The Hanging Girl (25 page)

“What reasons?” he shouted back, regretting it immediately.

“Liberation Day, stupid,” she replied expectedly. “And my birthday. I got the cell from my dad that day. All us sisters did that year.”

Was her birthday May 5th? Okay, he didn’t know that. In fact, he’d never thought of his colleagues as people who celebrated special days. For six to seven years these three had plodded around down there in the basement without ever really celebrating anything even once. Maybe it was about time they did?

He looked at Assad, who appeared equally in the dark as he shrugged his shoulders. He obviously hadn’t been any the wiser about her birthday.

Carl stood up and went out into the corridor, where Rose was in full swing digging around in Habersaat’s remains.

“So it was your birthday on Monday?”

She brushed her hand through her hair like an Italian diva emerging from a pool, her eyes confirming both the answer and the stupidity of the question.

What on earth had they been doing on Monday and why hadn’t she said anything? Carl felt awkward. What were you supposed to do in this situation?

“Happy birthday to you . . . ,” came the frightening noise from behind. Carl turned to face Assad, who also resembled an opera star, flailing his arms about as he kicked out his legs, bringing back distant memories of something Vigga had said about Greek dancing.

But Assad made Rose smile. Thank God for that.

Temporarily sidetracked by his gratitude to Assad, Carl tried to remember where he’d come to.

“Yes!” he shouted, as if it was something the others had been waiting for. “What about those texts, Rose? Was it something you could do back when you got your cell, can you remember?”

She frowned, thinking. “Text? No, I don’t think so.” She stood for a moment, staring. Apparently there was nothing that could jolt her memory.

“By the way, weren’t you supposed to call back those students Gordon talked to earlier today, Rose?” asked Carl.

She just looked at him again, this time her eyes telling him that she couldn’t be bothered and had her hands full with other things.

Speak of the devil. That second Gordon came out from Assad’s broom cupboard beaming with triumph from head to toe.

“He could bend spoons,” he shouted as if he were a ringmaster. The silence was deafening in the narrow corridors of Department Q.

*   *   *

“Let’s sum up the events of the last hour,” said Carl while Rose passed around the brochures from the alternative therapists on the wall. “You start, Assad.”

“I’ve spoken with Alberte’s mom, and she says that Alberte didn’t have a cell phone. Then she cried a little and said that if only she’d had one, the accident might never have happened. That she might’ve spoken more with her daughter and perhaps sensed if something was wrong or if there was something her daughter should’ve been careful about.”

Carl shook his head. Those people would live with their self-reproach for the rest of their lives. Terrible.

“She could have borrowed a cell from one of the other students,” said Rose.

Assad nodded. “Yes, but I’ve been told that texting was first introduced to Denmark in 1996, and that there were only limited networks supporting it. Plus the coverage on Bornholm was bad back then, so it’s unlikely that Alberte communicated with the guy outside the school that way.”

“But she could have called if she’d borrowed a cell,” insisted Rose.

Carl considered that while she did have a point, it didn’t add up. “Then those who had cells would’ve been able to say more to the police because they would’ve been able to see the call lists on the display.”

Rose sighed. “And the police could’ve been sent lists from the provider of all the calls made from the landline at the school, I assume.”

Assad nodded rather convincingly. It seemed that Alberte and the man from outside the school must have communicated some other way, just like Assad said. The questions remained how and how often. Did they talk together daily? Did they have rituals?

Then it was Gordon’s turn, as he pointed out impatiently, going on to say that one of the girls, a Lise W., who now lived in Frederikshavn and had graduated as a high school teacher, had given three bits of information that he deemed worth pursuing.

“Firstly, she’d luckily enough taken pictures from Østerlars Church on the trip. She’d no idea what had become of them, but she’d be sure to
have a look for them. Secondly, she told me that it was when they were there that they’d met a man who’d boasted that he could bend spoons. She thinks this was the man that Alberte dated. He laughed because they didn’t believe him and because he called himself Uri Geller the Second. But she still doesn’t know why. Do you have any idea?”

