The Hanging Girl

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Pirjo was unsure what to do about Wanda’s questions. They’d passed a couple of signs pointing toward Alvaret and Wanda asked again and again why they weren’t turning.

  “Not yet,” she shouted back. “Atu sometimes prefers the areas a little farther south. There are more ancient monuments to excavate there.”

  “So that’s what you use the spade for,” she shouted back.

  Pirjo nodded and looked ahead. Perhaps Gettlinge was the answer. The cliff was definitely steep there. And even though she couldn’t drive right up to it and push Wanda down into the deep directly from the seat of the scooter, it was the best place to do it given the options.

  Pirjo felt the excitement intensify, but she wasn’t really nervous. If it had been the first time she’d had to do away with a rival it would probably have been different, but it wasn’t.

  “We’ll stop at Gettlinge because that’s one of Atu’s favorite places. It’s not dead certain that he’s here today but at least you’ll have seen it.”

  Wanda smiled when she stood down and made some flattering comments about how thoughtful Pirjo was and that it looked wonderful.

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t see him anywhere. What a shame,” Pirjo said, gazing out around the landscape. “But look around before we drive on. This is a very special place,” she continued, spreading her arms out over a strange and protected landscape of stone that formed the outline of a ship.

  “Impressive,” Wanda said, nodding. “Like a sort of Stonehenge, but much smaller, right? And there’s one of those old mills, too. Is this a place where Vikings are buried?” she asked.

  Pirjo nodded and looked about. The landscape was barren and flat and, more importantly, deserted. The bleak moorland of Stora Alvaret was behind her on the other side of the highway, and was just as desolate.

  Over on this side and behind the graveyard was the cliff. There were more trees and bushes on the slope than she remembered, but that could be advantageous. She wouldn’t need to move the body straightaway since it would be lost in the wilderness. And if the body was found at some point, who would connect the find with a woman called Wanda Phinn? Not to mention connect the discovery to Pirjo.

  She came to the conviction that all in all it was the perfect place, while she checked that there were no cars driving on the highway between the moorland and the graveyard.

  “Come over here a minute, Wanda,” she shouted, trying to control her voice so it didn’t sound false. “You can see how the island was formed from here, and why the inhabitants disappeared.”

  She pointed out over the cultivated fields far below them in the lowlands, and farther westward toward the settlements along the shores of the Kalmar Strait on both sides of the glistening waves.

  “Over there on the other side of the sound you can see Kalmar, where you’ve just come from,” she babbled. “The farmers lived up here in the highlands for a few decades in the last century, dividing and portioning off their land endlessly, like I told you before.”

  She pulled Wanda forward toward the edge and turned her around, her pulse racing. “Look at the landscape on the other side of the highway. That’s Stora Alvaret, where Atu might be just now. It was fertile pasture less than a hundred years ago, but the peasants were too brutal in their use of it and the cows grazed it all away.”

  She grabbed Wanda’s arm.

  “Is it understandable that a people couldn’t find a way to help one another to feed themselves in such a fertile place?”

  Wanda shook her head. She appeared to be totally calm and relaxed, so it had to be now while the highway was still deserted.

  “In my opinion, you could rightly call Öland the island of egotism, considering a significant number of the inhabitants had to leave in the end to avoid dying of hunger, all because they couldn’t work together,” she ended, pulling Wanda’s arm vigorously while knocking her hip at full force toward her lower back.

  The result was initially just as planned. Wanda’s upper body dipped backward while she flailed about with her free arm. Then she took a step backward without being able to find her footing, the idea being that she would fall the second after. Fall and fall and tumble among the vegetation, stumps, and large rocks. A bad fall that could easily mean death. And if it didn’t result in that, there was always the spade to finish things off with.

  And Wanda did fall, but against all calculations not alone. In the exact second when she lost her balance she instinctively grabbed Pirjo’s waist with her free arm.

