The Absent One (36 page)

‘Gin and tonic?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Do you have whisky, by any chance?’

He seemed surprised, but not dissatisfied. Women who drank whisky were hardly sensitive types.

‘Well, well, aren’t you thirsty?’ he said, after she’d downed her drink in a single gulp. To keep pace, he poured another glass for her and one for himself.

By the time she’d had three more in succession, he was buzzed and distant.

Unaffected, she asked about the job he was working on and watched his alcohol-suppressed inhibitions lead him closer to her on the sofa. He gave her a fixed smile while his fingers strolled up her thigh.

‘I’m trying to find a woman who’s capable of making many people’s lives miserable.’

‘Ah, that sounds exciting. Is she an industrial spy or call girl or something like that?’ she asked, and illustrated her rapt submissivness by putting her hand on his and leading it determinedly to her inner thigh.

‘She’s a little of everything,’ he said, trying to spread her legs a bit.

She watched his mouth and knew she would throw up if he tried to kiss her.

‘Who is she?’

‘That’s a trade secret, love. I can’t tell you.’

‘Love,’ he’d said! Again the same pain.

‘But what kind of person hires you for such a job?’ She allowed his hand to move a little further up her thigh. His alcohol breath was hot against her throat.

‘People in the upper crust,’ he whispered, as if it would place him higher in the mating hierarchy.

‘What do you say to another shot?’ she suggested, as his fingers groped their way across her pelvis.

He pulled back slightly, looking at her with a wry smile wrenched into that swollen part of his face. He had a plan, it was clear. She would drink and he would pour, until she was completely lubricated and ready.

For all he cared, she could pass out. He didn’t give a hoot what she got out of it. She knew that didn’t matter.

‘We can’t do it tonight,’ she said, as his mouth ran parallel with his frowning eyebrows. ‘I have my period. We can do it another day, OK?’

It was a lie, of course, but deep within she wished it were true. Eleven years had gone by since she’d bled. Only
the stomach cramps remained, and they weren’t caused by anything physiological. Years filled with anger and broken dreams.

She had miscarried and almost died. And now she was sterile.

That’s what she was.

Otherwise things might have turned out differently.

Carefully she stroked his lacerated eyebrow with her index finger, but failed to mitigate his growing resentment and frustration.

She could see what he was thinking. He had hauled home the wrong bitch, and he wasn’t going to stand for it. Why the hell did she go to a singles’ night if she was on the rag?

Kimmie watched his facial features harden. Then she pulled her handbag to her and stood up, stepped over to the balcony window and gazed out across the dismal, barren landscape of terraced houses and stark, distant high-rises. There was almost no light, only the cold gleam of the street lamps a little further up the block.

‘You killed Tine,’ she said softly, reaching into her bag.

She heard him squirm up off the sofa. In a second he would be all over her. He was woozy, but deep inside an instinct of self-preservation stirred.

Then she turned and pulled out the pistol with the silencer.

He saw it as he attempted to manoeuvre around the coffee table, and stopped in his tracks, astounded at himself and the dent that had been made in his professional pride. It was funny to see. She loved this mix of silent astonishment and dread.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that probably wasn’t very smart. You dragged home your work target without knowing it.’

He bent his head and studied her face. Clearly he was adding layers to the image he’d created of a ravaged woman on the streets. Confusedly he ransacked his memory. How could he aim so low? How could he let himself be fooled by clothing and find a bag lady attractive?

Come on
, the voices whispered.
Take him. He’s nothing but their lackey! Take him now!

‘Without you, my friend would still be alive,’ she said, now registering the alcohol burning in her belly. She looked over at the bottle, golden and half full. One more slurp and the voices and the fire would die down.

‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he said, his eyes darting from her trigger finger to the safety latch. Looking for anything to give him a sliver of hope that she’d overlooked something.

‘Do you feel like a cornered rat?’ she asked. The question was superfluous, but he refused to answer. He hated to admit it, but who wouldn’t?