Carl shook his head. Couldn’t that man ever do a job right and finish it? If he’d looked the name up on Google . . . He sighed. “It was a guy who could bend spoons through the power of thought back in the seventies. He demonstrated his talent and a lot of other tricks in the media. I don’t remember if he was ever exposed as a fraud, but that was certainly his name.”

“He bent spoons? What a weird thing to do,” Assad added. It was evident that if he’d been gifted with supernatural powers like that, he wouldn’t start by massacring the spoons in the cutlery drawer.

“He held the spoon carefully with two fingers and rubbed it a little.” Carl demonstrated it. “And ta-da! It went soft right where he was holding it and bent. If our man could do that, then maybe he was actually a bit of a miracle man. But it’s odd that Habersaat hasn’t noted anything about it. Did he fail to ask the right questions or was it his insistence that made people clam up?” He turned to Gordon. “Well, what was the third?”

“She said there was also someone else who took pictures at Østerlars Church.”

“Okay, who?”

“Inge Dalby.”

They all looked at him, speechless.

“Are you sure? Did you ask her if she was positive?”

He nodded with a wry smile, as if asking them what they took him for. Maybe he was beginning to get the hang of it after all. “She was sure because she remembered that the guy had talked with Inge Dalby, almost as if he already knew her,” he added.

Carl snapped his fingers at Rose and just ten minutes later she returned with a message that Inge Dalby wasn’t home because she was on a study trip.

Carl noticed his jaw muscles tense up.

“Damn it, in what country?”

“In Denmark, actually. According to Kristoffer Dalby, she’s flirting with the idea of taking a course to be a teaching assistant over here in Copenhagen. I think all our talk about the old days opened up something that shouldn’t have been opened up, and definitely not on top of her seemingly leaving Kristoffer, too. He certainly seemed pretty down.”

“In Copenhagen? Couldn’t she take that course on Bornholm? What about all the children she normally looks after?”

“As far as I understood him, she didn’t have any more children after May 1st. That seemed to shake him just as much, as if now she was ready to leave the island. He didn’t think it could’ve been planned. But now she’s living with a brother out in the new district in Sluseholmen on Dexter Gordons Vej. The school is on Sydhavns Plads, just a ten-minute bike ride from her brother’s apartment.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Carl tried to imagine Kristoffer Dalby alone among all the toys in that little house. It must’ve been quite a shock for him.

“Okay, now she’s living with the brother, you say. And his surname is Kure, I assume, because wasn’t that Inge’s name when she was younger?”

“Yes, Hans Otto Kure. Owner of Kures Advanced Automobiles.”

“Doesn’t ring any bell.”

“It’s the biggest workshop in the city for higher-end vintage cars. Ferrari and Maserati and Bentley and so on. He’s a trained mechanic, following his dad and uncle.”

Rose looked at Carl for some time before he realized what she was thinking.

“Do you think . . . ?” he said.

“Wow,” said Assad. It’d clicked for him, too.

Gordon’s face had the usual appearance of a slapped ass.

“You’re telling me she grew up in a family where they fiddled about with cars?”

Rose raised her eyebrows a couple of times. “Yup. And of course I then asked Kristoffer Dalby if his wife could also do that sort of thing,
and he answered that she was born with a wrench in her hand and could weld with the best of them. He said that until she starts her course she’s working as a mechanic in her brother’s workshop. Seems she’s made of stronger stuff than you first thought, wouldn’t you say, Carl?”

“Yes, but then the question is how much stronger. I can see you’re all thinking the same as me. We certainly can’t ignore the fact that she could’ve been capable of attaching a shovel blade on a vehicle and even driving it on a very early November morning in 1997. Do we know if the students were asked to account for their movements that morning? What do the reports say, Rose?”

“Nothing. They’ve been asked if they heard anything and if they had any specific suspicions, but not about their own movements.”

Assad nodded. “She goes on the list of possible suspects then, right, Carl?”

