The Hanging Girl (40 page)

“Was he the one who called?” Carl pointed at the brochure photo of an elderly man with grey hair and penetrating eyes. There was definitely some photoshopping involved.

Carl studied the prices. Three thirty-minute sessions: seven thousand
one hundred and ten kroner.
Guaranteed effect or your money back,
it said, but nothing about what the effect would be.

He thought it was a heck of a price, puzzled at the last one hundred and ten kroner. Was seven thousand not enough?

Rose’s eyes were glistening. “Carl, he can provide us with facts about our missing person. He says he’s met Frank. And he’ll be at the Alternative Cosmos health fair in Frederiksborg Sports Center in Hillerød. We’re meeting him there later this afternoon.”

Carl smiled. Hypnosis? Kazambra? Just the name! Not since he’d been in a sports center in Øster Brønderslev thirty years ago, looking at a man who called himself Humboldt who claimed he could put the entire audience into a trance simultaneously, had he met anyone who actually believed they could hypnotize people.

Actually, the man in Øster Brønderslev couldn’t. At first, he’d wanted them all to jump at his command, and Carl had jumped as high as he could because he didn’t want to be the only one left slouching in his chair. But when the man had wanted everyone to fall asleep, Carl couldn’t be bothered, so he’d just looked around at all the others. Everyone with their eyes half-closed, wondering if they were the only ones it wasn’t working on.

The world demanded to be deceived.

He turned toward Assad with a cheeky smile. “Perhaps you should empty your piggy bank and see if you can get rid of your fear of dried-up grass snakes while we’re there.”

Strangely enough, Assad didn’t find that appealing.

Rose, on the other hand, was ready to go the whole nine yards.

“He’s got a special offer at the fair. Two sessions for two thousand three hundred and seventy kroner. That’s exactly fifty percent off. So Gordon’s actually considering coming, too. Something about existential phobia, he said.”

Existential phobia? That sounded right on the money. Carl couldn’t stop smiling.

*   *   *

A man was standing in front of Frederiksborg Sports Center, waving a sign:
The Alternative Cosmos is humbug. Don’t be seduced.

“You’ll be exploited and conned out of your sound sense of judgment. You’ll be led astray from God by all the witchcraft!” he screamed, handing out leaflets with his free hand.

Only a few people took them, and those who did threw them in the trash can by the entrance without reading them.

He should’ve known he wasn’t going to be a hit here.

They showed their ID cards, but still the doorkeepers were unwilling to let them pass without paying.

“Try to say that one more time, and we just might provide you with free lodging on bread and water,” suggested Rose, overly cocky.

The doormen grumbled, but let them in.

Frederiksborg Sports Center was bigger than it looked from the outside, and the number of stands made the place seem chaotic.

“He’s at stand 49E,” said Rose. “We’re meeting him in twenty minutes, so I’ll have a look around on my own.”

Carl looked at her despondently. Twenty minutes here was an eternity.

He and Assad walked through the aisles, observing people sauntering around with dreamy, searching looks in their eyes. It wasn’t hard to tell what they were searching for: a quick, easy, and preferably cheap shortcut to a better and more settled life. The easy way to lots of happiness, personal satisfaction, increased harmony, better health, and last but not least, better understanding of self, and access to the world beyond this and the secrets of the universe. The question was only in which stand they would find it, considering the vast number of suppliers.

They slowly walked past hopeful people who’d already entered the small stands, and were doing strange things. It was a very peculiar experience for a man like Carl, who had grown up on a farm in Vendsyssel learning that Kosmos was the name of the neighbor’s tractor, and that palm reading was a conversation between deaf people.

Assad, on the other hand, was enjoying himself, now and again pointing at something that caught his interest.

Miracle Poul
announced a sign at a stand where a middle-aged,
somewhat tubby man was practicing his healing touch. There was no limit to what he could do in half an hour, according to his sign, and the client definitely looked ready for healing of all kinds of things, from gas to divine guidance.

There were people chanting
hummm hummm,
people letting out guttural sounds that would scare even the bravest, and people holding their hands up in the air, twenty centimeters from each other, feeling one another’s auras, soul energy, color spectrums, and spiritual potentials.

