The Hanging Girl (3 page)

“A deceased estate? In 2009?” asked Rose, smiling with pouting lips. Was John Birkedal really her type?

“Yes. One of the teachers at the folk high school died midsemester. According to the autopsy, it was death by natural causes as the result of a weak heart but nevertheless, Habersaat was especially interested in the death when the property was checked. The deceased, Jakob Swiatek, according to some former students and teachers, had been tremendously interested in small arms, and on several occasions had shown some of the students a pistol which, according to their descriptions, could be a match with the pistol Habersaat used this morning.”

“Yeah, you don’t see a semiautomatic like that every day, so I just have one question,” Assad interjected. “Was the Beretta the basic model or was it a 92S, 92SB or 92F, FG, or FS? Because it can’t have been a 92A1 seeing as that series is from 2010.”

Carl slowly turned toward Assad. What on earth was the guy talking about? Was he also an expert on Berettas now?

Birkedal shook his head slowly. So he didn’t know damn all about that either. But no doubt he’d dig up an answer before the sun went down over Rønne harbor.

“Hmm, maybe I should sum up briefly what Habersaat stood for and what he’d been through,” continued Birkedal. “Then later on you can have the keys to his house and take things from there. They’ll be left in reception later tonight. I’ve conferred with the police commissioner and
he’s giving you a relatively free hand. I also think our colleagues are about ready with the house now, so you can get started. We just needed to check the property first. There could’ve been letters or something similar that indicated why he took the drastic action he did. But you know all that. It is you, after all, who have the most experience with this sort of thing.”

Assad was nodding, holding up his index finger ready to speak, but Carl checked him with a look. Whether it was one pistol or another the idiot had blown his brains out with was totally irrelevant. As far as Carl was concerned, they hadn’t travelled to this godforsaken place specifically to uncover why Habersaat had committed suicide, but more importantly to make Rose understand that the case she thought Carl should have done everything in his power to take on for Habersaat didn’t actually have anything to do with them.

*   *   *

For the approximately fifty students from eighteen upward enrolled at Bornholm Folk High School for the winter half year, taking courses in music, glasswork, painting, or pottery, November 20th, 1997, had been another typical day with good humor and certainly no sense of danger, explained Birkedal. A totally normal group of mostly happy young students who got along well.

They didn’t know yet that Alberte, the gentlest, prettiest, and probably also the most popular girl at the school had been killed in a car accident that morning.

A little more than a day went by before she was found hurled so far up in a tree by the roadside that it was almost impossible to see her. And the man who happened to look up at precisely the moment his car passed the tree, to his own misfortune, was a uniformed police officer from Nexø by the name of Christian Habersaat.

The sight of the fragile, limp body hanging from a branch burned itself into him, exactly like the inscrutable look that had forever attached itself to the girl’s face.

Despite only the slightest of leads, it was determined that she hung in the tree as a result of a serious car accident. A rather unpleasant episode that didn’t resemble any other hit-and-run cases in the more recent history of Bornholm.

Skid marks were searched for but never uncovered. There had been hope that paint flakes would be found in her clothes, but the vehicle had slid past without leaving any trace. Those who lived by the road were questioned, but no one and nothing pointed toward anything or anyone specifically. Only that one person on the stretch of road had heard a car at a terrible speed disappear off in the direction of the main road.

After that, perhaps due to the death being suspicious or because there were no other cases, a systematic hunt was instigated for vehicles with dents to the front carriage that weren’t immediately explainable. It was probably a day too late but, regardless, all cars on ferry departures to both Sweden and Copenhagen were closely monitored for the whole week, and all twenty thousand vehicles on the entire island were called in for inspection by motor vehicle diagnostics in Rønne and Nexø.

Despite the obvious disruption, the locals were surprisingly understanding and actively helpful to the extent that no tourist could move on four wheels without the hood being scrutinized by hawkeyed locals.

Birkedal shrugged his shoulders. “And in spite of all the efforts, the result was zero.”

The Department Q staff looked tiredly at the police superintendent. Who wanted to tamper with an equation where the end result, regardless of what you did, was always zero?

“And you know with certainty that it was a traffic-related death?” asked Carl. “Couldn’t it have been something else? What did you learn from the injuries at the postmortem? And what did you find at the collision scene?”

