The Hanging Girl

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  The splint was examined by a local team of technicians. The material is apparently birch. And the remnants of glue suggest that it’s a splint originating from plywood.

  As no similar fragments have been found in the collision area, the technicians conclude that the splint doesn’t stem from the collision.

  However, the undersigned believes this to be incorrect, and reports it to the leader of the investigation, Detective Jonas Ravnå, requesting a closer analysis by the police technical department in Copenhagen. Following the summons of all the vehicles on the island, no material has been found to date that can be connected to this find, and the request is denied.

  During a subsequent interview with me on local TV, looking for any finds of plywood with defects, twenty mostly local people report back with finds of wooden building boards. All the finds are of pine.

  Hereafter, no leads.

  Christian Habersaat, Listed.

  Carl nodded. Eighty percent sweat, two hundred and fifty percent dead ends. That’s what it meant to be an investigator.

  “But look at this, Carl,” said Rose, taking down a third piece of paper.

  It was another of Habersaat’s homemade journals.

  Wednesday, August 2nd, 2000.

  Find of wooden board wedged in the rocks at Hammerknuden.

  Ten year old boy, Peter Svendsen, of Hasle, pulls free a wedged board while playing at Camel Head Cliffs.

  The board is heavy and he leaves it on land. His father, local community officer Gorm Svendsen—who worked with the undersigned on the find of a washed up body from the wreck of the boat Havskummet—contacts the undersigned. Gorm Svendsen recollects an interview with me on local TV, where I was looking for a plywood board that the splint might originate from.

  The board fragment discovered at the cliffs is part of a larger board, but had probably been a meter in height and two meters in width. It is extremely battered but evidently originally watertight, as several of the layers of glue remain intact.

  A couple of bore holes are visible on the board, and faint shadows on one side. Undoubtedly remnants of print or similar.

  I request a thorough analysis of the wood type and am given authorization after some back and forth with the department superiors.

  The material is also birch, but a closer analysis is unable to determine with certainty if the splint originates from the same board.

  My theory, due to the plywood being glued together in several layers, is that the splint originates from one of the outer layers, which over the course of time has peeled away from the board due to its time in the water.

  I estimate, with the technicians, that it was probably a board between 20 and 24mm thick, from which the middle 18mm remain intact.

  I request a comparative analysis of the glue from the splint and the plywood, as this had been neglected previously, but authorization is not granted.

  It is finally my absolute theory that this board is involved in the collision, while at the same time recognizing that flotsam and jetsam are of such common occurrence here on the island that I must resign myself to the fact that the finding of the same wood types can be put down to coincidence.

  Christian Habersaat

  And added underneath in red ballpoint:

  Plywood board, found 8/2/2000, has gone missing.

  Possibly destroyed.

  “What did he say the cliffs were called?” asked Assad.

  “Camel Head Cliffs.”

  He nodded enthusiastically. It didn’t take much.

  Carl turned to Rose. “I’m not sure, but I feel as if it’s almost impossible to get anywhere here. If the splint has been so thoroughly analyzed, and the board is missing, what do you think that the technicians should work on, Rose?”

  “Finding something to make it plausible that the splint might originate from that board, Carl.”

  “Do we have something as simple as a photo of it?”

  “I’ll check,” shouted Assad, disappearing out in the corridor.

  “But if they can’t find the connection you want, what’ll you talk to the technicians about, Carl?”

  He sat for a moment, staring at the splint. “Habersaat hints at a suspicion that the board was used in the collision. So that’s the starting point. Do you know if a diagram has ever been drawn of the presumed trajectory of the body following the collision and up into the canopy? And of the bike for that matter?”

  She shrugged. “There’s a few hours’ work before we’ll have been through everything out there, Carl. But I hope I find a drawing like that. What are you thinking about?”

  “The same as you and Habersaat. That this board had been attached to the front of the VW Kombi. That’s why I need to see a photo of that board and the position of the boreholes. To see if it seems logical that the board could’ve been attached to that special fender.”

  He passed Assad in front of the shelves with a nod. If that photo was to be found among this colossal chaos, then Assad was the right person for the job.

  * * *

  In the cafeteria on the fourth floor, he found an astonishingly pale and scrawny version of the portly figure that Tomas Laursen had been only a few weeks ago.

  “Are you sick, mate?” he asked, concerned.

  Laursen, formerly the best technician in the force and now manager of the cafeteria at Police Headquarters, shook his head. “The wife’s on the five:two diet, and she’s forced me on it, too.”

  “Five:two diet, what’s that?”

  “Well, it’s actually five days of not much food and two days of fasting, but I feel more like it’s the opposite, five days fasting and two days with little food. It’s damn well not easy for a man with a waist like Santa Claus to keep up with this.”

  “What about this up here?” Carl pointed to a couple of tempting lunch plates in the glass counter. “You can’t eat your own creations?”

  “Are you crazy? She has me on the scales every time I come home.”

  Carl slapped his friend on the shoulder. Sorry fate.