There was trance channeling, drum therapy, reincarnation sessions, angel dance combined with tarot-reading courses, channeling of master energy, healing, and hundreds of other incomprehensible things. Each and every one had their specific solution to oceans of problems, convinced that their path was the right one. It was enough to make you dizzy.

Carl had just spotted a draft beer dispenser that seemed to deliver on promise when Rose appeared, saying that it was time for them to meet Kazambra.

Stand 49E with Kazambra’s imposing image was empty, but he shared the booth with a very lovely and active young woman, whose specialty was detection of earth radiation and water with willow twigs and pendulum.

Carl pictured his ex-mother-in-law.

“You should’ve seen my mother-in-law use a pendulum like that yesterday. She wanted to know if she’d be shagged by her nursing assistant. Yes, that’s what she said. It really set the pendulum in motion.”

Carl laughed, realizing too late that an elderly woman had appeared behind him with a hurt expression on her face. Could she be one of pendulum woman’s clients?

“I saw how you acted up at the entrance to get in for free, and I’ve noticed the looks you throw around. You shouldn’t be here at all,” she said, almost too quietly. “What do you know about what these things mean to us? I’m sick, and if I didn’t have my crystals and the metaphysical world to resort to, I’d be nothing.” She looked at Rose. “You’re young and healthy, but I’m worn down, and the crystals keep death from my door. Please try to put yourselves in our place.”

“Well, I don’t actually feel . . . ,” Rose tried to protest, but the woman cut her off.

“Albert asked me to give you this. He’s not feeling so well at the moment, so he had to give up on coming today. The address is on the card. He’s waiting for you.”

*   *   *

Kazambra’s house in Tulstrup was sparkling from a recent renovation, by far the flashiest in town. Hardly surprising, considering his extortionate fees.

“One at a time,” said the man, whose eyes looked completely normal, as he let them in to the corridor.

Carl shook his head. “I think you’ve misunderstood. We’ve come to hear what you know about Frank Brennan.”

“We’ll get to that,” he said, coughing. Hopefully it wasn’t contagious. “But I’ve agreed with the young lady here that I won’t do it for free.”

“I see, but the Danish police don’t pay for information,” protested Carl, throwing Rose a reproachful look. What in the world was she thinking?

“No, not information, I understand that. What you’re paying for is half an hour of hypnosis each, and then afterward we can talk about Frank. Wasn’t that what we agreed—Rose, was it?”

She nodded. “Yes, we all suffer from something we’d like to get rid of. Your fear of flying, Carl. My bad memories. And you, Assad, you know best what you most need to overcome. Personally, I think it’s anxiety.”

She turned toward Carl. “Take it easy, Carl, I found a loophole in the budget. You won’t have to chip in yourself.”

This was outrageous.

*   *   *

First, it was Rose’s turn, and then Carl’s.

For some time, he and the coughing Albert Kazambra sat face-to-face in a dimly lit room with oakwood bookshelves from floor to ceiling, skeptically looking at one another. An annoying power struggle was taking place, while Kazambra whispered, growled, and stared. Definitely
not a comfortable situation for a deputy police superintendent with more than twenty years in the service. And then suddenly—everything disappeared.

Afterward, when he and Rose were sitting in Kazambra’s lobby waiting for Assad to come out, he felt strangely relieved, almost as if a load had been lifted from his shoulders.

He should probably feel good about the situation, but the truth was that he felt his soul had been violated. What the hell had happened? What had this man done to him? What had they talked about?

He tried to get Rose’s attention as she sat staring silently out the window.

“What do you think happened?” he asked her a couple of times, before she finally turned toward him drowsily, as if she were under the influence of some kind of drug.

“Did anything happen?” she said, almost in a trance.

The situation didn’t get much better when Assad came out. Basically, it seemed they would both benefit from going home for a good, long nap. At any rate, Carl thought he’d got through it with more energy than they had.

“Would you like me to book a couple of cabs, so they can go home?” asked Kazambra, when Carl had asked how long his partners might feel like this.

