The Hanging Girl

12

Thursday, May 1st, 2014

Habersaat’s house had initially appeared to be an extremely chaotic place. The guiding rule here seemed to be that if there was space, and this included the floor, then piles would be put there. If there was any free wall space, then clippings or printouts were put up, all of which meant that there wasn’t any semblance left of normal homeliness or personal objects apart from a couple of photos of a family in a glass frame. It was clear that only the initiated were allowed access to this part of Habersaat’s life, which was more important than the daily grind of police work in Rønne.

But if you took the time to go carefully through the apocalypse that marked the end of a normal existence, there was rhyme and reason in each little measured area.

A painstakingly built-up collection spanning almost two decades of research into the one thing in life that Habersaat seriously seemed to care about: Alberte’s tragic end.

If you were to observe this hotchpotch of material through the experienced eyes of a police officer, then there was a clear sense that the living room was Habersaat’s distribution center for all incoming material, before it was allocated according to subject to the other rooms in the house. In this room the physical papers were organized in chronological piles, while the folders on the shelves contained a register of the collective contents of the house. The dining room seemingly functioned as a sort of final station for all leads and hints that couldn’t be outright dismissed, and the remainder of the house was divided into subtopics. The utility room, for example, housed the inquiries that the police had conducted parallel with Habersaat, and that material didn’t take up much room. The room behind it was propped full of interview transcriptions from different local residents in the weeks following the collision. The boy’s bedroom upstairs contained piles requisitioned from National Police Headquarters with connections to other hit-and-run cases, and then there was an entire bookcase that had the short and sweet heading Alberte, and which in turn was divided into different statements about her background. Folders and piles even for those friends pre-dating her time at the folk high school.

Habersaat’s own bedroom on the first floor was more tightly packed than all the other rooms. The window had long since been covered, the air persistently stale and close.

“Have you ever stood downwind from a camel with colic, Carl?” Assad asked after sniffing the air a few times.

Carl shook his head but understood what he meant. A place where an older man had lived with himself and his pent-up gases for decades.

He looked around. Apart from the neatly made bed and a small area of floor in front of the bed and wardrobe, the entire room was crammed full of material. In front of the window, there were two bookcases with more piles of general information about the folk high school, and of course folders on the students and teachers who’d been at the school at the same time as Alberte.

But it was also in this room that Assad and Carl came across the material that seemed to fit in least with the bigger picture.

“Why do you think you’d have this lying about?” Assad pointed to the floor.

Carl scanned the rows of beautifully arranged brochures and leaflets about occult phenomena and groups that lay closest to the bed. There was almost no form of mysticism that wasn’t included: contacting the dead, aromatherapy, astrology, aura paintings, aura transformation, Bach therapy, clairvoyance, dream interpretation, freedom techniques, energy balancing, healing in all its forms, house cleansing, and so forth. Dozens of different areas, sorted alphabetically, and all with alternative thinking, lifestyle, or treatment in common.

“Do you think he tried to find comfort in some of this stuff here, Carl?”

Carl shook his head. “I don’t know. But no, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Have you seen any sort of indication apart from this stuff here? Tarot cards, for example, or pendulums, astrological divinations? Bottles with aromas?”

“Maybe down in the bathroom on the ground floor. We skipped that.”

They went down the corridor, typically decorated with coat hooks holding jackets on the one side and opposite, a row of worn-out shoes, together with a shoehorn with a bamboo shaft on a hook. From this room, one door opened out onto a vestibule with the obligatory umbrella stand in the corner. Apart from that, there were four other doors: one door to the living room, a door to the kitchen, and then two narrow doors, behind which, Carl reasoned, must be the toilet and the bathroom.

He glanced out into the kitchen, where Rose was at the sink washing her hands with a rare thoughtful look about her. She simply wasn’t herself just now.

