“Get down on your stomach.”
The man did not react and his eyes flitted between the gun and the woods. Simonsen released the safety. The little metallic click sounded ominous and full of foreboding.
“Don’t get any ideas. If you run, I’ll shoot you in the legs and I’ll do it now if you don’t lie down. You’ll get your shin shattered for no reason, especially if I choose to shoot you in the mouth a few times so I get the joy of seeing you die and the result will be the same, namely that you’ll lie down. Please go ahead and make your choice before I do it for you.”
The man put his bag aside and lay down. He showed no signs of any emotion, neither anger nor resignation. Simonsen walked behind him, bent down, and clasped his handcuffs around the man’s wrists in an experienced way. Without hurrying, he put the safety back on the gun and put it back in its holster, then lit a cigarette. He inhaled greedily and gazed at his catch. The man was lean and well proportioned, clearly used to physical work, his hair blond and wild and his face weathered. The clear blue eyes were watchful and hostile and over his right eyebrow he had an irregular red scar. Simonsen pulled the man up onto his legs, searched him for weapons, and-as expected-found nothing. In the side pocket of his sturdy shell was a cell phone with a missing SIM card. The bag contained professional climbing gear as well as ropes, harness, and a pair of specially constructed boots with iron spikes at the front. There was also a thermos flask made of aluminum. Simonsen placed the bag under a fir tree and covered it with branches. Then he checked his watch.
“Andreas Linke, the time is eleven thirty-seven and you are under arrest. I also want to inform you that I hate you with all my heart and that you are going to cry blood over the pictures that you sent me of my daughter. I bid you a very hearty hello.”
As expected, he received no answer.
They walked side by side to the car. Simonsen took a chain out of the trunk. He carefully nudged the man into the passenger seat and secured the chain around the handcuff on the right side and the other end to the safety belt security catch that was mounted in floor of the car, where beforehand he had attached a small padlock. Then he locked the door, walked around to the driver’s seat, put his coat on the roof, and unfastened his shoulder gun holster. He tossed it into the backseat before putting his coat back on and getting into the car. Before he drove off, he freed his passenger a little more by unlocking his left hand. This gave the man a reasonable amount of mobility, but constrained by a radius of action where it was possible to hit him with a forceful strike of his fist.
“If you touch me or the steering wheel, I’m going to hit you in the face. Hard. Understand?”
The Climber did not respond. Simonsen jabbed him with his fingers and repeated his question: “Understand?”
A curt, angry nod indicated that the man had understood, and Simonsen smiled, pleased. This was contact.
A couple of kilometers after he had left the tree nursery, he neared the highway to Odense. He turned to the right and some ten or so kilometers farther up he came to the E20 freeway toward Copenhagen. He slipped into the fast lane and kept a steady speed of a little over a hundred. Traffic was moderate but did not demand attention. At twelve o’clock he turned on the car radio to hear the news. Without commenting on it, he noticed that his passenger followed the announcements carefully. Many people were apparently gathering outside Christiansborg Palace. At least, if one was to believe the speaker-and he was not one hundred percent convinced that one could. At any rate, the reporter sounded far from objective as she melodramatically described the people that quietly but deliberately waited for their legislators. There was nothing new from Parliament itself. He turned off the radio and drove a dozen kilometers as he rehearsed in his head for his coming telephone conversation. Then he called Pedersen.
“Hi, Arne, my battery is about to run out so listen without interrupting. I’ve got him and I’m on my way to HS. You and the Countess should ask for a couple of canine units.”
He told him quickly about the tree, the bag, and the SIM card, then added, “There won’t be a problem with evidence. He talks like a frightened child and admits to everything.”
Then he hung up.
The Climber appeared strangely unaffected by the situation. Apart from a brief, slightly astonished look when he heard himself described as a frightened child, he stared blankly out the window. But Simonsen perceived-with satisfaction-a certain tension in him. He had trouble finding a comfortable position and kept shifting in his seat. Not much, but enough to reveal his restlessness. They drove south of Odense and Simonsen broke the silence.
“Did you know that you killed your victims on the day of the Eleven Thousand virgins? That is what the eighteenth of October was called in the Middle Ages, or the Day of Ursula. Take your pick. Both names come from the same legend.”
He glanced at the man. The Climber did not answer, but he turned his head slightly and shot him a look of irritation. Simonsen continued in a cheerful and casual voice.
“Yes, it was a terrible story. Very sad and unfortunately very bloody. Ursula was a Breton princess back in the fourth century. Extraordinarily beautiful, as they are, the princesses of legend. She was also extremely pious. The English king, however, was not. He was a heathen. Still, he proposed to Ursula, who accepted but on the condition that she first had to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome in order to satisfy her deep desire for a spiritual union with Christ.”
He stopped abruptly. There was an accident ahead of him and traffic was starting to build up. He drove by slowly without staring at the ambulance or the damaged car at the side of the road. The Climber did not look either. When they had resumed their cruising speed he continued his story-sure that it embarrassed and confused his passenger.
“Now, where was I? Oh yes-Ursula took off for Rome but not alone. She took eleven thousand maidens with her, and you have to admit that is an overwhelming, colossal, and extremely large number of maidens. Don’t you think?”
The Climber did not appear to think anything. He had turned his face away.
“Okay, we’ll wait to hear your opinion, but anyway, I think it was a lot. In any case, the whole horde came to Rome, and the Pope-his name was Cyriacus, by the way-was besotted, to say the least, which is actually a bit strange because one would think he would become extremely irritated. I mean, it’s an imposition of the worst order. Imagine eleven thousand uninvited guests. The cost of food would have been enormous so he was clearly a very hospitable man, that pope. Anyway, they left eventually. Ursula had to go home and get married. But the journey home did not go as well as the way there. Not by a long shot. They bumped into Attila the Hun and presumably a number of Huns, and they were killed-all of them. No one quite knows why. Maybe Attila was having a bad day or perhaps they had taunted him, who knows? The point is, little Andreas, that in this context your deed doesn’t really hold muster. You only killed six, and five of those on the same day that the maidens died only some seventeen hundred years earlier.”
He could see the Storebælts bridge ahead of him and decided to wait with the conclusion. His audience said nothing anyway so he would most likely get no complaints. When they were nearing Slagelse, he went on.
“My story from the past… oh, that’s right. I didn’t quite finish. Almost, but not quite. That is, all those maidens. Do you know where they were killed?”