“Most people don’t care for murder. That shouldn’t surprise you. What’s your point?”
“That the outrage is not directed at the murders but almost exclusively at Thor Gran for his … selection of the third child. Even your daughter had that reaction.”
Simonsen nodded doubtfully and felt helpless. As the leader of the investigation he could hardly be responsible for the reaction of the public, and what could he put up against a collective distortion of perspective other than hope that it would correct itself? Or else just get to work. He said simply, “Well, that’s horrible to hear.”
Kasper Planck dropped the subject and said optimistically, “Well, now we finally have something concrete to work with, so let’s get go down to the HS. My honest opinion is that you’ve run a superb investigation so far, even if the coming days are the ones where you will have to show what you really go for.”
“I’m not planning to show anything of the kind, and now that I’ve been kept in the dark all morning, another half an hour will hardly make a difference. You can spend this next bit of time by telling me what you get out of drinking beer at the immigrant kiosk on Bagsv?rd’s main street. One can hardly claim that you have been particularly communicative, and the few times I’ve had time to call you’ve sounded halfway drunk. But you probably didn’t want to spend so many hours out there unless there was something to be had, I assume. I’ve wanted to ask you this for a long time and now is probably as good a time as any.”
Planck nodded respectfully.
“You are getting better and better, but I haven’t brought my notes with me and my memory is not what it once was.”
“And you get worse and worse. You can save that nonsense for the kids. Just start talking. I’m not expecting you to solve this crime on your own.”
The old man screwed his eyes shut and smiled slyly. Then he began making strange sounds. Some time went by before Simonsen realized that he was humming. It was not an enjoyable experience.
“Stop it, that’s horrible. What’s wrong?”
“‘Lady in Red,’ by Chris de Burgh. I thought you knew something about music?”
“I also have ears and they obey their maker. Can’t you express yourself like a normal human being? Tell me about the woman in red if she is relevant but at least use words, please.”
Planck started to talk in a monotone.
“The kiosk is on the Bagsv?rd main street, and the owner is called Farshad Bakht?sh?. I just call him Farshad. He is at least sixty years old and born in Shiraz, in Iran. He has a doctorate in astrophysics and taught at Teheran University until he fled Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in 1984. Denmark apparently had no use for his education, which he realized after a couple of years. In 1988 he married woman who was also a refugee from Iran. Farshad is a friendly and intelligent man who for the past twenty years has mainly used his intellectual gifts to find ways of cutting corners with the tax authorities so that the citizens of Gladsaxe can keep buying their discounted soda water and so his family gets by. He has three sons and a daughter, and he is also the closest thing to a friend of Per Clausen that we have been able to find.”
He paused for a moment to reflect. Simonsen waited without saying anything.
“They became friends, the janitor and the kiosk owner. Among other things they share an interest in mathematics. Per Clausen visits the shop once or twice a week, where he ends up sitting in the back room talking with his friend. Especially in the evenings, when there are almost no customers around but the shop stays open until midnight. Clausen is usually drunk, but mostly sober as of the past year, and Farshad doesn’t drink. Their friendship stretches back some seven years. Many of their conversations are of no interest to us, but not all. For example, the two men discuss revenge a couple of times, revenge for the daughter’s suicide and the man who abused her. This is mainly Per Clausen’s preoccupation, but Farshad has also been hit hard. Two sisters and a brother have fallen into the claws of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard—terrible fates—I’ll skip over the depressing details. The two friends weep together, light candles on the birthdays of their dearly departed, the anniversaries of their death, sometimes locking up the shop.”