With a sixth sense she felt his eyes on her and turned around in one move. “We can’t have all this in Gordon’s room in the cellar, Carl,” she said. “But if we incorporate the wall in the hallway, we might manage. A few bookcases here and there, and it’ll be fine. If you book a removal firm, maybe they can take some of Habersaat’s bookcases with them, if that’s all right with June Habersaat.” She dried her hands on her sides. “Because she’ll inherit it all, right? Technically, Bjarke inherited from his dad for a few hours, but seeing as he’s also dead now, it must be his mom who’ll take over. What do you think?”

“I say that you’ve got it all worked out, Rose. So you just get on with it. But if I were you, I wouldn’t ask anyone about those shelves.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Wow, was it that easy? I hadn’t reckoned on that.”

“No, but there’s quite a lot about the things in this house that you—and I for that matter—hadn’t bargained on.”

“Me neither,” Assad said from behind. He’d thrown wide open the two narrow doors, but there was light coming from only one of them.

“The toilet and bathroom are in the same room, and there’s nothing strange in there. The other door here leads out to a narrow corridor that goes to both the garage and down to the cellar. There’s a staircase.”

Sod the garage and the cellar with all their rubbish, thought Carl.

They opened the door from the house to the garage. The smell of tar and the stench of gasoline, and just a glimpse of light from two dusty windows left little doubt as to what the main use was of this annex. There were still tire tracks in the sand but the car was gone. It hadn’t been parked at the community hall, but the police had probably collected it and parked it in the police parking lot.

“Garages are eerie, Carl,” said Assad, emphasizing this with clenched fists at the end of his otherwise loosely hanging arms.

“Why? Are you worried about spiderwebs?” Carl turned around; there really were a lot of spiderwebs in every direction. No doubt whatsoever that his red-haired cousin would go into a coma if she was forced to stay in here. He couldn’t keep count of the number of summer holidays where she stormed through the farmhouse to squash spiders or scream hysterically because they were too big. But here everything looked homely. A few shelf units with bits and bobs from a bygone era. Roller skates and deflated beach animals, tins of paint with bulging lids, and all sorts of sprays that had clearly been banned for years. Up on the rafters a sail from a surfboard, skis, and ski poles. Nothing eerie as far as he was concerned.

“It says something about all the hours that have passed by, and all the hours that have been used incorrectly,” philosophized Assad.

“Used incorrectly?”

“All the hours where the things in here should have been used but weren’t.”

“We don’t know anything about that, Assad. And why eerie? More pitiable, I think.”

He nodded. “And garages are separate from the house and its life. When I’m in a place like this, it’s like feeling death.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t need to, Carl. We can’t all feel the same way.”

“Suicide and that sort of thing, is that what you mean?”

“Yes, that too.”

“Hmm. Well, there isn’t much in here at any rate. No boxes containing hidden secrets, no notes on the walls. No mystical pyramid constructions and crystals or occult paraphernalia like the stuff in the bedroom. Agreed?”

Assad’s eyes circled the room a couple of times. He appeared to agree.

The cellar didn’t seem to contain any noteworthy surprises either, appearing both tidy and orderly. It consisted of a laundry room without laundry, a pantry without any food, and a workshop without any tools. However, right in the middle, there was a newish photocopier and a collection of ancient developing equipment that only few in Denmark today would remember how to use.

“He’s made a darkroom down here,” said Carl. “I just don’t see any developer liquid or that sort of thing.”

“Maybe it was a hobby from his past, Carl. In fact, I think he used this most,” he said, banging the top of the photocopier. “He probably used it to make the enlargement of the Volks Kombi.”

“Probably.”

Carl picked up the wastepaper bin at the side of the photocopier and emptied out the scrunched-up contents, smoothing them out on the desk. It wasn’t hard to see how Habersaat had worked with that photo. First, he’d increased the size of the photo up to a quarter of an A4. From there he’d doubled it, continuing up to A4 size and finally up to A3. Not exactly an ideal route for a good-quality end result.

