Atu Rescues Carl and Assad

Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi’s intervention saves Carl Mørck and Assad after Pirjo incapacitates them in the control room, but it does not resolve his own culpability or intentions. He summons emergency help and is later identified as the person who probably freed the injured detectives; at the same time, his angry response makes clear that he fears the attack will bring suspicion upon him for something Bjarke Habersaat did.

The intervention in the control room

The rescue begins while Pirjo is still in the control room. After the screen flashes, she collapses in her seat and loses feeling in her arms and legs. Atu, who has been elsewhere in the room, shouts at her; she recognizes his voice. When he appears in front of her, snarling, he tells her that Carl and Assad are unconscious but alive. His immediate assessment establishes the stakes of what has happened: the detectives have been gravely injured, but they have not been killed.

Atu takes the telephone from the table and dials frantically. Pirjo hears him say words including police and ambulance. This call is the first concrete act of assistance in the scene: rather than leave the injured men where they fell, he alerts the authorities and medical services. The later police account confirms the urgency of that response. Carl and Assad are found on the control-room floor with multiple injuries and their feet tied with cables.

Anger, suspicion, and Bjarke

The rescue is not presented as a simple reconciliation between Atu and Pirjo. As he calls for help, Atu accuses her of having made him look suspicious for something Bjarke did. His complaint connects the immediate crisis to the larger danger surrounding Bjarke’s conduct: Pirjo’s assault has created circumstances in which Atu fears that investigators will associate him with another person’s actions.

Atu also tells Pirjo that she has ruined his life and that his life’s work will be ruined unless he can get Bjarke to confess. The money he takes from a drawer as she tries to nod adds a practical gesture to this outburst, but the scene supplies no further explanation of what he intends to do with it. What it does establish is the pressure behind his words. He is trying to protect his work and to obtain a confession from Bjarke, while recognizing that the events in the control room may turn suspicion toward him instead.

This combination of assistance and self-protection complicates the meaning of the rescue. Atu acts to get help for Carl and Assad, but his speech is focused on the damage Pirjo’s actions may do to his own position and work. The episode therefore reveals neither uncomplicated benevolence nor a clear explanation of all his motives. It shows an intervention taking place amid anger, fear of exposure, and a separate demand that Bjarke confess.

What the investigators can establish

When Carl and Assad later receive a preliminary report, the circumstances of their discovery are clear: both had been left on the floor of the control room with multiple injuries, and cables had been used to tie their feet. Their rescuers are not. The police do not know who cut them free, and the account rules out the woman who had bled to death. That uncertainty matters: Atu’s emergency call is directly connected to the rescue, but the initial report does not establish that he was the person who physically released the detectives.

Medical assessment underscores the cost of the assault. Carl has a bandage around his ankle, while Assad’s injured hand receives a provisional dressing. The doctor decides that both should be admitted to Kalmar Hospital for observation, despite their apparent lack of life-threatening injuries. Assad’s thumb is likely to require amputation, an injury to which he seemingly does not react. Carl, seeing Assad, puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes it; he cannot put into words what Assad has endured in sacrificing himself. Their survival is therefore not a return to safety without consequence.

The later identification and its limits

The uncertainty about who called for help and who freed the detectives is revisited while Carl and Assad are driving toward Listed. Ella Persson, a police secretary from Kalmar, contacts them on behalf of Criminal Inspector Frans Sundström. By listening again to the emergency-dispatch recording, the police have identified the caller as the leader of the Nature Absorption Academy on Öland: Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi. They also have reason to believe that he was the person who cut Carl and Assad free, although the call presents this as a well-supported inference rather than a witnessed fact.

The identification changes how the detectives must understand Atu’s actions. The call establishes that he summoned the police and an ambulance; the probable freeing of the men gives his intervention a more direct, physical dimension. Yet the officers receive this information too late to act on it as an arrest lead. Assad tells Ella that Atu has passed away and that the local Bornholm Police will presumably provide a report. The journey then continues in silence as the information sinks in.

The event thus ends with a belated clarification rather than a full account of Atu’s intentions. His voice on the emergency tape confirms that he sought outside help, and the investigators come to believe that he also freed them. But the identity of the person who cut the cables remains initially unknown, while Atu’s death prevents the proposed arrest and leaves no opportunity for further questioning. His rescue of Carl and Assad is both a decisive act of intervention and a final complication in the case: it changes the light in which his conduct is viewed without making every uncertainty disappear.