The Hanging: A Thriller (33 page)

“That is definitely not my conclusion, Officer Troulsen. You are getting ahead of yourself. The matter will be given a thorough consideration.”

“And when do you anticipate reaching a conclusion?”

“I think we should be able to do so relatively quickly. It is of considerable importance that the Gentofte County School District be a cooperative partner to the other public entities, not least to the police.”

“And by quickly you mean…?”

“I would rather not commit myself to a certain time frame.”

His mouth stretched upward by a couple of centimeters. It was a smile and Troulsen realized that the man was enjoying himself. He stood up.

“I would bet that when you were a child, you were one of the ones who ran straight out of the school yard as soon as there was a fight.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, I guarantee that you were scared shitless by fighting. Have you ever experienced any police brutality?”

The suggestion of physical violence sucked all confidence out of the director, who crumpled like a punctured balloon. He folded his arms across his chest and his voice shot up a couple of octaves.

“Are you threatening me?”

“It makes no difference if I am or not, and if you don’t want anything to happen to your nose, you’d do best to keep still.”

The man obeyed. Small beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and along his as-yet-unharmed nose. Troulsen’s gaze fell on a pair of scissors that lay on the table and for a split second he thought about cutting off a tuft of his hair and forcing him to eat it. Then his common sense returned and he limited himself to giving the man a light slap on the back of the head.

“Before I go I can inform you of the procedure for filing a complaint with the police. You turn in your paperwork to the nearest police station and the zoom—within only a few years you will receive a rejection.”

While he spoke he moved slowly to the door. He nodded a goodbye, smiling, relieved that he had managed to control his temper to a reasonable degree.

CHAPTER 52

The episode at Gentofte’s city hall had not vanquished Poul Troulsen’s sense of humor. He was extremely satisfied with the day’s developments so far and now all he hoped was that the woman in red would turn out to be cooperative, which their telephone conversation indicated she would be. He also, of course, hoped that she would have information that could advance the investigation. Preferably by a great big leap forward. They could certainly use the help.

Emilie Mosberg Floyd was an attractive woman in her early thirties. She had a well-proportioned and slender figure, her face was animated and pretty, her choice of clothes expensive and somewhat ill chosen. An orange-red shiny satin skirt, a short-sleeve cotton blouse in the same color, and a cropped jacket in a roughly woven wool that alternated between orange and purple in a stylized pattern with tulips. Her black shoes would have been appropriate if she were going hiking.

She greeted him at the door of her large brick house and showed him to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. The initial pleasantries were quickly dispatched. She was the first to change the subject.

“You want to know about Helene and Per Clausen. You’ll have to excuse me switching to this so abruptly but I only have half an hour and then I have to be at work.”

She smiled winningly. Her teeth were very even and the green watchful eyes were lively. Her words had a teasing charm.

“Yes, I do. You knew them both?”

“Yes, I did, but mostly Per. My relationship to Helene was secondary. She was friends with my little sister, not me. They were in the same year at school, but you know that.”

The answer was a little surprising and sounded promising. Troulsen was definitely more interested in the father than the daughter and he was not without a sense of anticipation. However, he forced himself to proceed methodically.

“Perhaps you could tell me a little about your own background first?”

She nodded.

“That sounds reasonable. So, I was born and raised here in Gentofte. In 1992 I went to the university and began my medical studies. The following year my little sister and I had a bad accident in my father’s car. I was half drunk and fell asleep at the wheel. It was during summer vacation. We were both badly hurt and our recovery took almost a year. But the psychological damage was the worst. When I resumed my studies, I was still not fully recovered. I had problems concentrating and frequent crying fits. One day I was visited by a psychiatrist by the name of Jeremy Floyd, who was the chief physician at the Sexology Clinic at the National Hospital. Even though my problems did not fall within his area of specialization, he had promised one of my instructors to give me fifteen minutes of his time, primarily to urge me to seek professional help. Four months later we were married and it changed my life. I bore and raised our two sons and studied at the same time. For a couple of years I worked constantly if I wasn’t sleeping. In 2001 I graduated and was then employed at the National Hospital, where I am doing my residency in cardiology. Last year Jeremy died in an accident. His other great passion other than his family was mountain climbing, and it killed him. Aconcagua took him.”