“Have a look at the first enlargement here, Assad. You’re looking across the hood of another car, and it’s a very old car if you ask me, with all that chrome on the hood. Far, far behind, you can see the man and the car. I think it’s a parking lot, what do you think?”

“But there’s also grass. So it could be something else.”

“It could be, you’re right. But look how this enlargement actually shows a bit of another photo on the side. What does that tell us?”

“That there were several photos on the same page.”

“Precisely. Our photo has presumably been in a photo album. It tallies with the structure of the paper the photos are pasted onto. It’s often something a bit coarse and cardboard-like. Judging by its square shape, I think it’s taken with a Kodak Instamatic camera.”

“I bet the original is still lying in the photocopier,” said Assad, lifting the lid. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

Assad rubbed his stubble. It sounded almost like the rhythm section of a salsa band. “If only we could see more of that photo album so we could find out where it was taken. Or maybe even identify who took it.”

“Habersaat wasn’t a detective, so that sort of logic and systematic way of thinking isn’t something we should assume he understood. And anyway, he must’ve noted where he got it from somewhere or other, for goodness’ sake. There’s probably something up there in one of the folders.”

“Look, Carl. There’s another pile of photocopies here.” Assad pulled them out of a wooden box that Habersaat had screwed into the wall, passing them down to Carl with a smile. “Maybe some of the last stuff he worked with on the case.”

“Very funny, Assad.” Carl threw the photocopy of a naked woman in rather precarious positions away from him across the table. The paper was completely yellowed. It was definitely many years since Habersaat had had any pleasure in that area.

* * *

“I managed to access his computer, Carl,” said Rose when they came back up. “The password was Alberte, of course. How hard can it be?” Rose smiled mockingly. “All the summaries of his research material, which you can also find in the folders, are on the computer. The difference being that inside the plastic wallets in the folders there’s sometimes been added a small clipping or something else in support of the entry. I’ve had a bit of a look in them, but they’re really nothing special. It seems to me that Habersaat gave up on the folder system and just stuck with the piles. But I could be wrong.”

Be wrong! Did she really say that?

“Is there any data that might explain something about the photo of the Volkswagen, Rose?” Carl put the smallest enlargement in front of her.

“Maybe,” she answered. “It’s very unclear. A photocopy, right?”

Assad nodded.

“Of course. I haven’t seen any evidence of a scanner anywhere. He apparently only had that little printer there.” She pointed to an inkjet printer under a pile of papers. “But don’t worry, Mr. Mørck. I’ll trawl through the computer and maybe we’ll find something about the origin of the photo. There’s only a 60-megabyte memory on the old box after all, so it won’t be an insurmountable task.”

Okay, finally the irony was rearing its head.

She turned back to the screen with a sigh, already in her own world. That was their Rose.

“Come here, Carl,” shouted Assad.

He was staring at the enlargement, his face tense with concentration.

“What’s up, Assad?”

“Try to feel here.” He pulled Carl’s hand up to a spot in the middle of the copy.

“And?”

“Press harder; then you’ll feel it, right?”

Now he could feel it clearly.

“Yes. Something is stuck to the back of the photocopy.” Assad nodded to himself. “Of course Habersaat assumed that we’d take the enlargement with us, Carl, of course he did. Now I think we’ve found the needle in the strawstack that we were looking for.”

“Needle in the haystack, Assad.” Carl peeled the tape on the corner of the photocopy.

“Bongo,” said Assad, and he was right. On the back of the copy was the page from the photo album with the four photos.

“Maybe there’s something about when they’re from,” said Assad, pulling the page free from the photocopy.

But of course there wasn’t.

Carl took the page with the photographs and turned it over. All four photos on the page were obviously part of a larger series with a classic car theme, probably taken at a festival of some sort or another.

Carl felt his heart skip a beat. This happened from time to time when an investigation suddenly entered a new stage. He smiled to himself. This is what he lived and breathed for.