Aalbæk was the one who’d beaten Tine. The one who’d really shaken her up, made her vulnerable. Aalbæk was the one who’d made her dangerous to Kimmie. Yes, perhaps Kimmie was the weapon, but Aalbæk was the hand that guided it. That’s why he had to pay.

He and the ones who’d given the order.

‘Ditlev, Ulrik and Torsten are behind it. I know,’ she said, fully absorbed by the proximity of the bottle and its healing contents.

Don’t do it
, said one of the voices, but she did it anyway. She reached out for the bottle and saw his body first as a
vibration in the air, then as a flailing mass of clothes and arms, punching and grabbing hold of her.

In his wild rage he had her thrown to the floor. ‘Humiliate a man sexually and you have an enemy for life,’ she had learned. It was true. Now she was going to have to pay for the hungry looks and servile pawing he’d had to perform in order to get her back to his flat. For him having exposed himself and appeared vulnerable.

He threw her against the radiator, the coils bashing against her skull. He grabbed a large wooden figurine that was standing on the floor and slammed it against her hip. He seized her shoulders and twisted her on to her stomach. Pressed her torso down and twisted the arm with the pistol round her back, but she didn’t let go of it.

His fingers dug into her arm. She had felt pain many times before and it would take more than that to make her cry out.

‘Don’t you dare lead me on. Don’t you dare try and con me,’ he said, banging his fist into her lower back. After that he managed to unclasp her grip on the gun and fling it into a corner. Then he got a hand up under her dress, tearing her tights and pushing her underwear aside.

‘Damn you, bitch, you don’t have your period!’ he shouted. He took a hard grip on her, jerked her round and punched her in the face.

They stared directly at each other as he held her down and boxed her with randomly placed blows. Sinewy thighs in worn polyester trousers straddled her chest. Blood-filled veins protruded from his pounding and hammering forearms.

He beat her until her defences began to wane, and resistance seemed pointless.

‘Are you finished, bitch?’ he shouted, showing her a clenched fist that was ready to resume her punishment. ‘Or do you want to end up like your junkie friend?’

Was it ‘finished’ he’d said?

Not finished until I stop breathing.

She understood that better than anyone.

Kristian knew her best. He was the one who sensed when she felt that surge of excitement. This chemical feeling of being lifted off one’s base as the belly sends shivers of desire to every cell of the body. And when they sat watching
A Clockwork Orange
in the dark, he showed her where desire could lead.

Kristian was the experienced one. He’d tested girls before. He knew all the code words to their deepest thoughts. Knew which way to turn the key in the chastity belt. And suddenly she was sitting there in the middle of the gang as they lasciviously observed her unveiled body in the flickering light of the horrific images on the TV screen. He showed her and the others how to achieve pleasure in multiple directions at once. How violence and lust went hand in hand.

Without Kristian she never would have learned how to use her body as a lure. Exclusively for the sake of the hunt. What he hadn’t bargained for, however, was that she had also learned how to control the events around herself, for the first time in her life. Perhaps not initially, but later.

And when she came home from Switzerland, she mastered the art to perfection.

She slept with random men. Broke them and broke up with them. That’s how she spent her nights.

During the day everything was routine. Her stepmother’s icy coldness. Her work with the animals at Nautilus Trading. The contact with customers and the weekends with the gang. The occasional assault.

And then Bjarne got close and aroused new feelings in her. Told her that she was worth more than that. That she was someone of value. A person who could enrich him and others. That she was not guilty for her past actions; that her father had been a swine. That she should be wary of Kristian. That the past was dead.

Aalbæk noticed her resignation and immediately began fumbling with his trousers. She smiled briefly at him. Maybe he thought she smiled because she liked it that way. That everything was going according to her plan. That she was more complicated than he’d first assumed. That being knocked about was a part of the ritual.

But Kimmie smiled because she knew he was at her mercy. Smiled when he pulled out his member. Smiled when she felt it on her bare thigh and noticed that it wasn’t stiff enough.

‘Lie still for a second, we’ll get to it,’ she whispered, looking him in the eyes. ‘The pistol was a toy. I just wanted to frighten you. But you knew that, didn’t you?’ She parted her lips slightly so they appeared fuller. ‘I think you’ll like me,’ she said, rubbing herself against him.

