“You don’t sound like someone who shares that view.”
“It was his department, his practice, not mine. Personally, I suspect that part of this conviction stems to tax considerations or rather tax-avoidance considerations. At any rate we always had a lot of cash lying around. Sometimes Jeremy bought me expensive jewelry without any regard for the fact that I hate fussy accessories like that, and when he died I found almost six hundred thousand tucked away. Some of this was in our safe, but other packets of bills were spread in all kinds of places all around the house. It isn’t very long since I found an envelope and I don’t hesitate to call it pathological even though he was my husband. But before you get any ideas, I want you to know that I went to the tax authorities myself and after a long investigation they decided that I could keep the money.”
The Countess and Simonsen nodded approvingly, although they didn’t have the slightest intention of reporting her for tax evasion. Then they asked her half a dozen other questions without getting anywhere. The name Stig ?ge Thorsen didn’t mean anything to her and a picture of the man also got no response. They did learn that all of Jeremy Floyd’s appointments were handled through the National Hospital, so any telephone records would be difficult to trace.
And that was that. They did not get further in this round. The interrogation had lasted for more than two hours and all three wished it would end. It fell to Konrad Simonsen to make that decision. After digging in vain into the woman’s relationship with her younger sister and having ignored the Countess’s pleading looks, he finally decided that enough was enough. He glanced at his watch, read the time aloud to the tape recorder, and formally concluded the session. The two detectives stood up. Emilie Mosberg Floyd remained seated.
“Have you stopped the tape?” The question was directed at Simonsen, who answered in the affirmative. “I have something that I’d like to tell you but that I don’t want to have recorded.”
They sat back down again.
“First I want to say—as strongly as I can—that I absolutely do not belong to the camp that claims it is a legitimate act to murder pedophiles. It isn’t right either legally, morally, or in any other way, and I feel betrayed by Per even though I still love him. It’s strange and it confuses me and I don’t understand it, but there it is. And this even though I believe he was behind the burglary that took place in our house last March, and who may have planted the idea of Aconcagua with Jeremy. A mountain he was definitely not ready for, as I see in retrospect.”
She struggled with her emotions and said straight out into the air, “Cerebral edema.” Then she explained, “Acute mountain sickness.”
Simonsen injected a soft, “The burglary.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll get there. So we were in Canada with Jeremy’s brother when someone broke in and rifled through his files. The basement window and the filing cabinet had been forced open but there was nothing missing and we didn’t report it, even though it weighed on Jeremy’s mind. He talked about moving the files into his office but didn’t get to it before he died. Per knew that we were going to Canada and as I said, I believe he was the one who was behind it.”
“What do you think he wanted with the information?”
“What do you think yourself? It would have been an excellent place to start if he wanted to find followers—if I can put it that way—and remember that Jeremy had already introduced him to some of them. He wouldn’t arrive as an unknowing stranger when he one day looked them up.”
This time she was the one who stood up first. On the other side of the glass, Troulsen followed her example. He had an urgent need to go to the bathroom. On his way there he pounded his fist angrily against the doorframe. This time, however, his outburst was not directed to the woman but to her late husband. For careless, stupid, idiotic oversight of the storage of confidential materials.
CHAPTER 55
Like all nurses at the nursing home, Helle Smidt J?rgensen was an expert in counting pills. She had lined up all ten kinds in front of her: seven were taken out of bottles with screw tops, the three others were popped out of foil packets.