The Girl in the Ice aka A Price for Everything

CHAPTER 42

On Sunday morning at six o’clock Andreas Falkenborg was released from the jail at Police Headquarters. He was led out of a back entrance to avoid the waiting journalists and on Hambrosgade was released on his own recognisance, as the court and judge had decided. Konrad Simonsen showed up for the occasion, if you could call it that, feeling that it was wrong to stay home and sleep while a serial killer was set free. Afterwards he went to his office to mine away at the heaps of paperwork that always piled up in investigations like this.

At nine o’clock Arne Pedersen also arrived at work and shortly after him Poul Troulsen. The three men put their heads together in Simonsen’s office. Pedersen asked Troulsen, “Why didn’t you take the weekend off?”

The older man shrugged his shoulders.

“You were here, and I think I owe you a little extra effort. I wasn’t too active on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.”

Pedersen teased him.

“Not too active? You’re joking. You were far too active last Wednesday.”

“You know what I mean… ”

He looked at his boss.

“… and I still think it’s unfair they put all the blame on you.”

Simonsen stuck out his lower lip.

“Yes, it’s cruel, the world is so mean… mean.”

Troulsen shook his head.

“I’m starting to look forward to retirement.”

“Hmm, we have to talk about that at some point, Poul. There are a number of different arrangements, that if you stick around a couple more years-”

“Forget that.”

“Okay, well, no need to decide right now. How far are we with the Finnish girl, Arne?”

“We’ve got her data, but you know that, and otherwise not much has happened since Friday. The narrowest time frame we can establish in which she disappeared is between the seventeenth of April and the third of May, 1992, presumably from Hässleholm Central Station. Falkenborg’s old farm was a few kilometres south-west by Finja Lake, but Elizabeth Juutilainen was never seen with him. The Swedes are working on the case.”

“I’m hearing that you don’t expect we’ll get any further with her.”

“It’s hard. The witnesses we’ve managed to trace are not the sort to go talking to the police. What they have to say is extremely limited… basically nothing.”

Troulsen commented, “Actually it’s a paradox: one form of criminality shouldn’t overshadow the other, if I may say so. I mean, narcotics circles have just as much interest in getting serial killers behind bars as ordinary law-abiding citizens.”

Simonsen said, “In theory you’re right, but they don’t think that way. Or very rarely in any-”

Pedersen jumped up from his chair.

“Say what you said again, Poul. Right away, it’s important.”

“The thing about the narcotics smugglers?”

“Yes, damn it, what was it you said?”

“That they ought to be just as interested that we catch serial murderers as anyone else, and that it’s a paradox they aren’t.”

“No, not that, the other thing you said.”

Simonsen recited calmly, “Actually it is a paradox: one form of criminality shouldn’t overshadow the other, if I may say so. I mean-”

He got no further.

“Yes, that was what she said! Exactly that.”

“Who said, Arne?”

“The new teacher at the parents’ evening. She said that she always spoke softly to the children, because she did not believe that too much noise should be drowned out with even more noise. Now it also has a logical sense, yes, obviously-what an idiot I’ve been! If we have the transcript of the questioning of Andreas Falkenborg you’ll see it. Yes, and the conversation in the car between Poul and him, that’s the same.”

Both of his listeners gave up trying to make immediate sense of his outburst. Simonsen found the printouts. Pedersen browsed eagerly, almost feverishly, through them after which he read out loud to them.

“This is from the interview. Simon, you are asking him about Annie Lindberg Hansson.

K.S.: She resembled the other women to a T.

A.F.: So it must be me. Yes, I would think that.

K.S.: Where did you bury her?

A.F.: I didn’t.

And this is from the car. Poul, you are also pressuring him in relation to Annie Lindberg Hansson.

P.T.:… so it’s Annie now-where did you bury her?”

A.F.: But I haven’t done that.

P.T.: Why drag this out?

A.F.: But it’s the truth, I haven’t done that.

Stop right there, can’t you see it?”

They could. It was Troulsen who answered.

“You mean the pig?”

“It was a gigantic sow that stank for months, while it rotted. That is, rotted outside on the tree. Now you haven’t seen it, of course, but I have, it’s an old poplar, and I would bet that at the same time the pig rotted, Annie Lindberg Hansson was sitting inside the tree. The poplar resembles an upturned, giant-sized shaving brush. The trunk must be a metre-and-a-half wide and no more than four metres up to the thin branches that stretch out in all directions. When I was a kid, there was a poplar like that on waste ground near us, and it was hollow, rotten from above and down inside, but outside the tree seemed healthy enough and put out leaves and branches every year. We kids climbed up and squeezed through the branches so we could lower ourselves down into the hollow trunk with a rope, almost all the way to the ground. I’m damned certain-she’s in there.”

