The dog was given a roll of film to sniff at and then put to work. It weaved its way in and out between the various items with its tail wagging, then stopped abruptly at an empty bookcase at which it began to scratch frantically. The dog handler praised and patted it, and uttered his first voluntary words of the day:
‘He’s found something.’
The three officers searched the bookcase. It was teak with a backboard and six movable shelves. They investigated every square centimetre. They tipped the bookcase over and examined the bottom, but nothing was forthcoming. The dog had lain down, its tail occasionally thumping the floor as it watched its owner’s every move. They pulled the shelves out and looked them over carefully, again without result. Simonsen sent the dog a frown. After fifteen minutes they gave up on the bookcase and the dog handler issued a command to the labrador, which promptly sprang into action. It pounced forward and did a little dance with its front paws on one of the shelves that had been put aside on the floor. The dog handler spoke again:
‘He’s found something.’
Simonsen and Pauline Berg examined the shelf again. The dog handler asked them:
‘Can you see anything?’
Simonsen replied drily:
‘Yes, a laminated teak shelf, sixty by thirty centimetres, I’d say. Twelve, maybe fourteen mill thick. Ends grooved to fit the shelf hangers.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah. One surface scratched by a dog,’ Pauline rejoined, though the sarcasm seemed to be lost on the man.
‘There’s something about that shelf.’
‘There’s nothing about that shelf.’
‘Try hiding it among the others, but keep your eyes on it.’
He drew the dog away and they both turned round so they couldn’t see. Knowing not to underestimate the intelligence of the animal, Simonsen shuffled the shelves thoroughly. Pauline had given up on the project.
‘No cheating, mind,’ she called out to the dog handler.
‘We won’t.’
Simonsen was ready and the dog received its command. It ran straight to the correct shelf and scratched the other side as well. Simonsen was quick to react:
‘He’s found something.’
He examined the shelf again, only to shake his head. Now he’d given up, too. He handed the shelf to the dog handler, who turned out to know rather more about wooden shelving than Simonsen did.
‘It’s not laminated. There’s two layers of three-millimetre teak veneer on the outside and four-millimetre chipboard in the middle, so you can hollow the chipboard with the teeth of a saw if you’ve got the patience. It’s softer than the veneer, so the saw’ll find its own way. Nice little hiding place once you’ve done it. It’s been seen before.’
He produced his mobile phone from his inside pocket.
‘Are you phoning for a new dog?’ Pauline asked in earnest.
The man said nothing, but shone the phone’s torch into the groove at one end of the shelf.
‘There’s a crack there, I reckon. Maybe he made a plug from another piece of chipboard, to put in and cover the hole. Have you got anything pointed, something that’ll bend? A paper clip or a bit of wire?’
Simonsen had to go off down to the far end of the storage hall where there was a small office behind a glass wall. The place was empty. He took a handful of paper clips from the magnetic holder on the desk. Returning, he handed them to the dog handler, who straightened one out and shaped a little hook from it. The remainder he tossed on to the floor. He gave his mobile phone to Pauline who shone the torch for him as he inserted the makeshift tool into the groove and began to fiddle about with great concentration and immediate result: he removed a thin wafer of chipboard, took the torch from Pauline’s hand and peered into the hiding place.
‘There’s an envelope in there.’
Simonsen beamed.
‘We’ll leave it for the technicians and stop here. But let me say, you and your dog have done a tremendous job, even if I was a bit sceptical at first.’
As they left, the dog received a treat and Simonsen thought his owner deserved one, too. He patted him on the back a couple of times instead.
Konrad Simonsen had to wait four long days before receiving confirmation that a sorely needed breakthrough had finally been made in his investigation. He spent the time tying up a loose end that had been bothering him for quite a while.
The retired postman he had visited at the care home had lied to him. Young kids in 1969 didn’t save up to travel the world. At best, they made themselves a packed lunch and took off. But more importantly, Jørgen Kramer Nielsen didn’t have a passport, a fact that didn’t tie in very well with his supposed wanderlust. That thought had occurred to Simonsen the first time he and Arne Pedersen had gone through Kramer Nielsen’s personal effects, but had quickly slipped from his mind. Much later, one morning while he was taking a shower, he suddenly remembered it. The brain was a peculiar organ. Subsequently, he deployed an officer to check up on the old man, and the pieces had all fallen nicely into place.
Back at the care home he confronted the misleading witness.
‘You lied to me last time I was here. You told me Jørgen Kramer Nielsen saved his money up to go round the world. That wasn’t true.’
The man hid conveniently behind his advanced years.
‘I don’t remember that.’
‘You also told me he was a lively, outgoing lad until his family died in that plane crash. That wasn’t true, either.’
‘It’s ages since you were here. I can hardly remember us talking.’
‘And now you’re lying again. There’s nothing wrong with your memory.’
‘How would you know? Anyone can remember wrong.’
‘Are you fond of the police?’
The old man’s miserable face grimaced more deeply. He didn’t answer the question, but shook his head in annoyance.
‘You applied to join the force often enough in your younger days,’ Simonsen observed.
‘I wasn’t tall enough. It wasn’t fair.’
‘Is that why you led me a dance? Or did you have something against the postmaster? Maybe you didn’t care for his son either?’
‘I don’t care for anyone much.’
That, at least, seemed true enough, Simonsen thought. He pulled two cartons of cigarettes out of his briefcase. He had been trying to think of a way to motivate the old man. Cigarettes were the only thing he could come up with.
‘They say without a pension scheme and money in the bank it can be hard making ends meet once you’re retired. The manager told me this was your brand.’
He put the cartons down on the table.
‘The truth, and nothing but.’
The old man stared greedily at them and abandoned his grudge.
‘Jørgen was strange from the day he started, and I didn’t like his dad one bit either. A big head, always boasting about one thing or another. His son never did any harm, though. Then again, he never did any good. He was just there, that’s all.’
‘The song’s familiar.’
‘Everyone found him odd, even his dad, as long as that lasted. Odd, but harmless.’
‘And all that about him wanting to travel, that wasn’t true, right?’
‘I don’t think he could have got it together. He wasn’t like the rest of them.’
‘Who?’
‘The youngsters they took on in those days. I couldn’t stand the sight of them, me. All that long hair, and filthy dirty, no respect for anything. Oh, they could tear things down, no bother, but that was it. And all familiar we were supposed to be all of a sudden. No more “sir” and “madam”. It was like a clearance sale, everything had to go. A good hiding’s what they should have had.’