Department Q's search for Frank

Department Q’s search for Frank is a gradual effort to turn a common first name into an identifiable person. The investigation moves from the problem of finding one Frank among thousands to a network of recollections about Bornholm, sun cults, and a former companion named Simon Fisher. Each lead makes Frank’s past more legible, while the question of where he went remains unresolved.

From a First Name to a Search Strategy

Carl Mørck recognizes that the name Frank alone cannot identify the man connected to Alberte Goldschmid. He estimates that the person they seek might have been in his mid-twenties or early thirties at the relevant time, then compares that likely age range with the number of people given the name Frank in Denmark. Statistics Denmark’s figures establish the scale of the problem: 11,319 people were registered with the name, and about 500 had received it since 1987. To narrow the historical search, Carl asks Assad to obtain figures for people named Frank between 1968 and 1973. If that cohort numbers in the thousands, Department Q cannot simply summon everyone for questioning; the search will require a way to distinguish the right Frank from the rest.

That practical difficulty shapes the inquiry. Rather than treat the name as a sufficient lead, the investigators look for people and places that might connect it to Alberte and to the man seen outside her school. The investigation therefore advances through remembered details, old photographs, professional contacts, and the recollections of people who encountered Frank in alternative spiritual circles.

Memories of Alberte and Bornholm

Gordon reports that Lise W., a former schoolgirl who has since become a high-school teacher in Frederikshavn, may have preserved useful evidence from a trip. She took photographs at Østerlars Church, though she does not know where the pictures are now and promises to look for them. Their potential importance is concrete: the images could preserve a visual record from a trip associated with the man Alberte dated.

Lise also remembers meeting a man who boasted that he could bend spoons by thought. He called himself Uri Geller the Second, laughing when the girls doubted him. Lise suspects that this was Alberte’s boyfriend, but cannot explain why he used the name. Carl recognizes the allusion to a well-known seventies performer who demonstrated spoon-bending and other tricks in the media. The recollection supplies a distinctive identifying feature, although it does not by itself settle the man’s identity.

The search then follows Frank’s connection to Bornholm. Carl contacts a museum director whom Assad identifies as an archaeologist who excavated material related to the island’s sun cult. When the archaeologist is asked whether Frank might be Frank Scott, Rose signals approval to Assad, and she turns to the computer with a name to pursue. The exchange marks a shift from an anonymous first name toward a specific candidate, though the supplied leads do not establish that the search has located Frank himself.

Frank’s Spiritual Project and Simon Fisher

The archaeologist recalls that Frank disappeared from Bornholm but corresponded with him for several months. Their contact was by letter, not email; Frank was described as old-fashioned, and the archaeologist says he no longer has the correspondence. The letters are thus a lost source: they once connected Frank’s ideas to a witness, but cannot now be consulted directly by Department Q.

The recollection nevertheless gives the investigators a clearer picture of Frank’s intellectual project. He was seriously interested in sun cults and sought links between them and a theory that religions originated in a common source: the sun, the seasons, and the zodiac. The archaeologist understood Frank to be assembling his own spiritual philosophy by collecting and combining whatever material he considered useful. Frank also described the man accompanying him as a witness of truth.

Department Q broadens its inquiries among alternative therapists, sorting potential witnesses by whether they are old enough, sufficiently well, and able to remember events from nearly twenty years earlier. Two people prove especially useful: an esoteric astrologer and an Aura-Soma therapist both remember Frank, his sunstones, and his sustained interest in sun cults. Their shared memories reinforce the Bornholm account, while the details about the stones provide another distinctive feature for identifying him.

The Aura-Soma therapist remembers the companion’s name: Simon Fisher. The witnesses found the pairing symbolically apt, understanding Frank as a messiah figure and Simon as a follower. The therapist also recalls Simon’s interest in her medicinal-plant garden and his wish to have a similar garden of his own. This personal detail becomes a traceable lead when Department Q learns that Simon later acquired a garden center in Tempelkrogen, in Holbæk. The center gives the investigation a concrete connection to one of Frank’s former associates, but the evidence presented does not show that Simon’s business reveals Frank’s present location.

Former Associates and the Limits of the Trail

Another inquiry returns Department Q to Frank’s time at the Ølene camp on Bornholm. When Carl raises the subject, the person he is questioning initially asks whether the matter concerns Rolf, then says he does not know anyone named Alberte apart from the singer. Carl and his colleagues explain their business, but the conversation yields no immediate identification of Frank. Instead, the former associate describes a conflict: Frank always wanted to dictate everything, and he left because he would not accept that control.

The departure gives the search a rough direction. The associate says he left when they returned to Zealand. Frank, by contrast, wanted to go to Sweden or Norway and establish something that could make money, described as a kind of course center. The plan fits the larger picture of a man seeking to gather followers around a spiritual system of his own, but it remains an intention reported by someone who had separated from him. Department Q assembles a profile and a set of routes to investigate—Bornholm, Simon Fisher’s garden center, and a proposed center in Sweden or Norway—without yet confirming which route Frank took or where he is.