Inge Dalby's disclosure about Frank

Inge Dalby's disclosure about Frank Brennan turns a guarded interview into a crucial, but incomplete, piece of the investigation into Alberte Goldschmid's death. Inge admits that she had a sexual relationship with Frank before she began at the school, describes his VW Kombi, and confirms that he used the name Frank with her. Yet the account also exposes how much she had not told the police before—and raises questions about what she knew of his connection to Alberte.

The Case Behind the Interview

By the time Carl Mørck and Rose question Inge, the inquiry has been reopened after years in which Alberte's death was treated as an accident. The papers Superintendent Birkedal had passed on had not been updated since 2002, and investigators had never properly considered premeditated murder. Christian Habersaat had pursued his own theory, but his insistence may have pushed others away rather than persuading them to test the case anew.

Carl has begun to pursue the possibility that the driver of a VW Kombi deliberately struck Alberte. A photograph of a man beside such a vehicle appears to point toward a suspect, and Carl asks his chief for permission to make a public appeal on TV2's Station 2. The request is rejected: the case, the chief insists, was dismissed by Bornholm Police fifteen years earlier. Against this institutional resistance, Inge's recollections could supply a name, a vehicle description, or a connection the old inquiry missed.

The interview begins with a problem of disclosure. Inge says she is finished discussing that period of her life, but Carl tells her the police believe she withheld evidence previously and insists she answer his questions, warning that otherwise she will be taken to the station. After a silence, she acknowledges that there were many things she could have told Habersaat but did not. Her admission changes the status of what follows: this is not simply a witness supplying fresh memories, but someone accounting for the gap between what she knew and what she had said.

The Affair and the Van

Rose takes a calculated risk by asking whether Inge met Frank before she started at the school. Inge immediately asks how the investigators know that. They do not yet have a firm identification; the question is a test, and her reaction sharpens their attention. She then gives a specific chronology: she met Frank at the beginning of July, the day before a classic-car event. She says they had sex in his car for a period, and that choosing a secluded spot at the back of a grass area had been her idea. When the classic cars arrived earlier than expected, she left Frank to deal with the fact that they were parked where they should not be.

Inge also places the relationship alongside her relationship with Kristoffer Dalby: she was seeing him at the same time. Her account makes clear that Frank was not an incidental stranger she glimpsed once. She describes an ongoing sexual relationship and remembers its circumstances, including her wish to avoid being caught by her uncle with the man she called a hippie. The details give Carl and Rose a personal connection to investigate, even though they do not establish what Frank did to Alberte.

The vehicle description is more concrete still. Asked about the dark arched line visible in the photograph, Inge explains that the VW Kombi had a large peace sign on its roof, with the circle extending down the sides. She remembers posters inside, including more peace imagery, though she cannot identify what they depicted. She says Frank used the name Frank when they were together, and that she learned only a day or two later that he was the man Alberte had been seeing. She cannot explain why he used another name with Alberte, describing him as unusual and saying that his ideas meant little to her at the time beyond their sexual relationship.

Description, Doubt, and the Follow-Up

Inge's account helps make the man more imaginable as a person, not merely a figure in a photograph. She recalls a bead necklace, loose woven shirts, jeans, and unusually large homemade-looking boots with soles that seemed too wide; at times, she says, he looked like a Cossack. The detectives record further commonplace details about what the two did when they were apart. Such recollections may not independently identify a killer, but alongside the peace sign and the posters they give investigators features against which later information could be checked.

Carl asks Inge to let the police know if she plans to travel. She is not a direct suspect, he says, but could matter if questions arise and might be asked to identify the man if they find him. He also asks her to have her husband locate a photograph from a trip to Østerlars Church. His suggestion that she might need to return to the island to be with her children prompts a frown that seems on the verge of tears, and Carl asks whether she still sees them. The exchange does not resolve the question, but it marks the interview's movement beyond the affair: the detectives are trying to secure cooperation and find material that could corroborate her account.

The investigators also notice a tension in what Inge says about Frank's name. Rose points out that it is difficult to believe Inge would not know what the man she called her boyfriend went by, or would simply forget a name she had heard from Alberte. When Carl turns back to Inge, she appears caught out, but the scene does not establish exactly what she knew or why she withheld it. Her own explanation—that Frank used one name with her and another with Alberte—remains part of an account that supplies leads without fully settling their meaning.

What the Disclosure Does—and Does Not—Prove

The interview moves the investigation forward by linking Inge to Frank Brennan, by associating him with a distinctive VW Kombi, and by confirming that he was involved with Alberte. But those links are not proof that he killed her. Carl's reconstruction of the collision remains a hypothesis, and the team commissions technical checks on Habersaat's drawings, the possible wooden board and shovel blade, and whether Alberte's body could have struck the van's windshield. Inge's memories contribute to the search; they do not answer those forensic questions.

The eventual course of the case underscores that limitation. Carl later realizes that the hunt for the VW Kombi and the suspicions directed at Frank Brennan, also known as Atu, had sent the team down misleading paths. A photograph of Bjarke Habersaat beside a four-wheel drive fitted with a plow redirects attention toward Christian Habersaat's son; Christian's later writing says he came to believe Bjarke killed Alberte. June Habersaat, however, ultimately tells the investigators that she was the one who killed Alberte. In that final context, Inge's disclosure remains important not as a solution, but as a vivid example of how a true account of a relationship can generate a plausible lead without identifying the person responsible.