The Hanging Girl (11 page)

She just wasn’t herself right now.

All Pirjo could think was that Wanda was going to steal her position and give birth to Atu’s children, making her nothing more than a simple housekeeper.

It was enough to drive her crazy. Why hadn’t she been able to prevent this? Why hadn’t she just discredited the girl to Atu? Why had she even answered her e-mails? Why, why?

“If you aren’t feeling too good I’d better drive the rest of the way,” came Wanda’s voice from behind her.

Pirjo turned to face the woman who was standing there in her tattered clothes and with her hand outstretched toward her.

“The keys, thank you!” she said with a look that couldn’t be misunderstood. She was really on guard and knew that she had good reason to be.

“Which way are we going?” she asked, putting the scooter in gear.

Pirjo pointed. “Back on the highway up toward Resmo, then to the right and in to Alvaret. It’s about a ten-minute drive to get there.”

It would have to happen on the moor. She didn’t know how, but it would have to be there.

Friday, May 2nd, 2014

The night in a
double bed with Assad was a somewhat motley affair.

How a relatively small person could produce such a varied range of noises was a mystery to Carl. He’d certainly never before heard anything of a similar human origin vary between subsonic snoring and squeaky whistling sounds reminiscent of an overworked church organ. And just as never-ending as Assad’s one-man orchestra was, it was equally impossible to bring him back to the surface again. In short, Assad not only slept like a log; he slept like a tree. Actually, more like an agitated rookery, thought Carl as he lay discouraged between three and five in the morning.

When the snoring finally subsided, Carl heaved a sigh of relief in the few seconds before these inarticulate sounds were replaced by an equally incomprehensible mumble from Assad’s gaping mouth.

The sounds were definitely words, which Carl in his daze interpreted as gibberish or just Arabic, until a few seemingly random Danish words appeared among the gibberish, causing Carl to lie wide awake once again.

Had Assad said “kill”? And had he said “I don’t forget,” as he’d begun to writhe about? The words were unclear but it was obvious that Assad wasn’t okay inside. Just as obvious as Carl not being able to get any shut-eye after that.

As a result, he was dead tired and no matter how much he might want to, he was in no fit state to return Assad’s beaming smile when he finally opened his eyes.

“I’ll say this for you, Assad, you can certainly talk while you’re
sleeping,” he managed to say before a woman’s voice down on the street began to yell.

Carl jumped out of bed. She must have been standing right in the hotel entrance because he certainly couldn’t see her.

“Was I talking?” came the question from behind in a very, very subdued voice. “What was I saying, then?”

Carl turned around to face Assad, intending to direct a disarming smile at him, but the guy was sitting with a deadly serious expression, pale, with his back crouched up against the headboard, resembling a soldier who’d stabbed his comrade.

“Nothing special, Assad. It was almost unintelligible. But you spoke Danish and didn’t sound happy. Did you have a nightmare?”

Assad wrinkled his heavy eyebrows and was about to answer when the woman on the street shouted up again.

“I know you’re in there, John,” she yelled. “You’ve been seen. Do you hear me? You’ve been seen together with her.”

Carl hurried over to the window, from where he could see an attractive middle-aged woman snarling on the steps of the hotel like a fighting dog that had caught the scent of blood. Her eyes were wild and her fists clenched.

Damn it. So Rose had caught John Birkedal in her net after all.

Poor, poor man.

*   *   *

“I suggest we split up today,” Carl said at the breakfast table, struggling to keep his eyes open. When the other two were off on their way, he’d creep back to the room and try to claw back some of the sleep the night had robbed him of.

“I was thinking the same,” said Rose, already in full black regalia as the evil queen in
Snow White.
Not a word on the morning’s clash and no apology for what it had caused. The incident between man and wife in front of the hotel was apparently already ancient history in Rose’s eyes. She seemed both satisfied and recharged. God only knew how Birkedal must be feeling.

“I’ll head over to Habersaat’s house and get the packing started,” she continued. “I struck a deal with a local removal company yesterday and they’re coming to pick me up here in twenty minutes.”

Carl nodded approvingly. That was her taken care of.

“And I’ve found out that June Habersaat’s sister lives in a nursing home not far from here, no doubt a job for you, Assad?” she added. “Seeing as
you
made sure that June probably won’t tell us anything about what her husband might have told her about his inquiries, it seems fitting that you’re the one who should pump her for information. June might have complained to her.”

