The Hanging Girl

8

Thursday, May 1st, 2014

The breakfast table had been set for three people by the window overlooking the harbor area. Rose was already sitting with her eyes lost somewhere out over the sea where the eye could never quite reach.

“Good morning,” Assad tried bravely. “Well, you’re looking pale in a bit more of a babylike way today, Rose. So at least we’re making progress, as the camel said to the Arabian camel when it grumbled about being whipped.”

Rose shook her head and pushed the plate away.

“Shall I grab you something from the pharmacy?” Assad suggested.

The same shaking of the head.

“We know it was stupid that you saw that DVD with Habersaat, right, Carl?” Assad grunted.

Carl gave a feeble nod, thinking it would be better if the guy would put a sock in it or at least wait until after the first coffee of the day. Couldn’t he see that she wasn’t feeling any better than when she’d gone to bed?

“It hasn’t got anything to do with the film,” she said. “I didn’t have a problem watching it even though it was sickening.”

“What, then?” asked Assad as he piled crispbread on his plate.

Her eyes disappeared into the distance once again.

“Leave Rose in peace and pass me the butter, Assad.” Carl looked despondently at the already almost empty dish. “Just a little bit of what’s left that you aren’t planning to use yourself.”

He apparently didn’t hear the comment. “Do you know what, Rose? Maybe it would be good if you said what’s going on in that head of yours,” he said crunching, crumbs flying left and right. It was a good thing they didn’t share breakfast every day.

Assad momentarily fixed his eyes on the small group of demonstrators with banners in preparation for the day’s May 1st celebrations in the square in front of the Brugsen supermarket. Stronger Together, declared one of the banners.

“Do you also think Bjarke Habersaat was gay?” he said, without moving his eyes.

Carl frowned. “Why are you saying that? Do you have some information on it?”

“Not directly, no. But his landlady was definitely pettable and really not bad-looking, in my opinion.”

“Pettable,” what the hell sort of expression was that? Speak for yourself, he thought.

“What of it?”

“He was only thirty-five, a relatively young man, who she obviously didn’t have any objections to. No doubting she was ripe for the picking.” He looked at Carl like someone who’d stuck his well-formed nose in a hornet’s nest and gotten away with it. Pretty smug.

“I don’t have the slightest damn idea where you’re going with this, Assad.”

“If she and Bjarke had something going on, his room wouldn’t have looked like it did. She’d have fussed over him; you saw yourself how she was. She’d have fussed and flapped, aired his bed, emptied his ashtrays, and whipped his laundry away to have some love and affection in her life!”

“Really, you don’t say? Interesting! But in that case, I don’t see why they couldn’t have had sex in other parts of the house. It doesn’t prove anything, Assad. Your imagination is running wild.”

Assad tilted his head slightly. “Yes, you could say that. You mean, then, that they could’ve had sex among the family photos and lace doilies with ping-pongs?”

“Pom-poms, Assad. Yes, why not? But why is the question even of any importance?”

“I also think he was gay because he only had magazines under his bed with images of men with tight trousers and leather caps on the front cover. That, and all the posters of David Beckham on the wall.”

“Okay, you could’ve said that in the first place. But what about it? Isn’t it totally irrelevant?”

“Yes, it is. But I don’t think his mom liked it and for the same reason didn’t like to visit where he lived. He wasn’t a pretty boy with cookies in a crystal bowl, worshipping his mommy like a goddess or who loved to go shopping with her. He was more of the tough sort.”

Carl pushed his bottom lip forward, nodding. A possibility, certainly, whatever use it might be. As far as he was concerned, Bjarke Habersaat’s sexual preferences could involve sex with identical Andalusian twins over sixty-five, if it did it for him. Nothing could interest him less, so long as the rolls lying there invitingly in front of him were still warm.

Assad turned to Rose. “Who zipped your mouth up? You normally have an opinion about everything under the sun. Whatever’s wrong, just spit it out, Rose. I can feel it. If it wasn’t the suicide on the DVD that shook you up, then what? Something did.”

