The Hanging Girl Read Online Free PDF

Could a hoist have been used?”
    Did Assad say “cordage”? A very specific word coming from him.
    Birkedal nodded, as there was certainly nothing wrong with the questions. “No, the technicians found nothing to indicate that.”
    “You can refill from the thermos in the dining hall,” came the message from the hotel proprietor standing in the doorway.
    It took no more than a split second before the coffee flowed dark in Assad’s cup while he poured sugar directly from the bowl. How could his poor hardworking taste buds survive all his strange challenges?
    The others shook their heads when he offered to pour the coffee for them.
    “How can it be that there weren’t any leads from the collision?” he asked, turning around. “You’d expect some skid marks or at the very least some tire marks. Had it been raining?”
    “No, nothing to speak of, as far as I know,” answered Birkedal. “The report mentions that the state of the roads had been reasonably dry.”
    “Then what about the direction the body was thrown up in?” Carl continued. “Was that properly investigated? Were there visibly broken branches from where the body had been hurled up? Or was it possible to infer anything from the position of the body on the branches or the position of the bike in the thicket?”
    “Based on a witness statement from an elderly married couple who lived on a farm on the bend a little farther down, it was concluded that during the morning a vehicle came speeding from the west outside theirhouse. The old couple didn’t see the vehicle but they could hear the car revving up beyond all reason just outside the house and driving at full speed toward the last bend before the place where the tree stood.
    “We’re quite convinced that it was the hit-and-run driver that the old couple heard and that the girl was hit head on near the trees, and that the vehicle then drove off in the direction of the highway intersection without slowing down.”
    “What’s that based on?”
    “On the witness testimony and the experience of the technicians from previous hit-and-runs.”
    “Aha.” Carl shook his head. All these known and unknown factors. He was already tired just thinking about it. Suddenly the desk back home in the cellar of the police station seemed far away.
    “Who was the girl, then?” The unavoidable question was asked from which there was no turning back once an answer had been given.
    “Alberte Goldschmid. Despite her rather flamboyant surname she was an ordinary girl. One of those who suddenly felt freedom far away from mom and dad and reacted accordingly. You couldn’t call her directly promiscuous but she was into a bit of this and that now that she had the freedom to do so. Everything certainly indicates that she took advantage of the couple of weeks she was over here, quite intensely.”
    “Intensely? What do you mean?” asked Rose.
    “A couple of partners here and there.”
    “Okay, did the girl become pregnant?”
    “The autopsy said no.”
    “And it would be superfluous to inquire after foreign DNA on the body,” she continued.
    “The year was 1997, need I say more? Three years before the central DNA register was set up. I don’t think there was an intensive search. But no, there were no traces of semen in her or foreign skin under her nails. She was as clean as someone who’d just stepped out of the shower, which she probably had, seeing as she took her bike before the other students had even assembled for breakfast.”
    “Let me get this right,” said Carl. “You know nothing, is that correct? This is the story of a locked-room murder and Habersaat was the local Sherlock Holmes, who for once fell short.”
    Birkedal shrugged his shoulders again. He couldn’t answer that either.
    “Right, then,” said Assad, draining the remainder of the hot coffee in one gulp. “Let’s call that a wrap, then.”
    Did he really just say that?
    Rose turned unfazed toward Birkedal, again with her sugar-sweet