The Hanging: A Thriller (8 page)

Troulsen had been struggling all evening to get his pizzas taken seriously, and now they were being taken almost too seriously. He answered meekly, “Okay, Simon. I will.”

The Countess wasn’t on board.

“What’s all this about?”

“About criminal foresight, I believe. But let’s wait for further discussion until the morning.”

Which made no one the wiser.

CHAPTER 10

Helle Smidt Jørgensen doesn’t scream. It doesn’t help any.

Instead she whimpers like an abused puppy, a soft little Labrador with black fur; she buries her face in the fur to hide; the dog sleeps with her; the dog always sleeps with her, it’s her dog; she dreams that she wakes up; she’s drenched in sweat and her nightgown is damp; she tosses the pillow aside, she has no use for it; one Sunday in summer, a family breakfast in the community garden; the table is set outside in the beautiful weather; the flag is raised; everyone is happy except her, her and the dog; they have to wake up and go; they have to get out of bed and find the pills; psychopharmaceuticals; fear is a normal reaction; Uncle Bernhard is sitting at one end of the table; the children are playing on the grass; she is not playing; she is grown-up; fifty-three years old, a fully trained nurse, nurse Helle Smidt Jørgensen, that’s what it says on the name tag; anxiolytika; fear is made up of psychic, bodily, and behavioral symptoms; she hunches over and smiles because she is an adult, a grown-up nurse; Uncle Bernhard is assistant mayor, a grown-up assistant mayor; the dog lies down next to her; the dog is hers; you can bury your face in a dog; benzodiazepine; fear is an important survival mechanism when the organism is faced with danger; she is not in danger; she has the rest of the group; Stig Åge Thorsen and Erik Mørk protect her; Per Clausen slays fear; the Climber murders the night; Grandfather suggests that they sing, everyone loves to sing; she tells Grandfather that he is dead; and Uncle Bernhard is dead; and the dog is dead; her dog who sleeps next to her; and everyone is enjoying themselves; and Uncle Bernhard gets the banjo; Lexotan; anxiety disorders can be mitigated with psychopharmaceutical treatment.

They sing; Uncle Bernhard sings baritone; everyone likes Uncle Bernhard; Uncle Bernhard sings beautifully; Uncle Bernhard becomes mayor; Uncle Bernhard is handsome; everyone knows that Uncle Bernhard is handsome; three milligrams three times a day; she wakes up, goes out into the kitchen, the glass is on the shelf, she has to have three milligrams, three times three milligrams, three times three times three hundred milligrams, now! quickly, as soon as she wakes up; before the singing, she has to get up before the singing; everyone is quiet; everyone is looking at her; Uncle Bernhard is smiling, Uncle Bernhard smiles sweetly; Uncle Bernhard is nice when he smiles; Uncle Bernhard sings her song; it is a foreign song; only she and her uncle Bernhard understand foreign; Uncle Bernhard sings her foreign song; only she and Uncle Bernhard understand her song.

Be my life’s companion and you’ll never grow old.

She is grown. Fifty-three years old.

I’ll love you so much that you’ll never grow old.

She is a nurse. She is strong.

When there’s joy in living you just never grow old.

She doesn’t need to be afraid. She has pills.

You’ve got to stay young, ’cause you’ll never grow old.

The song reaches out for her; the song embraces her; the daughters of the night rage in the sunlight; the song drives the dream away; the sun disappears, and the flag, the table, Grandfather, everything disappears; the bed is gone; the nurse is gone; it is dark; it is quiet; there is fear; she hides her face in the dog; she hears steps; she is so little and the steps are so heavy; panic can be mitigated with psychiatric or psychotherapeutic treatment.

Therapy chases away the anxiety; Uncle Bernhard chases away the dog.

She feels his moist breath on her neck; she can smell his brilliantine.

She hears him panting; she feels his fingers open her.

Helle Smidt Jørgensen doesn’t scream. It doesn’t help.

