The Hanging Girl

19

Saturday, May 3rd; Sunday, May 4th; and Monday, May 5th, 2014

Waking up in the morning was abrupt and disagreeable, made worse by a pounding head and an all-too-clear conviction that minibars should only be frequented with a certain reservation.

When they drove onto the car deck of the ferry, Rose’s cargo of goods had already arrived. And it was clear that the axle load definitely wasn’t to the benefit of the undersize removal van. Damn it, all this rubbish had to go down in their basement area. Carl could hardly believe it, not to mention that Rose had reserved seats for them in the cafeteria at a table between her two well-built removal men.

Carl nodded to them extremely cautiously. Better to keep his thumping head as still and calm as possible.

“Weather’s getting up,” said one of the drivers by way of introduction to what could easily become an endless round of nonsense and mindless chatter.

Carl tried to smile.

“He’s got an overhang,” said Assad.

Carl couldn’t be bothered to react.

“Ha! An overhang,” burst out the removal men, shoveling fast food into their mouths, consisting in equal measure of fat and white flour. “I think you mean hangover, mate,” one of them said, laughing, and gave Assad a friendly thump on the back that could have split a boulder in half.

“Eew,” uttered Assad as his otherwise enviable southern coloring took on a less than charming hue. He stared out at the waves, already prepared to give up.

“Do you get easily seasick?” one of them asked. “Well, I’ve got a miracle cure for that.”

He produced a small bottle and poured the contents in an empty glass.

“You’ve got to down it or it won’t work. It does something with your stomach that makes you feel better.”

Assad nodded. He was ready to give anything a try that might save him from the walk of shame out to the toilets to get some sick bags.

“Down she goes!” shouted the removal men when Assad tilted his head back and poured the contents down as directed.

It was less than a second before the poor guy grabbed his throat, and his eyes became even rounder than usual. Then the color of his face changed to crimson as if he couldn’t breathe.

“What on earth was in that bottle?” asked Rose without any noticeable worry as she folded out the morning paper. “Nitroglycerin?”

The removal men laughed so much that everything rattled, and Assad tried in vain to laugh along.

“No, just eighty percent Slivovitz,” answered the man with the bottle.

“Are you crazy?” Carl was seriously indignant on someone else’s behalf for once. What a pair of idiots. “Assad’s Muslim; he can’t drink alcohol.”

The man with the bottle put his hand on Assad’s arm. “Hell, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it, mate. It’s not the sort of thing I normally go around thinking about.”

Assad raised his hand. It was already forgotten.

“Relax, Carl,” said Assad, when he got his voice back. He seemed surprisingly perky despite the fact that the wind was up and the crockery was dancing the fandango on the table. “I didn’t know what it was.”

Carl directed a dejected look out over the waves and suddenly felt the contents of his stomach go in the opposite direction. A few more hours of this and he’d know about it.

“But you’re okay?” Carl asked cautiously.

Assad nodded, probably with misplaced relief.

Rose looked up over the paper. “But the color on your face isn’t good, if you weren’t aware of it yourself, Carl,” she said unsympathetically.

Assad patted his hand with a hazy look. “It’ll be all right; just look at me. I think I’ve just about got the hang of sailing. Maybe you just need one of those sli . . . itsjers.”

Carl swallowed again. Just the thought.

“I’ll get a bit of fresh air,” he said, getting up with Assad at his heels.

Carl gagged a couple of times, only just making it to the deck before the sluice gates opened, and boy did they open.

“Thank you very much,” groaned Assad, assessing the extent of the consequences. “Maybe you don’t know the saying, Carl: A wise man doesn’t puke against the wind.”

* * *

The weekend came and went before Carl dared think of anything other than dry crispbread and small glasses of water. If it hadn’t been for Morten’s daily visit to Hardy down in the living room, he’d definitely have abandoned all hope. Since he and Mika had moved a few years ago, cheerfulness wasn’t something you could take for granted in this house. He even missed his stepson, Jesper, occasionally, but that always faded quickly, thank goodness.

Around midnight on Sunday he went to bed, tired of his own company and the meaningless things he’d been occupying himself with. A good sleep would do wonders for body and soul: no one in the house to disturb him, no upset stomach, just peace and calm.

The telephone rang at five in the morning, causing Carl to jump up as if simultaneously hearing fire alarms and sirens.

