Police Find Alberte's Postcard Among David's Belongings

The search of David Goldschmid’s belongings yields a postcard from his sister, Alberte Goldschmid, that turns an otherwise ordinary family archive into a lead in the investigation of her death. In it, she describes visiting Østerlars Round Church and meeting a young man she plans to see again. The card does not identify him or provide a legible date, but it gives Carl Mørck and Assad a concrete route forward: establish when the school trip took place and look for photographs of the people who were there.

The search of David’s belongings

Before the search, David’s family had not felt able to go through his things. Carl Mørck asks whether the investigators may look, explaining that Alberte and David had been close and that she might have written to him while attending the folk high school. The request is tentative; the purpose is to see whether the possessions can recover a connection or detail that was missed in the original inquiry.

The room offers a varied impression of David’s life. Warhammer Fantasy figures stand on the windowsill; posters include Roskilde Festival and musicians George Michael and Freddie Mercury. CDs range from Judas Priest, Kiss and AC/DC to Cher and Blur. A rusty machete and a convincing copy of a samurai sword hang crossed on the wall. The contrast between these collected objects and David’s father, Eli Goldschmid, sitting in an armchair makes the distance between father and son apparent to the investigators.

The first box complicates the picture further. It contains colorful shirts, tailored jackets and expensive suits, all kept pressed and apparently new, along with David’s business-school diploma, excellent grades and reports, and an appointment letter for a secure job at a distinguished company. The orderly signs of professional success sit beside evidence of an alternative life of thievery. The archive is therefore not a simple portrait of the promising son suggested by his credentials; it is a collection in which different versions of David coexist.

The postcard in the cigar box

The discovery comes in the third box, when Assad finds a cigar box filled with postcards. Most are from a man called Bendt-Christian, who sends greetings from places including Bangladesh, Hawaii, Thailand and Berlin. His cards begin with the affectionate address “Dearest Davidovich” and include tender remarks, although the rest of their contents are comparatively neutral. The postcards from Alberte are different in emphasis: like cards she sent to her parents, they give plain descriptions of a day and reassure David that she misses him. Their ordinary tone supports the investigators’ understanding that the siblings were close, while also making the more revealing card stand out.

Carl initially sees little to pursue among the cards. Then he notices one bearing a picture of Østerlars Round Church. A red heart has been drawn above the cross on the church’s spire. Turning it over, he reads Alberte’s message: “Hi bro. Trip to Østerlars Round Church this time. It’s meant to be fantastic with Knights Templar and everything, but the best thing was I met a sweet guy. He knew more about the church than the guide, and he was SO hot. Meeting him tomorrow outside school. More about that another time. Hugs and kisses, your sis, Alberte.”

The message gives the church visit a second significance. Alberte’s account moves from the attraction of the site and its Knights Templar associations to her encounter with a man whose knowledge surpassed the guide’s. Her enthusiastic description and plan to meet him the following day establish that this was not merely a passing conversation: she expected to see him again and intended to tell David more later. The postcard does not reveal what followed, but it records a meeting that the investigators had not known to look for.

An incomplete date and a new lead

The discovery prompts Assad to ask for the date. Carl turns the card over, but it is not written there. The postmark appears to contain the number 11; the rest cannot be made out, even when the investigators examine it from different angles. The date therefore remains uncertain. The investigators cannot simply place the encounter in the timeline from the card itself, and the partial mark offers no reliable way to identify the day.

Rather than treating the illegible stamp as a dead end, Carl proposes asking the rector couple when they went on the trip. Assad develops the implication: someone from the school may have taken photographs that day. Their reasoning turns the postcard’s gaps into practical questions—when the visit occurred, who else was present, and whether a photograph might preserve the identity of the man Alberte described. Carl is less confident that photographs will exist, reflecting on how little routine documentation there was in 1997 compared with the smartphone-filled present. The hope of finding an image is thus tentative, not a discovery already made.

Significance in the investigation

The postcard does not name Alberte’s acquaintance, explain his connection to her death or settle the chronology. Its evidentiary value is narrower and more precise: it establishes that during a school trip to Østerlars Round Church, Alberte met a man who impressed her and whom she planned to see again outside school the next day. The card also indicates where investigators might seek corroboration, through the rector couple’s recollection or photographs taken by someone from the school.

The scene’s turn depends on the difference between a family message and a usable clue. Alberte’s usual cards to David are affectionate but routine; this one preserves a new encounter in her own excited account. Its unreadable postmark withholds the time even as its text reveals the meeting. From that mismatch, the investigation gains both a fresh question and a method for pursuing it: the postcard cannot identify the man alone, so the investigators must reconstruct the day around it.