The question was aimed at the woman beside him, whose mouth tightened though she did not respond.
“One of those types who will do anything to bother other people, not at all the sort we like down here,” the man continued.
Pedersen sensed that the conversation could easily veer off track, so he tried to guide it in the right direction.
“When did Andreas Falkenborg live in the neighbouring house?”
“Well, that I can’t remember, but in truth I recall that he poisoned our existence for an entire autumn break and most of the winter too.”
The woman surprised the officers then by pressing her husband to answer the question as fully as possible.
“Listen to what the officer is asking you. He wants to know when Falkenborg lived there.”
The man nodded his head tolerantly.
“When was it? Well, it must have been in the mid-1980s or thereabouts… 1987, I think. Yes, 1987 it was-now I remember.”
The woman cut him off.
“Nonsense, it was late summer of 1990, and in July less than a year later the teachers moved in.”
He tried sheepishly to save face.
“Yes, that’s even more correct.”
“Did he live there year-round?” Pedersen put in.
“Yes, he was always here.”
The woman intervened again.
“In the beginning he was in Copenhagen twice a week, from Monday to Tuesday and Thursday to Friday; later he almost never came here.”
“How did he acquire the house?”
“Well, he bought it.”
The woman confirmed the response with a little grunt, throwing a bad strawberry into the flowers for emphasis.
“ I mean, was it up for sale or did he approach the owners and make them an offer?”
Pedersen directed the question at the woman, but it didn’t work. She ignored his gaze and waited for her husband to answer, obviously satisfied to correct him when he made a mistake.
“It was up for sale, I remember that. I went to school with the man who lived there before, but he moved to Lolland to live closer to his son. Well, he’s dead now.”
Again the woman agreed. This time with an indifferent nasal sound that clearly indicated what was to be expected if you moved outside the parish.
“I see that you did not get along with Andreas Falkenborg. Why was that? Was there a specific episode that began the difficulties between you?”
“He was bad-tempered from the first day he moved in. By the day after he’d come over and complained to us.”
The man stopped talking and waited for a comment from his wife. Pauline Berg urged him on.
“About what?”
“At that time we drove slurry out over the fields, and he objected to that. But we had a right to do it, if it wasn’t at weekends or holidays. And if he had problems with the odour, he could always have stayed in the city. We weren’t the ones who forced him to buy his summer house.”
“And you told him that?”
“You better believe it! Even though he shouted and fussed like nobody’s business. Swore that we would pay, and poured a whole shit bucket of abuse over us.”
“So since that day you were enemies?”
“Yes, and after that there was the business with the pig. A few weeks later he got hold of a sow. It wasn’t even a dead one, because later on we found out that he’d bought it from a farmer in Allerslev and had it slaughtered for the occasion. And just imagine, he nailed it up on the old poplar that stands almost on the boundary with our land. That is, he didn’t do the work himself. He hired four men, and they went to work with pulleys and everything until they got the animal hung up. I don’t know if you’re aware how big a pig’s carcass is?”
“What kind of tree did you say?”
“That one, right over there.”
The man pointed to an old, slightly crooked poplar that badly needed pollarding and had seen its best years besides.
“If you go over there you’ll see the iron plates are still attached.”
“I can see them fine from here, but why do you think he did that?”
“Don’t you understand? It was revenge. That giant sow was hanging rotting on the tree until there was almost nothing but the skeleton left. It stank worse than you can possibly imagine. We couldn’t even be out here on our terrace, and when it was at its worst it was almost unbearable if you so much as opened a window. We had to dry laundry in the attic. Otherwise the rottenness clung.”
“But wouldn’t the smell also have affected him?”
“Yes, just as badly as us, but he seemed indifferent to it. Just strutted around, grinning arrogantly, and went up and patted the carcass occasionally.”
“Didn’t you report him to the authorities? That sort of thing isn’t allowed. Not even out here in… in this place close to nature.”
The woman’s mouth pursed like a hen’s behind, but the man did not notice Pauline Berg’s slip and answered proudly, “No, we don’t do that here. But after a couple of weeks I’d had enough and went in and gave him a good thrashing.”
“Nonsense! He played you like a fiddle.”
Both Pedersen and Berg turned expectantly towards the woman, and this time she spoke for herself.
“Falkenborg let himself get beaten up, that’s the truth of it, and somehow managed to record the whole thing on videotape. He called emergency services and was driven away in an ambulance, while he moaned and groaned and made it sound much worse than it was. Then two days later he came in and showed us the video on some kind of little portable machine and said he was going to set both the police and a lawyer on us if we didn’t let the pig hang and suffer the punishment we deserved. That’s what he said, think about it, the punishment we deserved.”
The two officers dug deeper into the neighbours’ feud for fifteen minutes, but there was not much more to be learned. In conclusion Pedersen set a photograph of Annie Lindberg Hansson on the table between them.
“Do you recognise her?”
The man did not recognise the girl and said so. The woman on the other hand cast an acid glance at the picture and said, “That’s Annie, the drunk’s girl, from out at Jungshoved Church.”
“She disappeared in 1990.”
“Disappeared? Don’t give me that nonsense. She ran off to Copenhagen. There’s no doubt about it.”
CHAPTER 14
The day after their excursion to South Zealand Arne Pedersen was on the move again, this time to the opposite end of Zealand. Konrad Simonsen had sent him to Hundested, where he was going to meet a man who might possibly be able to help explain the gap in Andreas Falkenborg’s studies. Well in advance of the meeting they’d arranged, Pedersen turned up at the restaurant where he sat enjoying the view of Hundested Harbour, a charming spot that merged busy late-summer tourism with the local fishing industry and ferry service to Rørvig on the other side of the fjord. The day promised to be almost as hot as yesterday. Above him the sky was filled with slow-moving fleecy clouds, and the coffee he had just been served was strong and good, so all in all life seemed quite pleasant, although he was extremely tired.
The man he was going to meet arrived late and apologised half-heartedly, saying it had been difficult to find the detective in the mass of tourists, although Pedersen had seen him steer his clogs directly from his car over to this table. Simonsen had not said much about this witness, other than that he was a former police commissioner in the town and concisely described him as colourful, whatever that might mean. The ex-police commissioner was a big man in his early sixties and quickly proved jovial and winning in his manner. Pedersen took an immediate liking to him. He was also apparently popular with the locals, as many of them greeted him as they passed the table. The man’s name was Hans Svendsen, and he began, “What has Simon told you about this meeting?”
“Not much, I’m afraid, he’s pretty busy. We all are.”