She turned her head toward them slowly with the same suffering and open look as June Habersaat the night before. But Rose didn’t cry. On the contrary, she looked strangely dry-eyed and composed. It was a look that expressed that this was something she wanted to be left alone with but wasn’t being given the chance to.

“I don’t want to talk about it even if I do tell you, okay? I couldn’t handle watching it because Habersaat was the spitting image of my dad.” Then she pushed her chair away and left them.

Carl sat for a while staring down at the table.

“I don’t think you should dig deeper there, Assad.”

“Okay. Was there something special about her dad?”

“Nothing other than that he was ground to a pulp up at the workplace in Frederiksværk where Rose also worked. That’s all.”

* * *

The community hall was expectedly accessible and welcoming, situated in the middle of the main street of Listed, cutting the town in two halves with the fishermen’s cottages out toward the sea and the newer additions in toward the land.

Listed Community Hall written short and sweet on the yellow façade. That sort of summed it up.

As announced in an unattractive and misplaced glass-fronted notice board, the elderly residents of Listed were offered line dancing, Nordic walking, and pétanque, while the children were offered the chance of a bonfire and baking bread over the fire, softball, and carving Halloween pumpkins. There was also a short account from the civic association about the present problems and hopes of the town. Should there be a residency criterion for the homeowners of the town? Should the bench by Mor Markers Gænge road be replaced? Was there enough money to build a pontoon bridge by the bathing area?

Exclusively local questions, nothing at all about a May 1st meeting here or anywhere else on their way across the island other than Metal Bornholm having erected a bouncy castle on something that, God help us, they’d called Chicken Mother, somewhere or other in Almindingen forest.

Here in the community hall on this remote little spot in the summer paradise people gathered for events big and small, and it was here that less than twenty-four hours ago one of the better citizens had faced the fatal consequences of his poor judgments in life.

Carl recognized the women who greeted them from Habersaat’s film.

“Bolette Elleboe,” one of them introduced herself in an almost understandable Bornholm dialect. “I’m the substitute accountant and live just at the back, so I’m the keyholder.” She seemed self-assured but not comfortable with the situation. The other woman introduced herself as Maren, chair of the civic association, her sad eyes revealing that she could do without this just now.

“Did you know Habersaat privately?” he asked as they greeted Rose and Assad.

“Yes, very well,” answered Bolette Elleboe. “Maybe too well for our own good.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She shrugged her shoulders, leading them into the meeting hall, a light room with certificates and paintings in glorious disarray on the white walls, and from where at one end of the room, through a pair of panoramic windows, there was a view out to her back garden. They sat here at a laminate table, the coffee ready and waiting.

“We probably should’ve been aware that this could happen one day,” the chairwoman said quietly. “That it finally happened yesterday is just too gruesome to think about. I’m really still rather shaken by it. Christian probably did it because so few came, I think. It could be a punishment for all of us in the community.”

“Nonsense, Maren,” interjected Bolette Elleboe, turning toward Carl. “That’s typical Maren, such a gentle and impressionable soul. Habersaat did it because he was tired of the man he’d become, and that’s the way it was, if you want my opinion!”

“You don’t seem especially shocked, but why not exactly? It must’ve been a very violent event to witness, wasn’t it?” asked Rose.

“Listen, darling,” said Bolette Elleboe. “I’ve worked as a social worker in the back of beyond in the settlements in Greenland for five years, so it takes more than that to shock me. I don’t doubt that I’ve seen more shotguns used for the wrong reason than most. But of course it affected me. You just have to move on, though, right?”

Rose sat silently for a moment and observed her, stood up, and walked over to the window overlooking the street, turned around to face the small gathering, raised her index finger on her left hand up to her temple, pretended to shoot, and fell a step to the side.

Rose looked at Bolette Elleboe. “Was it here and like that that it happened?”

“Yes, I guess. You can just look at the floor and see the remains of the stain. They won’t get me cleaning it anymore. I’ll be calling a cleaning company.”

“You seem irritated, Bolette. Is it because he did it here?” asked Assad, heaping sugar in his cup along with a few drops of coffee from the thermos.

