The Hanging

by Lotte Hammer

  She had photographed his face earlier that evening.

  Chapter 29

  The ad filled half a newspaper page. It was in full color and had been expensive.

  At the top was a photograph of an eight-year-old boy. The grainy quality and the boy’s long, blond hair, which grew past his ears, indicated that he had been captured for posterity in the seventies or eighties. Apart from that there was nothing special about him. He was smiling selfconsciously into the camera and it was not hard to imagine that he wished the picture taking would be over soon so that he could get out and play soccer. At the very bottom of the ad was another portrait, this time of a presentable man in his midthirties who stared straight at the reader. His gaze was steady and decisive, his expression serious, except for the smile, but also angry. It was tempting to compare the two faces, but for the trained gaze there was not much of a likeness.

  The text between the two pictures was in an old-fashioned-typewriter font that emphasized the raw and immediate message. Four short paragraphs written in the first person declared that the boy had been sexually abused. That those who should have been his protectors had failed him and that the man had always felt shame and kept his childhood story secret. Until now. The final paragraph was made up of a series of questions: How many children are growing up like this? How many children in Denmark will be raped this evening? Ten? One hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? What is your guess? Or don’t you care?

  At the Roskildevej County secondary school, class 3Y was reading the notice. One of the students in the class had passed around a photocopy of it as a precursor to something she wanted to tell. Now she was standing next to the teacher’s desk and waiting patiently while the teacher sat on a chair in the corner of the room. The girl was one of his star students and it had not taken many pretty smiles to persuade him to let her have the first ten minutes of the lesson for her own purposes. Apart from being clever, she was also unusually attractive, and he looked her up and down stealthily with a gaze that contained more than pedagogical interest.

  When everyone was done reading, the girl told them calmly about her childhood. Without hatred or pathos. She was gripping, and never before had 3Y been so quiet. Each word soared, every sentence perfectly formed, and she affected them like no one before her had done, with a story that could coax tears from a stone. Her issue. Their issue. Everyone’s issue. Every one of them felt it—for the first time in his or her life.

  What none of them knew was that the girl had spent a long time preparing her speech. She had known that the notice would one day appear, and that she would then stand ready with her own story. Many, many times she had stood in front of the mirror and rehearsed until everything had been perfected: her tone, phrasing, the lump in her throat, the spontaneous blush—even the curl of hair that accidentally fell over one eye at a certain moment. Inside she felt nothing except a glowing vanity at living up to her role as fire starter. Even though she knew that this was only the rehearsal and that a bigger scene was waiting for her.

  She was done in ten minutes. She ended her speech with a tear glittering in the corner of her eye, pleading with her classmates to help her spread her story. Just like the man in the ad, apart from the fact that she could not afford expensive media interventions. Seconds later, her request had been fulfilled as her classmates’ thumbs hammered like drumsticks over their cell phone keys and sent her story into circulation. Two friends who were gifted in practical matters talked briefly and found that they were on the same page. The shopping trip was canceled. The diesel pants could wait. Without further ado, they piled money on the desk, as a way of speaking for the less affluent. And others also consulted their wallets.

  And the spark caught. Like a fire in a haystack, the confessional narrative spread among Danish secondary-school students.

  Chapter 30

  Konrad Simonsen was looking at Helmer Hammer’s house. It was a pretty villa in its original condition with tall mahogany paneling and ornate crown moldings. The floors had been sanded smooth and polished white with pipe clay. He peered out the window until he caught sight of a jogger his own size making his way around the lake, which gave him a bad conscience. He left the window and inspected the pictures on the opposite wall. They were four original lithographs of Hans Scherfig’s naivistic elephants. They were striking and fit very well into the decor.

  “You know, of course, that he was a communist?”

  He turned in surprise. A girl was standing behind him. She was around sixteen years of age with black matted hair, worn jeans, a ring in her nose, and peeling nail polish in a vibrant shade of red. Her sweater was unraveling on one arm and she was wearing two different, extremely worn sneakers. There were no laces in one and the ones on the other were undone. Her clear eyes shone with intelligence.

  “Dad has all of his books, even the yearbooks from Land and Folk. He collected them in his Red Period.”

  Simonsen did not really know what to say, and decided on an affable smile.

  “Is he still with you?”

  “He was called in, apparently something important. It’s like that all the time. It’s always very important and extremely irritating. Are you the one who is supposed to find the ones who killed the five men in Bagsværd?”

  “Yes, me and a whole lot of other people.”

  “I hope you don’t find them.”

  She said this without aggression, more as a considered opinion that should naturally be respected. Against his better judgment, Simonsen found himself impressed with her self-confidence.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because the five men were child molesters, of course.”

