The Hanging Girl

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Pirjo’s menstruation cycle was under control, and always had been. Her ovulation was completely regular, and when she knew that she was at her most fertile, the feeling could be so strong that it almost scared her. These days could be a nightmare, but this time she felt the opposite.

  It was fast approaching Christmas before she dared to find out for certain the cause of her absent periods. She’d read a lot about what the desire alone to be pregnant could do to a woman’s body, so she wanted to be totally sure. The test she’d bought at the pharmacy was positive, and she almost fainted when she saw the result. But she still wanted to get a doctor’s opinion of what she hoped the situation was, and if she was right, what precautions she needed to take. She was thirty-nine, after all.

  When she arrived back from the same gynecological ward where two months earlier she’d visited Malena, it was with the deepest feeling of happiness.

  Atu would be surprised but he’d also be happy, she was sure of it. When it came down to it, she’d proved long ago that she was worthy to bear his child, and that she was the one who had the necessary genes.

  When she stood in front of the door to The Academy’s Communal Heart she had to stop for a moment and compose herself to prevent her emotions from getting the better of her. She didn’t want to stand in front of Atu crying. She wanted to say it to him calmly and with a smile. He was used to her that way and this was the way things would continue. Pregnant or not: Pirjo was Pirjo.

  But she did smile, perhaps a little too much, as she walked past the disciples in the reception area and entered her office, from where she’d call and ask him to come in to her for a moment.

  So her surprise was understandable when she found Atu already standing in her office, with a woman sitting opposite him in flat shoes, heavy makeup, and a dress that was too tight and garish, and which couldn’t hide either her age or her overweight figure.

  “Here you are, Pirjo, just in time,” he said, smiling, nodding toward the woman. “Shirley has arrived unannounced from London. She’s taken part in one of the sessions over there this summer and would like to join one of our groups. I’m sure we can find room for her, don’t you think?”

  Pirjo nodded. It wasn’t quite how she’d imagined she and Atu would meet in regard to her totally overwhelming news, but it would have to wait. It was a minor setback, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied.

  “Tell Pirjo what you just told me, Shirley.”

  She smiled and said hello in relatively flat cockney English. “We were on your course in London, my friend and me, and both became very fascinated with nature absorption. So much so that my friend came over here a few months ago. Or, at least I thought she did, but I haven’t heard from her since and Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi . . .” She took a short pause. Just saying his name made her blush. ”. . . and I’ve just been told in reception that she never arrived. It’s really strange. I’m actually quite worried now.”

  Atu nodded gravely. “It is odd, you’re right, but as I said, she isn’t here. I can actually remember her well, Shirley. She was a very attractive girl. Wasn’t she mixed-race?”

  The woman shrugged, and Pirjo’s skin suddenly turned ice-cold.

  “I’ve never thought about it, actually, but she was definitely very brown. She came from Jamaica, and you can find people of every color there.”

  Atu raised his head. “Does any of this ring a bell, Pirjo? The girl wrote to us, apparently. What did you say her name was, Shirley?”

  Pirjo didn’t hear the answer. She already knew it, after all.

  She only thought about her next move.

  24

  Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

  “I have a really ridiculous problem with the former students at the folk high school, Carl,” said Gordon. It was incredible how much he could hunch himself up to show his suffering.

  “When I finally get hold of some of them, they can’t remember anything, and even if they do try, they mix things up. One of them had actually been to five different folk high schools since Bornholm, and she couldn’t differentiate one from the other. Another one, one of the ones from Lithuania, and the only one funnily enough who still lives at home, couldn’t speak a word of English, so how she managed to survive five months on Bornholm is a mystery to me. And then there are the addresses! Apart from this one from Lithuania, there wasn’t a single person with the same address as they had then, and that goes for most of the parents, too.” He sighed. “It’s an altogether hopeless job you’ve given me, Carl. The few I have managed to contact mostly remember something because Habersaat was so annoying, but otherwise only just the name Alberte and that she was found dead. That’s all. So, to be honest, and to put it a bit bluntly, her death obviously didn’t leave any lasting impression on them.”

  Carl reluctantly focused again. When Gordon ranted on, he really had an uncanny ability to make people think about something else.

  “Gordon,” he said so loudly that it caused the man to jump. “You just need to find one person who remembers and wants to talk. And when you find him or her you transfer them to Rose, who has all the old student interrogations. She’s the one who needs an overview, okay? So give it your best shot. Of course you can find them.”

  He left Gordon with his head right down on the edge of the table, Assad giving him a gentle pat on the back. If he was to have any hope of being included in the team, he’d better lift his head up quickly.

  Things were quite different in Rose’s office. Masses of paper piled high with notes, masses of scrunched-up paper in the bin, and masses of wrinkles on her forehead. She was busy, that much was clear.

  “Anything new from the alternative world, Rose?” he dared to ask.

  She shook her head. “I’ll need to call around in the evening, Carl. As we discussed earlier, the majority also have a more normal job. But I’ve been looking through the interviews with the folk high school students, and I stumbled across one that I think Gordon should try and make an appointment with. Read it for yourself. Here’s a transcript of the interview.”