CHAPTER 11

The young man’s fingers flew over the keys so fast that it sounded like a strip of cardboard in the spokes of a child’s bicycle wheel. The Countess looked up from her reading and watched him surreptitiously as he worked. He was a curly-haired youth with blue eyes and an open face; he had a slender build, with a fashion sense that she could characterize only as unique. His downy upper lip held the beginnings of a mustache, but when he smiled it was difficult to suppress an urge to stroke his curls and want to rescue him from a cruel world that at best offered him only minimal chances for survival. Or so it seemed to her.

Malte Borup looked up as if he felt her gaze, and his hands hovered above the keyboard.

“That good-looking one, is she also a cop?”

“Her name is Pauline, and yes she is. As she told you.”

“That’s true, she did. I was using my eyes more than my ears.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“What about the other one? The one with … well, the other one.”

“She is a psychologist who will be participating in the discussion.”

“What’s she done?”

“Nothing. How is my laptop doing?”

“It’ll be ready soon. I’ve sent a text message to the one with the beard. The strange one … one moment … I’ve got him here.”

Her address book popped up on the screen. The computer worked as a natural extension of his thoughts.

“Poul Troulsen. I’ll have to learn these names. He went to McDonald’s, isn’t that right?”

“A pizzeria. What did you write?”

“I just asked if he wanted to bring a couple of sodas back with him. Was that bad? I’ll pay him back.”

“No, that’s all right, but I don’t think he reads his text messages.”

He glanced at the screen, realized there was no help to be had there, and shrugged.

“We’ll go back to HS tomorrow. There’s a canteen there where you can buy soda.”

“Sweet. Will I meet the boss? That fat guy. I saw him on TV.”

“You’ll meet him today, but don’t call him fat.”

“Not fat. I meant slightly overweight.”

“Don’t call him fat, and don’t call him overweight.”

“Okay.”

“His name is Konrad Simonsen and he’s in the gymnasium with a guest. Maybe we can catch him before he heads back to the city.”

Malte Borup stiffened. Like a frozen computer screen.

“I’d rather not see any corpses. I really don’t want to, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“And you won’t. The bodies were transported to lab a long time ago.”

“Cool.”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

*   *   *

It turned out that it was a matter of opinion if the dead were completely gone. A woman who turned up in a taxi brought a whole new perspective on the matter.

Simonsen was stubbing out his cigarette in an ugly black streak on the exterior wall of the gymnasium when he saw the car. He was on edge, almost irritable. The night had been too short and his head was about to run over with information that he was expected to handle. Big and small all mixed in together and every time something left his hands something new turned up to take its place. It was always that way in the beginning of a case, especially something of this nature, which was, mildly put, a high-profile case, but knowing this was hardly a consolation. On top of this, he had forgotten to call Anna Mia yesterday although he had gone to great lengths to promise her, and he had forgotten to thank the Countess for the chess book, which he had gone to great lengths to promise himself. But he had not been able to remember either of these, and as if that were not enough, he had, in a fit of terrible dietary planning, decided to subsist on a bowl of yogurt for breakfast, so now he was also famished. He tried on a smile that was far from genuine and walked up to meet his guest.

She was a weathered little woman who blended into the asphalt. They greeted each other formally. Her voice was dry as talc and without inflection as she started to dissect his current desires—and as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“I sense a strong attraction to fish filets.”

He knew she was teasing him. Sometimes she used her special abilities to stir up his rational world, just because. He had been through it before.

“Thoughts don’t make you fat. That’s just how it is.”

Simonsen was a rational man. He did not believe in the Klabautermann, in the power of crystals or of earth power lines, and his window box had to make it through the winter without iron as a precaution against supernatural creatures, so when he nevertheless incorporated the little woman’s talents into his regulated universe it was because she regularly produced precise, correct, and relevant facts that lay miles beyond what simple guesswork could have produced. However, from time to time she was wrong and at other times she had nothing to say. How she came by her information he had long since given up trying to understand.