“Irritated? You know what, it’s just bad karma that he shot himself in this room. He could at least have done it at home or gone down to the cliffs. I don’t think it was very considerate of our little hall that he did it here.”

“Bad karma?” Assad shook his head of curls uncomprehendingly.

“Would you perhaps find it especially cheerful to have to sit in this room at association meetings and eat while still envisioning what happened here in front of you?”

“That can only be the case for you two. There weren’t so many of you after all from the association at the reception, right?” Rose said pointedly.

“No. But there is still a hole in the painting and a wreck of a wall at the back, isn’t there?”

Bolette Elleboe certainly wasn’t thrown off-balance easily.

“Right! But at least we’ll finally get that wall plastered after the huge hole the technicians left when they scraped the bullet out. I’ve actually been agitating for that for years, so that’s something at least. Look how ugly the wall is. It’s made of aerated concrete, how shabby could it be! So thanks for that, Habersaat, you did something useful.”

Cynicism was apparently thriving out here in the wild east.

“Don’t take any notice of Bolette,” the chairwoman almost whispered. “She is just as shaken up by this as I am. We’ve just all got our own way of dealing with it.”

“Try and stand like you did before, Rose,” said Assad as he got up and stood in front of her. “Now I’m a witness and you’re Habersaat. I want to . . .”

But Rose didn’t hear anything. She just stood, staring at the painting that the bullet had hit. Not because it was a piece of art that would go down in history. Just a sun, branches, and birds in flight.

“Yes, he hit the bird flying there, right in the bull’s-eye. Strange, it didn’t fall down.” Bolette laughed. “But at least we’re free from that eyesore.”

“You don’t like the painting either, then?” asked Assad as he approached. “It’s really good, but not as good as the painting of the beach next to it, is it?”

“I think you need to clean the sleep from your eyes, my friend,” she answered. “The man is a fake. He could paint ten of those in a day.”

Rose looked away from the wall. “I’m just going out to get some fresh air.”

Around the bullet hole in the middle of the bird, there were remains of cranial splinters and brains from the man who reminded her of her father, so it was understandable enough.

“That’s a very young woman for this sort of work,” the chairwoman said empathetically.

“I guess.” Carl nodded. “But don’t be fooled by her age or the liquid steel that flows through her veins. But tell me, what do you know about Habersaat? We’ve just arrived from Copenhagen, you understand, so our information about him as a private person is still thin.”

“I think Christian was a good sort,” the chairwoman said. “He just wanted to do so much more than he could, and that impacted the family. He was a uniformed policeman, not in the crime unit, so why did he do all that? That’s what I don’t understand.” She stared ahead thoughtfully. “It has affected Bjarke most of all, the poor boy. I don’t think it’s been easy for him with that mother.”

The two women don’t know he’s dead, thought Carl, sending Assad a warning look to keep quiet so they could keep on the trail. As Carl saw things, they could still manage to catch the evening ferry home. Bjarke’s death was a case for the Bornholm Police and the rest was useless to dig up further anyway. They had done what they could, Rose had been heard, and now she’d quit. All in all, it was going to be the evening ferry home.

“So it’s maybe the mother’s fault that Bjarke has committed suicide,” Assad said anyway.

A second passed and both women sat there with their eyebrows raised halfway up their foreheads.

“God, no,” exclaimed the chairwoman, horrified.

They sat very quietly while Carl updated them. Damn Assad’s outspokenness.

“They weren’t really on speaking terms, as far as I’ve heard. Bjarke was homosexual and his mother hated it. As if she was a novice under the sheets herself,” said Bolette Elleboe.

“What did I tell you.” Assad’s face lit up.

“You said she wasn’t a novice. But she was single, so there’s no harm in that, is there?” asked Carl.

The two women exchanged glances. Obviously there were widely known and juicy stories circulating about his wife.

“She swarmed around like a little bee while she and Habersaat were together,” came the poisonous response from the chairwoman. Her angelic mask had finally slipped.

