The Purity of Vengeance (18 page)

But Nete never understood why he could swear so profusely himself, and why it was so wrong to talk about what males and females did, when it was all around them every day on the farm.

“They say you’re foulmouthed and stupid, and that you contaminate everything around you,” her father told her. “You were expelled from school, so I found a lady to teach you instead, though she didn’t come cheap. If only you’d at least learned to read and write, but you couldn’t even manage that. Everywhere I go, people look at me with resentment. I’m the smallholder whose daughter brings shame to the village. The pastor, the school, everyone speaks against you, and thereby against me. You’ve yet to be confirmed, and now you’re pregnant besides. And you tell me it’s your cousin who’s the father.”

“He is. We did it together.”

“No, he is
not
, Nete! Tage says he’s had nothing to do with you. So who’s responsible?”

“Me and Tage together.”

“Get down on your knees, Nete.”

“But . . .”

“DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!”

She did as she was told, watching as he stepped across the floor and reached into the bag on the table.

“Here,” he said, depositing a fistful of rice grains on the floor in front of her. “Eat!”

He placed a jug of water next to her. “And drink!”

She glanced around the room, her eyes passing over the picture of her mother, delicate and smiling in her bridal gown, over the glass-fronted cabinet with the porcelain inside and the clock on the wall that had long since stopped. And nothing in the room could comfort her, nothing suggested there was any way out.

“Tell me who you cavorted with, Nete, or else eat.”

“With Tage. Only with him.”

“Here,” her father snarled, forcing rice into her mouth with hands that trembled from rage.

The grains caught in her throat, though she drank all she could. Each time she swallowed she thought she would choke on these small, pointed grains heaped on the floor.

When her father buried his face in his hands and began to sob and beg her to tell him who had made her pregnant, she flew up at once, breaking the water jug in the process. Four strides to the door and she was out. In the open she was quick and nimble, and she knew the landscape like no other.

She heard her father’s cries behind her, and later his screams in the distance, but they didn’t stop her. What brought her to a halt was the pain in her abdomen as the rice began to swell with the water and her bile. She felt her stomach expand and it made her throw back her head and gasp for breath.

“It was Taaaaaggggeee!” she screamed, out across the reeds and the stream that flowed in front of her. Then she fell to her knees and pressed her fists against her abdomen as hard as she could. It helped momentarily, but her stomach was swelling still. She put a finger down her throat in an effort to regurgitate, but nothing could assuage her pain.

“It was Tage! Why can’t you tell him, Mother?” she wept, her eyes turned to the heavens. But her mother didn’t answer. Instead she found herself confronted by five boys with fishing rods.

“Nete, the willy wanker!” one of them cried.

“Willy wanker, willy wanker!” the others joined in.

She closed her eyes. Everything inside her felt wrong, her diaphragm and abdomen, and places she had never been aware of before. She felt a throbbing behind her eye, in her temples, inside her skull. She could smell her own sweat. Her whole being tried to scream away the pain and make the body whole again.

But she couldn’t scream, no matter how much she wanted to. Nor could she answer when the boys asked if she’d lift up her dress so they could see what she looked like down below.

She heard the expectation in their voices, revealing them for what they were: silly little boys without a clue, who’d only ever done what their fathers told them. Her refusal to answer made them not only angry, but embarrassed, which was the very worst anyone could make them feel.

“She’s a dirty pig,” one of them yelled. “Throw her in the stream and wash her clean.”

And without warning they took hold of her arms and legs and cast her into the water with all their might.

They heard the splash, and the thud as she landed stomach-first on a submerged boulder, and they saw how she flailed her arms as blood colored the water between her legs.

But none of them did anything to help. Instead they ran away.

And there, in the cold water, came the scream.

The scream saved her, because her father followed the sound, hauled her ashore, and carried her home. Strong arms, suddenly gentle. He, too, had seen the blood and realized she could no longer defend herself.

He put her to bed and laid a cool cloth across her stomach, and asked for forgiveness for losing his temper. But she said nothing. The stabs of pain in her head and abdomen made it impossible to speak.

