Inge Dalby

Inge Dalby is a former schoolmate of Alberte Goldschmid whose memories become important to the renewed investigation into Alberte’s death. First encountered in the old class photograph as Inge Kure, she is at once a witness to Alberte’s school years and a participant in the private history surrounding the unidentified man who was seeing her. Her disclosures show how resentment, embarrassment, and long silence had left important details outside the original account to police.

Identity and School Years

Inge was known as Inge Kure when she attended school with Alberte. When Carl Mørck and Assad revisit the class photograph, she is identified behind Alberte in the group. The image presents a sharp visual contrast: Inge is remembered as a slightly plump girl with dark curly hair, while Alberte occupies the front row and is described as the angel who lights up the scene. That contrast is part of the investigators’ view of the school group, not a measure of Inge’s character; it does, however, give a visual form to the imbalance she later describes between Alberte and the other pupils.

Her name also carries a small piece of the island’s social context. Inge explains that she was called Kure at school and preferred her mother’s maiden name. With so many people on Bornholm called Kure, Studsgaard, Pihl, or Kofoed, she and her husband had agreed to use a less common surname when they married. The explanation helps Carl and Assad locate her in the yearbook under a name they had not initially searched for.

Resentment Toward Alberte and Habersaat

Inge does not deny that Alberte’s arrival changed the atmosphere at school or that this change left her bitter. But she pushes back against the idea that she simply hated Alberte, and rejects the interpretation that Alberte had deliberately taken her boyfriend. Inge’s grievance was that he had offered himself to Alberte; to her, that distinction mattered. The episode continued to trouble her seventeen years later, not because she believed Alberte had schemed against her, but because the boyfriend’s choice made the rejection impossible to dismiss as something Alberte had forced.

The conversation with Carl takes place with Inge’s husband sitting opposite the investigators, hunched on the sofa and looking down. Inge speaks openly about the old hurt in front of him. The scene does not establish his response, but his silence is a visible part of the setting in which she recounts the past. Her testimony moves between remembered embarrassment, continuing bitterness, and the practical question of what she knew about Alberte’s final years.

Inge also recalls the repeated questioning by Christian Habersaat. She had told the police in Rønne what she knew, but Habersaat kept returning to the school and asking again about the man Alberte had been seeing. Inge says she disliked him from the beginning: she felt that he was pressing the former pupils to identify someone among them as responsible, and that when the first round of questioning produced no answer, he returned repeatedly to try again. She acknowledges that there were things she could have told him and did not. Her account therefore complicates the appearance of a complete original inquiry: information existed in the school group, but it was not all volunteered to the investigator who kept asking.

Her Relationship with Frank Brennan

Inge eventually tells Carl and Assad that she met Frank Brennan at the beginning of July, the day before a classic-car event. A photograph had placed her near the relevant scene, but she says that had it been taken ten seconds later she would have been visible on the other side. She admits that she and Frank had sex in his car for a time. She had suggested parking at the back of the grass area because it was secluded; when the classic cars arrived earlier than she expected, Frank dealt with the problem of being parked where they were not allowed, while she made her escape. She did not want her uncle to catch her with the man she regarded as a hippie.

At the time, Inge was also seeing Kristoffer. She says Frank could do things Kristoffer could not, and describes their sex as exceptionally intense. This admission makes her connection to Frank more than a passing encounter: she was involved with him while maintaining another relationship, and her account gives the investigators a direct witness to his manner and appearance. It also makes clear why details of the affair were not necessarily part of what she had told the police years earlier.

Inge remembers Frank as about six feet one, six or seven years older than she was, handsome, and marked by strong features. His voice was husky but warm. He was tanned, though pale beneath his clothes, and wore his long, almost ash-blond hair down to his collar. A small dimple in his chin stood out in certain light. She recalls no visible scar, bodily mark, or tattoo; he had talked about wanting tattoos but had not decided what to get. These details convert a name and a past affair into a specific physical description that could be compared with other evidence.

The Kombi and the Investigation

Inge’s recollection also clarifies the vehicle associated with Frank. When shown a photograph from a parking area, she says the VW has the same colour and shape as the one she remembers, while cautioning that it is not clear enough for certainty. Her more distinctive memory is the black arched line rising from the roof: she explains that it belonged to a large peace sign on the roof, whose circle extended partway down the sides. That detail links her firsthand account to the VW Kombi with the peace sign and gives the investigators a recognizable feature beyond the vehicle’s general type.

Her name resurfaces when someone reports that Inge Dalby also took photographs at Østerlars Church. The disclosure surprises the investigators, who stop to verify it. Inge’s position in the investigation thus changes: she is not only a former classmate with a memory of Alberte, but also a person connected to photographic evidence and the man whose identity the police are pursuing. The book does not make her the killer or present her as knowing the full truth. Her importance lies in the particular pieces she can supply and in the delay before she gives them.

Narrative Role

Inge’s account separates several things the investigation might otherwise collapse together: hostility toward Alberte, knowledge of Alberte’s boyfriend, and knowledge of Frank from her own affair with him. She had resented Alberte, but says the resentment arose from a boyfriend’s voluntary choice rather than a calculated act by Alberte. She had been questioned by Habersaat, but says his repeated efforts to obtain an accusation made her distrust him. And she knew Frank intimately enough to describe his body, voice, car, and the circumstances of their meetings, even though she had not put all of that information into the earlier police account.

The delayed disclosure makes Inge a hinge between the old school investigation and the renewed search. Her testimony does not resolve every uncertainty: the photograph of the VW is too unclear for her to identify it conclusively, and the account does not establish what she knew about Frank beyond her own experience. But it changes the evidentiary picture. The former pupil who had once appeared behind Alberte in a class photograph can now place Frank in a specific time and setting, identify the car’s distinctive peace sign, and explain why the past had remained painful—and partly unspoken—for so long.