The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler-Olsen

away from the wall. “I’m just going out to get some fresh air.”
    Around the bullet hole in the middle of the bird, there were remains of cranial splinters and brains from the man who reminded her of her father, so it was understandable enough.
    “That’s a very young woman for this sort of work,” the chairwoman said empathetically.
    “I guess.” Carl nodded. “But don’t be fooled by her age or the liquid steel that flows through her veins. But tell me, what do you know about Habersaat? We’ve just arrived from Copenhagen, you understand, so our information about him as a private person is still thin.”
    “I think Christian was a good sort,” the chairwoman said. “He just wanted to do so much more than he could, and that impacted the family. He was a uniformed policeman, not in the crime unit, so why did he do all that? That’s what I don’t understand.” She stared ahead thoughtfully. “It has affected Bjarke most of all, the poor boy. I don’t think it’s been easy for him with that mother.”
    The two women don’t know he’s dead, thought Carl, sending Assad a warning look to keep quiet so they could keep on the trail. As Carl saw things, they could still manage to catch the evening ferry home. Bjarke’s death was a case for the Bornholm Police and the rest was useless to dig up further anyway. They had done what they could, Rose had been heard, and now she’d quit. All in all, it was going to be the evening ferry home.
    “So it’s maybe the mother’s fault that Bjarke has committed suicide,” Assad said anyway.
    A second passed and both women sat there with their eyebrows raised halfway up their foreheads.
    “God, no,” exclaimed the chairwoman, horrified.
    They sat very quietly while Carl updated them. Damn Assad’s outspokenness.
    “They weren’t really on speaking terms, as far as I’ve heard. Bjarkewas homosexual and his mother hated it. As if she was a novice under the sheets herself,” said Bolette Elleboe.
    “What did I tell you.” Assad’s face lit up.
    “You said she wasn’t a novice. But she was single, so there’s no harm in that, is there?” asked Carl.
    The two women exchanged glances. Obviously there were widely known and juicy stories circulating about his wife.
    “She swarmed around like a little bee while she and Habersaat were together,” came the poisonous response from the chairwoman. Her angelic mask had finally slipped.
    “How do you know that? Wasn’t she discreet?”
    “Probably,” answered Bolette Elleboe. “You never saw her actually going with anyone, but she was suddenly so sweet-tempered. Then you knew why.”
    “Did she seem in love?”
    She gave out a couple of grunts, the question obviously amusing her. “In love? No, more that she seemed satisfied. Orgasms, you know. And that was something she wasn’t getting at home, if you ask me. Those she worked with were certainly not in any doubt that she was up to something with all the long, long lunch breaks she suddenly took. Her car was also seen parked outside her sister’s house in Aakirkeby when her sister wasn’t at home. One person I know, who lives on the street, says that she met a man outside the front door there and that it definitely wasn’t Habersaat. He looked too young.” Bolette Elleboe laughed quietly for a moment, but then toned her face down and changed character. “She never helped her husband get back on course at home, if you ask me. So they were both to blame for it all. Alberte case or not, I’m sure she’d have left him anyway.”
    “It was really a blow to hear about Bjarke,” said the chairwoman. She hadn’t moved on.
    “No, it wasn’t good news. But the girl killed in the hit-and-run, Alberte, what about her?” asked Assad. “Do you know something about her, too, something not in our papers, do you think?”
    They both shrugged their shoulders.
    “Well, we can’t know what it says in your papers, but we know something. It is a small island after