The lanky guy next to them stared goofily over. “Sorry, I don’t quite follow. Suspect for what? Was she at that classic car show on Bornholm you’re always going on about?”

They looked at each other.

It was a fantastic
new city space for Copenhageners. For once, the architects had bucked their own trend and created something homogenous and almost attractive. It was as if the rare rays of sunshine shone down from every angle, causing the glass and concrete to melt together with the landscape of bridges and canals that ran directly out to the harbor area. Even though the area had existed for a few years, Carl had never been there before, and he liked what he saw. If it hadn’t been for his thoroughly pitiful financial situation, this would really be something for him. Maybe he should talk with Hardy about whether he might want to chip in a bit.

“They’ll be home in five minutes,” said a very dark-skinned woman in an unmistakable Jutland dialect, as she led them through the apartment’s micro-kitchen and down some stairs to the living room. It was at least six meters to the ceiling, and large glass panels revealed that only a small pontoon ramp separated the apartment from one of the canals. Three small floors on top of each other, stairs here and there and everywhere. Definitely not something for a man in a wheelchair like Hardy. So much for that dream.

“The water got a bit too close when the storm came here last December. The water was just this far away from reaching the window.” She demonstrated with her fingers what couldn’t have been more than five centimeters.

Carl nodded. Another reason to stay in Allerød. There at least you
were sixty meters above sea level. So when the catastrophe came, which was bound to happen sometime or other, it would take a significant glacial melt or tsunami.

“Good thing nothing happened,” he said, looking at the flat screen and all the other electronic equipment. “When Inge Dalby arrives, can we talk to her down here in peace and quiet?”

She gave him a thumbs-up. She and her husband could go for a walk. No problem.

Inge Dalby didn’t look happy seeing the trio standing at the bottom of the stairs down in the living room, waiting for her.

“Sorry we’ve come unannounced, but we were in the area and have a few questions we think you might be able to help us with,” said Carl as the brother gave him a very firm handshake. A friendly man who also got a suitably impressive shake back when it came to Assad. Just enough to crush.

After five minutes, a few of these questions had been answered.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Hans Otto Kure in an authentic dialect. It begged the question whether a Bornholmer like him could ever learn to speak real Danish. “My dad took care of the work with the motors while Uncle Sture took care of everything else, apart from anything electrical, which they had an assistant for. I’ve been to lots of those classic car events, so have you,” he said to her.

Then he and his wife left. “We have to go Irma supermarket and buy some groceries,” she said simply, and that was that.

Inge Dalby sat with her back to the panoramic window and rubbed her head with a rough hand that already seemed grey with oil and rust. Was she even aware where all this might be leading?

When their eyes met, she seemed calm, but a pulsating vein on her wrist told a different story. The next half hour would be interesting.

“You might well have questions but I’m done talking about that time. Kristoffer and I have been doing that for an eternity. It’s just all a bit passé for me.”

“I understand,” said Carl with a nod. “But I’m sorry to have to tell you
that it’s not for the police, Inge. We have grounds to believe that you withheld evidence last time we spoke, so I’ve got four to five questions I’m going to ask you to answer, and I mean all of them. If you don’t, we’ll have to take you down to the station for questioning, understood?”

No reaction.

“Are you ready, Assad?”

He took out his notebook and lifted his pen, which strangely enough tended to get people talking.

“So, I’ll ask: Do you have a photo of the guy that Alberte was seeing? We know that you took photos at your trip to Østerlars Church where she met him, and that you most likely have a photo among them of the man we’re looking for. We also know that the man had contact with several of you students. You were one of them. So a second question is why you haven’t told us that. Was something going on between the two of you? Is that why you were so quick to forgive your boyfriend after his involvement with Alberte? Because you were both as bad as each other?