“How do you know that? Wasn’t she discreet?”

“Probably,” answered Bolette Elleboe. “You never saw her actually going with anyone, but she was suddenly so sweet-tempered. Then you knew why.”

“Did she seem in love?”

She gave out a couple of grunts, the question obviously amusing her. “In love? No, more that she seemed satisfied. Orgasms, you know. And that was something she wasn’t getting at home, if you ask me. Those she worked with were certainly not in any doubt that she was up to something with all the long, long lunch breaks she suddenly took. Her car was also seen parked outside her sister’s house in Aakirkeby when her sister wasn’t at home. One person I know, who lives on the street, says that she met a man outside the front door there and that it definitely wasn’t Habersaat. He looked too young.” Bolette Elleboe laughed quietly for a moment, but then toned her face down and changed character. “She never helped her husband get back on course at home, if you ask me. So they were both to blame for it all. Alberte case or not, I’m sure she’d have left him anyway.”

“It was really a blow to hear about Bjarke,” said the chairwoman. She hadn’t moved on.

“No, it wasn’t good news. But the girl killed in the hit-and-run, Alberte, what about her?” asked Assad. “Do you know something about her, too, something not in our papers, do you think?”

They both shrugged their shoulders.

“Well, we can’t know what it says in your papers, but we know something. It is a small island after all, and word gets about when something like that happens.”

“So, what . . . ?” Assad gave his coffee cup yet another spadeful of sugar. Was there really room for more?

“She was apparently a sweet girl, who’d probably been given a little too much freedom. Nothing out of the ordinary, but sometimes things could get a bit steamy up there at the folk high school when no one was keeping an eye on the youngsters; that’s the way they are,” said Bolette. “The girl had a couple of different guys within a short time at any rate, or so people say.”

“People?” resounded Assad’s voice from within his cup.

“My nephew, he’s the groundskeeper at the school, said that she flirted with a couple of guys, as girls in the first throws of love are prone to do. Walks hand in hand down in Ekkodalen valley behind the school and that sort of thing.”

“I think that sounds rather innocent. Is there anything about that in the report, Assad?” asked Carl.

Assad nodded. “Yeah, a little. One of the boys was a student at the school. It was just a bit of fun, but she was also seeing someone else outside the school for a little longer.”

Carl turned to the women. “Someone you know about?”

They shook their heads.

“What does the report say about him, Assad?”

“Nothing other than that they tried to clear up his identity without any luck. A few of the girls from the folk high school spoke about the guy not being from the school, but that because of him Alberte would sit and stare into thin air for hours on end as if she couldn’t care less about anything else.”

“Did Habersaat’s investigation come any closer to identifying the man, do you know?”

Now both women and Assad shook their heads.

“Hmm, that’ll have to rest for a while. As I understand it, Habersaat is obsessed with a hopeless case that wasn’t even his. The wife leaves him, taking the son with her, and the people here in the town offer him no support. A hit-and-run driver and the death of a young woman change everything for him, which is a little hard for me to understand as a policeman. We’ve tried to speak with June Habersaat, who isn’t very keen to talk about the whole situation and also rather uncompromising concerning her husband. It seems like you know her pretty well, Bolette. Are you in contact with her?”

“Heavens, no. We were good friends once when she lived a few hundred meters down the road, where Habersaat has lived since all this happened. But when she left him it sort of phased out. Of course, I’ve met her at her work selling tickets, ice cream, and whatnot up in Brændegårdshaven Amusement Park, but otherwise I haven’t spoken to her in years. She became strange after all that with her husband and the Alberte case. But perhaps her sister, Karin, can tell you more. She lived for a while with June and the son in the house on Jernbanegade in Aakirkeby. It was originally their parents’ but it obviously all got too much for the sister. Karin lives in Rønne now, I think. Try visiting Uncle Sam down at number 21 as well. He was probably the one who had most contact with Habersaat in the later years.”

Carl looked over at Assad, who was frantically taking down notes. Notes that they could hopefully lock away in the archive. “Just one more thing,” he said. “In the film that was made here yesterday we have one person registered who disappeared from the hall just after Habersaat committed suicide. Do you know who he was?”

