The Girl in the Ice aka A Price for Everything

CHAPTER 13

Arne Pedersen and Pauline Berg took a walk in the summer forest after conducting two interviews, which combined lasted less than five minutes and produced nothing. Andreas Falkenborg’s summer house proved to be a modest country place, one side bordering the forest they were now walking in, and the other side a farm whose fields were in front of and behind the house. Since the summer of 1991 the place had been rented out to a childless couple, both of whom were teachers. They met the woman at home, but she had nothing to say about her landlord, whom she had never met, and assured them her husband had not either. They paid the rent, which incidentally was extremely reasonable and had not been raised since they signed the lease, to a law firm in Præstø. She had nothing else to contribute, and the two officers had to leave empty-handed.

They achieved roughly the same negative result with the neighbour they encountered in the midst of repairing his tractor. He had no knowledge of Falkenborg either but was sure his parents did, without elaborating as to why. Unfortunately his father had just lain down for a nap while his mother was in town. A resolute attempt on the part of Pauline Berg to get him to waken his father had no effect, but on the other hand he said they were welcome to come back in an hour. And so it was.

Pedersen kicked at a stone on the forest path. It sailed between the beech trees in a lovely arc. He followed his success with another stone, but this time missed badly. Pauline Berg, who was posing a few steps ahead of him while she imagined his gaze running up and down her body, was abruptly torn out of her fantasy. She said, “Would you mind stopping that? It irritates me.”

In response he stepped over to her side and they strolled slowly back towards the farm with-as if by mutual agreement-enough distance between them not to risk physical contact. Even so she asked, “What about us?”

And sensed at once how he stiffened. She chose to forestall him.

“Okay, I know what you’re going to say, if you even dare. Your kids count more than me.”

“Yes.”

“I’m really very clear about that, and the strange thing is that I don’t even know if I want you, but it offends me to be rejected. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

“But that’s how it is? Like last time.”

“That’s how it is.”

She felt exposed and quickly hid behind a more teasing facade.

“Now I’ve got a house where there’s plenty of room for both of us.”

“Yes, and a lovely house, I must say. Although there is one thing I’ve thought about, Pauline. Maybe you should consider getting a dog.”

“As a substitute for you? That’s worth a thought.”

“Go ahead and joke, but you live in a very isolated spot and so close to the forest. Any Peeping Tom can sneak up and look in at you without being seen.”

“Does it bother you to think that others can look at me too?”

“It’s not about me, it’s about you.”

“I have a cat, that must be good enough.”

“Take this a little seriously. It’s meant seriously.”

She considered it briefly and then rejected the thought.

“No, Gorm will never allow it.”

“Who is Gorm?”

“That’s my cat.”

They laughed, and for the rest of the way they held hands, until they were out of the forest.

When Pedersen and Berg came back to the farmyard, the retired couple were sitting on the terrace waiting for them. The man was a round, short fellow with a bald head that seemed to sit right on his body, as if his neck had been cut away. The woman looked stern. They were sitting at a garden table, set with a pitcher of water and two cut-crystal wine glasses. The woman was working on a large dish of strawberries, which she expertly trimmed and let fall into a bowl below her chair. She barely greeted them when they arrived. The man on the other hand was more lively, and extended a short, fat arm towards two vacant chairs.

“Sit down. Mother has put out iced water, if you want a little against the heat.”

They poured and drank, while they let the man talk.

“My son tells me that you’ve come from Copenhagen to question Director Falkenborg, who once lived in the neighbouring house, and we know all about him. He was a very unsympathetic type, isn’t that right?”

The question was aimed at the woman beside him, whose mouth tightened though she did not respond.

“One of those types who will do anything to bother other people, not at all the sort we like down here,” the man continued.

Pedersen sensed that the conversation could easily veer off track, so he tried to guide it in the right direction.

“When did Andreas Falkenborg live in the neighbouring house?”

“Well, that I can’t remember, but in truth I recall that he poisoned our existence for an entire autumn break and most of the winter too.”

The woman surprised the officers then by pressing her husband to answer the question as fully as possible.

“Listen to what the officer is asking you. He wants to know when Falkenborg lived there.”

The man nodded his head tolerantly.

“When was it? Well, it must have been in the mid-1980s or thereabouts… 1987, I think. Yes, 1987 it was-now I remember.”

The woman cut him off.