She glanced at him and Troulsen nodded. He assumed that Aconcagua was a mountain but did not want to interrupt her in order to ask. She went on, but only briefly: “The past few years I have been alone with the children, who right at this moment happen to be on a camping trip.”

After giving him the information about her children’s whereabouts she had apparently reached the end of her narrative. Her stressed expression was exaggerated when she checked her watch. Troulsen ignored it. Instead, he gave her a couple of key words: “Helene and Per Clausen?”

She emptied her coffee cup and refilled it, starting to talk again at a slightly faster clip.

“Helene Clausen was a friend of my little sister, as I mentioned. My sister’s name is Katja, Katja Mosberg, and she lives in Austria. Her partner is a Norwegian who works for the foreign service—the Norwegian one, that is. Helene started in Katja’s class in 1993. She came from Sweden, where she had lived for a few years with her mother and stepfather. Helene was shy and introverted but she and Katja got along well and they spent quite a bit of time together. Among other things they did their homework together and complemented each other well. Helene was uniquely gifted in mathematics, physics, and chemistry—anything to do with natural science. On the other hand, she was not so good at Danish, probably because of her many years in Sweden. Katja was just the opposite: good at Danish and bad at math. Unfortunately, the bad-math gene is something we share and you might say it’s the reason that I got to know Per, because when Katja and Helene were in ninth grade I was in my first year of medical school and my worst subject by far was statistics. All my fellow students were sweating over anatomy or some of the more traditional medical classes, but statistics threatened to cut short my career before it had even begun. I simply didn’t understand it and even today I start to feel ill if someone mentions regression analysis or significance level.”

She smiled as if she wanted to apologize for her lack of statistical knowledge. Troulsen thought that if he ever developed heart problems he wouldn’t care if his surgeon could handle probabilities. Again she glanced at her watch, this time without trying to hide it, and he knew they would have to wrap it up soon.

“Katja talked to Per about me. She has always been a busybody, making arrangements for other people, but in this case there was a good outcome. Per was very happy about Katja and Helene’s friendship and he was also a sweet man who liked being helpful if he could. He started tutoring me. One or two evenings a week, for free. He didn’t even want to hear the mention of money. My father was happy to pay for anything that had to do with his daughters’ education. But back then Per was making a good salary himself.”

She shook her head and corrected herself: “No, I take that back. He wouldn’t have taken any money even if he had been as poor as a church mouse. He was like that. Always helpful.”

Troulsen glimpsed a genuine tenderness in her for her old tutor and it wasn’t the first time he had seen something like it. Per Clausen was apparently the kind of man who touched the people around him.

“Well, the end of this whole thing was that I got through my final examination with a perfectly respectable passing grade, which I had Per to thank for. That summer I had the accident and then Helene died, as you know. Katja and I were the only ones who knew her background, who knew that she was most likely committing suicide when she drowned. And Per, of course, but I only became sure of that a few years ago.”

She looked up and met his eyes. “You know that Helene was abused by her stepfather?”

Troulsen confirmed this and she went on.

“The following years I didn’t see Per. I thought of him from time to time and was planning to look in on him but it never happened. An excuse, however weak, is also that I had my hands full those years with two toddlers and medical-school studies. But before I get to how I met Per again I think I have to tell you a little about my late husband.”

She paused until Troulsen indicated that he accepted this change in priorities. He nodded, which he would have done whatever she had proposed. She was a wonderful storyteller, the kind where all you had to do was lean back and listen.

