Exclusively local questions, nothing at all about a May 1st meeting here or anywhere else on their way across the island other than Metal Bornholm having erected a bouncy castle on something that, God help us, they’d called Chicken Mother, somewhere or other in Almindingen forest.
Here in the community hall on this remote little spot in the summer paradise people gathered for events big and small, and it was here that less than twenty-four hours ago one of the better citizens had faced the fatal consequences of his poor judgments in life.
Carl recognized the women who greeted them from Habersaat’s film.
“Bolette Elleboe,” one of them introduced herself in an almost understandable Bornholm dialect. “I’m the substitute accountant and live just at the back, so I’m the keyholder.” She seemed self-assured but not comfortable with the situation. The other woman introduced herself as Maren, chair of the civic association, her sad eyes revealing that she could do without this just now.
“Did you know Habersaat privately?” he asked as they greeted Rose and Assad.
“Yes, very well,” answered Bolette Elleboe. “Maybe too well for our own good.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged her shoulders, leading them into the meeting hall, a light room with certificates and paintings in glorious disarray on the white walls, and from where at one end of the room, through a pair of panoramic windows, there was a view out to her back garden. They sat here at a laminate table, the coffee ready and waiting.
“We probably should’ve been aware that this could happen one day,” the chairwoman said quietly. “That it finally happened yesterday is just too gruesome to think about. I’m really still rather shaken by it. Christian probably did it because so few came, I think. It could be a punishment for all of us in the community.”
“Nonsense, Maren,” interjected Bolette Elleboe, turning toward Carl. “That’s typical Maren, such a gentle and impressionable soul. Habersaat did it because he was tired of the man he’d become, and that’s the way it was, if you want my opinion!”
“You don’t seem especially shocked, but why not exactly? It must’ve been a very violent event to witness, wasn’t it?” asked Rose.
“Listen, darling,” said Bolette Elleboe. “I’ve worked as a social worker in the back of beyond in the settlements in Greenland for five years, so it takes more than that to shock me. I don’t doubt that I’ve seen more shotguns used for the wrong reason than most. But of course it affected me. You just have to move on, though, right?”
Rose sat silently for a moment and observed her, stood up, and walked over to the window overlooking the street, turned around to face the small gathering, raised her index finger on her left hand up to her temple, pretended to shoot, and fell a step to the side.
Rose looked at Bolette Elleboe. “Was it here and like that that it happened?”
“Yes, I guess. You can just look at the floor and see the remains of the stain. They won’t get me cleaning it anymore. I’ll be calling a cleaning company.”
“You seem irritated, Bolette. Is it because he did it here?” asked Assad, heaping sugar in his cup along with a few drops of coffee from the thermos.
“Irritated? You know what, it’s just bad karma that he shot himself in this room. He could at least have done it at home or gone down to the cliffs. I don’t think it was very considerate of our little hall that he did it here.”
“Bad karma?” Assad shook his head of curls uncomprehendingly.
“Would you perhaps find it especially cheerful to have to sit in this room at association meetings and eat while still envisioning what happened here in front of you?”
“That can only be the case for you two. There weren’t so many of you after all from the association at the reception, right?” Rose said pointedly.
“No. But there is still a hole in the painting and a wreck of a wall at the back, isn’t there?”
Bolette Elleboe certainly wasn’t thrown off-balance easily.
“Right! But at least we’ll finally get that wall plastered after the huge hole the technicians left when they scraped the bullet out. I’ve actually been agitating for that for years, so that’s something at least. Look how ugly the wall is. It’s made of aerated concrete, how shabby could it be! So thanks for that, Habersaat, you did something useful.”
Cynicism was apparently thriving out here in the wild east.
“Don’t take any notice of Bolette,” the chairwoman almost whispered. “She is just as shaken up by this as I am. We’ve just all got our own way of dealing with it.”
“Try and stand like you did before, Rose,” said Assad as he got up and stood in front of her. “Now I’m a witness and you’re Habersaat. I want to . . .”
But Rose didn’t hear anything. She just stood, staring at the painting that the bullet had hit. Not because it was a piece of art that would go down in history. Just a sun, branches, and birds in flight.
“Yes, he hit the bird flying there, right in the bull’s-eye. Strange, it didn’t fall down.” Bolette laughed. “But at least we’re free from that eyesore.”
“You don’t like the painting either, then?” asked Assad as he approached. “It’s really good, but not as good as the painting of the beach next to it, is it?”
“I think you need to clean the sleep from your eyes, my friend,” she answered. “The man is a fake. He could paint ten of those in a day.”
Rose looked away from the wall. “I’m just going out to get some fresh air.”
Around the bullet hole in the middle of the bird, there were remains of cranial splinters and brains from the man who reminded her of her father, so it was understandable enough.
“That’s a very young woman for this sort of work,” the chairwoman said empathetically.
“I guess.” Carl nodded. “But don’t be fooled by her age or the liquid steel that flows through her veins. But tell me, what do you know about Habersaat? We’ve just arrived from Copenhagen, you understand, so our information about him as a private person is still thin.”
