The Hanging: A Thriller (24 page)

Troulsen’s office was far and away the nicest at the Homicide Division. During a long career and with a sure eye for quality, he had obtained furnishings that made the office look more like a living room than a workplace. The pièce de résistance was a gigantic flat-screen TV that had originally been purchased as a digital information screen for the lunchroom but that had ended up in his office due to an unfortunate bureaucratic oversight. It was an arrangement pleasing to everyone since no one particularly cared to have his meals interrupted by inconsequential messages from police management. Instead, they now actually had a place to gather whenever there were sporting events of national significance. And a cozy place at that.

When Simonsen walked into the office, Troulsen was lying on his couch watching a cartoon while Arne Pedersen was lounging in an armchair eyeing a betting sheet. Neither one appeared in a hurry to interrupt his activities when the boss arrived.

Simonsen said, “What on earth is going on here?”

Troulsen turned off the TV and said, “Nothing, except I’m amazed at how bad cartoons have gotten since I was a child and it’s a bleeding shame.”

Pedersen put his sheet down and explained, “Half of the people in this country have gotten the misguided idea of calling the police. Our lines have gone down. You can’t call in or out.”

Simonsen was confused. “Why is that?’

“Well, our modern society is vulnerable like that. Half of the population may be an exaggeration, of course, you don’t need more than a couple of thousand and you’ve maxed out our capabilities. And now I’m talking about the whole country and not just here at HS. We’ve just seen a telecommunications expert on the news, which of course will get even more people to call.”

“Are you telling me that lines are down at other police stations?”

“More or less. There is some variation but no one has a good grasp of the situation.”

“What about management? Have they been informed?”

Troulsen sat up on the couch. He commented ironically, “Yes, we’ve been down to the mailbox with a letter.”

Simonsen shot him a disapproving look.

Pedersen said, “The national chief of police is at a conference in London. His second-in-command is at a golden wedding anniversary in Falster.”

“So no one is trying to put a stop to this nonsense?”

“Don’t think so. It’s only in the last half an hour that it’s gotten really bad. Three-quarters of an hour ago the telephones were still working but the wait for incoming calls was absurdly long. We were down at the exchange—”

“The call center,” Troulsen interrupted. “Remember it’s called the call center now. It was the exchange in the olden days, back in the stone ages when the things actually worked.”

Simonsen reprimanded him impatiently: “Stop it, Poul. If you don’t have anything constructive to add to the conversation, you should just go home. Go on, Arne.”

“Sure, but unfortunately there’s not much more to say. Except perhaps the fact that one or more of our colleagues must have added fuel to the fire by posting our private cell phone numbers and direct work lines on the Internet, but you must already have discovered that. You and I are on the list, but Poul, the Countess, and Pauline have unlisted numbers. Do you want to see one of the pages where our numbers are published?”

Simonsen shook his head.

Troulsen broke in, this time with a positive contribution: “I’ve gone out and bought twelve cell phone start-up packages. They’re in Arne’s office. Just put your SIM card in one of them and write your new number on the board.”

“Good thinking but it’ll have to wait. Did they say anything at the exchange? Is there any point in going down there?”

“Not in the least. They’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off and speaking in technical tongues, but the reality is that they are as powerless as the rest of us. It’ll only get better when people stop calling.”

“And when will that be?”

Troulsen shrugged. Simonsen looked over at Pedersen. He, too, had a blank expression; he held his arms out and shook his head.

“So we just wait it out?”

It was a rhetorical question. Neither of the two men answered but both avoided his gaze. Simonsen stood there silently for a while, then left suddenly without saying anything else.

*   *   *

He came back to the office an hour later. The atmosphere in the room had not changed significantly since he’d left. Troulsen was idly leafing through some reports and Pedersen had turned back to his betting sheet.

Simonsen managed to get life into them by saying, “The situation has been as good as resolved. We can count on having normal communications within the span of an hour or two. Let us use this time to find out how we should proceed with gathering information about Mr. Northeast and Mr. Southeast when the serious calls resume. We should probably assume it will take an extra day before we get it sorted out. I also want to know how far we have come with Thor Gran. And last but not least, you can put your SIM cards back in your regular phones.”

Pedersen asked with some astonishment, “What’s happened? Why has it stopped?”

“It hasn’t stopped completely yet, but there has been a significant reduction. Shall we get to work?”

Troulsen ignored this and turned on his television. He found the news channel, where a picture of Simonsen in his younger days filled half the screen. A slightly lisping female announcer’s voice asked, “But doesn’t this cast the police in a less-flattering light, that the public can even think of engaging in something like this?”

The static-filled telephone connection only partly concealed Simonsen’s profound irritation as he said, “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I couldn’t care less how it casts the police. Tell me what you’re going to do if you’re attacked on the way home.”

“I’m the one who’s asking the questions.”

“No, you’re not. You’re the one who’s had a burglary. It’s your child who’s been abducted. It’s your car that’s been plowed into by a drunk driver. And what do you want then?”

The hesitation was two seconds longer than it should have been. Two seconds only magnified by the fact that Simonsen had hung up and thereby ended the interview.

CHAPTER 41

On Sunday, all hell broke loose.

The five doomed men stared at the reader from the front page of the
Dagbladet.
Each of them was pictured in his last few seconds except for one who was already dead. The thick blue nylon rope was clearly visible on all. Fear emanated from their eyes and sold more copies of the paper than the most notorious royal scandal ever had. No sympathy was to be found among the editorial staff. The headline clearly took a position against the victim and read succinctly, in thick black print,
JUDGMENT DAY.
The newspaper carried an insert of eight pages, a photo montage that displayed the film sequences Anni Staal had received almost frame by frame, so that none of the juicy details escaped the reading public.

