‘Stop blubbering, man. Find yourself a decent solicitor instead.’
‘I didn’t think you wanted us to.’
‘No, but you’d better. Did you really think your wife was going to cover up for you for ever? How naive can you be? Especially in view of the way your relationship’s been going over the years.’
Mikkelsen burst into tears again, struggling to utter his words through the sobs.
‘Then punish me for killing Jørgen, even though I didn’t. I deserve to go to prison.’
Pia Mikkelsen was the only one who offered a measure of resistance.
‘Can’t you people get it into your heads? I had nothing to do with Jørgen whatsoever.’
‘But you’re the only one who was in touch with him.’
‘I most certainly was not. That’s a lie.’
Simonsen slammed the flat of his hand down on the table and yelled. And then she was crying, too.
That evening he and the Countess had dinner at a little Italian place in Helsingør’s town centre. Anna Mia joined them, the Countess having called and asked her. Or maybe it was vice versa, Simonsen never really found out.
The food was good without being spectacular, and reasonably priced, too, as the Countess noted when eventually they sat with their tea and coffee. Anna Mia didn’t get it.
‘I don’t understand you, Nathalie. You’re absolutely loaded with dosh and normally you’re not bothered how much you spend, but every time we got out for a meal you look at the bill as if every penny counted. Did your parents starve you when you were a kid, or what?’
The Countess laughed. No, she’d wanted for nothing. Anna Mia persisted:
‘Maybe it doesn’t always have to be you who pays every time we’re out. Dad could, for a change… or me, for that matter.’
The afterthought was a bit hesitant.
‘I thought you were saving up,’ said the Countess.
‘I am, but there’s a long way to go yet.’
Simonsen suddenly paid attention. He’d been staring out of the window without really listening. Pauline Berg was inside him again, a voice, an emotion… impossible to explain, but he found it happening increasingly.
‘What was that you said about saving up?’ he asked his daughter.
Anna Mia shook her head in resignation.
‘It doesn’t matter. There’s no point anyway with property prices the way they are in Copenhagen. Flats, I mean. I’ll never get anywhere near being able to put something down for a mortgage.’
‘Aren’t you happy where you are?’ he said, a note of concern in his voice.
The Countess shook her head with a little smile.
‘Simon…’
She made it sound like he should stop contesting the law of gravity. He acquiesced. She was right, of course, he shouldn’t interfere. Anna Mia explained it to him.
‘I’m getting older, too, Dad. But it’s not feasible, especially if I want to live in the centre, Frederiksberg or Valby. Sometimes I think I should move to Jutland. Aarhus, perhaps, or Aalborg. The prices over there are more reasonable.’
The Countess came to her aid.
‘That sounds like a good idea. Live somewhere else for a few years, Copenhagen’s not everything. We could drive over one day and look at some places, if you want. I love doing that.’
‘That’d be brilliant.’
Anna Mia sounded happy. Simonsen was not. He spun out a couple of inarticulate arguments in favour of the capitaclass="underline" Copenhagen would be best in career terms, and besides, her friends were all here. What’s more, she had to bear in mind the greater distances involved in Jutland. The region was bigger, much bigger than she was used to, for which reason she would have to work a car into her budget, meaning there wouldn’t be much gained anyway. Probably the opposite, all things considered. No doubt about it.
The Countess again offered her help.
‘You can buy my car cheap, I’ll get another. We’d be able to see you a bit more then, though it wouldn’t be the same as when you’re living here, of course.’
The ensuing pause lasted all of five seconds, and then Simonsen had another idea. He still had his own flat, which basically he hardly ever used. Anna Mia put a hand on his arm at the suggestion.
‘But it’s yours, Dad. And you’re so fond of Valby, I know you are.’
He might well have been, but he’d hardly been there more than three or four times in the past couple of months, apart from picking up his mail. Besides, it had been on his mind for a good while now that something had to change, and this was as good a time as any. It was worth considering, at least. At some point, in the near future.
The Countess thought it was a splendid idea. She knew a solicitor who was brilliant at that sort of thing. Anna Mia could buy the place cheap, the Countess could chip in and help, and Simonsen himself would then have enough in his account to buy something else if he ever found he couldn’t stick living with her any more. She waved away all protests. There were no two ways about it. It was an investment, and she’d be saving money on the car, too, if Anna Mia didn’t need it.
They hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol during the meal, but now she ordered three glasses of Calvados, enlivened by the excitement. Anna Mia conceded that Aalborg was perhaps rather too far away after all, and agreed it would be fantastic if they really could work this out. The Countess raised her glass.
‘Of course we can. I’ll get the solicitor to come round tomorrow evening. Skål!’
The two women chinked glasses. Anna Mia turned to her father.
‘It’s really kind of you, Dad. And thanks for having a drink with us, too. I know you don’t normally. But it’s like sealing the bargain, isn’t it?’
They toasted and drank up.
The second and third round of questioning yielded as little as the first. Simonsen huffed and puffed, begged and pleaded, and used every trick in the book, and a couple more besides, but all to no avail. Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s killer remained unforthcoming. The searches he initiated, the surveillance and phone taps, permission for which was so infuriatingly difficult to secure, brought no result either. None of the four suspects had been in contact with any of the others, apart from the Mikkelsen couple, of course, and none had made phone calls that could in any way be considered suspicious. After three days’ slog, Simonsen was left with a big, fat zero.
These were days when he felt everyone was conspiring against him, with the Countess as ringleader. Even Klavs Arnold, who had been on his side right from day one, seemed to have changed tack. When Thursday came round Simonsen took the bull by the horns, gathering his inner circle to hammer it home once and for alclass="underline" they may reject his theory that one of the Hearts was responsible for Kramer Nielsen’s untimely death, but he was still heading up the investigation, and he alone decided how it was to proceed.
He repeated himself for effect and felt almost gleeful at the sight of their weary-eyed expressions as he hammered home his message.
‘Lonely Hearts, Lonely Hearts, Lonely Hearts. That’s where we need to look. One of them did away with Jørgen Kramer Nielsen. They may even all be in on it. Somewhere there’s a connection, and we have to find it. I want bright ideas, and I want them fast.’
His voice boomed out, to be met only by the blank wall of a rare consensus. Klavs Arnold was frank with him.
‘You’re wrong, and you won’t admit it. The main thing preventing us from finding Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s killer at the moment is you being so stubborn.’
Arne Pedersen was more diplomatic.
‘I’m sorry, I just don’t think there is a connection, not any more.’
He contended that the searches they’d conducted had been a waste of resources. Naturally, that was the word Arne used: resources. Not time or effort. It was the way executives viewed people, Simonsen thought to himself. He listened, feeling somewhat detached, as Arne listed the negative results, going on to confirm Helena Brage Hansen’s and Jesper Mikkelsen’s alibis from the period the killing in Hvidovre had been deemed to have taken place. Eventually, Arne Pedersen concluded: