The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler-Olsen Page B

been lying in slumber, like something forlorn and stale, waiting in vain for the redeeming and liberating kiss.
    “The life never returned to this house after the family was split up, can you feel it?” Rose said as she put the key in.
    The acrid sour smell that hit them confirmed it.
    “Eugh, couldn’t the technicians at least have aired the place out?” she continued.
    In other cases, smells of this sort were usually due to waste andrubbish that had never been thrown out. Vegetables rotting in forgotten drawers. The fermenting contents of half-empty tins. Months’ worth of washing up. But Habersaat’s house wasn’t at all like that. Overwhelming, chaotic amounts of paper in every direction dominated the first impression, but if you looked at it through different eyes, everything seemed well organized, meticulously and thoughtfully arranged and laid out. The kitchen was spotless, almost shining, and the living room neatly vacuumed, just as the dusting had also been done to the extent it could with all the hundreds of piles of paper.
    “It stinks of nicotine and frustration here,” Assad said from a corner where a meter-high pile of journal papers threatened to collapse.
    “More like years of withdrawal and cellulose,” countered Carl.
    “Do you really believe that the technicians have been through all this?” asked Assad, his arms outstretched over the landscape of paper heaps.
    Carl took a deep breath. “Hardly,” he said.
    “Where on earth should we start?” sighed Rose.
    “Good question. Now maybe you know the explanation behind why he gave up, and why the police in Rønne were so willing to give us the key and let us take possession of Habersaat’s material. So thanks for that, Rose,” said Carl. “Maybe it would be an idea if Assad and I went home tonight and you stay here. With your talent for systematizing, you could have this lot in alphabetical and chronological order according to subject in . . . well, a month or two, I reckon.”
    Carl laughed but she didn’t react.
    “There is something or other buried here that could take this case forward. I have a strong feeling about it. I’m certain we can get further than Habersaat if we really want to,” answered Rose a little harshly.
    She was probably right, but it would take weeks for a whole workforce of people to plow through all this material, and it went absolutely against his will. With just a preliminary view, it looked as if Habersaat had mapped the entirety of Bornholm in the days after the fatal traffic accident, not to mention the hundreds of leads he’d followed in the years since. Each lead in its pile.
    But where was the pile that meant more than all the others?
    “We pack it all up and take it back to Police Headquarters,” said Rose.
    Carl frowned. “Over my dead body, and anyway we don’t have room. Where the hell do you think this mausoleum of paper should end up?”
    “We’ll make a special area in the room where Assad is painting.”
    “Then I’m not finishing the painting job,” came the reply from the corner.
    “Wow, wait a minute, you two. Wasn’t that room earmarked for Gordon, ready for when he’s finished with his training? What do you suppose our dear boss, Lars Bjørn, will say when his favorite doesn’t get the place in Department Q he’s insisted on?”
    “I didn’t think you cared about what Lars Bjørn thought or said, Carl,” Rose replied.
    Carl smiled drolly. He damn well didn’t care.
He
was the head of Department Q, not Lars Bjørn, even though he thought he was. And it was funds earmarked for Department Q that he was pinching, so if he had something to complain about, Carl knew whose ear to whisper in. No, Bjørn just had to keep his mouth shut, but that wasn’t what was at the heart of the matter. Carl simply didn’t want more paper and junk in the communal area of the cellar, and that was that.
    “Gordon is welcome to sit in with me while the case is running,” Assad said. “I like