The Hanging Girl (12 page)

“So it might be one of the girls who hurled her up in the tree?” Carl grunted.

“Very funny, Mr. Mørck. But one of the boys at the school got a little further than the others, it seems. They kissed and were together for a while before she found the other one.”

“The other one?”

“Yes, the one who didn’t go to the school. But we can talk about this later, right?”

“Yes, of course, but then why are you calling?”

“I called to tell you about the folders and to ask if either of you have come across anything to do with the guy she was with at the school? His name was Kristoffer Dalby.”

“We didn’t get much from the trip to the school, no. Kristoffer Dalby, you said? We’re on our way now to the former rector couple, so we can ask them if they can tell us anything about it.”

*   *   *

A tall and thin elderly man, who beyond his corduroy trousers, tweed jacket, and well-groomed beard needed only a pipe hanging in the corner of his mouth to give him the look of a professor of literature from Oxford,
led them to the kitchen, where the windowsill had more pots filled with herbs than in a garden center.

“Allow me to introduce my wife, Karina.”

Principal Karlo Odinsbo’s complete opposite took the stage with smiles and embraces. She was dressed with multiple layers of clothing in such an array of color that she looked like she’d stepped out of the musical
Hair.
All she needed was a turban fashioned from three gaudy scarves and she and Carl’s turbo-tuned ex-wife, Vigga, could have been hatched from the same nest.

“Kristoffer Dalby, you say?” the principal mulled over the name once he had them seated at the Formica table. “Hmm, we will have to bring forth the annals to help. But let’s have some coffee first.”

Assad looked quizzically at the former principal. “Annals?”

Carl gave him a nudge to stop him. “Annals are old records and books, Assad, not what you’re thinking about,” he whispered.

Assad’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “Oh,” he said in recognition. A new word had found its way into his vocabulary.

“What do you say, Karina?” the principal asked while pouring. “Do you remember a student by the name of Kristoffer Dalby from Alberte’s group?”

She thrust her bottom lip forward. Apparently not.

“Just a second, I might have something to jog your memory,” said Carl and dialed Rose’s number.

“Do you have a picture of Kristoffer Dalby, Rose? If you do, could you take a photo of it with your cell and send it to me?”

“No, not of just him. But I have a photocopy of the entire group. Habersaat marked off everyone in the photo that he spoke with, and wrote out their names.”

“All right, so snap a photo and send it to me.”

He turned toward the couple and the cookie jars.

“Good cookies,” said Assad, his hand rotating between the tins.

Carl nodded. “Yes, and thank you for being so accommodating. It feels very welcoming here, just like at the school. It’s been said that it’s down to your efforts that the school has become a sort of home away from home
for the students during their stay. Everything is there: art on the walls, newly tuned piano, comfortable common room, and rooms that give a special atmosphere. But is there always such a pleasant mood? Aren’t there also fights between students and teachers as well as among the students themselves?”

“Yes, of course,” answered the principal. “But it has always been reserved to petty affairs, I would venture.”

“How was it to lose one of your students in the way you did Alberte?”

“Frightful,” answered the wife. “Frightful.”

“The school is very old,” continued Carl. “We saw some pictures that were over a hundred years old.”

“Yes, we celebrated our centenary in November 1993, so you’re quite right.”

“Wonderful,” Assad threw in, brushing crumbs from his stubble. “Have there been any other stories like this in your time?” he continued.

“Stories like this? Erm, we did have a couple of silly incidents of theft a few years back, where a couple of guitars, amplifiers, and cameras disappeared. That wasn’t at all amusing, but it gave our country policeman, Leif, something to sink his teeth into back at the square in Aakirkeby instead of the usual vandalism in the graveyard and such,” said the lady rector.

“Yes, and then there was the unfortunate business with one of our teachers who died here at the school, of natural causes, but he had an illegal weapon in his room.”

Assad shook his head. “No, I’m not thinking of that sort of thing. Like the Alberte case, I meant.”

“Fatalities, rapes, serious assault,” elaborated Carl and nodded to Assad. Excellent turnabout over the cookie crumbs.

“Goodness no, nothing like that. That’s to say, there was a girl who tried to commit suicide a few years ago but without success, thank heavens.”

“Troubles of the heart?” Carl scrutinized their faces as they looked questioningly at each other. These two didn’t seem to have any reason to hide anything.

“No, I think it had something to do with family back home. Some of our younger students come over here just to escape home. However, they don’t always manage to create the desired distance.”

“What about with Alberte? Did she also come here to distance herself from her family?” asked Carl.

“Yes, I suppose she did. Her family was what one might term somewhat orthodox. Yes, Alberte was Jewish.” For a moment, he looked almost apologetically at Assad, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

He looked indifferent, however that should be interpreted.

