by Lotte Hammer
Pauline Berg did not respond. This did not sound like something she should get mixed up in.
Konrad Simonsen turned eagerly towards Malte and Pauline as they came into the room. The tirade from Malte’s girlfriend had not been without effect, as he remembered the girl from a previous case and knew that she was neither hysterical nor unreasonable. From time to time he needed to draw heavily on Malte’s labour. Best to keep his girlfriend happy too.
“Thanks, Malte, for taking the time to drop by. You and Anita can go out for lunch at government expense. Do you mind being reimbursed later?”
Malte Borup looked like someone who had won the lottery. A free lunch would surely appease his girlfriend, and shorten the shopping trip considerably besides.
“Thanks a lot. No, Anita won’t mind being paid back later.”
“Great, so should we think about getting started? I asked you to come in because your database system or cross-reference program is simply more efficient and reliable than our memories. We’ll start by uncovering Andreas Falkenborg’s childhood and possibly his early adolescence. I want to see what you can conjure up out of the computer before the rest of us start running in every conceivable direction.”
Simonsen was referring to a computer that had been brought out so everyone could follow along on the screen. Malte Borup sat down.
“No offence, but why don’t you use the system yourself? I’ve written a whole interface where you can search in free text and issue SQL orders, if that’s what you want. Is it my manual that’s not very good?”
Poul Troulsen patted him on the shoulder.
“No, we’re the ones who aren’t very good—and too lazy besides. But we’ll take that up another time.”
Simonsen did have something to add.
“Because there are searches, and there are searches.”
Malte’s neck changed colour; this was a delicate subject with him. Despite that Simonsen expanded.
“The searches we are making, or rather are not making, are not quite as—shall we say, exhaustive?—as the ones you are responsible for.”
The student tried to defend himself.
“The Countess says that we will save the judges a lot of time by not asking for court orders, if we are sure that we don’t—”
“I don’t want to hear any more about that! Just concentrate on this. What can you find for us about Andreas Falkenborg’s childhood? I’m well aware that we don’t have too much at this point, but can you conjure up some reasonable witnesses for us to start with, even though it’s a long time ago?”
“You mean besides the maids?”
Malte Borup misunderstood when he didn’t receive a response.
“Is it wrong to say maids? There are two of them calling themselves that. Is it called domestic help nowadays?”
When he still did not receive a response, he turned to face them. The three detectives were astonished. None of them had heard anything about maids before this. Malte was a genius with a computer but seldom presented the information he gained from any angle related to solving a case. Simonsen spoke first.
“We didn’t know there were maids in his childhood home. How did you get that information?”
“Completely legally. Some municipalities are digitising their census record archives. It’s a research project in cooperation with the CPR registry and Copenhagen University. Rudersdal Municipality is part of the collaboration, and they have reached all the way back to the 1920s, long before the period you’re interested in.”
“So we can see who is registered as living at the address in Holte where the Falkenborg family lived when Andreas was a child?”
“Exactly, and I’ve also made a list of the maids. It’s in the system.”
“I don’t doubt that you have. Can you call up that list?”
Malte typed a command. Shortly after that a list of female names came up on his screen.
“There were eleven of them in the period from 1956 to 1967. Most of them were employed for one or two years, some for only a month. Should I see how many of them are still living?”
“Yes, please.”
“You’ll have to wait for the result, it may take a long time.”
A long time in Malte Borup’s universe was three minutes. The computer said that two of the maids were dead.
“Can you find out how old they were when they were employed by the Falkenborg family?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to wait again. If you’d said that before, I could have done it in one swoop.”
“We don’t mind waiting.”
This time however the student was cheated; the data appeared at once.
“That’s strange, they must have stored my records in a buffer. Maybe they’ve improved the system.”
Simonsen’s focus was elsewhere. “All aged nineteen to twenty-three . . . this looks promising. Malte, can you get us the current addresses and possibly telephone numbers too?”
“If they live in Denmark, that’s no problem. Otherwise it’s hard.”
“And then there is the very big question: what about pictures of them?”
Malte looked down at the corner of the screen, towards his computer’s clock, and answered hesitantly, “Pictures are not that easy.”
“But?”
“If they have a passport or driver’s licence or, well, something else, then there will be a picture, but normally it’s not digital, and then . . . it’s not that easy.”
“So what do you do in that case?”
The student squirmed, but buckled under the pressure of a meaningful pause left by Simonsen.
“Well, we have a service and return system.”
“Who is we?”
“A lot of us who work with computers on a daily basis. If we help each other out, we earn points. Or the other way around. Well, we call them Guilt or simply G. The system’s very efficient, and I have a lot of G.”
Simonsen could not conceal his dismay.
“You’re not telling me that you trade information from the police for G?”
“No, the Countess says that—”
“I don’t care what the Countess says. I say that under no circumstances do you sell data from our registries, regardless of whether you settle up in G or any other currency.”
“I don’t do that, I’m well aware that it’s strictly forbidden. I’ve earned every G I have by helping other people with computer problems and never by anything else.”