“Here’s our man,” he said calmly, pointing at a section of less than a square inch on one of the photographs. “There, right at the back of the area, can you see him? And he’s looking over toward the car with the impressive hood. A beautiful old model.”

“Carl, we’ll never manage to get that little section clearer than Habersaat did. Never. Not even if we tried for a hundred years.”

He was right. Everything taken into consideration, Habersaat had done what he could.

“CI B14G27 it’s got here under the photo. And BCCR/BCCEC down in the corner. And look what’s written above the black car on the photo next to it: THA 20. And the other two underneath: WIKN 27, WIKN 28. Don’t you think they refer some way or other to the cars, Carl? Do you know anything about classic cars apart from that old sardine tin you drive us around in?”

Carl shook his head. “The only make of car I know with Ci is Citroën. But the others, THA and WIKN, I don’t recognize.”

“We’ll look them up,” said Assad.

Rose didn’t manage to protest before Curly jumped in and pushed the computer chair, with her in it, away from the screen.

“We’ll explain in a second,” Carl said, while Assad typed Citroën B14G27 in the search box.

No match. What now?

“You two aren’t the brightest bunch, are you?” said Rose, somewhat peeved as she glanced quickly over at the photo page. “They’re old cars, right? Very old in fact. From the twenties even, I’d guess. More specifically 1920, 1927, and 1928, as I read it.”

Carl raised his eyebrows. How embarrassing that it hadn’t occurred to him.

“Okay. Try and write Citroën B14G 1927 instead, Assad.”

Rose was right. A second after Assad had typed it, a whole series popped up on the screen of polished examples of what the motor industry and the art of the conveyor belt could produce in the inter-war years. Beautiful, beautiful cars in all colors.

“Fantastic. What car makes do we know, then, with TH or WIKN or WI KN? Check it out, Assad.”

“Just let me,” said Rose, pushing the computer chair into Assad’s hip with a thud.

After a minute of typing, she produced pictures of a Thulin A 1920 and two Willys-Knights from 1927 and 1928.

Assad looked like someone who was about to open his presents. “Here we go, then, Carl, now we’ll find out,” he said when Rose typed all the car models in one and the same Google search.

“Hidehi,” shouted Assad with a huge smile.

A meager three hits came up with this complicated search, and the top hit was definitely the right one: a link to a photo series from the Bornholm Classic Car Rally 1997 and a website for the Bornholm Classic Car Enthusiasts’ Club.

And with that, any doubt about what BCCR/BCCEC stood for was laid to rest.

Assad was jumping up and down with excitement. An odd sight when you took his general condition and age into account.

“Yeah, yeah, Assad. Now there’s just the job of finding out where the photo was taken, who gave the photo page to Habersaat, who the man in the photo is—if anyone even knows—and then finding out if he’s actually guilty, and where he is, and how Habersaat . . .”

All of which put a stop to Assad’s jumping.

“Give it a rest, Carl,” said Rose. “I’ll check if Habersaat’s printer works and, if it does, print out everything I can find on that club, okay? Then we’ll take it from there.”

Carl pulled out his cell, noticing again that the battery was almost dead. He typed Police Superintendent Birkedal’s number.

“Carl Mørck here. I just have two things to say,” he said briefly when the call was answered. “We’re taking all Habersaat’s research with us over to Police Headquarters, is that okay?”

“Well, I think those inheriting his estate will be glad. But why?”

“We’ve become curious—someone has to be. And the other thing is . . .”

“If there’s something more specific in relation to the case, Carl,” interrupted Birkedal, “you’ll need to talk directly with the man responsible from that time. He’s a good guy, so go easy on him, all right? He’s actually one of the good guys, works hard, does a good job. I’ll transfer you. His name’s Jonas Ravnå.”

“Just one more thing. Did you find anything at Bjarke Habersaat’s place that we should know about? Motives for the suicide or anything like that?”

“No, nothing. His computer was just chockablock with pornographic photos of a homosexual nature and old games.”

“You’ll send it over to us when you’re finished, right?”