“Yes, she was Jewish and arguably kept on too short a leash. She only ate kosher, so she must’ve had some orthodox morals and ethics from home.”

“But as far as her emotional life was concerned, she distanced herself from her family?” asked Carl.

The lady rector smiled. “I think she was as most young girls that age tend to be.”

There was a noise from Carl’s pocket. He took out his cell. It was a text from Rose.

“Here he is,” he said, pointing to someone in the group photo.
Fall Semester 1997
was written under a series of handwritten names and arrows pointing to the respective faces. “He’s the one called Kristoffer Dalby. Sitting in the front on the floor.”

The elderly couple squinted. “It’s certainly very small and unclear,” said the man.

“We have the yearbooks in the sitting room. I’m sure Karlo will bring it. Would you, darling?”

Carl nodded as the amenable husband stood up. There was an enlarged photo from the yearbook of decent quality in the folder back in the hotel room. It would’ve been a good idea to have brought it.

“Shouldn’t we look at this one here? It’s much bigger,” said Assad, pulling the folder out of his bag.

Why on earth hadn’t he done that ages ago? Had he managed to stick home-baked goods in his ears while he’d sat here tucking away?

He winked at Carl, putting his version of the photo on the kitchen
table at the same time as the principal came back with his worn example of the yearbook in hand.

“It’s him here,” Assad said, putting his finger on a youthful guy wearing an Icelandic sweater and sporting a downy beard.

Two pairs of experienced eyes were furnished with reading glasses and came closer.

“Yes, I remember him, but not very well,” said the rector.

“You don’t mean that, Karlo,” the wife shot in, squinting her eyes as her breast began to heave up and down. Was it repressed laughter?

“He was the one who played the trumpet at our hat party. It was so out of tune that the rest of the musicians stopped. Don’t you remember?”

Her husband shrugged. Fun and games seemed to be more her department.

She turned to Carl and Assad. “Kristoffer was sweet. Very shy, but also very sweet in his own way. He lives here on the island. There were a few locals in every group; otherwise they come mostly from Jutland and Zealand, and of course we always have a few foreigners. The Baltic countries are usually overrepresented, as far as I can tell. There were eight to ten from Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and then a few Russians that year, too.”

She pointed to a couple of the girls in the photo and then rested her finger on her cheek pensively.

“Was Kristoffer’s surname really Dalby? I don’t recognize that name in any connection with him. Check the names in the yearbook, Karlo.”

His finger ran down the list of names under the photo.

“You’re right. His name wasn’t Dalby but Studsgaard, of which there are many over here. So I don’t know why it says Dalby on the police copy,” said the man.

“Kristoffer Studsgaard, yes, yes, yes!” the wife shouted clearly. “
That
was the name.”

“Well, it seems that while he went to the school he had a short affair with Alberte, if you can call it that. Can you tell us anything about it?” asked Carl.

They couldn’t. It was many years ago, and they probably couldn’t
have commented back then either. They had never really known much about the students’ movements outside of school hours.

*   *   *

On the way back to Rønne, Carl called Rose to inform her that she’d have to deal with the packing up herself, which she didn’t take remarkably well. Had it been possible to transmit all the facets of her quivering dissatisfaction over the telephone, they would’ve been cooked alive.

“We’re going to check out this Kristoffer Dalby now, if he’s home,” added Carl to change the direction of the conversation. “There’s only one on the island, living just outside Rønne, so that should be easy enough. Afterward, we’ll drive over to June Habersaat’s sister in Rønne. You’ll manage, Rose,” said Carl.

But she
wasn’t
happy.

October 2013

Funny sort of epilepsy,
thought Wanda. She’d seen epilepsy and then some. From a family of seven children, and among them an ailing and beloved little sister, who suffered almost weekly torments of small focal seizures as well as monthly unconsciousness-inducing seizures, Wanda knew all the signals and aspects of epilepsy. The illness had frightening, paralyzing, and grotesque faces, but none of them resembled the one Pirjo had feigned just before.

When Wanda lifted her foot and shifted gears, the woman immediately put her arms around her tightly, so why couldn’t Wanda do the same when it had been Pirjo driving? Weird!

Wanda looked down at the hands wrapped around her waist. Small white hands that radiated a certain age but also innocence and vulnerability, and which were seemingly trembling.

Why were they trembling? Was she scared that they’d swerve and crash? Was she freezing? Or was it her own little personal aftershock from an epileptic attack?

If that was the case, then Wanda had been unfair and the episode just before had been the accidental result of a seizure, even though it didn’t seem like it was, based on Wanda’s experience.