  The result was unavoidable. They both fell down the slope, intertwined like a ball. Suddenly there were two pairs of legs hitting the tree trunks.

  As the limbs of two bodies take up more space than those of just one, the fall was stopped before the cliff slope became really steep, leaving them suddenly lying entangled together on the slope among twigs and rotting leaves, staring into each other’s wide-open eyes.

  “Are you trying to kill me!” hissed Wanda Phinn, throwing an arm up, securing her hand in between low-hanging branches and exposed roots.

  Pirjo was in shock. Not only from being knocked about after the failed murder attempt, but over the whole situation. Wanda must be aware now that something really wasn’t as it should be and so would be on guard.

  How would she be able to stop her from seeing Atu? How to prevent the woman from voicing her misgivings to the one person who really mustn’t know anything about this?

  “I have epilepsy,” improvised Pirjo, falteringly and with her face turned to the ground, while she tried to induce shaking all over her body. “I’m terribly sorry. It was a small attack. I normally feel them coming in advance, but not this time. I’m so terribly sorry, Wanda. It could have ended so badly.”

  She tried to bring forth tears but couldn’t. Instead, she managed to force a bit of spit, letting it drool out of the side of her mouth.

  “Come on,” said Wanda without any sign of compassion.

  She hauled them both up to their feet, while Pirjo thought so hard it hurt.

  At the far end of the square, there was a shed with old-fashioned toilets. A seat and a hole in the ground, just like their ancestors had done. Pirjo had been there several times before and could recite by heart the rhyme that some idiot had written on the wall in faltering handwriting.

  If you’ve sat there coiling one

  leave some paper when you’re done

  other people after you

  need to wipe their asses too

  More than once she’d thought that the worst fate for someone must be to be blocked down a toilet hole to end your days choking on other people’s excrement.

  Was that a possibility? Could she get Wanda over there and knock her out?

  Pirjo felt only too clearly that her thoughts were going in circles. The situation had become crazy and her defenses were falling.

  She just wasn’t herself right now.

  All Pirjo could think was that Wanda was going to steal her position and give birth to Atu’s children, making her nothing more than a simple housekeeper.

  It was enough to drive her crazy. Why hadn’t she been able to prevent this? Why hadn’t she just discredited the girl to Atu? Why had she even answered her e-mails? Why, why?

  “If you aren’t feeling too good I’d better drive the rest of the way,” came Wanda’s voice from behind her.

  Pirjo turned to face the woman who was standing there in her tattered clothes and with her hand outstretched toward her.

  “The keys, thank you!” she said with a look that couldn’t be misunderstood. She was really on guard and knew that she had good reason to be.

  “Which way are we going?” she asked, putting the scooter in gear.

  Pirjo pointed. “Back on the highway up toward Resmo, then to the right and in to Alvaret. It’s about a ten-minute drive to get there.”

  It would have to happen
on the moor. She didn’t know how, but it would have to be there.

  14

  Friday, May 2nd, 2014

  The night in a double bed with Assad was a somewhat motley affair.

  How a relatively small person could produce such a varied range of noises was a mystery to Carl. He’d certainly never before heard anything of a similar human origin vary between subsonic snoring and squeaky whistling sounds reminiscent of an overworked church organ. And just as never-ending as Assad’s one-man orchestra was, it was equally impossible to bring him back to the surface again. In short, Assad not only slept like a log; he slept like a tree. Actually, more like an agitated rookery, thought Carl as he lay discouraged between three and five in the morning.

  When the snoring finally subsided, Carl heaved a sigh of relief in the few seconds before these inarticulate sounds were replaced by an equally incomprehensible mumble from Assad’s gaping mouth.

  The sounds were definitely words, which Carl in his daze interpreted as gibberish or just Arabic, until a few seemingly random Danish words appeared among the gibberish, causing Carl to lie wide awake once again.

  Had Assad said “kill”? And had he said “I don’t forget,” as he’d begun to writhe about? The words were unclear but it was obvious that Assad wasn’t okay inside. Just as obvious as Carl not being able to get any shut-eye after that.

