Two ring binders on the shelf supported the girl’s story. She hadn’t been the first, by any means. Jesper and Pia Mikkelsen had come to the aid of many more besides her. Simonsen and Klavs Arnold each leafed through the contents. Young girls, mostly from the region’s smaller towns, who’d hit bottom in Aalborg or else were well on their way. Where necessary, the couple got them admitted to a private rehab centre in Viborg, subsequently finding them somewhere decent to live and getting them started back at school or working, often going back to square one and beginning from scratch when the girls fell back into their former ways. But once they’d picked a girl out, the couple were apparently prepared to go to any lengths to ensure that they made a difference, and no expense seemed to be spared to that end. Klavs Arnold put down his ring binder. A moment later, Simonsen did likewise, turning at once to Jesper Mikkelsen.
‘I’m impressed.’
The nightclub owner said nothing. Simonsen went on:
‘The Vesterhavsgården holiday cabin. June 1969. Revising for the exams.’
Mikkelsen returned Simonsen’s gaze without a sign of apprehension.
‘Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. Here, in my office, with my wife and solicitor.’
‘Lucy Davison. I’ve got photographs of you and your wife with Lucy Davison.’
Jesper Mikkelsen said nothing. Simonsen changed the venue for their meeting to Aalborg Politistation and told Mikkelsen they’d find their own way out.
Pia and Jesper Mikkelsen arrived for questioning at eight the next morning as agreed, bringing with them a solicitor who kicked off by announcing that he wished to make a statement on his clients’ behalf. Simonsen and the Countess waited with keen anticipation. Perhaps the Countess’s early-morning flight had not been in vain, but in that respect they were disappointed. The solicitor produced a sheet of paper and began to read from it.
‘“Pia Mikkelsen and Jesper Mikkelsen wish not to make any statement to police. Should they at any subsequent point in time be detained – either individually or together – in connection with this matter, it is their clear wish that I, their solicitor, be contacted immediately and be present before any questions are put to them.”’
Simonsen responded with astonishment:
‘But we haven’t even told them what this is about yet.’
His protest was ignored, the solicitor continuing in a lifeless monotone:
‘“My clients wish to inform the police that Lucy Davison, the English girl they met on their revision trip in nineteen sixty-nine, continued her journey by bus to Varde on the afternoon of Wednesday the eighteenth of June of the same year. Since that time they have not seen her, and they have no further comment to make on the matter.” Are my clients detained?’
The Countess shook her head.
‘No, but we’d very much like to…’
The solicitor got to his feet. The Mikkelsen couple followed suit.
‘In that case we shall leave.’
As indeed they did.
Pauline was glad to be asked if she’d like to see the posters again, and they’d driven straight from the airport to Søllerød. Praising his officers wasn’t something Konrad Simonsen found easy to do. He always felt like an actor having to speak a line he’d forgotten. He gave up trying and followed Pauline as she walked slowly round the exhibition. She was silent, allowing herself plenty of time to study each poster in turn, like a buyer at a proper gallery.
In some odd way Simonsen felt the images belonged to him and was stricken by modesty, a feeling he immediately tried to suppress.
‘You said yesterday you were reading up on the sixties. What have you discovered?’ he asked.
‘Nothing hard and fast, but a lot of stuff I didn’t know before.’
‘Such as?’
‘Like how brilliant your music was. Your books were boring, though.’
Your music, your books. Simonsen accepted ownership, thinking to himself that he probably wouldn’t have done only a month ago. Pauline Berg lingered at the poster she’d just been looking at, staring down at the spot where ten days ago she had suffered a panic attack. After a while she spoke.
‘When I felt my throat tightening here, I thought it was Juli Denissen being strangled. But now I know it was Lucy Davison.’
She sounded serene, as if presenting some banal, albeit relevant fact. Simonsen said nothing. He didn’t know what to say and responded to her only with a shrug, causing her to look away and proceed to the next image, commenting as she went:
‘I know what poster you had on your bedroom wall when you were young.’
‘No, you don’t.’
He tried without success to make eye contact with her again.
‘Marilyn Monroe with flaxen hair, purple mouth and blue eyeshadow. Andy Warhol, nineteen sixty-seven.’
Simonsen flinched. Not only did he remember the poster well, he vividly recalled wanting to buy it, though for some reason, probably lack of funds, he never did.
‘Very close indeed, I must say.’
‘You thought I was going to say Che Guevara, didn’t you? The doctor who ended up an inept guerrilla.’
‘That’s what I guessed.’
‘What poster did you have, then?’
‘Nothing typical of the age, I’m afraid. Not that I recall… or, wait a minute, I did have one at the time of the Common Market referendum. It wasn’t exactly art, though. It just said EF NEJ TAK in big red letters.’
‘That wasn’t the sixties, though. Wasn’t it in nineteen seventy-two, that referendum?’
‘I was a late starter.’
The conversation faded as she concentrated on the picture in front of her, Simonsen finding himself unable to think of something to say to fill the void. The pause, however, was short-lived.
‘Nej tak was typical, though. Everything was Nej tak. Nej tak to this, Nej tak to that. Anyway, I’d have thought you’d vote yes to joining Europe.’
‘I did, as a matter of fact. But I was against for a while. And the poster was put up by a girl I knew then.’
‘Rita?’
He couldn’t recall having mentioned her name, but supposed he must have done. Unless Pauline had been talking to the Countess. He decided not to worry about it, it didn’t matter.
‘That’s right.’
‘And she voted no?’
‘She didn’t vote.’
They fell silent again. By now Pauline only needed to look at three more posters and the tour would soon be over. When she was finished, she returned to one of the first images.
‘There’s something I can’t stand. It’s the way you all brag about it. As if in your view no other generation’s worth tuppence. Everything else gets weighed and measured against your hallowed nineteen sixties and nothing else ever comes up to scratch.’
She spoke without aggression, a simple statement of fact. Simonsen grinned.
‘In three hundred years’ time we’ll be the only generation remembered, unless some major upheaval occurs in the next twenty. And note, I said the only one. We were out on our own, and quite without precedent.’
If he’d been hoping to provoke her, it didn’t work. Pauline’s reply sounded resigned.
‘That’s exactly what I mean. I can’t stand it.’
‘We were the first generation in the history of Denmark never to have experienced war or hunger. I really hope others will follow on, but I’m not optimistic it’ll happen.’