The Hanging Girl

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  When they trudged past Roskilde in a queue at ten kilometers an hour, surrounded by seriously irritated drivers, Assad put his feet up on the dashboard and looked away. Then it came.

  “That was a bad move back at the house, Carl,” he said.

  Just what Carl had expected. No further explanation necessary.

  “You saw that the wife had seen through us, Assad. She was already about to stop him. They didn’t want to help us, couldn’t you tell? We wouldn’t have got the information anyway, so now we’ll have to bet on Søren Mølgård. But if there’s something fishy going on, you can bet he’s been warned.”

  “Something fishy? I don’t always understand what you’re talking about, Carl. What are they doing with the fish?”

  “An expression meaning that there’s something suspicious going on, Assad.”

  “Why fish?”

  “I don’t know, Assad.”

  “Why not something . . .”

  “Are you listening to me, Assad? I’ve got a distinct and very well-founded suspicion that there’s something wrong in this case. All this stuff about sun cults and sunstones, it puts me on edge.”

  “On the edge of what?”

  “Stop! I can’t think when you’re interrupting all the time. I don’t like it, okay?”

  The telephone rang. It was Rose.

  “The course was called ‘From Star Myths to Christianity’ and it took place in fall 1995. The lecturer came from the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen and is now professor emeritus living in Pandrup. His name’s Johannes Tausen.”

  Johannes Tausen. You couldn’t really get a more theological name in Denmark.

  “Pandrup in Vendsyssel?”

  “Is there another one?”

  “Okay, text me his full address and I’ll drive out there tomorrow after the funeral in Brønderslev. Thanks, Rose.”

  She hung up before he even managed to blink.

  “You’re planning to talk to the professor tomorrow?” asked Assad.

  Carl nodded. He was still thinking about the impression Simon Fisher had left on him. Why hadn’t he and his wife been cooperative? Was there something he hadn’t understood when it came to people like those from Ølene?

  “Then I’d like to come.”

  Carl looked absently at Assad. “Good. Thanks,” he answered.

  “I can see you’re not really here. You’re thinking of the motive, right?”

  “Of course I am.” Carl rolled the window up, which resulted in a deep sigh of relief from Assad. “I feel more and more that we’re on the right track. I’m afraid Habersaat was right about Frank being a megalomaniac. Saw himself as some sort of messiah, and maybe everything was going to plan before Alberte came along and blocked his path somehow or other.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That she became a deadweight for him. But there is another possibility, and more uncomfortable to imagine in my opinion. Maybe it was simply a case of sacrificing Alberte. A murder that Frank and the others from Ølene didn’t want to be connected with the sun cult. A sun sacrifice that curiously enough must’ve taken place at the very moment the sun was rising.”

  32

  Friday, May 9th, 2014

  She had felt the pain in waves. Strange short circuits where the diaphragm contracted, like when you sit in a draft or when something you ate the day before begins to take revenge. Of course it worried her, just like any other irregular bodily sign. But she’d been for a checkup the day before and everything was as it should be. The gynecologist had nodded authoritatively and declared the pregnancy to be exemplary, leaving Pirjo both relieved and happy. More than six months in and the baby was declared healthy and viable, so she dismissed the discomfort as random and harmless.

  Just as the pain seemed to disappear completely, the phone rang.

  The voice sounded familiar but it was only after the usual introduction that Pirjo began to smile.

  “Simon, Simon Fisher! It’s been a long time,” she exclaimed, trying to remember when they’d last had contact. Was it five years? Or ten?

  “Is everything okay over there, Pirjo?” he asked.

  She was puzzled by his tone. Simon wasn’t exactly a natural when it came to perception, so why was he suddenly calling to ask? Could it be Birtemaja who’d sensed something?

  “Why are you calling to ask that?” she asked cautiously.

  “It’s Birtemaja.”

  She knew it.

  Pirjo looked down at her hands and noticed that they were already shaking. How could Birtemaja know? How could she know that Pirjo’s entire world could come crashing down around her in an instant if someone caught a whiff of what she’d done to Wanda Phinn?

  “The police have been here asking about Atu. Well, the policeman and the immigrant he had with him as an assistant only knew him as Frank, but it was him they were thinking of. It was about something that happened over on Bornholm.”

  For a brief moment she was relieved, and then she realized what he’d said. It wasn’t Wanda Phinn. It was even worse.

  “Bornholm?”

  “Yes. They’re investigating something about a girl who disappeared. What was her name again, Birtemaja?” he called out.

  Pirjo knew the answer well enough. But what was going on just now? It was almost twenty years ago. The dust should have settled on that case long ago.

  “Alberte was the name, Birtemaja says. And while they were here, Birtemaja sensed that it could be fateful for you. She felt it so strongly that we had to warn you. That’s why I’m calling. Does any of this mean anything to you?”

  Pirjo took a deep breath. “Bornholm, you say? A case with a girl? Did you say her name was Alberte? No, it doesn’t ring any bells whatsoever; it must be a mistake. Did you tell them where we’re staying?”

  “Why should I do that? But I did refer them to Søren Mølgård. That soon got rid of them.”