But was she a doctor? And, at the end of the day, had she been there for her little sister when things went wrong? Did she know all the characteristics of these attacks?

She probably didn’t, when it came down to it.

“You need to turn right here,” shouted Pirjo.

Wanda put her foot down when they came round the bend and onto the road through the well-grazed moorland. From now on, the woman behind her shouldn’t be in any doubt about who was in charge of the speed, so she could just as well get used to it. There couldn’t be any shadow of a doubt that her arrival wasn’t welcomed by this Pirjo, just as Shirley had predicted. Wanda could feel the instinctive impulse to hit back, but she’d decided to control herself. There were other ways to win this fight.

Wanda had once been the woman who only had the wall to look at, and she wasn’t going to be that again. And no one should get in her way.

Wanda decided to take a careful approach when Atu saw her again, going over in her head what she’d say when she found him. How she’d thank him for taking such good care of her in London to remind him of the looks they’d exchanged. That she had come to serve him, and without hope of payment, and that she was trained in sports and could help to get his course participants in shape. Who knew, maybe she could secure a permanent place here for herself straightaway.

“A bit farther down and we’ll come to the nature reserve, Wanda. To the right the area is called Mysinge Alvar, and to the left Gynge Alvar. That’s where Atu probably is.”

She sounded more believable now than before.

Wanda turned her head toward her and saw her smiling face.

Actually, too smiling.

Whenever one of his children had come to him with ulterior motives, Wanda’s father had always said,
Your smile is crystal clear but the reason behind it is unclear.
His life experience had long ago taught him that certain special smiles cost more than others. Sometimes a few coins, sometimes substantial concessions or indulgences.

And it was one such special crystal-clear smile that Wanda saw on Pirjo’s face. The question was, why? She didn’t like it.

She sped up and tilted her head back, so the wind tickled her scalp. Like all Jamaican women with an ounce of respect for themselves or their religion, she kept her dreadlocks carefully and tightly braided so that her hair shone and appeared sculptural. For Wanda, hair was an invitation to be touched, and she could still feel Atu’s hands from that day in
London when they gently and sensually brushed over it. She wanted to experience that feeling again, and right now it was her driving force.

“Park over by the sign on the wall,” said Pirjo, pointing over Wanda’s shoulder and pulling the keys from the ignition before Wanda could react. It seemed like a reflex because she was apparently more concerned just now with one of her feet.

“I twisted my foot when we fell, so I don’t think I can go out there with you,” she continued, pointing toward a stone-covered path that disappeared off in the flat landscape. “You aren’t allowed to drive motorized vehicles in Alvaret, but you just need to follow the path a kilometer or two before you’ll find Atu, if he’s there, which he probably is. There are so many legends about this area, and Atu collects energy out here as he melts together with the weatherworn landscape. It tends to be beautiful and colorful, but at this time of year you won’t find so many orchids, even though that’s what defines the area. Really fascinating, isn’t it?”

Pirjo turned toward the scooter, but evidently thought of something and turned around again.

“In order to catch the train back to Copenhagen you need to be back here in an hour and a half. The walk out to where Atu will be doesn’t take more than a good fifteen minutes, so you’ll be fine for time.”

Pirjo sounded totally trustworthy now. Maybe she was adjusting herself to the new state of things. In that case, Wanda would also be able to show magnanimity. After all, she understood the woman and her situation perfectly. Everything would sort itself out when she became Atu’s chosen one. Even the situation with Pirjo.

Wanda felt a rush in her stomach. Fifteen minutes, the woman had said, and then she would meet him.

*   *   *

For Wanda, who had lived for most of her life in an exotic and lush climate with both rain forests and savannah, this barren landscape was the most colorless she’d ever witnessed. In the outermost part of the moor, there was admittedly a hint of green, but after a while both the grass and cobbles disappeared from the path, replaced by an indefinable whitish
layer reminiscent of salt or chalk. Along the side of the path, the colors of the dead plains in arid tones changed from withered green to brown and white, and neither birds nor insects were to be seen. It was a lonely place, which reminded her of the time she stood, day in and day out, as a door guard. There wasn’t any human contact here either.

She smiled. It was at least different here, not the marble-covered back entrance of 80 Strand, but earth and sky and life-giving air.

She thought that if Atu could find peace out here, then she could, too. But she also wondered if she would find him and puzzled over where someone could hide in this flat nothingness.

She scanned back and forth and considered her options. A few hundred meters farther ahead low bushes and reedlike grasses swayed in the wind. A ways to the side, rainwater lakes had accumulated between scattered areas of grass on the stone-hard ground, and if you looked closer, it looked as if footprints led over there.

