The Hanging: A Thriller (17 page)

“It is, of course, an unverified number, but many researchers estimate that between one and two percent of the population has been sexually abused in their childhood, which is to say, that around five thousand children between the ages of five and ten years are at this time being victimized. I myself was raped some eight hundred times as a child, but perhaps I was an unlucky outlier among the unfortunate. I place the estimate of average rapes for the average abused child in this age group at two hundred. Each of you can now try to make these calculations on your own but I’ll spare you the trouble. My guess is that every single day around five hundred children are abused in Denmark. If I am right, then tell me, what is the biggest problem in our society? The day cares? Schools? Freeways? Or is it the five hundred children who will be raped tomorrow?”

He paused. The statistics created a certain distance, as statistics always did, and the intense silence from earlier was gone. It was time to come in for the landing.

“As the ad says, I want to try to get people to make their own assessment and I want your help to do this but you have to decide if you will do so or not. Those of you who are my co-workers also have a choice. You can take the next three weeks off fully paid and without using your vacation, or you can stay here and help me. If you feel that you can’t engage with this, then I would rather that you stay away. Now I want you to get up for a while. Walk around and talk to each other, think it over—and then report back what choice you have made.”

He turned off the projector.

“Let me end by telling you that I once knew a wise man who has unfortunately passed away. He asked me if I believed that the world could be changed by a handful of people fighting for a new order and he gave me the answer himself, which is as ordinary as it is true, that the world has always been changed in that way.”

Erik Mørk waited eagerly for any preliminary indications. In the scenarios he spun out at night he had imagined a string of different reactions, but none of them matched up with reality. The woman straight ahead of him was apparently speaking for many, and in advance he had written off her as too analytical, unmoved by emotions. But he was wrong.

“I don’t need more time. Just tell me what to do.”

CHAPTER 27

The night was cold and the Climber was freezing on the square in Allerslev.

From time to time he slapped his arms around himself, but it didn’t help much. Through his work he was used to being exposed to the elements and he had years of experience in dressing for the weather. Despite all this, he had underestimated the cold of the night and his sinewy body did not carry much in the way of extra padding as in-built protection for the chilly north wind that was sweeping over the square with increasing intensity.

A gust of wind—a little stronger than he cared for—caused him to look up into the crown of the tree he was standing under. The upper branches were illuminated both by the streetlamps and by the clear white moon. The tree was ready to be felled and could not take too much wind. He narrowed his eyes and concluded that there was no immediate danger of the tree coming down on its own. In a short time his victim would be arriving for work. It was now more than half an hour since the morning papers had been delivered, tossed helter-skelter in front of the hot-dog stand. He shook himself again and jumped back behind the tree trunk for shelter.

Suddenly he noticed a man with a bottle in his hand unsteadily making his way across the square, aiming directly for him. He retreated farther into the shadows. Shortly thereafter, urine ran out on both sides of him and he heard the man mumbling, without being able to make out his words. He carefully pulled his cap visor down in order to conceal his face lest he be discovered. Then he mouthed into the night, “Not this time, Allan, no one is that lucky.”

The words were directed to the hot-dog vendor. At that moment, the light in the stand went on. The darkness gave way and for the next couple of seconds the Climber held his breath until he heard the man on the other side of the tree leave. He peeked out hesitantly and followed the drunk with his eyes until he turned a corner. Then he took his stick and crossed the square to the hot-dog stand.

The vendor was bent over the newspaper bundles and did not immediately realize that he had a visitor. It was the voice, that well-known voice that he could never mistake, that made him look up with a start.

“Good morning, Allan. Give my regards to your brother.”

With his solid beech stick the Climber rammed the man in the skull. His body collapsed in a limp heap, while his head landed neatly on a bundle of newspapers. Blood flowed from his nose out over the latest news. The examiner took a step to the left and put all his strength behind the next blow. He was skilled with an ax and had no trouble striking his victim right on the neck. Ten seconds later he was back at his tree, where he paid no heed to the noise and started up his saw.

An earsplitting crash rent the morning asunder. The sound wave thundered down the street, bouncing off the building walls, shaking the earth, and rousing the town from its slumber.

The Climber smiled out into the dark and gave himself time to savor the sight of his handiwork before he disappeared.

CHAPTER 28

On the square in Allerslev where the Climber had felled his tree some five hours earlier, a police photographer picked up a newspaper. An ad had caught her gaze. The wind tugged in the paper and she smoothed down the sides to reveal the advertisement. She read, disgusted, but could not tear her eyes from the questions. An emergency technician came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“I think you should move back, little lady.”

The phrase pissed her off and she turned angrily, but discovered that she knew the man. He grinned.

“You’ll have to excuse me, but when I saw that it was you I couldn’t help myself. And you really are too close. There’s a great deal of power in this kind of tree, and unpredictable tensions. Haven’t you ever heard of trees felled by the wind? A heavy branch could squash you like a little bird and that would be unfortunate. One death is enough.”

He nodded in the direction of the trunk and she followed his gaze. The gigantic tree filled most of the square. Five people were busy working around the top of the tree, all men. They were working intently but gently with their small chainsaws in toward the crushed hot-dog stand. She moved back and let the newspaper flutter away in the wind. The entire area was awash in papers and one more or less wouldn’t matter. The EMT walked with her.

“You look tired,” he said.

“I am. I’ve worked all night and should be in bed. How long do you think it’ll be take before I can get started?”

“Ten minutes at most, then we’ll be in. Where were you working tonight?”

“At the Pathology Institute in Copenhagen. It’s really tough, pretty morbid, but superinteresting. I’m part of a team of facial surgeons, artists, pathologists, and computer experts. Some of them international. All of us under the direction of a single lovable, dictatorial old man who unfortunately doesn’t hold sleep in high regard. I only made it back to Odense at ten, and was called out here after that.”