  “Can’t you read it aloud for me?”

  “Just read, Carl. Go into your office, light a cigarette, and read. But remember to shut the door. All these papers from Habersaat stink enough of smoke already.”

  Carl sniffed as he went past the shelves and on to his office. Apart from Rose’s perfume, which both made his nose itchy and made his eyes water, he couldn’t smell anything.

  He put the paper down in front of him on his desk, obediently took a cigarette as suggested, and read Habersaat’s transcript.

  12/9 1997. Interrogation of Synne Veland, 46 years old, Fall semester student. Middle school teacher currently on leave from Hvidovre Municipality. Social security number 161151-4012.

  Transcript excerpt 12/10 1997.

  Carl stopped. A thought came to him, but was it really imaginable that the man was so blindingly stupid? He tried to imagine Gordon at work. God almighty, it could just be.

  He pressed the intercom.

  “It’s coming from here,” shouted Assad into the intercom on the other side of the corridor, his own voice drowning himself out.

  “It’s not you I want to talk to, Assad. Are you listening, Gordon? Are you there?”

  Something squeaked. Was it the chair or an acknowledgment?

  “You have made sure to get a list of the social security numbers of all those at the folk high school, right?” He caught himself nodding, but knew that it couldn’t be the case.

  “No,” he confirmed. “The school said they couldn’t give them to me.”

  Now Carl lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply. What a tool, and definitely not the sharpest one in the shed!

  “Are you a total idiot?” he shouted. “That’s the first thing you do. Damn it, Assad, tell him that he’s got direct access to all civil registration details, and that he has every right to those details fr
om the school if anyone has, and that he can otherwise find all the social security numbers on Habersaat’s interrogations, if he bothered to look. Tell him to get on with it. And that means now, tell him!”

  “Do I need to when you’ve just said it, boss?” Assad grunted back into the speaker.

  Carl took a deep drag and coughed a couple of times. “And what are you up to, Assad?”

  “I’m sitting with something I’ve just found. I’ll be in with it in a minute.”

  Carl hung up. Why couldn’t anyone think for themselves?

  But then maybe he should’ve seen this coming?

  He shook his head and continued reading Habersaat’s report.

  . . . 161151-4012

  Transcript Excerpt 12/10 1997.

  Synne Veland’s statement about Alberte:

  “Yes, I didn’t really know her like many of the others did. We seniors aren’t with the young ones as much. The average age this year is roughly twenty-six and a half, raised by the group of over forties, who I have more to do with, of course, so we feel a bit past it in relation to the others. And on top of that, you need to remember that Alberte was one of the youngest. Younger than my own daughter, in fact, and not much older than those I normally say goodbye to when they leave tenth grade. But I talked with her, of course, and I noticed her too. We all did because she was so beautiful and full of life. I also noticed that some of the other young girls seemed somewhat jealous of her because all the boys, and the men for that matter, were always glancing over at her, but I didn’t think it was anything serious. It’s natural at that age.

  And I remember that the day before she disappeared we had a visit from The Rhythmic Folk High School, and with Alberte being as interested in music as she was—she actually had a sweet and adorable voice too—I thought it was strange that she wasn’t there at the end of the afternoon and that she wasn’t at the party in the evening either.

  One of the guys, one she’d flirted with, Kristoffer his name is, said at one point that she’d found herself someone outside the school, and I’d noticed that she’d been a bit distant over the last few days. You know how a girl in love can look—(she laughs here). And she was also distant in another sense of the word. We took glass work together, but she didn’t turn up to lessons for most of the last week.”

  Q: Did you ever see the man or the young guy?

  “No, but it struck me that Alberte had said one day that she’d met the most mystical and fascinating person ever. Nothing specifically about being in love but she was obviously very taken with him. Naturally, we asked who he was but she just giggled, she often did, and said he was just someone she’d met and that he sometimes drove past the school after lessons.”

  Q: So you didn’t ask if they met to talk out by the road or if they went for a drive together?

  “No, unfortunately.” (Synne Veland seems regretful and perhaps also a little sad.)

  Q: Are there others you can think of who might know more about it?

  “We have spoken about it since. Maybe Kristoffer, but otherwise, no, I don’t think so.”

  Q: But isn’t it just the sort of thing you’d expect the girls to talk about?

  “Yes, but I think Alberte was well aware that the other girls had had enough of all her flirting. So she just kept quiet, I think. Maybe to try and avoid provoking them more than was necessary.”

  Q: Maybe it was a sort of game for her with this guy? A secret game?

  “Yes, that could be it.”

  Carl read on. There was absolutely nothing explosive in this interview.

  He pressed the intercom again. “Rose, would you come in here?”

  “You can just as well come out to me instead!” she shouted from the corridor.

  Carl stuck his head out, and there she was, sitting on the floor with all the transcripts piled in between her legs.