“Nonsense, it was late summer of 1990, and in July less than a year later the teachers moved in.”

He tried sheepishly to save face.

“Yes, that’s even more correct.”

“Did he live there year-round?” Pedersen put in.

“Yes, he was always here.”

The woman intervened again.

“In the beginning he was in Copenhagen twice a week, from Monday to Tuesday and Thursday to Friday; later he almost never came here.”

“How did he acquire the house?”

“Well, he bought it.”

The woman confirmed the response with a little grunt, throwing a bad strawberry into the flowers for emphasis.

“ I mean, was it up for sale or did he approach the owners and make them an offer?”

Pedersen directed the question at the woman, but it didn’t work. She ignored his gaze and waited for her husband to answer, obviously satisfied to correct him when he made a mistake.

“It was up for sale, I remember that. I went to school with the man who lived there before, but he moved to Lolland to live closer to his son. Well, he’s dead now.”

Again the woman agreed. This time with an indifferent nasal sound that clearly indicated what was to be expected if you moved outside the parish.

“I see that you did not get along with Andreas Falkenborg. Why was that? Was there a specific episode that began the difficulties between you?”

“He was bad-tempered from the first day he moved in. By the day after he’d come over and complained to us.”

The man stopped talking and waited for a comment from his wife. Pauline Berg urged him on.

“About what?”

“At that time we drove slurry out over the fields, and he objected to that. But we had a right to do it, if it wasn’t at weekends or holidays. And if he had problems with the odour, he could always have stayed in the city. We weren’t the ones who forced him to buy his summer house.”

“And you told him that?”

“You better believe it! Even though he shouted and fussed like nobody’s business. Swore that we would pay, and poured a whole shit bucket of abuse over us.”

“So since that day you were enemies?”

“Yes, and after that there was the business with the pig. A few weeks later he got hold of a sow. It wasn’t even a dead one, because later on we found out that he’d bought it from a farmer in Allerslev and had it slaughtered for the occasion. And just imagine, he nailed it up on the old poplar that stands almost on the boundary with our land. That is, he didn’t do the work himself. He hired four men, and they went to work with pulleys and everything until they got the animal hung up. I don’t know if you’re aware how big a pig’s carcass is?”

“What kind of tree did you say?”

“That one, right over there.”

The man pointed to an old, slightly crooked poplar that badly needed pollarding and had seen its best years besides.

“If you go over there you’ll see the iron plates are still attached.”

“I can see them fine from here, but why do you think he did that?”

“Don’t you understand? It was revenge. That giant sow was hanging rotting on the tree until there was almost nothing but the skeleton left. It stank worse than you can possibly imagine. We couldn’t even be out here on our terrace, and when it was at its worst it was almost unbearable if you so much as opened a window. We had to dry laundry in the attic. Otherwise the rottenness clung.”

“But wouldn’t the smell also have affected him?”

“Yes, just as badly as us, but he seemed indifferent to it. Just strutted around, grinning arrogantly, and went up and patted the carcass occasionally.”

“Didn’t you report him to the authorities? That sort of thing isn’t allowed. Not even out here in… in this place close to nature.”

The woman’s mouth pursed like a hen’s behind, but the man did not notice Pauline Berg’s slip and answered proudly, “No, we don’t do that here. But after a couple of weeks I’d had enough and went in and gave him a good thrashing.”

“Nonsense! He played you like a fiddle.”

Both Pedersen and Berg turned expectantly towards the woman, and this time she spoke for herself.

“Falkenborg let himself get beaten up, that’s the truth of it, and somehow managed to record the whole thing on videotape. He called emergency services and was driven away in an ambulance, while he moaned and groaned and made it sound much worse than it was. Then two days later he came in and showed us the video on some kind of little portable machine and said he was going to set both the police and a lawyer on us if we didn’t let the pig hang and suffer the punishment we deserved. That’s what he said, think about it, the punishment we deserved.”

The two officers dug deeper into the neighbours’ feud for fifteen minutes, but there was not much more to be learned. In conclusion Pedersen set a photograph of Annie Lindberg Hansson on the table between them.

“Do you recognise her?”

The man did not recognise the girl and said so. The woman on the other hand cast an acid glance at the picture and said, “That’s Annie, the drunk’s girl, from out at Jungshoved Church.”

“She disappeared in 1990.”

“Disappeared? Don’t give me that nonsense. She ran off to Copenhagen. There’s no doubt about it.”