The Purity of Vengeance (56 page)

Gitte glanced around as she stood in the hallway, handed her coat to Nete, and proceeded into the living room. Each silver spoon was registered, each painting on the wall assessed by Gitte’s keen eye.

Eventually she turned to face her hostess. “I’m so awfully sorry to hear how poorly you are, Nete. Is it cancer?”

Nete nodded.

“And there’s no more they can do?”

Nete nodded again, ready to offer Gitte a seat, though wholly unprepared for what her guest had in store.

“No, you take the weight off your feet, Nete. I’ll take care of things. I see you’ve made tea. Let me pour you a cup.”

She steered Nete backward onto the sofa and turned to the sideboard.

“Do you take sugar?” she asked.

“Not for me, thanks,” Nete replied, standing up again. “I’ll make a fresh pot; that’ll be cold by now. I made it for my previous guest.”

“Your previous guest? You mean there have been others?” Gitte looked at her inquiringly, then began to pour despite Nete’s protests.

Nete felt unsure of herself all of a sudden. Was Gitte burrowing? Did she suspect something wasn’t right? Nete had seen her coming from the direction of the Pavilion, so the risk of her having bumped into one of the others had to be rather small.

“Yes, there’s been a couple before you. You’re the last.”

“I see.” She handed Nete her tea and poured a cup for herself. “Are we all being favored in the same way?”

“No, not everyone. The lawyer’s just popped out, by the way. Some errands before the shops close, so you’ll have to be patient, I’m afraid. Are you in a hurry?”

The question prompted an odd outburst of laughter. As though being in a hurry was the last thing in the world Gitte could imagine.

Keep the conversation going until she lets me pour, Nete told herself. But how? She racked her brains amid the stabbing pain of her migraine. It felt like a helmet lined with spikes had been clamped on her skull.

“It’s so hard to understand that you should be ill, Nete. The years seem to have been so kind to you,” Gitte commented, stirring her tea.

Nete shook her head. As far as she could see, they resembled each other in many ways, and the word “kind” didn’t quite seem appropriate in describing how the years had treated them. Wrinkles, pasty skin, and gray hair had long since become a part of their appearance. No, it was obvious that life had not been without its trials for either of them.

Nete tried to think back to their time together on the island. It all felt so strange now that she knew their roles had switched.

They chatted about nothing for a while, then Nete got to her feet, picked up her own and Gitte’s cups, and went over to the sideboard, where she stood with her back to her guest just as she had done four times before. “More tea?” she asked.

“No, thanks, not for me,” Gitte replied. “But don’t let me stop you.”

Nete ignored her and poured anyway, adding several drops of the extract. How many times had she been bossed about by Gitte Charles on that dreadful island? She put the cup down on the table in front of Gitte without refreshing her own, the throb of migraine pulsing in her ears. Even the smell of the tea made her queasy.

“Do you mind if we swap places, Gitte?” she said, nausea welling in her throat. “I’ve a terrible headache and I’m afraid I can’t bear to sit facing the window.”

“Headache, too? Oh, you poor thing,” Gitte consoled, standing up as Nete moved her cup across the table.

“I can’t really talk right now, to be honest,” Nete added. “I need to close my eyes for a while.”

They swapped places and Nete closed her eyes, trying her utmost to think. If her former tormentor didn’t drink her tea, she’d be compelled to use the hammer again. She would offer her coffee, fetch the hammer, bring it down hard against the nape of her neck, then sit and wait for the worst of her headache to pass. There would be blood, of course, but what did it matter with Gitte being the last? She could always wash the carpets after she’d dragged the body into the room where the others were.

She heard her guest approach yet was surprised to feel Gitte’s hands on her neck and shoulders.

“Sit still, Nete. I’m good at this, but you’re sitting rather awkwardly. It’d be much better if you were in the chair,” came the voice from behind and above, her fingers pinching and kneading the muscles of Nete’s neck.

She heard the voice babbling away, but the words faded. She’d felt this touch before under quite different circumstances. It was stimulating, delectably sensual, and she hated it.

