June Shoots Atu Dead at the Funeral

June Habersaat’s shooting of Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi at Bjarke Habersaat’s funeral turns a graveside gathering into a murder scene, a failed suicide, and an attempted escape. Carl Mørck and Assad witness the killing but cannot intervene before the shots are fired. The pistol’s eventual identification links the scene to the weapons once owned by Christian Habersaat, while the setting gives Atu’s death an unsettling counterpoint to the spiritual identity he had fashioned for himself.

The funeral and the approach

Carl Mørck and Assad reach the churchyard after spotting a blue Volvo with Swedish plates. They leave Nelly Rasmussen behind and hurry toward the mourners. At the bottom of the churchyard, the burial is already almost over: the vicar has stepped aside with his small shovel, and earth has been thrown onto the coffin. About a hundred meters ahead, a man in yellow is moving straight toward the group. It is Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi.

The detectives have two urgent concerns. They do not want Atu to see them and flee again, but they also fear for June Habersaat, whose intentions they cannot know. Their approach is therefore cautious and divided between interception and protection. That uncertainty lasts only moments. June goes to the edge of the grave and throws something in. The people who see it react audibly; then she reaches into her bag and takes out another object.

Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi calls June Habersaat’s name in a desperate voice as he nears the grave. The mourners hesitate, startled, then pull back together. He stretches his arms out to either side and speaks to her, but Carl Mørck and Assad cannot hear what he says. The distance between the approaching man and the woman at the grave closes while the detectives quicken their pace.

The shooting and the interrupted suicide

The object in June Habersaat’s hand is a pistol of a conspicuous caliber. She fires suddenly, four or five times. The shots echo against the churchyard walls, and Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi doubles over and collapses beside the grave. The narration identifies the killing as a clear-cut, premeditated execution. Carl Mørck and Assad stop where they are; Carl has not been armed for a long time, and neither can prevent the shooting once it begins.

June Habersaat appears to have been overtaken by the speed of what has just happened. She stares in turn at the body, the bottom of the grave, the mourners, and the vicar, who moves toward her with calming words. Then she raises the pistol to her head. Assad recognizes the danger and whispers, “She’ll shoot herself now, just like her husband did.” The prediction gives the moment an added weight: the weapon is now pointed at the killer herself, recalling the suicide of Christian Habersaat.

The vicar acts before June can fire. Swinging the small shovel he had used at the burial, he strikes her hand and knocks the pistol away. June screams, then runs without looking back. She reaches a bench against the churchyard wall, jumps onto it, crosses the stone wall, and drops toward the road beside the field boundary. Carl Mørck sends Assad after her and turns to the stunned onlookers, calling for someone to contact the police. The killing is witnessed; June’s flight begins immediately.

Confirmation and the recovered weapon

Carl Mørck looks back at Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi while the priest checks the pulse in his neck. One foot lies over the grave. His yellow shirt has two deep holes in the stomach and one in the shoulder, and a patch of skin shows where a bullet passed through. Carl remembers that the wound is right where Atu’s tattoo reads “RIVER.” The detail fixes the shooting on the body itself: the word remains visible beside the fatal injuries, but it cannot alter their consequence. The priest shakes his head. Atu is dead.

The scene also brings Atu’s self-presentation into collision with the manner and place of his death. He had wanted to be the guardian of enigma and the son of the sun; now he lies beneath the shadow of the round church, a fabled Bornholm landmark associated in the narration with the hidden mysteries of the Knights Templar. The contrast does not explain the shooting, but it strips the spiritual language of any power to protect him from ordinary violence. The grave, the church, and the body occupy the same space, while the funeral’s solemn order gives way to gunfire and flight.

Carl Mørck picks up the pistol and recognizes it as the same type as the one Christian Habersaat used to shoot himself. The weapon appears to be the second of the two pistols from Habersaat’s home that had never been found. Carl concludes that Habersaat had taken both, and that June Habersaat somehow obtained one without his knowledge. The shooting thus exposes a concrete connection between June, her former husband’s weapons, and the execution at the grave, even though the passage leaves unexplained how she acquired the pistol. The funeral ends not with the quiet completion of burial but with Atu dead, June gone over the wall, and the missing weapon finally recovered.