He held up for a moment. “She doesn’t seem to be making a connection.” Suddenly he called out, “Dammit, Anita, hang up! I’ll call you back.”
Then he ended the call and took the next one. It had been indicated in the background of his mobile phone’s call-waiting plan. The others were impressed by his complete transformation: he sounded like thunder.
“What the hell is this, Anni? Can’t you get it into your pea brain that you can never call me? Last time you promised me that it would never happen again, so what is your pathetic excuse this time?”
He listened, then he sneered, “Now I don’t believe anymore, I’m just sure, but if you have doubts you should get yourself a better source.”
Again he listened and then answered, “No, that was right. The sequence in the films was different. The first one who was killed was Jens Allan Karlsen, he was at the very front and to the left, and the last one was Frank Ditlevsen, who was in the middle. Tell me, why in the world would you want to know that?”
Again a pause. Then he wrapped things up: “Yes, do that, and you can add a thousand to my fee and don’t contact me again. Do you understand?”
He hung up and then called Anita Dahlgren back. The connection was reestablished.
The next twenty minutes were uneventful, aside from the fact that Pauline Berg left, which she did without fuss. At the Dagbladet, Anni Staal was writing an e-mail about how her interview with Konrad Simonsen had found its way to an unauthorized individual. She suspected a certain secretary.
Then suddenly there was action again. Arne Pedersen narrated, “Her cell phone is ringing.”
At the same time, the copy phone rang. Simonsen picked it up and listened. At one point he wrote something down and when he stopped, everyone was starting intensely at him.
“He passed her test with the order of the hangings, and they are going to meet tomorrow.”
Cheering followed this news. Even Kasper Planck made a fist.
“Kongens Kringle at Hindstrup Hovedgade, eight kilometers east of Middelford at exactly twelve o’clock.”
The Countess gently squeezed his arm. Then she asked, “Did he give her a name?”
Simonsen purred like a hungry cat.
“He did, in fact. He said that she could call him the Climber.”
Chapter 71
Stenholm Castle dated back to the middle of the 1500s, when the county’s baroness Lydike Rantzau had the Renaissance water fort built. At that time, Skipper Clement and his peasant mob’s abuses of the Jutlandish gentry under Count Fejde was still fresh in people’s minds and so the new home of the baroness was fortified to withstand a rebellious horde-strong and formidable, with thick double walls, countless embrasures, machicolations, and a moat and a drawbridge. The most attractive feature of the castle was without a doubt the old rhododendron garden in the month of May and the castle park, which was maintained in a natural English style with winding paths and superfluous little bridges arched over artificial ponds. The property stretched all the way down to Gamborg Fjord and continued into the Hind fir-tree nursery.
Below the castle lay Hindstrup, a smaller province town that had an excellent yacht marina, a number of small niche industries, and a central square and adjoining pedestrian zone where a handful of stores struggled for survival. To call it a bustling town would be an exaggeration but people managed to get by, and although most of them were employed in Middelford or Odense, the village was far from dead. Mainly because the house prices were reasonable and the stream of tourists in the summer was substantial.
In Hindstrup, Konrad Simonsen added “trespassing on private property” to the long row of sins he had compiled over the past few days. Luckily he was simply invading a woodshed and luckily the house it belonged to was currently for sale and unoccupied, but he really had no legitimate grounds for his presence there whatsoever. On the other hand, the spot was almost perfect.
He had arrived at night and begun by surveying the main street, a luminous white autumn moon making this possible. Diagonally across from the bakery Kongens Kringle was a library with an informational poster that promised access at eight o’clock the next day. He called the Countess and recounted this to her. She confirmed it groggily. Shortly afterward he found the shed behind a house on a side road off the main street. It was unlocked and filled with firewood, nylon packets with wooden blocks of irregular size piled from floor to ceiling, against one whole wall. Only the long sides of the shed were made of brick. The other two were made with horizontal lathing fitted with wide spaces so that the firewood could dry out in the wind. He made his way past the wood by laboriously moving bag after bag to the opposite wall and realized, once part of the wall had been freed, that this was the place he had been searching for.
To the right he had an excellent view out to the bakery and straight ahead up the hill he saw the outline of the castle. The woods at the end of the castle grounds lay a few degrees to the left, and even with the naked eye in the moonlight one could see most of the edge of the forest. It didn’t get better than this. He fetched blankets and his travel bag from the car. He made himself as comfortable as possible on top of the woodpile and set his alarm. Right before he shut his eyes he shot a last, long look up at the forest and said quietly, “Good night, Climber. I’m going to get you tomorrow.”
Then he fell asleep.
Five hours later, his alarm clock chimed and he started his day as he had finished it the day before, by peeking out between the slats up toward the forest and the castle. In the dark the grade had appeared steeper but the scene was not much different from what he had imagined back home when the Countess-with the aid of some scissors, tape, and a printout from the Internet-had created an excellent map of Hindstrup and its environs. They had placed it on the dining-room table and studied it as intensely as a general’s map before a battle. After a while, Arne Pedersen had suggested a systematized approach, slapping the flat of his hand over different areas of the map as he spoke.
“Okay. Village, castle, castle grounds that run up against the woods, the water, and tree nursery. The woods and the castle are high up, the village below. Let’s imagine that we’re the Climber. Where will he have the best overview of the situation? It’s almost a given.”
He let his finger run along the edge of the woods.
“Here he has an unobstructed view down to the main street. At least on the one side and I’ll bet five rum balls that that’s where Kongens Kringle is.”
The Countess agreed: “Apart from the fact that betting no longer has a place in your repertoire, that fits very well. The building over here is probably the nursing home and it has an odd number. The bakery is probably opposite but he may also live in the village or have access to the castle. The view from there is even better. What is it being used for?”
“A school for children with learning disabilities. I don’t think the possibility is very likely. His retreat would be hampered if-”
Simonsen had been looking at the map for a long time. Now he broke in. “It’s the woods. He feels safe among the trees. He sets up in there and lurks around until the coast is clear. I can feel it. He’s probably already there before it gets light. Remember that he waited half the night by the hot-dog stand in Allerslev.”
Planck shook his head. The Countess gave him an anxious glance and Pedersen said, “I suggest eight to ten plainclothes officers in the village, ideally from PET, and then thirty to forty men in the woods and the nursery. That will create an iron ring that he doesn’t have the chance to escape.”
He went on, turned directly toward Simonsen: “Call in the special forces if you can. Those boys are supertalented and we have enough time to organize it.”