The Hanging Girl

46

Tuesday, May 13th; Wednesday, May 14th; and Thursday, May 15th, 2014

It was a hellish night, and the following day wasn’t much better.

Carl had slept heavily, much more than usual. It ought to have felt good, but when he woke up, his heart was pounding so hard he thought he was going to die.

He stayed in bed for a long time, one hand on his chest, staring at his cell on the nightstand, considering whether to call the control center so they could send a doctor. What the heck was the new number? There’d been nothing but talk for the past few months about how bad the new service was, and now he couldn’t even remember the number. Being a policeman, he should know it better than anyone. How embarrassing! He could die before he managed to remember it.

He counted the beats of his pulse, and when he reached a hundred in less than a minute, he stopped. That was far, far too many, almost like the time when he’d had his first anxiety attack. Only this wasn’t an anxiety attack. It was something different. He could feel it. Something buzzing around in his head that he couldn’t let go of.

A nightmare, most likely.

He threw his head back on the pillow and chilled out. “Humm, hummm,” he chanted, the way he’d heard at the health fair the day before, and strangely enough it worked. People should know that; it would save them money. Then he fell into no-man’s-land, where sleep and the waking state fight against each other, creating completely uncontrollable dreams.

“Hello, Hardy,” he heard himself whispering out there somewhere. He saw himself standing with a cell phone in his hand, trying to make his friend answer. Apparently, he desperately needed his advice and honest opinion. “Why did Anker and I shut you out, Hardy?” sounded a voice in his head. Why? Did he dare ask? Did he even dare confide anything to Hardy? Confide—what?

“There’s a casket in the attic, Carl,” laughed Jesper in the background, and Carl turned off the phone, but then he turned it on again, and called Mona. Nothing happened.

And then he woke up.

He staggered down to the kitchen, his head dizzy and heavy as if he’d only slept for an hour or was running a fever.

Maybe Morten and Hardy said good morning, he didn’t know. All he knew was that the only thing he wanted was the oatmeal Jesper had left in the food cupboard last time he visited, and for them to turn down the sound of the crap morning TV, where overly enthusiastic hosts were talking about trivial things while stuffing their faces with excessively hyped food creations.

Having sprinkled sugar and a bit of cocoa powder on the oatmeal, he ate the first spoonful, the taste of the everlasting mornings of the past almost like a jolt to his palate. All his senses were flipped upside down. His sense of smell was distorted, reviving smells of old aunts and uncles. The sound of his chewing on the oat flakes was enhanced. The sight of the oatmeal box dissolved into images of a family silently and stubbornly hanging on to unsaid words.

Suddenly, he remembered that time when he and Ronny had been fooling around behind Ronny’s dad while he was fishing. He suddenly remembered how he’d jumped around, punching the air, imitating Bruce Lee with savage karate kicks and horizontal chops.

Carl gasped, almost choking on the oatmeal. What was happening? Where was that coming from? Was he going crazy? Was everything inside his brain short-circuiting at once, or was it the opposite? No matter what, it didn’t feel good.

* * *

“Someone named Kristine called, Carl,” said Gordon, his mouth lopsided, his battered face a palette of colors.

Kristine? No, he wasn’t ready to renew contact with her, especially not at the moment. Anyway, why would he want to be with someone who’d left him for her ex-husband? The idea was absurd.

“She didn’t leave a message, but said she’d call again.” The part of Gordon’s face that was still able to express something changed character. “And Rose hasn’t come in. Do you want me to call her?” He sounded worried.

Carl nodded. “Where’s Assad?” he asked. “Hasn’t he come in either?”

“Yes, he’s been here. He said he needed some air. But it’s strange, because when I came he wasn’t here either. I think it’s the third time he’s gone outside in the yard, and it’s only quarter past ten.”

Carl thought he wasn’t the only one who was at sixes and sevens today. He pictured Kazambra, sincerely declaring that the side effects of the hypnosis would be minimal. Maybe Carl should give him a call.

