Earlier in the day there had been a miracle when the school psychologist, Ditte Lubert—under great pressure—let her defenses fall and finally cooperated with the authorities. The Countess related, “At Gladsaxe town hall they have performed their own little bit of sleuthing by going over the past ten years of accounts at the Langeb?k School with a magnifying glass. A clerk reacted to three telephone calls to Pretoria in South Africa and he contacted the telecommunications company to find out if there had been any similar calls last fall vacation, which indeed turned out to be the case. Thereafter he informed me.”
Troulsen predicted the course of events, outraged at the psychologist: “So her recalcitrance was based on a simple case of telephone abuse?”
“Yes. I called the number and got an answering machine that said Ingrid Lubert was not available at the moment. Then I contacted her brother-in-law to share this turn of events with him. You know, the lawyer, he was extremely cooperative. In part he confirmed that his other sister-in-law was stationed in South Africa for Danida, and in part he promised to have yet another talk with Ditte Lubert, but then there was apparently some atmospheric disturbance on the line.”
She formed her hand like a cell phone and cleverly mimed a bad connection. Then she smiled briefly.
“When I went through everything one more time, he wanted to be sure that he had understood me correctly, that what I had said was that this kind of unauthorized use of county telecommunications could mean that his sister-in-law could be demoted from senior to junior school counselor unless she rectified the situation by cooperating fully with the police, which I could find no fault with. Ditte Lubert turned up twenty minutes later. Without the lawyer.”
Troulsen commented again: “Very entertaining.”
“Like a dentist appointment. She was sulky enough but she came crawling back on her knees and admitted that she called her sister last Wednesday. To save money, she walked over to the school and used the speech therapist’s office phone to cover her tracks. The call ran from one twenty-one to one fifty-four, which we know from the account invoice, and on her way home she saw a white van that was turning out from the school’s back entrance. It was around two o’clock but unfortunately that is all that she saw. No matter how hard I pressed her after that, she was unable to elaborate on her answers. This time there was no resistance, she simply had nothing more to contribute.”
Pedersen asked, “But is she sure that it was a minivan?”
“Completely sure. Unfortunately, that hardly narrows down the field. The smallest are eight-passenger but they range all the way up to twenty for the largest. I’m sending a vehicle expert to her home tomorrow, but I doubt it will give us anything.”
Simonsen took over.
“At least now we know how the victims were transported to the school. Who they are, why they were killed, and why no one misses them are still unknown. Of course, there have been numerous inquiries, but as yet none that we can use. The best guess is that they are all thought to be on vacation and won’t be missed until later. Countess, can you organize a new door-to-door round regarding the white minivan? Ideally this evening. Sorry.”
The Countess agreed, and Berg also volunteered. She felt she owed something.
The meeting was over and Simonsen stood up and paused in the middle of the floor. His co-workers followed him with their eyes as he swayed from side to side for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. Then he took a deep breath and took on Kasper Planck’s role of posing questions of his co-workers, although he hated being in that position.
“What is the difference between an execution and a murder?”
No one made a motion to answer, as the question appeared rhetorical.
“An execution is legal, a murder illegal. The state retains the right to kill its citizens. Citizens do not have that right in relation to each other. The act itself is fairly similar and for the person who is affected the difference is negligible. For the victim, the outcome is the same if an executioner cuts his throat or if he is strangled by his neighbor, but from a judicial and sociological viewpoint there is a world of difference. The executioner maintains the social order. The murdering neighbor breaks it down. Order is the key word in this context.”
His words grew many and the point was oversold. Perhaps because he was a man who cared about right angles and logical relationships. When he finally finished, none of his listeners could have had any doubts about the social-order-building aspect of executions.
The Countess summed it up in a friendly way: “The execution ceremony sets this act apart from a mass murder. But…”
She hesitated, and Simonsen took over again.
“No buts. It is the difference that’s interesting. But let me take the opportunity to remind you not to use the word execution in this context. And then on to our big question: why the mutilation? It doesn’t fit the pattern. It goes against everything I’ve mentioned, so either I’m mistaken with regard to the words and the legitimacy or else this step has been so desperately necessary that the perpetrators have had to accept it as a kind of sloppy side effect.”
“Identification?” the Countess chimed in.
“Yes, that is the most obvious explanation, but the ones who are behind this must know that we will secure the identities of the victims sooner or later, however much they have mutilated the bodies.”