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The Hanging Girl

Page 44

by Jussi Adler-Olsen


  A nightmare, most likely.

  He threw his head back on the pillow and chilled out. “Humm, hummm,” he chanted, the way he’d heard at the health fair the day before, and strangely enough it worked. People should know that; it would save them money. Then he fell into no-man’s-land, where sleep and the waking state fight against each other, creating completely uncontrollable dreams.

  “Hello, Hardy,” he heard himself whispering out there somewhere. He saw himself standing with a cell phone in his hand, trying to make his friend answer. Apparently, he desperately needed his advice and honest opinion. “Why did Anker and I shut you out, Hardy?” sounded a voice in his head. Why? Did he dare ask? Did he even dare confide anything to Hardy? Confide—what?

  “There’s a casket in the attic, Carl,” laughed Jesper in the background, and Carl turned off the phone, but then he turned it on again, and called Mona. Nothing happened.

  And then he woke up.

  He staggered down to the kitchen, his head dizzy and heavy as if he’d only slept for an hour or was running a fever.

  Maybe Morten and Hardy said good morning, he didn’t know. All he knew was that the only thing he wanted was the oatmeal Jesper had left in the food cupboard last time he visited, and for them to turn down the sound of the crap morning TV, where overly enthusiastic hosts were talking about trivial things while stuffing their faces with excessively hyped food creations.

  Having sprinkled sugar and a bit of cocoa powder on the oatmeal, he ate the first spoonful, the taste of the everlasting mornings of the past almost like a jolt to his palate. All his senses were flipped upside down. His sense of smell was distorted, reviving smells of old aunts and uncles. The sound of his chewing on the oat flakes was enhanced. The sight of the oatmeal box dissolved into images of a family silently and stubbornly hanging on to unsaid words.

  Suddenly, he remembered that time when he and Ronny had been fooling around behind Ronny’s dad while he was fishing. He suddenly remembered how he’d jumped around, punching the air, imitating Bruce Lee with savage karate kicks and horizontal chops.

  Carl gasped, almost choking on the oatmeal. What was happening? Where was that coming from? Was he going crazy? Was everything inside his brain short-circuiting at once, or was it the opposite? No matter what, it didn’t feel good.

  * * *

  “Someone named Kristine called, Carl,” said Gordon, his mouth lopsided, his battered face a palette of colors.

  Kristine? No, he wasn’t ready to renew contact with her, especially not at the moment. Anyway, why would he want to be with someone who’d left him for her ex-husband? The idea was absurd.

  “She didn’t leave a message, but said she’d call again.” The part of Gordon’s face that was still able to express something changed character. “And Rose hasn’t come in. Do you want me to call her?” He sounded worried.

  Carl nodded. “Where’s Assad?” he asked. “Hasn’t he come in either?”

  “Yes, he’s been here. He said he needed some air. But it’s strange, because when I came he wasn’t here either. I think it’s the third time he’s gone outside in the yard, and it’s only quarter past ten.”

  Carl thought he wasn’t the only one who was at sixes and sevens today. He pictured Kazambra, sincerely declaring that the side effects of the hypnosis would be minimal. Maybe Carl should give him a call.

  “While I’ve got you, Carl, there’s something strange going on with Assad that I wanted to show you. His PC was on when I came in at seven, and I could see all sorts of stuff on his desk that suggested he’d been here all night. Three tea glasses, some empty peanut bags, and a couple of empty halva boxes, and then the mail from you about that Atu-whatever-guy. I think he’d been Skyping. I know you shouldn’t spy on your colleagues, but I couldn’t help looking at what was on the screen. It was Arabic writing, so I took a photo of the screen and mailed it to one of the Arabic-speaking interpreters here at HQ to find out what it said.”

  “Hmmm,” said Carl. He had no idea what Gordon was babbling about. Assad outside to get fresh air? That had never happened before.

  “It was Arabic, Carl, but there were phrases mixed in that weren’t Syrian. Iraqi, more likely, said the interpreter.”

  Carl looked up; he was slowly coming to. “Say that again, what did you say? You’ve been nosing about in your colleague’s computer? Repeat what you said a moment ago, and I’ll give you a piece of my mind.”

  Gordon looked slightly nervous now. “I just thought that since we’re all working, it must be work related. And then it must be of interest to the entire department. Or . . .”

  “Go on, Gordon, say it again.”

  Carl was listening. If the guy could do this to his office mate, he could do it to anyone. To be honest, Carl didn’t like that. Only problem was that if anyone in the basement needed to know more about Assad, it was him. So when you did have a sneaky spy like that in your group, at least he could make himself useful. He could always be told off later.

  “The interpreter didn’t understand everything, but here’s his suggested translation.”

  He pushed it over to Carl.

  Just drop it, Said. No one is interested in time contracting anymore. You are like a feather on a fish to us. Accept it.

  There was that name again, Said.

  “Why do you think he calls him Said, Carl?”

  Carl shrugged, but inside him it triggered a chain reaction of piled-up, unanswered questions.

  “I don’t bloody well know if that is what he’s doing,” he said. “Was that all it said?”

