“I can see them fine from here, but why do you think he did that?”
“Don’t you understand? It was revenge. That giant sow was hanging rotting on the tree until there was almost nothing but the skeleton left. It stank worse than you can possibly imagine. We couldn’t even be out here on our terrace, and when it was at its worst it was almost unbearable if you so much as opened a window. We had to dry laundry in the attic. Otherwise the rottenness clung.”
“But wouldn’t the smell also have affected him?”
“Yes, just as badly as us, but he seemed indifferent to it. Just strutted around, grinning arrogantly, and went up and patted the carcass occasionally.”
“Didn’t you report him to the authorities? That sort of thing isn’t allowed. Not even out here in . . . in this place close to nature.”
The woman’s mouth pursed like a hen’s behind, but the man did not notice Pauline Berg’s slip and answered proudly, “No, we don’t do that here. But after a couple of weeks I’d had enough and went in and gave him a good thrashing.”
“Nonsense! He played you like a fiddle.”
Both Pedersen and Berg turned expectantly towards the woman, and this time she spoke for herself.
“Falkenborg let himself get beaten up, that’s the truth of it, and somehow managed to record the whole thing on videotape. He called emergency services and was driven away in an ambulance, while he moaned and groaned and made it sound much worse than it was. Then two days later he came in and showed us the video on some kind of little portable machine and said he was going to set both the police and a lawyer on us if we didn’t let the pig hang and suffer the punishment we deserved. That’s what he said, think about it, the punishment we deserved.”
The two officers dug deeper into the neighbours’ feud for fifteen minutes, but there was not much more to be learned. In conclusion Pedersen set a photograph of Annie Lindberg Hansson on the table between them.
“Do you recognise her?”
The man did not recognise the girl and said so. The woman on the other hand cast an acid glance at the picture and said, “That’s Annie, the drunk’s girl, from out at Jungshoved Church.”
“She disappeared in 1990.”
“Disappeared? Don’t give me that nonsense. She ran off to Copenhagen. There’s no doubt about it.”
CHAPTER 14
The day after their excursion to South Zealand Arne Pedersen was on the move again, this time to the opposite end of Zealand. Konrad Simonsen had sent him to Hundested, where he was going to meet a man who might possibly be able to help explain the gap in Andreas Falkenborg’s studies. Well in advance of the meeting they’d arranged, Pedersen turned up at the restaurant where he sat enjoying the view of Hundested Harbour, a charming spot that merged busy late-summer tourism with the local fishing industry and ferry service to R?rvig on the other side of the fjord. The day promised to be almost as hot as yesterday. Above him the sky was filled with slow-moving fleecy clouds, and the coffee he had just been served was strong and good, so all in all life seemed quite pleasant, although he was extremely tired.
The man he was going to meet arrived late and apologised half-heartedly, saying it had been difficult to find the detective in the mass of tourists, although Pedersen had seen him steer his clogs directly from his car over to this table. Simonsen had not said much about this witness, other than that he was a former police commissioner in the town and concisely described him as colourful, whatever that might mean. The ex-police commissioner was a big man in his early sixties and quickly proved jovial and winning in his manner. Pedersen took an immediate liking to him. He was also apparently popular with the locals, as many of them greeted him as they passed the table. The man’s name was Hans Svendsen, and he began, “What has Simon told you about this meeting?”
“Not much, I’m afraid, he’s pretty busy. We all are.”
“Simon is always busy, he was born busy, don’t give in to that.”
Pedersen protested that the boss’s workload was considerable at the moment. His own too for that matter. Or more correctly it felt that way because he had not really slept much the past few nights. The thought made him yawn. Then he said, “You met a man named Andreas Falkenborg in 1977, and we are strongly interested in what he was doing that year. I haven’t been told much more than that, apart from the fact that you were a police commissioner in this town.”
“Yes, though I started out as a common or garden constable. You usually do.”
Hans Svendsen had an engaging laugh, and Pedersen laughed with him.
“I should begin by saying that I know something about the murder they called the Stevns case, but this story goes back much farther. Were you around under old Planck, when he investigated Stevns?” asked Svendsen.