‘Yes, I did. And put it all well and truly to the back of my mind. It’s been there ever since, until now. So many things have happened in my life of late that seem to have brought it bobbing back up to the surface again. Not least this Lucy Davison case. Such a senseless killing… so without meaning… and yet her death has affected so many people for life. It’s as if we could just as well throw a dice and determine our fate that way. If I’d been found out that day back in nineteen seventy-three, my whole life would have been drastically different.’
‘I’m not sure things are quite as meaningless as you make out, though naturally I can’t provide explanations for everything, nowhere near. But when you stole that money, Lucy Davison had already been in the ground more than four years. Perhaps the reason you weren’t found out then was because you were needed to find her again all this time after. Who knows?’
‘That sounds even more frightening.’
‘You think so? I don’t. And I don’t think you need to feel particularly weighed down by what you did back then, either. You’ve led a law-abiding life since, I assume.’
‘Of course.’
‘All I can say is that I’ve heard much worse. It’s not up to me to forgive, but in the big picture your crime is rather trivial.’
‘A scruple, isn’t that what you call it? A minor sin?’
The priest laughed:
‘Indeed, let’s call it that, shall we?’
Simonsen smiled.
‘I needed to tell another person. Not even my girlfriend at the time, Rita, knew for certain what I’d done. But these past months I’ve found it increasingly difficult to keep it inside. I’m glad I’ve told you.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s not because I want us to swap secrets or anything.’
‘The thought hadn’t occurred to me.’
They walked on for a while without speaking, each preparing for the next act they both knew would come. All of a sudden they came to Anfield. Simonsen jabbed a finger towards the ground.
‘I was there yesterday and heard them sing.’
‘Really? I did happen to see on the news this morning that the English army had just won the war.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t war, not at all. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. Not the football – I wouldn’t know about that – but the atmosphere. We stayed behind in our seats for a bit while the crowds were leaving. I just needed to sit there and… take it all in. Eventually we were asked to move along by one of the stewards.’
‘I tend to just skim the results in the paper. It’s quicker that way.’
To his surprise, Simonsen felt offended.
‘It’s not the same.’
‘No, of course not, but they’re football mad in this city and I like to tease them a bit every now and again. The truth is I’ve seen a few matches there myself.’
‘I wish I could sing with them.’
‘It comes with time.’
‘You mean, you know the songs?’
‘A couple. The most important one, certainly. I might let you hear it later on. But it wasn’t football you wanted to talk about, was it?’
‘No, quite. Do you want to know how I discovered the truth? It’s a bit funny, actually.’
‘The truth, indeed. No mean feat. Tell me, by all means.’
It was hard for him to know quite where to start. After his epiphany on his nocturnal wander that night in Valby, the pieces had all simply fallen neatly into place, though the order in which they came to him was the opposite of the actual chronology of events. He told the priest about the woman officer who’d accidentally removed Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s mobile phone from the scene. He’d contacted her again recently and realised there was an important detail that ought to have puzzled him at the time, but which for some reason had escaped his attention.
‘You closed Kramer Nielsen’s eyes when you found him, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘It could have happened by chance, but we would have expected his eyes to be open, regardless of whether he was killed or just fell. But they weren’t.’
‘I never gave it a thought until now. It seemed the natural thing to do, that’s all.’
‘Cui bono? For whose benefit? That was what set me off, that expression. The answer was so obvious all of a sudden: for my benefit.’
He’d found Lucy, and now finally she’d come home. It was a satisfactory conclusion, and it pleased him more than anyone. Moreover, the priest was contented, too. Simonsen had come to see the man at his side in a whole new light. He had studied the transcripts of his interview with the priest and his bishop again from a fresh vantage point, and been impressed. Not once had the priest told a lie, not once had he compromised his vow of secrecy, but at the same time he had allowed the police to believe exactly what they wanted to believe: that he had been led into revealing that he knew Lucy Davison and that she was dead. Simonsen explained the finer points and concluded with a smile.
‘On the other hand, what would one expect of a man who won his seminary’s annual debating competition twice in a row?’
‘You’ve been doing your homework.’
‘I certainly have.’
‘Perhaps there was a convergence of interests during that interview.’
‘Definitely. We didn’t know that, but you did. Do you know the story about Mefisto from Ekstra Bladet?’
The priest knew it well. Simonsen told him anyway. Erling Olsen, a keenly intelligent scholar, also known as the Owl, was Minister of Housing in Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen’s government in the seventies. At the same time, Olsen was penning highly insightful and scathingly satirical political copy in a national tabloid Ekstra Bladet under the pseudonym of Mefisto. No one knew Mefisto’s true identity, only that it was obvious it had to be someone very high up in the political echelons. Legend had it that the prime minister eventually narrowed the field down and confronted Olsen at a cabinet meeting, asking him straight out if he was behind the articles, to which Olsen supposedly had replied rather indignantly: Why would I do a thing like that? And with that the matter was effectively closed.
‘I never thought for a moment that you would lie to me directly,’ Simonsen went on. ‘So when you said you didn’t move Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s body, I believed you. Until one night I realised that you’d never actually said that at all. I asked you in your garden if you’d moved the body or altered its position in any way, and you said: Why on earth would I do that? You could see your neighbour was obviously dead and that there was nothing you could do. Which was true, there wasn’t. But while I believed you to have told me you never moved the body, the truth is you never actually said one way or the other. What you said led me to believe what I wished to believe. Our former housing minister would have complimented you.’
‘How astute. It sounds like you know more than I do,’ said the priest, his voice a mutter.
Simonsen laughed.
‘Come now, there’s no need to be modest. I think the time has come for us to tick some boxes, see how much of what we know tallies. Jørgen Kramer Nielsen lay dead on the stairs when you got back from your holiday. He’d fallen and broken his neck, not down the short flight that starts by his own door, but down the longer one that ends at yours. Seeing your upstairs neighbour lying dead like that, you realised the chances of ever finding Lucy Davison and having her remains laid to rest in consecrated ground were now slim indeed. The thought tormented you, as it had tormented Kramer Nielsen, but you were both bound by an oath that couldn’t be broken. You, however, had an idea. You decided to move him up on to the little landing before calling the ambulance, and as you did so Kramer Nielsen’s mobile fell out of his pocket, only you didn’t notice that. By changing the position of the body you hoped the police would realise something didn’t add up and look into the matter in such detail as to discover the secret he’d been keeping all those years. What’s more, you were right, that’s exactly what happened. There’s only one thing I don’t understand, though: how come you didn’t carry him all the way up to his own door, rather than leaving him at the bottom of the second, albeit shorter flight?’