Mercy (16 page)

‘What was Hale like as a person, in your opinion?’

‘As a person?’ Antvorskov shook his head. ‘I have no idea. Reliable and conscientious as a subcontractor. But as a person? I have no idea.’

‘So you didn’t have anything to do with him privately?’

This provoked the famous Bille Antvorskov growl that was supposed to pass for laughter. ‘Privately? I never set eyes on him until the meeting at Christiansborg. Neither he nor I had time for that. And besides, Daniel Hale was never at home. He would fly from Herod to Pilate in an instant. One day in Connecticut, the next day in Aalborg. Back and forth, constantly. I’ve probably scraped together a few free miles myself, but Daniel Hale must have left behind enough to fly a class of school kids around the world at least a dozen times.’

‘So you’d never met him before that meeting?’

‘No, never.’

‘But there must have been meetings, discussions, price negotiations. Things like that?’

‘You know what? I have staff to handle those things. I knew Daniel Hale by reputation, we had a few phone conversations, and then we were in business. The rest of the collaborative work was handled by Hale’s people and mine.’

‘OK. I’d like to talk to someone here at the company who worked with Hale. Is that possible?’

Bille Antvorskov sighed so heavily that the tightly upholstered leather chair he was sitting on creaked. ‘I don’t know who’s still here. That was five years ago, after all. There’s a lot of turnover in our business. Everyone’s always looking for new challenges.’

‘I see.’ Was the idiot really admitting that he couldn’t hold on to employees? He couldn’t be. ‘Could you possibly give me the address of his company?’

Antvorskov frowned. He had staff to handle that.

Even though the buildings were six years old, they looked as if they’d been constructed only a week ago. ‘InterLab A/S’ it said in three-foot-tall letters on the sign in the middle of the landscape of fountains in front of the car park. Apparently the business was doing just fine without its helmsman.

In the reception area Carl’s police badge was scrutinized as if it were something he’d bought in a practical jokeshop, but after a ten-minute wait a secretary arrived to speak with him. He told her that he had questions of a private nature, and with that he was immediately escorted out of the lobby and into a room with leather chairs, birchwood tables and several glass cabinets full of beverages. Presumably it was here that foreign guests first encountered InterLab’s efficiency. Proof of the laboratory’s high status was everywhere. Awards and certificates from all over the world covered one whole wall, while another two displayed diagrams and photographs of various projects. Only the wall facing the Japanese-inspired driveway leading up to the building had any windows, and the sun was blazing in.

Apparently it was Daniel Hale’s father who founded the firm, but this was long ago, judging by the photos on the wall. Daniel had successfully followed in his father’s footsteps in the short time that he’d been boss, and clearly he’d done so with pleasure. There was also no doubt that he’d been loved and given plenty of incentives in the right direction. A single photo showed father and son standing close together, smiling happily. The father wore a jacket and waistcoat, symbolizing the old days that were on their way out. The son had not yet come of age, which was obvious from his smooth cheeks and big smile. But he was ready to make his mark.

Carl heard footsteps approaching.

‘What was it you wanted to know, sir?’ said a plump woman wearing flats.

The woman introduced herself as the public relations manager. The name on her ID badge, which was clipped to her lapel, was ‘Aino Huurinainen’. Finns had such funny-sounding names.

‘I’d like to talk to someone who worked closely with Daniel Hale in the time before he died. Someone who knew him well privately. Someone who knew what his thoughts and dreams were.’

She looked at him as if he’d assaulted her.

‘Could you put me in touch with someone like that?’

‘I don’t think anyone knew him better than our sales director, Niels Bach Nielsen. But I’m afraid he doesn’t wish to speak with you about Mr Hale’s personal life.’

‘And why not? Does he have something to hide?’

She gave him another look as if he were making a serious attempt to provoke her. ‘Neither Niels nor Daniel had anything to hide. But Niels has never recovered from Daniel’s death.’

He caught the undertone. ‘You mean they were a couple?’

‘Yes. Niels and Daniel were together through thick and thin, both in private and at work.’

For a moment Carl stared into her pale blue eyes. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she suddenly doubled over with laughter. But that didn’t happen. What she had just said was no joke.

‘I didn’t know that,’ he said.

‘I see,’ she replied.

‘You wouldn’t happen to have a photograph of Daniel Hale, would you? One that you could spare?’