They usually met in her home in Høje-Taastrup, where she and her husband managed a lucrative but discreet consulting business. Her husband called himself Stephan Stemme and produced strange stories for online advertising. Once in a while Simonsen received an e-mail with an audio clip from him. He usually deleted these. When he consulted with the woman he always brought an object related in some way to the case in which he was seeking assistance. That was crucial. Like a police dog, she had to have some material to work from, but in this forensic investigation he had no physical objects to present to her. The agreement was that she would simply walk around the scene and see if the spirits were willing.

It turned out that the spirits not only were willing, they were lining up to have a chance to speak.

The second after she stepped into the gymnasium she tentatively stretched out her hand and glanced alternately at the ceiling and the floor, as if it were raining. Whatever it was she saw, it contorted her face.

“A man has been castrated by his own son. There are drops of blood on the floor.”

Suddenly she jumped back and was about to fall on top of Simonsen.

“Thank you. Who are they?”

Then it took hold of her. She stared in desperation down the length of the room, her hands pressed to her head, without words, apart from the occasional exclamation, but her gestures and facial expressions reflected an intense and unpleasant scene. The visions went on for quite a while. From time to time she covered her eyes, at other times her ears, and once she put her palms together and pressed her fingertips against her chin as if she was listening or praying. On one occasion she turned away in disgust.

Then all at once it stopped and she was left staring vacantly into space.

Simonsen was tense but remained silent even when one minute followed another and she stood there without sharing what she had seen. The first move had to be hers. Her response turned out to be as disappointing as it was surprising. That it was also a lie, was something he had no power over. The shadow world could not be consulted.

“Unfortunately I’m not getting anything else, and I would like to go home.”

CHAPTER 12

The face was fleshy and pale with tiny beady eyes, and the thin girlish mouth looked painted on. The gaze was directed downward and the features crumpled into wrinkles as many people have the habit of doing when difficult decisions need to be made. A sour fish-face.

The head filled two-thirds of the frame, and the headrest, decorated with the Danish flag, made up the rest.

For a brief second nothing happened, then the face broke into a grin while an eager tongue tip flicked out a couple of times and moistened the red lips.

Something was said, whereafter the video sequence froze and caught the man in an unflattering grimace.

Anni Staal—reporter at the
Dagbladet,
whom Simonsen preferred to see banned from the country—was disgusted. The flag and the man made her feel unclean even though she did not know who he was or hear what he was talking about. She halfheartedly looked around for her headset and realized that as usual someone had taken it. At which point she gave up. The message accompanying the video had been anonymous. The sender was only noted as “Chelsea,” which she didn’t know what to make of. Anonymous messages were nothing new. She received several every day, so she shouldn’t really be wasting more time on a single one.

The telephone rang. She grabbed the receiver and smiled when she recognized the well-known voice. After a short while she said, “I certainly remember Kasper Planck and that will be a sensation, so you’ll get two thousand if we have a feature on him tomorrow.”

She gave a time and a place and added, “All right, we’ll say twenty-five hundred, but tell me something while I have you on the line. Arne Pedersen—you know, Konrad Simonsen’s right hand—there’s a rumor that he has gambling debts. Do you know anything about that?”

Again she listened, though not for as long this time, then she said, “I know, I know. With regard to Kasper Planck, do you think that I can get a comment from either Simonsen or Planck himself?”

While she listened to her answer, she deleted the e-mail and read the next one. She received two new messages before she wrapped up the call.

“I think I’ve got the right little Lolita-Anita for the job. The girl has such high morals she should be studying to become a minister rather than journalist, so she meets both of your criteria. And for God’s sake, call me back soon.”

She hung up and called out into the editorial cubicle area, “Anita!”

CHAPTER 13

There was nothing charming about the Pathology Institute in Copenhagen but through the years there had been many times when Simonsen had felt a certain relief upon entering the place. Perhaps it was the ubiquitous smell of rodalon that stung the palate and nostrils, but that nonetheless did not manage to conceal the heavy odors, or else it was the strange mix of hypermodern machines and gray-white organs in holding jars from an earlier era that appealed to him. The institute was a locked world where only a few insiders belonged, and he was not one of them.