  “Can you get some of your old pals at the lab in Rødovre to pull some old analyses out of the drawer and have another look at them? If they have photos of the material, it would be great. Things always go more smoothly when you’re involved.”

  Laursen nodded. The former technician in him had never totally disappeared.

  “And if such a photo is still to be found, you might try and ask them to consider what the markings on the one side of the board might have been? And then I’d also like to know if there’s been any sort of idea about how long that board had been in the water.”

  Laursen looked quizzically at Carl. “I can’t see why the result wouldn’t still be there. Murder cases are never shelved in Denmark, are they?”

  “No, but that’s exactly the problem, Tomas. This case has never been treated as a murder.”

  20

  “Did you find a photo of the board, Assad?” asked Carl on the way over to the garages.

  “No.” He shook his head. Too many shelves. Too many papers.

  “Did you arrange with the junk artist that we could drive out there?”

  “Yes, he’ll be at his studio in an hour and a half.” He looked at his watch. “So we’ve got time to stop at Alberte’s parents’ first. They live on Dyssebakken, out in Hellerup.”

  Carl frowned. “Right. How did they react when you told them the case was reopened?”

  “The mom cried.”

  Just as he’d expected, so this was going to be a cheerful visit.

  After five minutes they turned down a road of villas, where Assad pointed to a well-kept red-painted bungalow. Everything needed to create a good and desirable framework for a healthy Danish family life was there: a wooden garden gate, weeping birch tree, and privet hedges in the front garden, a moss-grown path you could play hopscotch on
, and, in the middle of the garden, a flagpole flying the Danish flag.

  At least there was someone who remembered Denmark’s Liberation Day in 1945. He hadn’t seen so many flags out in Allerød that morning. But would he have remembered it, if he’d had a flagpole, that is?

  “Come inside,” said the woman, her eyes lifeless.

  “My husband’s a bit reluctant, so you’ll be talking with me,” she said a moment later.

  They greeted a plump man with trousers pulled up halfway around his stomach. It obviously wasn’t him Alberte took after most. When he sat down and turned his head, his kippah slipped to the side a little. Didn’t they secure them with clips?

  Carl looked around. If it hadn’t been for the squint kippah and the seven-armed candlestick, he never would’ve imagined this to be an Orthodox Jewish home. Mostly because he didn’t have a clue what an Orthodox Jewish home tended to look like.

  “Have you found something new in the case?” asked Mrs. Goldschmid in a faint voice.

  They brought her quickly up to speed, from Habersaat’s suicide to the establishment of a situation room in the basement of Police Headquarters.

  “Christian Habersaat brought us more sorrow than joy,” came the resounding voice from the man in the armchair. “Is that what you’re also intending?”

  Carl said no, but that he’d like to try to build on the picture they had so far of Alberte, though he knew that it might be hard for them to talk about her.

  “Know more about Alberte?” Mrs. Goldschmid shook her head, as if she couldn’t contribute anything decisively new, and that was what pained her. “That’s what Habersaat was after, too. First the criminal investigation team from Bornholm and then Habersaat.”

  “He insinuated that our little girl was a whore.” The man took over, his tone hateful rather than angry.

  “That’s not what he said, Eli, to be fair. The man’s dead. He possibly committed suicide for the sake of our little girl.” She stopped and tried to compose herself. The hands in her lap became agitated. The scarf around her neck seemed suddenly to choke.

  The man nodded. “That’s right, he didn’t use those words. But all the same, he implied that she’d been in relationships, and we don’t believe that could be true.”

  Carl looked at Assad. The body hadn’t been subjected to sexual assault, but was she a virgin? He grabbed Assad’s notebook out of his hands and wrote virgin? before passing it back.

  Assad shook his head.

  “It might be the case that she’d had an affair,” suggested Carl. “That wouldn’t exactly be unusual for a girl of nineteen, not even then. We know for certain that she was seeing someone, as they say, which you’ll no doubt have been aware of.”

  “Of course Alberte had suitors. She was a beautiful young girl, as if I didn’t know that.” Now it was the man’s voice that faltered.

  “We are a totally normal Jewish family,” the woman continued, “and Alberte was a good daughter in our faith, so we don’t think anything bad of her. We can’t and we won’t. But Habersaat always went further than that. He maintained that Alberte wasn’t a virgin, but I told him that no one could know that because she had done a lot of gymnastics, and it’s possible that . . . well, that . . .”

  She couldn’t get the word “hymen” past her lips.

  “That’s why we wouldn’t talk with Habersaat anymore. He said so many horrible things, in our opinion,” she continued. “I know it was his job as a policeman to look at things in that way, but it became so vulgar. He also went behind our backs and asked friends and family about Alberte, but he didn’t get anywhere with that.”

  “So there was nothing back then that might have given you cause for concern about Alberte’s behavior during her stay at the folk high school?”

  They looked at each other. They weren’t old, possibly early sixties, but they seemed it. The dust didn’t seem to have been shaken from their habits or ideas in years, and it showed most when they looked at each other. Their look seemed to say that things would never be different, and it didn’t have anything to do with the limitations or restrictions of their Orthodox view of life, but rather the bitterness that follows when your life takes a knock.

