Three Dog Night (38 page)

He got up and squeezed Cato's shoulder. His skeletal body writhed. Peter could smell his fear and his greed. Cato owed him big time and they both knew it.

He felt Cato's eyes on his back as he stood up to leave. Cato's voice dripped with irony: ‘See you under the clock.'

T
HE PIGLET IN
the corner didn't even have the strength to squeal. It was the runt of the litter. Number seventeen, to be precise. Kir looked into its tiny, blinking eyes, which at that moment seemed to know what was going to happen. There were not enough teats and it didn't have the strength to fight its siblings for the available milk. It was going to die.

Her father made short work of it. With a grunt, Christian Røjel bent down and grabbed the piglet with one hand. Holding its tiny head with the other, he twisted and snapped its neck. The expression of panic disappeared from its eyes, to be replaced by a void.

‘What d'you want?'

He didn't even look at her. She wanted to say that an injection was more humane, but he would only retort that he couldn't afford the vet's bill. The piglet should count itself lucky he didn't just let it starve to death. She knew he was right. This was the lesser of the two evils.

‘You've been blabbing to the police, haven't you? Who do you think you are?'

Mark Bille Hansen had driven straight from Fredensgade 27 to talk to her father. She'd asked to be the first to contact him, but he'd probably been right. A surprise visit was probably best – no time to prepare answers or put up his guard. He was cunning, the old pig farmer, his daughter could vouch for that.

‘What a little shit. Thinks he can come here, poking his nose into our business.'

Finally he turned to face her.

‘I don't know why you're after him. Thinks he's something special, he does, the smart-arse.'

He was angry and hurt because she had told Mark Bille about the Polish workers, she knew that. That was why she was there, to make it up to him. To see with her own eyes, to experience for herself, whether there was any basis for mutual understanding or whether it was all over. After all, she was his daughter and that was what always drew her back to him. But now his mouth erupted like a volcano and his words spewed out like molten lava. She tried, to no avail, to remind herself of his background. He was old school. His view of the world differed from most people's. He might be a Christian, but in his actions he believed in neither mercy nor forgiveness. He believed in the soil and the animals and power and his God-given right to exercise it over his own. Pigs as well as people. He was the patriarch. A Djursland version of a stubborn old bull elephant.

‘I'm not after anyone. I'm doing my job.'

‘Job. Pah!'

He threw the dead piglet into the aisle and spat on the floor. He moved on to the next bay and she had to follow.

‘I curse the day you started that rubbish.'

His long fingers closed around yet another newborn piglet. He held it in his hand as though he were an Egyptian god weighing the soul before deciding whether to send it to Heaven or Hell.

Childhood memories flashed through her brain. The image of him standing in the same pose, not with a piglet in his hand but her diving mask. A present from Uncle Hannibal. She loved it. That and the matching snorkel she had hidden under her pillow so that no one would find it. She remembered his long fingers closing around the glass. And the sound of it shattering when he smashed her diving mask with one blow. And then his hand reaching under her pillow, with snake-like rapidity, finding the snorkel and snapping it in half. He had turned around to see her and he hadn't even had the decency to look guilty.

‘He's putting ideas in your head,' he had growled, glaring at her, fists clenched. ‘Stay away from him.'

The piglet writhed and squealed in his hand. His face was expressionless as he bent down to push it in between its siblings so that it could find a teat to suck. She remembered that this was his life, his whole world. The same way she loved water, he loved working the soil, working with animals. The same way she respected the sea, without an ounce of sentimentality, with no more than a fleeting smile for silly amateur divers, he was equally unsentimental with his passion. He had no time for tree-huggers who wanted to save the world or bleeding-heart liberals trying to save the lives of animals born and bred for the slaughterhouse. ‘Most of them are quite happy to sink their teeth into a nice pork joint with crackling,' he used to say.

She knew from Mark that he had been cooperative. He had given him the names of two Polish workers who had now moved on to other jobs. It was winter and there was little work to be had, but he thought they might have gone to a farm in Allingåbro near Randers, to build a barn.