After that, he never again raised the issue of who had made her pregnant. The fetus was no longer, so much was obvious. Nete’s mother had also had miscarriages, it was no secret, and the signs were unmistakable. Even Nete knew.

That evening, when Nete’s brow became hot with fever, her father called Dr. Wad. An hour later Wad arrived with his son, Curt, apparently unsurprised by Nete’s condition. He noted her father’s explanation that she had slipped and fallen into the stream. Others had already told him as much, and now he could see it must have been the case. It was too bad the girl had begun to bleed, Wad said, and asked her father if she was pregnant, not even bothering to examine her himself.

She watched her father as he shook his head, paralyzed by shame and indecision.

“That would be unlawful,” her father said in a quiet voice. “So of course not. There’s no need for the police on that account. An accident is an accident.”

“You’ll be all right again,” said the doctor’s son. He stroked her arm, his touch rather too prolonged, the tips of his fingers surreptitiously brushing against her small breasts.

It was the first time she saw Curt Wad, and even then she felt uncomfortable in his presence.

Afterward her father scrutinized her for some time before eventually collecting himself and announcing to her the decision that would destroy her life and his.

“I can’t have you here any longer, Nete. We must find you a foster family. I shall speak to the authorities in the morning.”

 • • • 

After the radio interview with Curt Wad she sat frowning in her chair in the middle of the living room. Not even Carl Nielsen’s
Springtime on Funen
or Bach’s preludes could bring her peace.

A monster had been allowed to speak over the airwaves. The interviewer had tried her best to halt his flow with her penetrating questions, but he had utilized his allotted time to the full, expertly and with sickening effect.

Everything he had stood for back then was not only intact but now seemingly reinforced to such an extent that she was appalled. Curt Wad had made public the aims of his work and that of the organization he had founded and which so plainly belonged to a bygone age. A time when people raised their arms in Nazi salutes and clicked their heels, murdering in the insane belief that some people are born better than others and that the right to divide humanity into those who are worthy and those who are not belonged to them and them alone.

She would do everything in her power to make sure the monster rose to her bait, no matter the consequences.

Her body trembled as she found his number, her fingers fumbling at the dial until she got it right.

It took three tries before the line was no longer busy. He’d probably been inundated after the interview. She hoped his callers were people who despised him for what he was.

But when she finally got through, there was nothing in Curt Wad’s voice to indicate this was the case.

“Purity Party, Curt Wad speaking,” he announced directly, and without shame.

When she introduced herself he indignantly demanded to know what on earth she thought she was playing at, wasting his time with that letter of hers and now phone calls.

He was about to hang up on her when she mustered all her strength and calmly informed him of her business.

“I’m terminally ill and I want you to know I have come to terms with what happened between us. The letter I sent you informs you of my intention to release a large sum of money to you or the organizations you have founded. If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you read it and seriously consider its content. I fear time may be short.”

And with that she put down the receiver. Her eyes wandered to the bottle of poison as she felt a migraine coming on.

Only five days to go now.

15

November 2010

With his cheek stuck
to the wall and a pungent, exotic pong in his nostrils, Carl awoke to see a pair of scrutinizing eyes and a mat of prickly stubble in front of his face.

“Here, Carl,” said Assad, offering a steaming glass of scalding-hot liquid.

Carl recoiled immediately and felt a jab of pain in his neck as though a vice had suddenly tightened on a muscle. To think tea could have such a foul smell.

He glanced around and remembered it had been a late night and that at some point he’d felt he couldn’t manage the drive home. He sniffed his armpits and wished he hadn’t.

“Genuine Ar Raqqah tea,” said Assad hoarsely.

“Ar Raqqah,” Carl repeated. “Sounds nasty. What is it, a disease? An accumulation of catarrh?”

Assad smiled. “Ar Raqqah is a very fine city on the Euphrates.”

“The Euphrates? Whoever heard of tea from the Euphrates? What country are we talking about, anyway?”

“Syria, of course.” Assad shoveled a couple of teaspoons of sugar into the glass and handed it to him.

