‘I think Arne thinks that too.’
He turned his head to look at her.
‘Can’t you just concentrate on something other than yourself, for the next few hours at least?’
Sometimes he forgot how needy she could be. Especially if she’d been normal for a while, back to the way she’d been a year and a half ago. When she regressed her voice changed. It sounded as if she were quoting from a book, a passage she didn’t care for but had been asked to read aloud.
‘When you sat with me that night at my flat and I was asleep, didn’t you want to get into bed with me?’
‘For crying out loud, Pauline! No, and you know perfectly well I didn’t. But right now I’d like to send you home.’
He snorted with contempt and instantly regretted his reaction. It was obvious she was trying to provoke, and he shouldn’t have bothered answering her at all, that would have been by far the best thing to do. He channelled his annoyance elsewhere.
‘Where the hell’s Arne got to anyway?’
‘He had to go for a whizz.’
‘I know what he said. And I also know we’re surrounded by about ten thousand pine trees he could have gone behind, if that was what it was.’
Again, Pauline slipped her hand under his arm. A conciliatory gesture, accompanied by a comment about not being a man herself and not knowing. She gave his arm a little squeeze, then removed her hand before he did it for her. The conversation died as soon as they heard the car.
A blue Citroën came up the driveway and pulled up in the car park, the gravel crunching beneath its tyres. It was Hanne Brummersted. The agreement had been for Arne Pedersen to receive her. Simonsen nudged Pauline forward.
‘If Arne’s not here, you’ll have to…’
At the same moment, Pedersen came round the corner of the main cabin. Simonsen stopped talking and watched as Pedersen led the woman inside and into the communal living room, where Helena Brage Hansen was already seated. It was the room she and her classmates had used most back in 1969. After a short while, Pedersen came out.
‘She seems relaxed about it. We won’t be having any problems with her.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean, relaxed about it?’
Pedersen muttered a few brief words of explanation without Simonsen being any the wiser.
‘How did the reunion go off?’
‘Cautious, non-committal.’
‘Are they talking?’
‘How would I know? You never taught me to look through walls.’
‘What I meant, obviously, was do you think they’re talking?’
Arne Pedersen hesitated. Pauline Berg shook her head as if dismissing the bickering of two errant schoolboys. Then she walked the ten metres or so over to the window and peered in for a second before returning.
‘No, they’re not talking. The doctor one’s just sitting staring into space. The little thin one’s typing something on her phone.’
Pedersen was infuriated.
‘Don’t you even know their names?’
Pauline clenched her fists, almost as if she was about to strike out. Of course she knew their names. Perhaps he wanted to test her? Was that it? She paused and growled the two women’s names. Simonsen’s phone vibrated in his inside pocket. With difficulty he opened the text message. It was from Helena Brage Hansen. He read it, informing Berg and Pedersen of its content:
‘The Mikkelsen couple won’t be here for another half-hour. They’re running late.’
Arne Pedersen had found a back room they could access from the main cabin’s rear entrance, a room with heating. He went off, rolling his eyes at Simonsen as he did, with a telling nod in Pauline’s direction. She watched him go, turning to Simonsen once he was gone, suddenly with sweetness in her voice:
‘Let’s take a walk round the grounds.’
He dragged his feet while she chatted gaily.
‘I was out on the town on Friday and met this guy in a bar. Do you know what he said? He said I’d got child-bearing hips. What do you reckon? Is that any way to score a girl? Child-bearing hips!’
Simonsen didn’t reckon anything at all and could only muster an inkling of a polite smile in response to her incredulous laughter. Then, abruptly, she changed the subject.
‘What did Kramer Nielsen’s priest say when you interviewed him yesterday?’
‘It wasn’t an interview. Have you been talking to the Countess?’
‘I phoned when you were out with him. If it wasn’t an interview, what was it?’
Simonsen’s own view was that it might best be described as a prologue, preparing him to reveal something he had kept secret for many years. If the opportunity even arose.
‘Can’t you go back to Arne?’ he said. ‘I’d like to be on my own for a minute.’
She left him alone, without protest and without taking offence. The woman was clearly frustrated. He stared after her, disappearing into his own thoughts.
He didn’t remember exactly when it was, but it must have been around midsummer, because when the film ended and they left the cinema it was still light. Maybe it was the Grand Teatret on Mikkel Bryggers Gade, but he wasn’t sure about that either. And yet he recalled the film so vividly: Easy Rider. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper crossing America from West to East.
On their way out she’d stopped at an amusement machine, one of those where you steer a claw to grab a prize. It was as if she ground to a halt, standing there amid the throng of filmgoers, feeding the machine with coins, coming up with three cuddly toys for herself. But her success left her strangely unmoved. Then all at once it came pouring out.
She wanted to go away. To America. They should leave immediately, start afresh, just the two of them. That was what they’d do – go to America, far away from Denmark. She could play music, sing. He could… get a job somewhere. They’d be transformed, and life would be good, she felt sure of it. In America, not Denmark.
Thinking back on it now, it seemed to him she’d been quite unflappable and rational about it, and yet exalted and manic at the same time. She couldn’t have been, but that’s how he remembered it.
She dropped her last coin into the machine without success, not even trying. And then she said:
‘I’m taking some cash to Germany next week. I’m going to steal it and take off.’
He said nothing, merely shook his head, realising she meant it. They went back to his flat, leaving her cuddly toys behind on top of the machine.
The next day he called in sick, the only time in his career he’d ever skived off. They holed up together in his home and he spent the entire first day trying to persuade her to give up her hopeless venture. After that he went to a bookshop and bought six exercise books, and for the next four days she wrote it all down: names, people, dates, places, conversations – everything she could recall, down to the minutest detail. The times she’d run cash… How much? Who gave it to her? Where did she deliver it? To whom? Who kept the books? And so on. In hindsight it was his first interrogation. His first and most difficult. When she’d finished he read her statement through carefully, putting additional questions to her and writing down her answers in the exercise books. She co-operated willingly, albeit disillusioned, and without holding back on any fact.
He found it a lesson he would never forget: the importance of the interrogator penetrating into the soul of his witness, understanding and accepting their feelings, ultimately putting himself in their place. Oddly enough, it was Rita who, in one of their occasional breaks, first passed comment on his skills:
‘You’re good at this, Konrad.’
It was an objective statement of fact, yet tinged with sadness. The distance between them when he wasn’t questioning her was marked. They slept apart.
When they were done, he went to Kasper Planck, who had helped them once before and might do so again. Who else was there? He knew no one.
Tremblingly uncertain, he waylaid the man outside the Store Kongensgade Politistation.