The girls were impossible to keep in check, and so he gave up.
When evening came, they drank tea and watched television. In colour! The TV was his pride and joy, even if Rita did call it a proletarian gogglebox, slapping him playfully on the back as the film started. It was an Arena with a 21-inch screen in a swish teak cabinet, with a crisp sound that reached into the kitchen without the slightest distortion. He’d bought it on hire-purchase a couple of years before so that he could watch the Americans landing on the moon. Man’s first steps on an alien celestial body, an image he felt certain he would remember, even when he grew into an old man. Live transmission, and in colour! But Neil Armstrong’s ‘small step for man, a giant leap for mankind’, was not the image he remembered best from that time. That was a quite different one entirely, and, ironically it was in black and white.
The Countess interrupted his thoughts.
‘You’ve got yellow paint in your hair, Simon. You’ll have to have a bath before you go to bed, I don’t want my bedroom painted, if you don’t mind.’
He promised to do as she said, noting that now it was her bedroom all of a sudden. At other times it was theirs – when the bed linen needed changing, for instance.
‘You’re miles away, what are you thinking about?’
They had sat down on the sofa after dinner, she with a book, he with the day’s paper, though he couldn’t be bothered to read it.
‘A picture I remember.’
It was of a man on a step, taken from the side. His head with its receding hairline; his folded hands contrasting to his long, black coat and shiny, polished shoes. The man was kneeling. Behind him photographers could be seen, the front of a crowd, a single soldier with epaulettes and cap. All eyes were focused on the man on the step, albeit from a respectful distance, as if they already knew that this spontaneous moment was historic. Further back you could make out the housing, the dismal grey blocks that had been thrown up in no time in this city whose every building was new. The image of the West German chancellor kneeling before Warsaw’s Ghetto memorial went around the world, and Willy Brandt was the only politician he and Rita ever jointly respected. And millions along with them. West Germany had a chancellor who brought together rather than divided, no mean feat in the days of leftist rebellion. The following year, the man on the step was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and seldom had it been more deserved.
The Countess spoke.
‘What picture’s that?’
‘A picture of a statesman, the greatest of his time.’
She guessed the name, of course. It wasn’t difficult. Simonsen went and had his bath.
As soon as the alarm went off and Konrad Simonsen opened his eyes, he thought to himself that he would much rather stay in bed than get up and start the day that lay ahead of him. His humour was little improved when it turned out he still couldn’t get in touch with Pauline and was instead put through to the answering service he was already sick and tired of. He sulked at breakfast, and the Countess left him alone. She knew by now how to spot the telltale signs of his changing moods and was able to navigate around them to the extent that suited her. This morning she was out of the door long before him, and he barely had the chance to kiss her goodbye before she was gone. He cleared the breakfast things, spent fifteen minutes half-heartedly skimming through the day’s paper, then drove to Frederikssund.
The chief constable turned out to be a pleasant and sensible man, who received Simonsen at the duty desk since his office was being done up. They sat down in a corner where they could talk undisturbed, and the chief constable put him in the picture about the death that Pauline Berg had seemingly decided to treat as a murder investigation.
A twenty-four-year-old woman, Juli Denissen of Frederiksværk, had been found dead on 10 July at Melby Overdrev, a former military training area out towards the Kattegat between Asserbo and Hundested. The place was now a conservation area, part of the National Park that had been dubbed Royal Nordsjælland. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body were particularly poignant: the persistent crying of the woman’s two-year-old had been heard by a forestry worker. The death was singular, not only because of the woman’s young age, but also because it had occurred in such a deserted spot. For that reason it had been investigated thoroughly by Nordsjællands Politi, who nonetheless had been unable to unearth anything untoward. The autopsy report concluded quite unequivocally and without reservation that death had been due to a massive cerebral haemorrhage, for which reason the death was classed as occurring from natural causes and duly closed. Juli Denissen had been cremated from Kregme Kirke on Saturday 2 August.
‘That’s the short version,’ said the chief constable. ‘I’m skipping the fine detail, of course, but there’s a couple of case folders you can take with you, if you want to delve into it.’
Konrad Simonsen shook his head emphatically.
‘No, thanks, I’d rather not. I’ve no doubt at all it’s like you say, natural causes.’
‘Glad to hear it. However, the National Commissioner has transferred everything concerning the woman’s death to you. There was an e-mail yesterday, but you’ll know all about that already. I hope we’re not going to have to allocate resources to this again, because if you ask me it would be a waste of time.’
Simonsen assured the chief constable there would be no such expectation. And the transfer was purely so that Nordsjællands Politi could refer to him should anyone start… stirring things up. He couldn’t find a better expression, and the chief constable picked up on it straight away:
‘Stirring things up, indeed. The only person stirring things up here is your own detective sergeant, Pauline Berg.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Tell me what she’s been getting up to.’
‘Well, not much really, besides what we talked about on the phone yesterday. And of course it’s no skin off my nose now it’s all been handed over to you.’
‘I’d like you to endorse the two folders you mentioned with a signed note to the effect that they can only be lent out if sanctioned by you or me.’
‘No problem. Are you having trouble getting in touch with her?’
‘Trouble isn’t the word.’ He held up his hand to stem any protest. ‘All right, I know it’s a bit unorthodox, but like I say, her situation isn’t normal.’
‘Is it PTSD?’
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. The thought had occurred to Simonsen, too. Pauline Berg’s behaviour at work at times verged on self-destructive. She forced herself and those around her into situations that could only end with her… it was hard to put into words exactly… being put in her place, passed over or sometimes even ignored. He was aware that this followed the recognised pattern of events before some people caused themselves physical harm. Both kinds of behaviour were in order to dull the trauma they had suffered. But Simonsen was no therapist and refused to hang psychiatric labels on others. He replied frankly:
‘I don’t know. Sometimes she appears unbalanced, at other times her work is just as good as before she was abducted. Of course, we hope she’s going to stabilise at some point. However, it seems like she views this young woman’s death as a chance to investigate a case that’s hers and hers alone. And there’s another aspect to it, too. When Pauline was banged up in that bunker, the dead woman came to us with vital information that saved Pauline from dying. I think she has merged the two things in her mind and convinced herself she owes it to the woman to proceed with an investigation. Unfortunately, there’s not much doubt that at the moment she’s consciously avoiding not only me, but her other superiors, too.’