Why on earth should they be allowed to live when I can’t? And it helped.
Anneli was almost smiling on the way to the hospital to receive her sentence, because the decision had definitely been made.
If she was going to die, then they would damn well die too.
The consultation was one long blur because Anneli was unable to concentrate on all the unreal and real words. Terms such as “sentinel lymph nodes,” “scintigraphy,” “X-ray,” “electrocardiography,” and “chemo” passed by. She just waited for the final and ultimate sentence.
“Your malignant tumor is estrogen-receptor-negative, so we can’t treat you with hormone therapy,” the doctor had said, adding an explanation that the tumor had a malignancy level of three, which was the most dangerous type, but that the tumor was small because it had been found so early and that with an operation everything would probably be fine.
Such a long sentence ending with “everything would probably be fine” was ominous.
Probably! What the hell was “probably” supposed to mean?
Everything went very quickly on the day of the operation. Wednesday morning at eight o’clock she had called in sick to work with influenza. The anesthetic was at nine, the operation was over a few hours later, and she was home by late afternoon. Altogether radical changes in the quiet life she had otherwise led up until this point, and Anneli couldn’t quite keep up.
The results were ready on Friday the 13th of all days, a couple of days after the operation.
“It wasn’t cancer in the sentinel lymph node,” she was told as her heart raced. “The evidence suggests that there is a good chance you’ll have a long and healthy life, Anne-Line Svendsen.” The doctor couldn’t help but smile a little. “We have performed breast-conserving surgery and you can expect a speedy recovery if you follow our advice carefully. Then we’ll have a look at your future treatment.”
—
“No, I’m still not quite myself; it’s a really bad case of influenza, this one. Of course I can come into the office, but I’m worried I’ll give it to everyone else. Why don’t I wait until sometime next week to come back? At least then I ought to be over the worst.”
The answer from her line manager was a little hesitant; it wasn’t a good idea to put other people at risk, so she should try to get herself as well as possible; they would look forward to her being back again after Whitsun.
Anneli hung up, feeling the beginning of a smile. She had been marked for death and had therefore decided to take her revenge on those girls who were of no value to society, and now she might not die after all. She would go to radiation therapy, get dry skin, and expect to be utterly exhausted, but what did that have to do with her vendetta against women like Jazmine and Camilla and Michelle, and whatever the hell they were called? Nothing!
A vendetta is a vendetta, and as she saw it, she should stick with it.
That evening, against the advice of the doctors, she emptied most of the contents of a cognac bottle, which some merciful soul had left at her place after the only get-together she had ever had.
Intoxicated by fermented grapes from a dusty bottle, she regained all her indignation and anger. From this day forth, she was finished with playing the victim. She would attend her treatment without mentioning anything at work, and if anyone asked, in the event that she arrived late in the morning after her treatment, she would say that she had been to the psychologist to deal with latent stress issues. At least it was something every center manager would be able to understand.
She laughed again, holding the half-empty glass up to the light emanating from the hanging lamp.
No, no, from now on she would think of only herself and her own needs. No more nice girl who hardly ever lied or went against the rules. Gone was the woman who thought she would collapse under the strain and who had already been thinking about a place to be buried. From now on, she was going to live life and take no nonsense from anyone.
Beautiful scenes danced before her in her drunkenness. She saw them in front of her—the girls and their idiotic mothers, who had neglected their offspring, making them useless, and whom she would now cause to fall down in shock.
“They’re absolutely worthless!” she shouted, making even the storm windows shake.
She lay on her side on the sofa, doubled up with laughter cramps, stopping only when the scar from the operation began to throb. She swallowed a couple more painkillers and wrapped herself in her old quilt.
Tomorrow, she would quietly and calmly come up with a way to wipe out those broads, and then she would get ahold of an address list of the most superfluous and useless girls in greater Copenhagen.
—
There were fifty printouts from Google in front of her, all detailing the simplest and safest way to steal a car. A mass of exciting information and many things that seemed very obvious when one had read the advice and learned the techniques a car thief needed to know by heart to ensure nothing went wrong. If one knew these basic sentences like the back of one’s hand, then one had the essentials necessary to gain access to a locked car without a key, and also how to get it started.
The only crime she could think of that she had committed up until this point was when she neglected to tell the checkout staff in the supermarket if she was given too much change. Fuck that, she’d always thought, because public employees like Anneli didn’t have much to play with to start. But to steal cars with the intention of using them to kill was a totally different matter. The thought made her giddy.
She thought of the idea after seeing a crime report that had been all over the media. A murderer on Bornholm had deliberately driven into a girl so brutally that she had been flung up into a tree. She could picture the scene. It was a murder that had taken twenty years and a lot of luck to solve, and that was on the sparsely populated island of Bornholm. So if one were to do the same in a densely populated city like Copenhagen and took the right precautions, who on earth would work out that it was her?
With good preparation and meticulousness, it will all be fine, she thought. And she was both meticulous and well prepared.
