Malte Borup looked like someone who had won the lottery. A free lunch would surely appease his girlfriend, and shorten the shopping trip considerably besides.
“Thanks a lot. No, Anita won’t mind being paid back later.”
“Great, so should we think about getting started? I asked you to come in because your database system or cross-reference program is simply more efficient and reliable than our memories. We’ll start by uncovering Andreas Falkenborg’s childhood and possibly his early adolescence. I want to see what you can conjure up out of the computer before the rest of us start running in every conceivable direction.”
Simonsen was referring to a computer that had been brought out so everyone could follow along on the screen. Malte Borup sat down.
“No offence, but why don’t you use the system yourself? I’ve written a whole interface where you can search in free text and issue SQL orders, if that’s what you want. Is it my manual that’s not very good?”
Poul Troulsen patted him on the shoulder.
“No, we’re the ones who aren’t very good—and too lazy besides. But we’ll take that up another time.”
Simonsen did have something to add.
“Because there are searches, and there are searches.”
Malte’s neck changed colour; this was a delicate subject with him. Despite that Simonsen expanded.
“The searches we are making, or rather are not making, are not quite as—shall we say, exhaustive?—as the ones you are responsible for.”
The student tried to defend himself.
“The Countess says that we will save the judges a lot of time by not asking for court orders, if we are sure that we don’t—”
“I don’t want to hear any more about that! Just concentrate on this. What can you find for us about Andreas Falkenborg’s childhood? I’m well aware that we don’t have too much at this point, but can you conjure up some reasonable witnesses for us to start with, even though it’s a long time ago?”
“You mean besides the maids?”
Malte Borup misunderstood when he didn’t receive a response.
“Is it wrong to say maids? There are two of them calling themselves that. Is it called domestic help nowadays?”
When he still did not receive a response, he turned to face them. The three detectives were astonished. None of them had heard anything about maids before this. Malte was a genius with a computer but seldom presented the information he gained from any angle related to solving a case. Simonsen spoke first.
“We didn’t know there were maids in his childhood home. How did you get that information?”
“Completely legally. Some municipalities are digitising their census record archives. It’s a research project in cooperation with the CPR registry and Copenhagen University. Rudersdal Municipality is part of the collaboration, and they have reached all the way back to the 1920s, long before the period you’re interested in.”
“So we can see who is registered as living at the address in Holte where the Falkenborg family lived when Andreas was a child?”
“Exactly, and I’ve also made a list of the maids. It’s in the system.”
“I don’t doubt that you have. Can you call up that list?”
Malte typed a command. Shortly after that a list of female names came up on his screen.
“There were eleven of them in the period from 1956 to 1967. Most of them were employed for one or two years, some for only a month. Should I see how many of them are still living?”
“Yes, please.”
“You’ll have to wait for the result, it may take a long time.”
A long time in Malte Borup’s universe was three minutes. The computer said that two of the maids were dead.
“Can you find out how old they were when they were employed by the Falkenborg family?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to wait again. If you’d said that before, I could have done it in one swoop.”
“We don’t mind waiting.”
This time however the student was cheated; the data appeared at once.
“That’s strange, they must have stored my records in a buffer. Maybe they’ve improved the system.”
Simonsen’s focus was elsewhere. “All aged nineteen to twenty-three . . . this looks promising. Malte, can you get us the current addresses and possibly telephone numbers too?”
“If they live in Denmark, that’s no problem. Otherwise it’s hard.”
“And then there is the very big question: what about pictures of them?”
Malte looked down at the corner of the screen, towards his computer’s clock, and answered hesitantly, “Pictures are not that easy.”
“But?”
“If they have a passport or driver’s licence or, well, something else, then there will be a picture, but normally it’s not digital, and then . . . it’s not that easy.”
“So what do you do in that case?”
The student squirmed, but buckled under the pressure of a meaningful pause left by Simonsen.
“Well, we have a service and return system.”
“Who is we?”