‘I think so, too,’ he said, with sluggish eyes deep in her cleavage.

‘You’re strong. A wonderful man.’ She snuggled her
shoulders affectionately against him and saw how he relaxed his locked legs so she could free her arm and lead his hand down between her legs. This caused him to completely loosen up so she could take hold of his cock with her other hand.

‘You won’t say anything about this to Pram and the others, will you?’ she said, working him up until he began gasping for air.

If there was anything he wouldn’t report to them, it was this.

No one challenged these men. Even he knew that.

Kimmie and Bjarne had lived together for half a year when Kristian would no longer put up with it.

She noticed it one day when he’d tempted the gang into an assault that developed very differently to their usual routine. Kristian had lost control, and in an attempt to restore it had turned the others against her.

Ditlev, Kristian, Torsten, Ulrik and Bjarne. One for all, all for one.

This she remembered all too clearly when Aalbæk, who was on top of her, could no longer wait and tried to take her by force.

She hated it and loved it at the same time. Nothing could bestow strength like hatred. Nothing could get her going like vindictiveness.

With all her might she lurched backwards, lifting herself halfway up against the wall, the hard wooden figurine he’d hit her with underneath her. Once again she took hold of his half-stiff member. It was enough to make him
hesitate. Enough so she could work it and tear at it until he was about to cry.

And when he finally came on her thigh, the air got stuck in his lungs. He was a man who’d been taken by surprise many times that night. A man who’d seen better days and who somewhere along the way had forgotten the difference between solitary masturbation and a woman’s touch. He was completely lost in the moment. His skin was moist, but his eyes were dry and staring blindly at a point on the ceiling that wouldn’t provide an answer as to how she’d been able to slide away from him and suddenly lay with her legs splayed and the pistol aimed directly at his still-throbbing groin.

‘Keep that feeling in your body, because it’ll be the last time, you bastard,’ she said, and stood up with semen dribbling down her leg. Filled with contempt and the lingering feeling of having been defiled.

The exact same feeling she’d had when those whom she’d most trusted had let her down.

Like her father’s blows when she didn’t behave correctly. Like her stepmother’s surprise mood swings and boxes on the ear when she spoke enthusiastically about anyone at all. Like the clawing fingers of a wiped-out, drunken mother who didn’t know in which direction to direct her punches, or why. She used words like ‘proper’, ‘silence’ and ‘courtesy’. Words that the little girl understood the importance of long before she really understood their meaning.

And then there was what Kristian and Torsten and the others did to her. The ones she’d put her faith in.

Yes, she knew the feeling of defilement, and she craved
it. Life had made her dependent on it. It was the way forward. It enabled her to act.

‘Get up,’ she said, opening the balcony door.

It was a quiet, humid evening. Loud voices in a foreign language emanated from the terraced houses across the street and resounded like a pulsating echo in the concrete landscape.

‘Get up.’ She waved the pistol and watched the smile broaden on his swollen face.

‘I thought you said it was a toy?’ he asked, moving slowly towards her while zipping up his trousers.

She turned to the figurine on the floor and shot it once. It was surprising how quiet a sound the bullet made as it bored into the wood.

Surprising, too, for Aalbæk.

He shrank back, but again she waved the gun, this time towards the balcony.

‘What do you want?’ he asked when he was outside, now with a very different degree of seriousness and a good grip on the railing.

She looked out over the edge. The darkness beneath them was like an abyss that could swallow everything. Aalbæk knew it, and he began to shake.

‘Tell me everything,’ she said, retreating to the shadows by the wall.

He did as she asked. It came out slowly, but in the right order. A professional’s neatly chronicled observations. Because what was there to hide when it came down to it? It was only a job, after all. But now much more was at stake.

As Aalbæk talked to save his life, Kimmie was picturing
her old friends. Ditlev, Torsten and Ulrik. It’s said that powerful men reign over mankind’s impotence. As well as their own. History proved it time and again.