“What the hell!” he shouted in confusion as the digital clock revealed the time. Unless it was news of death or at the very least a military emergency, someone was going to get it.

“Carl Mørck!” he shouted, a warning of his frame of mind.

“Oh, shut up, you idiot. Do you have to shout?”

He recognized the voice. Not one he wanted to hear. “Sammy, you fool, do you know what time it is?”

A moment passed. “What’s the clock, honey?” he asked someone in the background.

“It’s ten!” he exclaimed, slurring his words.

Carl was fuming. The man was completely brain-dead.

“It’s five here, just so you know.”

“Carl, damn it, it’s you . . .” He burped, so the party was obviously neither just begun nor finished.

“I said . . . it’s you Ronny’s sent the goddamn fucking will to. Don’t you think I’ve worked it out?” A rattling sound came from the receiver. “No, honey, not now, take your hands away. I’m on the phone.”

Carl counted to ten. “If I had that goddamn fucking will, I’d shove it down your throat so that once and for all we’d be free from your shit. Good night, Sammy!”

He ended the call. Damn Sammy, damn Ronny, and damn that will. It made him feel ill just thinking about it.

Then the telephone rang again.

“You’d better not hang up on me, I’ll tell you that for nothing, Carl. Now admit it, you stupid pig. What’s Ronny written in his will? Are you pilfering everything?”

“Just stop there. Did you call me a pig? That’s five days at least, Sammy. It’s not the first time, is it?”

There was a deep sigh and giggling at the other end. “Yeah, Diamond, but wait a couple of minutes, okay? Yes, sorry, Carl, the girl here’s . . .” He chuckled. “Shut the hell up. You know how it is. I just want to say, Carl, that you’re a great guy. And that stuff with the will, we’ll work it out together, right? My God, Diamond . . .” And with that, the connection died.

So now he had that to think about.

For the rest of the night, actually.

* * *

When he arrived in the basement at Police Headquarters just before eleven, he was neither in the mood for reading journals nor ready to face the fear-inducing sight that waited for him in the basement.

Not so much as an inch was left so the color of the wall could peep through. On both sides of the large notice board with all the cases and bits of string, the shelves were lined up like a pumped-up North Korean military parade, and Assad and Rose had long ago started filling them up.

“The fire inspectors will get a shock” was the first thing he said.

“Then it’s good they’ve just been here and won’t be coming back for the foreseeable,” came the reply from deep inside the removal box in which Rose’s upper body had disappeared.

Carl staggered to his seat and flung his legs up on the table.

“I’m reading,” he shouted for good measure, in case they badgered him for help with the unpacking.

He sat for a moment to consider what would serve him best: a couple of cigarettes or a doze?

“Might as well put it in here straightaway,” Rose was saying even before she entered Carl’s office.

God only knew how she’d managed to get that huge pile in her arms. At any rate, it ended up between Carl’s legs, threatening to break the table.

“They’re photocopies, and they are in order. Just start from the top. Enjoy!”

* * *

Regardless of whether or not Carl would admit it, the material Rose had picked out of the boxes made for interesting reading. Too interesting, you might think. If you wanted to gain a reasonable overview of all these examples of information that Habersaat had collected, you’d need to have either a photographic memory or a huge amount of free wall space to hang the rubbish up so you could form an idea of what was really rubbish and what was gold.

Carl looked around the chaos that he called his office. Actually, an unlikely amount of stuff had piled up that didn’t need to be there. All that mess and dirt that Rose, in a rare moment, described as Carl’s “spice of life,” and which she more usually referred to as the only colorful and interesting thing in the office, himself included.

“Gordon!” he shouted. “Come here a minute, you lanky whiner.” He could have the job of getting rid of the stuff.

“Gordon’s busy being depressed,” Assad said from out in the hallway.

Depressed? As if that was anything special. Who wasn’t, in this workplace? It would’ve been worse if they’d placed his desk among the removal boxes.

He got up and took an empty removal box from the hallway, filling it with all the superfluous trash and junk from the office. Rose would probably have a heart attack when she saw the hotchpotch of documents from completed cases mixed together with dirty dishes, pieces of paper with undated conclusions, folders, journals, broken pencils, and worn-out pens.

He took a step back and nodded with satisfaction. Now you could glimpse a bit of the tabletop and a little more of the wall above the small bookcase on the opposite side.

