The Hanging Girl

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  He looked at Assad, who was standing with his back to him. “Tell me, Assad, do Muslims have something they can honor the dead with, a prayer or something?”

  Assad slowly turned around to face him.

  “It’s done, Carl. It’s already done.”

  * * *

  And while the fields and shady groves were left behind them, Carl imagined the beautiful young Alberte cycling over there on the other side of the road with her hair flowing and expectant face en route to her death.

  “Kristoffer Dalby lives over in Vestermarie. So we need to go the same way back and then a bit farther on,” said Assad, moving his cell away from his ear. “That was Detective Jonas Ravnå I was just talking with and he says that Dalby is a schoolteacher now. And then he told me something else, which I’m not sure is so good.”

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “They’ve found the bike.”

  “Okay, isn’t that good?”

  “Yes, but it turns out that they’d kept it for ten years before just throwing it out. On February 25th, 2008, to be exact.”

  “Isn’t it irrelevant that they did that? They’ve found it again.”

  “Yes, but it was more than likely a coincidence. One of the locals, back in 2008, knew that it was Alberte’s bike lying in the pile of junk. He recognized it from the newspaper and that’s why he took it.”

  “I don’t understand where you’re going with this.”

  “He took it because it was special and had a special history to it. So he welded it into a scrap sculpture, which he called . . .” He looked down at his paper. ”. . . Fateopia.”

  “God almighty! And where is this so-called artwork now?”

  “We were lucky there because he’s just had it in an exhibition in Verona, but now it’s back home again.”

  “And where is home?”

  “In Lyngby. Strange, right? You race through there every day when you drive home from the station.”

  * * *

  They found the way down to the smallholding where Kristoffer Dalby lived, northwest of the small cluster of houses known as Vestermarie. The plot where the house was situated was probably the smallest for miles around, but still there were swings, slides, and sandpits enough for an entire army.

  “Do you think we’ve taken a wrong turn?” asked Assad.

  Carl looked at the GPS and shook his head. He pointed out of the window at the postbox on the side of the road. Kristoffer and Inge Dalby and a small sticker underneath adding Mathias and Camilla.

  They rang the doorbell, noticing at least fifty cigarette butts in a small bucket by the side of the doorstep. Someone’s kept under the thumb here, thought Carl, as they heard movement from behind the door.

  “We’ll cut straight to the chase, Assad,” he managed to say before a man opened up.

  There was no doubt that it was Kristoffer Dalby standing there, supposed master of the house, despite a bit more meat on his bones, wispy beard with grey touches to it, and worn-out shoes. Probably not someone Alberte would fall for if she’d been alive today.

  His good-natured expression collapsed when they told him why they were there, and all Carl’s warning lights flashed. He observed from Assad’s expression that he’d also noticed it.

  A typical reaction from those with more to hide than was good for them.

  “You’ve been expecting us?” said Carl.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I can see that it’s shocked you that we’ve come here on this business, so we assume it’s something you’ve been dreading. Is it something you’ve been thinking about for almost twenty years, Kristoffer?”

  All his features suddenly shrunk. Pinched lips and squinting eyes, cheeks sucked in. A very peculiar reaction.

  “Come inside,” he said unwelcomingly.

  He pointed to a chair in a sea of wooden toys on a play mat decorated with roads, crossroads, and houses. It was a real hotchpotch in every possible color, and over on the windowsill lay the trumpet he’d once tried to charm the crowds with.

  It was covered in dust now.

  “Do you have a lot of children?” asked Assad.

  He tried to smile but without success. “We have two, but they’ve left home for now. My wife’s a child minder,” he answered.

  “Oh, right! Yes, well, we don’t want to waste anyone’s time, so we’ll get straight to the point, Kristoffer,” said Assad. “Why aren’t you called Studsgaard anymore? Did you think that something as simple as a change of name would make it difficult for us to find you? Then you shouldn’t have found a house so close to the school, should you?”

  It was a bit of a gamble, but why waste time?

  Carl looked around. Two older teenagers in a photo frame on top of a monstrosity of an analog TV. Masses of VHS cartoons on the shelf. Strange to think that you could still find them.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I changed names because my wife didn’t want to be called Studsgaard, so I took hers.”

  “Listen here, Kristoffer. We know that you once had a thing with Alberte, so you won’t deny it now, will you?” said Carl.

  He looked across the floor with his head at an angle. “No. It’s true that Alberte and I had something together, but it was honestly perfectly innocent and didn’t last for more than a couple of weeks.”

  “But you were really in love with her, right, Kristoffer?” asked Assad.

  He nodded. “Yes, I suppose I was. Alberte was amazingly sweet and beautiful, so . . .”

  “So you killed her when she decided she’d rather be with someone else, right?” Assad threw in.

  He looked confused now. “No, not at all.”

  “So you weren’t particularly sorry when she didn’t want to be with you anymore?” he pressed.

  “Yes, of course I was. But it’s a little complicated, you see.”