  Pirjo shook her head. The idiot had referred them to an even bigger idiot. This wasn’t good.

  “Right, well, that can’t do any harm, can it?” she said with a certain degree of skepticism.

  “No, I can’t see why,” he answered. “The man is so spaced-out that he can hardly remember what he did the day before.”

  Something was mumbled in the background. It sounded like a woman’s voice. “Birtemaja is asking how things are going, Pirjo. It’s all going splendidly, I imagine.”

  She momentarily considered saying yes. Telling them that there was an heir to Atu’s kingdom on the way, and then a twinge went through her from her lower back, crossing down through her abdomen. She pushed the telephone away from her mouth for a moment so she could counter the pain with deep breathing.

  “Thanks for the warning, Simon,” she said afterward, her breathing more relaxed. “Don’t think any more of it; it’s just a mistake. And yes, everything is fine here. Say hello to Birtemaja and cheer her up for me. She must have misread her hunch this time.”

  She hung up quicker than was called for, leaning back in the office chair with pain that went under her breastbone and awoke foreboding.

  For a moment she prayed to Horus and the higher powers. First on behalf of the fetus, then for herself, and finally for Atu. Pregnancy had changed her order of priorities. And after a couple of minutes the pain let up.

  She promised herself it was nothing when she felt the baby kick inside, telling herself that it was just her body trying to keep up, reminding herself that she wasn’t exactly young anymore. And anyway, maybe this is how it was meant to be for some people.

  Søren Mølgård, Simon had said. Should she call him and try to shut him up? Could she?

  She shook her head. The risk that he might blurt out that she’d called was too high. Søren Mølgård had been the weakest link in their commune. Always the one who fell for temptations and succumbed. So what could a m
an like him say? Absolutely nothing. Wasn’t she the only one from the commune at Ølene who knew anything about Alberte, apart from Atu? Yes, she was.

  She shook her head yet again and began to relax as the stomach pains subsided.

  Then there was a knock at the door.

  She straightened her robe. “Come in,” she said.

  Valentina stood looking utterly apologetic, with a grip on the door handle as if she had no intention of coming in, but Pirjo waved her closer. Her role was to be every disciple’s mother, and this office was their confessional, counseling, and advice center. Nobody was turned away who had problems, and Valentina evidently did. It almost radiated from her.

  “Is something worrying you?” she asked even before the woman had sat down. She wanted to get it over as quickly as possible so she could have peace to think. So she used the same questioning technique as when giving advice: straight to the point. “Are you disillusioned about something? Or is it powers fighting against the love around you that have put the worry lines on your face today, Valentina?”

  She shook her head. The first time Pirjo saw her, she was marked deep in her soul from intense bullying from colleagues and physical abuse at the hands of a partner who’d treated her like a whore or an animal. When she finally decided to come to the center, she saw herself as a commodity with limited use, who after a while should just be broken in two and thrown away. Suffering from a sense of inferiority and hate, she had a desperate desire for acceptance that was her only driving force at that time.

  And now, sitting there with her eyes lowered, it was almost as if the nearly two and a half years she’d been with them had never existed. It was definitely not the Valentina they knew at the center.

  “It started with a dream, Pirjo,” she said after collecting herself for a moment. “The other night I dreamt that an angel with black wings flew over my room. After a while it dived through the roof and down to me, where it placed a hand over my eyes. It burned intensely, but not as if it could harm me, at least not before I thought that I needed to wake up. But then the angel rose again through the hole in the roof, and up above it a massive hall floated, lit by projectors. It almost felt as if the entire building vibrated when the angel disappeared into it. As if it could almost explode with the presence of that being. And the second after, the walls of the hall suddenly disappeared so you could see that the interior was full of yellow blobs. And then I woke up.”

  Pirjo smiled. “Okay, that sounds very special. But you know that dream analysis isn’t my strong side, Valentina. I’m sure that your dream can be interpreted better and more precisely by some of the others here. It seems to have made you feel uncomfortable, but maybe in reality it’s a tremendously good dream. I don’t think you should worry about it.”

  “It isn’t the dream that worries me,” she said as her eyes slowly moved up until they caught Pirjo’s. “I’ve already mentioned it to several people, and some thought it was an illustrative dream that revealed a lot of nonsense about myself, while others said that it was an advisory dream, telling me something about my actions and unresolved conflicts. If was only when I spoke about it with Shirley that I understood it might be a warning dream.”

  Pirjo tried to maintain a look of calm.

  When she talked with Shirley, she said!

  “I know now that it was a real event that triggered the dream, and that’s what’s troubling me. That’s why I’m coming to you, Pirjo.”

  “A warning dream? Warning about what, Valentina? Has something in particular happened here? Because if it has, we’d better ask Atu to attend. It can’t be right now because he’s . . .”

  “I don’t think you’ll want Atu to be here,” she said in an unexpectedly harsh manner.

  Pirjo turned her head a little, maintaining eye contact all the while. The warning signals were clear. What was Valentina up to? If Atu shouldn’t be here, was it because she was about to negotiate something? But what could she demand, and for what?

