“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.”
“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.
15
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 we
re 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.
The Hanging Girl Page 13