  He had denied this rumor at least ten times in the past twenty-four hours. He had even gone so far as to issue a press release, which, as far as he knew, was unprecedented. The dead men had still not been identified, so their sexual predilections could belong only to the realm of speculation, even though the information he had uncovered lately surprisingly enough seemed to speak for there being truth to the rumors. He could not bear to start the day, however, where he had stopped it last night and definitely not before breakfast, so he decided not to correct her. Nor was it particularly likely that she would allow her opinions to be derailed by mere facts. Why would she, when no one else did? He chose another line of argumentation, and looked her straight in the eye.

  “Last time I looked in the law books, there was nothing in it about the right to kill pedophiles.”

  She returned his gaze without faltering. Her voice was friendly, albeit with a note of mockery, as if she were explaining something to a sweet but not overly bright younger brother: “If you are looking for things that are allowed, the law book is a bad place to start.”

  Piqued, he shifted his gaze.

  He was rescued by her father, who was finally finished with his call.

  “And if you don’t get your backpack and get going, you can start looking for a paper route for your pocket money.”

  Helmer Hammer’s show of anger was unnecessary. He was clearly proud of his offspring, for which one could hardly blame him.

  “Yes, Daddy dear.”

  She kissed him quickly on the cheek and left. Almost. She turned to them in the doorway and her smile could have melted an icicle. Her final words were aimed at Simonsen: “Dad always speaks nicely about you, he likes you, he just doesn’t show it. That’s one of his weaknesses. You’re welcome.”

  Her shoelace dragged on the floor behind her as she walked away.

  Breakfast was excellent and the subsequent conversation disheartening. Simonsen had both good and bad news from the medical examiner’s office. He started with the positive: “Today I’ll get likenesses of at least two of the victims and supposedly they are lifelike enough to be published in the media. That will almost certainly lead to an identification.”

  “Sounds good. I allowed myself to place a call to the professor yesterday, but… eh …” The police chief hesitated. “He claimed that I was an illusi
on. That I simply wasn’t aware of it myself.”

  “He can be a little odd at times.”

  “Yes, you could say that.”

  “You should come with me sometime. I’m good at handling the old codger.”

  That was a lie. No one was good at handling Arthur Elvang and least of all Simonsen. He was simply more accustomed to embarrassment and therefore more prepared than most.

  Hammer nodded and left the subject.

  “In my line of work there isn’t anything called sin or shame. You either deliver the goods or you don’t. I was supposed to set the agenda, reassure the public, give you time to work in peace, and I haven’t managed very well with any of it. If at all.”

  He was silent for a couple of seconds, then continued: “If there is a thing that politicians hate, it is getting relevant questions that they have no idea how to answer. I understand that all too well.”

  “You’re no wizard,” Simonsen interrupted. “How are you supposed to control all the possible and impossible allegations? When most of them are untrue and some out-and-out ridiculous?”

  Hammer listened to Simonsen’s support, then continued in the same defeated vein: “The minister of foreign affairs talks of a veritable bombardment of e-mails to our embassies, all of them maintaining that the Danish authorities are deliberately withholding the fact that the five slain men were pedophiles. The media is indulging in wild speculations on the same topic. On top of this, we have all these campaigns and protests against the so-called laissez-faire attitude of our society toward the sexual abuse of children piling up like a pyramid scheme. Mainly at secondary schools and institutes for adult education. At this point. And to top it all off, the minister of justice appears to have gone into hiding, which I haven’t quite decided if I should take as an advantage or disadvantage.”

  Simonsen got the conversation back on track, effectively if a little inelegantly: “I’m afraid that it’s going to get worse.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Unfortunately, I am.”

  He told him how Elvang had contacted him the evening before and—neighing with laughter—told him that Mr. Middle had been killed twice. The facial features of the hot-dog vendor in Fyn and the victim from the gymnasium were so similar that it could not be sheer coincidence. He kept silent about the old man’s amusement, however.

  Hammer looked pained. “Another murder?”

  “It looks that way, I’m afraid. The professor is almost never mistaken but we’ll get a firm answer today. I’ll call, of course.”

  “There’s more, I can tell.”

  “Yes, there is. The vendor’s name was Allan Ditlevsen and he was forty-nine years old. He had been convicted of two sexual crimes. One for sexual misconduct with a twelve-year-old boy, the other for sexual abuse of an eight-year-old girl who the father apparently lent out when he did not abuse her himself. That put him in jail for eighteen months.”

  “The pedophile pattern.”

  “That’s right, if one can call it that, and perhaps one can at this point because now there is yet another event to support it. A woman from Århus turned to the local police yesterday and said that her husband, Jens Allan Karlsen, had been murdered in Bagsværd. Or so she declared. The man was supposed to be on vacation in Thailand but has not called home as expected. We have a positive photographic match of an ear from a family photo and that of Mr. Southwest. The technicians have no doubt, but some DNA material from the man’s brother will give us an answer today.”

  “And Jens Allan Karlsen was a pedophile.”

  “Jens Allan liked to have sex with children. That is a direct quote from his wife, who was forbidden to involve herself in his affairs. Now he is dead and so she decided she might as well turn to the police in case she could be of assistance. The woman is completely believable. I have spoken to her myself on the telephone.”