“That she was probably alive for a time after she was hurled up there. Otherwise: fractures, internal and external bleeding, all the usual. And then we found the bike Alberte had cycled on quite a distance in the thicket and mangled almost beyond recognition.”

“So she’d cycled there,” Rose said. “Do you still have the bike?”

Police Superintendent Birkedal shrugged. “It was seventeen years ago and before my time, so I’m not sure. Probably not.”

“It would be wonderful if you could do me the favor of finding out,” said Rose in a sweet voice and with bashful eyes.

Birkedal pulled his head back. A handsome married man tends to know when he’s on thin ice. “Why are you so certain that she was thrown up into the tree?” Assad quietly asked. “Couldn’t she have been hauled up there? Was there a search for any sign of cordage on the branches above the body? Could a hoist have been used?”

Did Assad say “cordage”? A very specific word coming from him.

Birkedal nodded, as there was certainly nothing wrong with the questions. “No, the technicians found nothing to indicate that.”

“You can refill from the thermos in the dining hall,” came the message from the hotel proprietor standing in the doorway.

It took no more than a split second before the coffee flowed dark in Assad’s cup while he poured sugar directly from the bowl. How could his poor hardworking taste buds survive all his strange challenges?

The others shook their heads when he offered to pour the coffee for them.

“How can it be that there weren’t any leads from the collision?” he asked, turning around. “You’d expect some skid marks or at the very least some tire marks. Had it been raining?”

“No, nothing to speak of, as far as I know,” answered Birkedal. “The report mentions that the state of the roads had been reasonably dry.”

“Then what about the direction the body was thrown up in?” Carl continued. “Was that properly investigated? Were there visibly broken branches from where the body had been hurled up? Or was it possible to infer anything from the position of the body on the branches or the position of the bike in the thicket?”

“Based on a witness statement from an elderly married couple who lived on a farm on the bend a little farther down, it was concluded that during the morning a vehicle came speeding from the west outside their
house. The old couple didn’t see the vehicle but they could hear the car revving up beyond all reason just outside the house and driving at full speed toward the last bend before the place where the tree stood.

“We’re quite convinced that it was the hit-and-run driver that the old couple heard and that the girl was hit head on near the trees, and that the vehicle then drove off in the direction of the highway intersection without slowing down.”

“What’s that based on?”

“On the witness testimony and the experience of the technicians from previous hit-and-runs.”

“Aha.” Carl shook his head. All these known and unknown factors. He was already tired just thinking about it. Suddenly the desk back home in the cellar of the police station seemed far away.

“Who was the girl, then?” The unavoidable question was asked from which there was no turning back once an answer had been given.

“Alberte Goldschmid. Despite her rather flamboyant surname she was an ordinary girl. One of those who suddenly felt freedom far away from mom and dad and reacted accordingly. You couldn’t call her directly promiscuous but she was into a bit of this and that now that she had the freedom to do so. Everything certainly indicates that she took advantage of the couple of weeks she was over here, quite intensely.”

“Intensely? What do you mean?” asked Rose.

“A couple of partners here and there.”

“Okay, did the girl become pregnant?”

“The autopsy said no.”

“And it would be superfluous to inquire after foreign DNA on the body,” she continued.

“The year was 1997, need I say more? Three years before the central DNA register was set up. I don’t think there was an intensive search. But no, there were no traces of semen in her or foreign skin under her nails. She was as clean as someone who’d just stepped out of the shower, which she probably had, seeing as she took her bike before the other students had even assembled for breakfast.”

“Let me get this right,” said Carl. “You know nothing, is that correct? This is the story of a locked-room murder and Habersaat was the local Sherlock Holmes, who for once fell short.”

Birkedal shrugged his shoulders again. He couldn’t answer that either.

“Right, then,” said Assad, draining the remainder of the hot coffee in one gulp. “Let’s call that a wrap, then.”

Did he really just say that?

Rose turned unfazed toward Birkedal, again with her sugar-sweet eyes. “All three of us will sit down together now, quietly and calmly, and read all this material you’ve brought for us, and that’s probably going to take an hour or two. And when we’re done with that we’ll probably want to ask a bit more about this and that in Habersaat’s investigation, and life and death.”

A hint of a smile creased Birkedal’s stoical mask. It was clear that as far as he was concerned they could do just as they pleased, so long as he wasn’t involved.