“Is it the pedophiles from Bagsværd?”

“Yes. That is, not that I know for sure if they were pedophiles. It’s hard to tell when people are dead.”

A police technician called out to her. He pointed to a half-empty bottle of beer at the foot of the tree. She looked questioningly at the emergency medical technician and stepped forward only when he indicated with a nod that she could safely approach. She prepared her camera. The brand of beer was Elephant. She crouched in front of it and noticed the pungent stench of urine. She zoomed in on the bottle and got to work without allowing herself to be distracted by the smell. Only when she was finished did she wrinkle up her nose and tilt up her head to take a blessedly deep breath. At almost exactly the same time, there came a call that an entry had been created.

The same technician who had pointed out the bottle led her to the corpse. The man had been knocked to the ground and he lay on his stomach, his head turned toward her, nailed to the floor. He was impaled by a thick branch that entered at the base of his spine and exited through his belly, as if a vengeful arrow had been fired in heavenly fury. Even at first glance she started with surprise, which her colleague misread. He wrapped a reassuring arm around her. She pushed him away and stared in disbelief at the dead man. There was no doubt in her mind.

She had photographed his face earlier that evening.

CHAPTER 29

The ad filled half a newspaper page. It was in full color and had been expensive.

At the top was a photograph of an eight-year-old boy. The grainy quality and the boy’s long, blond hair, which grew past his ears, indicated that he had been captured for posterity in the seventies or eighties. Apart from that there was nothing special about him. He was smiling self-consciously into the camera and it was not hard to imagine that he wished the picture taking would be over soon so that he could get out and play soccer. At the very bottom of the ad was another portrait, this time of a presentable man in his midthirties who stared straight at the reader. His gaze was steady and decisive, his expression serious, except for the smile, but also angry. It was tempting to compare the two faces, but for the trained gaze there was not much of a likeness.

The text between the two pictures was in an old-fashioned-typewriter font that emphasized the raw and immediate message. Four short paragraphs written in the first person declared that the boy had been sexually abused. That those who should have been his protectors had failed him and that the man had always felt shame and kept his childhood story secret. Until now. The final paragraph was made up of a series of questions: How many children are growing up like this? How many children in Denmark will be raped this evening? Ten? One hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? What is your guess? Or don’t you care?

At the Roskildevej County secondary school, class 3Y was reading the notice. One of the students in the class had passed around a photocopy of it as a precursor to something she wanted to tell. Now she was standing next to the teacher’s desk and waiting patiently while the teacher sat on a chair in the corner of the room. The girl was one of his star students and it had not taken many pretty smiles to persuade him to let her have the first ten minutes of the lesson for her own purposes. Apart from being clever, she was also unusually attractive, and he looked her up and down stealthily with a gaze that contained more than pedagogical interest.

When everyone was done reading, the girl told them calmly about her childhood. Without hatred or pathos. She was gripping, and never before had 3Y been so quiet. Each word soared, every sentence perfectly formed, and she affected them like no one before her had done, with a story that could coax tears from a stone. Her issue. Their issue. Everyone’s issue. Every one of them felt it—for the first time in his or her life.

What none of them knew was that the girl had spent a long time preparing her speech. She had known that the notice would one day appear, and that she would then stand ready with her own story. Many, many times she had stood in front of the mirror and rehearsed until everything had been perfected: her tone, phrasing, the lump in her throat, the spontaneous blush—even the curl of hair that accidentally fell over one eye at a certain moment. Inside she felt nothing except a glowing vanity at living up to her role as fire starter. Even though she knew that this was only the rehearsal and that a bigger scene was waiting for her.

She was done in ten minutes. She ended her speech with a tear glittering in the corner of her eye, pleading with her classmates to help her spread her story. Just like the man in the ad, apart from the fact that she could not afford expensive media interventions. Seconds later, her request had been fulfilled as her classmates’ thumbs hammered like drumsticks over their cell phone keys and sent her story into circulation. Two friends who were gifted in practical matters talked briefly and found that they were on the same page. The shopping trip was canceled. The diesel pants could wait. Without further ado, they piled money on the desk, as a way of speaking for the less affluent. And others also consulted their wallets.

And the spark caught. Like a fire in a haystack, the confessional narrative spread among Danish secondary-school students.

CHAPTER 30

Konrad Simonsen was looking at Helmer Hammer’s house. It was a pretty villa in its original condition with tall mahogany paneling and ornate crown moldings. The floors had been sanded smooth and polished white with pipe clay. He peered out the window until he caught sight of a jogger his own size making his way around the lake, which gave him a bad conscience. He left the window and inspected the pictures on the opposite wall. They were four original lithographs of Hans Scherfig’s naivistic elephants. They were striking and fit very well into the decor.

“You know, of course, that he was a communist?”

He turned in surprise. A girl was standing behind him. She was around sixteen years of age with black matted hair, worn jeans, a ring in her nose, and peeling nail polish in a vibrant shade of red. Her sweater was unraveling on one arm and she was wearing two different, extremely worn sneakers. There were no laces in one and the ones on the other were undone. Her clear eyes shone with intelligence.

“Dad has all of his books, even the yearbooks from
Land and Folk
. He collected them in his Red Period.”

Simonsen did not really know what to say, and decided on an affable smile.

“Is he still with you?”

“He was called in, apparently something important. It’s like that all the time. It’s always very important and extremely irritating. Are you the one who is supposed to find the ones who killed the five men in Bagsværd?”

“Yes, me and a whole lot of other people.”