“I think you should stop,” she said, pulling away. “Otherwise I may be sick. Let me sit for a while. I’ve taken a tablet and I’ll be all right soon. Drink your tea, Gitte. Then we’ll talk about it all once the lawyer gets back.”

She opened her eyes a crack and felt Gitte’s fingers withdraw as though they’d touched something electric. She sensed her walk around the table before sitting down gently on the sofa next to her. After a moment or two came the quiet clink of a teacup on its saucer.

Nete leaned her head back slightly and squinted through her eyelashes as Gitte raised the cup to her lips. She appeared tense and ill at ease, nostrils flaring as she sniffed at the tea before taking a sip. Then suddenly her eyes grew wide with suspicion, all systems seemingly on the alert. She sent Nete a brief, piercing look and sniffed at her tea once more.

When she put down the cup, Nete slowly opened her eyes.

“Ahh,” she said, trying to assess what was going on in Gitte’s mind. “I feel a bit better already. That was a lovely massage, Gitte. You’re very good.”

Get up now, she commanded herself. Fetch the hammer and get it done. After that, pour the formalin down her throat, and then you can go and lie down.

“I think I need a glass of water,” she said, standing up gingerly. “The pills make my mouth so dry.”

“Why don’t you have a sip of tea?” Gitte rejoined, holding out her cup.

“No, I don’t like it unless it’s hot. I’ll put the kettle on and make us some more. I’m sure the lawyer will be here any minute.”

She went out into the kitchen and opened the cupboard, and as she bent down to pick up the hammer she was startled by Gitte’s voice behind her.

“If you ask me, Nete, I don’t think there
is
a lawyer.”

44

November 2010

Police HQ was a
mechanism in which even the smallest movement of the tiniest cog at the remotest extremity was registered. It was an anthill where signals crackled round the building so swiftly as to defy explanation. Whenever a person under arrest tried to bolt, whenever evidence disappeared, whenever a colleague became seriously ill, or the commissioner was in hot water with the politicians, the news reached every ear.

It was that kind of day. The place was electric. Visitors at the duty desk, the commissioner’s floor a whirr of energy, advisers, and high-ranking staff from the public prosecutor’s office swarming.

And Carl knew why.

The issue of The Cause and those behind it was explosive, and explosives are liable to go off unless doused with water in copious amounts. So upstairs was sopping wet.

They reckoned on the region of forty people would be charged before the day was over, and each case entailed a scramble to find evidence that would stick. The ball was rolling, and the police officers whose names appeared on Curt Wad’s membership list had already been brought in for questioning. If anything leaked before they were ready, all hell would break loose.

Carl knew the various departments all had the right people for the job. That much had been demonstrated so often before. But at the same time, he felt just as certain that even in this finely meshed net of concrete and circumstantial evidence, there would be holes through which a man could pass. All it took was power, and the people they were after now had plenty. Sod the petty hooligans. Sod Curt Wad’s stormtroopers. Sod the foot soldiers. They wouldn’t be going anywhere; experience told him that. It was the strategists, the tacticians they were after. Ahead of them lay hour upon hour of patient police work interrogating the minnows who would lead them to the big fish if only the investigators made sure to do their job properly.

The only thing was that Carl was more impatient than most, especially now. Reports on Assad’s condition were the same as before: they would be lucky if he survived.

Who could stay patient in a situation like that?

He sat for a while, wondering how best to proceed. The way he looked at it, there were two issues here that might or might not be linked. On the one hand were the disappearances in 1987. On the other were the injustices committed against a large number of women and the attacks on Assad and himself.

Rose had got him confused. Until her report, all their efforts had been focused on Curt Wad, whereas Nete Hermansen had seemed only to be a victim, a puzzling yet innocuous link between missing persons. But after what Rose had come up with, warning lamps were coming on everywhere.

Why the hell had Nete Hermansen lied to him and Assad? Why had she conceded to connections with all their missing individuals except Viggo Mogensen, when the fact of the matter was that he appeared to be responsible for starting the whole unhappy chain of events that had so marked her life: unwanted pregnancy, abortion, rape, unjust confinement to mental asylums, and compulsory sterilization.

Carl was at a loss.

“Tell Marcus Jacobsen he can reach me on the mobile,” he barked at the duty officer when eventually he decided to move into action.