Assad took the blame on the chin. Rose was Rose after all, and just now he was more concerned with pouring sugar in his coffee without it overflowing.

She turned toward Carl, cold and indifferent to his chalky-white complexion and suppressed protest that she was now taking control. “I’ve also arranged a tour of Bornholm Folk High School for you at nine thirty, Carl. Afterward, it’s been arranged for you to visit the former rector couple who ran the school, if you want to, which I’ll assume you do. They don’t live far from there.”

How in the world had she managed to do all that on top of everything else?

Carl took a deep breath and looked at his watch. It was five past nine. That would give him just under ten minutes to try to summon up an appetite, eat something, drink his coffee, shave, and catch the nap that he so desperately needed.

“I think you’ll have to ring the folk high school again and postpone, Rose. I’ve got a few things I need to sort out first.”

She smiled, so she’d obviously been expecting that answer. “That’s okay, but then it’ll have to wait until the day after tomorrow because the school is closed tomorrow for a trip. But if you really want to sleep here at the hotel for another few days, that’s fine by me. It’s not as if there’s anyone else waiting for us.”

Carl nodded, realizing the pointlessness of suggesting a later time in
the day to the battle-axe who currently represented the executioner at Nuremberg, the nail in his coffin, and the stone in his shoe.

“And when you two are done, I think you should meet me in Listed to give a hand. You’ll probably be finished first, Assad, but you can take a taxi. What do you say?”

“I say that I’ve never tasted such great coffee before,” he replied, swinging his cup in front of them as Carl accepted defeat.

“I think it might be easier if you and I go together, Assad,” he said. “June Habersaat’s sister can wait until later today.”

Carl’s cell phone rang. He looked at the display with equal measures of resentment and awe.

“Yes, Mom. What’s up?”

She particularly hated that expression. It sometimes had the advantage of paralyzing her completely so the conversation was over before it began. Unfortunately, it apparently didn’t annoy her one bit today. She cut straight to the chase.

“We’ve heard from Sammy in Thailand now. He reversed the charges, but that’s fine because it was quite rough what he had to say, if you ask me. He’s gone out there now to sort everything out, and do you know what?”

Carl threw back his head. The memory of both Sammy and why he was bumbling around in that quintessential exotic playground of the Danes had luckily been hidden somewhere deep in Carl’s brain, somewhere he didn’t often visit.

“Sammy is so angry, and I can understand why, because Ronny’s already sent his will to someone else. It’s almost as if he couldn’t trust his own brother, isn’t it?”

Ronny’s will. Hopefully, Ronny had limited himself solely to sharing his usurped goods, but Carl wasn’t certain. Why did he get such a bad taste in his mouth whenever Ronny’s affairs were brought up?

“If Sammy was my brother, I’d have myself adopted,” he replied.

“Goodness, Carl, you rascal. You’re always coming out with such funny stuff. Your dad and I would never let you do that.”

*   *   *

The folk high school was located in exactly the kind of place you’d expect, surrounded by fields and forests, directly up to the spectacular Ekkodalen valley, probably the biggest attraction on Bornholm, and on which masses of schoolchildren from all over Denmark descended as part of their compulsory school camp. Carl had often heard about it but never seen it before because where he came from you didn’t go to Bornholm but to Copenhagen, where the highlight was a ride on the roller coaster in Tivoli Gardens and subsequent throwing up.

A flagpole with a pennant gently dancing in the sun, and a massive engraved boulder, greeted them in true style with the words
Folk
High School,
behind which there was a series of red and white buildings from all periods, spread out in the landscape, framed by bushes and windbreaks, homemade totem poles, and a coffee pavilion in miniature.

A presentable red-haired woman was waiting in front of the entrance to the administration building, whose presence immediately prompted Assad to straighten up the few centimeters that were possible.

“Welcome,” she said, starting out by saying that she wasn’t employed at the school when Alberte was there but that their groundskeeper had been. “We’ve got publications from that year, and our former female rector has also written a diary throughout the extensive period when she and the rector were at the helm here. I don’t really think she’ll have made many comments on the Alberte case, though.”

Assad nodded like one of those bobbing-head dogs kept by some strange people in the backs of their cars. “We’d really like to talk to the groundskeeper,” he said with half-closed eyes and an almost certainly flirtatious look. “But maybe you could show us around so we know a bit more about what Alberte’s life was like here.”