“My third question is equally important. You’re good with your hands. You’re interested in cars. You’ve been to classic car events, as your brother so kindly informed us, and probably also the event where the photo of the man with the VW was taken. We’re convinced that you actually met the guy
before
that day at Østerlars Church. Can you confirm that? And finally, isn’t it the case that you were fuming over Alberte stealing
both
your guys? First Kristoffer, who you’d been together with for half a year, and then also the guy you’d had an affair with in the summer of the classic car event? Are you aware what sick minds, like the sort detectives have, make of that? We think that you’re the one who rigged the car and drove it into Alberte. You simply couldn’t stand that she outdid you
twice,
so you’re the murderer, Inge. And now you’ve left your husband because he was getting too close to the truth, is that how it is? Yes, sorry, that makes it six questions.”

Carl had been watching her carefully during this tirade. Not once had she reacted. Not with the hypothesis that she knew the man earlier. Not even at the accusation of murder. Nothing. Just those black hands half covering her face. Had he played his cards too early?

Carl nodded to Rose, who moved closer. “We’re listening, Inge,” she said.

“Yes,” added Assad. “We’re old ears.”

At that the woman lifted her head and looked directly at him. “It’s called ‘all ears,’ mate. What planet are you from?”

Did she have enough energy to laugh just then?

Rose put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Will you answer or do we need to take you down to the station, Inge?”

“You can do whatever the hell you want. You won’t believe me anyway, no matter what the hell I say.”

“Try us,” said Carl.

They sat for several minutes in silence before she got her act together. Against all expectations, she appeared surprisingly unaffected, but concentrated as if she were passing a busy road with traffic coming from all directions. What was it that was making her so alert? Fear of being misunderstood or of saying too much?

“I know there were lots of things I could’ve told Habersaat back then, and that I didn’t. Did you know the man?”

“No, we didn’t,” answered Carl.

“Then let me tell you, he was strange. I didn’t like him at all, and I felt like that from the beginning. It was as if by any means possible he wanted us to point to someone among us who could’ve done this to Alberte. And when it didn’t work the first time around, you could be sure he’d be back, no doubt about that. And he was. Lots of times.

“If I’d told him everything I knew back then, he’d have pinned it on me, I can promise you that. He was obsessed with finding someone he could charge for what happened to Alberte.”

“So what was it you didn’t tell him, Inge? Does it answer some of our questions?”

“Not all. But some of them.”

“What ones doesn’t it answer?” threw in Assad. Always so impatient.

“Who did it. Because it wasn’t me.”

“You met Frank before you started at the school, isn’t that right?” asked Rose. A gamble with the name.

Inge sucked in half her bottom lip and started to bite it while looking over to the side. That alertness again, which experience said usually accompanied lies. Carl was really on alert now.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

She would have to make do with silence. Should they have blurted out that it was all guesswork? That they actually weren’t even sure of the guy’s name?

But they were just about to be.

She took a deep breath. “I met Frank at the beginning of July, the day before the classic car event. If that photo had been taken ten seconds later, you’d be able to see that I was on the other side. Yes, we had had sex in the car. I’ll tell you that right out. We did for a while. It was my idea that we should park down there at the back of the grass area because it was so secluded. I didn’t think we’d be kicked off or that the classic cars would turn up so early. But I let Frank deal with the business of being parked somewhere he wasn’t allowed, and I made my escape. I definitely didn’t want my uncle catching me with that hippie.”

“But you were also seeing Kristoffer at that time, weren’t you?” asked Carl.

“Yes, but Frank could do things Kristoffer couldn’t, and never learned. He could make love so it blew your mind.”

Carl decided it was a subject best left alone.

“Then it wasn’t guesswork when you described the VW Kombi. That black arched line that came up from the roof, what was that?”

“There was a large peace sign on the roof, and the circle around it went down the sides of the car a bit.”

“Anything else? Anything inside the car that could give us a clue so we can find the man.”

“I didn’t see much other than him. But there were posters stuck on the walls. Don’t ask me what they were meant to be. Some more peace stuff that the van’s owner had put up way back when.”

“And you’re sure you can’t remember what he called himself when he was with Alberte?”

“He only used Frank when we were together. That’s why it took a day or two before I found out that it was him Alberte was seeing. I don’t know why he used that other name when he was with her. He was a bit special.”

