Carl Mørck and Christian Habersaat

Carl Mørck and Christian Habersaat are linked first by a half-remembered encounter and a phone call Carl is eager to end, then by the unresolved Alberte case that Habersaat leaves behind. Their relationship is brief in direct contact but consequential: Carl’s initial refusal becomes part of the circumstances that bring Department Q to Bornholm and into the investigation Habersaat had struggled to pursue.

An acquaintance Carl barely remembers

Habersaat introduces himself as someone Carl had met “a lifetime ago,” but Carl cannot immediately recall him. Bornholm comes to mind, and Carl remembers a prison escort, yet the name itself does not at first connect to a clear memory. His hesitation establishes the imbalance between the two men: Habersaat has sought out a familiar name and a possible source of help, while Carl is still trying to work out who is calling.

Habersaat approaches Carl with both praise and a request. He refers to Carl’s recent success in solving the complicated circus case at Bellahøj, acknowledges that the culprit’s suicide prevented a trial, and then explains that he is serving with the Bornholm Police in Rønne. Habersaat is due to retire the next day. He recalls having once known what was happening across much of the island’s central and eastern districts, but says that the work no longer feels exciting. His account makes the call more than a routine referral: he is at the end of his police career, looking for someone he believes might take seriously what he has not been able to resolve.

The call Carl turns away

Carl quickly suspects that Habersaat wants Department Q to take on a case. Rather than hear him out, Carl redirects him to colleagues on the floors above, explaining that Department Q already has too much work. The call falls silent, and Habersaat hangs up. Carl stares at the receiver, irritated rather than alarmed by the abrupt ending; he assumes that a caller who is so easily offended does not deserve a more sympathetic response.

The refusal is sharpened by Carl’s practical resistance to the setting and the work. He does not want another case, particularly one connected to Bornholm, and the call arrives while he is focused on other matters. He has also just heard Habersaat refer to the circus case, whose suicide ending does not trouble him in the way it troubled Rose. The contrast matters: what Habersaat treats as a reason to approach Carl is, to Carl, neither an invitation nor a burden worth taking up. Their first substantial exchange therefore ends before Habersaat can explain the case that has brought him to the phone.

Suicide and the unfinished appeal

About twenty minutes later, Rose asks whether Carl has spoken with Sergeant Habersaat. Carl shrugs; his attention is elsewhere. The next day, Rose reports the news from Rønne: Habersaat arrived at his farewell reception in the community hall in Listed, and fifty minutes later released the safety on his pistol and shot himself in the head in front of ten witnesses. The formal end of his police career becomes instead a public and devastating death. Carl has no time to recover the conversation before its significance changes.

When Carl meets the local police, he acknowledges that he spoke briefly with Habersaat the previous afternoon. He says that Habersaat wanted to involve him in a case and that he had probably not been receptive enough. He then proposes that Department Q take a closer look, expecting the local officer’s agreement. Habersaat’s email, in which he described Department Q as his last hope, gives the missed call a clearer shape: the request had not been a casual attempt to pass along work. Carl cannot restore the conversation or know what Habersaat might have disclosed, but he can act on the case he left behind.

A relationship carried into the investigation

The connection between the two men continues mainly through the testimony and recollections Carl encounters while investigating Alberte’s death. The case reaches back to November 20, 1997, when students at Bornholm Folk High School had experienced an ordinary day, unaware that Alberte had been killed in a car accident that morning. More than a day passed before she was found thrown high into a roadside tree. Christian Habersaat, then a uniformed officer from Nexø, happened to look up as his car passed it. For Carl, this history explains what lay behind the call: Habersaat was reaching out from a long, unresolved investigation, not simply seeking assistance with a new assignment.

Witnesses describe how Habersaat returned repeatedly to questions about Alberte’s relationships and the man she had been seeing. Inge Dalby recalls being asked about the man’s name at least ten times, even though she had already answered the police in Rønne. She remembers Habersaat as strange and disliked him from the beginning; in her account, he kept returning to the school, trying to get people to point to someone among them as responsible. She also recalls that Alberte had mentioned an exotic-sounding name, and that the man apparently came from Copenhagen and was associated with a Volkswagen. These details are not direct memories Carl and Habersaat share. They are the investigative residue through which Carl learns what Habersaat had pursued and how persistently he had pursued it.

That residue also prevents a simple reading of Habersaat as either an ignored colleague or a flawless investigator. The accounts show sustained attention to Alberte’s case, but also repeated questioning that witnesses experienced as pressure. Carl inherits both the unresolved work and the human consequences of the methods used to pursue it. The relationship’s decisive change is thus from an incomplete exchange between former acquaintances to an indirect bond formed through investigation: Habersaat’s final appeal becomes a responsibility Carl accepts only after it can no longer be answered in person.