The Hanging Girl

31

“That looks fine. Those herbs will do the trick with your sleeplessness,” Simon Fisher said to Assad. “And now your friend here.”

He went over to the corner of the room, a bomb crater of the impacts of time, where nothing matched. Furniture that a flea market would reject, rugs consisting equally of dog hair and old coffee stains, and last but not least, a myriad of colored posters with Hindu gods among pictures of Danish nature in gold frames. In this corner he opened a drawer in the exact copy of the bureau Carl’s granddad had had in the tailor shop in Risskov.

He was just about to ask him where he’d gotten the bureau when the man passed Assad a pendulum and briefly instructed him in how to use it.

“Do the same as your friend,” he said to Carl. “Hold the pendulum still in your hand, and calibrate it with your energy. Afterward, hang it over the plants you’ll make your tea from, and then we’ll see if I’ve chosen the right herbs.”

Carl took the chain and tried to stop himself from frowning. Now the pendulum just needed to damn well behave so they could get on.

He pulled the chain up and down to help it along.

“No, no, you have to sit totally still, and it’ll decide for itself. It will detect the energy around you,” said the man as a woman in grey glided in behind him. They nodded to her but weren’t so fortunate as to get any acknowledgment.

Carl looked down skeptically at the dead-still pendulum. Apparently there wasn’t so much energy in the plant stuff he’d selected.

“No, it won’t do. We’ll have to calibrate the pendulum again. Now, do what your friend here did so well. First, hold your other hand under the pendulum, and ask it to respond to a movement for yes.”

Carl turned his head to face him. Was he crazy, or what?

“Come on.”

Carl let the pendulum hover a few centimeters above his free hand. “Respond to a movement for yes,” he said, almost whispering, but still nothing happened. Of course not.

“Give it here,” said the gardener, at which he pulled the pendulum up to his mouth and began to suck in the air around it in short bursts. He did this a few times in deep concentration, then raised it in front of his eyes and blew out hard after an extra-large intake of breath.

“There. Now it’s cleansed,” he said. “Try again.”

There was one other time, when he’d dived from the five-meter diving board at an outdoor swimming pool to impress Lise, only to end up with his trunks around his knees midair, that he’d felt more stupid than just now. Was he really sitting here trying to convince a cone that it should make a start and move?

And then it did.

“Okay, good,” said the gardener. “Now hold it over the herbs and ask the pendulum if they’re good for you.”

He only did it because Assad poked him in the leg under the table.

“Thought as much. They’re no good for you. You need something a little less potent, or we’ll have you running around like crazy.”

Carl nodded and said that was exactly what he needed. That way he could be free from playing Dr. Mesmer again.

“Okay, but you’ve been warned,” he said.

Did the man think that he’d ever consider making soup from his stinking crops?

“Put the pendulum in your pocket. It’ll help you another time when you need it most. I’ll put fifty kroner on top of the price of the plants. That should keep us straight.”

Carl tried to smile and thanked him. “But actually we’re also here to talk to you about that time you were over on Bornholm with Frank in the Ølene camp. We mustn’t forget that.”

He looked thoughtful. “Frank?”

“Yes, that’s the name we know best.”

“And why are you asking?”

Assad took over. “We’re interested in his philosophy about sun cults and the like. We’d like to talk to him ourselves but we don’t know where he’s gone. Do you know maybe?”

The grey lady in the background took a few steps forward, which didn’t go unnoticed by the man.

“How did you find me?” he asked with his eyes fixed on the woman.

“From one of the alternative therapists that you visited together. She remembered your name, and she’s been a customer of yours.”

He nodded when Carl said her name. “Yes, that’s right enough. I lived in the Ølene camp for the whole summer; they were good times. We had a difference of opinion, Frank and me, but our conversations were actually really fantastic.”

“What did you discuss?” asked Carl. “Sun cults, religion, and that sort of thing?”

“Yes, and a whole lot more besides. Frank and I were both part of the excavations at Rispebjerg, but Frank in particular felt a special affection for the place because of the sun offerings and extensive evidence of strong cultures that had been there thousands of years before. Actually, he stole one of the sunstones we excavated, but we only talk about that under our breath.”

He laughed for a moment but stopped again when he caught his wife’s eyes.

“Do you know how he got this interest?”

“I think it was just something he’d always busied himself with. And the Open University, of course. He took a couple of courses the year before while he was working in Copenhagen, so he told me.”

“What courses, do you know?”

“There was a lecturer from the theology faculty in Copenhagen, a visiting lecturer. I don’t know his name but he was a professor, Frank said. It was apparently quite epochal, something to do with the origin of archaeoastronomy and religion.”

“Archaeo-what?”

“Archaeoastronomy, the significance of the zodiac for prehistoric peoples.”

Assad noted it down. “Do you have contact with any friends from Ølene?” he asked.

“No, not apart from Søren Mølgård. But he’s really gone to the dogs of late.”

“Søren Mølgård. Can we have his address?”

