The Hanging Girl

40

Monday, May 12th, 2014

“Have you gone completely insane, Carl?” The attack was launched already in the reception area.

All his colleagues were staring at him. Some faces showed how happy they were that they weren’t in the line of fire. Across others, the word “idiot” was painted, and Bjørn’s niece even had the nerve to laugh behind the reception desk, but he could deal with her when he came out again.

“You’re this close to a suspension, Carl” was the first thing the chief of homicide said once they were in his corner office, demonstrating the statement with a paper-thin space between his long, sinewy fingers.

Then came the tirade about lack of loyalty and a sense of priority, followed by disobedience and disrespect for the work of his good colleagues. Carl didn’t utter a word. He was only thinking about how many people might have been watching TV2 News at this ungodly time of day.

“Are you listening to me, Carl?”

He looked up. “Yes. And I’d like to know if you would’ve seen it as an example of a good sense of priority, respect, and loyalty if you’d been dragged out of your bed and into the spotlight, and confronted with the weapon that ruined several of your friends’ lives, not to mention your own?”

“Don’t try to sidestep me here, Carl. You’ve disobeyed my orders, and I’ll need to consider what to do about that.”

“You could begin by giving me better working conditions and thanking me for taking the investigation of our cases so seriously.” He turned toward the door. He wasn’t going to take any more from that idiot.

“Stop right there, Carl.” Lars Bjørn’s face was white, his voice icy. “You and I are not on the same level—I’m the one who manages your professional life, and you’re the one who has to comply with that. If you ever humiliate me in public again, or speak to me again in that manner, I’ll send you straight back to the sticks where you came from, is that understood? There are still good positions vacant in Ølsemaglegård, from what I hear.”

When Carl was eventually kicked out, the niece was still there, ready to flash both teeth and dimples.

Carl stepped over to the reception desk and looked at her with dead eyes.

“My sweet little troll. I assume you’re showing your pretty, porcelain-covered front teeth so clearly because you want to announce that you enjoyed the show. That it was great fun to see Uncle Bjørn so hot under the collar, isn’t that right? Because if not, then . . .”

“You’re completely right,” she continued with a smile. “It was hilarious. My mom is going to love it. She can’t stand him either.”

Carl’s eyebrows leapfrogged. “Your mom?”

“Yeah, my dad is Lars’ brother, and he’s just like Lars. That’s why he and Mom got divorced.”

Lis, the uncrowned queen of reception, patted the girl’s shoulder. “You can go and help out downstairs now, Louise. I can hear Catarina, who you’re filling in for, coming up the stairs.”

Both the niece and Lis flashed smiles at Carl: an effective way to turn stiff legs to jelly.

The change of guard between temporary and permanent secretary, on the other hand, was not particularly pleasant. From Miss Baywatch behind the reception desk to Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, with her shining forehead, moist eyelashes, flat greasy hair, and eyes that could suck all joy out of you from far off.

Her eyes commanded him to stop staring. Actually, he’d sooner throw himself off a bungee jump with a barrel over his head than clash verbal swords with the irritable Catarina Sørensen during a hot flash, so Carl gave up on his compulsory flirt with Lis and ducked.

“It’s not amusing to feel like I do just now, if you were in any doubt, Mr. Protruding Front. Why don’t you speak to our head psychologist about it?”

Carl frowned. Was that how Mona felt? Was it the menopause?

He looked down at himself. Protruding front? Was she being naughty, or was his shirt just too tight?

There was a vibration in his back pocket. He took out his cell, and looked at the glowing display. It was Hardy.

“I saw it all on TV2 News,” he said.

“I got quite an earful for it afterward,” answered Carl. “But I suddenly had a chance to call for witnesses who might know something about the guy we’re after.”

“Yes, you took a chance of course, and you’ll have to live with the consequences. But I was talking about the press conference. The murdered man in the drainpipe, Rasmus Bruhn, doesn’t that name mean anything to you?”

“Not a damn thing.” He looked at Mrs. Sørensen, who commented on his language by rolling her eyes.

“I’m surprised, Carl. It worries me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was wondering why you didn’t comment on it when they showed the photo of the dead man on the screen.”

Carl pulled away from the reception desk. “Comment? How? I’ve never seen him before, Hardy.”

“Yes, you have. You burned his driver’s license in the middle of the street.”

“I did wh . . . ?” Carl waved at the women behind the reception desk, and they disappeared out into the stairway. “Help me out here, Hardy. I only have a vague recollection. Was it during an arrest?”

“Oh, come on, Carl. You and me and Anker were eating roast pork ad libitum at Montparnasse. Your birthday in 2005, Carl. We wanted to celebrate, but Vigga had just moved out. You were pouring your heart out when this drunken man sat down at our table and began tugging at Anker’s sleeve.”

