The Scarred Woman

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  There they stood, the oddest pair you could find at HQ. The short, squat, and dark Assad, with masculinity oozing from his jet-black stubble, standing next to Gordon, looking pale and as tall as a giraffe in comparison, and who was still waiting for his first real shave. The worry in the faces, however, was identical. It was genuinely touching.

  “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it, guys,” he said.

  “We thought we’d drive over there now, didn’t we, Assad?” said Gordon.

  He nodded. “Yes, we need to see how she’s doing, Carl. Maybe she needs to be admitted again.”

  “All right, you two,” he said soothingly. “Try not to worry. It’s probably not so bad. Let Rose cool off. She said what she had to say. I’m sure she’ll be back to her old self tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, maybe, Carl, and then again maybe not,” said Assad. He didn’t look convinced.

  Carl knew where he was coming from.

  “Time will tell,” he said.

  14

  Tuesday, May 17th, 2016

  The perfume bottles stood close together in a neat row on the bathroom shelf. One for Vicky, one for Yrsa, and one for Lise-Marie, the way Rose had arranged them. Three very different and delicate scents that each bore witness to personal style and some measure of elegance, which wasn’t something one would accuse Rose of possessing much of.

  Each bottle had a sticker with one of the sisters’ names on it. And when Rose sprayed one of these scents on the inside of her wrist, it was normally only a matter of seconds before she could mimic the personality and identity of that sister down to the smallest detail.

  It had always been that way with the scents of the women Rose had grown up with. When she was a child, she had mimicked her grandmother and mother by spraying her wrists with eau de cologne or Chanel No. 5, respectively, and later in life also all her sisters with each of their perfumes. Only her own perfume had an almost anonymous scent because “it’s easier to dress when naked,” as her pale Danish teacher always used to say with a hint of irony.

  Earlier today, like so many times before, she had splashed herself with Vicky’s perfume, and carried by this scent she had taken the S-train into the city to give Carl a piece of her mind. Prior to that, she had been to the hairdresser to have her hair cropped so short that even Vicky would have found it daring. She had bought a blouse from Malene Birger and a pair of jeans that were so tight around the crotch that anyone except Vicky would have found them obscene. When she arrived at police HQ dressed and acting like Vicky, she had shown her ID card to the puzzled security guard and made her way down to Carl, where she had spent five memorable minutes letting Carl have it about how hard, unfair, and insensitive he always was with Rose, her beloved sister.

  In Rose’s experience a disguise often had the same effect on people as alcohol, as they both strengthened courage as well as the characteristics that didn’t normally see the light of day.

  She knew full well that Carl wouldn’t be easily fooled, even though she had once managed to convince him for several days that she was her sister Yrsa, but that didn’t matter. People were still more willing to listen to a cry for help if it was expressed by someone else or by people one pretended to be.

  Afterward, she had felt great for about an hour, because Carl deserved no better. But then things took a turn for the worse.

  She had only just arrived back at Stenløse Station when the all-consuming blackout hit her like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky. She couldn’t remember what happened in the following hours. She just suddenly came to in her sitting room, having wet herself, with her expensive blouse pulled halfway down her shoulders and torn up to her belly button.

  This had made Rose scared. Not just confused and uneasy like she had felt so many times before when her dark side had taken over, but soaked in complete and irrational anxiety. These blackouts were rare and superficial, but this time it was different. It almost felt as if a liquid had spread in her brain, killing her cells, and that there were membranes growing on her senses.

  “Either this is going to kill me or I’m really going crazy,” she whispered.

  “But just think about it. You’ve hardly had any sleep or anything to drink in the last four days, and you haven’t eaten anything. What did you expect?” she argued.

  She wolfed down the remains in the fridge and drank liters of water in an attempt to feel better, but every time she tried to swallow, it felt as if an internal vacuum sucked her further into herself. It made her nausea ten times worse than when she needed to be sick.

  When evening came, she walked like a zombie from room to room, spitting on the bare walls. She saw faces deep within staring intensely at her from everywhere: the paneling, the walls, the tiles in the bathroom, and the cupboard doors in the kitchen.

  Make the sign of the cross over us if you want to block out evil, screamed the surfaces. Protect yourself against the inescapable abysses if you can, but hurry, you don’t have much time.

  Rose found all the pens and pencils she could find in her drawers and placed them in front of her. Slowly and carefully, she chose a couple of bundles of black and red permanent markers and began to cover the walls with words that for a brief moment could keep all her terrible thoughts at bay.

  After many hours in this daze, with aching wrists and stiff neck muscles, she put the permanent marker in her other hand and continued. She didn’t allow herself any rest the entire night. She didn’t even stop when she needed the toilet. It wasn’t the first time today she had wet herself, so why should she worry if she did it again? She was driven by the fear of a harsher reality overpowering her if she didn’t continue. She was constantly looking for bare surfaces to cover with her message, and eventually only the mirrors, fridge, and ceilings were left.

  By that time, Rose’s hands were shaking uncontrollably and her eyes wouldn’t stop blinking. Her gag reflex had almost taken over her breathing and her head was swinging from side to side like a clock pendulum.

