The Girl in the Ice aka A Price for Everything

CHAPTER 20

Under normal circumstances Arne Pedersen was one of the few men on the Danish police force who could mentally multi-task, which he regularly resorted to during boring meetings. But today’s at Police Headquarters did not follow the norm. It was beyond difficult for him even to single-task. He was dead tired; small flashes of light were constantly exploding in his peripheral vision, while it seemed to him that in an unpleasant and uncontrolled manner his brain was working faster than normal. Poul Troulsen was having his third cup of coffee and was equally bleary-eyed. Pauline Berg on the other hand looked like she had just stepped out of a sports catalogue. Konrad Simonsen also appeared vigorous, even though this was already his second meeting of the day. The Countess had chosen to get an update later in favour of keeping a dental appointment already postponed several times.

The psychologist, or profiler as he called himself, was new and obviously needed a solid bolster of self-promotion before he dared start in on his business. He sat at the end of the table flanked by sizeable bunkers of papers to either side and reviewed his scientific career, putting particular emphasis on what articles he had published where and together with whom. This was not boasting, but simply a desire to establish that he was prepared for the task. His introduction was therefore met with accommodating nods and more or less effective attempts to conceal growing impatience. At last it became a little too exhaustive for Simonsen, who cut him off.

“No one around this table is in any doubt about your expertise, and besides we haven’t come here to assess your qualifications but to listen to what you can tell us about Andreas Falkenborg.”

The man blushed a little and feverishly flipped through his papers, which made Simonsen elaborate on his words.

“I can see and hear that you’re nervous. There is no reason to be. In no way do we expect a flawless lecture and definitely not for you to have an answer to everything. Besides I'm well aware of your expertise. That’s why you’re here.”

It helped. The psychologist smiled shyly and said, “Yes, I admit I’m a bit excited to be invited here. But I think I’ve prepared myself well, and would like to start by briefly sketching Andreas Falkenborg’s psychological profile in relation to a so-called standard profile for serial killers. There are some interesting correspondences, but also some essential points where he does not match the profile, which are at least as relevant.”

“We would really like to hear about those.”

“I’ve written them all down but I can’t find… Is it all right if I… Oh, there it is, sorry.”

He looked around, the ice broken, and Pauline Berg thought he had happy eyes.

“First and foremost I want to state that Falkenborg cannot be characterised as a serial killer, based on the definition I am working from, as he does not fulfil the most essential criterion, which is having at least three documented murders on his conscience. I emphasise documented. I am not stating any opinion on the probability that the third woman, Annie Lindberg Hansson, was murdered by Andreas Falkenborg. That is outside my area of expertise. But the fact that our man does not qualify as a serial killer under this criterion should not keep us from comparing him with the general profile we normally see among this type of offender.”

He looked up and encountered nods of agreement. No one in his audience felt compelled to apply the designation “serial murderer” to their suspect.

“The first similarity with serial murder that jumps out is the very high level of orderliness displayed in connection with the two homicides. An order that has a ritual character. Serial murderers often kill their victims in the same way each time they strike. One example among many is John Wayne Gacy, who killed thirty-three boys in Chicago in the 1970s by garrotting them with a rope and a stick while he read aloud from the Bible. Both of Andreas Falkenborg’s known murders proceeded in the same way down to the slightest detail, and I am almost certain that what the women were subjected to before their deaths happened in the same sequence.

“Supported by Rikke Barbara Hvidt’s testimony, which I was able to read here this morning, this sequence consists of the fact that he isolates the women in a place where he won’t be disturbed, he takes off their outer clothes but not their panties, and makes sure that their breasts can be seen by removing their bras and tearing their underclothes in front. He cuts, or acts as if he is cutting, their nails, he attaches their hands to their thighs, he puts red lipstick on them, and finally he suffocates them by pulling a clear plastic bag over their heads and tightening it around their necks. In addition their grave has been dug in advance, which he does not try to conceal from them. Here it is obvious that Andreas Falkenborg fulfils the serial killer criterion of killing victims in the same way. Even if the statistical material in his case-fortunately, I would add-is slender, I am convinced that if he has killed other women, it has happened in exactly the same way.”

The profiler took a sip of water and continued speaking.

“It is also worth noting that he is white, male, that he tried to kill for the first time when he was in his twenties, and that he was not closely linked to his victims. It is also significant that both his victims were of his own race-all indicators for the classic serial killer. On the other hand, he does not commit his murders within a geographically limited area, which is otherwise the norm for serial killings. And he apparently does not kill to achieve excitement, sexual satisfaction, domination or a combination of the three. The fact is, I can’t really ascribe any of these motives to him, although I must clearly emphasise that this concerns an assessment that I am not certain holds up. I was actually doubtful whether I should even mention it, and when I do, it is overwhelmingly due to the new angles about Falkenborg’s behaviour that you collected in Hundested yesterday.”

Simonsen asked soberly, “What are you basing your assessment on?”

“Excitement is the easiest element to rule out. Serial murderers who get a kick out of killing seldom plan the scene of the crime and almost always commit their murders quickly and not far from potential witnesses. That is a significant part of the excitement for them. If we take a serial killer such as Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper-”

Simonsen looked at Pedersen, who shook his head in annoyance, and then politely interrupted the psychologist.