  “Why shouldn’t he be here?” she said with as much authority in her voice as the situation demanded. It didn’t work that way here. You couldn’t just keep Atu out of affairs without so much as a by-your-leave. Valentina should know that.

  She wiped a drop of sweat from her nose and straightened up. “Shirley didn’t understand the dream. She doesn’t actually understand very much at all; I’ve realized that. But she made me remember something important and understand that I’d seen things that could be read into more than I’d initially thought.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Valentina. What have you seen?”

  “It would appear I’ve seen many things, now that I think about it,” she said, breaking away from Pirjo’s inquisitive eyes in favor of resting them on the wall behind her. “Just before telling Shirley about the dream, she’d told me about her friend with the belt and the time when Jeanette had to leave us. And when she told the story, she said something in particular that I noticed, as a result of the dream I’d had.”

  “Well, what did she say, Valentina?” Pirjo smiled. It was the only defense she had now. The pain in her diaphragm was pulsating just under the surface. First Simon Fisher’s call, and now this.

  “Shirley told me something about her friend, Wanda, that’s connected with the day when Malena went to the hospital.”

  Pirjo shook her head and raised her eyebrows a little, intended as a display of ignorance and uncertainty as to why all these things were being connected.

  “It’s also so strange that Malena disappeared the way she did the day after being admitted. Did you know, by the way, that she was my Latin soul mate? Yes, she was, Pirjo. There were so many things we had in common, Malena and me. So why didn’t she give me so much as a hint before she disappeared? I’ve thought from time to time that maybe she wasn’t in a position to do so.”

  “I don’t think she was either, Valentina. The doctors said that she just discharged herself and left. Yes, and before she was ready to do so. Maybe it was a sort of birth trauma, even though there wasn’t actually a real birth. No, I don’t know, Valentina. But how is that connected with your dream? Is she the angel?”

  “I thought maybe she was at first, but the wings were black, and Malena’s couldn’t have been.” She lowered her eyes again but kept them fixed on the wall. “It’s happened before.”

  “What’s happened before, Valentina?”

  “That one of us has just disappeared without any warning.”

  “Yes, unfortunately. You’re thinking about Claudia? But she drowned, Valentina. They found her down on the coast of Poland, we know that. She’d become so depressed that we couldn’t help her out of it, no matter how much we tried.”

  “No, I’m not thinking of her. I’m thinking of one of the people who was on the same course as me. Iben Karcher. The German girl that Atu was so fond of.”

  “You know what, Valentina? I don’t understand what it is you want to tell me. Iben was a strange girl, and we have to face the fact that all sorts of people seek us out. We offer our disciples peace in their soul and a new understanding of the world. That’s all we can do. There are some people we can’t help, and Iben left of her own accord.”

  “That’s what you keep saying, and I’ve always thought so, but then there’s the dream.”

  Pirjo sighed. “Out with it. What is it that’s worrying you, Valentina?”

  “Shirley mentioned the episode with the belt, which Jeanette found in the loft of the Stable of Senses. Well, that building isn’t as light as all the others here. It’s darker.”

  “Er, yes. But I don’t understand where you’re going with this. It’s just rose colored, isn’t it? White or rose, what’s the significance? I’m totally confused now.”

  “It was a similar light red hall that the angel disappeared up into, so it was precisely that hall I dreamt about. And the angel with the black wings was you,
Pirjo. I saw you that day. I saw you from down on the beach when you drove in to the Stable of Senses on your yellow scooter. It was the scooter that left the yellow blobs when the walls in the dream disappeared. And it was the same day that Malena miscarried. I know because several of us were looking for you even though it was during meditation hour. Atu wanted you to take Malena to the hospital. I was glad when I saw you come home because I knew that things were just as they should be and Atu would be relieved. Afterward, in the assembly hall, you looked so beautiful. It almost felt as if an angel of deliverance had returned. From that moment, I knew that you’d help Malena while she lay in the hospital. At least I thought so.”

  “What do you mean that you saw me? Should that be something out of the ordinary, perhaps? I remember the day well, Valentina. I wasn’t feeling well and took a ride up to Nordodden to meditate, and it helped. Afterward, I parked my scooter in there on a sudden impulse because I wanted to charge the battery; that’s all. And yes, of course I helped Malena when I was there. How could you think otherwise? She was given every chance to either come back quickly, so we could look after her, or stay at the hospital until she was back on her feet.”

  “Do you know what’s weird, Pirjo? Now we’re getting to the thing with Shirley’s friend. Shirley told me precisely what day her friend Wanda left from London. So I was able to work out that she must have come on exactly the same day that Malena miscarried, the same day as you and the scooter and the Stable of Senses. I know, Pirjo, because I’ll never forget that date.”

  Pirjo nodded. She looked serious now. “Strange coincidence.” She pressed her lips and thought for a moment. “We don’t know what this Wanda Phinn has actually done. I’m inclined to think that she spun Shirley a story and that right now she might be living in . . .”

  “You were the angel, and the hall was the Stable of Senses, and the black wings a warning that something unspeakable has happened. Am I right, Pirjo? I’m telling you now because you’ve always lifted my spirits when I’ve needed it.”