  He avoided any mention of Helene Clausen’s upbringing in Sweden. Additional speculation was of little use.

  “So what you’re telling me is that the pedophile rumors are true.”

  Simonsen gave himself time to think before he replied. There were many reservations and unknown factors to be raised, but he skipped over them all and spoke clearly when he finally answered, “Yes.”

  From his expression, it was evident that this answer weighed heavily on Hammer.

  “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Yes, but you won’t get one.”

  They grinned at each other. The teasing gave them a feeling of release, a moment of respite from the storm. Hammer’s voice was a notch lighter when he continued.

  “It’s going to seem like a concession if you are right. As if we were pressed to let out the truth. That’s worrisome, not least for you.”

  “For me?” Simonsen was genuinely surprised.

  “You’ve met my daughter. She is a fairly normal girl, even though she does everything she can not to be, and you heard yourself what she thinks of the investigation. Imagine her attitude becoming widespread, which is what she and her classmates are working on day and night at the moment.”

  “No one in their right mind believes that we can abolish the sexual abuse of children by killing all pedophiles.”

  “No, not anything so drastic. But a tacit public acceptance of what has already occurred. How will that affect your work?”

  “It would naturally be devastating.”

  “That it will be. Do you think it’s planned?”

  Simonsen noticed that he was beginning to sweat. Not because of the conversation but because his inner thermostat sometimes malfunctioned, particularly these past few months. He loosened his tie and dabbed his forehead with a napkin. It helped a little. Then he asked, “Planned?”

  “As in planned, orchestrated, manipulated. You know what I’m saying.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “I don’t know. But if the pedophile e-mails are telling the truth, they can’t simply be dismissed as slander. Someone may have been in on this from the start. You can’t guess your way to these things. I’m sure you’ve already put some thought into this.”

  He had, and then rejected the idea. Speculation was a waste of time when what he needed was something firm. Until this evening he had had a great deal of time, but yesterday’s murder and the chief‘s alarming picture of a hostile public had changed things. Which really struck him only at this moment.

  Simonsen stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes.

  Chapter 31

  The church looked striking in the low autumn sun. The whitewashed stone dazzled and the quartz in the foundation glittered like thousands of drops of water.

  Erik Mørk put one hand up to shield himself from the sun while he gazed at the building. The transept and nave were distinctly Romanesque, with rounded windows, ornamental stonework, and finely detailed cornices. The tower, porch, and vestry were constructed of granite and brick, late Gothic outbuildings added some couple of hundred years later. The church wall could be dated back to the Middle Ages, and the tower clock was a construction from the eighteenth century, made of black-painted wrought iron.

  Mørk was hardly an architecture maven. But he had arrived early enough to have plenty of time to gather his impressions of the neighborhood and possible police activity. It was easily done, and then he had spent some time at the reading room of the local library, which turned out to be located next to the church. There he read what he could about the parish, the congregation, and the history of the church, which seemed a fitting way for him to pass the time.

  Now he was sitting in the shelter at a bus stop, a comfortable distance from the authorities and with a fine vantage point. It was as close as he dared to get. The Climber sat beside him, sulking because he was not taking part inside the church. Mørk had pulled him into a shed when he happened to discover him, which he found somewhat frightening. But strictly speaking, neither one was in a position to
chide the other. They had both disobeyed Per Clausen’s orders about not attending his funeral.

  The Climber was still having trouble making peace with their location.

  “It’s a strange way to say goodbye, just looking at the outside of the church. Are you sure there are police photographers?”

  “Yes, and a lot of other photographers from the papers, and that’s almost as bad. We shouldn’t even be here. Neither one of us, and definitely not both of us. This is as good as it gets. We’re not getting any closer. That would be insane.”

  The Climber unwillingly accepted this. “I don’t have to like it.” He added, chuckling, “Per would go nuts if he saw us. We would never have dared to do this if he were still alive.” He sounded like a naughty schoolboy, savoring his own audacity.

  Mørk felt a sting of irritation. He secretly wanted the Climber as far away as possible, out of the country, even. He had done what was needed—magnificent—but now he was superfluous and a walking security risk.

  “You’re right. His influence around here has gone way down since he died.”

  The sarcasm was wasted.

  “Why do you say that? That’s obvious.”

  Mørk regretted his words and halfheartedly offered an explanation. He felt uncomfortable with the Climber and would much rather have been alone. The situation had brought them together but they were hardly on the same wave length—anything but. It was imperative not to start a disagreement.

  Nonetheless, there was something that Mørk wanted to know, now that he had this unexpected opportunity. After some harmless small talk, he gathered himself.

  “I read in the paper that you didn’t just cut their hands and faces, you made short work of their privates. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” the Climber said.

  “That wasn’t part of the deal. Why did you do that?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Mørk had trouble holding back a sneer. “Perhaps you can clarify.”