The Hanging Girl

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Assad had saved him.

  If only they could save Assad now.

  * * *

  The sirens had been going for some time before they were turned off right outside the windows. Ambulances, police, fire engines—a whole regiment of rescue workers had mobilized to action.

  Carl was on his feet now, giving his version of events as much as his voice would allow. In the meantime, a pair of their Swedish colleagues routinely checked his and Assad’s ID on the telephone. Hopefully, they’d get hold of Lars Bjørn, and hopefully he’d get a shock.

  Over on the sofa, Assad had exclaimed a couple of inarticulate sounds, but when the doctor gave him his injection, he woke suddenly, looking confused at the horde of people around him.

  When he saw Carl, he smiled gently. Carl could easily have cried.

  Fifteen minutes later, when the doctor had treated Assad’s hand with a provisional dressing, and put a bandage around Carl’s ankle, they listened to the preliminary report from the police.

  They’d been discovered in the control room, lying on the floor with multiple injuries, tied by their feet with cables. Who’d cut them free, nobody knew, but it could hardly have been that woman who’d bled to death.

  The doctor deemed it necessary to admit them for observation at Kalmar Hospital, even though they’d seemingly escaped any life-threatening injuries. Apart from Assad’s thumb, which would in all probability have to be amputated, and which he seemingly didn’t react to.

  Carl assumed he must be in shock, putting his hand on Assad’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. He couldn’t express with words how he felt about Assad sacrificing himself. For all the pain he’d endured.

  “Thanks, Assad,” he said. It didn’t seem enough.

  He nodded. “I wanted to save myself, too, Carl, don’t read too much into it,” he said gaspingly.

  They were asked to identify the dead woman as the person who’d knocked them out and tied them up. Afterward, the technicians came and took pictures. The forensic pathologist wrote a temporary death certificate, but was convinced the cause of death was extreme blood loss caused by bleeding during premature labor. He put a stethoscope to her stomach and shook his head after a few seconds. The child was no longer alive either.

  Then the paramedics put the body on a stretcher and carried it out.

  The amount of blood around the area she’d been sitting in and under the table was awful. So much blood from such a small woman was hard to fathom.

  “She’s confessed to attacking you. Look here,” said one of the officers, pointing at the computer screen on the desk.

  Carl read. It was in Swedish, and made for horrifying reading.

  “What does it say exactly, Carl?” asked Assad, looking concerned. “I don’t read Swedish too well.”

  Carl nodded. Of course he didn’t. How much could you expect from someone who allegedly didn’t understand a word of Danish sixteen years ago.

  “It reads: I confess my deeds. I’ve killed two officers in the solar power control room. I killed Wanda Phinn. She’s buried down in Gynge Alvar, about eight hundred meters from where the path stops, and then a hundred meters to the right. I pushed a German woman in front of a car down at the ferry terminal in Karlskrona. Her name was Iben. I drowned Claudia, who was found in Poland. I don’t remember their surnames at present. It all started with Alberte on Bornholm, where Atu, called Frank at the time, began . . .”

  And there her confession ended with a mass of “n”s and some spaces. Her finger must’ve fallen there when she lost consciousness. Carl pointed to the “n” key on her keyboard. Exactly one key above the space bar.

  “Where’s Atu?” Carl asked around the room.

  People shrugged. Everything pointed to the rat having abandoned the sinking ship.

  “His car’s not there,” someone said.

  So he’d slipped away before everything came burning down around him.

  “I think he’s directing a massive accusation at himself, running away while his chosen one, Pirjo, was sitting here dying and the buildings were on fire,” said Carl.

  “Yes, but what she wrote . . . can be understood in several ways,” said Assad.

  Carl nodded. “It can. It can also mean that she’s trying to make him responsible for Alberte’s death. We can’t know from what’s here. We don’t know anything about what her motivation was. Maybe she was insane. But the fact that he ran away, leaving his fiancée and lifework in flames, speaks volumes.”

  “Then we need to find him, right?”

  Carl nodded. But where? And how? Now they were being taken to the hospital. Assad’s injuries weren’t the sort you could ignore. Just taking a couple of steps, he looked like a zombie. His limbs were obviously stiff and were with all probability damn painful, just like his own. And then there was his hand; it was almost unbearable to think about.

  “We’ll put a call out for Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi and his car,” said one of the Swedish plainclothes officers.

  “Good. Listen, we need to find our car keys and cells,” said Carl. “Otherwise . . .”

  “You’ll have to leave that for someone else, because you won’t be doing that now,” interrupted the doctor. “We’ve got some patients to transport and ambulances waiting outside.”

  * * *

  Out in the courtyard, there was a multitude of flashing blue lights and people in uniform, lost in a fog of smoke and damp. Not far from there, it was still possible to see black clouds rising, but the fire had already been brought under control, according to the on-site commander.

  Carl looked over the body that only an hour and a half ago had been a smiling and happy woman with Atu’s cape over her shoulders and sunstones in her hands. Her deathly white face hadn’t yet been covered, and many white-clad men and women stood around her, totally lost and crying.

