The Hanging Girl

30

Thursday, May 8th, and Friday, May 9th, 2014

“Put it on speakerphone, Carl,” said Rose.

Carl hesitated. He knew who he was dealing with.

“We’ll keep our mouths shut, right, Rose?” said the mind reader Assad.

She nodded slowly with her chin right down on her chest.

Carl dialed the number. It was a bit late in the day, but experience told him that all museum directors were geeks and found it hard to go home. Not least one like this one.

“You say he’s a specialist of everything when it comes to the sun cult on Bornholm?”

Assad nodded. “He’s an archaeologist, Carl. He’s the one who dug the rubbish up.”

Carl gave him a thumbs-up. It had been an oddish sort of grey day, but good nevertheless. Inge Dalby had talked nineteen to the dozen, and they’d managed to get through to her. She’d been able to explain somewhat plausibly that she didn’t know Frank’s alias. They’d had sex together, nothing else. That Alberte had been closer to him and could say things about him that Inge didn’t know about had just been an extra thorn in her side.

All things considered, Inge wasn’t a particularly attractive woman inside.

“Bornholm Museum, Filip Nissen,” came the voice from the receiver. They were off. The man was still stuck behind his desk.

Carl looked at the photo of him on the computer screen. A little too rotund, beard a little too scraggy, glasses a little too heavyset. A real geek, if you asked him.

“No, I’m afraid I can’t talk just now; the museum is closed. You’ll have to wait until the morning. I’m going skateboarding with my sons, you see, and they’re waiting outside.”

Proof you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. It must be an extremely sturdy skateboard. Custom-built, maybe.

“We just need to know if you can remember a hippie guy who was interested in your excavations back in 1997, and who was also very interested in sun cults and sunstones?” Rose blurted out. How long had she managed to contain herself? Approximately twenty seconds?

“No, sorry,” he said, panting. Was he already on his way down the stairs with the skateboard and everything? If so, then he had call redirection to his cell phone, in which case the office hours were irrelevant.

“His name was Frank,” shouted Assad.

Then there was a pause in the panting. Had he stopped to think or had he already hopped on the board?

“Okay, Frank, you say! Frank Scott, perhaps? Is it him you’re thinking about?”

Rose gave Assad a high five, one-nil to him.

Rose turned immediately to the PC in the corner. Now she had a real name.

“A tall guy with long hair and a dimple in his chin?” Carl asked.

“Yes, yes, that’s him. But why do you call him a hippie when he wasn’t?”

“Because of his clothing.”

He laughed at the other end. “He only had the same damn ugly gear as the rest of us. But maybe you wear Armani when you’re lying in the mud scraping away?”

“I can’t say I do, no. Have you had any contact with him since then? We’d really like to get hold of him.”

“Hi, boys,” they heard at the other end. “I just need to finish up here, is that okay?” But it didn’t sound like they thought it was.

“Contact?” he returned to the call. “Well, not really. He disappeared from the island but we corresponded for a while. For a few months actually, I think. Frank had all sorts of theories and was very serious about the discovery of the sun cults that he could link with some theories about all religions originating from the same source: the sun, the seasons, and the zodiac.”

“You corresponded. How? Letters? E-mails?”

“Letters. He was very old-school. But I don’t have them anymore, I can assure you. I have enough old papers in my work.”

“Never e-mails?”

“No. Hang on, yes, maybe once, when he was visiting a colleague somewhere or other. Don’t ask me about what or where. They had a quick question they thought I was the man to answer. Something or other about timber circles, I think.”

“Hopefully you’ve still got that e-mail?”

“It would be quite strange considering we’ve changed computers at least three times since then. No, of course I don’t have it.”

“Printouts?”

“I belong to that rare group who’ve avoided maximizing their use of paper in the digital age, so no.”

“Any address for Frank? Can you remember that?”

“I don’t think I ever had it.”

“Think?”

“I never had it. I know he lived near Copenhagen. After all, that was where he could search for most of his information.”

“What information?”

“National Museum of Denmark, the Royal Library, Open University, that sort of thing. He soaked things up like a sponge. He was very inquisitive when it came to the sun cult’s roothold here on the island and parallel events like that, which is understandable enough.”

“Absolutely,” answered Carl.

Even Gordon began to smile now. An atmosphere like this would be welcome on a more or less permanent basis in the situation room.

