The Hanging: A Thriller (15 page)

It was Stig Åge Thorsen who ended Per Clausen’s monologue. He said haltingly, “You know, Per, that’s all very well and fine to send e-mails to the USA, but … uh … I saw a show about the moon landing that they claimed took place and…”

Per Clausen smiled broadly. Erik Mørk waved his arms and said, “We all get your point. How many e-mail addresses would you say I should get a hold of?”

“Half a million. It’s a big country.”

The first real hit of the campaign turned out to be in Baltimore, where a disgruntled systems analyst uncritically took over the message as his own. As luck would have it, the man had been fired after nine years of employment with Ericsson, the Swedish communications giant. The reason was corporate downsizing, which he found deeply unjust and took very personally. At the same time, he was not particularly proficient in his knowledge of geography and firmly maintained that Denmark was a large Swedish province. To him it was evident that the e-mail was telling the truth. The lack of morality in Stockholm was well known and it did not surprise him that things were even worse in the provinces. As revenge for his dismissal and as a kind of noble gesture he forwarded the e-mail to all sixty thousand employees at the company. In addition, he created his own abbreviated version that he sent to a quarter of a million Vodaphone customers via his SMS-server in London, well aware of the fact that he could be fired only once.

Many e-mails died by the Delete button or got caught in spam filters, but a few came through intact and hit their mark. This was the case with a lumber baron and business owner from Knoxville, Tennessee.

The lumber baron was a ninety-three-year-old man who had emigrated as a child with his parents from Onsild in Himmerland, after which he had never set foot in Denmark again. But he remembered very well the old country with its golden, rippling fields of grain and idyllic little farms where the hollyhocks banged against the crooked windows while the sun sank and the people lit candle stumps. If they didn’t simply pull on their nightcaps and creep into the hay, exhausted after a day’s battle with weeds. When the old Danish emigrant read the e-mail he flew into a blinding rage—something he was accustomed to doing and a habit that had not grown milder through the years.

He had fared well in the USA—very well, even. He was the sole owner of eighty lumber retailers spread across the state. It had started as a local lumber emporium, which he had built up and steered with a hard but sure hand throughout his adult life. A few years ago he had been forced to retreat from the day-to-day affairs and after that he settled with overseeing his many markets as chairman, which meant that he involved himself in everything and made life hell on a daily basis for a handful of managers who had to jump and dance according to the old man’s whims. Even now.

The old man’s frail body trembled with anger at the fact that someone was accusing his native land of showing a despicable liberal softness toward child molesters, and two of the company’s top officers were ordered to put everything else aside and, under his leadership, prepare an appropriate response to the offensive e-mail. The executives wrote a short memorandum that stated that in Denmark people were severely punished for any form of disorderly conduct or perversion. The rare sexual offenders that escaped the executioner’s ax could look forward to years of labor in the royal quarries, for this was how the old man believed things worked. His two coauthors were very aware that this was at best a form of wishful thinking and at worst a form of dementia, but they both had families to support and neither of them wanted to lose his job over the state of the justice system in an inferior European nation. And by now they were accustomed to a little of everything.

The letter was posted on bulletin boards in sixty lumberyards, where no one read it except staff members who had great fun with the old codger’s latest whim. Thus the rumor found its way into yet another of its dead ends, but in one of the stores there was a customer who had come in to get a key made. As host of the most popular radio show in Chattanooga, she was always on the lookout for stories with surprising angles and unexpected twists. She asked two clerks what they were smiling at.

On its way west, the campaign gathered momentum and in one of its many iterations the e-mail was transformed into a drawing. A drawing with a punch far stronger than Per Clausen’s and Erik Mørk’s studiously crafted words.