“Oh, that’s Hans,” answered Bolette. “He’s just a local simpleton who runs errands for people in the town. He comes up here whenever there are free drinks and snacks. You won’t get anything sensible out of him.”

“Where can we find him, do you know?”

“At this time of day? Try the bench behind the smokehouse. Just across the road and to the right of Strandstien road. There’s a flat grey building with a couple of smoke ovens at the end. The bench is in the garden at the back. He’ll probably be sitting there, whittling or drinking beer, he normally is.”

* * *

They caught sight of Rose some way out on the horizon as they swung down Strandstien road. She was standing on the edge of some flat cliffs that only just stood above the water, and appeared strangely lost, as if the world had suddenly become too much for her.

They stood for a moment watching her. It wasn’t the strong and quarrelsome Rose they were used to.

“How long has it been since Rose’s dad died?” asked Assad.

“It’ll be a good few years now. But obviously not something she’s finished with.”

“Shall we send her back to Copenhagen?”

“Why? I assume we’ll all be sailing back tonight. We can deal with those we need to talk with on the telephone from home. Just the sister and maybe some of those at the school.”

“Tonight? You don’t think we should carry on here on the island, then?”

“What for, Assad? The technicians have searched Habersaat’s house, so from that angle I don’t expect anything groundbreaking, and there hasn’t been anything concrete to cling to yesterday or today. Not to mention that Habersaat made this case his life’s mission, despite which he was still unable to solve it. How should we be able to do it in a couple of days, more or less? We’re talking about something that happened almost twenty years ago, Assad.”

“Hey, there’s the man they were talking about.” Assad pointed toward a scrunched-up figure with a collection of beers on a white garden bench behind the smokehouse chimneys. There wasn’t much you could hide from each other in such a small community.

“Howdy,” Assad said jauntily as he sauntered through the garden gate. “So, you’re sitting here, Hans. Just like Bolette said you would be.”

Good try, Assad, but the man didn’t deign to acknowledge him with a single glance.

“You’re sitting here relaxing, I suppose. It’s a nice view.”

Still no reaction.

“Okay, you don’t want to talk to me, but then you brought it on yourself. It suits me fine.” He nodded to Carl as he turned on a hose and rinsed his hands. Carl looked at his watch. It was prayer time.

“Just go after Rose; this’ll only take ten minutes.” Assad smiled.

Carl shook his head. “I think she needs to be left to herself just now. I’ll toddle on down the road and think things through while you do that. But, seriously, Assad—do you think this is a good place to pray? Everyone can see you. Do you even know if there’s anyone home in the house there?”

“If they haven’t seen a Muslim pray before, then it’s maybe about time, Carl. The grass is soft and the man here doesn’t want to talk with me. How hard can it be?”

“Okay, suit yourself, Assad. Want me to get your rug?”

“Thanks, but I’ll use my jacket. That’ll have to be good enough in the open air,” he said, taking his socks off.

* * *

Carl hadn’t even managed twenty meters down the road before Assad stood in the qiyam position, reciting. It looked very harmonious and natural against the blue sky. Carl would unfortunately probably never come that close to God.

He turned his head toward the figure on the cliffs standing motionless like a sphinx with clouds dancing over it. Why is she just standing there? he wondered. What’s going through her head? Is it grief or are there so many secrets that there’s hardly room for them? Or is it the case with Alberte and Habersaat?

Carl stopped with an odd feeling in his body. A few days ago he’d been on home turf and had no knowledge of Habersaat or Alberte. To put it bluntly, he didn’t give a damn about towns like Svaneke and Listed and Rønne, and now suddenly here he was feeling so strangely alone and abandoned. Here of all places, on the extreme edge of Denmark, he was struck by the realization that people couldn’t run from themselves, regardless of where they were. The feeling that you always carried the past with you, and that it was only yourself that could be held responsible for who you were.

He shook his head. How miserable it felt. Had he really thought that he’d ever be able to forget himself and what had made him who he was?

