The Absent One (5 page)

On the bus to Østerport she was mumbling to herself and people were staring.
Stop it
,
Kimmie
, she told herself. But her mouth wouldn’t obey.

Sometimes she listened to herself as if she were someone else talking, and that’s how it was on this day. She smiled at a little girl, and the girl returned the kindness by making a face at her.

So it must be especially bad.

With ten thousand eyes drilling into her, she got off a few stops early. That was the last time she would take the bus, she promised herself. People were simply too close. The S-train was better.

‘Much better,’ she said aloud, as she made her way along Store Kongensgade. There were almost no people on the street. Almost no cars. Almost no voices in the back of her head.

Kimmie reached the building at Indiakaj straight after the lunch hour. At Brand Nation she discovered the yawningly empty parking spot that, according to an enamel sign, belonged to Torsten Florin.

She opened her handbag and glanced inside. She had stolen the handbag in the foyer of the Palace Cinema from a girl who’d been preoccupied with herself and her reflection in the mirror.

According to her health insurance card, the bimbo’s name was Lise-Maja Petterson. Probably another victim of numerology, she thought, pushing the hand grenade aside and pulling out one of Lise-Maja’s insanely tasty Peter Jackson fags. ‘Smoking Causes Heart Disease’ the packet read.

Lighting up, she laughed aloud, then inhaled deeply into her lungs. She had been smoking ever since she’d been kicked out of boarding school and her heart still beat just fine. It wouldn’t be a heart attack that would do her in, she knew that much.

After a couple of hours she’d emptied the pack, smudging the butts all over the flagstones. Then she grabbed one of the young women sashaying in and out of Brand Nation’s glass doors.

‘Do you know when Torsten Florin will be back?’ she asked, and was answered with silence and a disapproving glare.

‘Do you?’ she said more emphatically, tugging at the girl’s arm.

‘Let go!’ the girl shouted, twisting Kimmie’s arm round with both hands.

Kimmie narrowed her eyes. She hated it when people
touched her, hated it when they wouldn’t answer and hated their stares. In one fluid movement, she swung her free arm until it struck the girl’s cheekbone.

The girl dropped like a rag doll. It was a good feeling, and yet it also wasn’t. Kimmie knew this wasn’t how people were supposed to act.

‘Tell me,’ she said, leaning over the shocked woman. ‘Do you know when Torsten Florin’s coming back?’

When the woman stuttered no for the third time, Kimmie turned on her heels, fully aware she couldn’t return for a while.

She ran into Rat-Tine on the crumbling concrete corner outside of Jacob’s Full House on Skelbækgade. She was standing underneath the proprietor’s sign that read
THE SEASON’S MUSHROOMS
, with her plastic bag and her make-up long since smeared. The first johns she blew in the alleys had been rewarded with sharply drawn eye make-up and rouged cheeks, but the remaining customers would have to settle for less. Her lipstick was now blotched and it was clear she’d removed semen from her face with her sleeves. Tine’s customers didn’t use condoms. It had been years since she’d been in a position to demand that. Years since she’d been in a position to demand anything at all.

‘Hi, Kimmie! Hi, sweetie! Fucking great to see you,’ she snuffled, wobbling towards Kimmie on legs as thin as a crane fly’s. ‘I’ve been looking for you, sweetie,’ she said, waving her freshly lit fag. ‘Did you know that people are asking about you down at the central station?’

She seized Kimmie by the arm and escorted her to the benches across the street at Café Yrsa.

‘Where have you been? I’ve missed you so fucking much,’ Tine said, fishing a couple of beers from her plastic bag.

As Tine opened the bottles, Kimmie glanced towards the Fisketorv Shopping Centre.

‘Who asked about me?’ she said, pushing the bottle back to Tine. Beer was the drink of the proletariat. She’d learned that growing up.

‘Oh, just some blokes.’ Tine set the extra bottle under the bench. She was happy sitting there, Kimmie knew, in that spot where she felt most at home; beer in one hand, money in her pocket and yellowed fingers pinching a fresh cigarette.

‘Tell me everything, Tine.’