“My husband’s name as you know was Jeremy Floyd. His father was from Canada and his mother from Denmark. He spent the first years of his life in Quebec and then his family moved here. He received his medical training at Århus and after that he went on to specialize in psychiatry at the National Hospital. His greatest interest was in human sexual behavior, and after his doctorate in the psychology of sexual criminals he was appointed chief physician at the Sexology Clinic. In addition to his job at the hospital he had a private practice that he ran here from the house, where he would help victims of incest and later anyone who had suffered abuse as a child. In the beginning, taking on private patients was mainly a way for him to feed his scientific curiosity. By working with both perpetrators and their victims, he closed the circle, as he put it, but after a while the private practice took over and he ended up with long waiting lists. He also had trouble saying no and—I may as well just say this—he also liked the money.”

She stretched her hand out for the thermos flask and shook it hopefully. It was empty. She got up and took a couple of cans of soda from the fridge, placing them on the table but strangely enough without opening them. Troulsen was not tempted. He didn’t like cola.

“My sister’s old ninth-grade class got together the fall of 2003. At the reunion, Katja happened to hear that Per had been doing badly ever since Helene’s death. She heard he had lost his job, was drinking and generally falling apart. When she told me, I got serious about going to see him. Perhaps you could call it a repayment. He had helped me when I needed it, and now the time had come to pay him back. I think I visited him half a dozen times. He was often drunk or half drunk but always happy to see me. We talked mostly about Helene although there wasn’t much to say so our talks became endless repetitions of the same sad themes, and if I can be completely honest I started to get a bit tired of the visits even though I was the one who initiated them. But then I had an idea. It was something close at hand, of course. I convinced Jeremy to take Per on as a patient. It was difficult, but I succeeded. In his own way Per was also a victim of abuse although he had not suffered it personally, so it took a great deal of pressure on my part to get Jeremy to try it out. It was even harder to get Per to accept the role of patient and at first I didn’t think it would work. But Jeremy was clever and driven once he had become professionally involved, and I also think that Per realized after a while that he needed the help. At any rate they eventually embarked on a course of therapy, and there were only a few times when I had to go and get Per because he had missed an appointment. There were two times I had to put him through detox. He wouldn’t hear of taking any Antabuse.”

Troulsen observed, “There was one time you picked him up at a kiosk in Bagsværd Hovedgade?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“You were driving a silver-colored Porsche?”

“Yes, that’s also right. It’s my dad’s. I have an Audi myself.”

Troulsen nodded. That made perfect sense.

“We’ve combed through hospital records for ambulatory alcoholics. But Per Clausen was never admitted as far as we can tell.”

She smiled somewhat sheepishly.

“Well, both Jeremy and I worked at the National Hospital. Let’s just say that on a couple of occasions he got a spare bed. A little outside of the regular system.”

Troulsen groaned inwardly. It was just this kind of thing that made an investigation so difficult.

“Anyway, there was more and more order in Per’s life, the more he and Jeremy talked. The therapy helped. But there isn’t much of a concrete nature that I know about the course of the therapy because Jeremy never discussed his patients. They demanded privacy and Jeremy was happy to give it to them. The patients had their own entrance and I was basically not even supposed to show myself in my own garden when they came or went. I did learn a little bit later on but paradoxically it was through Per. After a year of consultation he joined a self-help group.”

She stopped. The word hung in the air. Also the small tremor in her voice when she said it. She was far from stupid and must have thought about the importance of her knowledge for a long time, and Troulsen noticed how his resentment of her suddenly grew explosively inside him. He had to exert a great deal of control to remain calm.

“Why haven’t you contacted us?”

The question leaped straight over a great many things and she could easily have deflected it in the first round but she made no attempt to do so.

“I don’t really know. Maybe I just hoped I wouldn’t get involved. And I don’t have any names of the people involved in the group. I’m not even sure how many there were.” She stared straight out in front of her before she resumed. “There’s no doubt in my opinion that it was wrong to kill those people. Very wrong and Jeremy would also have thought so, but I’m not sure that it has anything to do with…” She didn’t finish the sentence. Perhaps because she herself didn’t believe it.