‘She’s not stupid, just malicious, that’s all. But that’s my problem, not yours. Anyway, the thing is, she told me that you, Simon, are now in charge of your own hours. But we’re supposed to make sure you don’t rush things. She was adamant about that bit. And you’re still not to take on any executive function, which I’m really sorry about, even if I do understand why.’
Konrad Simonsen and the Countess had to stop themselves from laughing. It was three days since they’d been told Arne Pedersen’s piece of news after the Countess had phoned the Deputy Commissioner herself, albeit with Simonsen’s knowledge and consent.
They showed their guest out and shut the front door behind him.
‘You’ll have to think of something, Simon,’ the Countess said. ‘He’s scared of her. I had no idea it was that bad.’
‘No, it’s not the best scenario, is it?’
‘Not the best scenario? It’s pure paranoia, that’s what it is. We can’t have two people going around the department seeing ghosts wherever they look.’
‘You mean Pauline?’
‘Who else?’
She was right, of course. Pauline, who else? He promised to think about it.
As Head of the Homicide Department, Konrad Simonsen was accustomed to any number of people approaching him requesting an appointment. There’d been e-mails, letters, phone calls, and not infrequently people turning up at Police HQ in person, to demand he give up his time to them on the spot. The vast majority of these petitions were filtered away by lower-ranking staff and never reached him, and only in a very few cases did he become directly involved. When that occurred he would generally tend to find a younger officer to sit in, who could take care of the matter on his behalf.
These approaches from the general public fell roughly into four categories. The first consisted of mentally unstable individuals wishing to share with him what were obviously figments of their imagination. A TV host staring at them during a programme, for instance, and planning to kill them. Then there were the well-meaning amateurs who were convinced that by their genius and logical thinking they had solved some closed or ongoing case, usually a murder. Then came the pathological liars, people who would do anything to be interviewed by the police and who made up stories with the same intention, most often in the form of false confessions. Finally, there was a fourth category, without doubt the worst of them alclass="underline" family and friends unable to come to terms with the fact that a loved one was dead, and who imagined it must be as a result of crime. These traumatised individuals were often exceptionally persistent in their endeavours to capture the time of a senior crime investigator, and if they succeeded they were almost impossible to get rid of again.
The two people waiting for Konrad Simonsen outside Police HQ when he came in for work on Tuesday morning belonged to this latter category. The duty officer at the desk managed to warn him over his mobile before he got there, and he was able to use another entrance in order to avoid them.
On entering his office he found a stack of papers on his desk, meticulously placed by the keyboard of his computer, allowing him no chance of not seeing them. On top was a yellow Post-it note informing him that the material had been sent in earlier by the two people waiting for him outside the main entrance.
He flicked through the papers casually. The first contained a printout of three long e-mails, all addressed to Simonsen himself, but filtered out before reaching his mailbox. Each had been politely answered by a sergeant whose name he didn’t recognise, and these replies, more or less identically worded, stated that Københavns Politi regrettably were unable to pursue the matter, the sergeant referring them instead to the Nordsjællands Politi and concluding rather laconically that Detective Superintendent Konrad Simonsen was therefore unable to offer any personal appointment to discuss the matter. Which was correct.
The remainder of the documents consisted of a Xeroxed autopsy report. Simonsen paused upon seeing the name of the deceased. Juli Denissen. Somewhere, a bell rang. About a year before, Juli Denissen had been a witness and had provided valuable information in connection with Pauline Berg’s abduction. Later, when it was all over, Simonsen and the Countess had found themselves in Hundested on another matter. On their way home they’d stopped by the woman’s address in Frederiksværk and had given her the Countess’s mobile phone. Juli’s old one had been broken and Simonsen, who had been surprisingly taken with the young woman on meeting her, thought she deserved a new one. After that, he had neither seen nor heard of her and had long since forgotten all about her.
Distracted, he rolled the documents until they were a tight cylinder in his hand, and wondered for a brief moment if he should dump them in his wastepaper basket, only then to glance out of the window at the dense, grey autumn sky. It was not the sort of day on which to stand outside and wait for a person for hours on end, which they undoubtedly would do, and probably the day after as well, if they followed the norm. Instead of discarding the roll of papers he went out into the corridor, determined to offload the matter on to the first lower-ranking investigator he ran into.
Unfortunately, it was Pauline Berg.
Most of Konrad Simonsen’s work this dismal autumn Tuesday consisted of reading the reports of investigators who had been out knocking on doors in Hvidovre trying to turn up something on Jørgen Kramer Nielsen. But apart from a couple of notes he wanted to pursue, his endeavours provided him with little else but the feeling of being slightly better informed than previously. After lunch he met the Deputy Commissioner, a meeting that went well, it seemed, his boss apparently delighted by the idea he put forward. But just as he was about to leave, she stopped him.
‘While you’re here, Simon, I got this e-mail about an hour ago and I want you to have a look at it. I was going to forward it, but now you’re here you might as well read it.’
She turned her computer screen and allowed him to see. It was from the National Police Commissioner and was presumably to be taken as a formal reminder to make sure that the various police districts’ fields of jurisdiction continued to be respected. Simonsen wasn’t sure he understood, which was hardly surprising since he never did know how to interpret e-mails from the country’s highest-ranking police officer, the head of the Rigspolitiet. Nor was he the only one.
‘What’s it got to do with me?’
The Deputy Commissioner placed her elbows on her desk and put the tips of her fingers together, resting her chin on her index fingers.
‘Nothing, as such. But it sounds like Arne Pedersen might have too much on his plate. Can you sort it out for him?’
‘Sort what out? Now you’re making as little sense as our number one.’
‘Call the chief constable in Frederikssund, preferably before you go home today. It’s better he gets the story from you. It’s only second- or third-hand to me.’
It was a request that ought to have set off alarm bells, but it didn’t. Back in his office, Simonsen decided the phone call to Nordsjælland’s chief constable could wait until tomorrow. And then he went home.
That evening he and the Countess had visitors again.
Malte Borup, the Countess’s favourite intern, and his girlfriend Anita Dahlgren were invited to dinner, and it was all much more enjoyable than Konrad Simonsen could have dared to hope. The Countess had hired a chef to prepare some low-fat cuisine. Simonsen was used to her indulging in such extravagances now and then, and while the chef’s physical stature in no way advertised the benefits of his slimming recipes, it was money well spent. The dinner was no less than excellent: a selection of fine cheeses on toasted bread, tournedos with rice and peppers, and a homemade blackcurrant sorbet with whole berries to round things off.