Simonsen held his men back. Both of his subordinates were full of enthusiasm and wanted to go to Præstø immediately. It was extremely tempting, but the trip was postponed until the next day, and the chief was unyielding.

“No, I don’t want any more surprises in court. This time it will go precisely by the book. We will arrange the legalities today and get permission to cut down that poplar tree, if we have the slightest suspicion. But in that case it will be the technicians who do the job. You’d better find a good corpse dog for early tomorrow morning!”

Troulsen tried one last time.

“But we could at least go down and look, we can easily do that.”

“Tomorrow, Poul, tomorrow.”

Both men should have known their boss better and realised that it was pointless to pressure him. They tried anyway. At last however they accepted the postponement. Pedersen asked searchingly, “Can’t we take Pauline along? She and I have been there before.”

“Fine by me, but she’s sick, she called last night. Said we shouldn’t count on seeing her until at least the middle of the week. A summer flu, she said.”

“Oh, good Lord-yes, there’s a lot of that in this heat. What about Falkenborg? How much surveillance do you have on him?”

“I have two teams that change three times every twenty-four hours.”

Troulsen asked, “Isn’t it a mistake not to keep as much control over him as we possibly can? It would be unbearable if he gives us the slip, just when we can nail him on Annie Lindberg Hansson. Keep in mind that Ernesto Madsen could not understand that episode with the pig, it fell outside the pattern, and suddenly it doesn’t any more. I don’t like the fact Falkenborg’s withdrawn so much cash either. That sounds like he’s planning to disappear.”

Simonsen said regretfully, “In an ideal world without budgets, I’d throw all the resources we have at him. But now the situation is obviously different, I’ll add two more teams.”

They went their separate ways, feeling considerably more uplifted than when they’d arrived. Simonsen called the Countess and told her about Arne Pedersen’s hypothesis. She too urged him to drive to South Zealand right away. For once she was flatly rejected.

That same evening Andreas Falkenborg slipped away from police surveillance. It happened in the heart of Copenhagen, where Frederiksborggade runs into Nørre Voldgade. Four unmarked police cars took part in the shadowing, so that two were responsible for staying ahead and two behind Andreas Falkenborg’s easily recognisable blue Mercedes the whole time it was apparently driving aimlessly around in the city. The other two were held in reserve, ready to intervene when the lead car missed the route. The job was easy, on the verge of boring. The man they were following drove calmly and sensibly, more often too slowly than too fast, and the officers were thus not particularly attentive when their subject, in complete accordance with traffic regulations, stayed in the inside lane at a red light alongside Nørreport Station. It was the second time within five minutes that they’d found themselves at this exact spot, which ought to have sharpened the officers’ attention. The last time however the light was green, so they’d followed the traffic and glided past the station. In contrast to now. One of the two officers in the following car said tiredly, “God, how long does he intend to drive around here?”

“We’ll see,” said his colleague in a bored voice. “At least this is more fun than sitting staring at the entry to his apartment. Here there’s a little variety, and… what the hell!”

The officer reacted quickly. He opened the car door without looking and it banged into a bus that had pulled up alongside the police vehicle. He squeezed out, wriggled past the other motorists and ran the fifty metres to the station as fast as he could. When his colleague saw that the Mercedes was empty, he understood and followed. But Andreas Falkenborg’s head start on them was too much, and both men arrived too late.

They conferred briefly, after which one ran down the stairs to the platforms while the second officer called the other surveillance teams. Soon eight officers were gathered at the scene, but to no avail. After a hectic fifteen minutes they gave up, and the leader of the surveillance operation reported the depressing news to the officer on duty at Glostrup Police, who promised to inform the Homicide Division immediately.

But the news arrived at the worst imaginable time.

While the desk sergeant was receiving the information about Falkenborg’s disappearance, his commissioner showed up alongside him wearing a serious expression. Kindly but firmly, he took the desk sergeant’s phone from him and interrupted the call. The explanation followed immediately.

“Your daughter just called.”

Anxiety came in waves. The desk sergeant nodded, he was in no condition to do otherwise.

“It’s your grandson. He’s been admitted to Herlev Hospital with meningitis. It’s serious, Mads. The boy is in a coma. She’s asking for you to go there.”

The commissioner drove him.

Almost twelve hours passed before Konrad Simonsen was notified that Andreas Falkenborg was beyond the supervision of the authorities and had been so for almost half a day.