“Two of them, Hans? Am I that interesting?”
“You’ve always been a popular girl, Rikke. Is it all right if he talks to you now? He is a bit busy, you know, they always are in the big city.”
“That’s fine, Jeanette explained to me what they want. But I would prefer not to talk about . . . that other thing, you know.”
“We all understand, Rikke. And he is only interested in the assault.”
He nodded to Simonsen, who echoed Svendsen’s tone and approach exactly.
“My name is Konrad, but my friends all call me Simon. That’s because my last name is Simonsen. May I call you Rikke?”
Simonsen could be very intuitive. Without at any point forcing the conversation, he spoke quietly and calmly to the nervous blind woman, whose voice soon returned to its normal range. Only once did he make a mistake, when he happened to call her granddaughter Pauline instead of Jeanette, but that misunderstanding was quickly smoothed over and forgotten. Only after Pedersen had looked at his watch numerous times, and even Hans Svendsen showed signs of impatience, did he tackle the subject he had come to broach.
“Rikke, will you tell me about back in 1977, when you were attacked?”
“Yes, I’ll be happy to, Simon. I was living out in Kikhavn with my parents along with . . . Jeanette’s mother, who was little at that time, and then one evening I was home alone. It was a Tuesday in May, I recall, and the others were at the movies. Suddenly there was a man standing behind me in the kitchen, and before I had time to do anything, he shoved me down across the table with my arms behind my back. I don’t know if I screamed, I must have, but it was a long way to the nearest neighbour’s so no one could hear me. He tied my hands together with that wide, shiny tape . . . What’s it called again?”
“Duct tape?”
“Yes, exactly. Then he stuffed a rag in my mouth so I couldn’t call out. The whole thing happened very quickly, and I was paralysed with fright. It was so terrible, I peed my pants in fear. He had a mask on.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that, and I am very interested in that mask. Can you remember what it looked like?”
“Dreadful . . . like a ghost. But it was homemade: black and made out of cardboard, I think with holes for the eyes.”
“Did you recognise the mask? I mean, did it look like any definite character?”
“I didn’t recognise it, but there was more. Around his head and over his hair he had a kind of grayish-black cloth that went with the mask.”
“So you didn’t see his face?”
“No, not at all. Only his ears and a little of his head between the fabric and the mask.”
“Did he have gloves on?”
“Yes, and they were black too.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No, not in the house, not until we got down to the shore.”
“He took you down there?”
“Yes, he grabbed my clothes and shoved me ahead of him. We went quite fast, and a couple of times I fell, and then he pulled me up.”
“Did he pull you by the hair?”
“No, only by the clothes, and not brutally, more like firmly.”
“What about light? It must have been dark since you were living somewhere isolated?”
“He brought along a flashlight, and he took me pretty far down by the shore before he stopped. It was there I knew that I would die. I mean, that he was going to kill me.”
“You thought he would kill you?”
“No, I didn’t think so, I was sure of it, and I still am today. Yes, he wanted to kill me. He had dug my grave. A deep hole down in the sand, a place where the beach was narrow and the water reached almost to the dunes. There was a shovel to one side, ready for him to cover me with sand.”
“Did he use the flashlight to show you the grave?”
“No, the searchlight from the lighthouse at Spodsbjerg swept regularly across the beach, and then I could see it.”
“What happened to you there?”
“First I was supposed to take my jeans off, but not my panties. Then he forced me down on my stomach and tied my ankles together, after which he tore up my blouse in front and removed my bra. I can’t remember how, but I do recall that he looked away, as if he respected my modesty, and I also recall that I thought at least he wouldn’t rape me . . . That is, because he tied my ankles together first. Then I had to sit up, and he released my hands. Is this too disturbing, Jeanette? You can take a walk if you don’t want to hear this. Hans and Simon are with me.”
The girl answered in a voice filled with hatred.
“It’s not that I feel sick, Grandma, I just get so damned mad.”
“That’s the best reaction to have. Well, there on the shore, when I was sitting up, he took out a pair of scissors and sat down alongside me.”