Anni and the publisher were standing outside the main entrance of their workplace, waiting. It was nine o’clock and the street was deserted, misty, and gray in the cold morning.

Anni tried a third time: “Are you sure you don’t want me to participate?”

Her most senior boss gave a huge yawn. It had been a long night and he was tired. “Yes, Anni, I’m sure. You should show yourself and then leave. They shouldn’t think you’re hiding. I don’t want to risk them ordering a search for you or whatever it is they manage to think up. Tell me about the atmosphere.”

“The atmosphere?”

“In the newsroom, among the people, around. They say you can hear the grass grow.”

Anni Staal brushed the praise aside. It was laid on too thick. “They say so many things, but the links to our Web site are glowing red or whatever it is that links are. There have been one hundred thousand hits and that’s just the beginning. The whole IT department has been called in to manage the situation. They have already boosted our server capacity in order to hold down the video-download time.”

The director was uninterested in technology. “Smashing, smashing, but what are people thinking? I mean, when they have seen the videos. Is there support for our headline? Did we frame it correctly?”

“The film clip from the minivan with the one called Thor Gran hardens most hearts. You know, the one where he decides on his tasty little morsel—”

“Shush! I don’t want to hear that phrase again. Never again.”

“So you are typical. Almost everyone reacts like that.”

The director said sharply, “Let’s talk about something else.”

Anni ignored this order and went on: “Thor Gran has taken your language, dirtied what was clean. Now you can’t bear to use the words. You almost can’t bear to think them.”

“Now you’re a psychologist?”

“No, but I’ve been talking with someone who is.”

“Okay, you may be right. It still makes me sick.”

“But it’s also telling. People’s immediate reaction of sympathy goes quickly down the drain. The next time they see the images from the execution, it is with hardened eyes and a silent acceptance, or something closer to actual approval. I have been getting some e-mails.”

“Well, freedom of speech is there to be exercised, and there’s nothing in the law books about having to condemn murder.”

“And I can promise you that not many people will. Quite the opposite. But of course it’s the most outraged types who write. I tend to think that most people are not crying buckets over these victims. And I am sure that many people just like you have a sentence in the back of their heads that they don’t want to say and would very much like to forget when they form their opinions.”

The publisher smiled faintly. Then he glanced at his watch and thought longingly of his bed. He looked in vain down the street and saw nothing. They stood without speaking for a while, then he resumed the conversation.

“So keeping the news a secret worked?”

Anni hesitated before she answered, “Yes, I believe so. We took every precaution. Nighttime kiosk sales of the papers around Copenghaen were suspended and trusted people watched over the papers that were loaded on the night trains to the provinces. No employee was allowed to take any paper home with them, so the shock should have hit the country at about the same time. Were you afraid of a censure?”

“Not afraid exactly, but I feel you aren’t being completely clear, Anni. Did the news get out despite our best efforts?”

“I don’t really know. The police at least were taken by surprise and a number of officers on the periphery were openly puzzling over the fact that every time something significant happens in relation to the child-abuse murders, the state seems to be lagging far behind the events. Chief Inspector Simonsen doesn’t appear to have his foot on the gas. And the minister of justice was most certainly not forewarned. I heard the news on the radio at nine, where he ran the gauntlet at the Christiansborg parliamentary palace between several vociferous reporters. He was talking nonsense.”

“Poor man. First he is left behind, then slaughtered.”

“There’s an open season on politicians all year round and minister blood is one of the most dignified fluids one can press out of a story. It is something that results in personal prestige, and from time to time also a raise. Did you get any of that?”

“No, I’m tone-deaf when it comes to greedy scribblers. Tell me why you hesitated.”

“Not for any real reason. It just seems to me that this meeting has been a little too easy to arrange. You shouldn’t underestimate Helmer Hammer. He has powerful friends. Very powerful.”

“I don’t follow the connection.”

“Perhaps there isn’t one but we shouldn’t be blind to the fact that there are, shall we say, differing strands of opinion. We have seen this the past couple of days, and from time to time have stepped on some tender toes. For example, there have been discussions of making the travel industry financially responsible for any holidays where tourists end up getting too close to local children.”

The publisher was not impressed. “The travel industry. Give me a break.”

“Or banks, for transactions on the Internet with regard to child pornography. That’s also an idea that has been circulating and gaining in popularity. But look, your guests are here.”

Anni Staal pointed to the taxi that was just turning the corner. She had to poke at him to get him to look.

*   *   *

Helmer Hammer also had to poke his listener, and Poul Troulsen got himself an admonishing shove for his words about a welcome committee of dubious quality. On top of it all, Hammer leaned forward and saw through the window of the taxi that his fellow passenger had been right. If two people could be called a committee. He rubbed his eyes and suppressed a yawn. Sunday had barely started and he had already been up for more than five hours.

The telephone had rung at four o’clock and a voice that was familiar but that belonged to someone who on no account was supposed to contact him at home made him wide awake at once. The woman who had awakened him had several names. One of these she used in her highly skilled work in finance, and the other was used for more social activities. He was one of the very few people who knew both. He also knew that if one was in possession of a small fortune and had the right connections, she could be rented on a daily basis and that she was worth every penny. He listened and silently prayed to higher authorities that there was a natural explanation for her call, which went against all business ethics. His prayer was heard. She had a copy of the
Dagbladet
for him. Her penthouse apartment was nearby and they met halfway between. He got his newspaper and a kiss on the cheek. That he thereby owed her a large favor, she was far too smart to mention.

The order of the day for the following three hours was damage control, and it was not much of a consolation that he was able to ruin the sleep of a large number of other people. With call after call he gradually started to get something of a grasp on the situation.

By the time he collected Poul Troulsen in the taxi Hammer was therefore in a reasonable mood and was able to handle the invective that the detective directed at him.