‘What’s going on here? You can’t leave him there like that in this weather.’
The caretaker rose to his full height and wheeled round. Why didn’t he mind his own business? Or maybe he fancied a punch on the nose? Simonsen produced his ID, noting how the man still debated with himself as to whether to stand down or not.
‘You can have a try, and I’ll give you three months inside in return, as well as putting you on your back.’
The man calmed down a bit and growled at him:
‘I was down in the basement checking the boiler. Bloody thing went out again, didn’t it? There he was, crashed out in the stairwell… nearly fell over him. Bloody homeless, they’re all over the place if you’re not careful. I can’t have them on my property, it could put me in all sorts of trouble.’
‘Clear off before I take you in.’
The man did as he was told and Simonsen turned his attention to the man on the pavement. A low-life, one of those for whom there was no use any more, in clothes that were sorely inadequate for the time of year. Simonsen took off his coat and wrapped him up, then called for a patrol car.
He was familiar with the statistics. Increasing numbers with not enough money to pay the rent and no other option but the street; twice as many now as five years ago. The credit crunch had undoubtedly speeded up the process. He sighed and stepped back. The man reeked.
And then suddenly, in the space of ten golden seconds, everything came together.
For whose benefit? That’s what she’d said, and it was why he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Not because he was mixing her up with other women, not at all. It was because of those words she’d said at that last meeting when he’d lost his rag. Cui bono? For whose benefit? It was the oldest question in the book, the starting point of any police investigation. Thank you, Pauline. Thank you!
The patrol car arrived swiftly. Simonsen asked them to drive him over to HQ first. It was stupid, really: it would have taken him fifteen minutes at most to go back and pick up his own car. But he couldn’t wait. The two officers rolled down all the windows and lugged the sleeping tramp on to the back seat.
‘Is this your coat?’ one of them asked.
Simonsen nodded.
‘We’ve got a bin liner in the boot, if you want.’
It was a decent thought: he’d be able to take it with him and have it dry-cleaned without touching the thing. On the other hand, he hadn’t worn it for a year, so what the hell?
‘It’s all right, he can keep it.’
He hastened his way through HQ to his office, unlocked the door, switched on the light and found the folder on the shelf. His fingers fumbled their way through the contents before pulling out the printout he’d got himself so worked up about. He scanned the few lines he was looking for and felt his face light up in a smile.
Cui bono?
That day, Simonsen didn’t come in until mid-morning. He made for his office, gathering all the folders from the Kramer Nielsen case and spreading them out along the length of the deep window sill. Nineteen in all. They took up the entire space. He mused briefly on the fact that no matter what Homicide did, paper was a sure result. He paced about, ambled almost, gazing up at the ceiling or down at the floor, spirits high.
Pauline knocked on his door an hour later, by which time he was seated at his desk with a staple gun, firing at the coffee cup he’d positioned on the floor. The place was littered with staples. She stared at him in disbelief.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Working.’
He fired another shot. A hit.
‘The secret is to find the right angle and then pull the trigger slowly, so you’re never quite sure when it’s going to go off. All rather self-evident. But there’s two other things. Can you guess what they are?’
He fired again. Another hit.
‘That was twenty-six out of one hundred and sixteen, so I must be doing something right. What do you reckon?’
‘Arne wants you to help him out with a memo.’
‘You don’t say. A memo. How important-sounding. Why doesn’t he come and ask me himself?’
‘Because he’s busy working on it, that’s why.’
‘I’m busy, too. As you can see.’
Another hit. Third in a row.
‘The other two things are persistence and luck. Persistence and luck.’
‘Are you coming, or what?’
‘Yes, I’m coming. Do you think you could get me a couple of boxes of ammo from the store while Arne and I fine-tune his memo?’
‘Seriously?’
‘No, but you can get me the address of that nervous friend of yours, the girl who stole – or rather didn’t steal – Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s mobile phone. I’d like to speak to her again.’
‘You mean her private address?’
‘No, that’s probably overdoing it. Her e-mail will do.’
‘Why don’t you phone her?’
‘E-mail’s better in her case, it’ll give her time to think about her answers without being scared I’m going to come after her on account of that mobile.’
He dumped his weapon on the desk in front of him and went with Pauline Berg. She seemed to be in a good mood, too. Having a good spell, as she might say. He took the opportunity to have a jab at her:
‘Do you fancy sweeping some staples up off my floor afterwards?’
‘In your dreams.’
‘How about running zigzag? I could do with something more exciting to aim at than a coffee cup.’
‘Now you’re talking.’
He found Arne Pedersen slouched behind his computer, unproductive, staring emptily into space. Simonsen slapped him on the back. Don’t worry, help’s at hand. One little memo would hardly be a match for two grown men like them. Arne snapped back to reality.
‘I’ve never known a case to need so much mopping up as this school shooting. We got the actual events cleared up fast enough, but now they’ve got me writing at least five reports about what we can do to prevent it happening again. The fact of the matter is, we can do very little. I can’t say that, though, can I?’
Simonsen agreed. Preventing school shootings was clearly not the job of the Homicide Department. Arne went on wearily:
‘It’s not so much this memo, even if I have ground to a halt and could do with a hand. The thing is, I was sitting here thinking about something.’
‘Go on, we’ve got plenty of time.’
‘In that classroom at Marmorgades Skole, after they’d taken the three bodies away, the floor was covered in tiny shards from the window. They kept crunching under my feet as I walked around.’
‘I can imagine that.’
‘I just kept circling about the room, thinking about what a terrible thing it is when kids are ostracised like that, how deeply it can affect the soul of the victim and give rise to the worst imaginable catastrophes. I knew full well, even then, that Robert Steen Hertz had been victimised and left out. His physical appearance was quite enough on its own to suggest the fact. And then again with the Hearts in Esbjerg. If the kids in that class had just shown them even the slightest positive interest, that girl from England would never have been killed.’
Simonsen could well understand him. It was a neat comparison, certainly one that was worth contemplating. Arne glanced at him distrustfully, expecting a note of dissent perhaps, but there was none.
Nevertheless, he left the subject and returned to the matter of his memo.