Simonsen gave a wry smile.
“It comes in useful in our line of work. Well, back to Carl Henning Thomsen. Troublingly, our murder inquiry never established any cast-iron motive for Catherine’s death. We did know, however, that she had been keeping something secret from her parents. She had initiated what can best be described as a cautious or dawning lesbian relationship with a woman we know existed, but never located. The assumption was that the daughter must have informed her father about what was going on, after which, in an outburst of righteous fury, he killed her. But this was all highly speculative on our part, and there were timing issues there also. Another theory was that their daughter continuing her studies had offended the parents—Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe much in education—but that didn’t carry water.
“Carl Henning Thomsen continued to maintain his innocence, again and again. I don’t know how many hours he was questioned for altogether, but not for the briefest moment did he waver. My boss, Kasper Planck, thought for a long time that we had made a mistake over the prints, which unfortunately I finally talked him out of. He had all the proper doubts, I had all the good arguments, and sadly for Thomsen my view prevailed. In the past few days I’ve realised that I am going to have to live with this mistake for the rest of my life.”
To Simonsen’s own surprise he’d got through the admission he’d been dreading. Or maybe even thinking that way was symptomatic of his own self-importance—he was an egocentric fool, who could not tolerate being wrong, and now felt sorrier for himself than for those who had suffered as a result of his shortcomings.
Pedersen asked, “Should we take a break?”
Simonsen glanced at him in confusion.
“Excuse me, what was that you asked?”
“Whether we should take a break.”
“Yes, in a little bit, I'm just about done. The investigation ended when we brought charges against Carl Henning Thomsen for the murder of his daughter. During the trial he had a mental breakdown and was admitted to Rigshospitalet, where despite close monitoring he managed to throw himself out of a ninth-floor window. That was in October 1998. The case was then archived. Two years later, however, there was an addendum to the notes when sophisticated listening devices were found in Catherine Thomsen’s old apartment during its renovation, but no one knew whether these had anything to do with her murder, and no one made more than a half-hearted attempt to find out. Any questions or comments?”
His gaze was met with a general head-shaking; no one had any questions.
“Now let’s take a break, and then Arne Pedersen will take over.”
He took a step towards his colleague and added in a low voice, “I hope that’s all right? The Countess did mention to you that it was a possibility, I hope.”
“It’s quite all right. I can easily continue, especially now it’s just us present.”
“I’m tired,” admitted Simonsen, “and the last few weeks have taught me to listen to my body.”
“You don’t need to explain.”
“Did that seem too self-important to you? The part about . . . about the father and my own role in his death?”
“It seemed very honest, and if you think you’re the only one who was affected by that case you’d better think again. I don’t know if you noticed, but there should be nineteen of us here today and there are only sixteen. Three colleagues who like you were involved in the investigation of the Stevns murder had to go home. They couldn’t take the stress. And Troulsen went out for a walk, he wasn’t feeling too good either.”
“Well, it’s out there and that’s a relief. For now I know a secret couch that I want to visit for an hour or so.”
Pedersen smiled.
“I know where that secret couch is too. I think a lot of people do, so I hope it’s vacant. Shall I come up and wake you?”
“I’ll set my cell phone, but thanks for the offer. I assume you’ll review what DYE-5 looks like now, and then allocate our resources to individual DYE employees based on the list from the Americans.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
“I would like to have an overview when arrangements are in place, and you should make sure that visits to any DYE employee are made by pairs of officers, one of whom must be male. Agreed?”
“Completely.”
“A plan will have to be thought out soon for how we inform the general public. There will be an outcry.”
“There already is. Go up now and rest.”
Pedersen almost pushed his boss towards the door, which suggested goodwill combined with worry for his well-being, but Simonsen knew his colleague too well to believe that. “Tell me, what’s going on here? Why are you suddenly so eager to get rid of me?”
Then he caught sight of a message from Malte Borup, in big letters on the screen: Distinguished visitor en route to the boss.