The man flashed a sarcastic smile. “Did I have a choice?”
“This isn’t an interrogation. In fact, I want to ask you a favor.”
“When the police ask for a favor they usually have a solid threat in their back pocket.”
“Not this time. What I want to ask you pushes at the limits of the law, so if you don’t want to help me our friendship won’t suffer.”
“So we’re friends?”
It was a reasonable question. To call their loose connection “friendship” was to take liberties with the meaning of that word. He had on several occasions played chess with the man in a couple of open tournaments but had not seen him other than that after he had interrogated him and later witnessed against him in court some twelve years ago now. Simonsen said thoughtfully, “No, of course we are not. That came out wrong and you’ll have to excuse it. We are not friends.”
He drank some of his coffee. It was already cold. For a split second he considered divulging his frustration with the social stigma that clung to those who had served time. That only created more criminality and was unreasonable. If you asked him, the slate ought to be wiped clean when a person had served his sentence, but he kept this to himself and said, “Perhaps you could tell me how things are going for you?”
The man answered haltingly and with some reluctance, “Things are as they are. I go to my treatments, I take my medicine, I never interact with children, I don’t look at pictures, I don’t watch movies, and I don’t like magazines.”
“I know that. I’ve checked up on you as much as I’ve been able but that wasn’t what I meant. I meant, how things are going in a more general sense.”
The man looked at him in surprise. Then he answered, “Well, in general things aren’t going particularly well now that you’ve put it so directly. I mostly keep to myself, watch some television, sometimes go to the theater, read books to get the time to pass. The weekends are long, as are holidays. Weekdays are better. I do have my work.” He stared down at the table. “I miss my boys terribly. Every single day. They are both adults now but I never see them, and that’s understandable.”
Simonsen found it hard to answer. “It is understandable,” he said.
“Yes, yes, of course it is.” The man looked up. His pain was fully apparent. “Thank you for asking. Tell me, what is it that I can help you with?”
“Tell me first what you think about the current pedophilia debate.”
“Debate. Well, I guess that’s one way to put it.”
“I couldn’t find a better word.”
“The truth is that I am afraid but there isn’t much I can do except keep my head down and wait until it dies down.”
Simonsen nodded sympathetically and then explained his errand: “I don’t have a good alternative channel for quick information about telephone calls. You know, who is calling whom, where and for how long—but I have no warrants, and if I did, the risk in the current climate is that one or another unfortunate error will end up affecting the very data that I am after. So I don’t dare to put pressure on our official sources and my unofficial ones have dried up.”
He had the Countess’s word for that last part. Under normal circumstances, she was able to find telecommunications information in the wave of a hand.
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“It can end up being quite a lot. Will you help me? And are you able to help me?”
“I think I can, yes. I have a colleague who has security responsibility for our switches and he has free access to all of our databases including the old backup tapes. I have to speak with him first, but I’m fairly certain that he will agree. Even if my past would end up … coming out.”
“Are you nervous about that?”
“Tell me, weren’t you even listening?”
Simonsen thought that it was starting to be a pattern that people asked him that question. He didn’t answer. Instead he took an envelope out of his pocket and fished a card out of his wallet. He wrote on it.
“Here, take this. My private number is written on the back. The envelope contains a list of things that we would like to have cleared up, and the truth is that time is of the essence, but I understand that you can’t perform magic. Call me when you have spoken with your friend and also call if you run into any problems.”
The man took the materials. He stuck the card into his inner pocket and put the envelope in his briefcase.
“Will you find the one who slaughtered those people?”
“Oh yes, I will. I shall find them. Each and every one. If not today then tomorrow or next week or next year, but at some point I will find them and with a little luck it’ll go fast.”
“I’m hoping it’ll be sooner than later, so this hatred dies down a little.” He didn’t sound particularly confident, more like he was saying an incantation.
They walked together for a while and then shook hands before they parted.
CHAPTER 59