“I’m no psychologist.”
“What is that supposed to mean? Didn’t I approve your request to attend a course in criminality and the psyche? You should have learnt a thing or two in there, or was that money also wasted?”
Planck laughed excessively at his own joke and refused help in crossing the ditch that separated the woods from the path down to the village.
Simonsen did not smile.
CHAPTER 69
Stig ?ge Thorsen was at Erik M?rk’s business location in R?dovre, south of Copenhagen, and he was getting more and more irritated. As arranged, he arrived almost three hours before the online broadcast was set to begin, but after a tedious tour among countless unfamiliar people whose names he very quickly stopped keeping track of, he was parked in a conference room, where the bombardment of information gave way to a period of long, passive waiting. The room was decorated with a trendy minimalism. His irritation grew.
An additional amount of time passed before his friend finally turned up. He had a plate with six sandwiches and looked stressed.
“Sorry, Stig ?ge, I apologize for the wait, but something came up.”
Thorsen mumbled something incomprehensible and managed a thin, polite smile. M?rk sat down and helped himself to a sandwich. He did not look calm or collected.
“Maybe you just need to relax a little, Erik.”
M?rk loosened his tie and tried to follow this advice.
“You’re right, things are pretty hectic. I’ve never worked this hard. But have you been following the media these past couple of days?”
“If you mean her, that high-school girl—I thought she was utterly convincing; she almost made me cry.”
“She was helpful, no doubt about it, but I was actually thinking more about you. Everyone is looking forward to your interview. Five local TV channels are going to broadcast it live from their Web sites—if you can call that live—but with commentary from the studio, if you follow. That’s one of the things we’ve been working hard on the past couple of days.”
“What will happen after the interview?”
“After the interview?” Erik M?rk sounded surprised. “Well, there’s a demonstration outside the Christiansborg parliamentary building tomorrow and in selected places in the provinces. In the middle of your program we’ll put up a screen in the reader’s face along with our demands, our slogan as well as times and locations. That’s the whole point, of course. We’re making use of your media attention to kick start our mobilization of the public and securing maximal dissemination, which is what we want. So tomorrow we’ll follow up with a full-page ad in all the big daily papers. Incidentally, with the high-school girl to catch people’s eye. I’ll show you a copy of the proofs in a bit and it’s really come out well, if I do say so myself.”
“Hold on, hold on, slow down for a minute. Our demands—”
But M?rk was hard to stop. Too little sleep and too much adrenaline had left its imprint of mania.
“We have been conducting massive election campaigns directed against close to one hundred members of parliament, so the parties are boiling, and my last political report says that there is now open discussion of a pedophile deal. Pressure from voters, Thor Gran’s beastliness, the violence, and not least this high school girl who blew through from cottage to castle, has laid the groundwork. By the way, do you know what half a USA is?”
“No idea, but I know that you go over there—”
“Sentences half as severe as the USA, which back home means a quantum leap forward. And our support on the Net has been completely fantastic. It takes less than—”
Stig ?ge Thorsen slapped his hand onto the table. “Stop it, Erik. And listen up for a change.”
M?rk stopped. And listened.
“First up, what do you mean by ‘our demands’? As far as I’m concerned, we unanimously established our demands a couple of months ago. Don’t tell me you’ve changed them.”
“No, I’ve just systematized them a bit.”
“Go on.”
“They fall into three areas. Judicial, where we demand severer sentences and a stop to parental protections. Preventative, where we want more money set aside for county resources and training for all teachers and educators. And finally, if the damage is done, we want subsidized psychological assistance.”
Thorsen accepted this. It was in large strokes what they had agreed on.
“Slogan, what slogan?”
“Stop the violence, tighten the law. It is the only slogan until tomorrow and there won’t be a speech or any other activity. In fact, the idea is for people to stay there—in dignified silence—until the politicians produce a bill.”