Neither of her listeners was convinced of this detail but both refrained from comment. On the other side of glass, Troulsen shook his head in vexation. Her story was substantially different from the one she had told only a short while ago.
Simonsen asked, “So the result was that Per Clausen joined a group?”
“Yes, he did, and Jeremy gathered together a group of people that he felt could offer Per a certain resistance, who had strong personalities themselves. The whole thing was quite an undertaking for him.”
“But you never got the names? Either from your husband or Per Clausen?”
“No, no, I never did.”
She hesitated.
There was something else and the Countess gave her the classic opening: “But…”
“But … there were some … some episodes. Per commented one time that one could say a lot about pedophiles but their victims spanned the social spectrum. Something like that, and then he added, a nurse, a farmer, an advertising executive, a janitor, and a climber. That was right after his group was formed.”
“A climber. What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know. I wondered that myself when I had time to think it over. In that situation I figured he meant Jeremy, who was a mountain climber in his spare time, but he probably meant someone else. Per would hardly refer to Jeremy as a climber but paradoxically enough I think that that’s the reason I can recall the phrase at all, indeed, that I can remember the order. Of course, I have no idea if he mentioned all of them.”
“You never saw them?”
“Never, none of them, apart from Per, of course. He always came a little early and sat with me in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee. That is to say, those times when I didn’t pick him up. After that he would go down to Jeremy. The others used the basement entrance.”
The Countess let her arms fall helplessly to her side. The woman misunderstood this gesture and preassumed it indicated a lack of respect for the patient’s right to anonymity. She suddenly sounded sharp and professional.
“A violation of anonymity at the wrong time can often mean the difference between success and failure in this kind of therapy. I don’t think you really understand what sexual abuse in childhood does to people and how deeply it scars their souls. Did you know that some victims have to go to special dentists for the rest of their lives because they have such an intractable resistance to opening their mouths for others?”
This was a side of her they had not yet seen. It was the cardiologist commanding the nurse. The Countess didn’t bother to explain herself, she simply apologized. That was the easiest. Simonsen brought the conversation back to the matter at hand.
“Is there anything else you can tell us about Per Clausen’s group? Anything at all, regardless of what you think it means. You must understand that we are very interested in these five people.”
“Yes, I do. There is one other thing. One of the members of the group was called Helle.”
“The nurse?”
It was the Countess who made her second misstep in less than a minute.
“I guess that would be a rational choice, if you don’t believe a woman can be a farmer or a climber, for that matter.”
Simonsen hid a smile. The Countess did not try to cover her mistake.
“I’m sorry. Why don’t you just go on and tell us.”
“She had left a sweater in the basement and I was about to drive Per home. We were sitting in the kitchen when she rang the main doorbell. My oldest son opened the door and he couldn’t have been more than three years old. I remember that he came to me proudly and said, That one’s name is Helle and it forgot its sweater. Per and I smiled a bit at his words even though the meaning was clear. Jeremy may have heard it because he took over and so I never saw her.”
She made one of her long pauses. They waited, but this time in vain as it turned out.
“Unfortunately there isn’t anything else. At least nothing else that I can think of.”
Simonsen shifted the conversation to more practical matters: “Your husband’s archives?”
“I destroyed them after Jeremy died. I burned the files in our fireplace without looking at a single one. There were a couple hundred and it took several evenings. Before I did it I talked with some of his colleagues and they agreed it was the right thing to do.”
“What about the accounts? How did your husband get paid by his patients?”
“Always cash, and always at the time of each appointment. He made a big production about the act of handing over physical bills. He felt it motivated his clients to make more of their sessions.”