“It’s slowly coming back to me. Then what happened?”

“He was drunk as a lord, talking a lot of bull that only Anker could understand. Then Anker slapped him, and you separated them. You and me, together with one of the waiters, managed to get him out on the street, but then he tried to punch us and began threatening us with his car keys.”

“Yes, and I took them from him, I remember it vaguely now. Did I give the keys to the waiter?”

“You did, so the jerk could come and get them when he was sober.”

“And then he punched me in the eye. Damn it, it’s coming back to me ever so slowly.”

“That’s good, Carl. Anything else would’ve been strange.” He sounded sarcastic; Carl didn’t like that. Did he think he was lying? “You punished him by taking his driver’s license and setting it on fire with your Ronson.”

“Was that him? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Carl nodded to Bente Hansen, one of the best investigators at headquarters, who walked past him and down the stairs. She’d gained a bit of weight on the backside after her last pregnancy, he noticed with a hint of sadness. She used to flirt with Anker. That was a long time ago. It all was.

He tried to concentrate. “Hardy, you mentioned long ago that you suspected Anker had some part in the shooting out on Amager.”

“Yes, and I’m more convinced now than ever. There’s just one thing I need to add to the story.”

“And what’s that?”

“You know what.”

“Not at all.”

“When you burned his license, Rasmus Bruhn pointed straight at you. Don’t you remember what he said?”

“No.”

“He threatened you, shouting I’ll remember this, Carl! He knew your name, and I know for certain it hadn’t been mentioned at any time during the incident.”

Carl closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. Why the hell had Hardy never mentioned that before? If they’d talked about it back then, he would’ve been able to find an explanation.

“Listen, Hardy. If Anker and that man had some unfinished business, we might both have been mentioned as his colleagues.”

“He didn’t know my name, Carl. He told me to stay out of it, but he used a random name.”

“Listen to me, Hardy. I think you’re starting to go cuckoo. I don’t know the man, and I didn’t recognize him today, okay? It’s been a long time, Hardy, and unlike you, I have to constantly take in new inf . . .”

There was a sigh at the other end, and then Hardy hung up.

Damn it, why did he have to say that!

* * *

“Lord almighty, here’s my hero!” Those were the words Rose welcomed him with in the hallway. Had she gone mad? Had Assad’s incense sticks, Gordon’s horniness, and all her strange ideas finally caused the relays in her weird, winding brain to short-circuit? Because it couldn’t possibly be . . . admiration?

“That was brave, Carl. We’ve already received a few calls because of what you did. One of them looks promising. Assad is talking with her now.” She pointed at the door opening, where Assad could be seen with the receiver glued to his ear.

“Okay, that sounds good. Did she recognize the man?”

“No, but I think she recognized the VW.”

“What do you mean? There must’ve been hundreds like it.”

“Not with a peace sign painted on the roof.”

Carl stepped into Assad and Gordon’s broom closet of an office. “Let me talk to her,” he whispered, but Assad waved dismissively with his free hand.

Across from Assad, Gordon leaned over the table. “Carl, I’ve connected our phones to our respective computers,” he said quietly. He pointed at a thin cable that went from the audio exit socket on the phone to the PC. “Just click on the arrow there on the screen, then it records.” He pointed at his screen. It looked fairly simple, so Carl nodded knowingly.

“I also have something else for you,” he said, pushing a note over to Carl.

It read:

Health & Well-Being Fair, Tuesday May 13, 2014, to Friday May 16, 12–9 PM, Frederiksborg Sports Center, Hillerød.

Laursen will come down to your office if you call him.

Carl nodded, and then Assad put down the receiver.

“Hey, what are you doing, Assad? I would’ve liked to talk to her.”

“I’m sorry, she’s a surgical nurse and was calling from work, so it wasn’t possible, Carl. Kitte Poulsen—funny name, isn’t it? She lives in Kuala Lumpur, and the only TV she watches is TV2 News on the Internet during her lunch break. So we were very lucky there.”

Kuala Lumpur? How lucky was that really?

“The Kombi probably belonged to her father. She told me he was a very active peace activist up until the mideighties. He was called Egil Poulsen. He died way back, but his wife still lives in their old house, and Kitte said that the last time she saw the Kombi was when she came home for Christmas. It’s been put on blocks in their garden in Brønshøj.”

Carl thought that of all things true and holy at police HQ, this was the most amazing. What half the population on Bornholm and most of the island’s police force hadn’t managed to do in seventeen years, Department Q had done in less than two weeks. Only about an hour had passed since the press conference, and already they had a bite. It was going to feel wonderful presenting this to Bjørn.

Carl almost laughed out loud.

“Did the daughter know anything about the Frank guy?” he asked.

