A Conspiracy of Faith (47 page)

Even a kidnapper and murderer was subject to the vagaries of the market, and now to all intents and purposes he had been forced to start again.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, as a new angle suddenly occurred to him.

If his sister didn’t get her money as usual, he would have another problem on his hands. She could bring up matters from his childhood. Names that weren’t to be divulged.

That, too.

When he returned from the boys’ home, his mother had a new husband, selected for her from among the eligible widowers by the elders of the congregation. The man owned a chimney-sweeping firm and was father to two girls of Eva’s age. A pillar, as the new pastor had referred to him, with scant regard for truth.

To begin with, his stepfather refrained from beating him, but once his mother reduced the dose of her sleeping pills and began to indulge him in
the marital bed, the man’s conceit prevailed and his temper gradually found an outlet.

“May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.” These were the words he used to conclude the thrashings he dealt out to his daughters. They were uttered frequently. If one of them had been deemed in any way to transgress the word of God, to whose interpretation their father believed himself to possess sole and exclusive rights, he would not hesitate to punish the fruits of his own loins. Generally, however, the girls did very little wrong, so his wrath was directed mainly at their stepbrother. He might forget the occasional amen, or perhaps smirk during grace. It was seldom more than that. Fortunately, awareness of his own physical limitations meant his mother’s husband never dared lay a finger on her strapping young son.

Afterward came the pangs of guilty conscience, and this was almost invariably the worst of it. His own father had never bothered with anything like remorse, and so no one was ever in any doubt where they stood with him. But his stepfather would stroke the cheeks of his daughters and beg their forgiveness for his rage and for their evil stepbrother. And then he would retire to the study and put on the Robe of God, as his father had always referred to the vestment, and he would pray to the Lord that He might protect these vulnerable, innocent girls as if they were His own angels.

As for Eva, he never deigned to say a word to her. Her glazed, blind eyes repulsed him, and she sensed this.

None of the children understood him. Why should his own two girls be punished when it was the stepson he hated and the stepdaughter he held in contempt? And none of them could fathom why their mother did not intervene, or how God could manifest Himself in the hateful and conspicuously unjust deeds of this beastly man.

For a time, Eva would speak up in her stepfather’s defense, but even her protests waned when the beatings meted out to her stepsisters became so violent that she almost believed she could feel the pain herself.

Her brother bided his time, saving himself for the final encounter. It would come when they were least expecting it.

Once, they had been four children, a husband, and a wife. Now only he and Eva were left.

He pulled the plastic pocket containing all the information about the family out of the glove compartment and quickly found Joshua’s mobile number.

Now he would ring him up and confront him with the realities. That his wife and their accomplice no longer posed a danger, and that his children would be next unless the ransom was delivered to a new location within twenty-four hours. He would inform Joshua that he was a dead man if he had revealed anything about the kidnapping to anyone other than Isabel.

It was easy for him to picture the ruddy face of this good-natured man, who would almost certainly break down and do exactly as he was instructed.

He had seen it all before.

He dialed the number and waited for what seemed like an eternity before it was answered.

“Hello?” said a voice he immediately realized was unfamiliar.

“Hello, is Joshua there?” he asked as a pair of headlights swept past him.

“Who’s this?” the voice replied.

“Is this Joshua’s mobile?” he asked.

“No, you must have got a wrong number.”

He glanced at the display. No, the number was right. What was going on?

Then it struck him. The name!

“Oh, I’m sorry. Joshua’s what we all call him, but his proper name’s Jens Krogh. I forget sometimes. May I speak to him?”

He stared through the silence into space. The man at the other end said nothing. This wasn’t a good sign. Who the hell was he?

“I see,” said the voice eventually. “And who am I speaking to?”

“His brother-in-law,” he blurted out. “Is he there?”

“No, I’m afraid he isn’t. You’re speaking to Sergeant Leif Sindal of the Roskilde Police. You’re his brother-in-law, you say. May I take your name?”

The police? Had the idiot gone to the police? Was he completely insane?

“Police? Has something happened to Joshua?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything until you give me a name.”

Something was definitely wrong. What now?

“It’s Søren Gormsen,” he said. That was his rule. Always give up an unusual name when dealing with the police. They’d believe it, because they knew they could check.

