The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “Come in, Rita, you look marvelous. And thanks for being on time,” Nete said.

  She led her to the living room and invited her to sit down. Still the same white teeth, the full lips. And the same blue eyes that could shift from frost to fire like no one else Rita had ever met.

  Fifty years old, and quite as beautiful after all these years, Rita thought to herself as Nete stood with her back to her, pouring the tea. Those fine slender legs of hers in neatly pressed slacks. A tight blouse that clung to the curve of her hips, her bum as firm as ever.

  “You’ve kept well, darling. I can’t believe that whatever’s wrong with you can be anything serious. Tell me it’s not true. That it was just a wheeze to get me here.”

  Nete turned to face her with the teacups in her hands and warmth in her eyes. But she said nothing. The quiet one, as ever.

  “I was sure you never wanted to see me again, Nete,” Rita went on, looking around the room. It wasn’t opulent. Not for a woman Rita’s inquiries told her was good for millions. “Even so, I’ve thought about you a lot, as I’m sure you can imagine,” she added, now looking at the tea Nete placed in front of her.

  She smiled. Two cups, not three.

  She turned and peered out of the window. No lawyer. This was looking cozy.

  • • •

  Rita and Nete made a good team. The staff realized as much instantly. “We’re short of hands in the children’s ward,” they said, and equipped them with spoons.

  For a couple of days they fed children who stood tethered to radiators because they were mentally incapable of sitting at the table. It was horrible, messy work that took place slightly removed from the others in order to spare them the sad spectacle. When the girls proved worthy of this new responsibility and able to keep their charges presentably clean, they were rewarded with the additional task of keeping the other end of the digestive system equally unsoiled.

  Rita puked. Where she came from, the only foreign excrement that encroached upon her life was what the sewers occasionally spewed up when the heavens opened in sudden, torrential downpours. Nete, on the other hand, could wipe bums and wring dirty nappies like she’d never done anything else.

  “Shit’s just shit,” she stated. “It’s what I was brought up in.”

  She told of cowpats and pig shit and horse dung, of days so long that being at the asylum must have seemed like a holiday in comparison.

  But Nete knew it was no vacation. That much was plain from the dark blotches under her eyes, and her cursing the doctor who had duped her with his outrageous IQ test.

  “None of the doctors here know what it’s like getting up at four in the morning to milk cows in winter, or even in summer for that matter,” she would snarl when a besmocked physician made a rare appearance. “Would he recognize the smell of the shed when a cow has an infection in the womb that won’t go away? Never in a million years. So why call me stupid, just because I don’t know who’s king of Norway?”

  When they’d been wiping mouths and arses for two weeks and found they could come and go on the children’s ward as they pleased, Rita began her crusade.

  “Have you been to see the consultant yet, Nete?” she would ask in the mornings. “Or any of the other doctors? Have they written that recommendation to the parish council yet? Have they even noticed you’re here?” She rattled the questions off like a machine gun.

  And after a week had passed, Nete had heard enough.

  When lunch was over that day, she looked around her at the vacant faces, the crooked frames, the short legs and shifty eyes. It was beginning to dawn on her.

  “I want to speak to the consultant,” she said to one of the nurses, who passed her by with a shake of her head. And after she’d repeated her request a couple more times with no response, she stood in the middle of the room and screamed it as loud as she was able.

  Now Rita’s experience stood her in good stead.

  “You’ll certainly see him if you keep that up. Only before you get there you’ll have been strapped to a bed for days on end and given injections to shut you up. I’m not joking.”

  Nete leaned her head back to scream out her shrill appeal with renewed force, but Rita stopped her.

  “The only way girls like you and me can get out of here is either by doing a runner or getting sterilized. Do you realize how fast they can sort who’s to be sterilized from who isn’t? I know for a fact the consultant and the psychologist picked out fifteen girls in ten minutes last week. How many do you think got off? No, once the cases have been through the board in the Ministry of Social Affairs, you can be sure most of them are packed off to Vejle General Hospital before they know what’s happening.

  “So I’ll ask you again, Nete. Is there anyone outside this place you’re going to miss? Because if there isn’t, then do a bunk with me after we’ve given the kids their dinner.”

  • • •

  The events of the two weeks that followed were easy to sum up.

  They stole a pair of white blouses and matching skirts the same day and walked out through the gates like anyone else on the staff. They hid in bushes, walked for hours, and left the asylum far behind. The next morning they broke the window of a farmhouse while everyone was at work in the sheds and stables, stole a few items of clothing and some money, and were gone.

  They got to Silkeborg in the sidecar of a Nimbus and were spotted by police as they stood hitching on the main road to Viborg. There was a dash through woodland before they were safe again. Then three days spent in a hunting cabin, living on tinned sardines.

  Rita tried it on with Nete at night, snuggling up to her winter-white skin and laying her arm across her breast, only for Nete to push her away, muttering something about there being two kinds of human beings for a reason and how it wasn’t natural for a person to lie with their own kind.

  On the third day, with cold rain lashing, their rations ran out. For three hours they stood at the roadside before a truck driver took pity on the two drowned mice and let them dry themselves in the cab with some rags. He stared a lot, but made sure they got to Hvide Sande.