Simonsen cooled down.
“I’m very happy to hear that. What about the pictures?”
“Maybe I can get someone to scan the girls’ pictures and send them to me, and then we can run them through the LifeCycle program if you want an impression of how they looked when they were employed with the Falkenborg family. But that will only be an indication, remember, because the source will certainly not have much information.”
“What are we talking about in terms of time, Malte?”
“Half an hour to an hour. Anita will skin me alive.”
“I’ll talk to her, you get started in the meantime.”
“Okay, I'll call you when I’m ready. I mean, maybe you could use the time better . . . ”
They understood what he meant, and left him alone.
Twenty minutes later Malte called his audience back. The G system had again proved effective. The detectives had used the waiting time to chat together. Simonsen had started in on a large portion of salad after turning over the job of calling Malte Borup’s girlfriend to Pauline Berg. The two women were still talking, but by now it was about clothes and good, inexpensive stores, so everyone assumed the student would be let off the hook when he saw Anita. Meanwhile on the computer screen seven of the nine maids had been given a face, even if their digital rejuvenation had in several cases given them a bizarrely animated appearance. Nonetheless it was obvious which of the seven manipulated images was the most interesting. Poul Troulsen said the name.
“Agnete Bahn.”
Konrad Simonsen agree
d.
“It’s a bit grainy and strange, but it’s close enough, even though the three murdered girls and Jeanette Hvidt resemble each other more than they resemble her.”
Malte explained, “Her real appearance may deviate quite a bit from what you see here. The driver’s licence photo is small and does not contain much information.”
Simonsen asked, “How old was Andreas when she was employed?”
“Ten when she was first hired, and then eleven.”
“Where does Agnete Bahn live now?”
“Copenhagen. In Østerbro it appears.”
“Let’s go out and visit her.”
Pauline Berg’s reaction was quite different when shortly afterwards she saw the picture and the name of the Falkenborg family’s old housemaid.
“Oh, no—this can’t be right. Does she have anything to do with this case? I mean, was she in the house back then?”
Simonsen sensed problems.
“Do you know her?”
“Do I know her? The whole of Vice Squad does. This is Brothel Bahn.”
“Let me take a guess as to her occupation.”
“A madam on a large scale, treats her girls awfully, is more money-grubbing than Scrooge McDuck, and she despises the police. She has a lawyer in attendance at all times and consistently refuses to say anything at all to anyone at all. On top of that she is uncommonly unsympathetic unless she can see any advantage to herself in behaving better. In that case she can be quite pleasant, but I’ve only experienced it once.”
“You make it sound like she wears horns.”
“Maybe not, but she’s going to meet someone who does, and the sooner the better.”
“We’d like the opportunity to question her first.”
“You can forget that. She won’t say anything to the police, if for no other reason than to annoy us. And don’t think that you can appeal to her conscience, because she has none.”
“But I assume that she has a brothel. Is she still active? She must be over sixty.”
Malte interjected, “Sixty-four. Should I see if she has a criminal record?”
Pauline Berg answered, “She has a catalogue of crimes longer than your arm. Her establishment is on Gudhjemgade, a side street off Nordre Frihavnsgade, she lives on the second floor—and, I promise you, she is active. She won’t let go of the reins until the day the devil calls her down.”
“It sounds like we have a good way in here. A madam’s business rarely withstands close scrutiny from the police, and she loses nothing by helping us, if she can.”
“She calls her business a massage centre, of course, and forget about pressuring her—that’s been tried many times. She keeps everything in meticulous order: accounts, so-called employment, VAT, you name it—even the fire department couldn’t find anything when we set them on her once.”
“And you’ve met her personally?”
“Several times. The hag usually offers me employment. On the other hand that’s the only thing she likes to talk about.”
The slightly dirty grin this received from the men did not go unobserved by Pauline. She snapped, “And she’s like that with everyone. It’s one of the many ways in which she harasses people.”
“Will it help if you talk to her, do you think? Or would a strange face be better?”
“I don’t think it matters, but I would really prefer not to.”
Simonsen sent his troops out. Malte was released for further clothes-shopping with his girlfriend, Troulsen got the interview with Agnete Bahn, and Pauline Berg covered the remaining maids. To start with they would be contacted by phone in order to get a general picture of life in Andreas Falkenborg’s childhood home. Simonsen himself went to the Foreign Ministry, and what he had to do there he did not say.
By later that afternoon a picture had started to form of the environment in which Andreas Falkenborg had grown up. The summary took place in Simonsen’s office, though he was the last to arrive. He turned up ten minutes after the scheduled time, drenched after a summer shower but in a sunny mood.
“It seems that the American Army has gotten a move on, as they say. My friend at Slotsholmen has pulled a few strings, and the Americans have promised to expedite the investigation into the helicopter trip to DYE-5. It’s far from certain that this will result in anything, but we’ll get an official letter detailing the usual procedure with helicopter overflights at that date. That should be helpful in court.”