  “Wouldn’t it be more comfortable to sit in your office and read?” he tried without getting an answer. “Right, well, why do you think this interrogation is something special? Apart from making me aware of Gordon’s ineptitude, I don’t see anything in it that we didn’t know before. Maybe you want us to talk to the woman? Because from this, I don’t think there’s any point. She must be about sixty-two now. It’s almost twenty years ago, so why should she remember something useful now that didn’t come out in the open then?”

  “You’re saying that because you’re a man. But men are sometimes so blind. Notice how simple the questions are that Habersaat asks her. If it had been you, would you have asked her the same?”

  “Well, he certainly wasn’t an investigator, but otherwise mostly the same, I reckon.”

  “But the details, Carl. What about them?”

  “Such as?”

  “Listen, if it’d been your case, and if it’d been fresh, you would’ve asked about lots of things that you can’t think of right now, but that a woman naturally thinks of even after such a long time.”

  “Details? About Alberte, you mean?” Carl looked at the tightly packed shelves with tons of paper. As if they didn’t have enough details to deal with.

  He sighed. “You mean footwear, clothes, hair?”

  “Yes, that and a whole lot more. New movements, different makeup. Everything that tells us something about how a young woman feels. It can be expressed through things like that.”

  He nodded. She was right. He’d had cases where women remembered everything about other women’s plucked eyebrows, but nothing about where they’d seen them, or in what connection.

  “Hmm. And I suppose now you want us to find Synne Veland and ask about these things seventeen years later?”

  “Of course we will. Synne Veland has an artistic nature. She discovered the creative side of herself at folk high school, appreciated music, took glass craft. She must have noticed things like that.”

  “And so what even if she did? Maybe those signs will tell us that Alberte was in love or maybe just out to have a good time, but isn’t it irrelevant now? I think the lead is a bit thin.”

  “Probably. But we can talk about that afterward.”

  “Right, then. There’s another lead you might also check. Since you named Knarhøj yesterday in connection with the guy we’re looking for, it’s been on my mind. We’ve come across it before, someone who was digging there.”

  “Hmm, yes, now that you mention it . . .”

  Assad’s disheveled body appeared from his office, his hands full of paper and, unfortunately, also a steaming cup of tea. This would be good.

  “I’ve found this here, Carl,” he said as they sat down in Carl’s office. “I wonder if it might be along the lines of what we’re looking for.”

  He put down a few sheets in front of him with graphs and numbers, placing the steaming cup next to them.

  “I thought you’d be in need of a pick-me-up, Carl.”

  Oh God! The cup was for him.

  “What is it?” It didn’t smell like it normally did. Better, actually.

  “It’s chai. A great recipe. Indian tea and ginger. It’s good for everything.” He pointed to his crotch with a cheeky grin.

  “You’ve been having problems with your waterworks, perhaps?” Carl said ironically.

  Assad gave him a nudge with his elbow and winked. “There’s talk that Mona’s been asking after you.”

  Damn, word got around quick here! And what was the idea? Was his libido to be pumped up by a strange-smelling tea?

  “Forget it, Assad. Mona’s well and truly in the past.”

  “What about Pristine? Wasn’t that the name of the last one?”

  “You’re thinking of Kristine. But yes, what about her? She’s gone back to her ex-husband. I don’t think your tea can help much with that.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Look at this. Christian Habersaat has made a plan of the tree, the road past the tree, and
the bike in the thicket. It needed to be very precise, so he probably hasn’t drawn it himself. I think it must’ve been the technicians.”

  Carl turned the drawing a little and looked at it. Yes, not dissimilar to how he’d also envisioned it.

  Assad produced another piece of paper. “But I’ve also done a drawing. It’s meant to be a vertical section of the accident site and surrounding area.”

  He pointed to the different elements as he named them each in turn. “As you can see, it was approximately here that Alberte was hit to enable her to end up in the branches.” His finger followed the trajectory that Habersaat had drawn. It looked reasonable, if slightly steeper than Carl had imagined.

  “On this third drawing he’s added what he thinks might’ve thrown her up in the air. Notice the angle of the whatsit. It’s at an angle and only seven to eight centimeters above the surface of the road.”

  Carl nodded. “Yes, the shovel blade that threw Alberte up in the tree must’ve been at about this angle. I can see where he’s coming from. But why did it kill her? I don’t think it looks deadly.”

  “Maybe the shock killed her, Carl. When you shoot people through the heart, they immediately die from the shock. This is probably similar.”

  Carl shook his head. “Yeah, maybe, though I’ve got my doubts. But if Habersaat’s drawing is right, and there’s good reason to believe it is, then she was almost shoveled up into the treetop. Of course you’d get some nasty bruises and definitely some lesions, but would it kill someone?”

  “Just a moment.” Assad disappeared out the door, and Carl stared at the cup. The combination of words like “libido” and “Mona” made him suddenly thirsty. A little sip couldn’t hurt.

  He felt the steam and the smell of distant, exotic coasts and dived in. He thought it tasted rather good until the effect kicked in.

  The combination of neck arteries suddenly opening, esophagus collapsing, vocal cords scratching like hell, and not being able to feel his uvula, all made him instinctively grab his throat with one hand and support himself on the edge of the table with the other. If there’d been acid in the cup, it wouldn’t have felt much different.