  “Complicated how?” asked Carl. “Can you tell us why you think that?”

  “My wife’ll be home in a minute and we’re going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment, so I’d appreciate it if we could hurry this along.”

  “Why, Kristoffer? Haven’t you told your wife everything? Or does she know something that she maybe shouldn’t. Have you confided in her, is that it? Are you scared about her reaction?”

  “No, no, we’re just going through a bit of a rough patch where . . . Listen, okay, we have two kids who are away at a residential school just now and, to put it bluntly, they’re not damn well coping too good. So things aren’t so happy on the home front, can you understand that?”

  “What’s that got to do with you and Alberte? Why can’t your wife hear it?”

  He sighed. “Inge and I had already started dating back in spring 1997, so we’d been together for almost half a year when we went to the folk high school, and then Alberte came on the scene, so that’s why! I don’t want to dig all this up. Not just now anyway.”

  “I see. So that means that Alberte bagged Inge’s guy from right under her nose?”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly. “It made her feel completely miserable, and still can. I betrayed Inge back then and she’ll never forget it.”

  “She didn’t just hate you then, but Alberte, too?” concluded Carl. He turned to Assad. “What does the report say? Has Inge Dalby been questioned in connection with the murder of Alberte?”

  “Murder?” Kristoffer Dalby moved forward to the edge of his seat. “It was an accident. It said so everywhere.”

  “Yes, but we have a slightly different theory. What about it, then, Assad, has she been questioned?” he repeated.

  Assad shook his head. “There wasn’t anyone called Inge Dalby in that group.”

  The schoolteacher shook his head. “Nonsense, she was there . . .” He stopped midsentence and nodded briefly. “No, that’s right. She was called Inge Kure back
then, but she preferred her mother’s maiden name. There are so many called Kure, Studsgaard, Pihl, and Kofoed over here on the island, but you’ll know all about that. So we agreed that we’d rather have a less common surname when we got married; that’s all.”

  Assad took out the folder, laid the yearbook with the group picture on the coffee table in front of him, and went through the names underneath. “Inge Kure, hmm. Yes, there she is. She’s up here behind Alberte.”

  Carl leaned closer. A slightly plump girl with dark curly hair. Very plain, not particularly pretty. An absolute contrast to the angel sitting in the front row lighting up the whole scene.

  Assad flicked through the pages. “Regardless, we’ll have to talk to your wife,” he said.

  Dalby sighed and bit his cheek, offering reassurances that neither of them had anything to do with Alberte’s death. Alberte was just the girl in the group who all the boys were crazy about, and for that reason she annoyed most of the girls. Alberte was popular enough, but all the same her presence disturbed the harmony that exists if everyone has roughly the same chances, romantically speaking. That’s how he expressed it. It seemed rehearsed.

  “Were you bitter that Alberte left you?” asked Carl.

  “Bitter? No, I probably would’ve been if she’d found another guy at the school, but that’s not how it was.”

  “Did Inge just take you back, then?” asked Assad.

  He nodded and sighed. Could it be a decision that he’d since come to regret?

  “So Alberte found a new guy outside the school? Who was he?” asked Carl.

  “I don’t know, really, but Alberte mentioned that it was someone who lived in a commune at Ølene. I wasn’t really told anything else. I don’t think anyone at the school was.” So that was how Habersaat had found the lead about the commune. “He was apparently a bit of a Don Juan,” continued Kristoffer.

  “How do you mean? Was he involved with someone else at the school?”

  “Er, no. Not as far as I know anyway.”

  “So how do you know that he was a bit of a Don Juan?”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably just how I pictured him given that he could just run off with Alberte.”

  “You never saw him?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re sure? Check here!” Assad put the photo of the man getting out of the VW Kombi in front of him. “You didn’t see this guy? Maybe you saw him waiting for Alberte outside the school?”

  Kristoffer picked the photo up and fumbled about for a pair of reading glasses in his breast pocket. Carl looked at Assad, who shrugged his shoulders. Yes, he’d seen correctly. Kristoffer Dalby’s reactions just now seemed both logical and understandable. His subdued manner and fear about digging up a past betrayal could explain his reaction when they rang the doorbell.

  “The photo is really unclear, but no, I don’t think I’ve seen him before. But I can tell you that I often saw a VW like that parked a little way down on the highway by the folk high school. I never saw it from the front, but the one that used to be there was definitely light blue like this one, and as far as I can remember, it also had dark-tinted side windows.”

  Insanely well remembered after so many years. Suspicion began to gnaw away at them again.

  They heard rustling out in the corridor and Dalby’s expression changed.

  “Who’s visiting?” shouted a woman’s voice from out in the corridor. “I don’t recognize the six-oh-seven out there. Has Ove been fobbed off with another old heap of junk?”

  A hefty woman appeared in the doorway. Very difficult to recognize from the group picture on the table.

  She frowned and let her eyes move from Kristoffer’s bowed head to the two strange men and down at the coffee table with the case folder and yearbook from the folk high school.