That was probably enough of an answer.

“Well, good-bye, then, Rose and Said,” he said, when the taxis arrived. “Please call me if you start feeling unwell. You might experience some nightmares tonight, but it’s nothing to worry about. Tomorrow everything should be back to normal, except for the small adjustments we’ve made today.”

“You seem to have got over our session more easily,” he said, when he and Carl sat face-to-face again.

Carl nodded. Actually, he felt oddly light and comfortable. Almost like in the good old days, visiting his aunt on a warm summer afternoon, a pitcher of homemade lemonade in front of him. Out of danger, just happy and free.

It was a nostalgic, almost surreal feeling, he explained.

Kazambra nodded. “Don’t count on avoiding a reaction, but that’s something we can get back to. After all, it wasn’t peanuts what you’ve just been through. But we’re on the right track, no doubt about that.”

Normally, Carl would’ve insisted on knowing what they’d talked about, and what the man had done to him, but right now it just seemed insignificant. It was the
feeling
inside him that counted, and he felt good.

“You wanted to ask about Frank Brennan, who I understand you’re looking for. Let me tell you straightaway that I haven’t been in contact with him for quite a few years. He came to me as a young man and made a scary impression on me, which is why I remember him so well.”

“When was that, do you remember?”

“Yes, it was in the summer of 1998. My wife, Helene, had just passed away, so it was a year of pain I’ll never forget.”

Carl could understand that. “I’m sorry. You’ve been alone ever since?”

He nodded. “We all have our crosses to bear.”

“True, true. You said he was scary. Why?”

“For several reasons. Firstly, he’s the only person I haven’t been able to hypnotize in my long career. But most of all, because I discovered that he’d come to me with insincere intentions. Usually, people want to get rid of something. But this Frank Brennan only wanted to be filled up, and that didn’t occur to me until the second time he came. He simply came to watch and learn the art, but I could sense he didn’t intend to use it only for good. I felt more and more that he didn’t just see me to learn hypnosis, but rather to acquire a tool to dominate people around him. At any rate, I’ve never met anyone who could manipulate others like he could. You could also sense it on the woman who was following him. She was like a puppy around him, almost as if he’d hypnotized her.”

“A woman. Can you describe her?”

“Yes, you wouldn’t forget her in a hurry either. She spoke Swedish with a Finnish accent, was slender and flighty, but also sinewy and slightly bony. I believe she was naturally blonde, but she was henna-dyed back then. A profound gaze, as if there were many things hidden in her
mind that could lead to inner struggle. She wasn’t in harmony with herself. That was the impression I got.”

“But you didn’t hypnotize her?”

“No, that was never in the cards.”

“And then what happened?”

“The third time he came to me, I put my foot down, stopped taking him in. By then I knew with certainty that he’d been acting all along through our sessions, pretending to be in a trance. I also knew a good deal more about what he was doing, and I couldn’t relate to it. Working in the alternative world, I meet lots of people who have other people’s best interests at heart. In fact, that’s by far the majority, and they very often help people to feel better. Often, I don’t even understand myself how it happens, but does that really matter, as long as the effect is positive? Anyway, what
he
was planning to do in the alternative world made me nervous. Sometimes you meet people who want to found a new movement, gather followers around them, and when they succeed, these people are normally quite satisfied with the result. Perhaps they gather ten or a hundred followers, and that’s the scope of it. But in Frank Brennan’s case, I could see much greater ambition. He seemed to have an insatiable desire to influence people. He spoke about the disintegration of the great religions and new paths for humanity. Of course, we’ve heard it all before, but compared to most of the others, he was incredibly systematic and determined in his work. I believe that if he hadn’t been the person he was, he wouldn’t have come to me three times. He went very purposefully for the tools that could be used to carry out his plan, and he wouldn’t be stopped by anything. That’s why our work together had to stop. I was the one who decided that.”

The old man looked at Carl with eyes that were completely different from his professional gaze. He almost seemed relieved, as if he’d been in the confessional and obtained an indulgence for his knowledge and actions.