She stretched out her arm a few inches to the right and grabbed a brochure lying on the glass counter next to half a dozen bottles of Ramlösa mineral water.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘There ought to be at least ten of them.’

He didn’t get through to Bille Antvorskov on the phone until he’d had a lengthy discussion with the billionaire’s grumpy secretary.

‘I’ve scanned a picture that I’d like to email to you. Have you got a couple of minutes to take a look at it?’ he said, after identifying himself.

Antvorskov acquiesced and gave Carl his email address. Carl clicked the mouse and looked at the computer screen as he transferred the file.

It was an excellent picture of Daniel Hale that he’d scanned from the brochure the public relations woman had given him. A slender blond man, quite tall, suntanned and well dressed, as everyone had noticed over in the MPs’ restaurant. There was nothing about his appearance to indicate he was gay. Apparently he had other sexual inclinations. About to come out of the closet as a heterosexual, thought Carl, as he pictured the man, crushed and burned to death on the Kappelev highway.

‘OK, the email has arrived,’ said Bille Antvorskov on the other end of the line. ‘I’m opening the attachment now.’ There was a pause that seemed to go on for a very long time. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

‘Can you confirm that it’s a photo of Daniel Hale? Was this the man who took part in the meeting at Christiansborg?’

‘This man? I’ve never seen him before in my life.’

26

2005

When she turned thirty-five, the sea of light from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling returned, thus causing the faces behind the mirrored panes to vanish.

This time not all of the tubes in the reinforced-glass fixtures went on. One day they’re going to have to come in and change them or the room will end up in eternal darkness, she thought. They’re still standing there, spying on me, and they don’t want to have to stop. One day they’ll come inside and change the tubes. They’ll bleed off the pressure ever so slowly, and then I’ll be waiting for them.

They’d increased the pressure again on her last birthday, but that no longer worried her. If she could handle four atmospheres, she could also handle five. She didn’t know what the limit was, but they hadn’t come anywhere near it yet. Just like the previous year, she had hallucinations for a couple of days. It felt as if the background of the room was spinning around while the rest remained in sharp focus. She had sung and felt light-hearted, reality had become meaningless. This time everything returned to normal after only a couple of days. Then she began noticing a howling sound in her ears. At first it was very faint, so she yawned and tried to equalize the pressure as best she could, but after two weeks the sound became permanent. An utterly clear tone, like the one accompanying the test pattern on TV. Higher in register, purer, and a hundred times more enervating. It’ll go away, Merete, you’ll get used to the pressure. Just wait, one morning it’ll be gone when you wake up. It’ll be gone, it’ll be gone, she promised herself. But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing. When the high-pitched tone had lasted for three months and she was about to go crazy from lack of sleep and the constant reminder that she was living in a death chamber at the mercy of her executioner, she began working out in her mind how she would take her own life.

She knew now that it would all end with her dying anyway. The woman’s face had not displayed the slightest grounds for hope. Those piercing eyes were a clear indication they would not allow her to escape. Not ever. So it would be better to die by her own hand. To decide for herself how it would happen.

The room was completely empty aside from the toilet bucket and the food bucket, the pocket torch, the two plastic stiffeners from her down jacket – one of which she’d made into a toothpick – a couple of rolls of toilet paper, and the clothes she was wearing. The walls were smooth. There was nothing to which she could tie the sleeves of her jacket, nothing from which her body could dangle until it was delivered from this life. The only possibility left to her was to starve herself to death. Refuse to eat the monotonous diet, refuse to drink the small amount of water they allowed her. Maybe that was what they were waiting for. Maybe she was part of some sick wager. Since time immemorial, human beings had always transformed the suffering of fellow humans into entertainment. Each stratum of human history had revealed an infinitely thick layer of callousness. And the sediment forming new layers was constantly piling up; she was finding that out for herself now. That was why she made the decision.

She pushed the food bucket aside, stood herself in front of one of the portholes and declared that she would no longer eat any of the food. She’d had enough. Then she lay down on the floor and wrapped herself in her ragged clothes and her dreams. According to her calculations, it had to be 6 October. She figured she’d last a week. At that time she would have lived for thirty-five years, three months and one week. To be more precise: twelve thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four days, although she wasn’t entirely sure. She would have no headstone. There would be no birth date or death date to see anywhere. Not a thing left after her death that might link her to the time she’d spent in this cage, where she’d spent this last long period of her life. Other than her killers, she was the only one who would know the date of her death. And she alone would know it beforehand, with more or less accuracy. On approximately the 13th of October 2005, she intended to die.

