The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “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.

  “It all started in 1923 with a certain Christian Keller, who was a doctor who worked with the mentally deficient. For some years he’d been in charge of a number of institutions for the mentally challenged, among them the one in Brejning. Together they were known as the Keller Institutions. He was the kind of doctor who firmly believed in his own infallibility and reckoned it qualified him to pick out people who hadn’t the ability to occupy what they called a ‘suitable role’ in society.

  “His theories, which resulted in the setting up of the institution on Sprogø, were based on the eugenic concepts of social hygiene that flourished at the time. Ideas about ‘poor genetic material,’ the propagation of degenerate offspring, that sort of bollocks.”

  Assad smiled. “Eugenics! Yes, I know all about this. It’s when you cut off the testicles of boys so they can sing the high notes. We had many of these in the old harems of the Middle East.”

  “Those are eunuchs, Assad,” Carl said by way of correction, only then noticing the cheeky grin on his assistant’s face. Bloody comedian.

  “Carl, I am making fun now. I looked this up last night. ‘Eugenics’ comes from the Greek language and means ‘well born.’ It’s a theory that divides people up according to their origin and environment.” He gave Carl a hearty slap on the shoulder. It was obvious he was rather more in the picture on this than his superior.

  But then his smile vanished. “And do you know what? I hate it very much,” he said solemnly. “I hate how some people think they are better humans than others. Racial superiority, you know? The idea that some people are worth more than others.” He looked straight at Carl. It was the first time Assad had ever spoken of such matters.

  “But many people are like this, yes?” he went on. “They feel they are better. They think this is what it’s all about. To be human is trying to be better than the rest, am I right?”

  Carl nodded. It sounded like Assad had had his own firsthand dealings with discrimination. Of course he had.

  “What went on then was quackery,” Rose continued. “The doctors hadn’t a clue. If a woman’s behavior was deemed to be antisocial she’d be in their spotlight in no time. Especially women who were considered to be of ‘easy virtue.’ They were classed as having ‘low sexual morals’ and stigmatized as being responsible for spreading venereal disease and giving birth to degenerate children. They could be sent to Sprogø indefinitely without being convicted of any crime. The doctors thought they could do that. They thought it was their right and duty to do so, because these women weren’t part of the ‘normal’ society to which everyone else belonged.”

  Rose stood silently for a moment, lending weight to what she said next.

  “The way I see it, they were a bunch of bigoted, self-righteous, self-indulgent charlatans who came running to the rescue every time some parish or other wanted to get rid of a woman who’d offended the morals of the local squire. These doctors thought they were God.”

  Carl nodded. “Yeah, or the Devil himself,” he mused. “But I honestly thought the women who got sent to the island were feeble-minded. Not that it justifies the treatment they were given,” he added in a hurry. “Rather the opposite, I’d say.”

  “Tsssk,” Rose exclaimed scornfully. “Feeble-minded, yeah, that’s what they called it. And maybe they were, according to the idiotic and primitive so-called intelligence tests the doctors subjected them to. But who the hell were they to call women feeble-minded, just because the women may have gone through life without the right kind of input? Most of them may well have been social cases, but they were treated like criminals and inferior beings. Of course, a few were actually mentally ill or backward in some way, but not all of them, not by a long chalk. And since when has being stupid been a crime in Denmark? If it was, there wouldn’t be many of our politicians walking around on the loose today, would there? What took place then was a completely unacceptable infringement of human rights. Amnesty International and the Court of Human Rights would have had a field day with it, and the worst thing is, the same kind of thing’s still going on in our little kingdom. Just think of how often limb restraints are used in psychiatry. Think of all the people they drug up to the eyeballs with pills and crap, so all they can do is shrivel up and die. Think of how many people can’t get citizenship here just because they can’t get the answers right to a load of stupid fucking questions of no relevance to anything.” Rose almost spat out the words.

  Either she’s short on sleep or else it’s a bad case of PMS, Carl found himself thinking, as he dug into his pocket for the cookies Lis had supplied him with.

  He offered Rose one, but she shook her head. He’d forgotten all about her dodgy stomach. Assad didn’t want one either. Great. All the more for him, then.

  “Listen, Carl. There was no escape from Sprogø. It was hell on earth for these women, do you understand? They were considered to be ill, but there was no treatment because it wasn’t a hospital. And it wasn’t a prison either, yet they were there indefinitely. Some of them spent nearly their whole lives without contact with their families or anyone else for that matter outside the island. And this went on right until 1961. That’s during your lifetime, Carl, do you realize that?” Clearly the case had roused Rose’s sense of justice.

  He was about to protest, but realized she was right. It had happened in his lifetime. Only just, but he was surprised nonetheless.