“Can’t we talk together tomorrow? The boys are tugging at me. They’re a little impatient,” insisted the man.

Carl shook his head automatically. Hell no.

“Do you have pictures of the guy? You must’ve taken loads of pictures in connection with your work on the site.”

“I really don’t know. Maybe a few where he’s standing in the background. But it’s such a long time ago, and even if you’re an archaeologist, we don’t go around preserving everything that’s old.” At that, he laughed out loud and then just as suddenly stopped again when Carl fired off the next question.

“This is a murder case,” he said dryly. “So will you tell your boys to go on ahead? We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”

* * *

“Damn it!” shouted Rose a little later. “There’s no Frank Scott in Denmark to be found, according to the civil registration list. Damn it.”

Carl fumbled for the cigarettes in his breast pocket, but stopped when Rose pointed to a sign on the wall written in capitals:

SMOKING DOESN’T JUST KILL YOU BUT THOSE AROUND YOU TOO, YOU FUCKING MURDERER!

It couldn’t really be put any more charmingly than that.

Carl pushed the cigarettes back. “The museum director must’ve heard the name wrong, or else doesn’t remember it right,” he said.

“Yes, or the man’s had a permanent name change or moved abroad,” suggested Gordon.

Rose threw him a look of resignation. “If there’s been a man at some time or other in the more recent past living in Denmark under the name of Frank Scott, you can damn well bet that I’d have found him.”

“I didn’t mean . . . I . . .” He looked around to find some sympathy. Christ, what a fool.

“Maybe he’s not a Danish national and never has been,” he dared to continue. “He could’ve belonged to the Danish minority in Slesvig. Or maybe he was Swedish or something.”

Carl nodded over to Rose. It was a possibility of course, so he gave Gordon a pat as high on his back as he could from where he was sitting, while Rose began typing like a lunatic.

“There was something that was weird about that museum director, Carl,” grunted Assad. “He could remember Frank and a load of other details about how he helped at digs, and all sorts of things they talked about, but he didn’t remember Alberte.”

“That’s how it is with professional geeks, Assad. They can’t see past the end of their own noses.”

“No, I don’t think he seemed like an end-of-the-nose type. He remembered all sorts of things. How the weather had been, what Frank’s car looked like, how they discussed the size of the timber circles and the old sun worship sites they excavated. He could remember that Frank was a vegetarian, and that he used his left and right hands equally well. He could also remember that he once had one of the girls from their camp down to the excavations, and that she spoke Swedish with a Finnish accent. He had a very good memory in my opinion, and the Alberte case was big news. All the vehicles on the island were checked, and that most certainly includes the four-wheel drive from Bornholm Museum that they used at the dig.”

“Where are you going with this, Assad?”

“I know,” said Gordon with his hand in the air like a schoolboy. Wasn’t he aware that you asked to speak after you put your hand in the air?

“He was most likely not on Bornholm at the time it happened, if you ask me.”

He got another pat on the back. This time from Assad.

“Exactly, boss,” said Assad. “We forgot to ask him. It’s possible this Frank borrowed the Rover from the museum and used it in the crime if the museum man had left it at his disposal while he was away.”

Carl snapped his fingers at Assad, who immediately went over to the corner and tapped on his cell phone.

“What about you, Rose, any luck?”

She shook her head. “I think Frank was much better at using other people’s names than his own.”

“So, suddenly we know almost nothing again,” said Carl. “When we pressed Inge Dalby last, she thought he’d changed his name to something very short that most likely started with ‘A,’ the rest of which was something oriental. But what the hell can we do with that? And now Filip Nissen says Frank was called Scott, but of course no such person exists. How far did you get, Rose?”

She drew a circle in the air. Meaning all possible neighboring countries.

Assad flicked his cell phone shut. “Filip Nissen was off travelling for part of that fall, he says. But the museum car had definitely not been left at anyone’s disposal.” Assad sighed, and it was contagious.

“I’ll call round the alternative therapists one more time,” said Rose. “Maybe there’s someone who can connect Frank with those two sunstones.”

* * *

She was already sitting in her seat when Carl turned up the next morning. Tousled hair, same clothes as the day before, and loud snoring was emanating from Assad’s office, which Carl could immediately eliminate as coming from Assad. You didn’t need to be much of a detective before you began smiling over the probable cause.