Wasn’t this the way it was for most people? The time they lived in was an open invitation to a cocktail of self-denial and self-glorification. And if you didn’t like the situation you were stuck in, there was always the option of running away from yourself: running away from opinions, from your marriage, from your country, from old values, from trends that had otherwise meant so much yesterday. The problem was just that out there, among all the new, you found nothing of what you were looking for deep down inside, because tomorrow it would all be meaningless again. It had become an eternal and fruitless hunt for your own shadow, and that was pitiful.

Bloody pitiful. Was he really no different?

Damn, you’re such an idiot, thought Carl, inhaling the smell of half-rotten seaweed and salt as the thoughts were still whirring about. Why did he feel like this and why couldn’t he have a serious relationship with anyone? Hadn’t Lisbeth been both sweet and understanding with him after the breakup with Mona? She’d actually been a really wonderful woman, hadn’t she? But had he been good enough to her? Strictly speaking he’d let her down and turned his back on her the very moment he met her. A fact she could have cast up and reproached him for, but she hadn’t. So who had let whom down?

And what now? In the meantime there had been others like Lisbeth. But was there even enough room in his life for a real relationship? Was there anyone who could keep hold of someone like him?

He thought that at least he had Morten and Hardy. But still that seed of doubt. And then there was Jesper and maybe even Assad and the girl out there on the cliffs.

But would they still be there in the morning? Was he worth keeping hold of?

Carl looked out over the pulse of the waves for a moment before he made the decision, pulled his cell out, and scrolled over the numbers.

Mona’s number was still there. Almost three years without her and she was still just a little touch away.

A moment of hesitation as his index finger rested on the screen, and then he pressed.

It only took ten seconds before her voice said his name. So his number was still on her cell. Was that a good sign?

“Are you there? Hello, Carl, say something,” she said so naturally that it almost paralyzed him. “Come on, I can see that it’s you who’s calling. Did you dial a wrong number?”

His answer came quietly. “No no, I didn’t. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Okay.”

“Yes, you probably think it a bit strange but I’m standing over in Listed by Svaneke just now, looking out to sea, and just wish that you were here with me.”

“Svaneke! Funny, because just now I’m at the opposite end of Denmark, in Esbjerg actually, so for that reason alone it would be a bit difficult.”

For that reason alone, thought Carl. Not exactly welcoming.

“Obviously. I just wanted to say it. Maybe we can meet up when I get home.”

“You could try and drop me a line, right? Well, take care, Carl. Don’t fall in the Baltic. I hear it’s really cold.”

That was that, and it didn’t feel particularly good.

When he came back, Assad was sitting on the bench chatting with the man.

“He’s crazy, this one,” said the man, chuckling in the voice of a child. “Lying on the floor with his arse in the air talking gobbledygook.”

Assad laughed. “This guy thought that I was trying to bum a beer. Now he knows that that’s not something someone like me would do.”

“No, he doesn’t drink. Not even on May 1st. Are you heading to the demonstration in Rønne? I’ve been once before but now I vote for the Danish Party, just like someone I know. It is Denmark we live in, after all. So does he, the one who doesn’t drink, right?” he said, laughing.

“Hans has told me that he knows everyone in town. He didn’t like what Habersaat did to himself yesterday, so he ran. But nonetheless he didn’t like him.”

“Yes, Habersaat! He’d lost his marbles! I’m twice as intelligent as he was. At least.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Carl.

“So beautiful, his wife. Yes, she really was. I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful. And still he let her get away, the stupid idiot. Yes, I saw her round and about in town with some of the fishermen, and also once up on Knarhøj with someone else. Habersaat was an idiot. Everyone was kissing her.”

He stretched his neck. “Hey! That woman you’re waiting for is coming over. Watch out, here she comes.”

He necked back a huge gulp from his beer and pointed over to Rose, who nodded back. Ruddy cheeked and with windswept hair, and obviously about to interrupt them in what they were doing.

“Just a second, Rose. Assad is on to something here,” Carl said, turning back to the man on the bench.

