“Andreas Falkenborg is dead. He poured gasoline over himself and the inside of his van, a lot it sounds like. He is burned beyond recognition, but there is no doubt that it’s his car. The fire department and several patrol cars are on their way, but that will take some time. The officers that are there now just happened to be in the vicinity.”
The head of DSIS commented, “I’ll take care of that aspect personally, if it’s all right with you, Simon?”
“Yes, do that.”
No one reacted with particular dismay to the information about Falkenborg’s death. They seemed almost indifferent. Jeanette Hvidt’s fate was also pushed to the background. Only news about Pauline Berg was important. Simonsen thought however about Doctor Cold’s fun with a blowtorch, and shuddered. Then he shook the thought away and concentrated on the present. Redemption arrived ten minutes later with a call to his cell phone. He relayed the message quietly to his audience in the control room.
“They have Pauline now. She’s alive.”
CHAPTER 61
Although the rest of the evening was nothing but aftershock, it was exhausting for Konrad Simonsen and the Countess. First they were at the hospital, where they waited a long time before the doctors and Pauline Berg’s family granted them a minute with the patient. She smiled weakly when she recognised them; they could barely manage to return it. Then Simonsen insisted—even though he could barely stand up—on driving to Hundested, where he felt that he owed Rikke Barbara Hvidt a visit. Fate had been pitiless to the blind woman, and in the midst of all the joy that Pauline Berg had been rescued, Simonsen could not forget the woman who had paid such a high price for Andreas Falkenborg’s madness. But they arrived too late. Despite supervision, Rikke Barbara Hvidt had succeeded in biting an artery in two, while the staff at the nursing home thought she was sleeping. When her suicide attempt was discovered, she had already lost a lot of blood, and she passed away in the ambulance.
On their way home they passed Frederiksv?rk, and Simonsen had an impulse.
“Do you have any desire to give your cell phone away?”
“Sure, if you like. To whom?”
“To a young woman whose cell phone doesn’t work.”
The Countess abstained from further questions. They made a detour so that he could accomplish his errand. It did not take long. The rest of the way home the mood was flat, and neither of them said much. The Countess drove, Simonsen stared out into the night. Suddenly he said, “I guess Rikke was his sixth victim, poor woman.”
“You could say that.”
Conversation stopped there. A little later he commented, “The ones who are high up, types like Helmer Hammer and Bertil Hampel-Koch . . . They never get dirt on their hands. They make certain of that.”
She did not answer him; what was there to say?
“Do you think what we did was wrong?”
“No, Simon, I don’t. It’s disgusting and grim to think about, and I will do everything I can to repress the memory of it, but when I saw Pauline, I loved you more than anything on earth. You did the right thing, the only thing you could do.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
“But that’s how it is, and remember, you were not alone in it. I also bear my share of responsibility, or blame, if you will.”
“And I’m happy about that. Do you think we can put this behind us?”
“Yes, we can. We have each other, and we also have Pauline back among us, if we should ever be in any doubt that we did the right thing.”
Simonsen nodded into the darkness.
*
The same night Andreas Falkenborg’s unhappy childhood claimed its seventh and final victim. The man who left the bar and went into the alley to pee, himself had a number of murders on his conscience. Overdosing addicts to get them out of the way was one of his specialities; threatening and beating up bar owners, so they would buy even more of his boss’s illegal products, was another. Many considered him a stupid swine, but few dared tell him that. A hard-boiled criminal was not someone you chose to have a falling out with.
What only a few people knew was that the man kept a leg in each camp. He worked for Marcus Kolding’s organisation, which for years the police had kept under so-called Level One surveillance, reserved for the most influential, extended federations in the criminal underworld, while at the same time he was the highest-ranking informant the authorities had in the same organisation. Although he was not exactly part of Doctor Cold’s inner circle of dubious personnel, his tips from time to time produced excellent results. To some degree a blind eye was turned to his personal rap sheet, which he found advantageous. Now his life had been exchanged for that of a young officer.
In the alley the man held his beer glass in one hand and prepared to relieve himself with the other. After that there was a warm dampness around him, while a slight, almost inaudible sigh of relief escaped him.
The knife was thrust from behind into his neck and severed his windpipe before he could scream; there was only a faint rattle. The glass shattered when he fell; beer, urine and blood mixed into an ugly fluid that slowly seeped out over the pavement and made its way into the gutter.
There is a price to be paid for everything.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHORS