“Park over by the sign on the wall,” said Pirjo, pointing over Wanda’s shoulder and pulling the keys from the ignition before Wanda could react. It seemed like a reflex because she was apparently more concerned just now with one of her feet.
“I twisted my foot when we fell, so I don’t think I can go out there with you,” she continued, pointing toward a stone-covered path that disappeared off in the flat landscape. “You aren’t allowed to drive motorized vehicles in Alvaret, but you just need to follow the path a kilometer or two before you’ll find Atu, if he’s there, which he probably is. There are so many legends about this area, and Atu collects energy out here as he melts together with the weatherworn landscape. It tends to be beautiful and colorful, but at this time of year you won’t find so many orchids, even though that’s what defines the area. Really fascinating, isn’t it?”
Pirjo turned toward the scooter, but evidently thought of something and turned around again.
“In order to catch the train back to Copenhagen you need to be back here in an hour and a half. The walk out to where Atu will be doesn’t take more than a good fifteen minutes, so you’ll be fine for time.”
Pirjo sounded totally trustworthy now. Maybe she was adjusting herself to the new state of things. In that case, Wanda would also be able to show magnanimity. After all, she understood the woman and her situation perfectly. Everything would sort itself out when she became Atu’s chosen one. Even the situation with Pirjo.
Wanda felt a rush in her stomach. Fifteen minutes, the woman had said, and then she would meet him.
* * *
For Wanda, who had lived for most of her life in an exotic and lush climate with both rain forests and savannah, this barren landscape was the most colorless she’d ever witnessed. In the outermost part of the moor, there was admittedly a hint of green, but after a while both the grass and cobbles disappeared from the path, replaced by an indefinable whitish layer reminiscent of salt or chalk. Along the side of the path, the colors of the dead plains in arid tones changed from withered green to brown and white, and neither birds nor insects were to be seen. It was a lonely place, which reminded her of the time she stood, day in and day out, as a door guard. There wasn’t any human contact here either.
She smiled. It was at least different here, not the marble-covered back entrance of 80 Strand, but earth and sky and life-giving air.
She thought that if Atu could find peace out here, then she could, too. But she also wondered if she would find him and puzzled over where someone could hide in this flat nothingness.
She scanned back and forth and considered her options. A few hundred meters farther ahead low bushes and reedlike grasses swayed in the wind. A ways to the side, rainwater lakes had accumulated between scattered areas of grass on the stone-hard ground, and if you looked closer, it looked as if footprints led over there.
Wanda wasn’t sure; she wasn’t exactly a specialist. As far as she knew, the prints could just as well be from animals as from humans, and they could be from yesterday or from months ago for that matter. Nevertheless, she went in that direction.
“Atu, are you out here?” she shouted a few times in the direction of the vegetation without any answer.
A misgiving about what was going on came rushing to her again.
Shit! So the stupid bitch had won the first hand anyway. The woman had lured her out here and no doubt left by now.
“I shouldn’t have let her take the keys to the scooter,” she whispered. “That was stupid, Wanda.”
She shook her head at herself, turned around, and went a few hundred meters, cursing her naivete.
Then she heard a sound like distant thunder rolling over the landscape.
Wanda looked up. The sky was a bit grey but the drifting clouds didn’t appear threatening or heavy with rain. Was the sound coming up from the highway? It would be strange if you could hear it all the way up here.
She shook her head and shouted Atu’s name again a few times, now sure that she’d been tricked and that the road back to some random person who could help her to Kalmar and the hotel would be tiring and long.
“But just you wait, Pirjo! Tomorrow, I’ll take a taxi to the Nature Absorption Academy, and then we’ll see what your next move will be,” she mumbled. “No matter what you do, it’ll only end up hurting yourself.”
Even though she was now behind in the game, the game was still hers, she reasoned to herself, when suddenly the indefinable noise sounded much closer.
Wanda squinted her eyes and stood on tiptoe. Now she heard what it was.
A ticking noise from a scooter coming toward her.
Wanda wondered if Pirjo had had second thoughts and ignored the ban on motor vehicles in order to drive out and meet her. No doubt arriving with some story that she’d had contact with Atu and that he wasn’t in a position to meet Wanda where he was. Yes, that’s what she’d be up to. But this time she wouldn’t pull the wool over her eyes.
Wanda decided that she’d just come straight out and tell her that she didn’t believe her. When you did that, the person’s face tended to give away the truth.
She stopped, standing completely still, watching the yellow blob moving ever closer to her, getting bigger and bigger, stirring up dust in its wake. Now she could see Pirjo sitting up on the scooter with both hands on the handlebars. There couldn’t be any doubt that she’d already seen Wanda out in the open and would soon pick her up.
Wanda waved to her but Pirjo didn’t wave back.
Poor woman, thought Wanda, feeling a momentary twinge of compassion for her as she realized Pirjo just didn’t know what to do to get rid of her.
It was only when there were twenty meters between them and she could clearly see Pirjo’s face that Wanda realized she was mistaken. Pirjo knew exactly what to do.
