‘And then there was that plane crash?’
‘That’s right. He wasn’t as full of himself afterwards.’
‘It sounds like you think he had it coming. Didn’t you like him much?’
The old man tossed his head and his eyes grew moist. Simonsen wanted to find him a hankie, and to draw his chair back a bit, but he never got the chance. The old man came back at him sourly:
‘That’s my business, not yours.’
‘Absolutely, of course. How did he react to the plane crash?’
‘Changed him completely. Broke him apart, it did. Never the same again.’
‘Can you elaborate on that?’
‘From the day they told him, he went about like a ghost. It was like he stopped living, only without being able to die.’
The man proceeded to echo the chorus of other witnesses who had talked about Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s social reticence. The old man recalled a handful of episodes, a couple of which Simonsen had already heard before. Others, however, were new to him, albeit uninteresting insofar as they merely corroborated what he had heard elsewhere.
After a few more questions, he thanked the man and said his goodbyes, glad to get out in the fresh air again, even if it was suffocatingly hot. He had got what he wanted, though he hadn’t cared for the old man one bit, a feeling that had obviously been mutual. The interview, however, had made it all worthwhile. Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s life seemed finally to be taking shape.
Following his visit to the care home, Simonsen drove back to Police HQ in Copenhagen, even though it was hardly half an hour before he was due to go home again. He found Pauline Berg in his little annexe, stretched out on the sofa reading a newspaper. She spent more time on that sofa than in her own office, often when he wasn’t even there himself, which seemed to annoy everyone else but him. Comment had been passed, in the canteen and elsewhere. He ought to get himself a padlock, it was said, to stop people swanning in and out. No one said it in as many words, but people meant Pauline Berg. Until now he hadn’t paid much attention. It was his office, after all, not theirs, and he was perfectly capable of drawing a line if he didn’t want company. He didn’t need his colleagues to point it out for him. He poked his head round the door and said hello, but then went to his desk and switched on his computer. She came in before he’d logged on.
‘I’ve got something on his holidays,’ she told him.
‘Who, Kramer Nielsen?’
‘Yes, who else? Package holidays weren’t for him, I think we can be sure of that, but then I struck really lucky with DSB at Hvidovre Station. The train lady, or clerk I suppose she is, said she recognised him when I showed her his picture. He used to buy a return to Esbjerg once a year, always the same dates, from Copenhagen Central on the nineteenth of June and back again from Esbjerg two days later.’
‘Was he connected in any way to the railways?’
‘Not that I know of. It was almost in desperation I tried them. I thought if he didn’t fly, then he’d have to go by train. Like I said, it was just luck, really.’
‘Because the clerk knew him?’
‘Recognised him, that’s all.’
‘Was he a regular customer besides that?’
‘Only once a year, as far as she knew.’
‘I’ve come across some good witnesses in my time, but that’s ridiculous. How on earth could she remember one customer who came in once a year?’
‘That’s what I mean. But she remembers him because he wouldn’t queue like other people. That was what first drew him to her attention. He kept going to the back of the line, like he didn’t want anyone standing behind him. She’d never known anyone do that before. Then, as it happened, he came in again the year after, on her shift, the same behaviour as the first time. She thinks it must have been the summers of nineteen ninety-six and -seven. She sold him tickets a number of times after that, though not every year, it depended on whether she was at work that day or not. But then I checked with the post office and the postmaster told me Kramer Nielsen was very flexible with his holidays, and his shifts generally, but always asked for a certain week off in June, and that checks with the week including the nineteenth to the twenty-first. There was never any problem with that from his employers’ side.’
‘Why wouldn’t he queue up?’
‘Who knows? Maybe he was just shy. The train lady thinks he didn’t want anyone else to know where he was going. But that’s with thinks underlined.’
‘What did he do in Esbjerg?’
Pauline shook her head, she’d no idea. Simonsen conscientiously praised her, but it didn’t seem to make any impression. He never quite knew how she was going to react. Sometimes she seemed pleased with the recognition, at times extremely so, and sometimes she was indifferent to it. Today it was the latter.
‘Did you make sure to give that cow a bollocking?’ she suddenly asked.
The ‘cow’ was the nervous female officer who had appropriated Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s mobile phone, though she had not done so with ill intent, and certainly not to steal it. On her way up the stairs to the postman’s body she’d been directly behind Hans Ulrik Gormsen and seen how he almost stepped on it without noticing. She’d picked it up and held it in her hand for some time while her colleague photographed the body and kept repeating how obvious it was that they were dealing with a killing, while all the while he argued with the priest. At some point she’d absent-mindedly put the phone in her pocket and, as things turned out, forgotten all about it until the next day back at Glostrup Politistation. There, she’d bagged it as evidence, but instead of allotting it a catalogue code she’d scribbled down her mistake in a few words and then put the bag in the drawer of her desk. Subsequently, she’d explained the matter to her superior in an e-mail and asked what to do. She never received an answer, and Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s mobile stayed put in the drawer.
Months later, when she was called into Konrad Simonsen’s office, her oversight suddenly turned into a liability, for which reason she’d tried to conceal the facts. She’d done the same when Pauline interviewed her, forcing herself to lie for fear of the consequences should the truth emerge. But at the suspicion this raised against her she grew increasingly restless and irritable, realising the bind she’d got herself into and at the same time genuinely not wishing to hold back evidence in a murder inquiry. Eventually, her husband managed to drag it out of her, and after mulling the matter over he put himself in touch with Pauline Berg. He it was, too, who subsequently drove over to Police HQ and handed in the phone.
Pauline wagged her finger angrily in front of Simonsen’s face.
‘I’ve wasted a lot of time on that cretin.’
Simonsen agreed, albeit in more conciliatory terms that he hoped would rub off. To his surprise it worked.
‘I know I ought to calm down… it’s just…’
And all of a sudden there were tears in Pauline’s eyes and he saw that she was clenching her jaw to hold them back. She managed to control herself and said tonelessly:
‘Go on, I’m all right.’
‘Where did she find the phone? Do we know?’
‘On the landing where the body was, up against the wall on the right. It was lying face down and the cover’s pretty much the same colour as the carpet, as you know, so…’
‘And you’re certain about that?’
‘No, but it’s what the husband told me. She never said anything herself, the stupid little…’