On the second day of her refusal to eat, they shouted to her to trade out the buckets, but she refused. What could they do? Either leave the bucket in the hatch of the airlock door or take it back. It was all the same to her.

So they left the bucket in the hatch and repeated the same ritual over the next couple of days. The old bucket out and a new one in. They yelled at her. Threatened to increase the pressure and then let all the air out. But how could they use death as a threat when it was death she desired? Maybe they would come in, maybe they wouldn’t, she didn’t care. She let her mind run amok with thoughts and images and memories that could push the nowling in her ears away, and on the fifth day, everything merged into one. Dreams of happiness, her political work, Uffe standing alone on the ship, love that had been shoved aside, the children she’d never had,
Mr Bean
and quiet days in front of the television. And she noticed how her body slowly loosened its grip on its unfulfilled needs. Gradually she lay lighter on the floor; a strange stagnation took over, and time passed as the food in the bucket next to her began to rot.

Everything was as it should be, and then all of sudden she felt a throbbing in her jaw.

In her listless condition, it felt at first like a vibration from outside. Just enough to make her open her eyes slightly, but nothing more. Are they coming in? What’s happening? she thought briefly, and then fell back into a silent torpor until a couple of hours later when she awoke with a pain as sharp as a knife stabbing into her face.

She had no idea what time it was; she had no idea if they were out there; and she screamed as she’d never screamed before in that barren room. Her whole face felt as if it had split in two. The pain in her tooth felt like a jackhammer pounding in her mouth, and there was nothing she could do to fight it. Oh God, was this the punishment for taking her life into her own hands? She’d neglected looking after herself for only five days, and now this torment. Cautiously she stuck her finger inside her mouth and felt the abscess around the back molar. That tooth had always been a weak point, providing a steady income for her dentist. A bad spot, which her homemade toothpick had tried to keep clean every day. She carefully pressed on the abscess and felt the pain explode through bone and marrow. She doubled over, opened her mouth wide, and gasped frantically for air. A short time ago her body had succumbed to lethargy, but now it had awakened to this torturous agony. She felt like an animal that would have to chew off its own paw to slip out of a trap. If pain was a defence against death, then she was more alive now than ever before.

‘Ohhh!’ she sobbed. It hurt so much. She reached for her toothpick and slowly held it up to her mouth. Cautiously she tried to find out whether something stuck in her gums had caused the infection, but as soon as the tip touched the abscess, her tooth once more exploded in agony.

You have to puncture it, Merete. Come on, she told herself, weeping, and jabbed at it again. The little that was left in her stomach threatened to come up. She had to puncture the abscess, but she couldn’t. She simply couldn’t do it.

Instead she crawled over to the airlock door to see what they’d put in the bucket that day. Maybe there was something that might offer some relief. Or perhaps a little drop of water on the abscess would make it stop throbbing so badly.

She looked down at the bucket and saw temptations she’d never dared dream of before. Two bananas, an apple, a piece of chocolate. It was totally absurd. They were trying to bait her hunger. Force her to eat, and now she couldn’t. Couldn’t and wouldn’t.

She grimaced at the next stabs of pain that nearly knocked her over. Then she took out all the pieces of fruit and placed them on the floor, thrust her hand in the bucket and grabbed the water bottle. She stuck her finger in the water and held it up to the abscess, but the icy-cold water didn’t have the expected effect. There was the pain and there was the water, and they had absolutely nothing to do with each other. The water couldn’t even assuage her thirst.

So she moved away, curled up in a foetal position underneath the mirrored panes, and prayed a silent prayer for God’s forgiveness. At some point her body would give up; she knew that. She would have to live her last days in pain.

Eventually it, too, would give up.

The voices came to her as if she was in a trance. They were calling her name. Entreating her to answer them. She opened her eyes and noticed at once that the abscess had stopped throbbing, and that her limp body was still lying next to the toilet bucket beneath the mirrored panes. She stared up at the ceiling, noticing that one of the fluorescent tubes had started to flicker faintly in the fixture high above her. She’d heard voices, hadn’t she? Were they real?

Then a clear voice that she’d never heard before spoke: ‘That’s right, she took out the fruit.’

It’s real, she thought, but she was too weak to be startled.

It was a man’s voice. Not a young man, but not an old man either.