Wanda’s pulse raced as the thought ran through her head that the woman was crazy and wanted to kill her.
And then she ran.
The ground underneath her quickly became swampy. Wanda wondered if she should keep going in this wet earth and hope Pirjo became stuck. She could only hope that the surface would stop the scooter, but nothing indicated that. Just now the sound from the scooter was so loud that she could only be a few meters behind her.
With a jerk she jumped to the side, landing in the split second where the heat from the scooter hit her, and the would-be yellow death trap roared past. Pirjo’s expression was one of frustration, but also cold and hard. Nothing would get in her way. That was clear enough.
Then she thrust her feet hard in the ground and spun the scooter round on itself, throwing up mud and earth from the rear wheel.
Pirjo thought she could catch her without any effort but she was about to realize that this was the fastest woman she had ever met in her life, thought Wanda as she stepped out of her shoes and accelerated in her bare feet.
But the speed wasn’t enough.
Wanda’s specialty on the ash track of the national stadium had been the four hundred and eight hundred meters, and at those distances she felt she was totally in symbiosis with the ground, her breathing, and the flailing arms of her competitors. In front of her here, the ground was uneven, unpredictable, and full of pebbles that made her forward leaps painful and so uncertain that she was in danger of twisting her ankle at any moment.
Wanda knew that she couldn’t keep this up for long, her pulse racing faster and faster as she decided that if Pirjo saw this as a hunt to the death, then she’d just have to turn the tables so she was the matador and Pirjo the bull.
She sensed the scooter right behind her again. The screeching of a motor in low gear enveloped her, signaling danger, but she wasn’t afraid.
Wanda thought about how she would jump to the side just like before and then, when Pirjo passed, swing her arm out toward her head and knock her off. But she knew she had to be careful that the scooter didn’t
hit her, especially as the ground was becoming softer underfoot.
It was only in the second before the scooter reached her that she turned her head.
Realizing it was now or never, she jumped to the side for the second time and stopped.
As she lifted her arm to take a swipe, she saw Pirjo’s crazy expression and a small, compact spade in her hand being swung right at her face.
That was the last she saw.
16
Friday, May 2nd, 2014
“Let’s check the tree on Skørrebrovejen, Assad, it should be here near the highway.” He pointed at a cross on the map. It wasn’t far from Aakirkeby.
“Okay, but shouldn’t we take the backside, so we can follow the same route as the guy who drove into her?”
“The back road, Assad, not backside. Yeah, but can you work out the route?” He looked down at the map and watched as Assad’s finger moved over it as he described the way. It looked right enough.
“First, we drive out of Vesterbro in Aakirkeby. Then we take Rønnevej, then right at Vestermarievej. From there he could have driven down Kærgårdsvej, but I don’t think he did do that. I think he drove right down to Skørrebrovejen and then right along it at full speed, because it was down there at the end where the old couple lived who heard the car.”
“Yes, but strictly speaking he could’ve come from the north and then turned down onto Skørrebrovejen, Assad, but that’s irrelevant if he came from Vestermarievej, like you said.”
“He almost can’t have driven any other way.”
Carl nodded.
When they turned up the road from the south, Carl stepped on it. Looking toward the first bend at the farm, where the old couple lived, there was a good six hundred meters, and farther up to the tree along the fields another one and a half kilometers. It was a godforsaken place that made you want to hit the gas.
The tires screeched as they plowed round the bend. There couldn’t be any doubt that a noise like that could be heard in the house where the old couple had lived.
“This spot right here is as flat as a pancake, Carl. So if Alberte was waiting with her bike up there at the end of the road, she would’ve been able to see the car very clearly for the last five to six hundred meters.”
“Yes, and what does that tell you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that she’d been waiting for that car and maybe she also recognized it, and that the last thing she would’ve expected was that it would drive directly into her.”
Carl looked at him. Not far off what he thought.
“Do you mind slowing down a bit?” said Assad with an apprehensive eye on the speedometer. Carl nodded, but increased speed to a hundred kilometers an hour. If it was going to have an impact, there needed to be some force behind it.
Just before they reached the cluster of trees farther up, the car swerved. He heard Assad shout something or other in Arabic but Carl had enough to think about. The entire car shook as it grazed the edge of the ditch and swerved from side to side over the verge. He slammed on the brakes. Thirty meters, and the car came to a halt leaving a trail of skid marks as black as coal in its wake.
“I almost swallowed my tongue there, Carl. You better not do that again.”
Carl bit his top lip. There were only two options left.
“There were no visible skid marks after the accident, were there?”
“There was nothing even resembling them found anywhere.”
“Then the vehicle couldn’t have driven as fast on the bend as I did, could it?”
“Thank God for the person driving,” replied his passenger.
“Then it must’ve been murder, right?”
“Looks like it.”
“Yes, because the car only sped up after the bend, it’s the only possibility. And as Alberte stood on this side of the trees—otherwise she would have been thrown in the other direction, away from the tree—the driver can’t claim not to have seen her. He certainly had enough time.”
