He knew she was teasing him. Sometimes she used her special abilities to stir up his rational world, just because. He had been through it before.
“Thoughts don’t make you fat. That’s just how it is.”
Simonsen was a rational man. He did not believe in the Klabautermann, in the power of crystals or of earth power lines, and his window box had to make it through the winter without iron as a precaution against supernatural creatures, so when he nevertheless incorporated the little woman’s talents into his regulated universe it was because she regularly produced precise, correct, and relevant facts that lay miles beyond what simple guesswork could have produced. However, from time to time she was wrong and at other times she had nothing to say. How she came by her information he had long since given up trying to understand.
They usually met in her home in H?je-Taastrup, where she and her husband managed a lucrative but discreet consulting business. Her husband called himself Stephan Stemme and produced strange stories for online advertising. Once in a while Simonsen received an e-mail with an audio clip from him. He usually deleted these. When he consulted with the woman he always brought an object related in some way to the case in which he was seeking assistance. That was crucial. Like a police dog, she had to have some material to work from, but in this forensic investigation he had no physical objects to present to her. The agreement was that she would simply walk around the scene and see if the spirits were willing.
It turned out that the spirits not only were willing, they were lining up to have a chance to speak.
The second after she stepped into the gymnasium she tentatively stretched out her hand and glanced alternately at the ceiling and the floor, as if it were raining. Whatever it was she saw, it contorted her face.
“A man has been castrated by his own son. There are drops of blood on the floor.”
Suddenly she jumped back and was about to fall on top of Simonsen.
“Thank you. Who are they?”
Then it took hold of her. She stared in desperation down the length of the room, her hands pressed to her head, without words, apart from the occasional exclamation, but her gestures and facial expressions reflected an intense and unpleasant scene. The visions went on for quite a while. From time to time she covered her eyes, at other times her ears, and once she put her palms together and pressed her fingertips against her chin as if she was listening or praying. On one occasion she turned away in disgust.
Then all at once it stopped and she was left staring vacantly into space.
Simonsen was tense but remained silent even when one minute followed another and she stood there without sharing what she had seen. The first move had to be hers. Her response turned out to be as disappointing as it was surprising. That it was also a lie, was something he had no power over. The shadow world could not be consulted.
“Unfortunately I’m not getting anything else, and I would like to go home.”
CHAPTER 12
The face was fleshy and pale with tiny beady eyes, and the thin girlish mouth looked painted on. The gaze was directed downward and the features crumpled into wrinkles as many people have the habit of doing when difficult decisions need to be made. A sour fish-face.
The head filled two-thirds of the frame, and the headrest, decorated with the Danish flag, made up the rest.
For a brief second nothing happened, then the face broke into a grin while an eager tongue tip flicked out a couple of times and moistened the red lips.
Something was said, whereafter the video sequence froze and caught the man in an unflattering grimace.
Anni Staal—reporter at the Dagbladet, whom Simonsen preferred to see banned from the country—was disgusted. The flag and the man made her feel unclean even though she did not know who he was or hear what he was talking about. She halfheartedly looked around for her headset and realized that as usual someone had taken it. At which point she gave up. The message accompanying the video had been anonymous. The sender was only noted as “Chelsea,” which she didn’t know what to make of. Anonymous messages were nothing new. She received several every day, so she shouldn’t really be wasting more time on a single one.
The telephone rang. She grabbed the receiver and smiled when she recognized the well-known voice. After a short while she said, “I certainly remember Kasper Planck and that will be a sensation, so you’ll get two thousand if we have a feature on him tomorrow.”
She gave a time and a place and added, “All right, we’ll say twenty-five hundred, but tell me something while I have you on the line. Arne Pedersen—you know, Konrad Simonsen’s right hand—there’s a rumor that he has gambling debts. Do you know anything about that?”