  Then a team of stretcher bearers approached from the area of the fire. People whispered, put their hands to their faces, and followed the unraveling events in disbelief.

  “Shirley!” some of them said.

  The woman they were carrying was still alive. A man walked alongside them, holding a drip, while another held an oxygen mask over her mouth. She held out her hand a couple of times to the people they passed on their way, touching their hands. She didn’t get much back, but there were a few who stroked her fingers as she was hurried past them.

  “She’ll take one ambulance, and the dead woman the other. The Danish officers can be driven in one of the emergency cars,” said the on-site commander.

  The battered woman on the stretcher was placed alongside the dead one. They took her mask off and spoke to her. She coughed, but was seemingly in a fit state to answer questions. Then a rescue worker came to rinse the area around her eyes of soot. Even her hair was black with soot, just like her skin. Everything was black. Amazing that she’d survived. They must have rescued her in the nick of time.

  She looked extremely sad, lying there. Maybe she hadn’t reckoned with getting out of that place alive. She was presumably still in shock.

  Then she turned her head toward the other stretcher, trying to focus. She blinked a couple of times before she really understood what she saw.

  And then something strangely grotesque happened that Carl knew he’d never be able to forget.

  With her eyes on the corpse, she began to laugh. To laugh so uncontrollably and resoundingly loud that everyone in the courtyard stopped, frozen to the spot.

  52

  Friday, May 16th, and Saturday, May 17th, 2014

  The information from Kalmar Hospital was completely unambiguous. Assad needed to have his left thumb amputated, and Assad had said no. If it had to come off, then he’d be the one to do it, he said.

  Carl felt sick at the thought and stared at the unfortunate hand. If a usable finger ever came from that thing, which on the surface looked totally charred
, he must have good connections with the powers up above.

  “Are you sure, Assad?” he asked, pointing at the marbling on the skin some way up the heel of his hand.

  He confirmed without hesitation. He claimed to have had similar burns to this before. And he’d weathered the storm himself just fine back then.

  The doctor then delivered unveiled admonitions about what would happen if gangrene set in, adding some instructions of varying character about what he shouldn’t do under any circumstances in this unpleasant situation.

  Carl could tell that Assad was in pain, but he took it on the chin. The doctor wasn’t going to have that trump.

  Then the staff checked their kidney and heart function, took a number of neurological tests, asked them to perform a series of muscle exercises, and finally asked them at least a hundred questions before they were finished.

  “We’re keeping you here tonight because Carl’s cardiogram is still showing some irregularities. When it isn’t any worse than this, our experience tells us that it’ll sort itself out within a few hours, but we’d like to take an ECG tomorrow morning to be on the safe side.”

  Assad and Carl looked at each other. It wouldn’t exactly make their hunt for Atu any easier.

  The consultant, a stereotypical-looking smart Swedish man in his prime, pushed his rimless glasses back in place. “I can sense that you’re hesitant to accept the offer, but you shouldn’t be. You’ve both been extremely lucky. Assad here, to the best of my knowledge, has sacrificed his finger, quite certainly saving your lives and definitely sparing you from any number of serious injuries. If it hadn’t been direct current, and if you hadn’t been so lucky with the bad weather, you wouldn’t be here now. You would’ve been boiled alive. Your brain and nervous system would have suffered irreparable damage. And, best-case scenario, your muscle tissue would’ve been subjected to far more damage, resulting in far greater pain than what you’re suffering now.”

  They protested when they were asked to put on hospital robes. Grown men in bed gowns that were too long, all bare asses and hair, were a sight no one wanted to see.

  “I’d ask you to be aware that in the coming twenty to thirty months, there can be delayed injuries following such a violent and traumatic case of physical stress. So if you notice any significant changes in memory, sensory irregularities, impaired vision or hearing, you must seek medical attention. Are we agreed?”

  They nodded. Who would dare to disagree with a doctor wearing rimless glasses?

  “One thing more,” said the white coat on his way out the door. “Your Swedish colleagues have been here with your cells and car keys, and they’ve parked your car down in the parking lot.”

  Now, that was information they could live with.

  * * *

  It was hard to get out of bed the next morning, their bodies protesting as they did. Carl looked over to Assad, who was asleep on his back in the hospital bed. He’d taken his dressing off, lying with his thumb in his mouth. Almost like a baby comforting itself.

  And he was still sitting like that when three quarters of an hour later they were in the car en route to Copenhagen. Despite an ardent search, the Swedish police had no news about Atu’s whereabouts.

  “Do you really think that will save your finger, Assad?” he said finally when they’d driven between forty and fifty kilometers.

  Assad took his thumb out of his mouth carefully, rolled down the window, and spat.

  Then he pulled a small brown bottle from the Body Shop from his pocket. Tree Tree Oil was written on the label.

  “I always carry one of these with me. It’s something Rose taught me. It disinfects. You just can’t swallow it,” he said, pouring a few drops in his mouth followed by his thumb.

  “It looks like a third-degree burn, which means the nerves are dead, Assad. So it won’t help, no matter what you use.”

  Assad repeated the procedure, spat out, and turned toward him.