“Well, well,” said Carl. “There seem to be a couple of you who slept in the situation room last night.”

“Yes,” answered Rose with her back to him. “We have to get going with this lot, so I’ve caught those people on Bornholm in their beds before they went to work.”

Carl had a cheeky smile on his face as he thought that this wasn’t the only thing that had gone on, and that they weren’t the only ones who’d been in bed before they went to work.

“And Gordon?”

“Yeah, he obviously needs more sleep than I do.”

Poor guy. No doubt she’d sucked all the energy out of the beanpole.

“Any results?”

Now she turned around. Seldom would you see a more triumphant Rose. Even her running coal-black mascara glowed.

“Several things. I called around some more of those alternative therapists and have finally managed to sort them. Half are too young to be able to give information about something that happened nearly twenty years ago, a quarter are too far gone, to put it mildly, to be able to get anything concrete or meaningful out of, and the last quarter are trying as hard as they can because they’ve got the right age, expertise, and wherewithal.”

“And?” he said impatiently.

“I got lucky twice this time: an esoteric astrologer and an Aura-Soma therapist, who both remembered Frank and his sunstones and keen interest in sun cults.”

Carl clenched his fists. Finally, they were off. “Do we have a name or address?”

“No.”

“Thought as much.” He relaxed his hands and stroked his neck. “So what have you got?”

“The description matches Inge Dalby’s. They both agreed on that. And they added a number of other characteristics. For example, this Frank guy was totally disconnected from modern technology.”

“No cell phones?”

“No cells, no PCs. He wrote everything by hand, and with a fountain pen. The car he drove around in was borrowed. He didn’t use a credit card, always cash.”

“And for the same reason, he hasn’t left any traces anywhere, right?”

She pointed directly at him. “Not directly, no, and yet, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of them thought that his special knowledge about the cults on Bornholm was just the tip of the iceberg. That he also had an extensive and more general knowledge about astrology, theology, astronomy, and ancient history. He was very interested in the religions of different ages, and what had been passed on from them. So he was always open to a good discussion about such things. The esoteric astrologer also thought that his theories were very epochal.”

“How does that help us? And what the hell is an esoteric astrologer?”

“It’s something to do with finding the power to reveal the soul’s hidden intentions in the current incarnation. Something with helping the soul to fulfill its full potential with the incarnation.”

Carl tried to find a suitable grimace for the occasion. This was apparently outside his comprehension. “But again, why’s it important that his theories were . . . what did you say, epochal?”

“That means that his enthusiasm was infectious. The people living at the Ølene camp were one way or another part of his spiritual family, a sort of disciple, and that included the Aura-Soma therapist. Once, when Frank was with her to strengthen his aura, one of the other disciples was with him.”

“Disciple how? I mean, how could anyone know that’s what they were?”

“Relax, I’m getting there now, Carl. The reason that Frank contacted so many of these alternative therapists was because he wanted to learn from them, of course, to know their secrets. It was as if he wanted to merge all the alternative knowledge and techniques in the world and try to find a common denominator for them. For healing, for religion, for all the ancient sciences: alchemy, astrology, channeling, electromagnetic therapy, clairvoyance, and so on and so on. Don’t ask what it was he was striving for; that was a whole science in itself, and that was the crux of it.” She pointed tellingly at him again.

“What?”

“That Frank was in the process of establishing his own spiritual philosophy. He wanted to collect everything useful and combine it, and the man he had with him was a witness of truth, as he put it.”

“Damn it, that’s some really weird stuff. But did he establish himself?”

“Yes, they both thought so. And what’s more, the Aura-Soma therapist could remember the name of the man who was with Frank. His name was Simon Fisher, which they all laughed about because it couldn’t really be more symbolic, could it? So Frank was a messiah and the man just a follower. And then one of the therapists said that Simon Fisher showed a keen interest in her garden with medicinal plants and said that he’d like to have a garden just like it. And now comes the final thing, Carl!” Again, the pointing finger. It almost made you want to find a pair of scissors and cut a bit off it.

“Well, fire away, damn it. What next?”

“The man called Simon Fisher got his garden center. It’s in Holbæk in an area called Tempelkrogen.”

“Tempelkrogen? Yes, of course. Why doesn’t that surprise me? One final question: What’s an Aura-Soma therapist?”