  As a result, he was dead tired and no matter how much he might want to, he was in no fit state to return Assad’s beaming smile when he finally opened his eyes.

  “I’ll say this for you, Assad, you can certainly talk while you’re sleeping,” he managed to say before a woman’s voice down on the street began to yell.

  Carl jumped out of bed. She must have been standing right in the hotel entrance because he certainly couldn’t see her.

  “Was I talking?” came the question from behind in a very, very subdued voice. “What was I saying, then?”

  Carl turned around to face Assad, intending to direct a disarming smile at him, but the guy was sitting with a deadly serious expression, pale, with his back crouched up against the headboard, resembling a soldier who’d stabbed his comrade.

  “Nothing special, Assad. It was almost unintelligible. But you spoke Danish and didn’t sound happy. Did you have a nightmare?”

  Assad wrinkled his heavy eyebrows and was about to answer when the woman on the street shouted up again.

  “I know you’re in there, John,” she yelled. “You’ve been seen. Do you hear me? You’ve been seen together with her.”

  Carl hurried over to the window, from where he could see an attractive middle-aged woman snarling on the steps of the hotel like a fighting dog that had caught the scent of blood. Her eyes were wild and her fists clenched.

  Damn it. So Rose had caught John Birkedal in her net after all.

  Poor, poor man.

  * * *

  “I suggest we split up today,” Carl said at the breakfast table, struggling to keep his eyes open. When the other two were off on their way, he’d creep back to the room and try to claw back some of the sleep the night had robbed him of.

  “I was thinking the same,” said Rose, already in full black regalia as the evil queen in Snow White. Not a word on the morning’s clash and no apology for what it had caused. The incident between man and wife in front of the hotel was apparently already ancient history in Rose’s eyes. She seemed both satisfied and recharged. God only knew how Birkedal must be feeling.

  “I’ll head over to Habersaat’s house and get the packing started,” she continued. “I struck a deal with a local removal company yesterday and they’re coming to pick me up here in twenty minutes.”

  Carl nodded approvingly. That was her taken care of.

  “And I’ve found out that June Habersaat’s sister lives in a nursing home not far from here, no doubt a job for you, Assad?” she added. “Seeing as you made sure that June probably won’t tell us anything about what her husband might have told her about his inquiries, it seems fitting that you’re the one who should pump her for information. June might have complained to her.”

  Assad took the blame on the chin. Rose was Rose after all, and just now he was more concerned with pouring sugar in his coffee without it overflowing.

  She turned toward Carl, cold and indifferent to his chalky-white complexion and suppressed protest that she was now taking control. “I’ve also arranged a tour of Bornholm Folk High School for you at nine thirty, Carl. Afterward, it’s been arranged for you to visit the former rector couple who ran the school, if you want to, which I’ll assume you do. They don’t live far from there.”

  How in the world had she managed to do all that on top of everything else?

  Carl took a deep breath and looked at his watch. It was five past nine. That would give him just under ten minutes to try to summon up an appetite, eat something, drink his coffee, shave, and catch the nap that he so desperately needed.

  “I think you’ll have to ring the folk high school again and postpone, Rose. I’ve got a few things I need to sort out first.”

  She smiled, so she’d obviously been expecting that answer. “That’s okay, but then it’ll have to wait until the day after tomorrow because the school is closed tomorrow for a trip. But if you really want to sleep here at the hotel for another few days, that’s fine by me. It’s not as if there’s anyone else waiting for us.”

  Carl nodded, realizing the pointlessness of suggesting a later time in the day to the battle-axe who currently represented the executioner at Nuremberg, the nail in his coffin, and the stone in his shoe.

  “And when you two are done, I think you should meet me in Listed to give a hand. You’ll probably be finished first, Assad, but you can take a taxi. What do you say?”

