The Hanging: A Thriller (43 page)

“What about us? How do we enter the picture?” Berg was trying to connect to the more forward-thinking direction that the conversation was taking.

Pedersen explained, “When the intern reporter—her name by the way is Anita Dahlgren—has delivered Anni Staal’s manuscript at Erik Mørk’s company, Simonsen wants her and Malte out of the way. We’re going to send them away for the weekend and you’ll be going along to look after them. Together with a couple of other colleagues.”

He went over the practical details and ignored Berg’s sour expression. Afterward he turned to the Countess to instruct her, but here he was constantly stopped.

“Just drop it. If Simon wants me to take part in this agent setup, then he can come talk to me himself. I should refuse of course, on the other hand I am probably the only one who can live without my salary, now that we will soon all be suspended.”

It stung. Pedersen went pale, as if he had used up his last lottery ticket, and it got worse when the Countess, after a brief nod to Pauline, went to her office while Berg stood up in front of him. Much too close.

“There’s something you should know, Arne. Something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while.”

He simply nodded.

“You and me, it’s almost too much fun for you.”

“No, absolutely not. You shouldn’t think that.” His denial was genuine, and he stretched a hand out for her.

“Be still and listen. You have your children. Your wife, your house, your regular mealtimes.”

Again he simply nodded, without knowing what he should say. She grasped his head and looked him in the eyes.

“From now on it will be on my terms. When I want, if I want it, that is. Do you understand?”

He nodded a third time. She kissed him on the mouth, then pushed him away, then changed tack and suddenly sounded like a pouty schoolgirl.

“I don’t like the idea of playing governess to Malte and whatever that little chit is who has turned his head. A weekend away, God help me. Why can’t I be with the rest of you? Can’t you talk to Simon?”

CHAPTER 68

The drive to Ullerløse, four kilometers northeast of Vig in Odsherred, took a good hour and a quarter and Konrad Simonsen took pleasure in the trip. The sky cleared up the farther east he went and soon the Danish countryside was smiling at him in sunshine, which elevated his good mood even more.

The interview with Anni Staal had exceeded his expectations and he was sure that she was headed back to her office convinced that she had a new sensation on her hands that would shake the nation and generate record sales. He had confirmed the robbery-murder angle and then given her a series of additional details that were lies from beginning to end, but carefully formulated so as to be impossible to corroborate. He had also forced her to turn off the tape recorder and rely on her rusty stenography so that she would not be able to pin him to his words later. If her article was enough to shake the vigilante group, and perhaps draw Climber into the light through Erik Mørk, remained to be seen. There was reason to hope.

He had no problems finding the village, which turned out to be a collection of houses clustered around a supermarket and a church. He slowed down and drove slowly down the main street to gain an impression of the place. There was no sign of any industry or other places of employment and—apart from an elderly woman on a bicycle—no people. Soon he was out on the other side and surrounded by fields, so he turned the car around and headed back and stopped by the supermarket, which he assumed was the village gathering place. He was received in a friendly manner by an overweight storekeeper with an infectious, joyous laugh.

“If this is about the past here in Ullerløse, you’ll have to get a hold of old Severinsen, and it would be smart of you to take a couple of those cans with you. They help jog his memory.”

She smiled as she handed him a couple of beers. Then she followed him out of the store and pointed, smiling, at the house where the man lived.

Shortly thereafter he stepped into old Severinsen’s backyard, where he heard someone chopping firewood. Severinsen was a weather-beaten and sinewy old man. He was dressed in worn, dirty green work clothes and his thin white hair fluttered in the wind around a beautifully furrowed face. He laid his ax down when he saw that he had a visitor. A dog of uncertain extraction raised its head and stared at Simonsen before it lay back down to sleep. After having shaken hands, the old man led him to a moldy bench along the side of the house. Simonsen sat down and hoped for the best. The bench held up, and he opened the beers.