“No, but as far as she knows, all the files concerning her father’s peace friends and all the events he went to are still sitting on the shelves in his old office, so we can check ourselves.”

“Let’s get going. Have you got the address, Assad?”

“Yes, but hold your horses, Carl. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Because the wife has just been to visit her daughter in Malaysia, and she’s on her way back with British Airways. She’ll be landing in Kastrup tomorrow at twelve fifty P.M., so maybe we should pick her up at the airport.”

“All right, Assad. And you, Gordon, call Laursen and say that I’m in my office. He’s welcome down whenever it suits.”

Gordon’s, Assad’s, and all the other phones in the basement rang at the same time. Now the ball was rolling.

Brilliant!

* * *

A hundred and eighty calls and one and a half hours later, Carl was considerably less cocky. So was Rose.

“This is bloody awful,” she said, standing in the doorway when her phone rang again. “There are all sorts of loonies calling, and they’re getting on my nerves. Some call because they want to buy the VW, others to ask if we know the brand of the really cool classic car in the foreground. People are completely shameless, and stupid, and annoying. Can’t we just take the receiver off the hook and leave it on the table, Carl?”

“Haven’t you got anything more substantial?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Okay. Then redirect all the numbers to Gordon, and go get Assad.”

Twenty seconds later he heard a roar from Assad’s office. Apparently Gordon had realized that he was trapped now.

“I have a couple of assignments for you,” said Carl to the odd couple standing in his office. “A call has been recorded confirming that the VW Kombi in Brønshøj is indeed the one with the peace sign on top. Listen.” He pressed the PC recorder.

There was the sound of someone clearing their throat and then a dark female voice. “Hello, my name is Kate Busck—not Kate Bush, although I’m a good singer, too.” She laughed huskily, more like you’d expect from guys like Rod Stewart or Bryan Adams. “I remember the van with the peace sign. It was used during the demonstration outside the American Embassy in 1981. I remember we used it as our administrative van. I think it was someone called Egil who owned it. Egil Poulsen, that’s it, but I think he’s dead now. He’d painted a peace symbol on the top. If you’re interested, you can see it on the poster we made from an aerial photo of the American and the Russian embassies in Copenhagen. Funny enough, and quite symbolically, the two embassies were only separated by a cemetery.” She laughed.

Carl pressed the recorder’s stop function. “The entire recording is over five minutes long, and concerns all kinds of other stuff, too. She must have had plenty of time,” he snorted. “So I’d like you to call her, Assad, so we can check if she knows more. Maybe Frank was a volunteer at some of the demonstrations and met Egil Poulsen there. He can’t have been very old in the early eighties, so it’s not very likely, but ask anyway.”

Assad nodded. “I’ve also had a call. I recorded the whole thing on this.” He held up his smartphone. So that was also possible?

He tapped the play button, and a cranky woman’s voice—the type you’d rather not listen to for more than a minute—delivered a torrent of complaints of the type Carl hadn’t heard since his mom had explained to his dad why it wasn’t okay to sit shirtless at the dinner table, even if it was 30 degrees Celsius.

“Don’t I know that ugly car!” she jabbered. “In fact, it’s been parked right next to our hedge for God knows how many years, so we can’t avoid the sight of rusty metal and dirty windows most of the year. I explained to Egil time and time again that he needed to get rid of that heap of junk, but did he do it before he died? No, he didn’t. That’s how he was with things like that, didn’t give a damn. But now I guess you’ll take it away, assuming it’s been used for something illegal. Yes, nothing should ever come as a surprise. I expect you to handle this, what else are the police for? The tarp that used to cover it flew off in the storm and landed on top of the hedge, but of course not within reach. And that happened all the way back in . . . well, I don’t know, it must have been in 2003, or was it later, I . . .”

Assad tapped the button. “She screams like a camel that’s eaten sand.”

Carl tried to imagine why a camel would ever do that, but gave up. He turned toward Rose.

“Can I ask you to drive out to Alberte’s parents in Hellerup? They called administration a minute ago and said that they’d received Alberte’s drawings from that exhibition at the folk high school that never came to anything. Why the school secretary chose to send them to the parents is beyond me, when we were the ones to request them. Mr. and Mrs. Goldschmid sounded quite upset and wanted us to pick up the drawings as soon as possible. Tell them we’ll make copies if they might want them back sometime anyway.”

She looked at her watch. “If you want me to do it, I won’t be coming back today,” she said.

He was sure he’d get over that.

* * *

When they had left, Carl quietly took the phone off the hook and put his feet up on the table. With Rose safely out of the building, it was time for a cigarette.

He switched on the flat-screen TV, turned to TV2 News, and saw his own face advertise a case that made Lars Bjørn’s face turn the color of some poor ginger sod who’d fallen asleep on a tropical island beach.