“I think Christian was a good sort,” the chairwoman said. “He just wanted to do so much more than he could, and that impacted the family. He was a uniformed policeman, not in the crime unit, so why did he do all that? That’s what I don’t understand.” She stared ahead thoughtfully. “It has affected Bjarke most of all, the poor boy. I don’t think it’s been easy for him with that mother.”
The two women don’t know he’s dead, thought Carl, sending Assad a warning look to keep quiet so they could keep on the trail. As Carl saw things, they could still manage to catch the evening ferry home. Bjarke’s death was a case for the Bornholm Police and the rest was useless to dig up further anyway. They had done what they could, Rose had been heard, and now she’d quit. All in all, it was going to be the evening ferry home.
“So it’s maybe the mother’s fault that Bjarke has committed suicide,” Assad said anyway.
A second passed and both women sat there with their eyebrows raised halfway up their foreheads.
“God, no,” exclaimed the chairwoman, horrified.
They sat very quietly while Carl updated them. Damn Assad’s outspokenness.
“They weren’t really on speaking terms, as far as I’ve heard. Bjarke was homosexual and his mother hated it. As if she was a novice under the sheets herself,” said Bolette Elleboe.
“What did I tell you.” Assad’s face lit up.
“You said she wasn’t a novice. But she was single, so there’s no harm in that, is there?” asked Carl.
The two women exchanged glances. Obviously there were widely known and juicy stories circulating about his wife.
“She swarmed around like a little bee while she and Habersaat were together,” came the poisonous response from the chairwoman. Her angelic mask had finally slipped.
“How do you know
that? Wasn’t she discreet?”
“Probably,” answered Bolette Elleboe. “You never saw her actually going with anyone, but she was suddenly so sweet-tempered. Then you knew why.”
“Did she seem in love?”
She gave out a couple of grunts, the question obviously amusing her. “In love? No, more that she seemed satisfied. Orgasms, you know. And that was something she wasn’t getting at home, if you ask me. Those she worked with were certainly not in any doubt that she was up to something with all the long, long lunch breaks she suddenly took. Her car was also seen parked outside her sister’s house in Aakirkeby when her sister wasn’t at home. One person I know, who lives on the street, says that she met a man outside the front door there and that it definitely wasn’t Habersaat. He looked too young.” Bolette Elleboe laughed quietly for a moment, but then toned her face down and changed character. “She never helped her husband get back on course at home, if you ask me. So they were both to blame for it all. Alberte case or not, I’m sure she’d have left him anyway.”
“It was really a blow to hear about Bjarke,” said the chairwoman. She hadn’t moved on.
“No, it wasn’t good news. But the girl killed in the hit-and-run, Alberte, what about her?” asked Assad. “Do you know something about her, too, something not in our papers, do you think?”
They both shrugged their shoulders.
“Well, we can’t know what it says in your papers, but we know something. It is a small island after all, and word gets about when something like that happens.”
“So, what . . . ?” Assad gave his coffee cup yet another spadeful of sugar. Was there really room for more?
“She was apparently a sweet girl, who’d probably been given a little too much freedom. Nothing out of the ordinary, but sometimes things could get a bit steamy up there at the folk high school when no one was keeping an eye on the youngsters; that’s the way they are,” said Bolette. “The girl had a couple of different guys within a short time at any rate, or so people say.”
“People?” resounded Assad’s voice from within his cup.
“My nephew, he’s the groundskeeper at the school, said that she flirted with a couple of guys, as girls in the first throws of love are prone to do. Walks hand in hand down in Ekkodalen valley behind the school and that sort of thing.”
“I think that sounds rather innocent. Is there anything about that in the report, Assad?” asked Carl.
Assad nodded. “Yeah, a little. One of the boys was a student at the school. It was just a bit of fun, but she was also seeing someone else outside the school for a little longer.”
Carl turned to the women. “Someone you know about?”
They shook their heads.
“What does the report say about him, Assad?”
“Nothing other than that they tried to clear up his identity without any luck. A few of the girls from the folk high school spoke about the guy not being from the school, but that because of him Alberte would sit and stare into thin air for hours on end as if she couldn’t care less about anything else.”
“Did Habersaat’s investigation come any closer to identifying the man, do you know?”
Now both women and Assad shook their heads.
“Hmm, that’ll have to rest for a while. As I understand it, Habersaat is obsessed with a hopeless case that wasn’t even his. The wife leaves him, taking the son with her, and the people here in the town offer him no support. A hit-and-run driver and the death of a young woman change everything for him, which is a little hard for me to understand as a policeman. We’ve tried to speak with June Habersaat, who isn’t very keen to talk about the whole situation and also rather uncompromising concerning her husband. It seems like you know her pretty well, Bolette. Are you in contact with her?”
“Heavens, no. We were good friends once when she lived a few hundred meters down the road, where Habersaat has lived since all this happened. But when she left him it sort of phased out. Of course, I’ve met her at her work selling tickets, ice cream, and whatnot up in Brændegårdshaven Amusement Park, but otherwise I haven’t spoken to her in years. She became strange after all that with her husband and the Alberte case. But perhaps her sister, Karin, can tell you more. She lived for a while with June and the son in the house on Jernbanegade in Aakirkeby. It was originally their parents’ but it obviously all got too much for the sister. Karin lives in Rønne now, I think. Try visiting Uncle Sam down at number 21 as well. He was probably the one who had most contact with Habersaat in the later years.”