“Do you think we’ll find something that you should have found long ago? Something that might shed some light on the mystery of the girl in the tree?” Carl said stubbornly.

“I don’t know but I certainly hope so. The essence, I suppose, is that as far as Habersaat was concerned, Alberte’s death wasn’t just negligent manslaughter and a case of hit-and-run. It was murder,” he said. “And Habersaat tried with all his might not only to substantiate that theory but to find the perpetrator. I don’t know what he had to go on but there are no doubt other officers that can tell you more, not to mention Habersaat’s ex-wife.”

A plastic case was slid across the table. “I have to get back to the station now but take a look at this DVD. Then you’ll know roughly what you need to know about his death,” he said. “It was filmed by one of Habersaat’s friends invited to the reception. His name is Villy, but over here we call him Uncle Sam. I assume you have your own PCs with you so you can play it on one of them. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.” And then he stood up suddenly.

Carl noticed how Rose’s eyes were glued to his well-toned backside as he left. Hardly a look his wife would have appreciated.

*   *   *

So radically had Habersaat’s wife put the past behind her that she discarded not only the man’s name but also everything else imaginable that could bring forth memories of him, a fact she didn’t try to hide when Carl attempted to get a telephone conversation going with her.

“And if you think that just because the man is dead now that I have the least desire to dredge up his and our mutual problems for anyone, you’re mistaken. Christian didn’t choose his family during some difficult years when I—and especially his son—really needed his attention, and now all his bad choices have ended with a cowardly suicide. You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want to hear about his life’s biggest passion; you won’t hear it from me.”

Carl looked at Rose and Assad, who both gesticulated to him to stay firm. Yeah, what else?

“Do you mean that he was in love with the Alberte case or perhaps even the victim?”

“You cops never let up, do you? I’ve told you to leave me in peace, so good-bye.” There was the sound of the receiver being put down and that was that.

“She knew the speakerphone was on, Carl,” said Assad. “We should have gone out to her, like I suggested.”

Carl shrugged his shoulders. Maybe he was right, but it was late and the way he saw it, there were two types of witnesses to be avoided unless absolutely necessary: those who said too much and those who kept their mouths shut.

Rose looked in her notebook. “Here’s the address for Habersaat’s son, Bjarke. He’s renting a room at the northern end of Rønne, so we can be there in ten minutes. Shall we get going, then?”

The decision was made. Rose was already standing.

The house on Sandflugtsvej
was situated back from the road with a French balcony and the feeling of the good life emanating from it. Everything had been arranged down to the last detail, from the door knocker to the brass nameplate and well-mowed lawns. This was a place where you drove in newly washed VW Polos, French cars, or, for lack of something better, SUVs. All status symbols of the first degree in provincial Denmark.

There was only one name on the door, Nelly Rasmussen.

“Yes, Bjarke Habersaat certainly does live here,” she said with a friendly stress on Bjarke, as she stood there like a cougar in the half-open front door with a duster tucked in her cleavage and a cigarette burning between her outstretched fingers. “But you shouldn’t expect Bjarke to be in the mood to talk with you,” she said with the look of a professional landlady, glancing unimpressed at Carl’s ID card. He estimated that she was fifty-five. Blue housecoat, home-colored permed hair with highlighted split ends, and a crazily lopsided tattoo on her wrist that was probably, albeit in vain, supposed to make her more exotic.

“I think you should show a bit of sympathy and let him get over the shock. After all, it’s only a few hours since his dad, God bless him, took his own life.”

Assad took a step forward. “It’s really sweet that you’re so good to your lodger and look out for him. But what if we had a final letter with us for him from his dad? Wouldn’t it be a shame if he didn’t get it? Or what if his mom had also committed suicide? Do you really think we’d be allowed to tell you if that was the case? And what if we’re actually
here to arrest Bjarke for arson? Would it still be all right then, that you’re standing here in your heels and mocking the course of justice?”

She looked a little perplexed as she took in all the information and his smiling face. Maybe she became even more confused when Assad took her arm, patted it, and reassured her that he understood how much it must also affect her to have a lodger in so much distress. At any rate, she let go of the door handle and allowed Carl to nudge the door open with his shoe.

“Bjarke!” she shouted reluctantly up the stairs. “You’ve got visitors.” She turned toward them. “Wait here in the hallway a minute before you go up. And knock on the door and wait until he opens himself, okay? Bjarke can sometimes be a little indisposed, but I hope you’ll overlook that under the circumstances. I certainly do. And double standards or not, that’s just the way it is.”

