Again, he looked up and scanned his audience.
‘I asked for autopsy photographs from the hospital in Hillerød, and after the woman’s skull was opened and a portion of her brain removed, the haemorrhage itself is plainly visible. Not knowing if you would be comfortable with these images, I brought along a more anonymous example for you to see instead.’
He indicated the cylinder on the desk with the black cloth over it.
‘Which would you prefer? The original photographs of Juli Denissen, or the specimen here?’
Simonsen smiled to himself. The professor had obviously decided to pay him back for having tidied his lawn for him. When the others were too hesitant to reply, Elvang made the decision on their behalf and pulled the cloth from the specimen with a flourish. The head in the jar was split down the middle, permitting a view of the interior of the brain. Simonsen couldn’t help gloating secretly as he watched the unsavoury cheesemonger pale to the colour of Brie. The women present swallowed visibly. The professor plucked a biro from the pocket of his white coat and used it as a pointer as he explained to them exactly what they were looking at.
‘At the time of his death, this man was twenty years old. He died in 1903, the cause being a massive cerebral haemorrhage which…’
His summary of the process of death took almost fifteen minutes and was pure sensationalism, the sole purpose being to illustrate how Juli Denissen’s death too was due to natural causes.
When he was done he peered wearily at his audience.
‘Any questions?’
His attitude was clearly not inviting, but nonetheless the cheesemonger ventured a query
‘From when this eurysm, or whatever, burst, to when Juli was dead… would she have had time to think or feel anything?’
Professor Arthur Elvang stared at him through thick lenses.
‘How on earth would I know? I’ve never died of a brain haemorrhage, and have no idea what it feels like.’
The old man had a point, they could see that, and for a brief optimistic moment Simonsen thought they were finished. The matter could be closed, the group – or whatever they called themselves – could be dissolved, and, most importantly, Pauline Berg would realise that her private involvement in Juli Denissen’s death had been nothing but a diversion.
He was allowed to content himself with this illusion for about five seconds. Just as he was about to rise and thank the professor, Linette Krontoft raised another point.
‘How do you know Juli was only alive for two minutes after her attack? You said yourself it was very fast.’
‘We can ascertain as much by measuring the adrenalin, both that in the bloodstream and that which accumulated in her brain. Adrenalin leaves the blood rather quickly when oxygenated, but the bleeding in the brain receives no oxygen since it doesn’t circulate in the bloodstream. Tests can be done on it, allowing us to estimate fairly accurately the length of time between haemorrhage and death, and our calculations indicate two minutes at most.’
‘But why did she have adrenalin in her bloodstream at all? Is that normal?’
The question came from Pauline Berg. Elvang replied:
‘Quite normal. Adrenalin is released when a person is afraid, as I’m sure you know. Normally adrenalin content is measured in the urine. Juli Denissen’s result indicates 11.55 micromoles of adrenalin per litre of urine, which is tremendously high, more than seventy-five times greater than the median and as high as anything I’ve seen. We can deduce that she must have suffered a state of extreme alarm. Most conceivably, that’s what triggered the rupture of her aneurysm. That said, however, she would almost certainly have died from the congenital condition sooner or later.’
‘But what made her so afraid?’
The cheesemonger weighed in:
‘She’s right, no one gets scared on purpose.’
Elvang stared wearily at Simonsen, who sensed he had to intervene.
‘Obviously that’s not a medical issue. Besides, there’s no way of saying one way or the other; any number of things could have given her a fright.’
‘But something scared her, we’ve just heard she was in a state of alarm,’ said Pauline Berg, looking animated now.
‘Yes, but it could have been anything, for goodness’ sake. Some thought that suddenly occurred to her and made her upset… perhaps her daughter came across an adder in the grass, or maybe it was a sudden crack of thunder… we’ll never know.’
Simonsen noted the resigned exchange of glances between Linette Krontoft and the cheesemonger, both of them seemingly accepting his point. The professor’s run-through of the facts appeared to have done the job. Only Pauline remained unconvinced. He gave her a look of despair, only for her to meet his gaze without wavering, repeating her objection:
‘There must have been something, Simon. Something frightened the life out of her. But what?’
He shook his head and thought to himself that at least they’d got rid of her group. Then he considered what the cheesemonger had said. No one gets scared on purpose. It was the only intelligent thing he had uttered, if indeed it could be called intelligent. No one gets scared on purpose. What the hell was he supposed to do with that?
Hanne Brummersted, consultant of the Department of Clinical Genetics, Herlev Hospital, greeted the Countess and Simonsen at her place of work, in a meeting room not unlike the one Simonsen was familiar with from the Rigshospitalet. Here the two officers ran into a wall of memory loss.
Hanne Brummersted couldn’t recall ever having been to Esbjerg. She didn’t remember any of her classmates, and had no memory of any girl from the UK. She didn’t know if she’d been to Sweden, but even if she had, she certainly had no recollection of any tent, nor of any postcard for that matter. She’d also completely forgotten that she’d had to resit her maths exam in her final year of gymnasium school, and similarly couldn’t think of why she might have missed the exam proper. She had no idea if she’d ever been in touch with any of her former classmates after they went their separate ways, but she believed not. She didn’t know who Jørgen Kramer Nielsen was, and hadn’t the foggiest notion of why he, too, might have failed to turn up for the same exam.
Thus, she rattled off her list of everything she couldn’t remember, a long and well-rehearsed monologue that indicated quite clearly that she’d been prepared for this very situation for a good many years indeed. And when asked by the Countess if there was anything else she’d forgotten, she merely replied, without a hint of irony, that she couldn’t remember.
Simonsen placed the four photos from the Vesterhavsgården on the table in front of her.
‘You’re in all of these. Does that jog your memory in any way?’
‘I can’t deny I was there. I just don’t remember it, that’s all.’
She spoke to him as if explaining something difficult to a child.
‘If you’d care to look at these photographs, perhaps you might recall.’
‘That won’t be necessary. It won’t help.’
‘Does the name Lucy Davison mean anything to you? Lucy Selma Davison?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘That’s the name of the English girl you’re with in the photos.’
‘If you say so. I have no recollection of any English girl.’
‘That’s funny, because you and your friends killed her and buried her body.’
‘I have no recollection of that, and what’s more I don’t believe you.’
‘You killed Jørgen Kramer Nielsen, too. You broke his neck.’
‘I did not kill Jørgen Kramer Nielsen, whoever he may be.’
Simonsen pointed out the discrepancy between her not remembering if she’d killed Lucy Davison, and yet being perfectly adamant that she had not killed Jørgen Kramer Nielsen. To which she calmly and with detachment replied that memory was a highly complex phenomenon. And what did he think he was trying to achieve?