“Simon is always busy, he was born busy, don’t give in to that.”
Pedersen protested that the boss’s workload was considerable at the moment. His own too for that matter. Or more correctly it felt that way because he had not really slept much the past few nights. The thought made him yawn. Then he said, “You met a man named Andreas Falkenborg in 1977, and we are strongly interested in what he was doing that year. I haven’t been told much more than that, apart from the fact that you were a police commissioner in this town.”
“Yes, though I started out as a common or garden constable. You usually do.”
Hans Svendsen had an engaging laugh, and Pedersen laughed with him.
“I should begin by saying that I know something about the murder they called the Stevns case, but this story goes back much farther. Were you around under old Planck, when he investigated Stevns?” asked Svendsen.
Pedersen shook his head.
“Well, during that case I was contacted by a woman who lives here in town. She told me that when she was young she was involved in an episode that in many ways resembled what happened down at Stevns. What was that poor girl’s name now… I’ve forgotten?”
“Her name was Catherine Thomsen.”
“Amazing it slipped my mind, but it wasn’t my case. In any event, this local woman contacted me one day. I actually knew her rather well from old times, so we sat and had a nice chat in my office. That was in 1997.”
“Were you police commissioner then?”
“Tell me, do you have a thing about police commissioners? No, I wasn’t. Then I had an office at city hall, but that’s by the by. The woman’s name was Rikke Barbara Hvidt, and she told about an assault she had been subjected to all the way back in 1977. It happened in Kikhavn, a small historic town a couple of kilometres along the coast. I could easily remember the case myself from back then, I was involved in it a little on the sidelines, but she had apparently forgotten that. Fortunately she got away from her attacker.”
“How was she assaulted?”
“One evening, when she was alone in her parents’ house-yes, she was living at home at that time-a man broke in and forced her to go with him down to the shore after stuffing a rag in her mouth and tying her hands behind her. Or that’s what she said afterwards.”
“You make it sound like you didn’t believe her.”
“There were many others who didn’t. As far as I recall, I was one of the moderate doubters, but possibly that’s a later rationalisation. But I’m talking about in 1977, because twenty years later, in 1997, I believed every word she said.”
“Why did you doubt her originally? Was there some reason for that?”
“It concerned her parents. Neither of them was what you’d call an upstanding citizen. It’s no exaggeration to say they were hard-core criminals. Their home was almost a distribution centre for smuggled or stolen goods, mostly cigarettes, jewellery and hi-fi systems, but also hash and other drugs. Rikke had had a child at a young age too, and… Well, not everyone was tolerant about that sort of thing back then.”
He waved his hand to apologise for the viewpoint and continued speaking.
“The majority thought that the attack was a way of putting pressure on her parents. A score being settled between criminals, something law-abiding citizens didn’t need to get mixed up in. A few even believed that the whole thing was a lie Rikke made up to get attention.”
“How old was she when she was attacked?”
“Mid-twenties, I think.”
“Was she a criminal too?”
“No, not in the least. But tainted by association in the eyes of some people because she had stayed living in that robbers’ den. But she had a child, and financially it was probably easier for her to stay put. The old crook her dad was actually good to his kids, I have to give him that.”
“And so she got away? That is, when she was attacked.”
“I think she saw her chance to run and took it, but she was completely convinced that the man who attacked her wanted to kill her. He had dug a grave for her, and he behaved crazily. That is, over and above the insanity of just breaking in and dragging her down to the shore.”
“And she didn’t know him?”
“Well, that’s what makes the whole thing even more peculiar. It’s one of the reasons many people didn’t really believe her story. She maintained that he had a mask on.”
“A mask?”
“Yes, that’s what she said. And today I firmly believe her, because since then she has built up a lot of credibility. She became a book dealer and member of the church council-an ordinary, respectable citizen-but she has always stuck firmly to her story from back then. She described it as a kind of ghost mask with black cloth down the sides of the head, a bit like an Egyptian headdress. But you can ask about that later.
“First let’s finish talking about 1977. There was an epilogue. A couple of weeks after the assault-by then Rikke had collected herself-a strange man began sneaking around after her. It was a small town even then, and people kept an eye on each other, so rumours about it quickly spread, and the man was real enough. Soon he could barely step outside his door without someone keeping an eye on what he was doing. Nevertheless he continued to live at the inn for over six months, wherever he got the money for that. A few times he avoided surveillance, and on several occasions was spotted out in Kikhavn, either in the countryside or on the shore. Rikke was convinced that he was the one who had attacked her, but she could not give a facial description because of the mask he’d worn so we had no way to intervene. But the same rules did not apply to her father, and at one point the Peeping Tom got a beating that sent him to the Emergency Room.”
“Did that put him off?”
“Not in the least. Within a short time he was sneaking around again. Not that he was doing anything illegal, but no one thought it was particularly funny. And besides, we feared that next time her father would really let him have it and then we would have an assault case to deal with.
“I saw what it was like for her myself, close up. One day Rikke decided to get her hair cut short, and the guy who was pestering her just couldn’t handle that. He ran completely amok in the salon and made a scene, begging and pleading and crying. Naturally the salon owner called us, and I was the one who was sent out.”
“So you overpowered him?”
“I didn’t have to use force exactly. He was more like an out of control child, but I dragged him away and along to the station. He reacted hysterically, howling and calling Rikke terrible things. It was obvious that he was out of his mind, so we locked him up overnight and served him an injunction against approaching the salon or Rikke again, but then we had to let him go.”
“Was he questioned about the attack on the shore?”
“Not so far as I recall.”
“And all of this was about Rikke Barbara Hvidt having her hair cut short?”
“Yes, and all right, she did have beautiful hair, but it was none of his business whether she kept it long or not.”
“Do you think she had her hair cut on purpose?”
Hans Svendsen furrowed his brow and shook his head good-naturedly.
“What kind of question is that? People always get their hair cut on purpose.”
“Yes, obviously. I mean, did she get her hair cut because she had been attacked by him? Was there any connection?”
“Not to my knowledge, but you’ll have to ask her about that yourself.”
“I will. What about afterwards, when you released him?”
“Yes, it was strange, because the same day he checked out of his room and went home, or more exactly left Hundested-where he went, I don’t know.”
“So he was no longer interested in the girl, once she was short-haired?”
“It seemed that way.”
Arne Pedersen summarised.
“Rikke Barbara Hvidt pointed out much later, more exactly in 1997, that in her opinion there were similarities between the attack she herself had been subjected to on the shore at Kikkehavn and the murder of Catherine Thomsen in Stevns?”