“They say you’ve lived here a long time.”

“My whole life.”

“I’ve come from Copenhagen to hear something about the brothers Allan and Frank Ditlevsen. Can you remember them?”

The old man drank some of his beer and Simonsen followed suit. Then the man spit contemptuously. Simonsen copied him. The beer tasted like a disaster.

“You didn’t like them?”

“No, they were pieces of shit. They spent more time at the pub than on honest work and if there was anything they could get away with, they did.” A peculiar expression came into his face. “They are both dead. Someone hung them in the capital city. It’s nothing less than they deserved.”

The information was not completely accurate but Simonsen did not correct him.

“I beat up their dad one time when we were young. He is of course also dead and has been for a long time, but no one around here misses them. They were rotten bastards, all three of them, if you ask me.”

“I have some names that I wonder if they mean anything to you.”

“Let’s hear them.”

He started with the first name on his short list: “Andreas Linke?”

The old man reflected on this. Then he said, “Andreas. Well, I don’t know exactly … I can remember dates and see faces, but I forget names.”

“So you don’t know him?”

“Maybe. Andreas—it could be the son, that is, the grandson, but Linke I know of course. That’s the German. Yes, we never called him anything but the German even though Linke was his name. He lived here for many years, right next to the brothers for that matter.”

Simonsen felt triumph rush through him, the beginning of an intense relief in his body, swelling to a boastful pride and culminating in an inner roar of victory that felt as if it separated everything around him into a before and after. He had found Climber!

What he wanted most of all was to take a little walk around the garden and savor the moment but, of course, that wouldn’t help anything. He continued the conversation.

“They were neighbors?”

“Yes, they were, but the addresses are different. The German lived on the side of the road down by the church, and the road there stretches into a curve so the last two houses toward the forest lie directly behind the brothers, who lived on the main road. A Copenhager lives there now but he’s never there.”

“Do you want to tell me about the German?”

The old man nodded. For a while he just sat and thought himself back in time, then he started to tell.

“The German, well that’s a long story. After the war, in the summer of 1945, he moved in together with his wife. They wanted to get off the main road a bit because the missus had been through a little of everything—had her hair cropped, that kind of thing—and back then there weren’t many who wanted anything to do with that kind of folk. Later they came and took him away. He wasn’t a real German, he was from Tønder, part of a minority population, but he had fought for Hitler so he had to sit on the inside for a couple of years while the wife had a baby and everything. Well, she was hardly a tender mother and there were all manner of things that people said that he had done even though most of it was just idle rumor. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been let out after three years.”

“And the wife had a child?”

“Yes, it was a girl, and then she had another while he was still in prison but that one disappeared. Well, she brought shame on herself, but on the other hand … things weren’t completely easy for her, to manage the everyday and such. And they reconciled when he got out in 1949 and then there were two of them to get things to work. He hired himself out locally as a farmhand. He was strong and as time passed people thought less often of the war so in the end he was an appreciated commodity. But then the girl grew up. She was quite pretty. She went to study in Nykøbing, that must have been in 1960 or 1961, but it wasn’t long before she moved back home again knocked up, as it were. Well, well—she was a chip off the old block, and then they had to start over, the old couple.”

“So she had a baby as well.”

“She certainly did, and she couldn’t have been more than sixteen. The old couple never complained. They were used to it. Back then the German had gotten a secure position at the automobile factory in Vig and the mother and daughter kept a kitchen garden, some chickens and such and that yielded a trifle. And they looked after the little boy. But then came the fire. It was in 1964, October 1964, I remember it well. It was a tragic story.”

“Their house burned down?”

“Yes. It was the electricity, some old stuff, and a fire started at night. The German got the grandchild out. The two others perished inside.”

“So he was left alone with the child?”

“Yes, and a burned home. The insurance paid a little but he had to build most of it up himself, even though we helped a little. He became strange then too. It was as if he no longer understood what was going on. The eastern front he managed, but not the fire.”

