The priest was not happy about the situation and answered reluctantly.
‘No, not directly, but it was my clear impression. He was afraid… afraid of darkness.’
Hardly had the words passed his lips before Arne Pedersen slapped a photograph down on the table in front of him.
‘Did it have something to do with the girl in this photo?’
‘Yes, but I’m afraid that’s all I can say.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘No.’
‘Not even her name?’
‘No.’
The questions came like a volley of shots, Pedersen’s eyes fixing the priest’s.
‘Do you know anything about her?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
‘If you knew nothing about her, would you be able to tell me that?’
‘Then there’d be nothing to say.’
‘But you’d be able to answer me on that?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I ask you if she’s dead, are you going to answer me?’
‘I’d like to, but I can’t.’
‘Is she dead?’
The door opened and a red-haired intern from the Deputy Commissioner’s office came in with a tray of mineral waters. Without words, but with a friendly smile worthy of any waiter, she swapped the bottles for empties and withdrew again. Not even Konrad Simonsen reflected on the matter. Procedures were always bent a bit when bosses were taking part. Arne Pedersen repeated the question from before the interruption:
‘Is she dead?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
The Deputy Commissioner’s timing was impressive. A split second before the bishop could cut in she turned to Arne Pedersen.
‘There’s something wrong here.’
The bishop concurred.
‘Yes, it would seem there is.’
The priest grasped the pause eagerly, though was clearly unaware of what was going on. Certainly he seemed oblivious to Arne Pedersen’s presence.
‘What’s the problem?’ he asked the bishop.
‘The problem just left the room.’
He nodded towards the door through which the intern had just gone out. The Deputy Commissioner delivered a cutting rebuke of her subordinate:
‘You must get a grip, Arne. This is embarrassing.’
Arne Pedersen flicked calmly through his folder, leaving the photograph of the intern in plain sight in front of the priest. Then, apologetically, he said to no one in particular:
‘Sorry about that. Our red-haired friend would be three or four years older than the other girl would have been.’
The priest studied the photo for the first time, and his sad eyes seemed almost to be staring inwards when Arne Pedersen finally picked it up and replaced it with one of a good-looking young girl that Kurt Melsing’s department had extracted from the clouds.
‘Perhaps this one’s dead, then?’
The bishop shook his head pointedly.
‘This is getting too complicated for me. I think you’ve had your answer. I’m afraid we can add no more.’
Arne Pedersen let the issue lie, skipping instead somewhat absently through a few loose ends concerning the landing where the deceased was discovered, before declaring the interview over. All that remained was for the Deputy Commissioner to thank them for their co-operation, a matter she dealt with quite as elegantly as she had introduced them. On their way out she apologised once more:
‘I really am sorry about the mix-up with those photos. Perhaps we might return to the issue once we’ve made more headway?’
Arne Pedersen blushed appropriately like a schoolboy. The bishop, however, was quick to play down the matter, content that the interview had gone off in an atmosphere of mutual co-operation.
‘These things happen. And we’d like to help as much as we can, of course.’
‘Excellent, and thank you for a most pleasant chat. I do hope we’ve shown tact as to your faith, though I must admit I’m still not sure what you’re allowed to divulge and what you’re not.’
The priest commented with a tight-lipped smile:
‘I should get my own photos sorted out one of these days.’
Konrad Simonsen was painting that afternoon, a job he enjoyed and had got stuck into as soon as he came home.
The Countess had let him borrow a wing of her annexe as a makeshift gallery for Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s posters. His excuse for hanging them at home was poor: they ought to be viewed properly, he contended, in decent suroundings, after the psychologists, behavioural scientists and photo buffs had been asked to give their takes on what the images might mean. No one bought the explanation, but nor did anyone feel much like delving into the real reason, so the upshot was that the posters ended up in Søllerød after first having passed through Kurt Melsing’s lab in Vanløse. Now they were leaning up against a wall, waiting to be hung in their newly decorated room. Some tradesmen had cleared the place and carried out a few minor repairs, but Simonsen had insisted on doing the painting himself and he had just got started on the third wall when the Countess came home and found him hard at work. She stood for a while in the doorway watching him. The radio played a decades’ old song as he methodically swept the roller up and down the surface in front of him. Now and again he stepped back to consider the results of his efforts. When eventually he realised she was there he switched the radio off.
‘Are you spying on me?’
‘You know I am. How did Arne’s interview go?’
He told her all about it, standing with the paint roller in his hand.
‘They’ll have been proud of themselves, then?’
‘I’ll say. You should have seen them. Striding along the corridor arm in arm like a pair of lovesick teenagers, soaking up the applause and boasting their heads off.’
‘And you were the audience?’
‘Yes, and I can tell you it got a bit tiresome after their eighth curtain call. But credit where credit’s due, they were the perfect double act and I got all sorts of useful information out of it.’
‘Sounds brilliant.’
‘The priest simply assumed it was the girl from the loft on the photo he was shown, and answered accordingly. So there’s no doubt now that he knew about her before.’
‘Right, I get you. And I take it Arne’s not scared of our Deputy Commissioner any more.’
‘Scared? He called her by her first name – Gurli, he said – and was hugging her like she was a cuddly toy.’
‘I’d like to have been there for that.’
‘It’s all on video. They were so pleased with themselves they forgot to turn the camera off. It wasn’t my interview, so I let them get on with it. Wait till you see it, you’ll have a laugh.’
‘It sounds like something that’ll turn up in the entertainment slot at the Christmas do. Anyway, I actually came to ask what time you wanted dinner. And to see how the decorating was coming on, of course.’
The Countess looked around the room.
‘It’s a bit… gaudy. Why the primary colours?’
‘Don’t you like it? It’s not finished yet.’
She came up to him, but stopped short. Turning one room in the annexe into a rainbow was fine by her, but she didn’t want her new cardigan suffering the same psychedelic fate.
‘Are you having a good time?’
‘I am, actually. Very good.’
‘Have you been for your run?’
‘Of course. Before long I won’t have to walk it at all any more.’
‘I’m proud of you, Simon. But there’s something we need to talk about.’
He stiffened. Such words from a woman’s mouth were seldom encouraging.
‘What’s that?’
She told him.
Their colleagues had been talking, though of course only when Simonsen himself had been out of earshot. And Pauline Berg as well, since no one really knew where they were with her these days and largely avoided her for the same reason. What if their Head of Homicide was taking them in the wrong direction? Apparently, he’d decided that the postman’s murder was to be cleared up by uncovering the man’s past. But what if it had been random? A break-in gone wrong? A couple of maladjusted kids who reckoned he had money stashed away? The Countess filled him in on this cautiously.