The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler-Olsen Page A

wasn’t hard because everything about Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi seemed so right and logical. In fact, it felt as if through his thoughts Atu embraced all forms of belief and goodness in humanity in one pure and refined set of rules, and it took her by storm. The more she read, the more she tried to understand, the stronger she felt how these guiding principles and decrees for a purer life pulled everything ugly and foolishly mundane out of her.
    Finally, she sat up straight and felt the peace of mind growing in her. No cola on the table, no flashing television screen with soap operas in the background, no noise in her head. The last doubt in her project petered away, leaving her determined and peaceful.
    When she stood in front of Atu Abanshamash she’d be completely clear. Her sensuality and insight into the teachings of Atu Abanshamash would blow him away, convincing him that in her he’d finally met a woman who was worthy of him in every way.
    And the other woman, who thought herself untouchable and was trying to thwart her plans, would just need to go.

10
    Thursday, May 1st, 2014
    Villy Kure, the skipper everyone called Uncle Sam, lived in a yellow half-timbered house with its own smokehouse on Mosedalvej, two houses north of Habersaat’s home. Here along the highway between Sandvig and Snogebæk there was a mishmash of all types of property all in a row elevated a few meters above the level of the road and with the most beautiful view out over the fishing huts, harbor, and sea. Perfectly idyllic, if it wasn’t for the fact that someone from the town’s inner circle had just blown his brains out.
    They knocked on the door at the front of the house, and when no one answered they pulled into the driveway, past a smoke oven, and into the yard where a four-wheel drive was parked.
    Carl felt the hood. It was ice-cold.
    The back door gave no result either, which a cyclist out on the road was able to explain as they traipsed back to the car.
    “Uncle Sam is out at sea. He’s the captain of a fishing boat that’s acting as a patrol boat just now. So you shouldn’t expect to see him anytime soon.”
    “A patrol boat?”
    “Yes. When those damn Russian captains can’t raise their anchors properly, they scrape the seabed and take the cables with them. And now it’s gone wrong again. Last Christmas we were without power from Sweden for a month and a half because of it, but it isn’t quite so bad this time.
    “So every time something like this happens, Sam’s sitting out there onhis boat turning away all the boats on course with the cable ship that’s busy repairing the damaged cable.”
    “I see. I would’ve liked to talk to him about Habersaat. They were friends, weren’t they?”
    “Habersaat, good heavens!” he snorted. “Yeah, maybe they were friends, but Habersaat wasn’t exactly easy to be friends with. He could play cards with Uncle Sam. That was about all they had in common in the last few years.”
    “So you don’t think Habersaat could have confided in Sam about the case he was so obsessed with?”
    “I’m a hundred percent sure he did the first ten years. But you know what? Even a man like Uncle Sam can get tired, okay? Sam’s a nice guy, but not
that
nice. No, no. They played cards once in a while. That’s all, if you ask me.”
    “You don’t think Sam knew just
how
bad things had become with Christian Habersaat?”
    “How would he know that? He’s out at sea most of the time and Habersaat wasn’t exactly the sort of man to show his feelings, now, was he? But why don’t you call Uncle Sam? Or maybe you don’t think we Bornholm folk have access to the telephone network?”
    He laughed, giving them the number. But the line was busy.
    *   *   *
    A strange feeling of loss hung over Habersaat’s otherwise totally normal redbrick house. It wasn’t a haunted feeling, more the impression of something that would never awaken. It was like the enchanted castle in
Sleeping Beauty
that had