He didn’t think he looked so bad, himself. Maybe he should apply for a job as a TV host.

He scanned across his notice board with all the possible and impossible leads. Newspaper clippings, various photos, and excerpts from maps of Bornholm, all put up with colored pins.

Hanging there, it all looked so simple: the photo of the scene of the collision, the community hall in Listed, the location of the folk high school, and a number of other important places and people that were part of the investigation. A small story of a collision, and a man who wanted nothing more than to find the perpetrator.

The only problem was that when you looked at it like that, trying to create an overview, questions popped up that pointed in every possible and impossible direction. It was one thing that Alberte had cycled out early in the morning to a side road some distance from the school, obviously a place that had some significance to her. But why had she been there at that specific time? It was so tempting to imagine it was a meeting place, that she was meeting the guy she was infatuated with. Why else would she have rushed there at that ungodly hour? But was it all really that obvious?

How had she known where to go? Had the arrangement been made the day before? Or was it always the same time and place?

Carl found a compass in his drawer and got up.

Alberte cycled a lot, and someone had mentioned that she loved the nature over there. Who the hell was that again? He took a deep drag of the cigarette, which usually helped. When it didn’t, he took another one. Wasn’t it the caretaker at the folk high school? He nodded to himself. Yes, it was. He was also the one who’d said that Alberte was usually only gone for half an hour. Actually, that was quite observant of him.

Carl looked at the photo of the beautiful girl. Beautiful, young, and strong, so all in all it wasn’t unlikely that she could ride at least twenty kilometers an hour on her bike.

In order to get to her destination and back within half an hour, the distance to the meeting place or the place where they left messages to one another couldn’t have been more than five kilometers, if she also needed time to stay there for a few minutes.

He took the compass, measured five kilometers according to the scale of the map, placed the leg of the compass in the middle of the folk high school, and drew a circle with a radius of five kilometers around it.

Yes, the tree was well inside the circle, so it could easily have been the meeting place and where they left messages to one another. Probably a very romantic place—until it went wrong, that is.

Carl scratched the back of his neck. Nothing but assumptions; the truth could easily lie somewhere else. The question was why she was there. If she was there to meet someone, it must’ve been arranged beforehand, either verbally or in writing. Of course, she might also have visited the tree that morning to see if there was a note from her secret lover. In that case, she’d gone in vain, because the police didn’t find anything. Either that or the note had been taken afterward, although it couldn’t have been taken from her, given that she was hanging in the tree.

No, that was too many parameters. It didn’t help to force it. He looked at the circle around the school, sighing. What the hell had Alberte been doing out there so early?

“Hi, big boy,” sounded a voice from the door.

Carl turned around. It was Tomas Laursen with a cup in each hand.

“Why’ve you put the receiver on the table? It’s impossible to get hold of you.”

Carl put the receiver back, and only five seconds later the phone started ringing.

“That’s why,” he said. “It’s redirected to Gordon and Assad. The poor guy in there’s recording all the calls he doesn’t have time to answer.”

“Any luck?”

Carl waved his hand. “A couple of interesting calls, yes. Not bad at all.”

“Tell Assad he can stop looking for that photo of the plywood board.”

“Really. Have the technical department found it?”

“No.” He sat down, and pushed a coffee cup over to Carl. “It’s not boiling hot anymore, but it’s Jamaica Blue Mountain. You’ve never tasted anything like it.”

It smelled heavenly. Carl took a sip, and then the whites of his eyes showed. Fresh, slightly sweet, not a hint of bitterness. Damn better than Assad’s camel sweat.

“I know, but don’t get addicted, it’s only a taster. It costs an arm and a leg, and I definitely wouldn’t serve it to the mob up there.” He laughed. “Anyway, let’s get to it. Tech have dug out all the old examinations, and they can confirm the splinter that was found was plywood. But after a bit of a palaver over there, they can say for certain that the board found in the water wasn’t the one that flung Alberte Goldschmid up in the tree. The boreholes Habersaat described couldn’t have been used to attach the board to a vehicle like the Kombi. It wouldn’t make sense, unless there’d been hooks fastened through the holes. But where would they have been attached? That’s their question. If they’d been attached to the furrow with the rubber gasket under the window wipers, then both the windshield and the board would’ve been flung all over the place, and the technicians would’ve found traces of them back then, even if someone had thoroughly cleaned up the crime scene, and nothing suggests it was.

“Apart from that, the technicians claim that the fender alone wouldn’t be enough to fling the woman up in the tree. It would take a well-adjusted shovel blade to do that, apparently.

“In other words, they don’t believe that the board found could be the one used, but of course there could be another explanation.”

“I see. Then we’re back to square one,” said Carl.

He took a comforting drag on his cigarette, and offered one to Laursen.

It felt good for once to have a partner in crime.