  There they found a fisherman with a gleam in his eye, just as Rita had predicted, a man who jumped at the chance of taking them out to the fishing grounds. And if they were nice enough, he would gladly pass them on at sea to one of the English boats whose crews were quite as short on female company. At least that’s what he told them.

  He asked them to make themselves ready, so he could sample the goods, but Nete shook her head and he had to make do with Rita alone. And when he’d had his way with her for a couple of hours, he called up his brother, a policeman in Nørre Snede.

  They didn’t realize what had happened until two brick shithouses from the Ringkøbing Police snapped the cuffs on them and led them over to a patrol car.

  When they arrived back at the Keller Institution at Brejning, both Nete and Rita finally found audience with the consultant physician.

  “You are a despicable delinquent, Rita Nielsen,” he said. “Not only have you abused the trust of staff members, you have also served your own interests poorly. You are of execrable character. You’re stupid, mendacious, and sexually deviant. If I were to allow an antisocial individual like yourself to go about freely, you’d be indulging in sexual relations with most anyone who happened to cross your path, and before long society would have to deal with your subhuman offspring. For that reason, I have attested in writing that you are unfit to receive any treatment other than that which I have now made compulsory, and which will be of such duration as to teach you a lesson you’re unlikely to ignore.”

  Later that day Rita and Nete sat together on the backseat of a black Citroën with locked doors. On the front seat lay the consultant’s attestations. They were being dispatched to Sprogø. The island of outcast women.

  “I should never have listened to you,” Nete sobbed as they drove acro
ss Fyn. “It’s all your fault.”

  • • •

  “This is rather bitter, Nete,” she said after the first sip of tea. “Perhaps you’ve got coffee instead?”

  Nete’s face instantly took on an odd expression, as though Rita had handed her a gift, only to snatch it back again just as she reached out to accept it. It was more than disappointment. It was something deeper.

  “No, I haven’t, I’m afraid,” Nete replied, her voice subdued, as though the world were about to collapse around her.

  Now she’ll offer to make another cup instead, Rita thought to herself, amused by how seriously Nete seemed to be taking the role of hostess.

  But no such proposal was forthcoming. Nete said nothing, but sat there as though everything had begun moving in slow motion.

  Rita shook her head.

  “Not to worry. A drop of milk would be nice, though. I’m sure that’ll do the trick,” she said, puzzled now at the visible signs of relief that spread across Nete’s face.

  “Of course,” Nete said, almost leaping to her feet. “Be with you in a jiffy!” she called out from the kitchen.

  Rita glanced over at the sideboard on which Nete had placed the teapot. Why hadn’t she put it on the table? Maybe it wasn’t the done thing for a proper hostess. But then, what did she know?

  For a second she thought about asking for a glass of that liqueur, or whatever it was, in the decanter next to the tea, but then Nete came scuttling back with the milk, doing the honors with a smile that seemed more strained than the situation called for.

  “Sugar?” Nete asked.

  Rita shook her head. Nete was so hectic all of a sudden, as if she were in a hurry. It made Rita curious. Was this just a ritual, something to be completed as quickly as possible before Nete finally extended her hand toward her and declared how glad she was that she had accepted her invitation? Or was it something else altogether?

  “So, where’s the lawyer you said would be here, Nete?” Rita asked, a wry smile on her lips. A smile that remained unreturned, but then she hadn’t been expecting one either.

  As if she hadn’t already got Nete sussed. There was no lawyer, there was no ten million, and Nete wasn’t ill at all.

  But she would play her cards right all the same, so the journey wouldn’t be a complete waste.

  Keep your wits about you, she’s up to something, Rita told herself, nodding when Nete replied that the lawyer was running late, but would be along any minute.

  It was a farce. So beautiful, so wealthy, and yet so transparent.

  “Bottoms up,” Nete chuckled without warning, raising her teacup.

  Talk about manic, Rita thought to herself in puzzlement, images of the past milling suddenly in her mind.

  Did Nete really still remember their ritual? The one the girls performed when on rare occasions they were left unsupervised during dinner with no one to shush them? There in the dining room they would pretend to be free, imagining themselves at the Dyrehavsbakken amusement park, beer glasses held aloft and doing exactly as they pleased.

  “Bottoms up!” Rita would always urge at some point, whereupon they would all guzzle down their tap water. And everyone would laugh, apart from Nete, who sat in her corner, staring out of the window.

  Did she really remember?

  Rita smiled at her, sensing the day might turn out nice after all as she put the teacup to her lips and downed its contents in one.

  “Bottoms up!” they chorused, laughing now as Nete went to the sideboard to pour another cup.

  “Not for me, thanks,” said Rita, still chuckling. “Imagine you remembering that,” she continued, repeating the cry once more for good measure. “We had a laugh, didn’t we?”

  More reminiscences were shared about the pranks she and a couple of the other girls had always been up to out there on the island.

  She nodded to herself. It was odd, the way the atmosphere in Nete’s apartment suddenly provoked so many memories. Strange, too, that they should be so pleasant.