  “OK.” He nodded. “So this Christian Keller had all these women deported to Sprogø because he reckoned they weren’t fit to lead a normal life, is that it? And that’s why Rita Nielsen landed there, too?”

  “Yeah. I sat up all night reading up on these horrible people. Keller and his successor, Wildenskov, from Brejning. The two of them ruled the roost on Sprogø from 1923 until two years before the place closed down in 1961. That’s almost forty years, and in all that time more than fifteen hundred women got sent to the island indefinitely, and it was no picnic, I can tell you that much. Rough treatment and hard work. Poorly trained staff who looked on ‘the girls,’ as they were called, as inferior. They ran a brutal regime of discipline and kept them under surveillance day and night. There were punishment cells for when the girls got out of line. Isolation for days on end. And if any of them got their hopes up about getting away from the place again, they first had to reconcile themselves with being sterilized. Forced sterilization! They were robbed of their sexuality and their reproductive organs, Carl.” She tossed her head angrily and kicked the wall. “The bastards! It’s beyond fucking belief!”

  “Are you OK, Rose?” asked Assad, cautiously putting a hand on her arm.

  “Abuse of power, that’s what it was. The worst kind imagi
nable,” she said, with a look on her face that Carl hadn’t seen before. “Imagine being deported to an island and left there to rot. We Danes are no fucking better than those we claim to despise,” she hissed. “We’re as bad as those who stone unfaithful women or the Nazis who murdered anyone who was mentally or physically disabled. As far as I can see, what happened out there on Sprogø was the same as what happened to dissidents in the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. We’re no fucking better at all, I’m telling you!”

  And with that she turned and marched off toward the toilets. Apparently her stomach was still playing up.

  “Phew,” said Carl.

  “She was on her high horse about it all night, Carl,” said Assad, almost in a whisper. No way was he about to risk Rose overhearing him. “In my opinion she is acting strange about it. Maybe soon she will send Yrsa to us instead.”

  Carl’s eyes narrowed. The nagging suspicion returned. “You reckon Rose has personal experience of that kind of treatment, is that what you’re suggesting, Assad?”

  Assad shrugged. “All I’m saying is that there is something grating inside her like a stone inside a shoe.”

  • • •

  Carl paused and stared at the phone for a second before picking it up and dialing Ronny’s number.

  It rang for a while and he hung up, waited twenty seconds and called again.

  “Yeah?” said a gravelly voice, worn out by age, alcohol, and late nights.

  “All right, Ronny?” Carl said.

  No response.

  “It’s Carl.”

  Still no response.

  He spoke a bit louder, then louder again, eventually noting some form of activity at the other end, a strangled snort like someone snapping for air in their sleep, the rattle of mucus in a throat after the sixty cigarettes whose stubs most likely filled his cousin’s ashtray.

  “Come again?” the voice finally said.

  “It’s your cousin, Carl. How’s it going?”

  More coughing, then: “What’s the time?”

  Carl looked at the clock. “Quarter past nine.”

  “Quarter past nine! You’re kidding me, aren’t you? Not a word in ten years and here you are calling at quarter past fucking nine?” And then he hung up.

  Nothing new under the sun. Carl could picture him. No clothes on, most likely, apart from the socks he never took off. Probably sporting the world’s longest toenails, too, with stubble unevenly distributed about his face. A big man who preferred dingy back rooms and as little sun as possible, no matter where in the world he happened to be. If he was fond of Thailand, it certainly wasn’t because he wanted a tan.

  Less than ten minutes went by before he called back.

  “What number’s that, Carl? Where are you?”

  “My office at Police HQ.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “I’m hearing things about you, Ronny. We need to talk, OK?”

  “What sort of things?”

  “You spouting off in shady bars around the world about your dad’s death, and mixing me up in it.”

  “Who says?”

  “Other police officers.”

  “They’re sick in the head.”

  “How about you stopping by?”

  “Police HQ? You must be fucking joking. You gone senile since I saw you last? Nah, if we’re going to talk, you’ll have to make it worth my while.”

  Any second now he would make a proposal involving money. Money Carl was to provide and which would be spent on drink.

  “You can get the ale in, and some food. Tivoli Hall, just round the corner from where you are.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Opposite the Rio Bravo. You know where that is. Corner of Stormgade.”

  If he knew Carl was familiar with the Rio Bravo, why the hell didn’t he suggest meeting there, the imbecile?

  They arranged a time and Carl sat for a moment after he’d hung up, thinking about what he could say that might seep into his idiotic cousin’s thick skull.

  That’ll be Mona, he thought to himself when the phone rang again. He looked at the time. Half nine. He wouldn’t put it past her. Just thinking about her made his stomach flutter.

  “Hi,” he said, but the voice at the other end wasn’t Mona’s, and it certainly wasn’t sexy. More like a kick in the teeth.