She watched him bend down to study the sow, looked at his back, his long, lean body.

‘It wasn't about diving, was it?'

Kir was thinking about the diving mask. Its fate was the entire basis of her rebellion. Obviously, she'd got herself a new one. She had gone snorkelling in secret and practised diving with and without the new snorkel.

‘It was about you and Hannibal. The rivalry between you. The older and the younger son.'

There were many things she had never understood, but slowly they were starting to make sense. Recent events, the body in the harbour and her family's reaction. Her mother's rejection, her father's anger. They were scared. Once again their world was under threat.

‘Hannibal was younger, but he was also brighter. He was open to the world. He wasn't scared. He didn't need to flex his muscles and bully people. But then again, he wasn't going to inherit the farm. It wasn't his responsibility and you despised him for that.'

He made no reply. She carried on despite wishing she could stop.

‘Hannibal was a threat. He saw the world differently. He saw me differently. All you saw was a daughter, preferably one who would stay close to home and be there to look after you and Mum when you got old. Someone who shouldn't aim too high or try to be independent.'

She ran after him as he moved down the aisle, past the bays where the piglets squealed and fought for their mothers' teats.

‘The daughter's spirit had to be broken, didn't it? But the sons! Sons were pure gold. No limits for them.'

He straightened up, his hand on his lower back, and turned. The volcano erupted again. Fire flashed from his eyes as he broke the neck of yet another runt and dropped it on the concrete floor with a splat.

‘Shut your mouth!'

She was scared of him, but not scared enough.

‘I found the cat. Why do you keep protecting him? He keeps doing it. What will it be next?'

He took a step towards her. The crater opened, red and spitting fire.

‘I said shut up, didn't I?'

‘It wasn't me that time in the boat, Dad. It was Red.'

She had hardly uttered the words before the slap came. But she carried on, the slap singing in her ears and the certainty that this was the end for him and for her, father and daughter.

‘Red pushed Tomas overboard. But you said it was me. He had to be protected. The older son. He always had to be protected.'

‘This has nothing to do with Red.'

His voice was trembling; his entire body was quivering with rage. She knew that slap number two was on its way.

She looked at her father one last time. Then she turned on her heel and left.

T
HE HOUSE SEEMED
so empty without Felix. Peter wandered around aimlessly, had a cup of coffee, tried a cheese sandwich, but he couldn't concentrate on eating. Even the dog seemed lost.

He had taken Kaj for a walk on the cliff and was back inside the warm house when his mobile rang. It was Cato and he sounded just as nervous as he had done in the visitors' room.

‘I haven't got much time.'

The smoker's voice could crack at any moment.

‘What have you got for me?'

There was background noise and a gale blowing. Cato was gasping as he walked and his voice mixed intermittently with the crunch of his footsteps.

‘Operation Lily,' he said.

Peter imagined him in a corner in the prison yard somewhere. He hoped he was safe. The only problem was that nowhere in prison was safe. You had to watch both the staff and your fellow inmates.

‘Operation Lily? What do you mean?'

Peter felt like reaching out and shaking him for more information.

‘Grimme's girlfriend is called Lily. She was the mole.'

‘Lily Klein?'

He'd known it was about Horsens. He had seen Lily there. She must have been there to visit Grimme.

‘Yes, Lily Klein. Do you know her?' Cato asked. ‘Small girl with dark hair and more piercings than a Zulu chief.'

The description was apt.

‘Why?'

Cato laughed and coughed at the same time.

‘Grimme was shagging her sister. Lily walked out, but Grimme beat her up. Then he cast her out, but decided to brand her first so that other men would know she belonged to him.'

Peter heard him cough.

‘But she got away and set out to plot her revenge. She started going out with Ramses.'

He spat, and Peter imagined the gobbet landing on the snow-covered prison yard.

‘So now what?'

Peter heard Cato light a cigarette and inhale the smoke.

