‘If, and perhaps, and a few tentative maybes for good measure! I don’t get why we don’t just send that postcard we got from the UK over to Kurt Melsing and get a DNA-analysis done, see if we get a match to our doctor woman. There’s got to be a fifty per cent chance she licked the stamp.’
They all fell silent and gawped at her as if she’d just flown round the room. Pauline’s former uncertainty bubbled up.
‘What are you looking at me like that for? Was it a stupid thing to say? Can’t they do that after so many years? Or did we do it already? I might not be up-to-date, I’ve not had the chance to catch up the last few days… Anyway, I’m sorry. I can see now we’ve got nothing to compare it with, and Hanne Brummersted’s not going to agree to a test, is she? Apologies, go on.’
The Countess was the one to break their silence. She turned to Klavs Arnold.
‘There’s your Plan B.’
Simonsen beamed.
‘Brilliant, Pauline. Absolutely brilliant.’
Again, however, the Countess said what no one wanted to hear.
‘But is it at all possible to get DNA after forty years?’
Simonsen’s smile became even wider.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Then why are you laughing?’
‘Because if I don’t know, Hanne Brummersted won’t either.’
‘That’s true. As a way of talking her round it might work. It’d be useless in court, though, unless she agreed of her own accord to have a sample taken for comparison.’
‘Wrong, Countess. We get hold of a sample we can prove is from her, preferably without her knowledge, and then we get her DNA. That would stick all the way.’
‘Rubbish. No judge would ever accept that.’
‘Not in this country, no. But what about Sweden or the UK? Inadmissibility of evidence relates to jurisdiction not the organic matter itself.’
‘All right, so we’re being clever. Probably too clever by half.’
‘Perhaps, but if she did lick that stamp, our good doctor could find herself in a rather nasty position. And if she didn’t, there’s still a pretty decent chance she’s forgotten whether she did or not.’
That evening the Countess took up the positive results of their discussion. At least on the personal level, for the professional side of things stayed behind in the office. It was what she preferred in her own home, and Simonsen respected her for it – as well as for the fact that she could easily break her own rule if she found it suited her.
They were standing in the kitchen. Simonsen was chopping cabbage, a discipline at which he now excelled. The Countess was slicing beetroot, while Anna Mia sat on a chair exuding moral support.
‘That was really good of you, giving Pauline that pat on the back today,’ the Countess commented. ‘She was glad of it, I can tell you. It was just what she needed.’
‘She deserved it. Funny no one thought of it before, though, about DNA on the stamp.’
‘I’m glad she was the one who did. It hasn’t been easy for her after Klavs Arnold came in. Quite apart from everything else she’s got to deal with.’
‘Klavs Arnold’s not against her.’
‘I know, and he’s slotted in very easily himself, but I think she feels she’s the weakest link, even if she isn’t the last one in any more.’
‘She is, too,’ retorted Simonsen.
‘Well, I suppose so, but she needed the boost.’
‘Why haven’t you given her one before, then? A pat on the back doesn’t cost much.’
‘Now you’re being stupid, Konrad Simonsen.’
Anna Mia joined forces, munching on her second carrot and jabbing what was left of the vegetable at her father accusingly.
‘Happy workers work better. All the studies agree.’
‘No, they show that workers who work well are happy workers. But that doesn’t fit in with the touchy-feely modern workplace, so instead they changed it round and switched cause and effect. And in so doing created thousands of superfluous administrative positions to weigh and measure and keep on feeding the myth.’
The Countess laid her head on his shoulder.
‘You don’t mean that, and you’re not fooling us for a second. We know you too well. Anyway, how many cubic metres of cabbage do you think we can actually eat?’
‘I enjoy chopping. It runs away with me, that’s all.’
‘Pauline hasn’t been doing too well of late. After you took her off that problem page research she started ploughing through everything she can find about the sixties on the internet, as well as just about every book she can get her hands on. In the evenings, off duty.’
‘So I gathered from what she said. But her being taken off Helena Brage Hansen’s column research had nothing to do with her not knowing about the sixties. It was more a matter of Pauline not being able to glean a thing about someone else’s personality.’
The Countess ignored him and carried on regardless.
‘She’s upset, too, about having to ask if she could be involved when you invited Madame to look at your gallery, which, by the way, will have to go back to Kramer Nielsen’s estate very soon. She felt she was being overlooked. But she’ll be coming back, as it happens. Her therapist has told her she ought to.’
‘Fine by me. But you could have brought her home any time to see my… to look at those posters.’
‘That wouldn’t be the same, would it, silly? Sometimes you’ve got no idea how you affect people, have you?’
Anna Mia stole another carrot and pitched in:
‘Sometimes meaning never. Word is you patted a dog handler on the back. A colleague in Glostrup’s going round bragging about it, did you know?’
The Countess followed up:
‘Even the executives love it when you praise them. Not to mention Arne. He beams like a little kid whenever you get your act together to give him a word of encouragement.’
Simonsen shrugged indifferently, prompting the Countess to throw up her arms in despair, turning to Anna Mia, who shook her head and said:
‘He’ll never learn. Can’t you peel some more carrots? We’re running out.’
‘You can have some cabbage.’
Simonsen looked at the Countess.
‘You’re talking about all the others. What about when I give you a pat on the back?’ He sounded surprisingly serious all of a sudden.
She put her arms round him by way of reply and hugged him tightly. Anna Mia whistled.
‘Did we hear wedding bells?’
‘You mean, is your father going to make an honest woman of me? Well, he hasn’t actually asked yet.’
The Countess sounded cheerful and breezy about it. And yet both women’s antennae were out, and ultra-sensitive to Simonsen’s reaction. His answer, however, was frank and to the point.
‘How about when I retire? Will you still want me then? Lounging about the house while you’re at work?’
She hugged him again.
‘I’d love it. You could do up the basement, mow the lawns and do the weeding. Maybe even find time to mend that socket in the outhouse like you’ve been promising to do for the last fortnight. And don’t forget, I’ll be older too. I want to sit in a rocking chair by the fire and knit you a woolly hat, a nice warm one to cover your ears and hide the fact you’ll have no hair left.’
Anna Mia cheered.
‘All you’ve got to do is say the magic word, Dad, and it looks like you can stay on here for ever.’
The Countess turned her head, though still resting it against Simonsen’s chest. She flashed Anna Mia a playful smile.
‘I could knit a little jumper, too, for your third grandchild.’
Konrad Simonsen spun round and stared at his daughter. Or rather, his daughter’s stomach. The Countess let go of him and followed his gaze. Anna Mia got to her feet, displeased with the turn the conversation had suddenly taken.
‘That’s for me to decide, thank you very much. Let me set the table.’
Finn B. Hansen, Helena Brage Hansen’s elder brother, had come to Copenhagen, more specifically to Konrad Simonsen’s office. The tape recorder he’d brought with him lay on the desk between them, a clumsy, prehistoric monstrosity but nonetheless in full working order.