‘Oh, Kimmie, I don’t remember so well, you know. It’s the junk, innit? Then it doesn’t work so good in here.’ She patted her head. ‘But I didn’t say anything. Just told ’em I didn’t know a fucking thing about who you were.’ She smiled, shaking her head. ‘They showed me a picture of you, Kimmie. My God, but you were fine in those days, Kimmie, love.’ She took a long drag on her fag. ‘I was nice-looking, too, once, I was. Someone told me that once. His name was …’ She stared into space. That was also gone.

Kimmie nodded. ‘Was there more than one who asked for me?’

Tine nodded and took another gulp. ‘There were two, but not at the same time. One of them came at night, just before the station closed. So maybe it was around four in the morning. Could that be right, Kimmie?’

Kimmie shrugged. Now that she knew there were two, it didn’t really matter.

‘How much?’ The question came from a man standing right in front of Kimmie, but she didn’t react. This was Tine’s business.

‘How much for a blow job?’ he repeated.

She felt Tine’s elbow in her side. ‘He’s asking you, Kimmie,’ she said, gone from the world. She’d already earned all she needed for the day.

Kimmie raised her head and saw an ordinary-looking man with his hands in his coat pocket, wearing a pathetic expression on his face.

‘Sod off,’ she said, giving him a murderous glare. ‘Sod off before I smack you.’

He stepped back and straightened up, then smiled crookedly, as if the threat alone were satisfaction enough.

‘Five hundred. Five hundred if you wash your mouth first. I won’t have any of your slime on my cock, you hear?’

He pulled money from his pocket and flashed the bills, and the voices in Kimmie’s head grew louder.
Come on
, whispered one.
He’s asking for it
, sounded the rest. She grabbed the bottle under the bench and put it to her mouth as the man tried to stare her down.

When she threw her head back and spat in his eyes, he lurched backwards, shock etched into his face. He glanced down at his coat, furious, and levelled his gaze at her again. She knew he was dangerous now. There was no shortage of assaults on Skelbækgade. The Tamil handing out free newspapers up at the next corner was unlikely to intervene.

So she got to her feet and smashed the bottle down on the man’s skull. Shards of glass slid across the street to a buckled post box. A delta of blood spread from his ear
and dripped down the collar of his coat. As the man stared at the jagged bottle aimed at him, his mind was no doubt racing. How would he explain this to his wife, his children, his colleagues? He began running towards the central station, presumably aware that he’d need a doctor’s attention and a new coat in order to return to normal.

‘I’ve seen that cocksucker before,’ Tine snuffled at Kimmie’s side, as she stared at the beer stain spreading on the pavement. ‘Bloody hell, Kimmie. Now I need to go to Aldi for another one, don’t I? Poor fucking beer. Why did that idiot have to come wading by when we’re sitting here, having a good time?’

Kimmie relaxed her gaze and her grip on the bottleneck as the man disappeared down the street. Then she stuck her fingers in her trousers, fished out a chamois-leather neck purse and opened it. The newspaper clippings were very new. On occasion she exchanged them with fresh ones so that she could stay updated on how the others looked. She unfolded the clippings and held them in front of Tine’s face.

‘Was this guy one of the men asking about me?’ She put her finger on the press photo. At the bottom it read: ‘Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen, director of the stock market research firm UDJ, rejects partnership with conservative think tank.’

Ulrik had gradually become a big man, in both the physical and figurative meaning of the word.

Tine studied the clipping through a blue-white cloud of cigarette smoke and shook her head. ‘They weren’t that fat.’

‘How about this one?’ It was from a women’s magazine she’d found in a rubbish bin on Øster Farimagsgade. With
his long hair and shiny skin, Torsten Florin came across as a queer, but he wasn’t. She could confirm that.

‘I’ve seen that one before, on TV-Denmark or something. He does something in fashion, right?’

‘Was it him, Tine?’

Tine giggled as if it were a game. So it wasn’t Torsten, either.

When she’d also rejected the Ditlev Pram clipping, Kimmie packed them all up and stuffed them back in her trousers. ‘What did the men say about me?’

‘They just said they were looking for you, sweetie.’

‘If we went down there to find them someday, would you recognize them?’

She shrugged. ‘They’re not there every day, Kimmie.’