  When Rose had written throughout the night and the dawn light revealed the walls and surfaces of the apartment daubed with a horrible message of powerlessness, her body was almost out of control. When she looked at herself in the hallway mirror between the myriad red and black lines and noticed how the Rose she otherwise knew so well now unmistakably reminded her of the distorted faces and lost souls in locked wards, it finally dawned on her that if she didn’t do something about this now she would perish.

  When she rang the psychiatric ward pleading for immediate help in a quivering voice, they recommended that she just take a taxi and find her own way there. They tried to sound upbeat and optimistic, maybe in the hope that it would have some effect on her and encourage her to find some willpower.

  It was only when she began to scream down the telephone that the gravity of the situation became apparent, and an ambulance was sent for her.

  15

  Wednesday, May 18th, 2016

  Carl sat glued to the screen in amazement. With more than a million regular viewers, the crime documentary program Station 3 had become the most popular continually running program in Danish TV history. Other programs of that sort had a serious approach, carefully presented the police work, and were happy to lend a hand in the investigation where possible. Station 3 had an altogether different agenda, doing its best to explain criminal behavior based on the motto that all criminal acts were the result of poor social background, which was why the program often ended up glorifying the criminals.

  The program Carl had just seen was no exception. It had started with a so-called exhaustive study of Hitler’s background, concluding that he had been neglected and that the Second World War could have been avoided if his childhood had been more harmonious. As if that was news to anyone. Then the focus switched to the behavior of fifteen American serial killers, who without exception were the result of a string of parallel punishments in their youth. Time after t
ime, it was made clear that police work was nothing more than a social effort aimed at helping these criminals to avoid this otherwise unavoidable destiny at an early point in their lives.

  It was apparent to any fool, and yet the professional psychologists and other consultants on the program made good money from analyzing violent criminals, murderers, fraudsters, and other scum as victims, while eloquent journalists used their dubious talents to interview the criminals about the abuse they had been subjected to themselves.

  Carl shook his head. Why the hell didn’t they ever ask how these criminals could explain away all the terrible abuse they had inflicted? Serious matters were turned into entertainment, allowing politicians to sit back and breathe a sigh of relief because Denmark’s most popular TV program conveyed the impression that something was being done about the situation.

  Carl pressed eject and momentarily held the DVD that the TV company had given him before throwing it in the wastebasket. What the hell had Bjørn imagined that he could contribute to that infantile show? Now it seemed even more stupid to him that he had jumped on that bandwagon.

  He turned to Assad, who was standing behind him. “What can we say about that rubbish, Assad?”

  He shook his head. “Well, Carl, you might as well ask why camels have such big feet.”

  Carl pulled a face. Couldn’t those bloody camels find somewhere else to go?

  “Big feet?” He took a deep breath. “In order not to sink down in the sand, I assume. But what on earth do big camel feet have to do with that TV show, Assad?”

  “The answer is that camels have big feet so they can dance the fandango on poisonous snakes if the vermin are stupid enough to slither past.”

  “And?”

  “Just like camels, you and I also have big feet, Carl. Didn’t you know that?”

  Carl looked down at Assad’s small duck-like feet and took a deep breath. “So you think Bjørn assigned us to the job to make things difficult for Station 3?”

  Assad gave him a thumbs-up with his scarred thumb.

  “I don’t want to play at being a camel to make Bjørn feel better,” he said, reaching out for the landline. No, if anyone was going to play the camel, it was going to be Bjørn.

  As soon as he put his hand on the telephone, it rang.

  “Yes?” he snarled. There was never any peace to get things finished around here.

  “Hello, my name is Vicky Knudsen,” said a subdued voice. “I’m Rose’s younger sister.”

  Carl’s face changed. This should be interesting. He grabbed the extra receiver and gave it to Assad.

  “Well, hello, Vicky. Carl Mørck speaking,” he said with a hint of sarcasm. “How is Rose today? Did you give her my apology?”

  It went silent at the other end of the line. Surely she knew now that he had seen through her.

  “I don’t understand. What apology?”

  Assad signaled to Carl to tone it down. Was his desire to attack really that obvious?

  “I’m calling because Rose is in an awful state,” she continued.

  “I’ll say,” whispered Carl with his hand over the receiver, but Assad wasn’t listening.

  “Rose has been admitted to the psychiatric center in Glostrup again as an emergency measure, so I’m calling to let you know that she won’t be ready to come back to work for a while. I’ll make sure that the center sends you her sick note.”

  Carl was just about to protest and say that now things had gone far enough, but the next few sentences he heard stopped him.

  “A couple of our friends saw her sitting on a bench outside Matas in the Egedal shopping center yesterday, shaking all over. They tried to take her home with them, but she told them to get lost. Then they called me and said that I had better come down there. I looked for her with our younger sister Lise-Marie all over the whole shopping center, but we weren’t the ones to find her—that was a parking attendant, we were told later. He’d found her on the ground in a puddle of pee, half asleep against a car parked in the farthest parking bay wearing a blouse she had almost pulled off. He was also the one who helped her home.