If he started right at the top of the wall, he could probably find room for most of the photocopies Rose had handed him.

True to his word, within an hour the wall was plastered with everything imaginable under the sun, and with a system of sorts. Nevertheless, it was still hard to make heads or tails of the material, he thought, as he took a few steps back to admire his work. Of course Rose had made sure to include the most important papers, like the photo of the VW man, the crime scene report, the autopsy, and the group photo from fall 1997. But there were also papers that, to put it mildly, seemed out of place. For example, copies of brochures for alternative therapists and movements, shop receipts, and interviews with various and sundry locals, to mention just some of them.

And in the middle of it all hung a relatively large color copy of a photo of Alberte. Like an angel, pure with red cheeks and healthy, strong features and teeth, she reigned in the middle of all these loose threads, staring directly at Carl as if he were the only one in the world who possessed the philosopher’s stone. And regardless of where he sat in the room, those beautiful crystal green eyes rested on him as if pleading with him to get to the bottom of it all.

No doubt that Rose had chosen the photo carefully.

“Rose, Assad! Come in here and see!” he shouted with something approaching pride in his voice.

“Okay,” said Rose with her hands at her sides while she stared at the accomplishment. “Suddenly I can see dust that’s been hidden for months. Nice, Carl.” She wiped a demonstrative finger on one of the shelves and held it up.

“Good going, Carl,” Assad said, more to his liking, while nodding at the wall.

“Won’t you come with me, then, Carl?” Rose grabbed his sleeve without further warning and pulled him down toward the room where Assad had stood spreading paint around a few days before.

“Have a look.” She let her index finger point around the series of shelves in the corridor. “Luckily we’ve been able to find room for all our basic material out here in the hallway. That’s what we’re in the middle of sorting, following the same categorization as in Habersaat’s house, but with a few splashes of professional logic,” she continued, pulling him into a basement room farther down the corridor. “Down here, on the other hand, we’ve found space for what Assad calls the situation room. Everyone thought the room should be Gordon’s, but Assad offered to let him share with him, so go ahead, Carl!” She spread her arms out to the bright yellow walls that they’d plastered not only with the originals of the papers Carl had been given a copy of, but also with a series of appendixes.

Carl was shaking his head when Assad joined them. Why the hell hadn’t they told him? It would’ve saved him from working his butt off in his office.

“We, that’s to say, Assad and yours truly, but also to some degree, Gordon, have worked on it all weekend. Here are the most important notes and hints in Habersaat’s material. Are you satisfied, Carl? Can you use it?”

He nodded slowly but really just felt like going home.

“We thought we might put a couple of office chairs in here so we can swivel around while trying to get an overview,” said Assad.

“Yes, and for every category of file, we now have the extra option of going to the shelves not just for Habersaat’s material, but hopefully also to get an overview of the strategy and goal with his investigation and subsequent conclusions,” elaborated Rose.

“Thanks,” said Carl. “That’s really great. And where’s Gordon now? You shouted that he was depressed.”

This time it was Assad who dragged him off.

There was a clattering noise coming from Assad’s office, so it turned out the towering beanpole was in the process of moving in.

“Good afternoon, Carl,” Gordon said timidly from the other side of Assad’s desk. To be honest, he did look depressed. The beanpole had so little space that his knees protruded above the top of the desk, while the remaining parts of his gangly legs were presumably curled up underneath. In fact, there was so little space between him and the shelves behind, with all the pictures of Assad’s old aunts, that just in order to be able to stand up he had to push himself upright from the tabletop.

Some would call it claustrophobic. Carl would sooner call it pure torture. But the man’s body was put together in such a way that he must be used to it.

“Nice place you’ve got in here with Assad, Gordon,” he said with a barely comforting smile. “You’re lucky you’ve got such a good roommate. What do you think?”

Maybe it was because of the pressure from the table, maybe exhaustion, but didn’t his voice shoot up half an octave when he tried to confirm?

“We’ve decided to call Gordon the case manager,” said Rose. “The idea is that he’ll develop an overview of all Habersaat’s documents so we can use him like an encyclopedia. Leaving three of us to concentrate on following up on the leads. Gordon can then subsequently try to find a system to show how they’re all connected.”

“Great. And where do I fit in, if I might ask?” said Carl.

“You’re the boss, of course, as always, Carl,” Assad said, smiling.

The boss! Had that word just been given a new definition?

