The Hanging Girl

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Assad nodded. “That’s right. She wouldn’t talk about him either. You were right about her knowing something.”

  Carl reached for his cell, like a reflex, but instead stuck his finger in a stuffed animal with Mommy is the best written across the tummy.

  He doubted Birkedal’s wife felt like that just now.

  “You need to call June Habersaat, Assad. Pass me the cell when you’ve got hold of her. Something tells me she won’t want to talk to you.”

  After half a minute he shook his head. No cell contact.

  They called her workplace at Joboland and were told that she was currently on sick leave, which you could easily understand given the way one disaster had followed another with the deaths of both her ex-husband and son. But it didn’t matter, the friendly woman concluded, the high season didn’t start for another five weeks yet.

  The next stop was June Habersaat’s house in Jernbanegade in Aakirkeby.

  * * *

  “That’s the second time today someone has asked about her,” said a young guy in overalls and bare chest, in the process of moving things into the house next door.

  “Who?” asked Carl, marveling at his enormous, disheveled beard that couldn’t possibly be practical with that job. He looked more like a teacher from the sixties. He just needed the corduroy jacket, but that probably came when he was finished. Strange fashion at the moment.

  “He was an older guy dressed totally in yellow.” He laughed. “He looked like a bad TV ad for a travel agency. Tanned, dimpled, the whole nine yards.”

  Assad and Carl looked at each other.

  “How long ago was this?”

  He wiped the sweat from his forehead while he was thinking. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes ago, I think.”

  Damn it. Twenty minutes earlier and they would’ve had him.

  “But I don’t suppose you know where June Habersaat’s gone?” asked Assad.

  “I don’t know anything. But she said she was on her way up to collect something that she could place on her son’s grave. Very strange. I think she got the idea from something I carried in.” He looked at Assad’s hand. “You look like you got your hand caught in something. What was it, caught with your fingers in the jar?” He laughed. Hopefully, Assad didn’t get the insult.

  “What was it you carried in that you think gave her the idea?” asked Assad, clenching his healthy right fist. So he did know that figure of speech.

  Carl grabbed his arm so he didn’t give in to the temptation to sock the guy one.

  “Yeah, I don’t really know. It was one of the first things I carried in. Normally, we have quilts and clothes on the top of the load in black plastic bags, but I think it was a collection of magazines in a box. Still, I can’t be sure.”

  Carl pulled Assad over to the car.

  “Where on earth can she find something that was Bjarke’s? Shall we take a guess at their old house in Listed or at that woman’s place in Sandflugtsvej, where he rented a room?”

  Assad nodded. “The landlady’s name was Nelly Rasmussen,” he said. Well remembered.

  Then Assad pulled himself free, turned on his heel, and aimed directly back to the removal man. Were they going to fight now?

  “What did she say exactly?” he shouted already from a distance of ten meters.

  The guy stared at him, uncomprehending, with a removal box on his shoulder.

  “About what?”

  “She was on her way up to collect something. Wasn’t that what she said? Are you completely sure that was it?”

  “Yes, what the heck does it matter if she said it one way or another?”

  “She didn’t say that she had to go up to town, did she?”

  “Then I must have been deaf.”

  Carl came up behind him. “That’s right. It’s important for us to know if she was driving to Listed or Rønne to collect the thing she thought of. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Well, then it was probably Rønne. At least she pointed that way when she said it. Women do that all the time without thinking about it.”

  “You didn’t say that to the guy in the yellow clothes, too, did you?”

  He looked unsure of what to say. So he had, then.

  “Did he look as if he knew where to go?” asked Carl. Bjarke had moved after Frank left the island, so he wouldn’t know that address.

  “Maybe,” he said. “At least he had a page from a local telephone book in his hand. Maybe he found the address there.”

  “We’ve got to rush,” said Carl, beginning to run to the car. Assad beat him to it.

  “Damn it, there’s no GPS,” grumbled Carl, looking at the dashboard. Which way was the quickest?

  “Relax, Carl, I’ll find it on my smartphone.” Assad typed away for a moment. “It’ll take fifteen minutes if we drive south toward Lobbæk and Nylars.”

  Carl put his foot on it. “Call Birkedal—they need to send a car up there.”

  Assad typed, obviously finding it difficult with the pain in his left hand. Then he sat for a minute, nodding, while he listened to the answer.

  “Did you say that they should be discreet up there? I didn’t hear,” said Carl.

  Assad wrinkled his nose. “They aren’t coming, Carl, and you don’t want to hear why. But all their cars were unavailable at the moment. Something to do with ferry and airport surveillance.”

  “What?”

  “He also said that we’d be there before them anyway. The Peugeot can drive pretty quickly, he claimed.”

  “Then he can bloody well take the consequences if anything stops us,” said Carl, ignoring the speedometer quickly exceeding a hundred on a road with a limit of eighty.

  “Take your shirt off, hold it out the window, and let it flutter,” he continued, while pressing down on the horn. “Come on, Assad. We’ve converted this tin can here to an emergency car at full throttle.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, through scattered built-up areas, and dozens of gaping mouths, in the little red lightning bolt with flapping green shirt, Carl and Assad reached the house in Sandflugtsvej. If they’d expected cars in front of the house, they were disappointed. There was apparently nothing here that could justify their hazardous journey.