  “Can you come upstairs for a minute, Carl?” It was Tomas Laursen, the finest forensics officer west of Copenhagen until loathing got the better of him and a lottery jackpot subsequently consumed by dodgy investments gave him his ticket to freedom. Now he was back, running the cafeteria on the fourth floor and making a fine job of it, so Carl had heard, and it was about time he got his arse up there and found out for himself.

  Now was as good a time as any.

  “What’s on your mind, Tomas?”

  “That body they found out in Amager yesterday.”

  • • •

  The only thing reminiscent of the cafeteria before the powers that be decided they needed something more up to date was that the place was still cramped as hell.

  “All right?” Carl asked his brick outhouse of a former colleague, receiving a kind of sideways nod in reply.

  “Well, you know how it is. I probably won’t be able to pay for the Ferrari I ordered yesterday in one go, but apart from that . . .” Laursen said with a grin as he hauled Carl off into the kitchen.

  There his expression became solemn. “Do you have any idea how loud people actually talk when they’re sitting here filling their faces, Carl?” he asked, in a subdued voice. “I certainly didn’t, not until I took the place on.”

  He popped open a beer and handed it to Carl.

  “Listen. What if I overheard someone going on about you and Bak being at each other’s throats over the Amager case, would that be true?”

  Carl took a swig from the bottle. As if he hadn’t enough to be getting on with. “Not about that case, exactly. Why?”

  “Bak was in here yesterday making it sound like there was something fishy about the way you came out of that shooting in Amager, when Anker was killed and Hardy was left paralyzed. He seemed to reckon you just wanted it to look like you were shot at. Said the flesh wound you got in the temple never could have knocked you unconscious, and that anyone could fake a shot like that at close range.”

  “The fucking bastard. This must have been just before I helped him out with that business about his sister. The fucking ungrateful bastard. And who was he mouthing off to? Who’s going to be passing it on?”

  Laursen shook his head. He wasn’t saying. Apparently it would be bad for business if his customers in the cafeteria felt they couldn’t give vent. Which Carl thought was OK, as long as the gossip wasn’t about him.

  “It seems to be the word round here, I’m afraid, but that’s not all, Carl.”

  “What else?” Carl put his beer down on top of a fridge. He didn’t want to be reeking of lager when he stood before the chief two minutes from now to play hell.

  “Forensics found a number of significant items yesterday that had been in the pockets of that corpse. One was a coin that had been stuck in a fold, apparently. A one-krone coin, to be more exact. In fact, they found five Danish coins in all, but this one was the most recent.”

  “When was it from?”

  “The date was 2006. So the body was in the ground four years at most. But there’s more.”

  “Seems reasonable. What else did they find?”

  “Two of the coins were wrapped in plastic wrap, and there were prints. Two right index fingers, different individuals.”

  “OK. And what do they make of that?”

  “The prints are very clear and well preserved, so wrapping the coins up like that served the intended purpose, I’d say.”

  “And whose prints were they?”

 
“One was Anker Henningsen’s.”

  Carl’s eyes widened. He recalled the look of suspicion on Hardy’s face, heard his embittered voice telling him about Anker’s cocaine habit.

  Laursen handed him back his beer before studying him with searching eyes.

  “The other one was yours, Carl.”

  16

  August 1987

  Curt Wad sat for a moment, weighing Nete’s letter in his hand before tearing it open with the same lack of expectation as he would have opened unsolicited mail from a drug company.

  Once, Nete had been the girl who aroused his abusive urges, but there had been dozens after her. So why even bother with this insignificant little peasant now? What possible interest could he have in her opinions or thoughts?

  He read through the letter, then put it aside with a smile.

  The little hussy. Charity and forgiveness, who would have thought it? And why should he believe a single word?

  “Nice try, Nete Hermansen,” he said out loud. “But I shall check up on you.”

  He opened the top drawer of his desk, pulling it out as far as it could go until he heard the click, then pushed the desktop gently sideways until it revealed the shallow compartment in which lay his indispensable address book with all its phone numbers.

  He opened it at one of the first pages, dialed a number, and introduced himself.

  “I need a civil registration number. Can you help me? A Nete Hermansen, possibly registered in her married name, Rosen. The address is Peblinge Dossering 32, fourth floor, in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. Yes, that’s her. You remember her? Indeed, her husband was such a clever man, though I believe his judgment may have been failing him in later years. You’ve found the number? Excellent, that was very quick, I must say.”

  He noted it down and expressed his thanks, reminding his contact that the favor would be returned with pleasure whenever required. It was the way of all brotherhoods.

  Then he flicked through his address book again, dialed another number, put the book back in its place, and clicked the desktop shut.