Kimmie gnawed at her lip. She had to be careful now. They were getting close. ‘You tell me if you see them again, got it? Pay close attention to what they look like. Write it down so you can remember.’ She rested her hand on Tine’s knee, which protruded like the edge of a knife under her threadbare jeans. ‘If you have information, stick it under the yellow sign over there.’ She pointed at the sign that read
CAR RENTAL – DISCOUNT.

Tine coughed and nodded simultaneously.

‘Every time you give me solid information I’ll give you a thousand kroner for your rat. What do you say to that, Tine? You can get it a new cage. You still have it up in your bedsit, don’t you?

She stood for five minutes by the parking sign in front of the landmark C. E. Bast Tallow Refinery until she was certain that Tine wasn’t watching her.

No one knew where she lived, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Crossing the street, angling towards the wrought-iron door, she felt a headache emerging along with a prickling sensation under her skin. Anger and frustration at the same time. The demons inside her hated it.

Sitting on her narrow bed, holding the bottle of whisky and peering through the small room’s faint light, a sense of calm washed over her. This was her real world. Where she felt safe, where she could find everything she needed. The chest containing her most precious treasure lay under the bench, the poster depicting children playing tacked on the inside of the door, the photograph of the little girl, the newspapers she’d attached to the wall for insulation. The stack of clothes, the piss bucket on the floor, the pile of newspapers in the back, two battery-driven mini-fluorescent tubes and a pair of extra shoes on the shelf. She could do whatever she pleased with all this, and if she wanted something new, she had plenty of money.

When the whisky began to take effect, she laughed and inspected the nooks behind the three loose bricks in the wall. She checked these spaces nearly every time she returned to her house, starting with the one containing her credit cards and last ATM receipts, then moving on to the one where she kept the cash.

Each day she tallied up how much was left. For eleven years she’d lived on the street, and there were still 1,344,000 kroner left. If she continued as before, she would never use it up. Her daily needs, including her clothes, were met more or less through her thievery. She didn’t eat much, and thanks to the so-called health-conscious government,
alcohol cost next to nothing. A person could now drink himself to death at half-price. What a terrific society Denmark had become. She snorted, removed the hand grenade from her bag and set it in the third nook with the others. Then she replaced the brick so carefully that it was nearly impossible to see the cracks.

Her anxiety came without warning this time, which was unusual. Normally, internal images alerted her. Hands poised to strike, sometimes blood and mutilated bodies. Other times she caught fleeting glimpses of carefree moments from long, long ago. Promises whispered that were later broken. This time, however, the voices failed to notify her.

She began to shake. Cramps in her pelvis squeezed her insides. Like tears, nausea was an unavoidable side effect. Previously she’d tried drowning her emotional distress with alcohol, but it only made her pain worse.

At moments like these she just had to wait for the hours to pass, until darkness returned.

When her head was clear, she would get up and go to Dybbølsbro Station. She would take the lift down to Platform 3 and wait at the far end until one of the trains rushed by. She’d stand on the edge, stretch out her arms, and shout: ‘You won’t get away with this, you bastards.’

After that she would let the voices decide.

Carl had hardly settled in his office before the clear-plastic folder resting squarely on his desk caught his eye.

What the hell
, he thought, and called for Assad.

When Assad was at the door, Carl pointed at the folder. ‘Do you know where that came from?’ Assad shook his head. ‘Don’t touch it, OK? There may be fingerprints.’

They stared at the topmost sheet. ‘Boarding-School Gang Attacks’, read the heading in laser print.

Underneath was a list of violent crimes with times, places and names of victims. The attacks seemed to have been committed over a long period of time – all the way up to 1992. A young man on a beach near Nyborg. Twin brothers on a football pitch in broad daylight. A husband and wife on the island of Langeland. There were at least twenty recorded attacks. It wasn’t unusual for pupils to be in school until they were twenty back in the eighties, Carl thought, but the later attacks must’ve been carried out
after
they’d graduated.

‘We’ve got to find out who’s putting these files here, Assad. Call the crime-scene techs. If someone here at the station is doing this, then matching fingerprints will be an easy matter.’

‘They didn’t take
my
fingerprints.’ Assad seemed almost disappointed.

Carl shook his head. Why hadn’t they done that? Yet
another irregularity in a veritable catalogue of irregularities connected to Assad’s hiring.