  “I can feel life in it, Carl. It might be a bit black, but that’s just the skin. If there’s anything that isn’t in full working order, it’s only the top joint.” With which, he took some drops, and stuck his thumb back in his mouth.

  “We’ve had some feedback from the police in Ystad,” informed one of his colleagues from Police Headquarters on the car phone. “The man you’re looking for was seen driving on board the night ferry from Ystad to Rønne.”

  What did he say?

  “Why are we only hearing about this now?”

  “They tried yesterday but there was no response from your cells.”

  “We didn’t have them. They brought them to the hospital themselves, damn it. Why didn’t they call the hospital?”

  “You were sleeping.”

  “Then they could have called this morning.”

  “Look at your watch, Mørck, it’s only seven thirty. I doubt their office hours have even started.”

  Carl said thanks and ended the call. Atu was on Bornholm, but what the hell was he doing there? Wasn’t that the last place he would go if he were Atu?

  Assad spat out of the window again.

  “He’s gone there to get rid of some clues we’ve overlooked, if you ask me. He knows we can’t pin anything on him without evidence.”

  Then they’d just have to stop him in his tracks.

  Carl looked out the window. The decision he had to make wasn’t easy. He looked at his partner, fighting to save his thumb, keeping it stuck in his mouth, and felt a momentary twinge of shame. What hadn’t he sacrificed over the last twenty-four hours? So couldn’t Carl sacrifice himself a little?

  “I’ll hire a private jet,” he decided.

  Assad’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll be fine. Maybe the hypnosis has worked, too, who knows?” He looked at the GPS. “It isn’t too far to Ronneby Airport, so we can be there in half an hour. I’ll try to see if Copenhagen AirTaxi can help us.”

  Ten minutes went by and an extremely polite man apologized that they couldn’t find a free plane on such short notice. “But ask one of our former Swedish pilots, Sixten Bergström,” he suggested. “He has a private jet, an Eclipse 500, at Ronneby Airport. It’s got six seats and does seven hundred kilometers an hour, so maybe it’s just what you’re looking for. With a distance between the two airports of approximately a hundred and twenty kilometers, the trip to Bornholm can be done in no time at all.”

  * * *

  Never in his life had Carl thought he’d do something like this voluntarily. With his legs shaking, he sat in an extremely comfortable beige leather window seat, staring paralyzed at the older gentleman preparing for takeoff.

  “Shall I hold your hand?” said his wingman, comfortingly, having rolled a huge dressing around his left thumb.

  Carl took deep breaths.

  “I’ve already said a prayer for you, Carl, it’ll be okay.”

  Carl pressed himself back in his seat, oceans of sweat on his forehead, instinctively lifting his arms with the jet.

  “No, you don’t really need to do that,” said the pilot with a glance backward. “We’ve got wings enough as it is. Just take it easy.”

  Did Assad suppress a laugh just then? Was he sitting there with a burned-up finger and beaten-up body, laughing?

  Carl turned toward him and noticed, strangely enough, that it was infectious. When he thought about it, it was very comical.

  He let his arms fall and relaxed his shoulders. Actually, he wasn’t at all scared. It was just something he imagined.

  And then he laughed so much and so unexpectedly that the pilot nearly had a heart attack. What a twist of fate that would’ve been if they’d crashed.

  Just as quickly as they’d gone up, they were down again. Carl sent Kazambra a few gentle thanks, crossing over to Police Superintendent Birkedal, who was waiting for them.r />
  “We haven’t traced the man yet. None of the hotels have put him up, and none of the campsites think they’ve had anyone staying who fits the description.”

  “So he’s either stayed in a bed-and-breakfast, his car, or with someone we don’t know. Do you have a car for us?”

  Birkedal pointed over to a small red Peugeot 206. “You can borrow the wife’s. She’s left everything anyway.”

  He looked a little bitter, but then he should have known better than to accept Rose’s strange advances.

  They agreed to keep in contact all day, because the man they were looking for shouldn’t have any chance to get off the island. They’d put the ferries and airport under observation, too.

  “Can you manage, Assad?” he asked as they squeezed themselves into the car. He got a bandaged thumbs-up.

  Tough guy, that Assad.

  “The circle’s complete for Atu and Frank, then,” said Assad. “He’s back on Bornholm, but where do you think he is?”

  “There’s certainly no reason to believe he’s gone back to the scene of the crime. That wouldn’t make any sense. And if he does, he won’t find anything that the investigators didn’t find. I’m more inclined to think he might contact someone or other on the island who knows more than is good for them.”

  “Who could it be good for?”

  He had a point. Definitely not for the person Atu was after. Carl credited Atu with a lot of determination, maybe a bit too much.

  “Do you think he could kill someone, Carl?”

  “Aren’t we looking for someone we think has done it once before?” Hadn’t they seen the man being worshipped by a mob of white-clad people, and wasn’t that a position of power he’d do anything to maintain?

  “Inge Dalby’s in Copenhagen, so we don’t need to worry about her. So I’m thinking mostly about June Habersaat just now. What do you say?”