The Hanging: A Thriller (6 page)

Per Clausen’s appearance was at first glance wretched, with his washed-out overalls over a filthy sweater and one of the shoulder straps attached with a small metal wire. He had short, straggly, dark-blond hair that was badly in need of washing. His face was marked by sharp features and prominent cheekbones; his skin was sallow and drawn. But Simonsen had seen enough decay in his life to agree with Pauline Berg that the man’s disrepair was relative: his teeth were brushed, his undershirt clean—even if tinged with pink after careless laundering—and his nails had been clipped recently. Then there was his gaze, which met Simonsen’s with unflinching calm. Without aggression, but also without fear.

“My name is Konrad Simonsen, and I am spearheading the investigation that is currently under way in connection with the five people that were found hanged this morning in the school gymnasium. You have already met Officer Berg.”

He gestured to Berg, who was sitting at one end of the table. Neither of the men broke eye contact.

“I’m going to start on a positive note. I’m pleased that you have made time to come in. It is the third time that we trouble you today.”

“Thank you, Chief Inspector, that was very kind.”

“In passing, I should ask you how you know my title. Mr. Clausen—”

“Per; just call me Per. It feels more natural.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do. Per, I am too tired to worry about the little questions, and you have given me enough of the big ones. You should know that this conversation will be different from the others. For example, we will not use a tape recorder; as you have probably noticed, it is primarily I who intend to speak this time. I have been acquainting myself thoroughly with your previous meetings with us, and I wish to inform you about the conclusions I have drawn. In addition, I wanted to meet you in person.”

“As you like. It’s your party.”

“Yes, I guess one could call it that. Which fits very well with the rather absurd explanations and deliberate nonanswers that you have served us in large quantities ever since we located you. I have selected a few … passages, if you will, so that we are clear on what exactly I am referring to. Pauline, if you please.”

Berg was ready. She read in a clear, impersonal voice:

“Why did you go to the equipment shed to sleep when the police arrived?”

“So I would be fresh for the interrogation.”

“What led you to believe you would be interrogated?”

“Because I was sleeping in the shed.”

“If you hadn’t slept there, you would probably not have been.”

“What is done is done.”

She turned the pages quickly and continued.

“We’ve been talking for almost an hour now and you haven’t yet asked us why the police are here. How do you explain that?”

“I’m not the one asking the questions. You are.”

“You aren’t curious?”

“I think you will tell me sooner or later of your own accord.”

“This morning there were five dead men hanging from the ceiling in the gymnasium.”

“Hold on. That just isn’t true.”

“Have you been in the gymnasium?”

“Many times.”

“When the bodies were there, for heaven’s sake.”

“No, I don’t think so. I would have noticed something.”

Per Clausen’s only comment to the reading was an ironic tug at the corners of his mouth, hardly noticeable, but nonetheless hugely irritating. Simonsen ignored it and said gently, “Your actions and your evasive answers simply strengthen the impression that you are trying to attract our attention. Perhaps you enjoy being in the spotlight, perhaps you find it diverting to waste our time. I’ve met plenty of both types. My first guess is that you had nothing to do with the murders. If that’s not the case, then you must be very simple-minded, because only very naïve people imagine that they can get through an interrogation by being more quick-witted and clever in their answers than the officials who are conducting the session. They cannot. The power dynamic is far too uneven for that, and sooner or later everyone slips up. Every single time. It’s only a question of time.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Yes, it is. Am I boring you?”

“No, this is very interesting. Go on.”

“I will. We are going to talk a little about your untruths.”

“I see.”

“Many people think that it is illegal to lie to the police, but that is, to put it mildly, not a belief that you appear to share. Most people also find it embarrassing to be caught out in a lie, and in this case too you do not follow the norm. Pauline has an example…”

Berg again took up the post as reader. This time, the task was slightly different in that she combined two reports.

*   *   *

The first session:

“And you are a widower, you say. How long has that been the case?”

“Klara passed away one day nearly eight years ago when we were out shopping. She was struck on the sidewalk by a drunk driver. I was holding her hand but didn’t get so much as a scratch. The young hooligan who was driving got four months and after half a year he killed someone else. This time a four-year-old, and also when he was drunk. Today he is vice president of a large health-care company.”

Second session:

“… It turns out that your wife, or rather ex-wife, is not dead at all. Her name is Klara Persson, she lives in Malmö, and is in good health. How do you explain this?”

“Surely an ex-wife can be considered a little dead.”

“Why do you feed us this garbage?”

“I must have been swept up in the moment.”

*   *   *

Simonsen took over.

“And this is just one of your tall tales. You have lied about blood clots in your legs, about your employment at the school since 1963, that you often visit your sister in Tarm, and about your three convictions for arson. You also claim to be an alcoholic. On this point I want to give you the benefit of the doubt for now, and I want to show the same consideration regarding your visit to your sister last week, even though it was the first time in eight years that you went to see her.”

“My, my, how time does fly.”

Simonsen took no notice of the irony.

“We are deeply interested in the trip you took on your vacation and you can be sure it will be scrutinized in great detail.”

“An intercity train from the Central Station, Tuesday at eight
A.M.
The train was called the H. C. Andersen. A local train from Tarm Trinbræt, Friday at nine thirty-four. That train was called the Fætter Guf.”