“It’s a while ago and, to be honest, I’ve dropped him. Too many drugs, you understand. It’s not really compatible with what we work with here, is it, Birtemaja?”

She shook her head, lips pinched. Just as well it wasn’t her they were trying to squeeze something out of.

“I seem to recall that he moved to a commune with some Asa followers, just south of Roskilde. Probably what was needed if he didn’t want to go totally under.”

“And who is this Søren character?”

“Nobody special. Just one of the people who lived at Ølene for a while. As far as I’ve heard, quite a few of us from there have ended up in the alternative world and made a good go of it, but Søren lacked the talent. He was just a hippie who happened to come past. He apparently tried to become a numerologist just like Birtemaja, but didn’t really understand what lay at its core. We like some sort of order in our worldview, you understand, and that wasn’t something for him.” He laughed.

Carl nodded. As far as he could tell, the order of the worldview hadn’t quite made it into this room here.

“And what about you? Where are you two from?” he asked.

Now Carl pulled his ID card from his pocket, in spite of Assad’s intense look.

“We’re from Copenhagen Police, and we’d really like to talk with Frank about an accident that took place when you were living on Bornholm. We believe him to be the only one who can help us reach an understanding of what happened.”

Simon Fisher’s eyes fixed on the card. He hadn’t seen this coming. “What accident?” he said with a look of distrust. “While we were there? I don’t know anything about an accident.”

“No, but then that’s not what we’re here to talk to you about. We just hope you’ll be able to tell us Frank’s surname and what name he’s using at present. Do you know where he’s based at the moment?”

“Sorry,” he said briefly.

* * *

“Honestly, Assad, can’t you just hurl those plants out the window? It stinks so much it’s making me sick.”

“I paid fifty kroner for them, Carl.”

Carl sighed and pressed the passenger window down.

“It’s too cold and it’s pouring down, Carl. Can you shut it again? The seat’s getting soaked.”

He ignored him. Either the plants went or Assad would have to put up with it. And when they got back, he’d be keeping well clear of everything Assad might think to conjure up from the stuff.

Carl pressed Rose’s work number on his cell and asked her to find a man who’d taught at the Open University in Copenhagen in the years just before 1997, a theologian whose passion was apparently comparing religions and constellations.

Afterward, there was silence in the car for the next twenty kilometers. Really nice atmosphere when you were driving on a motorway where it seemed like half the population of Zealand had decided to head off in the direction of Copenhagen.

When they trudged past Roskilde in a queue at ten kilometers an hour, surrounded by seriously irritated drivers, Assad put his feet up on the dashboard and looked away. Then it came.

“That was a bad move back at the house, Carl,” he said.

Just what Carl had expected. No further explanation necessary.

“You saw that the wife had seen through us, Assad. She was already about to stop him. They didn’t want to help us, couldn’t you tell? We wouldn’t have got the information anyway, so now we’ll have to bet on Søren Mølgård. But if there’s something fishy going on, you can bet he’s been warned.”

“Something fishy? I don’t always understand what you’re talking about, Carl. What are they doing with the fish?”

“An expression meaning that there’s something suspicious going on, Assad.”

“Why fish?”

“I don’t know, Assad.”

“Why not something . . .”

“Are you listening to me, Assad? I’ve got a distinct and very well-founded suspicion that there’s something wrong in this case. All this stuff about sun cults and sunstones, it puts me on edge.”

“On the edge of what?”

“Stop! I can’t think when you’re interrupting all the time. I don’t like it, okay?”

The telephone rang. It was Rose.

“The course was called ‘From Star Myths to Christianity’ and it took place in fall 1995. The lecturer came from the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen and is now professor emeritus living in Pandrup. His name’s Johannes Tausen.”

Johannes Tausen. You couldn’t really get a more theological name in Denmark.

“Pandrup in Vendsyssel?”

“Is there another one?”

“Okay, text me his full address and I’ll drive out there tomorrow after the funeral in Brønderslev. Thanks, Rose.”

She hung up before he even managed to blink.

“You’re planning to talk to the professor tomorrow?” asked Assad.

Carl nodded. He was still thinking about the impression Simon Fisher had left on him. Why hadn’t he and his wife been cooperative? Was there something he hadn’t understood when it came to people like those from Ølene?

“Then I’d like to come.”

Carl looked absently at Assad. “Good. Thanks,” he answered.

“I can see you’re not really here. You’re thinking of the motive, right?”

“Of course I am.” Carl rolled the window up, which resulted in a deep sigh of relief from Assad. “I feel more and more that we’re on the right track. I’m afraid Habersaat was right about Frank being a megalomaniac. Saw himself as some sort of messiah, and maybe everything was going to plan before Alberte came along and blocked his path somehow or other.”

“How do you mean?”

“That she became a deadweight for him. But there is another possibility, and more uncomfortable to imagine in my opinion. Maybe it was simply a case of sacrificing Alberte. A murder that Frank and the others from Ølene didn’t want to be connected with the sun cult. A sun sacrifice that curiously enough must’ve taken place at the very moment the sun was rising.”