‘I’ve watched and reviewed all your interviews and have done my utmost in each case to go into things with an open mind. But all I can see is that it holds up. In the case of the unfortunate incident concerning Lucy Davison, they’ve put everything on the table. Every detail has been satisfactorily accounted for. There are no loose ends.’
‘It’s not about Esbjerg, it’s about Hvidovre.’
‘I know that, and in my honest opinion, none of them had anything whatsoever to do with what happened there. And that’s supported by the fact that we’ve yet to find the slightest, even remotely recent piece of evidence linking any of the four together or to Kramer Nielsen himself. And the reason for that is that there is no link, not to mention a conspiracy.’
The Countess twisted the blade.
‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, Simon. It’s as simple as that. Every time we’ve confronted them with Kramer Nielsen’s death they’ve provided us with logically consistent answers without hesitation or any kind of beating about the bush, and even you must admit you’ve been turning the screws on them. Perhaps excessively so at that.’
‘What about Hanne Brummersted? You suspected her yourself for quite some time, if I remember rightly?’
‘Suspected, yes, past tense. It’s no secret I don’t much care for the woman, but she didn’t kill Jørgen Kramer Nielsen. And while I remember it, I’ve got a report for you about people with Down’s Syndrome and their control of sexual urges.’
He was about to cut her off. That could wait, this was neither the time nor the place. But with an efficient flourish he immediately found infuriating she produced a printout and proceeded to go through its main points with pedantic insistence.
People with Down’s did indeed suffer from lack of self-control, though to varying degrees. In particular, they often found difficulty correctly interpreting human behaviour and language, communicative situations in general. Sexually, they could be considered promiscuous, and indecent exposure including public masturbation was not uncommon, a fact attributed to sexual confusion and disorientation. This could furthermore lead to inappropriate, offensive or physically violent behaviour. So, yes, there was a definite possibility that Troels Holst had killed Lucy Davison. Not because he intended to, but because he lost control of himself and the situation.
Simonsen grunted a word of thanks and endeavoured to pick up the thread.
‘Does this mean that you seriously consider we just happen to be dealing with the murder of a man who demonstrably colluded with others in causing the death of a young woman, and yet there is no link between the two occurrences? Think how unusual murder thankfully still is in this country, and then tell me you believe in this utterly incredible coincidence.’
His words were wasted. It was what they believed. Unanimously so.
‘Somewhere, there’s a detail we’ve missed. It’s there. Somewhere.’
There was a shaking of heads. No missing detail. Anywhere.
‘I’d like to help you, but I don’t know what to do.’
It was Pauline who said it and she sounded like she meant it. He didn’t know how to reply to her.
He spent the next day pondering different theories, each more unlikely than the next. Only one seemed to open up some small measure of possibility, enough for him to want to put it to others anyway, in this case Arne Pedersen, whom he waylaid in the corridor.
‘Listen, Arne. Suppose Kramer Nielsen was ill. Suppose he knew he was dying. As long as he was alive he wasn’t going to break that precious pledge of theirs, but on the other hand his Catholic faith is tearing away at him, urging him to make a clean breast of it so he can be ready to meet his maker. Maybe he wrote a letter, to be opened after his death, outlining how Lucy Davison died. Hanne Brummersted happens to find out about his illness via her medical connections. She goes to sees him, to make him think better of it before it’s too late. How does that sound?’
‘Like an equation with too many unknown quantities. Was he ill?’
‘We should be able to find out easily enough.’
Two wasted hours and a handful of phone calls later, Simonsen was forced to concede that there was nothing at all to indicate that the postman had been at death’s door. The priest had no information to that effect, the postmaster likewise, the man hardly having had a day off sick. Kramer Nielsen’s GP and the regional hospitals had nothing, and the list of the deceased’s personal effects contained no medicine other than a jar of aspirin, and even that was unopened. In short, whichever way he turned he drew a blank, and the theory died a death accordingly. Simonsen reminded himself he ought to inform Arne Pedersen, and then forgot all about it again.
There was more substance to Pauline’s input. She didn’t hide the fact that she inclined towards the majority line, as she referred to it, and yet she had taken his call for bright ideas seriously. Arriving in his office one morning, he found her lying flat out on the sofa in his annexe waiting for him. He commented on her choice of clothing, suddenly recalling it had been a problem for her – and for him – some months previously. Since then he hadn’t given the matter a thought, but now he noticed again:
‘You’re wearing your old clothes, the ones you had on before…’
He hesitated and could have kicked himself. She finished the sentence for him.
‘Before I was abducted and tortured. Yeah, so what?’
‘Nothing. It just made me wonder if you were beginning to feel better, that’s all.’
She shook her head.
‘I’m feeling like I always do. It’s up and down. But I don’t want to talk about it. Not today.’
He respected her for it, apologised and kicked himself again for apologising.
‘Two points, Simon,’ she said. ‘First, what if one of them from the Esbjerg trip used to go back once in a while, like Kramer Nielsen did, and then maybe at some point found the bag he’d hidden?’
‘It was well concealed, but not impossible, by any means.’
‘And second, I can’t see that we’ve cross-checked there for your suspects’ fingerprints.’
‘Our suspects.’ It was a point he had to stress. His suspects were Homicide’s suspects, and thereby theirs. Apart from that, he praised her and made a note. Pauline’s face lit up. Apparently, she was having one of those days. He went on:
‘They were all of them affected by what happened on that trip, and it’s no exaggeration to say it marked them for life.’
‘I agree.’
‘Jørgen Kramer Nielsen with his photos and his maths. Hanne Brummersted with all her work in diagnostics and genetic aspects of Down’s…’
His voice trailed off.
‘Go on, I’m with you.’
‘We’re leaving out Mouritz Malmborg. We’ve forgotten about him completely. How was he affected by Lucy Davison’s death? More importantly, have we even looked into how he died?’
Simonsen scribbled down another note with a pensive grunt and gave her credit once more. He wondered if that was why she was so tenacious with her theories. Much more so than the rest of them put together. Was it all to garner praise? If so, she was the complete opposite of himself. He would ask the Countess about it as soon as he got the chance.
By mid-morning, however, both loose ends came together. No fingerprints from any of the others had been found on Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s bag or any other of his personal effects, and if Mouritz Malmborg’s death had been orchestrated, the rather intricate performance had involved an Italian lorry driver falling asleep at the wheel and two totalled lamp posts. Konrad Simonsen went home for his jog.