It was alpha and omega that one didn’t use a car that could be traced back, which was why it was necessary to steal one—something she now knew quite a bit about.
Whether one was a professional or an amateur in the field, the first step was to ensure that the car wasn’t fitted with an alarm. The easiest way to check was to push the car roughly when walking past. If an alarm went off, the idea was to skip the next ten cars and try again with the eleventh. Only when an old banger had been spotted and proven not to have an alarm could step two be brought into play.
Were there any security cameras in the vicinity? People at windows or on the street, passersby on bikes or mopeds or in cars who might notice her when she got under way? All very logical for a young entrepreneurial car thief, but not for a so-called respectable woman in her prime.
Following this, the make and state of the vehicle should be thoroughly inspected. Anneli had no plans to sell the car to a mechanic in Lodz or strip it of airbags and expensive GPS equipment, so expensive vehicles were of no interest to her. She just needed any old car that was reasonably reliable, and which could be rammed directly into a human for an easy kill.
When that had been done, it was her intention to leave the car in some random place far from the crime scene.
The most important thing of all was that it was an easy car to steal. An older model where the steering lock could be wrenched apart, or which could even be started with a screwdriver stuck in the ignition. It certainly shouldn’t be a vehicle with an immobilizer, but she could check that on her smartphone. And then there were the basics, like checking whether the tires were flat. If there were any items in the car that might lead to problems, like a child safety seat with a child in it, for example. And then whether or not it was possible to maneuver the car out of t
he parking lot quick enough. Was there even enough room to get out of the parking space? Anneli needed at least forty centimeters in front of and behind the car, but that wasn’t that unusual.
Anneli smiled as she went through her checklist. Where would she run if she was caught red-handed? And if she didn’t make it, what story would she come up with?
Anneli practiced. “God, isn’t that my car? I wondered why the key wasn’t working. Oh no, God, if that isn’t my car, then where have I parked mine?” Wouldn’t most people believe she was a law-abiding but confused woman? That she had panicked or was maybe slightly senile?
Anneli completely forgot the pain she was in that Saturday. She just popped pills and emptied the liquor cabinet, reading so much that she became dizzy. It was decades since she had felt so warm inside, so ready for action and full of life. So it couldn’t be totally wrong.
The next day she made her first attempt.
Using Google Street View, she picked a large parking lot in Herlev, where she reasoned that the vehicles wouldn’t be as fancy and unapproachable as in Holte or Hørsholm, for example.
While she was still on the S-train, Anneli began to feel a tingling sensation in her body. All the other passengers suddenly seemed so grey and insignificant. Young people laughing or kissing didn’t irritate her like they usually did, and she almost felt sorry for the women her own age who would be returning home to their families and domestic chores at some point.
Then she patted the bag where the screwdriver, inflatable cushion, little crowbar, emergency hammer, and thin, expensive nylon string from Silvan waited for her.
The feeling was almost like being reborn.
—
Anneli looked around. It was a quiet Sunday the day after the Eurovision Song Contest. It probably didn’t affect the mood out here in the suburbs that Denmark had been knocked out; it was just as dull and quiet as always.
The goal for the day wasn’t to actually steal a car but just to get as far as gaining access and sitting in the vehicle. She wasn’t in a rush at the moment because safety had to come first. She would take the next step later in the week, attempting to short-circuit the ignition and go for a drive. She was setting the pace.
She found a promising Suzuki Alto with rust marks under the doors that looked like it had already been stolen. There was limited activity around her; it was the time when most normal people were relaxing with breakfast or busying themselves preparing the Whitsun lunch.
The grey wreck was parked between a couple of older BMWs, the type that neither steel rims nor noisy stereos could improve. It was a good quiet place to give the Suzuki a knock.
It rocked silently on the wheels: no alarm.
There were three options. Either the one with the string, which could be forced through the crack in the passenger door and down to grab hold of the locking tab on the door; the more difficult option with the inflatable cushion, which could be pushed in the door of the trunk to force it up, allowing one to kick down the passenger seats; or then there was the more simple option of smashing a window.
Anneli was more in the mood for smashing windows.
She had learned on the Internet that the best way to do it was with a short hit down in the corner of the window, so that was what she did. Firstly with the flat side of the hammer, which didn’t work, and then a hit with the pointy end.
Not too hard, she reminded herself. She shouldn’t risk her hand going through and cutting herself.
After the third attempt, she concluded that the window was irregular and therefore impossible to smash.
Then she tried the door handle. She ought to have tried that earlier: It opened.
—
After a few hours of breaking into different vehicles using different methods, she concluded objectively that with her pronounced lack of dexterity, everything pointed to smashing windows as the best method. All the fuss with string and inflatable cushions didn’t work for her. The string broke or the loop that was meant to go around the door lock became tangled, and the cushion punctured on the first attempt. At least you knew where you were when it came to smashing windows.