  “Call the police station and report the emergency driving, Assad, and I’ll go in and see if there’s anyone home. And take a pill or two. I can see how much that finger hurts.”

  Nelly Rasmussen opened the door reluctantly. Wearing a hat, she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw who it was, and a sight for sore eyes she was when the door was finally fully opened. Not even an Italian or Greek mama in mourning could be as decked out in black as she was. A veil on her hat, ready to be pulled down. Tights, shoes, jacket, blouse, skirt, gloves, necklace, eyelids, eyelashes, and hair, everything was pitch-black. Rose would have loved her unconditionally.

  “I thought you were the taxi driver,” she said, pulling a black handkerchief from her black handbag, ready to dab at her totally dry eyes. Truly a theatrical talent.

  “Has June Habersaat been here?”

  She nodded somewhat sullenly.

  “What did she want?”

  “Well might you ask. Do you really think she wanted to tell me? To collect a magazine from Bjarke’s room, I think. She didn’t show me, but that’s what it looked like when she left.”

  “Have you had a visit from a man in yellow clothes?”

  She nodded, this time a little scared.

  “That’s why I didn’t just open. I didn’t want him in again.”

  “When?”

  “Just before you came. Five minutes ago. I thought it was my taxi then, too.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to get hold of Bjarke. He was crazy and pushed his way in. He started shouting: Where’s Bjarke? Is he upstairs? He�
�s bound to be home on a Saturday! It was terribly unpleasant, especially on a day like today.” She dabbed at her eyes one more time.

  She stood for a moment, impatiently shuffling her feet. “Where has that taxi got to? I’ll be late.”

  “For what?”

  She looked totally indignant. “For Bjarke’s funeral, of course.”

  “Right. Is he only being buried now?”

  “Yes, they kept him in Copenhagen. They had to do the . . . postmortem first.” This time she shed a real tear.

  “And the man in yellow, what happened to him? We’re looking for him.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me? He was really unpleasant. When I told him he couldn’t see Bjarke because he was dead and was being buried today, he turned as white as a ghost. His eyes became totally bright, looking completely crazy, and then he said it couldn’t be true. That Bjarke had murdered a girl and that he needed to confess. It was really shocking to hear such an ugly lie about someone you’ve held so dear.”

  Carl looked confused. “Bjarke! Is that what he said?” He rubbed his forehead. There were more than a few things he needed to sort out in his head.

  “Yes, he very well did. And then he mumbled something about Bjarke’s mom having to help him. Then he suddenly looked extremely worried, asking me if she was still alive. I was just about to tell him that she wasn’t, but I didn’t dare.”

  “She’s bound to be at the funeral. Did you say where it was being held?”

  She nodded.

  “Carl,” shouted Assad from the car. “The police now know he spent the night at a bed-and-breakfast in Svaneke. Our woman in Listed, Bolette, called them to say that she’d seen him this morning outside Habersaat’s house. She called you, too.”

  Carl looked at his cell. Of course, the battery had died.

  “Come on,” said Carl to the woman in her mourning attire. “You can direct.” It saved her that taxi fare.

  Assad had to take his shirt off again to signal their emergency status. Nelly Rasmussen gasped. He did have a good deal of hair on his chest for an otherwise relatively short man.

  “What church?” asked Carl, pressing down on the horn.

  Carl repeated what Nelly Rasmussen had said about Atu and Bjarke, while she sat nodding in the back.

  “I think he’s lying,” Assad added dryly.

  Carl nodded. It was a definite possibility. Atu was doing the rounds of the people who’d known him on the island back then, and he was probably very satisfied that Bjarke was now out of the way. They’d seen what he could do with words.

  “Then we need to warn June,” continued Assad.

  Nelly Rasmussen was silent.

  * * *

  There were very few cars parked beside the stone wall in front of Østerlars Round Church, and a few of those were pickup trucks belonging to local builders carrying in extra-large scaffolding.

  “Maybe they’re parked over at Kirkebogård. It can’t be right that there are so few cars. And where’s the hearse?” said Nelly Rasmussen, in shock as they drove into the parking lot and Assad put on his shirt.

  “Why aren’t they ringing the bells?” she continued, looking at her watch. She tapped at it again and again. “Oh God, it’s stopped. We’ve come too late for the funeral.” Now she was really shaken.

  “Look, Carl!” Assad pointed to a blue Volvo. Right enough, it had Swedish license plates.

  They leaped from the car, leaving Nelly Rasmussen to be Nelly Rasmussen.

  She was right. Down at the bottom of the churchyard, the internment was already coming to an end, and roughly a hundred meters in front of them a man in yellow was heading directly down to the group of mourners standing around the graveside. It was Atu. Carl and Assad picked up their speed. If they ran, they risked Atu turning around. They couldn’t risk him fleeing again, but on the other hand they had to protect June Habersaat. Who knew what the man was up to.