‘She's dead meat. Examples are being set. They've got someone helping them on the outside.'

Cato blew out the smoke. Peter saw his face with the sunken cheeks and the thinning ponytail.

‘What kind of examples?'

There was silence down the other end while Cato filled his lungs with smoke.

‘Well, that girl who lived with the Arab, the girl who ended up in the harbour, if you didn't already know.'

‘Arab? How could Arabs be mixed up with Grimme?'

Cato burst into a hoarse laugh, which turned into a hacking cough.

‘You can have lots of different types of customer in a shop.'

Peter was reminded of the fleur-de-lis. The branding. It was war. Men against women.

‘Are you telling me they've joined forces? Biker gangs and immigrants?'

‘A bitch is a bitch no matter whose side she's on.'

‘Who would do all that for Grimme?'

It had to be someone without any scruples. Someone who actually enjoyed killing. Peter thought of Felix in the hands of someone like that and a cold sweat broke out.

Cato took a deep breath. His chest emitted a loud rattle.

‘I've given you enough. Got to go. The meter's running.'

‘Who, Cato? It's important! Give me a name.'

Cato sighed. The seconds passed. Peter heard voices in the background.

‘Some guy Grimme knows from the old days. He's done time, like us.'

‘Where?'

‘Djursland. That's all I know. Some sort of young offenders' institution.'

The telephone went dead.

F
ELIX WAS FROZEN.
She had always believed that extreme cold would numb the body, but it didn't for her. Everything hurt. Every joint, bone, muscle and organ. The cold was a worse foe than her kidnappers. She couldn't talk to it. She couldn't give it something to assuage its anger. She could only hope, endure and wait for Peter to find her. She knew he would. He would find her and save her. Or at least he would do his damnedest.

She had tried everything. She had shut her brain down and put it on standby so that her thoughts were frozen in time like the winter outside. But the winter had crept in where she was: Was it a stable, a barn or an outhouse? Or a basement perhaps? There was a smell of cats and fish, damp old newspapers and filthy mattresses.

She had also tried the opposite, feeding herself snippets from the past. She had gone over the days leading up to the helicopter crash in great detail, trying to fill every gap with memories. Episodes had emerged she had long since filed or forgotten or suppressed.

Like the time, in a fit of anger, she had slapped her brother across the face, partly to see how he would react. He was fifteen and she was sixteen and he had never forgiven her. On mature reflection, she realised it had affected their relationship to this very day, which showed how a split-second decision could have consequences for your whole life and destroy something precious. Like the time she had fallen out with her friend, Susanne. She wasn't proud of this episode, and in her foolish pride she had never patched up the breach, even though she missed Susanne terribly and realised they had been part of each other's lives ever since Year Two at school. At
gymnasium
, when they were seventeen, Susanne had stolen a boy Felix felt was hers, and Felix had frozen out her best friend. Once she came close to apologising. She sat down and wrote a letter to Susanne, but she couldn't bring herself to post it, and she tore it up and threw it in the waste-paper basket.

She had always found it easy to isolate herself, just as she had hidden herself away in the house on the cliff. Fleeing was her response to adversity. Rather than finish arguments with boyfriends, she would jump in her car and drive off, consumed with thoughts of righteousness and self-pity.

She had reviewed her relationships with her mother (not brilliant, but affectionate in a muted sort of way), her stepfather and her brother, who had long since left Denmark and settled in Spain. She had thought about colleagues and old boyfriends whose faces had a habit of appearing in her dreams and on Facebook. She had taken stock of her life and it wasn't one that filled her with pride – not if you counted success with others as the meaning of life. The only success she'd ever experienced had drowned in an orgy of water and wreckage. The only child she had borne, the only person to whom she had given life, had had her life extinguished because her mother had chosen the wrong man. Because she had been brainless. Because she hadn't seen anything, hadn't seen what he'd been up to. No, not that; no excuses. It was because she hadn't wanted to see and had closed her eyes.