Habersaat Finds Plywood Fragments and a Board Linked to the Case

Habersaat’s search for the object that struck Alberte Goldschmid yielded two pieces of possible evidence, found nearly three years apart: a small birch-plywood splinter near her bicycle and a larger board recovered from the rocks at Hammerknuden. He believed they belonged to the same chain of events, but the connection was never established by the comparison he sought. The clue is therefore both material and incomplete: it gives the investigation a possible object and a line of inquiry, while preserving the limits that kept suspicion from becoming proof.

The Splinter Near Alberte’s Bicycle

In a report dated Monday, November 24, 1997, at 10:32, Habersaat recorded finding a short splinter of processed wood after technicians had cleared the area. It lay six meters north of Alberte’s bicycle. Its position mattered to him because it appeared to fall almost on a straight line between the point where the bicycle had been hit and where it came to rest. The splinter was thus not merely a fragment in the landscape: its location made it a possible trace along the collision’s path.

The local technicians identified the material as birch, and remnants of glue suggested that the piece came from plywood. But they found no comparable fragments in the collision area and concluded that the splinter did not originate in the collision itself. That distinction is central to the clue. The fragment’s placement invited a connection to the impact, while the technical assessment cautioned against treating proximity and alignment as proof. Habersaat kept the splinter and his notes, preserving both the physical object and the disagreement about what it could establish.

The Board at Hammerknuden

On August 2, 2000, a ten-year-old boy, Peter Svendsen of Hasle, pulled a wedged board from the rocks while playing at Camel Head Cliffs. Habersaat’s journal identifies the find with Hammerknuden. The board had two visible boreholes and faint shadows on one side, which might have been remnants of printing. Habersaat requested a thorough analysis of its wood and received authorization after discussion with his superiors.

The board was also birch. That shared material made comparison with the splinter plausible, but not conclusive: a closer examination could not determine with certainty whether the two pieces came from the same board. Habersaat proposed a physical explanation for the difference. Because plywood consists of glued layers, he theorized that the splinter had peeled from an outer layer while the board was in the water, leaving its central eighteen millimeters intact. Working with technicians, he estimated that the original board had been between twenty and twenty-four millimeters thick. This reconstruction offered a way the small fragment and larger object might fit together, but it remained his theory rather than a verified match.

The Missing Comparison

Habersaat asked for a comparative analysis of the glue on the splinter and the plywood. The request was not authorized. Without that test, the most direct means he had identified for linking the two pieces was unavailable; matching birch and a possible layered-board explanation could support his suspicion, but could not settle it. His journal records both his conviction that the board was involved in the collision and his recognition that driftwood and other flotsam were common on the island. The same wood type, he acknowledged, might be coincidence.

A red-ink note beneath the journal entry adds another break in the chain: the plywood board found on August 2, 2000, had gone missing, possibly destroyed. The note does not establish what happened to it or why. Its practical consequence is plain, however: the object Habersaat considered crucial was no longer available for the further examination he had wanted. The evidence survives through his written account, including his hypothesis and his uncertainty, rather than through a confirmed forensic comparison.

The Records Revisited

The investigation encounters these discoveries through Habersaat’s homemade journals and the papers Rose has kept on the wall. She gives Carl Mørck a sheet bearing the splinter, secured with tape to a thin wooden sliver no more than two centimeters long, then shows him the progress notes beneath it. Carl reads the November 1997 report aloud before Rose brings down another journal, opening the later episode at Hammerknuden. The sequence makes the records themselves part of the clue: one fragment leads to a report, the report to a second object, and the second object to an unanswered comparison and a missing board.

When Assad asks what the cliffs were called, the place-name becomes the immediate next question in the room. The surviving material does not resolve the Alberte case on its own. Instead, it preserves the precise grounds for Habersaat’s suspicion and the reasons that suspicion remained uncertain: the splinter’s position, the two objects’ shared material, the unconfirmed relationship between them, the refused glue test, and the later disappearance of the board. The clue matters as an investigative lead, but also as a record of how a plausible physical connection can remain just beyond verification.