“So the boy lived alone with his grandfather.”

“Yes, until 1975 or 1976 and then he died. The German, that is, and then the county took the boy but at that point he was basically grown. Or, wait a little now, he went down to some relatives in Germany.”

Simonsen forced himself to take a sip of the beer. The old man noticed his aversion.

“If you don’t like it, let it be. I’ll give it to Klods-Hans. He knows what’s good.”

He pointed to the dog, who looked up lazily without getting to his feet. Simonsen put the bottle down on the bench. Then he said, “If I wanted to look up Andreas Linke in the church records, who should I go to?”

“Go back to Brugs-Katrine. You talked to her when you were buying beer. She is the reserve deacon, church servant, gardener, choir, and whatever else she can get hold of. She’ll be happy to help you when she gets back. Right now she’s busy helping the retired officer in the forest.”

“The retired officer?”

“Yes, he was also here yesterday. Nice man. They just walked past along the road. For a chief detective inspector you don’t seem very observant. Didn’t you see them? He must be persuasive because she’s not one to take walks.” The old man grinned and his tone was teasing, but not mean-spirited. Then he added, “Out here in the country, we read papers too, you know, Mr. Simonsen.”

Simonsen stood up. The man gave him directions to get up to the forest. The church records could wait. The dog also got to his feet. There was beer waiting for him.

Simonsen weaved in among the beech trees of Ullerløse forest. The terrain sloped up and the forest floor was soft with fallen wet leaves that were heavy to walk in, and after only a short while he was panting like a bellows. He slowed his pace. In front of him to the left in a glade he caught sight of a person with his back to him; he changed his direction and walked toward him. When he was a few meters away, he loudly made his presence known so that he wouldn’t cause any unnecessary shock.

Kasper Planck straightened up without turning around. “Quit your shouting, I’m not deaf.”

“No, and you look better all around, actually. What happened to your fatigue and your failing health?”

“God’s nature does an old man good.”

Planck kicked a tree stump and pointed his toe at two others close-by. “It was here it started. Or almost here. Frank had been the first, but it took place in the barn. Allan joined later and he was a real outdoorsman. But you must know that. I saw you talking with the old man.”

“Apparently not thoroughly enough.”

“No, that has always been your problem. You don’t give yourself the necessary amount of time, and you never learn.”

Simonsen felt a sting of irritation.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Planck didn’t comment on this. He said, “They were felled in the winter of 1984 and later nicely cut up and everything. Four large beech trees in their prime. The whole countryside heard about it, but apparently no one felt it necessary to alert the police or forest ranger. An outhouse was set on fire and that was also not reported.”

“It must have been terrible for him. How long did it go on, do you think?”

“Five–six years. The grandfather couldn’t really watch him. They say he was strange.”

“Everyone knew and no one did anything about it?”

It was a question. Planck was apparently more familiar with the reaction patterns of the village and their small hidden secrets.

“
Knew
is maybe too strange a word, but in such a small town you can’t so much as fart in a storm without your neighbor holding his nose, so some of them have surely guessed. I mean, there were times that the poor boy couldn’t even walk normally but it took several beers before the old man was willing to talk about it. By the way, that beer tastes awful, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it’s unusually bad, but the poor boy—I mean, Climber—he returned to revenge himself on the past? At least physically, you could say.”

Simonsen pointed to the tree stumps all around. “Well, what’s strange is that he didn’t, if the old man is to be believed. He paid others to do it. They brought a map where the trees were marked. He couldn’t stand to come back himself.”

Simonsen stared thoughtfully out into the air. Then he said, “What brought you up here?”

“The killing of the brothers was personal. That was the starting point, and with a lot of hard thinking you can get far. Suddenly the truth shines through. Like a falling angel that stands on your doorstep one night and illuminates your mind. And when the puzzle has been laid it gives meaning to many other things.”