She immediately raised her head, but not so much that they’d be able to see her from outside.

‘I can see the fruit from where I’m standing,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘It’s over there on the floor.’ It was the same woman who had spoken to Merete once a year; the voice was unmistakable. Apparently the people outside had been calling to her and had then forgotten to shut off the intercom.

‘She’s crawled over between the windows. I’m sure of it,’ the woman went on.

‘Do you think she’s dead? It’s been a week, you know,’ said the man’s voice. It sounded so natural, but it wasn’t. This was her they were talking about.

‘It would be just like her to do something like that, the little slut.’

‘Should we equalize the pressure and go in and have a look?’

‘What were you planning to do with her then? All of the cells in her body have acclimated to five atmospheres of pressure. It would take weeks to decompress her body. If we open the door now, she’ll not only get the bends, she’ll explode on the spot. You’ve seen her faeces and how it expands. And her urine, how it bubbles and boils. Keep in mind that she’s been living in a pressure chamber for three and a half years now.’

‘Can’t we just pump up the pressure again after we find out whether she’s still alive?’

The woman outside didn’t answer, but it was clear that under no circumstances was that going to happen.

Merete’s breathing became more and more laboured. The voices belonged to devils. They’d flay her and sew her back together for an eternity, if they could. She was in the inner circle of hell. The place where the torments never ceased.

Come on in, you bastards, she thought, cautiously pulling the pocket torch closer as the whining in her ears got louder. She was going to plant it in the eye of the first person who came near her. Blind the vile creature who dared to set foot in her holy chamber. It was the one thing she’d manage to do before she died.

‘We’re not doing anything until Lasse gets back. Do you hear me?’ said the woman in a tone of voice that demanded obedience.

‘But that’ll take forever. She’ll be dead long before then,’ replied the man. ‘What the hell should we do? Lasse is going to be furious.’

Then came a silence that was nauseating and oppressive, as if the walls of the room were about to contract and leave her there, like a louse squeezed between two fingernails.

She clutched the pocket torch even tighter in her hand and waited. All of a sudden the pain was back with a wallop. She opened her eyes wide and drew air deep into her lungs to release the pain in a reflexive scream, but no sound came out. Then she got herself under control. The feeling of nausea remained, and the sensation that she was about to throw up made her regurgitate, but she didn’t say a word. She merely tilted her head back and let the tears flow down her face and over her parched lips.

I can hear them, but they mustn’t hear me, she chanted soundlessly over and over. She clutched her throat, fanned her hand over the bulge in her cheek, and rocked back and forth, clenching and unclenching her free hand ceaselessly. Every nerve fibre in her body was aware of the excruciating pain.

And then the scream came. It had a life of its own. Her body demanded it. A deep, hollow scream that went on and on and on.

‘She’s there. Do you hear that? I knew it.’ There was a clicking sound from a switch. ‘Come out so we can see you,’ said the revolting female voice. Only then did they discover that something was wrong.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘The switch is stuck.’

Then the woman started tapping on the intercom switch, but it did no good.

‘Have you been lying there eavesdropping on what we were saying, you little bitch?’ She sounded like an animal. Her voice was raw, honed with years of cruelty and callousness.

‘Lasse will fix it when he gets here,’ said the man outside. ‘He’ll fix it. It really doesn’t matter.’

Now it felt as if her jaw would split in two. Merete didn’t want to react, but she had no choice. She had to stand up. Anything to distract the hammering sense of panic in her body. She propped herself up on her knees, noticing how weak she was, then pushed off and managed to sit back on her heels, feeling the fire ignite again inside her mouth. She set one knee on the floor and managed to stand halfway up.

‘Good Lord, look at you, girl,’ said the ghastly voice outside, and then it began to laugh. The laughter struck Merete like a hailstorm of scalpels. ‘You have a toothache,’ said the laughing voice. ‘Ye gods, the filthy slut has a toothache. Look at her.’

Merete turned abruptly to face the mirrored panes. The mere act of moving her lips felt worse than death. ‘I’ll get my revenge one day,’ she whispered, pressing her face close to the pane. ‘I’ll get my revenge. Just wait.’

‘If you don’t eat, you’re going to end up burning in hell without ever having that satisfaction,’ snarled the woman, but there was something more in her voice. Like a cat playing with a mouse, and the cat wasn’t done playing yet. They wanted their prisoner to live. Live for as long as they had decided, and no longer.