  “Is that this old case coming up again?” She looked hostilely at her husband. “What is it now, Kristoffer? Will we never have peace from that bitch?”

  Carl introduced both himself and Assad and explained the reason why they were on the case.

  “Habersaat, you’re kidding me! The man who blew his brains out; how pathetic can you be? Even when he’s dead he’s irritating,” she snorted. “I was certain that now he was gone, Alberte would be, too.”

  “You hated her, didn’t you, Inge?”

  “Not like you think. And not like Habersaat thought, either. But ever since Alberte turned up at the school, things were never the same again, and if you should get the strange idea that I was happy about that, then you’re definitely very much mistaken.”

  “We’d like to have your version of the story. Is that okay with you?”

  She looked away, so it obviously wasn’t.

  But she told it anyway.

  17

  In the beginning, everyone liked Alberte. She’d doled out generous hugs, and she was the one who waltzed from house to house larking about, and who could make the girls scream with laughter. To begin with, that is, but then things changed. Her inconsideration for the other girls who had their own dreams about the boys at the school was ruinous. Not because anyone ever suspected her of wanting to hurt someone; she was just thoughtless.

  She could say things like Niels is so hot, don’t you think, while one of the girls in the back of the class sighed. It was her guy’s turn.

  And Alberte’s eyes could sparkle when she talked about the kisses she’d received. She could talk about the boys’ hot breath and scent without giving a thought to the fact that it might hurt other people.

  She was called spoiled and accused of being used to getting whatever she pointed at. But that wasn’t true, or at least Inge knew it wasn’t.

  The truth was that Alberte didn’t need to point at something to get it. It came of its own accord.

  And that was the cause of Inge’s bitterness. She wasn’t going to deny that. Not because Alberte took her boyfriend from her, but because he offered himself, and that fact stayed with her, eating away at her even now, seventeen years later.

  Carl glanced over at Inge’s husband, sitting passively, huddled on the sofa opposite them with his eyes lowered. Obviously, Alberte had had a magical form of sensuality that no one could match, and a dangerous form at that.

  “Inge, I asked your husband if he knew the name of a guy that Alberte was seeing up until her death. Are you familiar with that name?”

  “I was asked that at least ten times by Christian Habersaat back when he did his rounds at the school. We’d already told the police in Rønne, but Habersaat wanted to hear it again. He always did. I said that Alberte had mentioned it once because she thought it sounded so exotic. But I couldn’t really remember it then, and not at all now.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No. Nothing other than that there were several names, and that it sounded weird together. The first was shorter than the others. Something biblical about it.”

  “Short, how? Like Adam?”

  “No, maybe only three letters, but to be quite honest I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Lot, Sem, Job, Eli, Koa, Gad, Set, Asa,” fired off Assad.

  How the heck could he, a Muslim nonetheless, sit there and recite that litany?

  “No, I don’t think it was any of those. As I said, I don’t really want to think about it.”

  “And the other names?” insisted Carl.

  “No idea. Something crazy, like I said before. Like Simsalabimkruttelutski.” She smiled. She had reason to.

  “So you know absolutely nothing more about him? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, nothing else other than that he apparently came from Copenhagen. He definitely wasn’t from Bornholm, or Jutland for that matter, as far as I knew. Then there was the VW of course, which Kristoffer and I have spoken about together.”

  “This one?” Assad pushed the photo from the parking area over to h
er.

  She looked at it for a moment. “The same color and shape at least. But you can’t really see it clearly.”

  “Can you remember any details about it?”

  “Details? I did only see it from behind and from a distance up on the road.”

  “Maybe some larger dents or scratches, color of the license plate, curtains in the windows? Anything significant?”

  She smiled. “The windows were matte, and I think the license plate was one of the old-fashioned types, black with white numbering, and then a sort of black curved line that looked like it came up from the roof, and I think it had white on the tires, a sort of broad streak round the hubcap, but I can’t be sure. It could also be another car I saw up on the road.”

  “A curved line, you said?”

  “I don’t know if it was dirt or . . .” She turned to her husband. “Can you remember anything about it, Kristoffer?”

  He shook his head.

  Okay, black license plates. At least they knew that the vehicle was registered before 1976, whatever help that might be.

  * * *

  “What do you say, Carl? Are the Dalbys off the hook?”

  Carl changed gears a couple of times before answering.

  “The question for me is who on earth Alberte was, Assad. That’s what I’m thinking about just now. I’ll have an answer to your question when we know a bit more about Alberte. Inge Dalby is definitely a very tough and angry woman, but she seems otherwise down-to-earth, so I don’t suspect her of anything particular just now. And then there’s Kristoffer. He’s a slowpoke, standing and smoking on the doorstep, and he’ll never dare to stand up to his wife. Could he be fiery enough to commit a crime of passion? I don’t really think so.”

  “Don’t you think it strange that he could remember that a VW had dark-tinted windows so many years later? And that she remembered that it had white tires, a line on the side, and black license plates? Would you have been able to remember that?”