“What do you mean?”
“I was up watching her again after a few years. To see whether she still had short hair, but she did. It was maybe in 1980, and then she didn’t notice me.”
“You were only interested in her if she had long hair?”
“Yes, their hair should go down to their shoulders.”
“Their hair? Who are they?”
“The women I’m afraid of, those types. They breed. They bring new ugly cuttings into the world. You have to deal with them at once.”
Simonsen felt a cold shudder pass through him and asked sharply, “What do you mean by that? What do you mean, breed?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
“Who is an ugly cutting?”
“That I can’t say. Maybe the ones I’m afraid of.”
“Are you thinking about anyone in particular?”
“Rikke, I was afraid of her.”
“No others?”
“Yes, others too, but mostly Rikke, since we’re talking about her.”
Simonsen observed him coldly. Falkenborg squirmed, but said nothing.
“How could you have been afraid?”
“I don’t know, I was young then, maybe I didn’t really know what I was doing.”
“Stuff and nonsense, you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“Sorry.”
“But I think I know why you are afraid of women who resemble Rikke Barbara Hvidt.”
Simonsen took out another photograph and set it in front of the suspect. Falkenborg looked and said, “Ugh.”
“You say ‘ugh’, so you recognise the picture?”
“Yes, it’s Belphégor.”
“Explain.”
“It’s a demon from TV.”
“The Ghost from the Louvre played by Juliette Gréco, broadcast in the summer of 1965?”
“Yes, that was it.”
“Have you ever owned such a Belphégor mask?”
“No, never.”
Again a shudder and the nose by the armpit. Finally Simonsen got the point.
“You shiver when you’re lying.”
“Yes, I’ve always done that. Or if I get nervous. I can’t help it.”
“You lied just now.”
“Yes, I'm sorry about that.”
“So you have owned such a demon mask?”
“Yes, when I was a kid. I made it myself, it took a long time.”
“Where is the mask now?”
“I’d rather not tell you, it’s a secret.”
“Well, then, let’s wait a little and see if we don’t find it some place or other when we search your apartment. I would bet we do.”
Simonsen reached across the table and moved the photograph of Rikke Barbara Hvidt over to the left of the man and the demon correspondingly to the right. Then he placed a picture of Agnete Bahn in the middle before him. Andreas Falkenborg started shaking.
“Who is she?”
“Her name was Agnete. She was our maid when I was a child. She was an evil person.”
“One night you tried to scare her with your mask, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it was a Sunday. I would prefer not to talk about it, if I can avoid it.”
“You sneaked up outside her window with your demon mask on and shone a flashlight on your head so that she would be scared. What happened then?”
“Can I avoid saying anything about that?”
“No, you can’t.”
“I didn’t kill Agnete.”
“I know that, did she get too old?”
“She didn’t look like that any more when I grew up.”
“And she wasn’t scared that night in the summer of 1965 when you were peeking in her window. The whole thing turned out quite different from the way you expected, right?”
“She screamed when she saw me.”
“Tell me!”
“She was sitting on top of my dad, she shouldn’t have been doing that, and I wasn’t supposed to see that, definitely not. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Your father got your mother and hit her, because you behaved as you did.”
“My mother screamed, it was awful, I dream about it at night.”
“While you were still pressed against the window with your mask on and all.”
“I didn’t know what I should do. You mustn’t say anything else, my whole body is shaking and sweating. I can’t help it that I sweat.”
“What did Agnete Bahn do in the meantime?”
“It was terrible, I’ll never forget it, it’s stored inside me . . . deep, deep inside me. She pretended that she was kissing me, she thought the whole thing was very funny, her lipstick was on the windowpane for days. Should she have done that? I was just a kid.”
“No, she shouldn’t have done that.”
“I hoped that she was dead, but you’ve spoken with her?”
“Yes, I have spoken with her.”
“Can she go to jail for what she did?”
“No, she can’t.”
“What about me? Can I go to jail for what happened in Hundested? I mean, such a long time after?”
“No.”
“Not for what I did on the shore either.”