His feet were taking him in the direction of the motor pool, but his head realized their mistake. Bollocks, he’d given the fucking car to Rose.

He glanced toward the rail terminal, nodding to a couple of plainclothesmen who were making off somewhere on foot. Why not walk? He could do that. What was two kilometers for a man in the prime of life?

He made it to Central Station a few hundred meters up the road before he found himself flagging and decided to sod it and grab a taxi.

“Bottom of Korsgade, by the Lakes,” he told the driver, the city crowds bustling. Carl looked back over his shoulder but couldn’t tell if anyone was following him.

He felt for his pistol. He wasn’t going to be caught with his pants down this time.

 • • • 

The elderly lady sounded surprised over the entry phone but recognized his voice and asked him to come up and wait a moment outside her door.

He stood there for a few minutes until eventually it opened and Nete Hermansen bid him welcome in a pleated skirt, hair neatly brushed.

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said, his nostrils registering a smell that indicated even more than last time he’d been here that she was a woman who perhaps wasn’t quite as inclined to air her rooms as often as she ought to.

He looked down the hallway. The matting by the bookcase at the far end had been scuffed up into a bump that had come loose from the carpet tacks.

He turned toward the living room. It was a signal that he wasn’t intending to leave just for the minute.

“I’m sorry to come bothering you like this without prior warning, Ms. Hermansen, only I’ve got a couple of issues I’d very much like to talk to you about.”

She nodded and showed him in, reacting to a sudden click from the kitchen, a sound that in Carl’s home meant the kettle was boiled.

“I’ll make us a nice cup of tea,” she said. “It’s about that time anyway.”

Carl lifted his head. “I’d prefer coffee, if it’s no trouble,” he said, recalling Assad’s molten tar, which for once he would have accepted gladly. The thought that it might never be offered again was devastating.

Two minutes later she was standing behind him at the sideboard in the living room, pouring him Nescafé.

She handed him the cup with a smile, poured herself some tea, then sat down facing him, hands folded in her lap.

“So, how can I help you?” she asked.

“Do you remember last time I was here we talked about those missing persons and I mentioned a Viggo Mogensen?”

“I do indeed.” She smiled. “I may be seventy-three, but I’ve not lost my marbles yet.”

Carl smiled back. “You said you didn’t know him. Might you have been mistaken?”

She gave a shrug. What was he getting at?

“You knew all the others, which was hardly surprising, given the circumstances. Nørvig, the lawyer who defended Curt Wad against the charges you brought. Your cousin Tage. Gitte Charles, the nurse who worked in the home on Sprogø. Rita Nielsen, who was there at the same time as yourself. Obviously it wouldn’t have done you any good to deny that.”

“No, of course not. Why should I? Though, granted, it does seem to be a lot of coincidences all at once.”

“And yet one of those missing persons was someone you didn’t know at all. That’s what you told me, and I assume in doing so you supposed we might turn our attentions elsewhere.”

There was no reaction.

“When we came to see you last Saturday, I told you we were investigating Curt Wad. For that reason, I think you probably thought you were in the clear. But do you know what, Nete? We now know that you were lying to us. You
did
know Viggo Mogensen, rather well, in fact. He was the cause of all your misery. You had a relationship with him and he got you pregnant, which sent you straight into the arms of Curt Wad, who performed an illegal abortion. We can see that from Curt Wad’s own records, which I can inform you are now in our possession.”

At this point he’d expected her to tense up, perhaps even break down and cry. But on that count he was mistaken. Instead, she leaned back slightly in her chair, sipped her tea, and shook her head slowly.

“Well, what am I supposed to say?” she replied. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole truth. What you say is correct, of course. I did know Viggo Mogensen. What’s more, you’re right in assuming I had no choice but to claim that I did not.”

She looked at him with eyes that had lost their luster.

“The fact of the matter is I have nothing whatsoever to do with any of it, and, as you suggest, I felt that everything nonetheless seemed to be pointing toward me. What else could I do but seek to ward off your attentions? I can assure you I am guilty of nothing and have absolutely no idea what happened to all these unfortunate people.”