“Yes, you could say that. We did.”
For the first time during her questioning, the woman was reticent, and the Countess sent silent thoughts of gratitude to her boss. When he was good, he was very good. The psychiatrist’s weak link had obviously been his wife. This was beginning to make sense. She slipped in the next question: “When you drove him home, did you stay with him?”
“In the beginning we talked in the car. Later on we went into his place and talked, sometimes all night. Or I slept while he lay next to me. My marriage was very rocky at that time. My husband was always at work and he expected me to do everything at home. To top it off, he had other women on the side and he often took his vacation by himself. Per helped me. He told me which battles I should take on and when and which I should put aside until later. He consulted Jeremy, I consulted him, and in the end we all won. That is, before these … crimes occurred. Per died and the newspaper wrote all kinds of things about him. That was hard. I was frustrated and angry and sad at the same time, and I miss him so terribly, much more than I miss Jeremy, but I couldn’t get away to go to his funeral so I had to settle for putting a bouquet on his grave the next day.”
The Countess observed quietly, “Perhaps it was also because you had guessed at the connection and didn’t wish to get involved.”
Emilie Mosberg Floyd glanced at the tape recorder and managed a nod. They let it stay at that.
Simonsen said, “It’s hard to imagine that the two of you never talked about how things were going with his therapy. The two of you, as well as your husband and you.”
“We did but only a little. Per preferred to keep those two things separate. Jeremy did too. He hated the fact that I was talking with Per but he had no choice but to accept it. When I told him about it he was furious and threatened to stop Per’s treatment but then for the first time I stood up for myself. I told him in that case I would take the children and leave. He backed down at that and it was my first victory. Later there were others.”
“But from time to time his name must have come up.”
“Yes, it did. When the one-on-one sessions between Jeremy and his patients were over he liked to place them in self-help groups. How long it took for a patient to be paired with that kind of group could vary a lot from case to case. It could be anything from six months to a year. Jeremy was very very careful about constructing groups that he thought would be successful, including taking geographic locations into account if he could. His patients often came from far away, some even from Jutland. A group usually consisted of four to six individuals and in the beginning they met with Jeremy under his direction. After a while they were supposed to continue on their own without him; they were—so to speak—kicked out of the nest, a process that took a couple of months but could also vary from group to group.”
“And Per Clausen joined this kind of group?”
“That was the problem. I talked with Jeremy a couple of times about it. He had some reservations about ending Per’s treatment in that way. For his part, Per very much wanted to join a group. He told me so at several different times and I put a lot of pressure on Jeremy to give him what he wanted.”
She stared sadly out into the room, then parted with her last bit of information.
“Yes, I forced him to do it, I’m afraid, and Jeremy probably also wanted to be done with Per. Push him out of our lives, so to speak. It was hard for him to separate the personal and professional in Per’s case.”
“Why did he have reservations? Was it because Per Clausen had not been abused himself?”
“No, it was something else. In part he was afraid that Per would dominate the group and there was some ground for his apprehension. As I mentioned, Per had an incredible manipulative strength, but that wasn’t the problem. It was more that Per … Per just hated pedophiles. With a red-hot, glowing hatred. We talked about Helene’s stepfather once, that he was seriously ill. Per told me that and was overjoyed. I don’t know where he had heard it. Another time there had been one of those terrible cases where a child had been killed. Per’s reaction was pathological. Not that he seemed beside himself, it was more the opposite. He was very … controlled, and at the same time he managed to frighten me without really saying very much. It’s difficult to explain. He was … I don’t know how to explain so that you will understand. He was … creepy. It was a side of him I didn’t like but perhaps it was his real self if we have something like that. Jeremy said once that there was not enough coal in the world to paint a true picture of Per’s soul, but it was during an argument so he was exaggerating.”