“Thank you, but we will manage without your assistance in this matter since your reliability is in question. That is not to say that your carelessness with the truth necessarily means anything at all. I would be the first to acknowledge that lying is a part of human nature, but if you scrape a little on the surface it turns out that most exaggerations stem from a disappointingly banal source. A made-up degree that the ego polishes a little, a gray life that is colored a little outside the bounds of reality, those kind of trivialities. Your lies tend more toward a kind of pathological lying—pseudologia fantastica—but if so, this is a disorder you seem to have acquired in honor of the occasion. The rest of the school staff do not characterize you as a compulsive liar, actually more the opposite, which brings me back to the question: Why? What are you gaining by this? If there is a good reason for it, it currently lies outside my capacity for understanding. Tomorrow I would like to speak with you again. You will meet us here at the school at two
P.M.
, and we’ll drive into Copenhagen together. In the meantime we will dig into your life and see if we can turn up a thing or two that may explain your behavior. Please make an effort to be sober. If not, I may have to commit you to a forced abstinence.”

“Will you write out a card? Like at the dentist?”

“No, we don’t do that. And unless you have anything relevant to add, I believe we are done.”

“That was it? That was quick.”

“As I said, the aim was mainly to meet you.”

“I see. Well, in that case, thanks for the pizza.”

“I didn’t know that we had fed you, but you’re welcome.”

Simonsen got to his feet but kept his gaze fixed on Clausen.

“One more thing—a minor question. How is your geometry?”

Per Clausen answered without missing a beat.

“Do you mean classic plane geometry or analytic geometry?”

“I’m not sure that I know the difference. I don’t have your expertise.”

“There is a big difference. Take good old Gauss, for example. He worked with equations and algebra as opposed to lines and circles. I have always thought that it was a bit of cheating or at least less elegant, but you have to give it to the man that it yielded results. He proved that the equilateral heptadecagon can be constructed with a compass and ruler. The first contribution in over two thousand years to the regular polygons.”

“Impressive.”

“Decidedly, but not particularly practical. I only know of a single instance where a heptadecagon has had a real-world application. Would you like to hear it?”

“Yes, very much.”

This answer was true, which it normally was not. There was so much else and so many more relevant aspects to discuss with this janitor, but Simonsen wanted very much to hear his story. The man was strangely fascinating.

Clausen explained, “In 1525, seventeen sailors in Portsmouth were convicted by the High Court of Admiralty for having whistled onboard the
Mary Rose,
the flagship of the English fleet. For this kind of serious offense, justice only knew one kind of punishment, and the gallows were prepared according to Gauss’s principles so that all of them could hang in symmetry. The drawings have been preserved at the National Maritime Museum in London.”

“That is a good story, exceptionally illustrative, I must say, and very convincing even though it lacks a couple of centuries to fall completely into place, but I think I followed the point. Now, get home safely and don’t forget that we have an appointment tomorrow.”

The janitor gestured in the air with one hand as if to underscore that a little slippage in time did not have to mean the world.

“A little artistic license is allowed, surely.”

They shook hands and Clausen left. He had barely made it out the door before Simonsen lit a cigarette. Berg took out a saucer from under a plant and placed it in front of him. Her boss looked so tired that she was worried for a moment.

“He was much more focused than when the Countess questioned him,” she said.

“Yes, I could imagine that.”

“What was that last bit about?”

“Hard to say. His behavior appears completely irrational, but we will probably get to the bottom of his life in the next couple of days and then we’ll see.”

“But I mean, his story with the gallows—wasn’t that a cut-and-dried way to link him to the murders in some way?”

“In a way. In addition to being extremely arrogant and demanding, I have no good reading of him, but that will change.”

“Maybe he wants to deflect our attention from something or someone else?”

“Who knows? But time is on our side, and good old-fashioned elbow grease normally yields more answers than guesses and suppositions.”

His comment struck home. Berg blushed slightly and let the subject drop, saying instead, “You promised to tell me why you wanted me to participate.”

Outwardly, Simonsen appeared more sure of the janitor than he really was. Perhaps it had been a mistake to release him. The man’s odd behavior lay outside Simonsen’s frame of reference, which was the real reason that he had let him go home. It would give him time to think it through. But as soon as Clausen was gone, doubt had started gnawing at him. He pushed the thought away.

“He has lost a daughter,” he answered. “His only child. She would have been around your age today so I thought he would have a vulnerable point and that you could possibly be … a point of departure, but I decided against it.”

Berg felt slightly ill at ease.

“I’m glad you did.”

Simonsen did not pay attention to her tone of voice.

“This isn’t a case of a stolen bike. There’s no place for that kind of sensitivity.”

“I know that, it would just have been unpleasant. Why did you decide against it?”

“He wouldn’t have taken the bait, so there was no point. Why don’t you head over and check with Troulsen to make sure the surveillance is in place. If Per Clausen so much as owns a dog, I want its stud register in ten minutes flat.”

“I’ll check. For the fourth time. But he is one hundred percent covered: local and remote surveillance, doubled-up coverage, and they are all experts. You don’t need to be the least bit nervous, Troulsen says.”

“Do it, regardless of what Poul says. Did we get a court order on his phone?”

“Yes, but it was difficult and it is only good for three days.”

Simonsen stubbed out his cigarette, and suddenly remembered what feeling he had had as he sat across from Per Clausen. He had been looking for it and now it was there. It was the same feeling that he had once felt when he encountered opponents in various chess tournaments. Respect and kinship, fellowship, mixed with a mental aggressiveness, as if one could differentiate between a person and his or her brain. Accompanying this was the creeping conviction that his opponent had studied him, had pinpointed his playing style and perhaps also his life and personality. He smiled tightly and allowed his inner images of the dead chase away any feeling of kinship with the janitor. Then he turned to Berg.

“What was that about pizza? Is there any more?”

“Lots. Should I get you one? They are laid out in the teachers’ lounge.”

“That would be nice, if you are willing, but only if you are willing. You haven’t been appointed as my assistant.”

“I’m willing. Anything in particular you want?”

“The two least-fattening—you decide.”