Two reasonably serious news agencies in Madison and Indianapolis had separately put out the story about the hanging of five Danish pedophiles and indicated that the national police were keeping the truth from the public. Both gave the Internet as a source, which was another way of saying that no one could vouch for the truthfulness of the information, but very few people took any notice of this. A middle-aged man in Tucson, Arizona, heard the news from his neighbor, who clearly enjoyed sharing it. Summary executions and subsequent mutilations were in her opinion the right kind of treatment for those kind of animals, which the state government could certainly learn from. The brief conversation across the fence energized and inspired him. He made his living as an artist who specialized in weeping children, and it was a good living. A great number of his unhappy faces hung in houses around the Midwest and his pictures were in demand. Maybe he wasn’t a great artist. His repertoire was a bit too narrow for that and his talent insignificant. But few could—as he was able to—capture the helpless despair in the eyes of little boys who had been forgotten by God, but not the priest. Sharp cold twinges and short uncontrollable twitches appeared in his face, neck, and abdomen, which was normal when he worked. He said a fervent prayer before he went to his studio and began to work. Eight years at the Catholic Mercy School in Cleveland had left him with a fear of God in his soul and a fear of the world in his body.

CHAPTER 25

Toward Wednesday the investigation started to pick up steam. The morning had been slow and more or less without results, whereas the afternoon was fruitful. Konrad Simonsen stood for the official assessment of the day’s work, which took place in his office at police headquarters in Copenhagen. He had nothing to relate himself, so he turned the meeting over to Poul Troulsen.

Malte Borup’s cross-referencing program had proven its worth. The application was coded to reveal coincidences, as data was introduced. It was then up to a human brain to determine which of these were of interest and should be followed up. The majority of the output was indifferent: two instructors who had been in Oslo that fall, a neighbor with the same name as the school vice principal, but a bill from Bagsværd lumber was connected with a teacher’s witness statement about the janitor’s use of the woodshop equipment in the evenings.

Troulsen’s visit to the lumberyard had yielded results. He said, “At the beginning of March, Per Clausen purchased the lumber necessary to construct the trapdoors in the podium in the gymnasium. It was a private transaction, in which the Langebæk’s School account was charged. Possibly in order to get a discount, which in itself is neither out of the ordinary nor expressly forbidden, but the purchase speaks for itself.”

He held out a green receipt so that everyone could see, then read aloud, “‘Carriage bolt, leaf hinges, latches, swing hooks, toothed washers, and not least three rolls of plastic.’ Clearly, this gives us at least a minimum time frame of the planning of the killings. In addition, in crucial ways this supports the technician’s hypothesis of a scene in which—”

“Excellent work, Poul, but let’s wait with the rest of your reflections,” Simonsen cut in. “Unfortunately I have no time; the financial people are waiting for me.”

“I thought you had free hands with regard to the financial considerations of this investigation.”

“Free hands does not mean that expenses can run amok.”

“And are they?”

Simonsen allowed himself a wry smile. “I don’t know, but I’m certain that the three accountants who have asked to meet with me know a great deal on the matter. Arne, your turn.”

Arne Pedersen had been in Malmö. His task had been to uncover Helene Clausen’s life from 1987 to 1993. The trip itself turned out to be unnecessary since the Swedish police commissioner—who was contacted by telephone at Simonsen’s request—could easily have managed the matter on his own. The Swedish police were extremely effective and gave high priority to the matter but no one had thought to involve Pedersen on the simple grounds that he was not needed, so he’d spent three interesting hours at Malmöhus Castle, where the city museum was located. Back at the police station in Kirseberg he received two reports, one in Swedish and one in English. Five closely written pages constituted a shining example of effective Nordic collaboration if one ignored the fact that the Swedes had done the whole thing.

His presentation was to the point.

“Everything points to Helene Clausen having been sexually molested by her stepfather while she lived in Sweden. Neither her mother nor her stepfather is prepared to speak on the subject but several independent sources have confirmed this. There is also the fact that after Helene Clausen grew up, her stepfather found other victims. He was cited on two counts of sexual molestation of a minor in 1992. These cases were never prosecuted due to a lack of evidence.”

He patted the reports.