“I see,” came the reply. “Can you describe your brother-in-law to us, Mr. Gormsen?”

“Yes, I can. He’s a big man. Balding, in his late fifties, always wears an olive-green sleeveless jacket and—”

“Mr. Gormsen,” the policeman interrupted. “We’ve been called because Jens Krogh was found apparently lifeless on board a train. The police doctor is with us as we speak, and I very much regret to inform you that your brother-in-law has been declared dead.”

He allowed the word “dead” to resonate for a moment before responding. “Oh, no. That’s dreadful. How did it happen?”

“We don’t know yet. According to a fellow passenger, he collapsed.”

He wondered whether he might be walking headlong into a trap.

“Where will you be taking him?” he asked.

He heard the police sergeant and the doctor confer in the background. “An ambulance will be coming to collect the body. There’ll probably be an autopsy.”

“So he’ll be taken to the hospital in Roskilde?”

“We’ll be getting off the train at Roskilde, yes.”

He said his thanks and a few words of regret, then got out of the car to
wipe the mobile, planning to hurl it into the windbreak of trees. They wouldn’t be able to trace him on that account if it was all a setup.

“Hey,” came a voice from behind him. He turned to see a couple of men climbing out of a car that had just pulled in to the rest area. Lithuanian plates and faded jogging suits. Gaunt, unfriendly faces.

They came straight toward him, their intentions clear. In a moment he would be sprawling on the ground with his pockets emptied. It was plainly their line of work.

He raised a hand in warning, indicating the mobile. “Here,” he shouted, then hurled the phone hard against the forehead of the man in front, swiveling to one side and planting a back kick into the groin of his accomplice, causing his bony frame to crumple amid cries of pain, the switchblade he carried dropping to the ground.

He had the knife in his hand within a second, thrusting it into the abdomen of the first man, then into the side of the second.

And then he retrieved his phone and threw it and the knife as far into the bushes as he could.

Life had taught him always to strike first.

He left the two bleeding thugs to themselves and entered Roskilde Station into the GPS.

He would be there in eight minutes.

The ambulance had been waiting for some time before they came with the stretcher. He stepped into the array of inquisitive onlookers with their eyes fixed on Joshua’s body underneath the blanket. As soon as he saw the uniformed officer with Joshua’s coat and bag in his hands, everything was confirmed.

Joshua was dead. The money was lost.

“Fuck,” he exclaimed under his breath, repeating it to himself as he pointed the Mercedes toward Ferslev and the cottage that had been his bolt-hole for years. His cover—his address, his name, his van, everything
that made it safe to be him, was all tied up in the place. And now it was over. Isabel had the license plate number of the van and had passed it on to her brother, and the owner of the vehicle could be traced to the address. It was no longer safe.

By the time he reached the village and drove up the track between the trees to the cottage, peace had descended upon the landscape. The little community had long since succumbed to the torpor of the television screen. Only the main house of a farm across the fields displayed a pair of brightly lit windows. The alarm would probably be raised there.

He noted how Rachel and Isabel had broken into his garage and the house. He went through the premises, removing items that might withstand the flames. A small mirror, a tin of sewing equipment, the first-aid box.

Then he backed the van out of the barn, drove it around the side of the house, and reversed at full speed into the picture window that had afforded him such a good view over the fields.

The sound of shattering glass prompted a brief cacophony of crows, but that was all.

He walked around to the other side and went into the house, shining his torch in front of him. Perfect, he thought, seeing the van’s rear tires punctured and its back end protruding onto the laminated floor. He stepped carefully between the shards of glass and opened the back doors, took out a jerrican, and emptied its contents in an even trail from the living room to the kitchen, out into the hall, and up the stairs.

Then he unscrewed the cap of the van’s petrol tank, tore off a strip of moldering curtain, and inserted the end deep into the tank.

He stood for a moment in the yard and looked around before igniting the rag of curtain and throwing it into the petrol on the floor next to the line of gas cylinders in the hall.

He was already on the road, racing through the gears of the Mercedes, by the time the van’s petrol tank exploded with a deafening boom. A minute
later, the gas canisters went up. The explosion was so violent it almost raised the roof.

Not until he had passed the village grocery store and could see across the fields again did he pull in and look back.