Bjarke Habersaat

Bjarke Habersaat, the son of Christian Habersaat and June Habersaat, is introduced through death and gradually reconstructed through objects and testimony. A scrap of paper, a Boy Scout photograph, a homemade snowplow, and a poem turn him from a bereaved father’s lost son into a figure whose love for Frank Brennan and resentment over rejection may explain his connection to Alberte Goldschmid’s death. The explanation arrives through Christian’s anguished interpretation, not through Bjarke himself, leaving his story inseparable from the uncertainty and grief surrounding it.

Identity and first appearance

When Carl Mørck and Assad encounter Bjarke, he is sitting alone in a worn armchair, his legs drawn up and a bottle of paint thinner in his hand. The scene offers no account of what led him there. Instead, the investigation presents a stark physical image and then a small written remnant: Carl reads a scrap bearing an apology to Bjarke’s father. Assad finds the message strange, a brief response to a death whose meaning has not yet been established.

The news is delivered to June Habersaat as a double disclosure: her son has died, and the medical officer places the time of his death at approximately four o’clock. The circumstances are described as suicide, but the supplied account does not establish the precise means or explain Bjarke’s decision. The apology to his father remains the nearest thing to a parting message in this early account. Its brevity contrasts with the extensive explanations that others will later build around him.

The Boy Scout and the snowplow

A photograph gives Bjarke a more public, energetic aspect. He is grinning in a Boy Scout uniform, with his cap low over his forehead, a shoulder cord, and a knife decorated with small shields at his belt. The description emphasizes his pride in his troop-assistant distinctions and in a small enterprise, probably charitable. He is leaning against a four-wheel-drive vehicle fitted with a plow of his own making. The image records initiative and self-regard, but it also supplies a detail that will acquire a disturbing connection to the Alberte case.

Frank Brennan recalls an encounter on the road in which Alberte smiled at someone driving a snowplow bearing an inscription, although there was no snow and Christmas was still more than a month away. Frank says he had made it appear that he would steer around her, then deliberately turned the vehicle into her and her bicycle. The account connects Alberte’s brief smile to the snowplow image; it does not, by itself, establish who was driving the vehicle she saw. Bjarke’s photograph and his father’s later recollection of a Christmas-tree-selling device bring his improvised work into the inquiry, while leaving the identification of the driver to the wider investigation.

Attachment to Frank and rejection

Frank describes Bjarke as an eager helper who assisted with excavations at Knarhøj. He recalls that Bjarke was devoted to what he did and that, at some point, Bjarke wanted to give him something while declaring his love. Frank says he did not want the gift. He told Bjarke that they were leaving; Bjarke responded by blaming Alberte. Frank remembers the accusation only later, when it comes back to him as something he had not understood at the time.

That recollection gives personal circumstances to the anger Christian later finds in Bjarke’s writing. It places Bjarke close to Frank through shared work, then records a rupture: Frank rejects his declaration and announces his departure, while Bjarke directs blame toward Alberte. The scene supports a connection between rejection and resentment, but its account comes from Frank, not Bjarke. What Bjarke intended beyond the words Frank remembers remains unavailable to the reader.

The poem and Christian’s reconstruction

A poem attributed to Bjarke becomes the key to Christian’s later interpretation. Its technical ineptitude does not obscure its emotional content: the poem concerns rejected love and intense anger. As it is read aloud, that anger is understood as directed at Frank for bringing their world down, for the harm Frank’s decisions caused Bjarke’s family, and even for existing. The poem therefore broadens the conflict beyond romantic rejection; in this reading, private hurt and the perceived ruin of a family have become entangled.

Christian says that finding the poem was what finally enabled him to understand the case. He concludes that Bjarke loved the same man as his wife and that Bjarke killed Alberte after being pushed aside in favor of the younger woman. Christian believes Bjarke wrote the poem sometime afterward, probably shortly before moving out. He describes the explanation as newly clear and logical, while also saying that it breaks his heart. His certainty gives Bjarke’s scattered clues a causal shape, but it remains Christian’s reconstruction of events rather than a confession by Bjarke.

Narrative role and significance

Bjarke’s story is assembled retrospectively. At first, the note and the report of his death invite questions without answering them. Later, the photograph, the recollection of Knarhøj, the roadside snowplow, and the poem become a chain of clues through which Christian reconsiders his son and the Alberte case. Each object changes the emphasis: the photograph suggests pride and invention; Frank’s memory supplies rejection and blame; the poem makes the anger legible to those who read it.

This delayed reconstruction also preserves a distinction between evidence and explanation. Bjarke’s affection for Frank, the rejected declaration, the accusation against Alberte, and the poem’s anger are reported through other people. Christian connects them to Alberte’s killing, but the account does not give Bjarke a voice with which to confirm his father’s conclusion. He remains both the subject of an investigation and the absent center of a family’s attempt to make sense of loss.