The Hanging Girl (41 page)

“We’re searching full out for him now, so I need to know more so we can find him,” said Carl.

“I know. As I said, I haven’t seen him since, but for some time I followed him from a distance. I know he founded an academy, and that it’s based in Sweden.”

He took a sheet of paper from his desk, and handed it to Carl.

The Nature Absorption Academy, run by Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi. Head office on Öland, Sweden,
it read in the old man’s neat handwriting.

Carl could have squeezed him. No money had ever been spent better than the amount he’d been relieved of today.

Carl sighed blissfully. The man called himself Atu. So it
was
a three-letter name.

The old hypnotist pulled back. His mission had been accomplished.

Carl shook his hand. “You’ve been a great help,” he said. “While we’re on the subject of names, why did you call Assad, Said?”

The old man looked down at his feet. “That was a mistake. I accidentally overstepped my authority; client confidentiality is the cornerstone of my business; otherwise it’s no good. But that was the name he used during the séance.

“Said, and a surname I never got.”

Wednesday, May 14th, and Thursday, May 15th, 2014

When three days had
passed, Shirley was out of likely explanations.

She could’ve easily understood if Pirjo had been sick the first day, and the second, too. But after that, wouldn’t she have found someone to take over, so Shirley got what she needed? What if nobody knew she was there after all? Pirjo could have forgotten, or she could have been so sick she was sleeping constantly. Because it wasn’t possible that Pirjo was fine but had just left her in the lurch? Was it?

She’d comforted herself from the beginning with the thought that she wasn’t in any danger. You could go three weeks without food. But when suddenly the water stopped running, it became a whole different story.

Initially, she thought that it would return. That it was only a matter of time. But as the hours went by, and she thought more about the course of events, she got scared. Really scared.

When the water supply stopped, it had happened suddenly. The flow hadn’t decreased gradually, and there hadn’t been air trapped in the system. From one second to the next, the supply had stopped, and precious drops had disappeared in the sink while she was looking.

She’d waited half an hour before turning both the cold and the hot tap, but nothing had happened.

Could something have occurred up at the building site? Had they cut a water pipe by accident? At any rate, the muffled sounds of hammering and shouting had stopped more or less at the same time that the water disappeared. Could there be a connection?

She’d tried a few times to scream for help as loudly as she possibly could, even though she knew it was pointless. She’d tried it before, and now her throat felt even more raw and dry.

She stared despondently at her playing cards and the manual that was meant to make her a better and more complete person. No matter how much her soul was thirsting for relief, and no matter what she believed the meaning was behind her being in this room, her body was thirsting more. If she didn’t get help or water within a couple of days, she wouldn’t make it, she just knew it. She’d never kidded herself that she was strong in that sense, because she wasn’t.

In her daily life, it only took a few hours without food and drink to make her desperate. She was such a creature of habit. Always a bottle of water in her drawer, always an energy bar in her purse. It made her feel secure.

Once again, she let her eyes wander across the massive wood walls. Even though she tried really hard, she couldn’t spot any screw holes or nails anywhere. The boards had probably been hammered in place so the nail holes had been covered, but if she could only pry one of the boards loose, it would be easier to grab the next one, and maybe then she could reach the insulation material and pull that out. Then people outside would definitely be able to hear her. Or even better, she might be able to kick a hole in the outer cladding.

For the thousandth time that day, she tried to swallow a little saliva but nothing came. Then she dug her nails in under the profile board where the gap was widest, trying to pull it loose.

The only thing that came out of it was two broken fingernails. Not that they were anything special. The women at the perfume counter in Liberty had made that clear long ago.

She rummaged through her bag. She had a pair of shoes with buckles and some things in her toiletry bag that might be useful instead.

After a minute’s search, Shirley’s lips began to tremble, and her hands worked feverishly. Every nook and cranny in the bag was searched, until finally she stopped apathetically, her hands in her lap, the bag on its side on the floor.

She almost couldn’t face it, but this was how it must be: Pirjo had helped her pack the bag, and now the shoes with the big buckles weren’t there, nor were the nail scissors or file. It couldn’t be a coincidence. In fact, not many things were when Pirjo had been involved.

The conclusion was horrifying. She wasn’t meant to come out alive. She could sense that now.

Shirley nodded to herself. She should’ve listened to her inner voice. As she’d sensed, Wanda Phinn
had
been at the Nature Absorption Academy, and Pirjo had made her disappear. But how? And where was she now?

The outcome of an encounter between those two could easily have been fatal. Wanda wasn’t one to back off, and neither was she one to roll on her back on Pirjo’s say-so.

But what then? What had Pirjo done about it?

Had the worst imaginable happened? Was Wanda’s body rotting away in one of the other houses? Had her poor friend been on the academy premises all along, while Shirley had been walking about, naive and oblivious?

There had been days when she’d almost taken her suspicion to Atu, and she regretted now that she hadn’t. Atu would have done something. She was almost certain. Pirjo might have a lot of power there, even over Atu now that she was carrying his child, but Atu was so open and made you feel so liberated with his profound, clever gaze. He would’ve listened and understood. She knew that.