Wanda wasn’t sure; she wasn’t exactly a specialist. As far as she knew, the prints could just as well be from animals as from humans, and they could be from yesterday or from months ago for that matter. Nevertheless, she went in that direction.

“Atu, are you out here?” she shouted a few times in the direction of the vegetation without any answer.

A misgiving about what was going on came rushing to her again.

Shit! So the stupid bitch had won the first hand anyway. The woman had lured her out here and no doubt left by now.

“I shouldn’t have let her take the keys to the scooter,” she whispered. “That was stupid, Wanda.”

She shook her head at herself, turned around, and went a few hundred meters, cursing her naivete.

Then she heard a sound like distant thunder rolling over the landscape.

Wanda looked up. The sky was a bit grey but the drifting clouds didn’t appear threatening or heavy with rain. Was the sound coming up from the highway? It would be strange if you could hear it all the way up here.

She shook her head and shouted Atu’s name again a few times, now sure that she’d been tricked and that the road back to some random person who could help her to Kalmar and the hotel would be tiring and long.

“But just you wait, Pirjo! Tomorrow, I’ll take a taxi to the Nature Absorption Academy, and then we’ll see what your next move will be,” she mumbled. “No matter what you do, it’ll only end up hurting yourself.”

Even though she was now behind in the game, the game was still hers, she reasoned to herself, when suddenly the indefinable noise sounded much closer.

Wanda squinted her eyes and stood on tiptoe. Now she heard what it was.

A ticking noise from a scooter coming toward her.

Wanda wondered if Pirjo had had second thoughts and ignored the ban on motor vehicles in order to drive out and meet her. No doubt arriving with some story that she’d had contact with Atu and that he wasn’t in a position to meet Wanda where he was. Yes, that’s what she’d be up to. But this time she wouldn’t pull the wool over her eyes.

Wanda decided that she’d just come straight out and tell her that she didn’t believe her. When you did that, the person’s face tended to give away the truth.

She stopped, standing completely still, watching the yellow blob moving ever closer to her, getting bigger and bigger, stirring up dust in its wake. Now she could see Pirjo sitting up on the scooter with both hands on the handlebars. There couldn’t be any doubt that she’d already seen Wanda out in the open and would soon pick her up.

Wanda waved to her but Pirjo didn’t wave back.

Poor woman, thought Wanda, feeling a momentary twinge of compassion for her as she realized Pirjo just didn’t know what to do to get rid of her.

It was only when there were twenty meters between them and she could clearly see Pirjo’s face that Wanda realized she was mistaken. Pirjo knew exactly what to do.

Wanda’s pulse raced as the thought ran through her head that the woman was crazy and wanted to kill her.

And then she ran.

The ground underneath her quickly became swampy. Wanda wondered if she should keep going in this wet earth and hope Pirjo became stuck. She could only hope that the surface would stop the scooter, but nothing indicated that. Just now the sound from the scooter was so loud that she could only be a few meters behind her.

With a jerk she jumped to the side, landing in the split second where the heat from the scooter hit her, and the would-be yellow death trap roared past. Pirjo’s expression was one of frustration, but also cold and hard. Nothing would get in her way. That was clear enough.

Then she thrust her feet hard in the ground and spun the scooter round on itself, throwing up mud and earth from the rear wheel.

Pirjo thought she could catch her without any effort but she was about to realize that this was the fastest woman she had ever met in her life, thought Wanda as she stepped out of her shoes and accelerated in her bare feet.

But the speed wasn’t enough.

Wanda’s specialty on the ash track of the national stadium had been the four hundred and eight hundred meters, and at those distances she felt she was totally in symbiosis with the ground, her breathing, and the flailing arms of her competitors. In front of her here, the ground was uneven, unpredictable, and full of pebbles that made her forward leaps painful and so uncertain that she was in danger of twisting her ankle at any moment.

Wanda knew that she couldn’t keep this up for long, her pulse racing faster and faster as she decided that if Pirjo saw this as a hunt to the death, then she’d just have to turn the tables so she was the matador and Pirjo the bull.

She sensed the scooter right behind her again. The screeching of a motor in low gear enveloped her, signaling danger, but she wasn’t afraid.

Wanda thought about how she would jump to the side just like before and then, when Pirjo passed, swing her arm out toward her head and knock her off. But she knew she had to be careful that the scooter didn’t hit her, especially as the ground was becoming softer underfoot.

It was only in the second before the scooter reached her that she turned her head.

Realizing it was now or never, she jumped to the side for the second time and stopped.

As she lifted her arm to take a swipe, she saw Pirjo’s crazy expression and a small, compact spade in her hand being swung right at her face.

That was the last she saw.