He glanced at the man. The Climber did not answer, but he turned his head slightly and shot him a look of irritation. Simonsen continued in a cheerful and casual voice.
“Yes, it was a terrible story. Very sad and unfortunately very bloody. Ursula was a Breton princess back in the fourth century. Extraordinarily beautiful, as they are, the princesses of legend. She was also extremely pious. The English king, however, was not. He was a heathen. Still, he proposed to Ursula, who accepted but on the condition that she first had to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome in order to satisfy her deep desire for a spiritual union with Christ.”
He stopped abruptly. There was an accident ahead of him and traffic was starting to build up. He drove by slowly without staring at the ambulance or the damaged car at the side of the road. The Climber did not look either. When they had resumed their cruising speed he continued his story—sure that it embarrassed and confused his passenger.
“Now, where was I? Oh yes—Ursula took off for Rome but not alone. She took eleven thousand maidens with her, and you have to admit that is an overwhelming, colossal, and extremely large number of maidens. Don’t you think?”
The Climber did not appear to think anything. He had turned his face away.
“Okay, we’ll wait to hear your opinion, but anyway, I think it was a lot. In any case, the whole horde came to Rome, and the Pope—his name was Cyriacus, by the way—was besotted, to say the least, which is actually a bit strange because one would think he would become extremely irritated. I mean, it’s an imposition of the worst order. Imagine eleven thousand uninvited guests. The cost of food would have been enormous so he was clearly a very hospitable man, that pope. Anyway, they left eventually. Ursula had to go home and get married. But the journey home did not go as well as the way there. Not by a long shot. They bumped into Attila the Hun and presumably a number of Huns, and they were killed—all of them. No one quite knows why. Maybe Attila was having a bad day or perhaps they had taunted him, who knows? The point is, little Andreas, that in this context your deed doesn’t really hold muster. You only killed six, and five of those on the same day that the maidens died only some seventeen hundred years earlier.”
He could see the Storeb?lts bridge ahead of him and decided to wait with the conclusion. His audience said nothing anyway so he would most likely get no complaints. When they were nearing Slagelse, he went on.
“My story from the past … oh, that’s right. I didn’t quite finish. Almost, but not quite. That is, all those maidens. Do you know where they were killed?”
As usual he received no answer, but Simonsen noticed that the man tightened his right fist, looked down and away.
“You know, I do believe you know where it is. They all suffered the martyr’s death in the middle of Cologne, and even if the facts remain a bit hazy they built an entire basilica in memory of the bloodbath. The Basilica of Saint Ursula, Ursulaplatz 24—to be precise. You must know it, I mean, you’ve lived only two streets away on Weidengasse 8. Actually, formally you still live there. A rented room on the third floor right under the roof, so of course you know the church. I think you may also have noticed that I’ve shifted the dates around a little to get my story to fit. I’m like that. Can’t always be trusted. The day of the virgins is on the twenty-first and not the eighteenth of October, but you knew that well because Ursula’s Day is well known in Cologne.”
The Climber’s ears had grown redder. He did not care about the conclusion. He maintained his silence but there was no great poker player in the man.
When they reached Sor?, Simonsen left the interstate and continued along the highway toward Holb?k. He could see that the Climber was confused. The most sensible thing would have been to continue in over Ringsted and K?ge, and hit Copenhagen from the south. But it was not completely misguided. At some point they would hit the Holb?k motorway, from which they could reach the capital over Roskilde and Glostrup. It was already one o’clock and he turned the radio on again. The timing was impeccable. The triumphant voice of the reporter filled the car:
“It has become worse to be a child abuser in Denmark. The Pedophile Packet has been negotiated here in a broad coalition between the government and the opposition. Initial treatment of the proposals will take place as soon as later this afternoon. Sentences for the sexual abuse of children will more than double and the parental protective clause will be removed. Rape in general becomes a more severe crime. In addition, close to eighty million kroner will be set aside in the budget each year for a series of actions to counter child abuse, including victim assistance, expanded police services, Internet surveillance, and psychological research. In the plaza in front of the parliamentary building here at Christiansborg, a huge celebration is under way. We now go to the ministry of justice, where the minister is preparing to make a comment.”