“That’s a bit of a weird one. I didn’t want to ask her, so I looked it up. Partly, it’s something with bottles that contain healing color vibrations, but I didn’t quite understand it.”

Carl fumbled for his cigarettes. This was really a long detour on the road to finding out something that might lead them to the right track.

* * *

“Wasn’t it wrong that we didn’t bring Rose with us, Carl? It was her after all who found the man,” said Assad as his jaw tried to get the better of the chewing gum he’d shoved in his mouth fifty-five kilometers back.

“Have a look at the GPS, Assad. I think we need to go down past Eriksholm when we pass Munkholm Bridge, what do you think?”

“I think it was wrong that we didn’t bring Rose along. And yes, when we’re over the water, you need to take a left.”

Carl looked out south over the glistening fjord, winding in and out between small islands and headlands. As far as he could see, it must be over on the other side of the water where a white house on a peninsula in lonely majesty almost seemed to lean down over the low-lying pasture.

“You’ll see, she’ll be fine as long as she has Gordon to . . .” He turned his attention to a kiosk where he and Vigga had so often stopped when they travelled by motorbike out in the countryside on the weekends. They were good times when they couldn’t afford anything else. How far had he come in life since then?

“I’m beginning to think about quitting the service, Assad,” he said after a sudden impulse. “It would make Lars Bjørn’s day, but still.”

He didn’t need to look at Assad to find out if it had caused him to stop chewing. He could hear it.

“That would be absolutely the worst thing that could happen for me,” said Curly in a flawless accent, prompting Carl to turn to face him instantly.

“You need to turn here, Carl,” he said. The accent had returned. “I don’t understand. What’ll you do?”

“I’ll open a Syrian café with you, Assad. And we won’t serve anything other than sticky mint tea and pastries. Sticky tea and Arabic music blaring out.”

Now the guy began to chew again. He didn’t believe he was being so serious anymore. Good, it would’ve been a shame.

They took a few small roads past farms and turned to go through a village and farther down toward the house.

“Deep in the countryside,” observed Assad, when the scenery opened up in all its rain-soaked splendor. He’d never been in Vendsyssel, it would seem.

Carl had yet another impulse. “Assad! Would you come to my cousin’s funeral up in Brønderslev? You’d be able to meet my parents, too, and the rest of the not-so-merry band.”

“Band? Will there be a band?” he asked as the house appeared at the end of the road. Water on two sides with the bridge in the background, and forest and road on the other two. A golden vision in the landscape. A rarity on earth.

It all seemed so accessible and friendly, but the Holistic Garden Center wasn’t just quite so easy to conquer. Two growling devils—the kind that’d been set on the unfortunate Christians in the Colosseum in ancient Rome—stood pawing at the floor as if they could jump over the fence at any second.

A small sign stated: Birtemaja & Simon Fisher. Ring first. Observant, thought Carl, as he pressed the bell right down and held it there.

“Hate and Skoll, down,” shouted a voice over the courtyard. A man, his trousers tucked down in his clog boots and wearing a baggy smock shirt, danced over a couple of deep puddles and edged toward them.

“Customers in the shop,” he shouted back toward the house.

Carl put his hand in his pocket to get his ID, but Assad put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Nice place you have here,” Assad said to the man, giving him his hand over the fence. “We’ve come to get some help with a few things.”

He opened the lock while the dogs began to growl at Assad.

“They’re not used to dark skin.”

“No problem. I’ve got them under control,” answered Assad, at which the dominant dog lunged toward him ready to bite.

Carl jumped to the side but Assad stood his ground and that very second, as the gardener tried to stop the beast, he let out an infernal yell that made both dogs sink to their knees like puppies and piss themselves like they’d never pissed before.

“That’s it,” said Assad, slapping himself on the thigh and calling the dogs to heel.

When they crept over to him and let him pet them, both the gardener and Carl stood speechless, watching.

“Where did I get to?” said Assad, the dogs on either side of him, as if they’d found a new master. “Yes, we need a little assistance. Firstly, we need to buy something or other that can help me sleep.”

Carl couldn’t believe his own ears. If Assad slept any deeper than he had in the hotel in Rønne, he’d damn well never wake up again.

“And then we need something that can revitalize my friend here. Afterward, we’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if that’s okay with you.”

The ID card never materialized from Carl’s pocket.