“Hello, Hans, I’m Assad’s friend. I’m actually a nice guy but I’m also inquisitive. These fishermen you say she kissed, do you know some of them? I’d like to chat with them.”

“There aren’t any fishermen left in town. Not them at any rate.”

“But you also mentioned that June Habersaat met a guy up at . . . what was it called, was it Knarhøj? Right, do you happen to know his name at least? Because if so, then I’d like to have a word with him.”

A spray of beer shot out of the man’s mouth as he laughed. “You won’t be doing that because I don’t know what his name was. It wasn’t someone here from town. But you can just ask Bjarke, the boy I taught to whittle. He looked ridiculous in his scout getup and shorts that time up on Knarhøj, where he was digging or something with that guy.”

“Ridiculous? How?”

“Well, he was almost an adult.”

“Was he maybe a scout leader or something?”

The guy lit up, as if someone had turned on his brain function. “That was it, yes!”

“Okay, Hans. So what you’re saying is that Bjarke was talking with the guy his mother was meeting?”

“Yes. She came up there one day when her son and the guy were there. Where there’s a maze now. They do call it a maze, don’t they? It says that somewhere. I can read, you know. I bet you didn’t know that.”

* * *

They left him with twenty kroner. Enough for the rest of the day, he said. Maybe even more than three beers.

He wasn’t the kind of person who expected the impossible of life.

“Listen, you two,” Rose blurted out on the way up to the car. There were sparks in her eyes and piles of electric cables in her mind. She’d worked out something or other.

“I’ve stood out there thinking over and over: Who was Habersaat really, and why did he do what he did? Why was he so hell-bent when it came to that case?”

“Maybe it was a counterbalance to things not going so well on the home front. You heard the two women and the guy just now. But Habersaat’s professional honor might also have been bruised,” Carl said.

“Maybe. He must have been a good policeman; there can’t be any doubt about that,” she said. “He pursued his goal, but he couldn’t move on, so he shot himself. But do you think he did it because he couldn’t take any more?”

Carl shrugged. “Probably.”

“Tell us what you’re thinking, Rose,” Assad said, smiling.

“Well, I don’t think so—not anymore. I think he shot himself to prove how seriously he took the case. And do you know how seriously I think he took it? Do you, Assad?”

“I think it’s serious enough that he blew his brains out.”

“Very funny, Assad. But Habersaat shot himself because he wanted to use all his power to ensure we carried on. I’m convinced of it. And he wanted that because he was no longer completely out on a limb.”

“Don’t you mean the opposite?” Carl suggested.

“No. That would be the most logical, but I think he probably knew who’d killed Alberte in the end but just couldn’t prove it.” She shook her head. “Or else he couldn’t find him. Or both. Yes, that’s what I think, and that’s what drove him crazy. I also think that if we look carefully enough in his house we’ll find one answer or another.”

“Just hang on a minute, Rose. I can see you’re very involved now, but wouldn’t it have been much easier and more logical if he’d just put his suspicion down on paper, making it all a lot more obvious for us? If his suicide really was premeditated and calculated, why are we left with nothing to go on? Maybe the answer is that there isn’t anything to go on.”

“No, that’s not how I see it. Maybe he has written something down but we just haven’t seen it yet. I don’t know. Or maybe he hasn’t.” She shook her head again. She was apparently standing at a crossroads of opportunities and couldn’t make a decision. “Or maybe he didn’t even know himself but realized that the solution was right under his nose without being able to see it. So he had to have help from fresh new eyes.” She nodded knowingly. “Yes, that’s how I think it was.”

She looked at Carl with a spark in her eyes. It was something else, the way her stare could be intense and seductive.

“You know what, Carl? He chose us to take a closer look at it all, and we should be proud of that. I’m sure he knew that we’d have to come over here when he did what he did. He knew that it was the sacrifice that was needed before those around him would reopen the case. I feel totally sure about it.”

Carl nodded, glancing at his curly-haired partner.

Assad’s expression indicated that he thought she’d gone crazy.

It was very difficult to disagree.