  Nete put her cup down on the table and laughed again, differently than before, as though there was more to their amusement than seemed apparent. But before Rita had time to digest the thought, Nete spoke to her calmly, her eyes piercing and intense:

  “To be frank, Rita, if it hadn’t been for you I’m sure I could have led a completely normal life. If only you’d left me alone I’d never have ended up there on Sprogø. I’d have learned how to behave in those institutions so the doctors would see I was normal and let me go. If you hadn’t ruined everything, the doctors would have realized I wasn’t antisocial at all, that it was just my background. They’d have known I was no threat to anyone. Why couldn’t you have just left me alone?”

  So that was it. Nete needed to confront her past. In which case she’d come to the wrong person. And before she headed back for Kolding, Rita would give this silly little cow what for. She could pay for her trip tenfold, and have her arse walloped into the bargain.

  Rita cleared her throat. She was going to say the tea was abysmal, that Nete would never have got away from Sprogø or Brejning without being sterilized, and that she was a little tart who ought to take responsibility for her own actions. But all of a sudden her mouth was so dry.

  She clutched at her throat. It felt funny, like the kind of allergic reaction she got from eating shellfish or if she’d been stung by a wasp. A searing sensation passed over her skin as though it had been rubbed with nettles. The light stabbed her eyes.

  “What the hell did you put in the tea?” she groaned, her eyes darting about the room in confusion. Now her esophagus was burning. Something was dreadfully wrong.

  The figure before her rose and came closer. The voice was gentler now, though strangely hollow.

  “Are you all right, Rita?” it said. “Lean back in the chair, otherwise I’m afraid you’ll fall. I’m going to call a doctor, all right? You may be having a stroke. Your pupils look all funny.”

  Rita gasped for breath. The copperware on the shelves started dancing before her eyes as her heart at first began to pound and then gradually subsided.

  She reached out a leaden arm toward the figure in front of her. For a brief second it resembled a beast rearing up on its hind legs, claws extended.

  Then her arm fell back, and her heart was almost still.

  And when the figure before her vanished, the light vanished, too.

  26

  November 2010

  She woke him up with beams of sunlight and dimples in her cheeks so deep he could have curled up in them.

  “Rise and shine, Carl! You’re off to Fyn today with Assad, remember?”

  She kissed him and drew up the blinds. Her body seemed almost ethereal now, after the night’s antics. Not a word about the four times he’d had to race to the loo, not one bashful look on account of the numerous boundaries they may have breached during their lovemaking. Mona was her own woman, and yet she had clearly demonstrated that she was his, too.

  “Here,” she said, putting down a tray on the bed next to him. A delight of aromas, and in the middle of it all was a key.

  “It’s for you,” she said, pouring his coffee. “Use it wisely.”

  He picked it up and weighed it in his hand. Two and a half grams. Not much for an entry into paradise, he found himself thinking.

  He turned the little plastic tag it was attached to and read what was written on the back in block letters: LOVER’S KEY, it read.

  He wasn’t sure he liked it.

  It looked used.

  • • •

  Four times they had called Mie Nørvig. Four times in vain.

  “We’ll just have to chance it and see if they’re in,” Carl said, as they approached Halsskov with the Storebælt Bridge beyond.

  They found the house looking like a caravan put away for winter. Windows shuttered, carport empty. E
ven the water had been turned off, Carl noted, twisting the outside tap for the garden hose.

  “Nothing to see here either,” said Assad, his nose stuck between two shutters round the back of the house.

  “Bollocks,” Carl snapped. They’d done a bunk.

  “We could break in,” Assad suggested, producing his pocketknife.

  Did his assistant have no inhibitions?

  “For fuck’s sake, Assad, put it away. We’ll come back later, maybe they’ll have turned up.”

  He didn’t even believe it himself.

  • • •

  “That’s Sprogø over there,” said Carl, pointing toward the island visible between the great pylons of the bridge.

  “It looks pleasant now, not like it was before,” Assad mused, his knees wedged against the glove compartment. Couldn’t he ever sit properly in a car?

  “This must be it here,” Carl noted, as they approached the island and the works exit halfway across the strait. He turned off and came to a barrier that seemed unreasonably closed. “Looks like we’ll have to park here.” He sighed.

  “But what do we do after? Reverse back along the motorway over the bridge? Has your mind been lost, Carl?”

  “Tell you what, I’ll put the hazard lights on, soon as I knock her into reverse. No one’ll run into us then,” Carl replied with a gleam in his eye. “Come on, Assad, the day’ll be gone if we start mucking about calling up for authorization.”

  Less than two minutes passed before something happened. A woman with short hair came striding toward them in high-heeled shoes and a hi-vis vest with fluorescent chevrons all over it. A striking combination, to say the least.

  “You can’t stop here, this is a no-access area! We’ll open the barrier for you, then you either carry on to Fyn or follow the track under the viaduct here and turn back to Sjælland without delay. That means now!”

  “Carl Mørck, Department Q,” Carl rejoined drily, holding up his badge. “This is my assistant, and we’re investigating a murder. You got keys to this place?”