“These documents also contain an explicit report from a psychologist who no longer found it necessary to observe her doctor-patient confidentiality. She was also the one who recommended that Helene Clausen move back to Denmark.”

The Countess took the opportunity to ask a question: “What about Helene Clausen herself? Didn’t she confide in anyone?”

“It appears not, at least not directly to the psychologist. Apparently she blocked out her memories and tried to forget, which is not uncommon. On the other hand, we don’t know what happened during the years she was in Denmark.”

Simonsen hurried them along again: “That’s something we need to take a look at. Get a couple of officers going on it. Anything else, Arne?”

There actually was one other thing. The Swedish colleagues had asked him delicately, on two occasions, if the Danish police were concealing the sexual orientation of the victims, whatever that meant. He had denied this but it was evident that they did not believe him. He would have liked to share these episodes if Simonsen’s timetable had allowed for a discussion of minor matters. But apparently this was not the case, so he shook his head. But it still struck him as strange.

Berg’s trip to Roskilde had also been strange but not without results. The boy, who had played with his cousin at the Langebæk School last Wednesday, had turned out to be a sweet and bright little thing with white-blond hair, prominent ears, freckles, and an appealingly frank and direct way with adults. With the mother’s help, she had been able to get the child to recall surprisingly quickly that day during the autumn holiday when he and his playmate had gathered bottle caps. In order to further stimulate his memory, the three of them had enacted this activity in the living room and this tactic had had the intended effect. The boy suddenly remembered that he had been chased away at one point by a man who looked like Buller’s father. Buller turned out to be another playmate. Berg’s heart skipped at this. The mother, who had grown alert to the fact that the information could turn out to be significant, did what she could to get the boy to elaborate on his description by going back over it step by step. But here they ran into a hurdle because although Buller’s father was dissected from top to bottom, there was nothing particular about him that apparently matched the unknown man at the school.

At this point the phone rang and the mother left them. Then the boy explained very secretively that the unknown man reminded him of Buller’s father because he drove a bus. He recognized the words
bus driver.
This piece of information was critical and unleashed further questions, which Berg, however, chose to wait with until she was joined by his parent. But when the mother returned, she had coldly and abruptly asked her to leave, without any additional explanation and without further comments. So from one minute to the next Borg had found herself outside the door, which slammed shut behind her.

Simonsen asked her, “That was rather strange. And you have no idea why?”

“No, none at all. I was thrown out. What should I do about it?”

“Leave, just as you did. You couldn’t do otherwise. That happens. You can’t be the hero every time.”

Berg blushed. Pedersen gazed up at the ceiling. Simonsen went on, unaffected.

“This reminds me of the fact that Per Clausen’s suicide was caused by a potassium solution. The pathologist called. I have canceled additional technical studies, as they simply will be a waste of time and resources. There must have been dozens of people who—”

The Countess cut him off and got his attention. No one else interrupted the boss.

“Simon, I can verify the van. Do you want to hear it?”

“Of course, of course. I am done anyway.”

Earlier in the day there had been a miracle when the school psychologist, Ditte Lubert—under great pressure—let her defenses fall and finally cooperated with the authorities. The Countess related, “At Gladsaxe town hall they have performed their own little bit of sleuthing by going over the past ten years of accounts at the Langebæk School with a magnifying glass. A clerk reacted to three telephone calls to Pretoria in South Africa and he contacted the telecommunications company to find out if there had been any similar calls last fall vacation, which indeed turned out to be the case. Thereafter he informed me.”

Troulsen predicted the course of events, outraged at the psychologist: “So her recalcitrance was based on a simple case of telephone abuse?”

“Yes. I called the number and got an answering machine that said Ingrid Lubert was not available at the moment. Then I contacted her brother-in-law to share this turn of events with him. You know, the lawyer, he was extremely cooperative. In part he confirmed that his other sister-in-law was stationed in South Africa for Danida, and in part he promised to have yet another talk with Ditte Lubert, but then there was apparently some atmospheric disturbance on the line.”