“You asked for it. I’ll transfer you to Ravnå.”

A worn voice came from the receiver, and it didn’t sound any less tired when Carl told him what he was calling about.

“Believe it or not, I really did want to help Christian Habersaat,” he said. “The problem was that we just didn’t get anywhere, and at the same time, there were all the other cases since then. It’s almost twenty years ago after all, don’t forget that.”

Carl nodded. He knew the game better than anyone. If there was just one thing in life you could be sure of, it was that criminals didn’t suddenly stop committing crime.

“Habersaat harbored a suspicion about a man in a VW Kombi who he traced in a photo album from 1997. Do you have any idea who might’ve given it to him, and has he ever told you about his suspicion?”

“Christian and I didn’t discuss the case over the last five to six years. Actually, I banned him from bringing it up unless he had groundbreaking new evidence; otherwise he should just get on with his work in the uniform division. So I suppose it points to it not being something groundbreaking, and that it’s something he discovered more recently.”

“What about you? Did you ever come across anything conclusive in the case? How do you view it today?”

“I have my theories.”

“And they are?”

“If it was an accident, the driver of the vehicle could’ve been under the influence of alcohol or drugs, as there were no skid marks. If it wasn’t an accident, but premeditated murder, we’re totally lacking a motive. She wasn’t pregnant and she was well liked, so why murder her? It could’ve been spontaneous. Maybe even carried out by a random sick person who had a sudden impulse to kill another human being. But again, there must have been a reason for Alberte to cycle out there so early in the morning, and we don’t know the answer to that with any certainty. Was she supposed to meet someone, and if so, why there exactly? I assume it was there that she had a meeting and had gotten off the bike to wait. She’d left it a little way from where she was standing; otherwise she would’ve been cut up by the parts of the bike. And we found absolutely no tissue residue on it. So I think she arrived a bit too early and walked around a little while waiting. Maybe for the person who killed her.”

“Any theory about who she was waiting for? Was it the man in the car?”

“Yes, that’s just it. We know she had a boyfriend, as detailed in my report. We know that he was staying on the island, but whether he disappeared before or after the accident, I don’t know.”

“Do you have his name and a place of residence on the island?”

“He probably lived in an interim camp located on a farm by Ølene, but we don’t have a name. The farmer who was renting out his land didn’t write a contract; he just got his five thousand kroner in cash for the rental period. Yes, he even declared the income to the taxman.”

“Probably, you said. How did you find out about him? This isn’t mentioned in the report.”

“I honestly don’t remember. I expect it was something Habersaat had discovered. He was sniffing about twenty-four hours a day.”

“Hmm. What period did the rental payment cover?”

“Six months in 1997. June to November.”

“Do we have a description of the tenant?”

“Yes. He was in his twenties, maybe even a bit older than midtwenties. Handsome, long dark hair, hippie clothes. Military jacket with sewn-on labels. Nuclear Power? No Thanks and that sort of thing.”

“And?”

“Yes, that was it.”

“Not bloody much. And you’re sure that the landlord told you everything he had?”

“I sincerely hope so because the man died three years ago.”

Carl shook his head and ended the conversation. No case should ever be allowed to drag on so long.

“I have a little detail to tell you, Carl, but there’s no guarantee it’ll please you,” said Rose. Then why on earth did she flash him that demonic smile?

“I’ve booked two more nights at the hotel.”

“That’s fine. And what’s the problem?”

“Oh, there’s no problem apart from the fact that both your bedroom and Assad’s have been allocated to other people.”

“Okay, then we’ll just change hotels, right?” Assad said cautiously, beating Carl to it.

Rose looked at them as if they were a couple of spoiled teenagers. There wouldn’t be any other hotel.

“Then we’ll just be transferring over to a couple of other rooms?” Assad continued.

“Exactly. There weren’t any single rooms left, but I managed to book a double room for you instead. With double bed and double duvet, the whole caboodle. That’ll be cozy, won’t it?”