Carl looked over at Assad, who was frantically taking down notes. Notes that they could hopefully lock away in the archive. “Just one more thing,” he said. “In the film that was made here yesterday we have one person registered who disappeared from the hall just after Habersaat committed suicide. Do you know who he was?”
“Oh, that’s Hans,” answered Bolette. “He’s just a local simpleton who runs errands for people in the town. He comes up here whenever there are free drinks and snacks. You won’t get anything sensible out of him.”
“Where can we find him, do you know?”
“At this time of day? Try the bench behind the smokehouse. Just across the road and to the right of Strandstien road. There’s a flat grey building with a couple of smoke ovens at the end. The bench is in the garden at the back. He’ll probably be sitting there, whittling or drinking beer, he normally is.”
* * *
They caught sight of Rose some way out on the horizon as they swung down Strandstien road. She was standing on the edge of some flat cliffs that only just stood above the water, and appeared strangely lost, as if the world had suddenly become too much for her.
They stood for a moment watching her. It wasn’t the strong and quarrelsome Rose they were used to.
“How long has it been since Rose’s dad died?” asked Assad.
“It’ll be a good few years now. But obviously not something she’s finished with.”
“Shall we send her back to Copenhagen?”
“Why? I assume we’ll all be sailing back tonight. We can deal with those we need to talk with on the telephone from home. Just the sister and maybe some of those at the school.”
“Tonight? You don’t think we should carry on here on the island, then?”
“What for, Assad? The technicians have searched Habersaat’s house, so from that angle I don’t expect anything groundbreaking, and there hasn’t been anything concrete to cling to yesterday or today. Not to mention that Habersaat made this case his life’s mission, despite which he was still unable to solve it. How should we be able to do it in a couple of days, more or less? We’re talking about something that happened almost twenty years ago, Assad.”
“Hey, there’s the man they were talking about.” Assad pointed toward a scrunched-up figure with a collection of beers on a white garden bench behind the smokehouse chimneys. There wasn’t much you could hide from each other in such a small community.
“Howdy,” Assad said jauntily as he sauntered through the garden gate. “So, you’re sitting here, Hans. Just like Bolette said you would be.”
Good try, Assad, but the man didn’t deign to acknowledge him with a single glance.
“You’re sitting here relaxing, I suppose. It’s a nice view.”
Still no reaction.
“Okay, you don’t want to talk to me, but then you brought it on yourself. It suits me fine.” He nodded to Carl as he turned on a hose and rinsed his hands. Carl looked at his watch. It was prayer time.
“Just go after Rose; this’ll only take ten minutes.” Assad smiled.
Carl shook his head. “I think she needs to be left to herself just now. I’ll toddle on down the road and think things through while you do that. But, seriously, Assad—do you think this is a good place to pray? Everyone can see you. Do you even know if there’s anyone home in the house there?”
&
nbsp; “If they haven’t seen a Muslim pray before, then it’s maybe about time, Carl. The grass is soft and the man here doesn’t want to talk with me. How hard can it be?”
“Okay, suit yourself, Assad. Want me to get your rug?”
“Thanks, but I’ll use my jacket. That’ll have to be good enough in the open air,” he said, taking his socks off.
* * *
Carl hadn’t even managed twenty meters down the road before Assad stood in the qiyam position, reciting. It looked very harmonious and natural against the blue sky. Carl would unfortunately probably never come that close to God.
He turned his head toward the figure on the cliffs standing motionless like a sphinx with clouds dancing over it. Why is she just standing there? he wondered. What’s going through her head? Is it grief or are there so many secrets that there’s hardly room for them? Or is it the case with Alberte and Habersaat?
Carl stopped with an odd feeling in his body. A few days ago he’d been on home turf and had no knowledge of Habersaat or Alberte. To put it bluntly, he didn’t give a damn about towns like Svaneke and Listed and Rønne, and now suddenly here he was feeling so strangely alone and abandoned. Here of all places, on the extreme edge of Denmark, he was struck by the realization that people couldn’t run from themselves, regardless of where they were. The feeling that you always carried the past with you, and that it was only yourself that could be held responsible for who you were.
He shook his head. How miserable it felt. Had he really thought that he’d ever be able to forget himself and what had made him who he was?
Wasn’t this the way it was for most people? The time they lived in was an open invitation to a cocktail of self-denial and self-glorification. And if you didn’t like the situation you were stuck in, there was always the option of running away from yourself: running away from opinions, from your marriage, from your country, from old values, from trends that had otherwise meant so much yesterday. The problem was just that out there, among all the new, you found nothing of what you were looking for deep down inside, because tomorrow it would all be meaningless again. It had become an eternal and fruitless hunt for your own shadow, and that was pitiful.
The Hanging Girl Page 7
