Atu Flees Back to Bornholm

Atu’s flight back to Bornholm turns his disappearance into a pursuit with an uncertain purpose: investigators learn that he has taken the night ferry to Rønne, while a witness’s account places a conspicuous older man in yellow at Bjarke’s home just before the funeral. The island is both a destination and a complication. Carl recognizes that Atu is there, but cannot tell why he has returned to a place that seems, at first, an unlikely refuge.

The confrontation before his disappearance

Atu’s departure follows a sharp break with Pirjo. During their confrontation, he takes the money from a drawer and tells her that she has ruined his life; he says his life’s work will be ruined unless he can get Bjarke to confess. The demand for a confession gives his immediate actions a clear focus, even as the precise connection between Bjarke’s confession and the threatened collapse of Atu’s work remains unstated.

The scene is also a personal severance. Pirjo wants Atu to embrace her and hold her hand, but he does not look at her. Instead, he tells her that she will have to take her punishment and that he demands it of her, before adding that he has something to do. He then disappears. The contrast between the tenderness Pirjo hopes for and Atu’s refusal makes the departure feel like more than a practical interruption: he leaves her with an accusation and an ultimatum, not reassurance or explanation.

The ferry report and the return route

The search acquires a definite direction when a colleague at Police Headquarters reports feedback from police in Ystad: the man they are looking for was seen travelling aboard the night ferry from Ystad to Rønne. Carl ends the call and recognizes that Atu is on Bornholm. The report establishes a route and destination, but not what Atu intends to do there or whether the ferry sighting alone proves every stage of his movements.

Carl’s first reaction is uncertainty. Bornholm seems to him the last place Atu would choose if he were trying to avoid the investigation. That apparent contradiction becomes the central question of the return: a suspect who might be expected to keep away has gone back to an island where his movements can be traced and where people connected to Bjarke may still be found. Carl does not resolve the contradiction at once. The journey instead gives the investigators a fresh lead to follow.

Assad offers a more suspicious reading. He thinks Atu has gone to dispose of clues the investigators have missed, because Atu knows they cannot pin anything on him without evidence. This remains Assad’s assessment, not a confirmed account of Atu’s purpose. Its importance is that the ferry report changes the problem from locating a missing man to anticipating what he might do with the advantage of time and the absence of proof.

The man in yellow and Bjarke’s funeral

On Bornholm, a young man moving things into a neighboring house says that another person had asked about the woman the investigators were seeking. He describes that visitor as an older man dressed entirely in yellow, with a tan and dimples. The detail is distinctive enough to prompt Carl and Assad to look at each other. The witness’s description does not itself name Atu, but it gives the investigators a concrete sighting to compare with the ferry information.

A woman later recounts the visitor’s appearance at Bjarke’s home. Bjarke had been kept in Copenhagen until the postmortem was completed, and his funeral was taking place that day. When told that Bjarke was dead and could not be visited, the man in yellow turned pale, his eyes became bright, and he reacted with disbelief. He insisted that Bjarke had murdered a girl and needed to confess. The woman regarded that accusation as an ugly lie about someone she had loved, while Carl immediately seized on the name Bjarke and asked whether that was truly what the man had said.

The visitor had also mumbled that Bjarke’s mother had to help him, then abruptly asked whether she was still alive. The woman withheld the answer, saying she had not dared tell him. This exchange ties the visit to both the demand for a confession and the question of Bjarke’s mother, but it leaves the visitor’s knowledge and intentions only partly legible. Carl’s reaction—recognizing that he had several matters to sort out—shows how the island evidence complicates rather than immediately settles the case.

Significance and limits of the pursuit

The return to Bornholm links three strands that might otherwise remain separate: Atu’s disappearance after confronting Pirjo, the police effort to establish where the sought man went, and the man in yellow’s disturbed visit to Bjarke shortly before the funeral. The ferry supplies a route; the witness supplies an appearance; the funeral account supplies words and questions that echo Atu’s earlier insistence that Bjarke confess. Together, these details make the return significant without making its purpose certain.

That uncertainty matters to the pursuit. Carl and Assad have a location and a suspicious pattern, but Assad explicitly recognizes that suspicion is not evidence. The narrative therefore holds Atu between two states: he has been found in the sense that the investigators know he is on Bornholm, yet what he means to do there remains unresolved. His return advances the search while sharpening its central evidentiary problem—how to turn the signs of a possible effort to reach or influence Bjarke’s family into something that can be proved.