“We recognise that this is your area of expertise. You don’t need to give examples to back up your argument.”

Pedersen put in, “It gets a little too much like answer key logic.”

“Fine by me, I’ll drop the examples. Where was I? Yes, excitement is easy to rule out in this case. Falkenborg isolates his victims, seems afraid of possible witnesses although they are far away, and takes as few chances as possible. One small exception to this perhaps is the way he presumably tied Maryann Nygaard’s arms behind her back, gagged and concealed her in his helicopter, while everyone else was running around searching for her at the radar station. But that was done from necessity and was not particularly risky for him.”

Simonsen agreed. “He does not kill for the sake of excitement.”

“Then there is the sexual motive, which I also think can be ruled out in Falkenborg’s case. In by far the majority of cases where serial murder is sexually motivated, the murderer’s treatment of his victims is brutal or sadistic, often to a horribly painful degree, and that applies not only to actions, but almost always to the words used as well. But apart from the fact that Falkenborg suffocates the women with a plastic bag-”

Here Troulsen interrupted.

“You have to excuse me, but to be frank I have a hard time overlooking that.”

“Let me put it differently: he suffocates the women, but what does he do in addition that underscores sadistic behavior? The answer is nothing. He uses neither torture nor rape. On the contrary-taking the full situation into consideration-he is relatively careful with his victims. He does not offend Rikke Barbara Hvidt’s modesty more than is strictly necessary when he takes off her bra, he asks her to please wait until the moped riders are gone, and he gets her to hold her hands out not by threatening her, but by patiently asking her to. And these arguments can also be used to reject dominance as a motive. I have never heard of a dominance murderer who spoke in that way to the victim he was killing. It simply doesn’t tally.”

Simonsen said, “But he frightens them with his mask, if we assume that he was wearing one at the other murders he committed.”

“I feel quite certain that he did.”

“But isn’t that a kind of torture? I mean, the women must have been terrified.”

“The mask is extremely interesting. I think he used it to frighten them, but also to hide himself and conceal his own anxiety. But may I have permission to wait for now before I consider the mask?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Another circumstance that puzzles me is that if he kills to achieve dominance, as I believed in the beginning, why does he choose to operate in darkness? The dominating effect and thereby his enjoyment of the killing would be much greater if he could observe the women’s reaction clearly and in detail, which he cannot under artificial light on dark beaches or in the Greenlandic polar night. Many dominance murderers kill at a place other than where they leave the bodies purely so that they have better conditions in which to kill.

“Furthermore our killer goes to great lengths to put the blame on Carl Henning Thomsen for the murder of his daughter Catherine. This does not tally in any way with a dominance motive, where the murderers very often make claims on both the victims and the crime even after the murder. Like a hunter who is proud of the animals he has killed and hangs them on his wall as trophies. With Catherine Thomsen the opposite happens. But having said this, our man’s very eagerness to lure Carl Henning Thomsen into a trap, and also his strange behaviour in 1990 with the pig that he nails on the tree to bother his neighbours, are two elements in his conduct that I simply don’t understand.”

The profiler stopped talking for a moment and looked around at the group.

“They don’t fit with his other conduct, and here I am not only thinking about the murders but also about the other witness statements that describe him as quiet, capable, sociable, well liked, but also very naive and almost infantile. Do you have any observations about this?”

Pedersen said categorically, “The important thing for me is whether he was quiet and capable as a child.”

The psychologist’s eyes wandered uncertainly.

“Yes, well, that may be an interesting angle. Are there any other comments?”

His four listeners all shook their heads. Simonsen interjected, “This puzzled me too. The episode with the pig doesn’t tie in with his other documented behaviour, and I was hoping you could help us get an insight into that-along the lines that perhaps he has two personalities.”

“No, he’s not schizophrenic, if that’s what you mean. Absolutely not. But it may be necessary for us to let that be for the time being. Unless… ”

He looked around, but no one had any further ideas.

“The last and most important reason that I am rejecting dominance as well as sexual satisfaction as motives, is that he does not take the initiative himself, and his cooling-off periods… that is, the period between his murders… is far too great. If he was dominance or sexually motivated, we would have experienced more-certainly a few more-murders. So my conclusion is that he derives no satisfaction from his misdeeds. Bear in mind, however, my initial reservation. I am doubtful that he derives enjoyment from frightening the women, but I cannot be sure he does not.”

Simonsen had clearly hoped for a different interpretation.

“But what help is this? I mean, this leaves me no further forward.”

“Exactly! The English, or to be more exact American, designations of the different classes of serial killers are thrill killers, lust killers, and power seekers. If we refuse to group Andreas Falkenborg in any of these categories, the obvious question of course is what groups remain. There are four, but none of these fit our man. If we look at them individually-”

Pedersen interrupted the survey.

“Okay, none of the remaining four groups can be applied. Maybe we should be more interested in what we don’t know that we don’t know, than in what we know we don’t know.”

Pauline Berg turned her head and gave him a friendly nudge.

“I didn’t understand a word of that. What in the world do you mean? And can you stop drinking my coffee? You have your own.”

Simonsen took out his cell phone, stood up and turned his back on the group. Shortly afterwards he said, “I’m sorry but I have just received instructions that can’t wait. We’ll have to take a ten-minute break. Arne, can you help me?”