“People always say that, and then they laugh anyway.”
“Not me. I won’t laugh, no matter what it is. I swear by all that’s sacred.”
“Forget it, I don’t think you’re particularly religious. What was it you wanted to ask me about?”
Pauline Berg set down her spoon.
“Listen now, you’re really sweet, but I can’t date a man I can only call Madsen. It sounds like something out of a nineteenth-century play. Tell me now, then I’ll tell you what my question is.”
“That’s an unreasonable trade, you’ll have to think of something better.”
“Okay, you get to decide on the first movie we go to see.”
“I didn’t know we were going to see a movie.”
“You know now. I love going to movies. We’ll find an evening next week, or maybe on Sunday, we’ll arrange the details later. Okay now-out with the name.”
“So, my parents were hippies, I was actually born in a collective, and I was named after one of their great role models. Do you know Che Guevara?”
“The guy on the T-shirts?”
“Hah, they should hear that. Yes, exactly, the one on the T-shirts.”
“What about him?”
“He and I have the same first name. Ernesto.”
Pauline Berg stared at him in disbelief.
“Your name is Ernesto? Ernesto Madsen?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
Tears were forming in her eyes.
“That’s not so bad.”
She almost sounded sincere, then a snort of mirth slipped out and betrayed her. The next moment she was howling with laughter. She reached her hands across the table and held his, as if she wanted to beg forgiveness even as she laughed. Fortunately her mirth was contagious, and he laughed too. Even the couple at the next table started smiling, without knowing why.
“Ernesto Madsen! That’s just God-awful. I really feel sorry for you.”
“Thanks for your honesty, I don’t like Pauline as a name either.”
Not until coffee did she have enough control of herself to ask her original question.
“What I was thinking about in connection with Andreas Falkenborg… you may recall that Simon asked whether you thought he would confess, when we questioned him?”
“Of course I remember that, how forgetful do you think I am? And I also remember that I didn’t have a serviceable answer.”
“No, I can see that, but… what if one of those questioning him had the same appearance as his victims? I mean, if the one questioning him resembled the women he killed. That is, was the same type, if you know what I mean?”
“Where would you get someone like that?”
Pauline Berg thought that obviously he was better at seeing into people than he was at observing them from the outside. In this situation that was a clear advantage, however.
“Well, this is just theoretical, but can you imagine his reaction?”
Madsen thought for a while and then answered hesitantly, “I think that he would be frightened out of his wits and presumably also confess, if he was in any condition to-basically do anything to get away from the situation. From his viewpoint, this would be a form of torture. But I would absolutely not recommend putting him on the spot like that, not even as a last resort, because if he ever got out again, you don’t need to be particularly imaginative to work out what could happen.”
“But he would confess?”
“I believe so, unless he completely broke down first.”
“Thanks, I just love you.”
“Is there anything else?”
“No, I’m a woman who doesn’t demand too much, Ernesto.”
CHAPTER 26
The director of social services in Gribskov Municipality, Helle Oldermand Hagensen, was a powerful person who demanded a lot from her fellow human beings when she could get away with it, which-given her exalted position-was often the case. Such as this evening, when the Countess was following a winding gravel path through Tisvilde Hegn, which ended at last in a deserted parking lot. There were only two cars here, an older model Renault and the director’s black Audi, which the Countess recognised from the day before. No director of social services was in sight; it was obviously up to the Countess to find her own way to the museum. She got out of the car and cast an assessing glance up at the sky, then made sure her umbrella was in her bag; it looked like rain. She checked her watch and saw that she had a good ten minutes for her walk, which ought to be plenty.
The path from the parking lot meandered up through an irregular moraine landscape, where only small clumps of crooked pine trees occasionally interrupted the view over Kattegat, grey and rain-drenched below her, with more dark clouds quickly approaching. A few drops landed on her head and she picked up her pace for the last stretch of the path.
The museum proved to be a thatched building three storeys high, reminiscent of an outsize coastal villa and poorly suited to its setting. The director was waiting under the roof overhang along with a younger man. She was a tall, almost stately woman in her early forties, expensively dressed but with an uncertain style, which the Countess with her expert eye quickly noted. From a distance the woman was quite good-looking, with regular features and thick, reddish-brown hair that billowed down over her shoulders, but close up her face was marred by her badly pitted skin, where it seemed like cosmetic laser treatment had gone wrong.
The Countess nodded affably while trying to convince herself that this time they would hit it off. Anyone could have a bad day, and nothing good ever came of nursing yesterday’s grudges. But Helle Oldermand Hagensen chased these positive thoughts far out into Kattegat with her very first sentence, when she said, “So there you are. You arrived just in time. You have an hour, starting now.”
The Countess controlled herself.
“Thanks for your kindness.”
She received a gracious nod, which was hard to interpret, whereas the director’s little snap of the fingers and about turn towards the main door was indication enough. The employee took out a set of keys and let them in. With the Countess bringing up the rear, the young man led them down a stairway and into a basement room, whose walls were covered more or less floor to ceiling with cabinets, shelves and all kinds of cases of various sizes and shapes. The illumination was poor, as the room’s only window was partly blocked by stacked trunks in serious need of cleaning. Alongside all this a narrow workspace had been squeezed in, with a desk, office chair, and a computer that had been obsolete since the nineties. Helle Oldermand Hagensen threw open her arms like a ring master and said, “Well, be my guest. You have fifty-five minutes, and of course must not remove any of the museum’s artifacts. I truly hope you know what you’re looking for because otherwise you are wasting my time.”
“I know that, and thanks for agreeing to help.”
“Did you bring a camera?”
“Yes. I’m searching for a picture I would really like a copy of, when I find it.”
“That’s out of the question. Give me your camera now, please.”
The Countess had controlled herself for a long time, far beyond what she would normally put up with in terms of obstructive behaviour from a witness in a murder case. The reason for that was simple: the clue she was pursuing had its basis in a telephone call with a clairvoyant and as time went by the message she’d received then seemed more and more as if it had been meant for her, and her alone. Furthermore, her parallel investigation was controversial in itself. All in all, she preferred to keep a low profile, but enough was enough.
She walked slowly up to the director, only stopping when she was just a bit too close, after which she looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Now you have a choice. You can stop your pompous meddling and leave right now. I’ll come and get you when I’m finished, whether that takes ten minutes or the whole evening. The other possibility is that you let out just one more negative word, in which case I’m putting handcuffs on you and locking you to a water pipe until I’ve done my work. Be kind enough to tell me which you prefer, before I choose for you.”