It was one o’clock in the morning before the technicians were done and Per Clausen’s body could be removed.
Simonsen had sent Arne Pedersen and Pauline Berg home when he arrived. There was no reason for them to stay, and he wanted them to go. In addition, Pedersen had been significantly shaken over their find, which surprisingly did not apply to Berg. He did not give any thought to the fact that he himself was also superfluous and would serve the investigation best by catching up on some sleep. Instead, he sat down behind the desk far enough away so that no technician felt compelled to order him out of the room. And then he waited patiently for the body to be ready to be removed. From time to time he nodded off and dozed for some brief moments. In front of him on the table was a receipt for a Canon SX100 camera, which was the only thing of interest that he had found in the dead man’s wallet. It had been bought that same day—or more precisely, yesterday—at a photo shop in downtown Copenhagen. It had cost 2,450 kroner. Where the camera was he did not know, nor did he know what it had been used to photograph. The only thing he felt relatively sure of was that Per Clausen had not retained the receipt by accident. He had intended it to be found.
At one point he must have dozed off again because he was startled when a female technician gingerly touched him on the shoulder and said, “So are we good to go? May I call the ambulance staff?”
A couple of seconds went by before he pulled himself together and said, “No, I want to take a look at him.”
“But the people are tired; everyone wants to go home.”
Simonsen stood up and cut her off: “You asked me a question and you got your answer. I want to have him to myself now, but it won’t be more than ten minutes.”
“Okay, fair enough. Will you come out when you’re ready?”
The question was foolish. He swallowed his sarcastic reply about whether she really thought he wanted to spend the night in there, and said only, “Yes, of course.”
She left and locked the door behind her. He rolled his chair over next to Per Clausen’s body. Then he sat down and studied the dead man for a long time, as if this would help him penetrate his secrets. The eyes and mouth were open, so the rotten teeth and dull pupils smiled grotesquely up at him—a final taunting grin from the other side.
When he had been sitting for a while he said, “You are a strange man, Per. You make everything that could be simple as difficult and complicated as possible. You could have taken your life yesterday morning at home in peace and quiet, but that was too easy for a man of your caliber. You wanted to show me what you went for first. Pizzas, arson, your absurd interrogation, your carefully planned disappearance, and now, here, your suicide in a room of pillows. And I’m not even sure I’m remembering everything.”
He stooped and closed the dead man’s eyes.
CHAPTER 24
FIVE PEDOPHILES MURDERED EXECUTION-STYLE IN DENMARK.
The title of the e-mail message cut straight to the chase and the contents were an unholy mess of facts and fiction. First, that the Danish state was apparently hiding the fact that the five murdered men in Copenhagen were pedophiles, in order to protect the country’s export of child pornography, which aligned rather nicely with the fact that Denmark allowed and supported pedophilic associations and Web sites and steadfastly refused to collaborate with the police in other member states of the European Union. Moreover, the legal consequences for the sexual abuse of children were ridiculously minimal and functioned largely as an official sanction of the phenomenon. Two concrete examples were then cited and analyzed. In conclusion, the recipient was urged to forward the message to others and also to write a letter of protest addressed to the Danish embassy in Washington, D.C.
Half a million letters were sent to various American post-office addresses on Tuesday night. The choice of destination had been Per Clausen’s, and his arguments had not invited any objections. It had been a spring day in May, and the group was enjoying the sun and a glass of white wine on Erik M?rk’s terrace as they planned the e-mail campaign.
Per Clausen said, “The United States is the locus of conspiracy theories par excellence and has a long history of being a breeding ground for bizarre theories. Aliens from Roswell; manipulated moon landings; not to speak of the country’s intelligence service, which—as everyone knows—is constantly popping off presidents, movie stars, and famous musicians, when they can spare the time away from their substantive LSD production. We can be certain that hundreds of warped minds or strange groups will forward the message, and naturally from their own perspective as the incontestable truth, which can only be doubted by complete idiots or dubious state-sanctioned leaders.”