Hansen got to his feet, indicating they didn’t have much choice in the matter.
‘No need to worry I’ll get in touch with her, because I won’t,’ he assured them as he showed them out.
They left the office and Pedersen returned to his accounts. The advantage of being overworked was always having something to do while waiting for something else to arrive. Simonsen chose to amble up and down the corridors of the courts building. The place was relatively new and the red-brick walls were lined with paintings, presumably at the instigation of the staff art society. The canvasses were hard to get a handle on and moreover rather dull.
Half an hour later Finn B. Hansen had come to a decision.
‘I’d like to help you if I can. At the end of the day it would be the best thing for Helena. At least, I hope so. What would you like to know?’
Pedersen kicked off.
‘Your father appeared in uniform at Brøndbyøster Gymnasium at one point, so we’ve been led to believe. Does that ring a bell, or would it be completely out of the question?’
‘No, he may well have done. He was top dog, field master general or whatever, in the Scouts. Don’t ask me what group it was, all I remember is he seemed to wear that uniform continually for a while. He was quite unabashed by it. The arguments we had in those days! I was studying law at university and my father went ballistic when we boycotted lectures and occupied the offices, not to mention the time we smoked pot on the stairs of the main building.’
Simonsen delivered a discreet kick to Pedersen’s shin, pre-empting his colleague’s interruption. Having already abandoned himself to recollections of the sixties as seen from class Three Y of Brøndbyøster Gymnasium, he was well aware that most who’d been around then had partaken of one substance or another at some point. It made fact a rather fluid concept, events being inclined to shift back and forth in recollection, one year or two, to accord with this or another reminiscence, and often suitably modified to fit the bill.
‘Basically, I think the uniform was his reaction to the times. Today I consider that to be rather courageous. But at the time I thought he was a fool.’
‘Was your sister in the Scouting movement?’
Hansen thought for a while before answering.
‘I don’t recall her being involved, but she may well have been. She and I were very different. Perhaps because of being boy and girl, but also because I rebelled against my parents while she rebelled against me. Had she been older than me it might have been the other way round. It’s often such slight differences in circumstance that dictate where you end up, isn’t it?’
‘But you can’t definitely say if she was?’
‘I’m afraid not. She was my younger sister, so I wasn’t that interested in the things that occupied her or who she hung around with.’
‘While she was at the gymnasium she edited a problem page. Could that have been something to do with Scouting?’
‘It could, certainly. I’ve got some stuff of my parents’… documents, papers… I’m sure I’d be able to find out what branch of the movement my father was involved in. You could take it from there.’
‘We’d be grateful if you would. What happened to your sister after school?’
‘She became ill with psychiatric problems. Whether it was following on from the gymnasium or later, I don’t recall, but certainly around about that time. It took quite some years before she began to function reasonably again, if one can put it like that. Thinking back, what I remember most about her then is how ill she was. She was in and out of hospital all the time, and of course it took its toll on the family, though especially on my mother and father. And Helena herself, naturally.’
Again he paused and they waited patiently. Simonsen found himself wondering. Until now their enquiries in to Helena Brage Hansen’s background had given them no indication at all that there had been mental health issues. He would have to chase that up himself.
Finn B. Hansen continued:
‘I know what you’re dying to ask, but I’ve no idea at all if her psychiatric problems can be linked to anything that happened in Esbjerg. Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid. All I can say is that her condition stabilised with time, I think probably due to advances in drug treatment. The psychiatrists found her a pill that could keep the demons at bay. In the eighties she lived in a farming commune. I went to see her there a couple of times, though it was quite a hike to Bornholm. Then when our parents died – that’d be, what, nineteen eighty-four and eighty-six – we inherited quite a sum of money. She spent hers relocating to Norway and establishing herself there. First in Bergen, then all the way up north in Hammerfest. She works as a nature warden and tourist guide there. At some point she became a Norwegian citizen, I don’t recall when exactly.’
‘And there’s no family there, no children?’
‘None. I believe she sees someone, though.’
‘Are you in touch with her at all?’
‘Not much. We e-mail once in a while, but months can easily go by.’
‘So you don’t get together much?’
‘She did come to my sixtieth birthday, and my youngest son went to stay with her when he was in Lapland a couple of years ago. If I remember, I’ll give her a call at Christmas, but that’s about it really.’
Neither Simonsen nor Pedersen had anything more to ask, apart from one thing that potentially might make a difference to their inquiry. The agreement between them had been that the one Hansen hit it off best with during the interview was to give it a go. There was no doubt this was Simonsen’s call.
‘As I’m sure you understand, we’re going to need to have a word with your sister. If that interview could take place in Denmark it would be in the best interests of all parties. We wouldn’t be able to go to Norway and question a citizen without the involvement of the Norwegian police. But you’ll be fully aware of that, of course.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. When were you thinking of?’
‘We’ll give you a call. It’ll probably be a week or two yet. We’re starting off by interviewing her classmates. It might not even be necessary to talk to Helena.’
‘Let’s hope that’s the case.’
The two policemen had only just left the court building when Konrad Simonsen halted and stood there like a pillar of salt. Pedersen was immediately alarmed.
‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling ill?’
‘No, just slow on the uptake, that’s all. Come on, we’ve got to go back in.’
Finn B. Hansen accepted the interruption gracefully as they came barging back into his office.
‘We forgot something,’ said Simonsen, slightly out of breath. ‘The scout group your father was with. Would they have had a hut or a cabin in the Esbjerg area, for summer camps and the like?’
‘Yes, the Vesterhavsgården. A children’s holiday camp. I remember the sea there, and that we went to stay sometimes when we were kids, but I honestly can’t remember if it was Esbjerg, or Blokhus, or somewhere else.’
Simonsen thanked him. Hansen shrank visibly as he realised how significant the information might be, and then added gently:
‘I’m afraid, as I recall, the grounds were rather extensive.’
The Vesterhavsgården turned out to be exactly right, though the place was now owned by Esbjerg’s local authority and had since been renamed. Looking at Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s photos no one could tell one way or the other if their Gang of Six had been staying at a holiday camp or not. Officers investigating in the area had been instructed to look for a summer house. The holiday camp was therefore duly passed by, until Simonsen called Klavs Arnold.
The photos matched. Arnold took some pictures on the spot and e-mailed one to Simonsen right away. There was no doubt about it: the same wooden cladding on the outside walls; the corner of the building and the slope in the background, exactly as they’d been forty years before. The end of the bargeboard was carved in the shape of a dragon’s head, presumably with a sheath knife, and the monster had been there in 1969, too, albeit rather grainy in Kramer Nielsen’s black-and-white images. Moreover, the man with Down’s had been traced. He had lived on the neighbouring farm until his death in 1991, but older people in the area remembered Daft Troels well – a harmless, happy soul, now sadly long-since gone. The only fly in the ointment was that Senior Deputy Judge Finn B. Hansen had in no way overestimated the extent of the grounds: thirty hectares, at least, of broken landscape comprising grass, scrub, heather, pine, fir and impenetrable thickets of brambles.