You could smell the indisposition already halfway up the stairs. In fact, it smelled like a hash café from the outskirts of Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district on unemployment benefit payment day.

“Skunk,” said Assad. “A very fine, strong smell. Not as sneaky and sour as hash.”

Carl scowled. That damned professor he was dragging along. Skunk or hash, the smell of decay was just as pathetic.

“Remember to knock,” came the reminder from the bottom of the stairs.

The message didn’t reach Assad’s hearing range because without further ado he grabbed the handle and opened the door.

Assad stopped immediately in the doorway and Carl understood why when he came up behind him.

“Hang on a minute, Rose,” he said, attempting to hold her back.

There, leaning back in a large worn armchair, sat Bjarke without a stitch on him, his legs pulled up under him and a bottle of paint thinner in his hand.

And apart from being naked, Bjarke was also stone-cold dead, as anyone could see from this distance despite the sun barely being able to penetrate the thick hash fog. Slitting his wrists, Bjarke had ended his
life with half-closed eyes in a dreamlike gaze. It hadn’t been a difficult death.

“That wasn’t skunk you smelled, Assad. It was the combination of hash and cellulose thinner,” said Carl.

“Don’t stand there blocking my way,” snapped Rose from behind as she tried to push past them.

“You shouldn’t come in here, Rose, it isn’t pretty. Bjarke’s dead. There’s blood all over the floor because he’s slit his wrists. I’ve never seen so much blood from one person.”

Assad nodded quietly. “But then I’ve seen a bit more of this sort of thing than you, Carl.”

It was a long time before the technicians and the doctor who would carry out the postmortem arrived. As a result, Bjarke’s landlady had the entire staff of Department Q to cling to while she lamented over something so horrid invading her life. How in the world was she going to get compensation for the rug and chair when she didn’t have the receipts for them any longer?

When it finally sunk in for her that the young man upstairs had actually died while she was downstairs dusting, she needed to sit down to try to avoid hyperventilating.

“Imagine, what if someone has killed him,” she whispered over and over.

“I don’t think that is something you need worry about, unless, of course, you’ve heard something unusual. Has there been anyone on the stairs over the last few hours, or can you enter the bedroom from the back of the house?”

She shook her head.

“And you didn’t do it yourself, I assume?” continued Carl.

Her eyes rolled as she began to hyperventilate again.

“Right,” said Carl. “Then he must have cut his own wrists. He was certainly in a state where he could’ve done anything to himself.”

She pursed her lips and pulled herself together, mumbling about all sorts. She’d reached the point where she realized that she might have been an accomplice to crime by renting to someone who grew magic
mushrooms on the windowsill and who, on top of that, breathed mostly through a chillum.

It was at this point Carl left her to the other two, went outside in the gleaming sunshine, and lit a smoke.

*   *   *

The search of Bjarke’s room, seizure of his computer and the knife he’d slit his wrists with, the collection of the technical data, and the postmortem and removal of the body down to the ambulance all happened so quickly that Carl was only on his fifth smoke when Birkedal stood with his investigator and a technician waving a scrap of paper in a plastic bag.

Carl read the scrap containing just the words:
Sorry, Dad.
“Strange,” said Assad.

Carl nodded. The message was so short and direct that it was moving in its own way. But why didn’t the note read
Sorry, Mom
? In contrast to her late ex-husband, she at least had the chance of getting the message.

Carl looked at Rose. “How old was Bjarke?”

“Thirty-five.”

“So he was eighteen in 1997, at the time his dad became preoccupied with the case.”

“Did you talk with June Habersaat?” interrupted Birkedal.

“Well, it went so-so. She wasn’t exactly cooperative if you ask me,” said Carl.

“Right, well then, I’ll give you the chance to try again.”

“Really, how so?”

“You could be the ones to drive down to her in Aakirkeby and inform her of her son’s death, couldn’t you? That would also give you the opportunity to ask her the questions you’re burning to ask and, in the meantime, it’ll give the rest of us more time to seal the room and prepare the body to be sent to forensics in Copenhagen.”

Carl shook his head. Seal the apartment and send the body to the mortuary? How long would that take precisely?

Ten minutes?