Carl couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing there, thinking that Assad would do fine on his own, and noticing how keen he was. Maybe he could sneak onboard the ferry later this afternoon and leave the rest to them. Another night with Assad’s outbursts would kill him.

“Some of the buildings are later additions, including the two facing
the road, where we house the glass workshop, for example,” she continued. “But you can see where Alberte ate, painted, and slept at night.”

*   *   *

It turned out to be an extensive tour, and Assad was thrilled. “What did they eat for breakfast? Was there a morning assembly? When did they sit in the lounge with the fireplace?”

It was only when the groundskeeper, Jørgen, a well-preserved man with slightly greying temples and a lean workman’s figure, turned up that the tour really had any substance. The man appeared to have a good memory, so Carl became more interested. He’d been employed here since 1992 but the events surrounding Alberte’s disappearance and the questions about how she’d come to end her days had naturally caused the year 1997 and the young girl Alberte to be imprinted more in his memory than so much else.

“She disappeared on the same day we held the topping-out ceremony for our workshop building, and I was busy that day; you remember things like that.” He led them over toward a cluster of low bungalows in yellow brick. “She slept over here in the house we call Stammershalle. They all have funny names like Helligdommen, Døndalen, and Randkløv, but don’t ask me why. That would be a longer explanation.”

“Okay, so they’re single rooms,” surmised Carl. “And with a window directly out to the lawn. So she could easily have had late-night visits from outside, couldn’t she?”

The groundskeeper smiled. “Nothing is impossible when young people dance in the night, is it?”

Carl thought about Rose for a moment and shook his head. He didn’t dare think about how she would have reacted in the same situation.

“But the police questioned the other girls who lived in the house and none thought she’d had a male visitor in her room. And they would’ve heard, as thin as the walls are.”

“How do you remember her? Was she special in any way?”

“Hmm, how? She was probably one of the prettiest girls to attend the
school in my time. Not only because of her fantastic features and eyes, but because she moved about like she was a princess. She had a special way of walking, almost gliding across the floor like Greta Garbo used to. She wasn’t very tall but all the same I think you always noticed her most in a crowd, if you get what I mean?”

Carl nodded. He’d seen pictures of Alberte.

“Who’s Greta Garbo?” asked Assad.

The groundskeeper looked at him as if he’d fallen from the moon, and maybe he had. Who knew anything about Assad? And what did Assad know? Two unknowns of the same sort.

“And then she sang so beautifully. You could clearly hear her voice rise above the others during the singing at morning assembly.”

“So what you’re saying is that she was unusually attractive and something a bit special. Do you remember anything about who she flirted with at the school?” asked Carl.

“No, I don’t know anything about that, unfortunately. The police asked me the same thing, but no doubt some of the other students had something to say about that. I just know that once in a while she took the bus or a taxi into Rønne with some of the others to have a good time. Had a beer and that sort of thing. I saw some of the other girls and boys smooching over in the greenhouse behind the solar collector, but never Alberte. She cycled a bit, too. She was really taken with the nature here, she said, but I don’t know how much she ever managed to see. She was often only gone for half an hour, I noticed, maybe even less than that.”

*   *   *

“We didn’t get much out of that,” said Carl half an hour later as they sat in the car on the way to Aakirkeby and the home of the former rector couple.

“It’s nice here on Bornholm,” Assad said with his feet up on the dashboard, taking in every detail of the landscape. “And that secretary, I could’ve eaten her up.”

“I did notice your amour, Assad.”

“My what?”

“Maybe you could find a job over here if you’re so taken with it.”

He nodded. “Yes, maybe. People seem nice here.”

Carl turned toward him. Was he serious? It certainly looked like it.

“You like redheads, then?”

“Nah, not especially. It’s just a feeling I have at the moment, Carl.” He pointed to the dashboard display. “Your cell phone’s ringing, Carl.”

Carl pressed. “Yes, Rose, what’s new?”

“I’m sitting in the middle of a load of boxes and paper on the first floor in Habersaat’s house. Have you two noticed that there are several folders full of transcripts of interviews with the students from back then?”

“We haven’t really looked yet, but yes, we’ve noticed.”

“I’ve had a little look. Several of her friends report that Alberte flirted with most of the guys and that it was really annoying for the others because the guys only had eyes for her.”