“While I’ve got you, Carl, there’s something strange going on with Assad that I wanted to show you. His PC was on when I came in at seven, and I could see all sorts of stuff on his desk that suggested he’d been here all night. Three tea glasses, some empty peanut bags, and a couple of empty halva boxes, and then the mail from you about that Atu-whatever-guy. I think he’d been Skyping. I know you shouldn’t spy on your colleagues, but I couldn’t help looking at what was on the screen. It was Arabic writing, so I took a photo of the screen and mailed it to one of the Arabic-speaking interpreters here at HQ to find out what it said.”

“Hmmm,” said Carl. He had no idea what Gordon was babbling about. Assad outside to get fresh air? That had never happened before.

“It was Arabic, Carl, but there were phrases mixed in that weren’t Syrian. Iraqi, more likely, said the interpreter.”

Carl looked up; he was slowly coming to. “Say that again, what did you say? You’ve been nosing about in your colleague’s computer? Repeat what you said a moment ago, and I’ll give you a piece of my mind.”

Gordon looked slightly nervous now. “I just thought that since we’re all working, it must be work related. And then it must be of interest to the entire department. Or . . .”

“Go on, Gordon, say it again.”

Carl was listening. If the guy could do this to his office mate, he could do it to anyone. To be honest, Carl didn’t like that. Only problem was that if anyone in the basement needed to know more about Assad, it was him. So when you did have a sneaky spy like that in your group, at least he could make himself useful. He could always be told off later.

“The interpreter didn’t understand everything, but here’s his suggested translation.”

He pushed it over to Carl.

Just drop it, Said. No one is interested in time contracting anymore. You are like a feather on a fish to us. Accept it.

There was that name again, Said.

“Why do you think he calls him Said, Carl?”

Carl shrugged, but inside him it triggered a chain reaction of piled-up, unanswered questions.

“I don’t bloody well know if that is what he’s doing,” he said. “Was that all it said?”

Carl cast a sidelong glance at Assad’s computer. Except for the police force icon, the desktop was empty.

“He closed down Skype when he came back, and he must’ve deleted the correspondence. I just checked.”

“Listen up, Gordon. You’ve seriously fallen short of the respect we treat each other with down here, and you’re in deep shit if you ever do this again. I’ll let you off this time, but next time you even think of doing anything like this, I’ll make damn sure you’re kicked the hell out. Understood?”

He nodded.

That was that, then.

* * *

Assad was standing at the back of the square-shaped courtyard, in the niche in front of The Snake Killer, the bronze sculpture with the swastika engraved on his glans, which policemen with contempt for death had teased the Nazis with during the war. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought he was sleeping on his feet, although his eyes were open. Distant, but open.

“Are you okay?” asked Carl.

Assad turned around slowly.

“I’ve sniffed out the address for that Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi,” he answered. “He’s the leader of a center on Öland. I’ve made inquiries about him.”

Carl nodded. Wasn’t that the crucial information they’d been after? So why did they look like two piles of piss with no spark or zest?

“What’s happening to us, Assad?” asked Carl.

He shrugged. “Is something happening? In my case, I think it’s just because I’ve been working most of the night.”

“Why are you out here? Gordon says you’ve been in and out all morning.”

“I’m just tired, Carl, and I’m trying to wake up so we can get going.”

Carl squinted. Should he ask about the name?

“Rose isn’t in top form, Carl, so she won’t be coming. I don’t think that hypnosis was good for her. She was shaking all the way home in the cab, and when we dropped her off, she sat down and started rocking back and forth. I tried to call her just before, but she isn’t answering.”

“Okay. I don’t feel too great about the hypnosis either. I had nightmares last night, and kept seeing things that I haven’t thought about for years.”

“It’ll pass, Carl. At least that’s what he said to me.”

Carl wasn’t too sure. “What about Rose, then?”

Assad drew a deep breath. “Rose? She just needs a couple of days at home and she’ll be all right again.”

* * *

“You keep in contact with her,” Carl said to Gordon. “We need to get her back on her feet. When you get through to her, ask if there’s anything you can do, and by that I don’t mean for yourself, Gordon, get it?” Carl gave him a stern look.