* * *

It quickly became apparent in the situation room that they needed to sort out some of Habersaat’s numerous and sometimes unhelpful leads before the team could seriously get going.

“You could ask yourself why all these papers about occult phenomena take up so much. Is it anything to do with us?” asked Carl.

“Habersaat might have tried a bit of everything to try and feel better,” suggested Assad. “When people aren’t feeling good, they attempt all sorts of crazy things.”

Rose frowned. “How do you know it’s crazy? Maybe you’ve had personal experience with the prophets? No, I didn’t think so. And yet you have a strong belief in them, which is fine by me. Because there’s nothing wrong with that specifically, is there?”

“No, but . . .”

“Good. So Indian mystics, clairvoyants, healing, visions, and so on can’t just be totally dismissed either, then, can they?”

“No, but . . .”

“But what?”

“It’s just, all these strange words are so silly. A bit hard to take seriously, I think.”

Carl scanned the papers on the wall displaying a bit of everything: DNA activation with archangels, Vedic sound therapy, transformation lecture, psychic maps, and much more.

You had to hand it to Assad—most of it sounded curious, to put it mildly.

“I think I’ve said it before,” he began, “but if you ask me, I don’t think a down-to-earth man like Habersaat resorted to things like this. I’m more inclined to think that it’s part of his investigation.” He swiveled in the chair and stared at the photo of the man with the VW Kombi. “What we do know is that this man lived in a sort of hippie commune that had some special rituals, midnight séances with dancing, painted naked bodies, and so on. And then there was the sign over their door, the one the old jogger mentioned. What did it say, Assad?”

He flicked through his notebook, going back at least twenty pages, so it took some time.

“The Celestial Sphere,” he said dryly.

“Listen, Rose. I think this material is important in some way or other, so I want you to take charge of it. Call all the associations, or whatever they’re called, that you can find on Bornholm involved in this sort of thing. Try to see if anyone has had contact with even one person from that commune back in 1997. Meanwhile, Assad can try to absorb some of the material in the room and maybe also arrange a meeting with the artist who swiped Alberte’s bike.”

Assad gave him a thumbs-up. “Shouldn’t we also have a little table in there to put our tea on?”

Carl shuddered. Would they ever escape from that nauseating stench?

“I’m heading up to talk with Tomas Laursen about how we can get the technicians in Rødovre to reevaluate the case and take another look at a couple of things.”

“You’ll need this, then,” said Rose, taking one of the pages down from the wall.

“Okay, what is it?” Carl took the piece of paper with loosely scribbled sentences and some tape securing a thin splint of wood no more than two centimeters long.

Splint found in a straight line between the recovered bike in the thicket and where by all accounts it was hit—written in Habersaat’s handwriting.

Rose removed some notes that had been hanging under the piece of paper with the splint. “Here’s the progress on the splint,” she said.

It was a note referring to a date four days after Alberte’s disappearance and three days after Habersaat had found her. Carl read it aloud:

Report for own use.

Monday, November 24th, 1997, 10.32.

Subsequent to the technicians all clear for the area, the undersigned found a splint from some processed wood lying on the ground six meters in a northerly direction from Alberte Goldschmid’s bike. The location of the discovery is therefore deemed to form almost a straight line from the place where the bike was hit and where it came to land.

The splint was examined by a local team of technicians. The material is apparently birch. And the remnants of glue suggest that it’s a splint originating from plywood.

As no similar fragments have been found in the collision area, the technicians conclude that the splint doesn’t stem from the collision.

However, the undersigned believes this to be incorrect, and reports it to the leader of the investigation, Detective Jonas Ravnå, requesting a closer analysis by the police technical department in Copenhagen. Following the summons of all the vehicles on the island, no material has been found to date that can be connected to this find, and the request is denied.

During a subsequent interview with me on local TV, looking for any finds of plywood with defects, twenty mostly local people report back with finds of wooden building boards. All the finds are of pine.

Hereafter, no leads.

Christian Habersaat, Listed.

Carl nodded. Eighty percent sweat, two hundred and fifty percent dead ends. That’s what it meant to be an investigator.

“But look at this, Carl,” said Rose, taking down a third piece of paper.

It was another of Habersaat’s homemade journals.

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2000.

Find of wooden board wedged in the rocks at Hammerknuden.

Ten year old boy, Peter Svendsen, of Hasle, pulls free a wedged board while playing at Camel Head Cliffs.

