fact hadn’t even enquired about it yet, but he was well aware that she wasn’t going to forget about it and that he would soon have to get things squared with the professor.
Contrary to what he’d expected, she had seemed happier this past week than he had seen her in a long time. She was almost back to being the old Pauline, from before the abduction. She was more sociable, too, he found, and not only towards him.
He looked at his present.
‘Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s final exam certificate from his upper secondary. So it turned up, after all. Where did you find it?’
‘It used to hang on the wall in his dad’s office at the post office, until they got a new postmaster. That’s why it’s framed. Two of the old postmen remembered it hanging next to King Frederik the Ninth, and probably about six months or so with Queen Margrethe as well, after her father died, I imagine, until the plane crash. We found it in the post office’s basement.’
‘So his dad was proud, then.’
‘He was. In fact, he was the first person at the post office whose offspring had graduated from the gymnasium, so it was something to boast about in those days. But have a look at this.’
She handed him a small pile of papers.
‘This is correspondence between Tom Kramer Nielsen and the Ministry of Education in nineteen sixty-nine, and you may as well pat me on the head now because you wouldn’t believe how many phone calls it’s taken to get hold of these copies. Of all the foot-dragging institutions in this country, government ministries are the worst. Most other places they at least get their finger out as long as you say murder inquiry and urgent, but with central administration it seems to have the opposite effect.’
‘They can be a bit reluctant at times. So, yes, a pat on the head.’
She put him in the picture.
Jørgen Kramer Nielsen hadn’t turned up for his final exam, oral maths. The reason seemed rather unclear, given that his father appeared to change his story during the course of the correspondence, but according to the rules his son could not officially graduate, having first to resit the exam at a later date. And yet Jørgen Kramer Nielsen hadn’t attended the resit either.
‘Why not?’ Simonsen asked.
‘I’m not sure, but his dad kicked up a fuss and wanted to know why they couldn’t just give him a fail in oral maths, because that would have meant he graduated with the rest of his class. His other grades were more than sufficient to make up for a zero in the one subject. So they correspond back and forth a few times. Only the ministry sticks to its guns and goes by the book.’
‘But he passed eventually?’
‘Yes. That’s this country for you, isn’t it? You see, one of Tom Kramer Nielsen’s old army friends from the days of national service had gone on to make a career for himself in just the right place. He’d become chairman of the association of folk high schools, and old mates scratch each other’s backs, don’t they? So, hey presto, Jørgen Kramer Nielsen graduates. Take the certificate out of the frame and look at the signature on the back.’
Simonsen did as she said.
‘You’ve certainly been digging into your modern history. Who told you all this anyway?’ he said as he fumbled to remove the certificate.
‘The folk high-school chairman himself. Still bright as a button and nearly a hundred. He went on for two hours. It was all very pleasant, quite fascinating actually. So what do you make of the signature?’
‘Well, I never. Old Evil Helge himself.’
‘Why do you call him that? Is there something I’m missing?’
‘It was a sorely unjust nickname. Helge Larsen was a very competent Minister of Education who became the butt of public criticism for the entire youth rebellion back in the day. His job put him on the front line. No politician could ever achieve any kind of popularity in that position then. These are very good grades Kramer Nielsen got, aren’t they?’
‘They are. And look at written maths, and physics for that matter, too.’
‘And yet he never took oral maths or carried on into higher education. I wonder why.’
‘Don’t ask me. But I was wrong about when they burned their exam certificates. It was the year after, in 1970. On the square of Kongens Nytorv.’
Pauline paused for a moment, then added pensively:
‘I’d like to have been around in those days. It must have been really exciting.’
Konrad Simonsen shook his head.
‘Not for me, it wasn’t. I had a job to do. And besides, I never went on to upper secondary.’
The next piece of input that brought the case forward, to view it positively, came the week after from an unexpected quarter and, for Konrad Simonsen, at an equally unexpected time. He had taken Monday and Tuesday off as holiday and spent them developing his repertoire of exercise. In poor weather he could hardly drag himself outside for his daily jog, and in a couple of months the pavements would most likely be covered in snow and ice, which would make running his usual route tantamount to idiocy. Consequently, he’d purchased an exercise bike that he set up in his gallery. And on the Monday morning, as he was working up a sweat for the second time on this new contraption, his unknown poster girl watching him with a twinkle in her eye, he was interrupted by a visitor.
Klavs Arnold was from Esbjerg. He was a big man in his late thirties, thick-limbed and full-chested. There weren’t many superfluous grams of fat on him, and it was a good bet that he seldom had anyone fronting up to him at his local drinking establishment. His clothes were practical and worn. He had taken off his solid leather boots, which wouldn’t have been out of place in an army barracks, and left them outside the door before knocking and entering.
‘Excuse me, are you Konrad Simonsen, from Homicide in Copenhagen?’
Simonsen wound down his cadence as he studied the man, who had to lower his head slightly to get through the doorway.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Sorry, I should have introduced myself. Klavs Arnold, detective sergeant from Esbjerg.’
He shook Simonsen’s hand, or rather his entire forearm, then twisted the bike’s resistance dial.
‘That’s too much for you, you shouldn’t be on more than three to start with. Beginner, yeah?’
Simonsen admitted rather curtly that this was true, only to realise that the man was right. He stopped pedalling, but remained in the saddle.
‘And you’d be an expert, then?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, but I do a few shifts at the local gym every now and then to make ends meet.’
He handed Simonsen his towel.