  “I say that I’ve never tasted such great coffee before,” he replied, swinging his cup in front of them as Carl accepted defeat.

  “I think it might be easier if you and I go together, Assad,” he said. “June Habersaat’s sister can wait until later today.”

  Carl’s cell phone rang. He looked at the display with equal measures of resentment and awe.

  “Yes, Mom. What’s up?”

  She particularly hated that expression. It sometimes had the advantage of paralyzing her completely so the conversation was over before it began. Unfortunately, it apparently didn’t annoy her one bit today. She cut straight to the chase.

  “We’ve heard from Sammy in Thailand now. He reversed the charges, but that’s fine because it was quite rough what he had to say, if you ask me. He’s gone out there now to sort everything out, and do you know what?”

  Carl threw back his head. The memory of both Sammy and why he was bumbling around in that quintessential exotic playground of the Danes had luckily been hidden somewhere deep in Carl’s brain, somewhere he didn’t often visit.

  “Sammy is so angry, and I can understand why, because Ronny’s already sent his will to someone else. It’s almost as if he couldn’t trust his own brother, isn’t it?”

  Ronny’s will. Hopefully, Ronny had limited himself solely to sharing his usurped goods, but Carl wasn’t certain. Why did he get such a bad taste in his mouth whenever Ronny’s affairs were brought up?

  “If Sammy was my brother, I’d have myself adopted,” he replied.

  “Goodness, Carl, you rascal. You’re always coming out with such funny stuff. Your dad and I would never let you do that.”

  * * *

  The folk high school was located in exactly the kind of place you’d expect, surrounded by fields and forests, directly up to the spectacular Ekkodalen valley, probably the biggest attraction on Bornholm, and on which masses of schoolchildren from all over Denmark descended as part of their compulsory school camp. Carl had often heard about it but never seen it before because where he came from you didn’t go to Bornholm but to Copenhagen, where the highlight was a ride on the roller coa
ster in Tivoli Gardens and subsequent throwing up.

  A flagpole with a pennant gently dancing in the sun, and a massive engraved boulder, greeted them in true style with the words Folk High School, behind which there was a series of red and white buildings from all periods, spread out in the landscape, framed by bushes and windbreaks, homemade totem poles, and a coffee pavilion in miniature.

  A presentable red-haired woman was waiting in front of the entrance to the administration building, whose presence immediately prompted Assad to straighten up the few centimeters that were possible.

  “Welcome,” she said, starting out by saying that she wasn’t employed at the school when Alberte was there but that their groundskeeper had been. “We’ve got publications from that year, and our former female rector has also written a diary throughout the extensive period when she and the rector were at the helm here. I don’t really think she’ll have made many comments on the Alberte case, though.”

  Assad nodded like one of those bobbing-head dogs kept by some strange people in the backs of their cars. “We’d really like to talk to the groundskeeper,” he said with half-closed eyes and an almost certainly flirtatious look. “But maybe you could show us around so we know a bit more about what Alberte’s life was like here.”

  Carl couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing there, thinking that Assad would do fine on his own, and noticing how keen he was. Maybe he could sneak onboard the ferry later this afternoon and leave the rest to them. Another night with Assad’s outbursts would kill him.

  “Some of the buildings are later additions, including the two facing the road, where we house the glass workshop, for example,” she continued. “But you can see where Alberte ate, painted, and slept at night.”

  * * *

  It turned out to be an extensive tour, and Assad was thrilled. “What did they eat for breakfast? Was there a morning assembly? When did they sit in the lounge with the fireplace?”

  It was only when the groundskeeper, Jørgen, a well-preserved man with slightly greying temples and a lean workman’s figure, turned up that the tour really had any substance. The man appeared to have a good memory, so Carl became more interested. He’d been employed here since 1992 but the events surrounding Alberte’s disappearance and the questions about how she’d come to end her days had naturally caused the year 1997 and the young girl Alberte to be imprinted more in his memory than so much else.