“That really makes me angry, but probably only because I know what I do. By far the majority of young people who disappear turn up again at some stage or another.”
“Yes, and that’s a good thing, but Annie Lindberg Hansson never showed up. Still no one really believed there’d been a crime, but were more inclined to think she had cut the bonds to her childhood home and was maybe living in the city or else abroad somewhere.”
“Then we can only hope that’s what she’s doing.”
“Do you believe that yourself?”
“No, unfortunately not. Not since I’ve seen her and know that Andreas Falkenborg was in the area. God knows whether he bought that summer house in Tj?rnehoved before or after he met her.”
“That’s one of the things we’ll try to find out today, but if I had to guess, I’d say after. That would fall neatly in line with the other murders, where he is obviously prepared to reorganise his entire existence to position himself for his misdeeds. He displays a strange combination of extremely goal-oriented activity once he has met his victims, while he does nothing actively to find—how shall I put it?—appropriate candidates. We’ll have to bring in a psychologist to analyse this.”
Poul Troulsen thought a while then said tentatively, “If women don’t have exactly the right appearance and the right age, he’s harmless. If on the other hand they are black-haired, slender and pretty in a very specific way, then he kills them?”
“It undeniably looks that way, but as I said, we’ll have to call in a psychologist.”
“It will make me very happy to turn him over to the correctional system.”
“You’ll have to get past a judge and presumably a jury first. And it will probably be Nyk?bing Zealand secure prison, when we get to that point.”
“He’s cost us two resignations from the force over the Thomsen affair—and don’t misunderstand me, I know full well that the murders, whether there are two or three of them, are much, much worse—but I can’t help being angry with him about that too. As far as I’m concerned I wasn’t doing too well either when I realised the truth, and I was only peripherally involved in the Stevns case. Even so I couldn’t attend your review on Monday.”
“I was very close to being the third to resign, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I knew, and this was just my clumsy way of asking how you’re doing now?”
“If he has killed someone after Catherine Thomsen, then I don’t know . . . I almost don’t dare think about it, but otherwise I guess it is what it is.”
Troulsen looked at his boss with disapproval. The reply did not invite further discussion, so he concentrated on his driving. Simonsen immersed himself in his papers again.
An hour later they were nearly at their destination. Poul Troulsen honked briefly at Arne Pedersen and Pauline Berg, as he turned left and drove toward Jungshoved while his colleagues’ car continued on the highway. A gentle rural landscape unfolded before them with a view over B?gestr?mmen, the crooked stream between Zealand and M?n. Five minutes later they stopped in front of a small homestead close to Jungshoved Church, all the way out on the promontory.
At the top of the driveway the two men stopped and looked around. The house consisted of two low, white-plastered wings, which created a contrast to the black-tarred concrete tiles of the roof. The small garden was overgrown, with a couple of beautiful old fruit trees and a weed-infested terrace stretching from the farmhouse out to the lawn, while a high beech hedge behind hid the view to the church. Simonsen recalled the boys’ books of his childhood, where Svend Poulsen G?nge’s guerillas had numerous encounters with the Swedes at this very Jungshoved, without his really knowing whether this was fiction or Danish history. Troulsen commented soberly, “It was probably sold off by the church at one time.”