“It could’ve been an idiot who wasn’t watching the road, Carl, couldn’t it?”
“Then Alberte would just have moved into the curb and nothing would have happened. No, she didn’t harbor any misgivings about the person approaching her. Something or other led her to think about anything other than danger.”
A rasping sound came from Assad’s stubble.
“Are you thinking that he didn’t drive so fast?”
“Fast, yes. But only in relation to the circumstances and the characteristics of the road. Maybe somewhere between seventy and eighty kilometers an hour, I reckon.”
They both looked up at the trees. It was as if Alberte was hanging up there, nodding down at them.
Carl looked away. Why was he trying to keep his guard up in this case? Why fight it?
He observed Assad’s strange eyes. They seemed sad, and yet his face shone with determination. All three of them from Department Q were in agreement. This case had to be solved.
“Yes, that’s it,” Carl said quietly. “We’re going to have to get that bastard.”
They stepped out of the car and could see why the girl hadn’t initially been seen hanging up there during the investigation, despite the fact that the leaves of the three trees, the tops of which supported each other, would already have fallen at the time.
“What’s that greenery covering the top, Carl?”
“Some sort of parasitic plant, I think. Ivy perhaps.”
Assad nodded, impressed at the comment. Botany definitely wasn’t one of his strong points.
“It almost looks as if the trees have already got leaves on them, Carl.”
They walked around the cluster of trees, looking up. From each of the roots, several strong trunks sprung up, dividing further into numerous forked branches. Plenty of opportunity for Alberte’s body to be wedged there.
“She hung up there in one of the lower forks, approximately four meters up. She must’ve rotated in the air, seeing as she came to hang with her head facing down, wouldn’t you agree, Assad?”
He nodded and tried to put himself in the situation.
“Habersaat was driving from the direction of the main road when he found her,” he said. “So he was coming from the wrong side, where it was most difficult to see her through all the ivy or whatnot. It was lucky that he saw her at all.”
“Lucky? Well, maybe. Just not for him.”
Assad waved Carl over to him. On the other side of the trees, a dirt track in the field led down to a farm a few hundred meters away. On the opposite side, close to the highway in the direction of the main road, there was a yellow building, the main part of yet another farm. Other than that, there was no sign of civilization nearby.
“It was in there they found the bike, Carl,” he said, pointing across the track toward a tight green carpet of undergrowth below yet another group of trees. Strange that the bike had been flung so far.
“Are we thinking the same thing, Assad?”
“I don’t know but I’m certainly thinking that it must’ve been a strange car that could throw her up in that way.”
“And the bike?”
“I think she’d left it supported on its pop stand and went to meet the car. That the vehicle hit the bike just after it hit the girl, and that it was thrown up in the air just like her, but only more askew.”
“Prop stand, Assad, not pop stand. And yes, I think so, too.”
They stood for a moment, each trying to imagine the scene. The vehicle that had come thundering past the farm a kilometer and a half from here. How the driver had become more and more determined that this was just something they needed to get out of the way. And then the bend farther up and the decrease in speed.
“I think the driver and Alberte make eye contact at the bend,” said Carl. “She’s put the bike on the prop stand behind her and steps forward. Maybe she
waves. She’s happy and smiling, a smile she takes with her to the death. I don’t think she’s scared because she’s happy and expectant. Then, only at the last minute, the vehicle speeds up and rams her, causing her to be hurled from the road and up into the branches. The driver straightens up the vehicle immediately, but clips the bike anyway a bit farther up the road, maybe with the side of the vehicle. That’s why the bike ends up a good bit over to the right.”
Carl looked again up at the road from the direction the vehicle had come in. “It’s very possible that the driver’s foot hasn’t been on the brake at all most of the way, only easing up on the gas after the event. Cruising past the yellow farm on his left at a more normal speed before finally sliding up toward the transverse Almindingensvej and away. Do you agree, Assad?”
“Damn bastard,” he mumbled. So he did agree, then. “What sort of car could hurl her all the way up there when going so slowly?” he continued, looking up.
“I don’t know, Assad. A snowplow could manage, but it wasn’t winter yet, and even if such a big boy had driven past, she would’ve moved out of the way of it. But the vehicle that hit her was definitely specially adapted, you’re right about that.”
“Then why didn’t they find it? They looked all over the island. And even though they only had video surveillance for ferry departures on the first two days after the incident, a vehicle like that would’ve been noticed driving on deck, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, unless what shoveled Alberte up in the tree was something that could be removed and got rid of, Assad.”
“Yes, but what? Are you also thinking about the VW Kombi?”
“Of course I am.”
“There must have been something on the front, resting on that weird fender, because it couldn’t have been up to it on its own.”
“No, it probably couldn’t; we’ll have to ask the technicians.”
Carl looked up again at the treetops, imagining the outline of that young dead girl. He momentarily felt melancholy but also a sense of reverence, as if standing on holy ground. Had he been Catholic, he’d probably have crossed himself, but he was far from being that, which in its own way felt both empty and sad.
The Hanging Girl Page 14