“Special?”

“Yes, he had a lot of ideas, I think, but for us it was just sex.”

It was hard to believe when you looked at her now.

“Tell us about him, Inge. Where did you meet him, and how were things later?”

“I met him in Rønne. Even then, I already knew who he was because I’d been down to Ølene once with a friend to see the hippie house, and he was there, walking about shirtless, looking hot. My friend and I were curious because there wasn’t much going on in those days on the island, and there still isn’t. And after Rønne, we began fooling around a bit. Nothing Kristoffer knew about. I mean, I knew the thing with Frank was something that would end suddenly, so it was good to have someone like Kristoffer to fall back on. Someone from the island.”

Carl mulled over what she’d said,
fall back on.
He’d felt like that himself once in a while. Not a feeling he wanted to repeat.

“And Kristoffer never found out?”

“I don’t think he ever suspected until you’d been to see us.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because of the business with the VW. He didn’t think you could see those stripes on the side. Not from the distance I said I’d seen it from, and he might be right. I should just never have mentioned it, and Kristoffer kept digging until I got pissed off. I hate it when people pick away at what I say.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine.

“And what about you and the guy, then?”

“Well, we continued until the thing with Kristoffer and Alberte, and at the time I thought maybe that was good enough. Yeah, at least it wasn’t me who broke up with him, even though that wasn’t what I wanted.”

What a nerve! Carl looked over at Rose, who just raised her eyebrows
as if it didn’t surprise her one bit. Maybe the method was common practice among women. He knew damn all about that sort of thing.

“And afterward Frank began to see Alberte. Were you just frozen out from one day to the next?”

“Yes, it was the same for Kristoffer and me.” She took a cigarette from her bag and lit it. The no-smoking-inside rule had obviously been dropped. Was she smiling ironically through the smoke?

“They dumped us both at the same time, leaving us in the lurch, despondent and unable to do anything about it.” She laughed out loud. “But Kristoffer felt so guilty that I thought it was a situation I could use to my advantage for years. I had him over a barrel basically, without him even knowing that I’d been much worse than him. Poor Kristoffer. If I’d had the chance, I would’ve escaped from the island with Frank.”

Carl nodded. Yes, poor him.

“It isn’t true that you couldn’t do anything, is it?” said Assad. “As I see it, you were sick with jealousy and full of hate, so you killed her. You made that board thing from something or other from your dad’s workshop and secured it on the front of the vehicle and killed her. Once she was out of the picture, you could pick up where you left off with the guy. But you just didn’t get him to take you off the island because he disappeared, ironically enough. You might as well just admit it now.”

She leaned her neck back a little and looked down her nose with contempt, pointing at him with her smoldering cigarette. “It’s really wonderful to talk with you again after so many years, Habersaat,” she said.

She turned to Carl. “Wasn’t that what I said? That’s why I kept my mouth shut about all this to Habersaat. I didn’t want to be accused of something
I
haven’t done, like Mustafa’s doing now.”

“My name isn’t Mustafa, but I do know someone by that name,” Assad said dryly. “And he’s a good guy, so don’t let me stop you.”

There was no love lost between those two.

“Okay, so we believe somewhat in your motives for not saying anything back then,” Carl cut in. “Now I’m going to ask you a lot of questions and you’ll answer briefly, agreed?”

“Yeah.”

“What was the guy called other than Frank?”

“I don’t know. We were only on first-name terms.” She smiled cheekily.

“Can you tell us where he came from?”

“He mentioned Hellerup and Gentofte. We never talked about it.”

“Do you know what became of him?”

“I’ve tried to google him, but I don’t know.”

“Do you have a photo of him we can see?”

“Yes, but it isn’t any better than what you’ve already got. It was a really shitty camera. But I caught him by the church, that’s true enough.”

“Okay, while we’re at it, you must have noticed that Alberte made passes at him when they first saw each other. What did you do about it? Did you try to stop it?”