While he was speaking, he found a package of hand towels in a cupboard and started drying his trousers by pressing the towels against his thighs one after another, and then tossing them in the wastebasket when they could absorb no more water.
“Now, Poul, I’m anxious to hear how things went with you.”
Troulsen shook his head phlegmatically.
“Pauline was right, she was completely impossible. Spotted right away that I was from the police, and before I even introduced myself had fired a whole arsenal of swear words at my head. I finally had to shout to have any chance at all of telling her why I was there, but it made no impression on her. She is truly not a person with a well-developed sense of civic duty.”
“What did she say specifically?”
“That I could run and shit and fart back home to my sod house in Jutland. I’ve been living here over thirty years, so her ear for dialect must be good.”
“That was all?”
“Well, then I gave her my card, in case she changed her mind.”
Pauline Berg broke in.
“Give me one guess . . . she tore it to pieces and then gave you hers and offered you employment?”
“Yes, exactly as you say. She was very impudent.”
Simonsen asked, “So you received no impression of whether she had anything to tell us about her time with the Falkenborg family?”
“Yes, I did actually, because right before she slammed the door in my face, she made us an offer. If the tax authorities repay her the thirty-six thousand kroner they unfairly robbed her of four years ago, she had salacious things to tell about Andreas Falkenborg and his pestilential family. Something along those lines—it’s not word for word, but almost.”
Simonsen thought about it. The towels were used up, and he had folded the plastic packaging into a roll that now resembled a conductor’s baton, as if orchestrating his thoughts. The tempo was andante. After a while he asked, “Did you see whether or not she was open for business?”
“I saw a few scattered customers, but it wasn’t rush hour. She lives on the second floor besides, with a separate entrance, so I didn’t have the opportunity to inspect the establishment.”
Simonsen turned to Pauline Berg.
“And you say she’s very money-driven?”
“Greedy is an understatement.”
“Okay, we’ll probably crack down on her, but that will have to wait until Monday.”
Berg remained doubtful.
“I’m ready to bet a bottle of good red wine that you can’t.”
Her boss gestured towards the photographs of the three dead women displayed on his bulletin board.
“I don’t think they would like it if we took things easy.”
Pauline felt humiliated and instantly apologised. She missed the guiding presence of the Countess, who should have arrived long ago.
Simonsen gave up the topic of the brothel owner then and asked, “What about the other housemaids? I assume they weren’t quite as impossible as Agnete Bahn.”
Pauline Berg answered tonelessly, “No, they weren’t. The majority remember their time with the Falkenborg family well, and paint quite a uniform picture of the household. Alf Falkenborg, Andreas’s father, was a domestic tyrant, in a big way. He and he alone ruled the home, and the mother was completely cowed. He didn’t hesitate to give her a good thrashing occasionally, whereas he never laid a hand on his son. He also degraded his wife by openly having relationships with other women, even in their home, including with at least three of the maids we contacted, but I’ll ret
urn to that later. Elisabeth Falkenborg was hardly a lovable person either. Her husband’s infidelity, and perhaps simple jealousy too, resulted in her taking out her anger on whichever maid was employed at the time. Nothing they did was good enough. She’d peck around after them, just to find something to complain about.”
Troulsen asked, “Why didn’t they leave? It must have been unbearable.”
“There were a few who did. But for many of them it was not that easy. Two, for example, came from Funen and had no desire to go home any time before they had to. Besides, the Falkenborgs paid well, at least fifteen per cent above the norm for those days, and beyond that several of the maids were duped.”
She took a sip of water from a bottle, glanced through her notes and continued.
“Andreas Falkenborg feared his father but at the same time looked up to him. He was what the boy aspired to be, but also a potential threat—first and foremost to Andreas’s mother. At school Andreas got by reasonably well, but no more than that. He often brought friends home to play but the maids describe him as prissy, soft and childish for his age. In other respects the boy’s treatment of the maids was arrogant and snooty, a reflection of his parents’, and he told tales on the women to his mother at the slightest excuse. In general he was most attached to Elisabeth and slept in her bed until he was almost eight years old. The parents had separate bedrooms, by the way, I forgot to mention that.”
Troulsen said, “Yes, it sounds like a recipe for a psychopath.”
“And it gets worse. If Andreas did not live up to the demands his father placed on him, especially when it came to doing well at school, Alf took it out on his wife. He considered their son’s schoolwork to be her responsibility, so she had to pay when Andreas did badly. On at least two occasions the boy had to witness his mother being punished after he came home with mediocre marks in a couple of subjects.”
Pauline Berg stopped speaking briefly and took another sip of water.
“Yes, there are certainly goodies here for the psychologist. But I have another little gem too—Elisabeth Falkenborg was obsessed with the household staff having short nails, and if they couldn’t keep them in check themselves, then she did it for them. One of Andreas Falkenborg’s favourite tricks, which he learned as a little boy, was to maintain that they’d scratched him, and then his mother was right there with the scissors, to his great delight.”