  The vicar had already stood aside, carrying the small shovel in his hand, so they’d already thrown the earth on the coffin. Now they watched as June Habersaat went to the edge of the grave and threw something in.

  There was an audible reaction from those who saw what it was.

  Then she put her hand in her bag and took something out.

  At the same moment, they heard Atu, aka Frank, shout June’s name. He sounded desperate. The group by the graveside hesitated in surprise, and then pulled back in one sudden movement.

  Frank had almost reached the grave now. He stretched his arms out to the side and said something to her that they couldn’t hear, while they quickened their pace to approach him.

  Now they saw what it was that June Habersaat had pulled out. It was a pistol of the type of caliber you don’t easily overlook.

  Suddenly, she shot what sounded like four to five times. The echo sounded against the walls as Atu doubled up and collapsed at the side of the grave. It was a clear-cut execution. Premeditated murder.

  Carl and Assad stopped on the spot. It was a long time now since Carl had been armed.

  At the same time, she noticed them. It was clear that the events of the last few seconds had happened too quickly for her, leaving her staring alternately between the lifeless man, the bottom of the grave, the mourners, and the vicar, who was bravely approaching her with calming words.

  “She’ll shoot herself now, just like her husband did,” whispered Assad, as she put the trigger up to her head. But it wasn’t just Assad who’d seen this coming, because the vicar sprang forward swinging his shovel directly toward the pistol, as if he were an elite player in Major League Baseball.

  She screamed when it hit her hand, and the pistol was flung to the side. Without looking back, she ran toward a bench up against the graveyard wall. She jumped onto it, over the stone wall that surrounded the churchyard, and down toward the road beside the field boundary.

  “You run after her, Assad, and I’ll take the car,” screamed Carl, turning toward the paralyzed onlookers. “One of you, call the police, okay?”

  He looked at Atu for a moment, who was lying with one foot over the grave with eyes wide open. The priest checked the pulse on his neck. His fancy yellow shirt had two deep holes in the stomach and one in the shoulder. You could just make out a piece of skin where the bullet had gone through. Right where he had a tattoo saying RIVER, Carl remembered.

  The priest shook his head. Atu was dead. Not that Carl had been in any doubt.

  How symbolic that the man lying there had wanted to be the guardian of enigma and the son of the sun, and here he was having ended his days at this most fabled location on the island, in the shadow of the round church that hid the mystical secrets of the Knights Templar.

  He picked up the pistol. Just like the one Habersaat had shot himself with. It must have been the second of the two pistols that had belonged to the deceased teacher from the folk high school and which had never been found. So Habersaat had taken them both, and his wife must have somehow managed to take one of them without his knowledge. Not exactly something the ex-husband could’ve taken further.

  Carl stood up and was about to rush off when Nelly Rasmussen pointed down in the grave, sobbing like never before.

  There, amid red roses and three shovelfuls of consecrated soil, lay a glossy magazine with stark-naked men on the cover. Was it June Habersaat’s manner of saying that she finally accepted the way her son had lived his life?

  But why?

  And then he ran.

  53

  Carl picked up Assad at the end of the road.

  “June had her car parked at the farm down there,” he panted, pointing back. “It was so close that I had my hand on the door handle, but I didn’t manage. I’m still having muscle and breathing problems, Carl. I’m sorry.”

  Carl understood. He had nothing to apologize for. Just the hundred meters he’d run himself had nearly
knocked it out of him.

  “Did you get the registration?” he asked.

  He shook his head. Damn it.

  “Look, I can see it driving down there,” shouted Assad, pointing forward.

  Even though the car was at least five hundred meters in front of them, they could clearly hear June Habersaat putting the gears through their paces.

  “That old rust bucket is being pushed right to its limit. She’s driving like a lunatic, Carl, you’ll never catch her.”

  “Call Birkedal. I assume they can find a couple of cars that can help us go after her now.”

  Carl put his foot down on the Peugeot as if he were trying to push the pedal out of the bottom, while trying to understand why June Habersaat would try to take her life at her son’s graveside. Was it depression due to his death or something more fundamental? Was it something lying in the back of her psyche? She’d been hiding that pistol all these years, after all. And why had she shot Atu? Was it self-defense? But if it was self-defense, why had she run, was it rea . . .

  “Watch out!” screamed Assad, cell in hand. Smashed bottles littered the road in front of them. Treacherous needle-sharp shards that could stop anything with rubber tires.

  Carl slowed down, crawling along for the next hundred meters. If Assad hadn’t seen it, the tires would’ve exploded with a bang.

  “Tell Birkedal, too, they’ll need to send someone out to clean up.”

  Another straight stretch of road lay before them, so Carl put his foot on the gas.

  When they reached the buildings in Gildesbo, the road was black with skid marks where it swung south. The sign pointed to Åsedamsvej.

  “What do you reckon, Assad? Are they her tracks?”

  He nodded to confirm. Now he’d managed to get hold of the duty officer in Rønne. It only took him a few seconds to relay the message, while Carl sped up to a hundred and twenty-five kilometers an hour down a road where the visibility on either side was optimal.

  “There!” shouted Assad.