  “I can see that this is hard for you, but Assad and I would like nothing more than to bring the person responsible for Alberte’s death to justice. So we can’t rule out any theories, and we can’t allow ourselves to take sides about either your or Habersaat’s understanding of your daughter’s comings and goings. We hope you can understand that.”

  It was only the wife who nodded.

  “Was Alberte your oldest?”

  “We had Alberte, David, and Sara, but now we only have Sara left. Sara is a wonderful girl.” She tried to smile. “She gave us a darling little grandchild on Rosh Hashanah. It couldn’t be better.”

  “Rosh Ha . . . ?”

  “The Jewish new year, Carl,” mumbled Assad.

  The man of the house nodded. “Are you Jewish?” he asked Assad with increased interest.

  Assad smiled. “No. But I try to be a cultivated person.”

  A knowing look of recognition spread across both their faces. A cultivated person, would you look at that.

  “You mentioned David. Was he an older brother?” asked Carl.

  “He was Alberte’s twin. But yes, he was the oldest, but only by seven minutes.” Mrs. Goldschmid tried to smile, but it wasn’t easy for her.

  “And David’s not with us anymore?”

  “No. He couldn’t bear what happened with Alberte. He simply faded away.”

  “Nonsense, Rachel, David died of AIDS,” her husband responded harshly. “Excuse my wife, but it’s still hard for us both to accept what David stood for.”

  “I understand. But he and Alberte were close?”

  Mrs. Goldschmid raised two crossed fingers. “Like peas in a pod, yes.” She turned to her husband. “And he was crushed, Eli. You can’t say otherwise.”

  “Can I ask about something totally different, Mr. and Mrs. Goldschmid?” interrupted Assad.

  They nodded, relieved at the change of topic. You don’t just say no to a cultivated person, and especially not when you consider yourself to be equally so.

  “Didn’t you receive postcards from Alberte? Letters or something? After all, she’d been away from home for over four weeks and maybe for the first time in her life, wasn’t she?”

  Mrs. Goldschmid smiled. “We received a few, yes. With scenes of the local attractions, of course. We still have them. Would you like to see them?” She looked at her husband as if looking for his approval. It didn’t come.

  “She didn’t write much. Just about the school and what they were doing. She was a good singer, and she could also draw. I can show you some of her earlier work?”

  Her husband was about to protest but he regained his composure and stared at the floor instead. Carl sensed that in spite of his brusque manner, he’d moved on more than his wife.

  * * *

  She led them down a small corridor with three doors.

  “Have you kept Alberte’s room intact?” Carl asked cautiously.

  She shook her head. “No, we’ve fitted it out for Sara and Bent, and for the baby, when they visit. They live in Sønderborg, so it’s nice for them to have a bed when they come to town. Alberte’s things are in here.”

  She opened the door to a broom cupboard where a pile of cardboard boxes threatened to collapse.

  “It’s almost all clothes, but in the box on top we’ve got it all, drawings and postcards.”

  She took it down and got on her knees in front of the box. Carl and Assad knelt on the floor beside her.

  “This is what she had hanging on her wall. She wasn’t your average girl, as you can see.”

  She unfolded a few posters of pop stars and celebrities from the time. Very average, actually.
r />   “And here are the drawings.”

  She laid them in a pile on the floor, looking through them so slowly that their knees began to ache. Technically, they were very accomplished, sharp pencil strokes and contours, but as far as the subject matter was concerned, you couldn’t mistake the lack of maturity. Floating young girls with long legs and fairy costumes draped in stardust and hearts. She’d clearly had a period when her romantic side was given free rein.

  “She hasn’t dated them. Were they drawn at the school?”

  “No, they never sent those. I think they might have been part of an exhibition,” she suggested with pride in her voice.

  “And here we’ve got the postcards.” She pushed the drawings to one side and pulled three postcards from a plastic wallet, handing them reverently to Carl.

  Assad read along over his shoulder.

  They were three glossy and well-read postcards with images from the town square in Rønne, Hammershus Castle Fortress, and a summer scene from Snogbæk with a smokehouse, seagulls in flight, and a view over the sea. Alberte had written short and sweet descriptions of what she’d seen on a couple of trips around the island, nothing else, in capitals with a ballpoint pen.

  All ending with: I’m doing fine. Hugs from me.

  Mrs. Goldschmid sighed, her face contorted. “Look, the last one is dated just three days before she died. It’s so awful to think about.”

  They got up, rubbed their knees, and said thank you.

  “What’s behind the other doors, if you don’t mind me asking, Mrs. Goldschmid?” asked Assad, glancing down the corridor. It was uncanny how polite he was suddenly being.

  “Our bedroom and then David’s room.”

  Carl was puzzled. “And David’s room hasn’t been turned into a nursery?”

  She looked tired again. “David moved away from home when he was eighteen, leaving everything such a mess in there. He lived in Vesterbro, not one of the better places, I have to say. When he died in 2004, we got all sorts of things sent out here from his friend. We just put it all in the room.”