The board is heavy and he leaves it on land. His father, local community officer Gorm Svendsen—who worked with the undersigned on the find of a washed up body from the wreck of the boat Havskummet—contacts the undersigned. Gorm Svendsen recollects an interview with me on local TV, where I was looking for a plywood board that the splint might originate from.

The board fragment discovered at the cliffs is part of a larger board, but had probably been a meter in height and two meters in width. It is extremely battered but evidently originally watertight, as several of the layers of glue remain intact.

A couple of bore holes are visible on the board, and faint shadows on one side. Undoubtedly remnants of print or similar.

I request a thorough analysis of the wood type and am given authorization after some back and forth with the department superiors.

The material is also birch, but a closer analysis is unable to determine with certainty if the splint originates from the same board.

My theory, due to the plywood being glued together in several layers, is that the splint originates from one of the outer layers, which over the course of time has peeled away from the board due to its time in the water.

I estimate, with the technicians, that it was probably a board between 20 and 24mm thick, from which the middle 18mm remain intact.

I request a comparative analysis of the glue from the splint and the plywood, as this had been neglected previously, but authorization is not granted.

It is finally my absolute theory that this board is involved in the collision, while at the same time recognizing that flotsam and jetsam are of such common occurrence here on the island that I must resign myself to the fact that the finding of the same wood types can be put down to coincidence.

Christian Habersaat

And added underneath in red ballpoint:

Plywood board, found 8/2/2000, has gone missing.

Possibly destroyed.

“What did he say the cliffs were called?” asked Assad.

“Camel Head Cliffs.”

He nodded enthusiastically. It didn’t take much.

Carl turned to Rose. “I’m not sure, but I feel as if it’s almost impossible to get anywhere here. If the splint has been so thoroughly analyzed, and the board is missing, what do you think that the technicians should work on, Rose?”

“Finding something to make it plausible that the splint might originate from that board, Carl.”

“Do we have something as simple as a photo of it?”

“I’ll check,” shouted Assad, disappearing out in the corridor.

“But if they can’t find the connection you want, what’ll you talk to the technicians about, Carl?”

He sat for a moment, staring at the splint. “Habersaat hints at a suspicion that the board was used in the collision. So that’s the starting point. Do you know if a diagram has ever been drawn of the presumed trajectory of the body following the collision and up into the canopy? And of the bike for that matter?”

She shrugged. “There’s a few hours’ work before we’ll have been through everything out there, Carl. But I hope I find a drawing like that. What are you thinking about?”

“The same as you and Habersaat. That this board had been attached to the front of the VW Kombi. That’s why I need to see a photo of that board and the position of the boreholes. To see if it seems logical that the board could’ve been attached to that special fender.”

He passed Assad in front of the shelves with a nod. If that photo was to be found among this colossal chaos, then Assad was the right person for the job.

* * *

In the cafeteria on the fourth floor, he found an astonishingly pale and scrawny version of the portly figure that Tomas Laursen had been only a few weeks ago.

“Are you sick, mate?” he asked, concerned.

Laursen, formerly the best technician in the force and now manager of the cafeteria at Police Headquarters, shook his head. “The wife’s on the five:two diet, and she’s forced me on it, too.”

“Five:two diet, what’s that?”

“Well, it’s actually five days of not much food and two days of fasting, but I feel more like it’s the opposite, five days fasting and two days with little food. It’s damn well not easy for a man with a waist like Santa Claus to keep up with this.”

“What about this up here?” Carl pointed to a couple of tempting lunch plates in the glass counter. “You can’t eat your own creations?”

“Are you crazy? She has me on the scales every time I come home.”

Carl slapped his friend on the shoulder. Sorry fate.

“Can you get some of your old pals at the lab in Rødovre to pull some old analyses out of the drawer and have another look at them? If they have photos of the material, it would be great. Things always go more smoothly when you’re involved.”

Laursen nodded. The former technician in him had never totally disappeared.

“And if such a photo is still to be found, you might try and ask them to consider what the markings on the one side of the board might have been? And then I’d also like to know if there’s been any sort of idea about how long that board had been in the water.”

Laursen looked quizzically at Carl. “I can’t see why the result wouldn’t still be there. Murder cases are never shelved in Denmark, are they?”

“No, but that’s exactly the problem, Tomas. This case has never been treated as a murder.”