  “Then this morning our mom called to say that the psychiatric center had contacted her and that Rose had been admitted again. Of course, I called them immediately, and the head psychiatric nurse told me that they’d found an S-train ticket in her pocket, which had been validated at Copenhagen Central Station. So we think that she must’ve walked from the station in Stenløse and perhaps stopped on the way home to buy groceries, which she normally does in Meny supermarket. But when the parking attendant found her, she had no groceries with her, so she probably hadn’t done that.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Vicky,” he heard himself say while Assad nodded along. It really was very sad.

  “Is there anything we can do? Do you think we could visit her?” Assad nodded again, but slower this time and with sharp, reproachful eyes.

  Carl got the message. It was true. He should have allowed Gordon and Assad to drive over to Rose’s apartment yesterday.

  “Visit? No, unfortunately not. The doctors have created a treatment plan for her and would rather she wasn’t disturbed.”

  “She hasn’t been committed, has she?”

  “No, but she’s not likely to want to leave the institution as long as she is in this state, they say. She’s ready to receive treatment.”

  “Okay. Let us know if anything changes.”

  There was a pause at the other end as if she were picking up the courage to say something else. Probably not anything that would soften the blow of the already sad news.

  “Actually, I’m not only calling to tell you this,” she finally said. “My sisters and I would appreciate it if you’d come over to Rose’s apartment. I’m calling from there. And remember she moved one floor up.”

  “Do you mean now?”

  “Yes, please, that would be good. We thought we’d just get some clothes for Rose and hadn’t at all expected the sight that met us. We’ve spoken about whether you or someone from your team might be able to come and help us understand what’s going on with Rose.”

  —

  Rose’s bright red Vespa was parked in the parking lot at Sandalsparken, next to the bicycle stands under a couple of budding trees, conveying nothing but peacefulness and normality. Rose had lived for more than ten years in this yellow block cocooned in open-air walkways without ever having expressed any dissatisfaction. That fact in particular was difficult to understand given the sight that met Carl and Assad when Vicky, who wasn’t at all unlike the woman Rose had pretended to be the day before, opened the door.

  “Why did Rose move up here? Isn’t this apartment similar to the old one?” asked Carl, scanning the surroundings.

  “Yes. But she can see the church from here, which she couldn’t really from the ground floor. Not because she’s religious or anything; she just thought it was nicer,” answered Vicky before showing them into the sitting room. “What do you make of this?”

  Carl swallowed hard. What a miserable chaos and indescribable mess. Now he understood better why Rose’s perfume was sometimes quite strong, even though it still couldn’t overpower the stuffy smell. In fact, the apartment looked like it was home to a hoarder who had been robbed by someone who had ransacked everything. Cardboard packaging everywhere. Moving boxes half-packed with the contents of drawers. Dirty dishes piled up on the coffee table. Dining table covered in leftovers and takeaway boxes. Books thrown down from the bookcase, blankets and duvets ripped to shreds, and sofas and chairs with torn upholstery. Not a surface had been spared.

  It was a very different sight from the apartment Carl and Assad had visited a few years ago.

  Vicky pointed at the walls. “That’s what shocked us the most.”

  Carl heard Assad behind him mumbling a few words in Arabic. If Carl had been able to, he would probably have done t
he same, because he couldn’t find words to express his shock. Rose had ferociously written the same sentence over and over in varying sizes on every inch of every wall.

  YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE

  He understood exactly why Rose’s sister had called.

  “Have you informed the psychiatrists about this?” asked Assad.

  Vicky nodded. “We’ve e-mailed them photos of most of the apartment. Lise-Marie is in the bedroom photographing the rest just now.”

  “Is it the same in there?”

  “Everywhere. The bathroom, the kitchen. Even on the inside of the fridge.”

  “Do you have any idea how long it’s been like this?” asked Carl. He simply couldn’t associate this chaos with the otherwise extremely structured person who ordered everyone around in Department Q on a daily basis.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t been up in the apartment since our mom came home from Spain.”

  “I seem to recall Rose mentioning that. It was at Christmastime, right? So almost five months ago.”

  Vicky nodded with a forlorn expression. It obviously plagued her that she and her sisters hadn’t been there for Rose. They weren’t the only ones.

  “Come in here a minute!” shouted Lise-Marie from the bedroom. She sounded somewhat desperate.

  They were met by a similarly graffiti-covered room, where Lise-Marie was sitting cross-legged and crying on the bed, the camera on the duvet in front of her. In her lap she had a small cardboard box full of grey notebooks with dark spines.

  “Oh, Vicky, it’s terrible,” exclaimed Lise-Marie. “Look! Rose just kept on and on. Even after Dad’s death.”

  Vicky sat on the edge of the bed, picked up one of the notebooks, and opened it.

  A moment later, her expression changed as if she had been slapped.

  “It can’t be true,” she said, while her younger sister hid her face in her hands as the tears streamed from her eyes.

  Vicky picked up a few more notebooks and turned to Carl. “She always did this when we were children. We just thought it’d stopped when our dad died. Here’s the first one she wrote.”