And all you had to do afterward was poke the broken glass out through the window frame and brush the shards of glass from the passenger seat onto the floor. Nobody would take any notice of the open window in this warm May weather, so long as the weather stayed as it was. And if one wanted to use the car multiple times and try to hide the fact that it was stolen, it was easy enough to get ahold of strong see-through plastic.
She was also able to conclude that her tools, and in particular the hammer, weren’t the best for the job. Therefore, a pointy carbon thingamabob like they suggested on the Internet would have to be the next thing she got hold of. And then there was the issue with the ignition. She tried once to press a screwdriver hard in the ignition and turn it, but that hadn’t sounded good.
Smaller and pointier screwdrivers next time and a better technique, she thought.
She still had homework to do.
—
It took Anneli until the following Friday before she began to feel experienced enough. The week had passed with a little work during the day and breaking into cars in different parts of town during the rest of the day. And she had now been successful in starting the cars using different methods.
When finally sitting in a car one hadn’t personally paid for and taking a street corner at full speed, the adrenaline rush felt extra-powerful. With a racing pulse and heightened senses in full swing, it was an altogether younger version of Anne-Line Svendsen sitting behind the wheel, or so it felt anyway. Sight and hearing were sharpened, as was the ability to quickly assess the surroundings, and the skin became warm and elastic.
Anneli suddenly felt shrewd and sly. Like someone who hadn’t yet reached her full potential; like a woman able to match a man in almost anything.
In other words, Anneli had become someone else.
On her kitchen table there was now a list of young women whom she had had professional contact with in recent years.
They were girls and women for whom nothing but their own needs meant anything. Everything around them seemed like it must be just for them. They scrounged off the feelings and charity of the world around them. Anneli hated every last one of them. In fact, “hate” wasn’t a strong enough word.
It had been a bit of a job finding relevant information from the other social security offices where she had worked in recent years. She needed a professional reason to check them first, but Anneli turned a blind eye to that regulation and now had fifty names to choose from, which satisfied her.
They were the ones the world was going to be rid of.
Midweek, she had made a list of priorities. First on the list were those who had irritated her the most, which was a mixed group from the three social security offices, so there wouldn’t be any immediate murder pattern, and then those who had been fleecing the system for years.
Anneli lit a cigarette and leaned back in the kitchen chair. If the police ever caught up with her, she would face her punishment with her head held high. She had nothing at home to hold her back and no one in society to stop her: Her relationships were dull and superficial. On the other hand, in prison she would get what mattered most for the majority of people: security, regular meals, routines, and lots of time to read good books. Far away from wretched work and stress. And there might even be some people in prison whom she would get on better with than those on the outside. Why not?
Well, if that was the alternative, it wasn’t the worst.
She printed out maps of Copenhagen’s different housing areas and marked with a pencil where the girls lived. Don’t shit on your own doorstep, she thought, selecting the girls who lived close to her in Østerbro and placing them at the bottom of the pile.
After some consideration, she chose Michelle Hansen as her first victim. Firs
tly, the girl was less intelligent and therefore presumably easier to outwit, and secondly, she was a demanding and irritating rat who could make Anneli break out in a rash just from thinking about her.
She knew that the girl lived with her boyfriend, Patrick Pettersson, and that the building was so hidden among the labyrinth of small streets in the North West district that you could count on the traffic being limited, giving her peace to execute her plan. There didn’t seem to be any impediment to her taking the next step.
She threw her cigarettes in the bag and headed out into the morning traffic. Now she was going to find a car.
The hunt was on.
12
Friday, May 20th, 2016
When Michelle turned twenty-seven, she suddenly felt old. Twenty-six was already bordering on old, but twenty-seven! That was nearly thirty, and years since she had been the age at which all the stars had their breakthrough. She thought about Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and all the other celebrities who had died at her age, and about everything they had achieved.
And then they just died. Before their time.
Michelle, on the other hand, was alive and kicking and hadn’t achieved anything other than living in a studio apartment in the North West district with Patrick. Admittedly, she was still somewhat in love with him, but was that all there was to life? Hadn’t she always been told that she was destined for great things? And yet now here she was, twenty-seven years old. What had happened to those great things?
All the TV appearances she had never been offered tormented her. Not that she had tried to draw much attention to herself, but still. Why wasn’t there someone who had discovered her on the street, just like that Natalya Averina from Roskilde? Or like Kate Moss, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence, Toni Braxton, or Natalie Portman? She did look better than most people, and she could also sing, according to her mother.
Now she was twenty-seven, so things needed to happen soon. Patrick had been on one reality show, and she had fallen for him initially when she saw him on-screen, even though he had been voted off in the second episode. At least she had managed to get him after stalking him for a few weeks, so something had worked out. And if he could get on TV, then so could she, feminine and beautiful as she was. Every morning she spent almost half an hour shaving her legs, arms, and crotch, half an hour on her hair, and half an hour doing her face, followed by time spent selecting an outfit. Didn’t she still have a flat stomach? Didn’t her breast implants make her look great? Didn’t she have at least as good a sense of fashion as those bitches who were cast in shows as if from thin air?
The Scarred Woman Page 9