  Carl cast a sidelong glance at Assad’s computer. Except for the police force icon, the desktop was empty.

  “He closed down Skype when he came back, and he must’ve deleted the correspondence. I just checked.”

  “Listen up, Gordon. You’ve seriously fallen short of the respect we treat each other with down here, and you’re in deep shit if you ever do this again. I’ll let you off this time, but next time you even think of doing anything like this, I’ll make damn sure you’re kicked the hell out. Understood?”

  He nodded.

  That was that, then.

  * * *

  Assad was standing at the back of the square-shaped courtyard, in the niche in front of The Snake Killer, the bronze sculpture with the swastika engraved on his glans, which policemen with contempt for death had teased the Nazis with during the war. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought he was sleeping on his feet, although his eyes were open. Distant, but open.

  “Are you okay?” asked Carl.

  Assad turned around slowly.

  “I’ve sniffed out the address for that Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi,” he answered. “He’s the leader of a center on Öland. I’ve made inquiries about him.”

  Carl nodded. Wasn’t that the crucial information they’d been after? So why did they look like two piles of piss with no spark or zest?

  “What’s happening to us, Assad?” asked Carl.

  He shrugged. “Is something happening? In my case, I think it’s just because I’ve been working most of the night.”

  “Why are you out here? Gordon says you’ve been in and out all morning.”

  “I’m just tired, Carl, and I’m trying to wake up so we can get going.”

  Carl squinted. Should he ask about the name?

  “Rose isn’t in top form, Carl, so she won’t be coming. I don’t think that hypnosis was good for her. She was shaking all the way home in the cab, and when we dropped her off, she sat down and started rocking back and forth. I tried to call her just before, but she isn’t answering.”

  “Okay. I don’t feel too great about the hypnosis either. I had nightmares last night, and kept seeing things that I haven’t thought about for years.”

  “It’ll pass, Carl. At least that’s what he said to me.”

  Carl
wasn’t too sure. “What about Rose, then?”

  Assad drew a deep breath. “Rose? She just needs a couple of days at home and she’ll be all right again.”

  * * *

  “You keep in contact with her,” Carl said to Gordon. “We need to get her back on her feet. When you get through to her, ask if there’s anything you can do, and by that I don’t mean for yourself, Gordon, get it?” Carl gave him a stern look.

  Gordon nodded. “I can see there are three hundred and sixty-five kilometers to the Nature Absorption Academy on Öland. The GPS planner says it’ll take you about four and a half hours to drive over there, so including a break you’ll be there at three this afternoon if you leave now and drive fast. Do you want me to call and say you’re coming?”

  Had he been at the back of the queue when brains were handed out?

  “Definitely not, thanks all the same. But we won’t leave until tomorrow, Gordon. We’re not in top form today.”

  “Okay. By the way, they called from Bornholm Police. They liked the missing person report on TV.”

  “I think they should tell that to Lars Bjørn. You didn’t tell them we’ve found the man with the VW Kombi?”

  “My God, no! What do you take me for?”

  Best not to answer that.

  “And then the policeman said they’d started talking about the case in the cafeteria again, and that one of them remembers that a relative of the teacher who died at the school—the one with the pistol Habersaat got his hands on and used for his suicide—said that the dead teacher actually had two completely similar pistols.” He panted. That was some torrent. “And that the other pistol had never been found after that. Not among Habersaat’s possessions either.”

  Carl shook his head. What bloody difference did one measly pistol make in Denmark today, when any idiot member of a gang with an ounce of so-called self-respect owned at least one?

  The world had gone completely bananas.

  And so had Carl’s head.

  * * *

  He staggered to bed at four in the afternoon, and when he woke up the next morning, still feeling out of it, he called Assad to cancel the trip.

  “It’s probably just an aftereffect of the hypnosis, Carl,” Assad said consolingly. “You know, if you look a camel too deep in the eye, it ends up cross-eyed.”

  Carl thanked him for the comparison, and fell back on his pillow. Everything around him was shrouded in a haze. Thoughts as well as movements seemed to unfold in slow motion. And even when he tried to control them, they didn’t obey. When he tried to think about the Alberte case, pictures popped up of Ronny’s brother instead, racing up and down the dirt road to his parents’ farm. When he tried to think about that episode, his mind was filled with memories of Hardy and Anker instead, on their way into the shed on the allotment on Amager where their fates were sealed. And then when he tried to think more profoundly about that terrible and fatal event, an unexpected stream of emotion and longing flowed through him. Suddenly it was Vigga, Mona, Lisbeth, and Kristine he saw—and then Mona again. It was all completely crazy. He couldn’t sort out his thoughts at all.

  There was a quiet knocking on the door, and before he’d mustered the energy to answer, Morten pushed the door open with a steaming breakfast tray.

  “I can’t remember when I last saw you like this, Carl,” he said, before pulling Carl up, and placing a couple of pillows under his head. “Don’t you think you should call someone?”

  Carl looked at the tray, which Morten placed on his knees. Two fried eggs were staring at him, next to a couple of bits of the flat toast Morten knew he hated.

  “Protein, Carl. I don’t think you’re getting enough protein. This’ll help.”

