His comment struck home. Berg blushed slightly and let the subject drop, saying instead, “You promised to tell me why you wanted me to participate.”
Outwardly, Simonsen appeared more sure of the janitor than he really was. Perhaps it had been a mistake to release him. The man’s odd behavior lay outside Simonsen’s frame of reference, which was the real reason that he had let him go home. It would give him time to think it through. But as soon as Clausen was gone, doubt had started gnawing at him. He pushed the thought away.
“He has lost a daughter,” he answered. “His only child. She would have been around your age today so I thought he would have a vulnerable point and that you could possibly be… a point of departure, but I decided against it.”
Berg felt slightly ill at ease.
“I’m glad you did.”
Simonsen did not pay attention to her tone of voice.
“This isn’t a case of a stolen bike. There’s no place for that kind of sensitivity.”
“I know that, it would just have been unpleasant. Why did you decide against it?”
“He wouldn’t have taken the bait, so there was no point. Why don’t you head over and check with Troulsen to make sure the surveillance is in place. If Per Clausen so much as owns a dog, I want its stud register in ten minutes flat.”
“I’ll check. For the fourth time. But he is one hundred percent covered: local and remote surveillance, doubled-up coverage, and they are all experts. You don’t need to be the least bit nervous, Troulsen says.”
“Do it, regardless of what Poul says. Did we get a court order on his phone?”
“Yes, but it was difficult and it is only good for three days.”
Simonsen stubbed out his cigarette, and suddenly remembered what feeling he had had as he sat across from Per Clausen. He had been looking for it and now it was there. It was the same feeling that he had once felt when he encountered opponents in various chess tournaments. Respect and kinship, fellowship, mixed with a mental aggressiveness, as if one could differentiate between a person and his or her brain. Accompanying this was the creeping conviction that his opponent had studied him, had pinpointed his playing style and perhaps also his life and personality. He smiled tightly and allowed his inner images of the dead chase away any feeling of kinship with the janitor. Then he turned to Berg.
“What was that about pizza? Is there any more?”
“Lots. Should I get you one? They are laid out in the teachers’ lounge.”
“That would be nice, if you are willing, but only if you are willing. You haven’t been appointed as my assistant.”
“I’m willing. Anything in particular you want?”
“The two least-fattening-you decide.”
“Is there anything else you would like?”
“Yes, a quarter of an hour of peace and quiet.”
And he got it.
Chapter 9
Arne Pedersen spun the wheel of fortune that was well balanced and surprisingly functional, probably the pedagogical fruit of six months’ worth of wood shop. He had emptied a container with sugar cubes onto a table, where they filled in as chips. The wheel landed on a sun; he reorganized his sugar cubes and spun again. The metallic clicks filled the teachers’ lounge.
“Could you stop that? It’s getting on my nerves.”
The Countess was troubleshooting an unresponsive computer. Its display was projected onto a screen, and, without understanding any of it, Poul Troulsen followed her efforts with interest. A stack of papers lay on his lap, the thickness of which did not bode well for getting any sleep.
Pedersen did not reply, but soon the wheel clattered on its way to a new meeting with chance. The Countess glanced pleadingly at Pauline Berg, who caught her drift, got up, and shortly returned leading Pedersen by the hand and with a lump of sugar in her mouth. She pressed him down into an armchair by Poul Troulsen’s side, where he sat and grumbled for a while before he got a look at his companion’s notes.
“Are you planning to go through all that?”
Poul Troulsen was rumored to be as conscientious in his presentations as he was in his work. He also appeared alarmingly fresh, even though he was the oldest of them. For once, Pedersen backed up the Countess.
“Arne has a point, Poul. You should speed it up. Everyone wants to go home.”
“Amen, amen, and amen again. I am tired, I don’t want to be here anymore, and I don’t understand why this janitor can’t wait until tomorrow. How the hell does Simon get to be off?”
“I’m here now, Arne. And perhaps you are right, perhaps we should wait, but I am the one who’s in charge of this investigation and assigning duties. You can either accept it, or leave.”
Simonsen had entered through the back door and no one had noticed him until he stood before them. Back at police headquarters there was talk that the chief of the Homicide Division had an uncanny as well as annoying habit of always becoming the point of focus once he entered a room. Often without saying very much. But this time it was too extreme. Pedersen had respect for his boss but he was not afraid of him, and the admonishment was out of proportion. He sat back in his chair with a noise of frustration and an angry gesture. Simonsen came to his senses.
“Okay, okay, sorry. But you aren’t the only one who is tired. We’re going at this hard so that we can get home sooner. Let me start by going over the events of the day.”
He then proceeded to do so, adding that he did not want them to put too much stock into their temporary organization and to flat out ignore the massive interest shown by the press. No one except Pauline Berg really listened, but all appreciated the fact that their chief seemed to have a good grasp of the situation, and the Countess thought to herself that her boss-standing there so strong and mighty-was a born leader. For everyone except himself. Only Berg had a question.
“If we ignore the reporters completely, don’t we risk them becoming… what shall I say… negatively focused? I mean, the coverage hasn’t focused on anything else all day, and even the international stations-”
“There are daily press conferences at headquarters, and it’s not our job to sell newspapers or television fodder,” Simonsen broke in.
There were no dissenting opinions, so that line was drawn. They could move on.
The Countess quickly dispatched with the topic of neighbors as no one had registered anything unusual, whereafter it was Poul Troulsen’s turn. He stood up. The unnecessary gesture caused some of them to roll their eyes, but unfairly as it would turn out, as he took less than ten minutes to give an overview of the day’s meager harvest. Troulsen had managed an impressive bit of research, which had turned out to be tedious, dull, unsuccessful, and at times difficult. Some teachers had acted impulsively and tried to leave, and one had actually escaped out a window, claiming that he had a legal right to his day off whatever was going on. He was now holed up at Gladsaxe police station, where he had been arrested for damaging public property, owing to the dirty boot prints on the windowsill. After that episode, no one left the school before they had given both oral and written accounts of their vacation travels. With the exception of two lovers who had spent the time together in Paris and who tried to conceal this from the police as they had concealed it from their spouses, there was nothing to dig into. No one had a past that indicated a predilection for mass murder. All in all, the school staff were law-abiding and the labors of the day resulted in nothing.
Or almost nothing, except for an incident that Poul Troulsen concluded with.
“The school counselor, Ditte Lubert. She is impossible. I interrogated her twice, if you can even call it that. She is… I can’t describe it exactly. I actually think she is trying to hide something, but I have no idea what, so either someone else should take over or I need permission to hit her. Preferably both.”