Poul Troulsen walked into the reading clinic at the Langeb?k School in high spirits, and the Countess used his entrance as a welcome opportunity for a break. She was in the middle of her second review of the failed interrogation session with Miss Lubert earlier that morning. This time, the woman had brought along her own lawyer—a well-meaning, competent, and most likely highly stressed fellow, since he was her brother-in-law. The Countess knew him well and she hoped for his sake that the sisters were very different. He deserved as much. Not that anyone deserved Ditte Lubert. Despite Pauline Berg’s insistent questions and the lawyer’s indirect assistance, the session turned into one long march in place, where every single word was turned, measured, defined, and redefined eight times by the psychologist until no one remembered the original question and no reasonable answer was possible. After almost one hour of this, Berg threw in the towel.
“What are you doing?”
“A lot of things at the same time. I have six teams going around the school rooms, plus two with neighbors. Mostly the teams take care of themselves, of course, apart from the fact that they call in every once in a while to say that they have nothing to report. At the same time, I’ve been gathering information on Per Clausen. Our operations leader calls me every half hour, so that is also something I have to contend with.”
“Where is he now?”
“Right now he’s shopping at a local grocery store.”
“What’s that? Our friend Lubert?” He pointed to the tape recorder in front of the Countess.
“Yes, good guess. Pauline didn’t get anywhere. She’s also a bit of a mouthful.”
Troulsen grinned. “Play some for me.”
The Countess rewound the tape.
“You’re pretty debonair now that she’s no longer your problem.” She started the tape and turned up the volume. School psychologist Ditte Lubert’s scathing voice filled the room.
“I’m sure I had some work to do.”
“You have told us that you were on vacation last week. Isn’t that correct?”
“One of you already asked me that once. You really should coordinate your information.”
“But is that correct?”
“If I was on vacation or if I said that I was on vacation?”
“If you were on vacation.”
“If I said I was on vacation, then I was.”
“So you were, then.”
“Is this really relevant in any way?”
“I don’t know, Ditte.”
The Countess pushed the Pause button and briefly explained: “She came in dragging a lawyer. He’s an otherwise reasonable man who has the misfortune of being married to her sister.”
“What did you do on your vacation?”
“Should I answer that? Do the police need to know what I did on my vacation?”
“No, you don’t have to answer anything. We’ve been through this, Ditte.”
“Does she actually have the right to ask me how I spend my time?”
“Yes, she has that right. But, as we’ve established, you don’t have to answer.”
The Countess rewound further and played another short bit.
“… It may improve the communications if you tell her.” The legal council’s voice was tired.
“I agree with that.” Pauline Berg’s voice was even more tired.
“Then first she has to define exactly what she means by ‘unusual.’” Ditte Lubert sounded well rested.
The Countess sighed and turned it off. She said, “And it goes on and on and on. I have seen many extraordinary witnesses but she takes the cake. She’s worse than the janitor.”
“What do you think about her?”
“What I think? I think that Ditte Lubert is looking for a bit of a ride. Single mother, a kitchen-sink existence, envious of her colleagues’ successes, querulous and puffed up, but I agree with you, if you push all that rubbish aside there is something she’s hiding. Right now I just don’t want to think about her. Tell me how things have been going for you. Have you found the happy pizza-delivery person?”
Troulsen sat down on the table next to her, ready to tell. The Countess sniffed a couple of times when he was closer.
“You smell terrible.”
“There’s a reason for that. I’ve been standing in pizza garbage up to my ankles for an eternity. But listen. When the joint opened this morning I was on the spot and had a long chat with the pizza mama herself. At first she didn’t understand a single thing and when she answered it was eighty percent Italian. I’m telling you, it was hard work, but then luckily her son came out and after that it turned out that the woman actually spoke reasonable Danish but was hiding behind a fake language barrier as a defense mechanism when she realized she was dealing with the public authorities. The son managed to talk her into a more reasonable state of mind and after some back and forth they agreed that the pizzas had been ordered last Monday, by a man, whose order was specified on a note.”