“I’ve had to call for reinforcements. On overtime hours, which you are paying for.”
“Absolutely. Bring in as many as you like.”
“Call me after midnight.”
“Roger that.”
Simonsen had only one more question. It was, however, somewhat controversial. Strictly speaking, it also fell outside the professor’s line of work, but in view of the man’s enormous experience and preeminent expertise it was not an unreasonable question.
“Terrorism?”
It took a couple of seconds for Elvang to grasp his meaning, then he grew impish. He flapped his hands by the side of his head like a hysterical teenager and said sarcastically, “Ooooh, ooooh, the monsters are coming. And they’re not coming out of the forest, they’re coming from the water.”
Simonsen ignored this odd outburst and said coldly, “Nine/eleven, Bali, Beslan, Madrid, London. Was that also paranoia, Professor?”
Their gazes locked, then the old man finally shrugged.
“If you are thinking of holy crusaders with curved sabres and dreams about the caliph, well, there isn’t anything here that I can see that points to such an interpretation. But I don’t know what that would be in any case. Your question is ill conceived.”
“Perhaps, but it’s a question I will have to answer for the rest of the day.” Elvang did not reply. He glanced at the bodies and shook his head thoughtfully. With his bald, age-spotted crown, his thin ruffled hair and sunken chest, he most of all resembled a baby bird.
Then he said, “I was in Rwanda in 1995.”
“I didn’t think you liked to fly.”
“I only do it in cases of genocide. For four months I traveled literally from one mass grave to another. There were so unbelievably many murdered people that it defies description, and I discovered a degree of depravity and excess that you could not imagine in your wildest nightmare. It was indescribably awful, but that wasn’t the worst. The worst thing was to come back home and realize that no one was interested. The victims were simply the wrong color to sell news and to refer to the catastrophe was almost in bad taste, so I apologize if I have a somewhat cynical attitude to the concept of terrorism.”
Simonsen felt empty.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s no one asking you to say anything. Forget it, everyone else does. But tell me, how do you know I don’t like to fly?”
“That’s just what I’ve heard.”
“It wouldn’t by any chance be from that story about how the city’s hotel chains have pulled strings to keep me in my job as long as possible because my fear of flying has brought international conferences to Copenhagen?”
Simonsen felt a faint warmth in his cheeks.
“Something along those lines.”
The door at one end of the gymnasium opened. Arne Pedersen, the Countess, and Pauline Berg walked in, immediately followed by Poul Troulsen.
“You are a fool. To think that the country supports a homicide chief who believes that kind of nonsense. It is frightening. Shame on you. Get a bucket while you’re at it.”
“What do you want with a bucket?”
“Your latest recruit has not yet learned to suppress her instinctual human reactions.”
The observation came too late. One second later, Berg collapsed and vomited onto the floor without making use of the plastic bag that she had been holding in her hand for that very purpose. Pedersen glanced down at his vomitspattered shoes and took out a handkerchief. It was made of raw silk and had been rather expensive. He managed to lift one foot before the Countess snatched the handkerchief and held it out to Berg, who looked gratefully up at him before she retched again.
Chapter 6
The corpses in the gymnasium were gone and all the windows were open, and yet it seemed to Pauline Berg, when she walked in the door, that the smell was unbearable. But it was most likely a deception of the senses and thus possible to verify. Konrad Simonsen was sitting in the middle of the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He reminded her of a monk in a pagoda and she had trouble guessing what he was up to.
“Arne said you wanted to talk to me.”
She could hear that she sounded like a nervous exam taker. Normally she dealt well with men, who often found her attractive and intelligent, but her boss was the exception that proved the rule, and apart from the fact that her choice of clothing was sometimes criticized by his puritanical gaze, he seemed mostly to ignore her. That is, on a personal level. She obeyed his gesture and sat down next to him.
“Did you see the bodies?”
“Yes, the sweet old doctor showed me around. I’ve forgotten what he is called but he carried on a running explanation of everything while we were looking and it wasn’t so bad.”
“The sweet old doctor is Arthur Elvang, and all of us have gotten sick from time to time. You are definitely not the only one who has thrown up today but you’ll find that you toughen up over the years. I don’t know if that is good or bad.”
“It will definitely be more practical.”
She tried a smile but did not set much of a response, and the situation struck her as strange. She shifted uncomfortably.
He must have noticed her restlessness, or else he read her thoughts. At any rate he said, “There is a reason why we are sitting here-I’ll come to that later. Tell me how the janitor reacted when you found him.”
“It was actually a canine unit that tracked him down, or rather, the dog. It was down by the shed for the athletic equipment by the soccer field, and he claimed he had only just woken up. I don’t know… there’s not much more to say. He mostly ignored me, apart from saying that he would tell my teacher about the rain poncho. Arne was very thoughtful…”
“Yes, I know. That was nice of Arne. Go on about the janitor.”
“He said that about the rain poncho to needle me, but apart from that he was quite meek. We delivered him to the Countess. He was afraid of the dog so it was told to stay behind. Out in rain.”
“What was your impression of him?”
“My first impression was that he seemed pathetic. He reeks of beer and needs a bath. On the other hand… he is also… it’s hard to explain.”
“Take your time. I’m a patient man.”
She paused for reflection, and Simonsen studied the ceiling.
“He isn’t quite as much of a wreck as he seems, I’m sure of it. And he is somehow… present.”
“Highly conscious and aware?”
“Yes. No. Not in that sense. It’s just that it seems like he knows what’s going on the whole time, even when his answers are completely loopy.”
“You were present when he was being questioned?”
“Only in the beginning. It was Troulsen and the Countess who interrogated him and it was sort of an unspoken agreement that I would just listen, but I read the rest. The recording was sent to HS and after an hour we had a transcription. I can tell that we have reinforcements-I’ve never experienced anything quite like this.”
Simonsen noted that she had started referring to headquarters as “HS,” which was new for her. “HS” for “Head Square,” as they said in the Homicide Division. He replied, “I haven’t either. But you were only there at the beginning?”
“Yes, then they sent me away to find a TV and watched your press conference.”
“To keep an eye on me and see if I made a spectacle of myself?”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
She paused, then proceeded carefully. “They said that it wasn’t one of your areas of expertise. Press conferences, I mean.”
“I see. They said that? And what do you think? Did I make a fool of myself?”
Although he was difficult to read, she tried to be somewhat honest.
“No, I don’t think so. You didn’t really say much. It was mostly the others, but you clearly don’t care much for the platinum blonde from Dagbladet.”
“Her name is Anni Staal and she represents a regrettable turn in human evolution, but personally I have nothing against her except that she should be deported. Was it so obvious?”