“Assad, as far as I know they don’t grow tea in Syria.”

“Herbal tea, Carl. You’ve been coughing all night.”

Carl stretched the muscles of his neck, but it only seemed to make things worse. “What about Rose, did she go home afterward?”

“No, she has been busy on the toilet most of the night. It’s her turn now.”

“She wasn’t ill last time I saw her.”

“It came on later, then.”

“Where is she now?” Hopefully miles away.

“At the Royal Library, looking at books about Sprogø. When she was not shitting she was on the Internet, reading. This is some of it here,” Assad said, handing Carl some stapled sets of printouts.

“Just give us a minute to freshen up a bit, Assad, yeah?”

“Of course, Carl. And while you’re reading you can eat as many of these as you can. They come from the same place as the tea. They are very, very, very good indeed.”

Three “verys” too many, I shouldn’t wonder, Carl thought to himself as he studied the packet that was decorated with Arabic lettering and a picture of a cookie even a castaway would turn his nose up at.

“Thanks, Assad,” he mumbled, stumbling out toward the toilets to take care of stop-gap ablutions. After that he could sort out his own breakfast. Lis usually had something tasty stashed away in her desk up on the third floor.

He was looking forward already.

 • • • 

“Funny you should turn up now,” said Lis, her wonky front teeth showing in a devastatingly delicious smile. “I’ve found your cousin, Ronny, and it wasn’t easy, I can tell you. That man changes address the way the rest of us change nightclothes.”

Carl pictured the two faded T-shirts he took turns sleeping in, before shaking the image from his mind. “Where is he now, then?” he asked, doing his best to appear less disheveled than he looked.

“He’s taken over the lease on a flat in Vanløse. Here’s his mobile number. It’s a pay-as-you-go SIM, just so’s you know.”

Vanløse! He drove past the bloody place every day. Small world.

“Where’s old misery guts, then? She off sick as well?” he asked, with a nod toward Ms. Sørensen’s chair.

“Nah, she’s like me. Can’t keep a good woman down,” Lis replied, gesturing toward the depopulated offices of the homicide division. “Unlike the wimpy male specimens we’ve got around here. No, Cata’s off on her NLP course. Last day today.”

Cata? The old hag couldn’t be called Cata, surely? Was she winding him up or what?

“Cata—is that Ms. Sørensen?”

Lis nodded. “Catarina, actually. But she prefers Cata.”

Carl staggered back down the stairs to the basement.

It was a madhouse up there.

 • • • 

“Have you read my printouts?” Rose asked, the second she noticed Carl’s presence. She looked like death warmed up.

“Not yet, no. Don’t you think you should go home, Rose?”

“Later, maybe. There’s something we need to talk about.”

“I was afraid you might say that. What’s all this about Sprogø?”

“Gitte Charles and Rita Nielsen were there at the same time.”

“And . . . ?” he said, sounding like he didn’t grasp the importance, though he most certainly did. This was fucking ace work, and all three of them knew it.

“So they must have known each other,” Rose said. “Gitte Charles was on the staff and Rita was an inmate.”

“Inmate? How do you mean?”

“You don’t know much about Sprogø, do you, Carl?”

“Well, I know it’s a little island between Sjælland and Fyn, that the Storebælt Bridge crosses over it, and you could see it from the ferries back in the days when you had to sail over the strait. There’s a lighthouse there. And a hill, and lots of fucking grass.”

“And some buildings as well, yeah?”

“Right. Since they built the bridge you can see them pretty clearly, especially if you’re coming from Sjælland. Yellow, aren’t they?”

Assad came over to them. This time neatly combed and shaved, albeit bleeding from nicks on his chin and throat. Maybe they should have a fund-raiser and get him a new razor.

Rose tilted her head. “I take it you’ve heard of the women’s home on the island, Carl?”

“Course I have. A place where they sent fallen women for a while, wasn’t it?”

“Let me enlighten you. I’ll make it brief, so listen up, Carl. You, too, Assad.”

She raised a finger in the air like a schoolmistress. This was Rose in her element.