But what about Valentina? She’d also disappeared suddenly.

A terrible thought hit Shirley. Imagine if she’d put Valentina in danger. After all, she’d let her in on her suspicion about what had happened to Wanda. What if Valentina had passed it on to Pirjo? Was that why she was trapped in this sterile cabin? Was that why Valentina had pushed her away, and then she’d disappeared?

Shirley laid her hands over her face. She couldn’t keep up. These thoughts were so horrible. If she’d had enough liquid in her body, she would have cried, but how could she cry without tears?

She felt the anger well up inside her with an intensity she’d never felt before. An anger that would make her strangle Pirjo if she ever got the
chance. An anger which she wished she’d had every time she’d been bullied, teased, pushed aside, abused.

She clenched her teeth, and pressed both her fists against her lips as hard as she could. She pinched herself until her skin started bleeding. Scratched her cheeks until she gasped for air.

She needed the pain to feel alive, because she was alive, and bloody well intended to stay that way to make Pirjo pay for this.

Shirley tilted her head back, catching a few glimpses of the stars in the skylight.

In a couple of hours, the sun would appear there and heat up the purification room. The weather had been very changeable and mostly wet the last few days, but what if the sun returned with renewed strength? Her thirst would get even worse if the temperature rose even just a few degrees.

*   *   *

She woke up to a sky that was far too clear and a temperature in the room that was at least 8 to 10 degrees Celsius higher than the day before.

If the pores in her skin opened and she started sweating, how long would she last, given that her fluid balance was already so critical?

She got up and went to the bathroom, looking for the tenth time at the showerhead she’d sucked dry long ago.

Images of a breakfast table with bread, juice, and coffee flashed in her mind’s eye for a moment. No, actually not all that. Just the juice.

Shirley wrestled free of her imagination, and felt the heat grab her like a choke hold. Under no circumstances could she start sweating. Don’t sweat, don’t sweat.

She thought about iced drinks. Evening swims in Brighton that she’d refused because the water had been too cold, because she looked terrible in a bathing suit, because she’d been alone and everyone else had had enough on their plates. She dreamt about cool breezes and downy drizzles.

Then Shirley took the decision to undress. Put all her clothes in a pile on the sink, feeling with satisfaction how her skin could breathe again.

She let her eyes wander down her pale, flabby body. How ironic that she, who had always struggled with her weight, was now dying of starvation and thirst.

Shirley shook her head. She decided that she couldn’t allow that to happen. She wouldn’t die without getting her revenge. She’d regulate her body temperature by dressing and undressing, so it was constant regardless of the weather outside. And at the end of the day, she still had a way to quench her thirst, even though it was far from inviting.

She looked down in the toilet, trying to gather courage. There was still water left in the S-trap, and the cistern wasn’t empty either. She’d been smart enough not to relieve herself there since the water stopped. If she economized with the water in the pan and the cistern, and did her business on the floor instead, just like she’d done the last two days, she’d still have about eight liters of water at her disposal.

It wasn’t inviting, though. There were still traces of feces and urine around the edge of the water left in the pan.

She thought that there was no point in being picky, dipping her hand in the water and bringing it up to her mouth.

She gagged a couple of times, but when the water reached her lips, she knew she could do it.

When she swallowed, she stared down in the pan and began to gag again.

“Stop it, Shirley, you can do this,” she shouted, hitting herself hard on the side of the head. It hurt, but it felt good, too.

And she was still here.

*   *   *

Throughout most of Thursday, the sun had shone more and more unrelentingly, while Shirley scratched away at her wallboard. She hadn’t managed to loosen it more than one and a half millimeters at the most. She’d admired the team working on the timber circle for their craftsmanship, but just now she cursed their skill. This was far too solid carpentry. It wouldn’t budge.

Then the idea occurred to her that she could break off the drainpipe
under the sink. She must be able to use a metal pipe like that to punch a hole, as long as she hit long and hard enough.

She grabbed it with both hands, pressed her feet against the wall, and pulled with everything she had in her.

The pipe broke as if it were made of paper, which actually was the case, more or less. It was very thin plastic, covered with imitation chrome.

“
Damn it!
” she screamed, and slammed it against the floor in sheer frustration.

The splinters spread evenly across the floor.

After a couple of hours’ futile work on the board, she gave up, then peed in the corner so she’d be ready to go to sleep and save energy.

Only a few drops of urine came, that was all that was left, and it smelled strongly and sharply. Her body odor had also changed over the last day. She didn’t like that at all.

After a couple of hours’ deep sleep, she woke up dizzy and dazed, feeling the need to pee again.

It was only after she’d flushed the toilet that she realized she’d used it.

She stood, shocked, and stared down into the pan in the half-darkness. What had she done? There was barely a liter left.

Now she genuinely cried, even though her eyes were still dry.

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?