  Help what? Help make him even more confused? And then what should he do? Call for help, or struggle through this London breakfast extravaganza? What would come next? Warm milk with honey? A thermometer in his butt?

  “I’ll take Hardy with me to Copenhagen,” came the words from the mouth on the plump face. “Don’t wait for us.”

  What a relief.

  * * *

  When Carl woke up, his duvet looked like a lunarscape of egg, toast, and deltas of stray coffee.

  “Ugh, damn it,” he shouted, and answered the call that had woken him up.

  “I just wanted to let you know that Rose has come in. She doesn’t look too good, but I don’t dare say that to her. She’s sorting the last shelf, and we’ve received Bjarke’s old PC from the police in Rønne. Rose is already busy emptying the hard drive. Quite a few photos of naughty men in leather pants with their bare asses showing, she told me to pass on to you. She’ll continue working on it tomorrow, but she’ll do it at home, since you and I will be gone anyway. I’ve calculated that if you pick me up at six, we can get there early. Are you feeling better now, by the way?”

  At six in the morning! Fried eggs all over his bed, and a flood of coffee heading under his duvet. Was he feeling better? What the hell could he say?

  47

  Friday, May 16th, 2014

  When she accidentally pressed the toilet flush, thereby flushing valuable water down the drain, Shirley lost the last of that one thing that can keep people going: hope. Without that to cling to, she was nothing. Throughout her life, hadn’t there always been a little bit of hope somewhere? Hope of recognition from her parents. Hope of weight loss. Hope that despite everything she’d find a partner, or at least a less ambitious hope that she’d be able to find a really good friend, male or female. Or even just a meaningful job.

  But if she put all of these unfulfilled hopes in one equation, she had to admit that she’d never get the right answer. A hope in one direction had been constantly replaced by a new hope in another direction, which in turn was replaced by yet another. And now the final hope was gone. A small handful of water was all that was left in the toilet, and she’d been sparing with that, so what was there left to hope for?

  No, she knew that even though this nightmare had lasted barely a week, it was going to be a short-lived process. All the statistics about people who survived for weeks without food and for a very long time with only a very meager supply of water didn’t apply to her. But strangely enough, it didn’t frighten her.

  Despite the extreme dryness in her mouth and an unpleasant smell from the feces and her body, her state of mind improved hour by hour. Over the last day, her body had almost reacted with a feeling of euphoria, presumably because her organs no longer had to work so hard at digestion, and probably for other reasons she didn’t understand.

  Since the fateful trip to the toilet in the middle of the night, she no longer felt the need to relieve herself. Her body was weak and tired, but her mind was more alert than it had been for years. She thought rationally and with a level head. She drew conclusions without sentimentality and inhibition. She was going to die, and the only thing she was going to fight for now was to make sure she didn’t go quietly, and that all blame would point toward Pirjo.

  Many hours had passed in trying to coax one board free so she could create a hole to the outer cladding, but when she finally succeeded in making a gap wide enough to enable her to see what lay behind it, she gave up her quest. She was faced with an aluminum sheet, and had no idea what it was for apart from that it might have something to do with the thermal properties Pirjo had talked about. Yet another sliver of hope disappeared as she realized the impossibility of breaking through that layer with the miserable tools she had at her disposal.

  Of course it came as a blow for a while, because the alternative meant certain death. And yet she quickly regained her courage, a condition probably triggered by the chemical processes now controlling her body.

  She turned to the next plan and found her reading glasses from her toiletry bag. They were a hideous pair she’d bought in a Tiger discount store in the Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth, in the vain hope that she’d be abl
e to apply her makeup so it looked more flattering.

  Based on the sun’s current position, it was time. The question was whether her venture could be done in a day or if she’d need tomorrow to help it along.

  She got down on her knees and tried to catch the sun’s rays in the glass to create a burning point on the wall.

  For a while in her younger days, Shirley had had the idea that she should work as a volunteer paramedic, so she’d taken several first-aid courses as part of that plan. She found out, however, that she couldn’t stand the sight of blood and so decided to abandon the idea. But during her training she’d learned that people who die in fires normally don’t feel any pain due to being unconscious as a result of smoke inhalation.

  If she managed to start a fire with her glasses, she’d jump into the bathroom and hope that someone would sound the alarm and come running over to the house before the fire was so strong that it took her with it. And if this didn’t happen, then things would just have to run their course. The bathroom was a small room so the oxygen would quickly be used up.

  Then she took Pirjo’s blue notebook containing Atu’s pearls of wisdom and ripped it apart, page by page, until there was a good pile of crumpled paper up against the wall that she could use as kindling.

  When she had been sitting for five minutes and concluded that the burning point would under no circumstances reach the degree of warmth that a burning glass can reach under optimal conditions, she looked up at the skylight. In just under an hour, the sun would have passed far enough overhead that there would no longer be any direct sunlight entering the room, and her plan wouldn’t be achievable before tomorrow. And when she thought about it carefully, the question arose of whether it would ever be achievable regardless of the sun’s strength. Maybe the essential problem was that the windows refracted the light so much that it lost its power.

 

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