Gordon nodded. “I can see there are three hundred and sixty-five kilometers to the Nature Absorption Academy on Öland. The GPS planner says it’ll take you about four and a half hours to drive over there, so including a break you’ll be there at three this afternoon if you leave now and drive fast. Do you want me to call and say you’re coming?”

Had he been at the back of the queue when brains were handed out?

“Definitely not, thanks all the same. But we won’t leave until tomorrow, Gordon. We’re not in top form today.”

“Okay. By the way, they called from Bornholm Police. They liked the missing person report on TV.”

“I think they should tell that to Lars Bjørn. You didn’t tell them we’ve found the man with the VW Kombi?”

“My God, no! What do you take me for?”

Best not to answer that.

“And then the policeman said they’d started talking about the case in the cafeteria again, and that one of them remembers that a relative of the teacher who died at the school—the one with the pistol Habersaat got his hands on and used for his suicide—said that the dead teacher actually had two completely similar pistols.” He panted. That was some torrent. “And that the other pistol had never been found after that. Not among Habersaat’s possessions either.”

Carl shook his head. What bloody difference did one measly pistol make in Denmark today, when any idiot member of a gang with an ounce of so-called self-respect owned at least one?

The world had gone completely bananas.

And so had Carl’s head.

* * *

He staggered to bed at four in the afternoon, and when he woke up the next morning, still feeling out of it, he called Assad to cancel the trip.

“It’s probably just an aftereffect of the hypnosis, Carl,” Assad said consolingly. “You know, if you look a camel too deep in the eye, it ends up cross-eyed.”

Carl thanked him for the comparison, and fell back on his pillow. Everything around him was shrouded in a haze. Thoughts as well as movements seemed to unfold in slow motion. And even when he tried to control them, they didn’t obey. When he tried to think about the Alberte case, pictures popped up of Ronny’s brother instead, racing up and down the dirt road to his parents’ farm. When he tried to think about that episode, his mind was filled with memories of Hardy and Anker instead, on their way into the shed on the allotment on Amager where their fates were sealed. And then when he tried to think more profoundly about that terrible and fatal event, an unexpected stream of emotion and longing flowed through him. Suddenly it was Vigga, Mona, Lisbeth, and Kristine he saw—and then Mona again. It was all completely crazy. He couldn’t sort out his thoughts at all.

There was a quiet knocking on the door, and before he’d mustered the energy to answer, Morten pushed the door open with a steaming breakfast tray.

“I can’t remember when I last saw you like this, Carl,” he said, before pulling Carl up, and placing a couple of pillows under his head. “Don’t you think you should call someone?”

Carl looked at the tray, which Morten placed on his knees. Two fried eggs were staring at him, next to a couple of bits of the flat toast Morten knew he hated.

“Protein, Carl. I don’t think you’re getting enough protein. This’ll help.”

Help what? Help make him even more confused? And then what should he do? Call for help, or struggle through this London breakfast extravaganza? What would come next? Warm milk with honey? A thermometer in his butt?

“I’ll take Hardy with me to Copenhagen,” came the words from the mouth on the plump face. “Don’t wait for us.”

What a relief.

* * *

When Carl woke up, his duvet looked like a lunarscape of egg, toast, and deltas of stray coffee.

“Ugh, damn it,” he shouted, and answered the call that had woken him up.

“I just wanted to let you know that Rose has come in. She doesn’t look too good, but I don’t dare say that to her. She’s sorting the last shelf, and we’ve received Bjarke’s old PC from the police in Rønne. Rose is already busy emptying the hard drive. Quite a few photos of naughty men in leather pants with their bare asses showing, she told me to pass on to you. She’ll continue working on it tomorrow, but she’ll do it at home, since you and I will be gone anyway. I’ve calculated that if you pick me up at six, we can get there early. Are you feeling better now, by the way?”

At six in the morning! Fried eggs all over his bed, and a flood of coffee heading under his duvet. Was he feeling better? What the hell could he say?