The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

He listened to the man’s breathing for a moment before all went quiet.

  “You still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Brandt replied. “Just needed to get myself together for a sec. My mother’s aunt was a Sprogø girl. Told the most hair-raising stories. Not about Curt Wad specifically, but others like him. I don’t know how he might be involved in that shit, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he was.”

  “OK. I spoke to another journalist, bloke called Louis Petterson. He did some critical articles on Curt Wad at one point. Do you know him?”

  “I know his name. And I’ve read his stuff, of course. He’s the kind of guy proper journalists don’t like. Worked freelance and seemed like he was actually on to something, but then it looks like Wad turned him round by getting him involved in Benefice, that tendentious little news agency of his. Most likely they pay him a bundle. Anyway, the critical stuff dried up overnight.”

  “Anyone ever make you an offer like that?”

  Søren Brandt laughed. “Not yet, but you never know with those hyenas. I did piss Curt Wad and Lønberg off at the Purity Party congress yesterday, though.”

  “This Lønberg, what’ve you got on him?”

  “Wilfrid Lønberg. Wad’s right-hand, his little pet. Father of Benefice’s puppet chairman, cofounder of the Purity Party, and highly active in The Cause. So, yeah, I’d give him some bother, if I were you. Put Lønberg and Wad together and you’ve got Josef Mengele reincarnated.”

  • • •

  They saw the glow of the bonfire long before they reached the house. On a dark November afternoon, it was hard to miss.

  “A well-to-do neighborhood,” Assad observed, nodding at the posh houses.

  Lønberg’s wasn’t that different from the others that lined the quiet road, white and imposing, with large casement windows and a roof of black glazed tiles. It was set slightly farther back than its neighbors’, and the walk up the crunching gravel path was sufficient to announce their arrival.

  “What are you doing on my property?” a voice demanded.

  They rounded a hedge and saw an elderly man wearing a brown apron and heavy-duty gardening gloves.

  “What’s your business?” he barked angrily, stepping in front of the flaming oil drum he was in the process of feeding with sheets of paper from the wheelbarrow at his side.

  “I ought to inform you that burning rubbish like that in the open is against the law,” Carl said, squinting to see if he could determine its more specific nature. Files and documents, most likely, relating to all the shit Lønberg and his ilk stood for.

  “Really? And what law would that be, then? There’s not exactly a drought on, is there?”

  “We’d be happy to go to the trouble of calling the Gentofte Fire Department in order to clarify the local authority’s regulations.” He turned to Assad. “Would you like to take care of that, Assad?”

  The man tossed his head. “Oh, come on, it’s only paper. How can that bother anyone?”

  Carl produced his badge. “I imagine it would bother quite a few people, actually, if it turns out what you’re destroying here is evidence that could answer a lot of questions relating to your and Curt Wad’s activities.”

  What happened in the seconds that followed was something not even Carl in his wildest imagination would have believed a man of Lønberg’s age and skeletal stature could effectuate so quickly and with such resolve.

  In one seamless movement he lifted the entire heap of documents from the wheelbarrow and deposited them in the oil drum, grabbed a plastic bottle of paraffin at his feet, removed the top, and tossed the whole thing onto the pyre.

  The effect was astonishing and immediate. Carl and Assad leaped back as a column of flame exploded into the air, almost reaching the crown of the tall copper beech that stood majestically in the middle of the garden.

  “There,” said the man. “Now you can call the fire brigade. What’ll it cost me? Five thousand? Ten? See if I care.”

  He was about to turn and go back up to the house when Carl stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Does your daughter, Liselotte, know what sort of nauseating enterprises she’s lending her name to, Lønberg?”

  “Liselotte? Nauseating enterprises? If you’re thinking of her chairmanship of Benefice, then I can tell you she has reason only to be proud.”

  “Oh, you think so, do you? Is she proud of The Cause and all its illegal abortions, or haven’t you told her about that? Does she share your sick views on humanity? Does she sympathize with your murdering innocent children? Is she proud of that, or have you just been keeping her in the dark?”

  Lønberg glared. His eyes were ice that no flame could melt.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you’ve anything at all of substance that you wish to discuss, I suggest you call my lawyer first thing Monday morning. His office opens at eight thirty. Caspersen’s the name. He’s in the book.”

  “Ah, yes, Caspersen,” said Assad, in the background. “We know this man from the television. One of the people from the Purity Party, yes? We would very much like to have his number. Thank you very much, indeed.”

  Assad’s breeziness seemed momentarily to take the wind out of Lønberg’s arrogance.

  Carl leaned into the man’s face and almost whispered his parting shot:

  “Thanks a lot, Lønberg. I think we’ve got enough now to be getting on with. Say hello to Curt Wad and tell him we’re off to see one of his old acquaintances in Nørrebro. The Hermansen case, wasn’t that what they called it back then?”

  • • •

  Nørrebro was a war zone. Concrete tenements knocked up overnight had provided ideal conditions for a complex of social problems, spawning crime, violence, and hatred. Not like the old days, when social work in the district had been all about helping hard-grafting workers keep a grip on a decent life. Only when you came strolling into the neighborhood along the City Lakes did the grandness of former times become visible in all its glory.

  “The Lakes are still the best place in the city,” Antonsen out in Rødovre always claimed. It was true. Standing there, looking at the rows of magnificent buildings nestling behind chestnut trees with their views across the gentle water, swans gliding over the surfaces, the thought seemed absurd that only a few hundred meters away the immigrant gangs and the bikers ruled the roost, and a person would do well to keep a watchful eye out when passing through after dark.

  “I think she is in, Carl,” said Assad, pointing up at the windows on the top floor.

  Carl nodded. Like all the others in the gray apartment building, they were lit up.

  “Nete Hermansen? It’s the police,” he said into the entry phone. “I’d like to ask you some questions. Would you be kind enough to let me in?”

  “What sort of questions?” came the reply.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. Routine, that’s all.”

  “Is it to do with the shooting incident on Blågårdsgade the other night? I did hear something going on, yes. If you’d be so good as to step back and hold up your badge so I can see it. One has to be careful.”

  Carl gave a sign to Assad to stay by the door, then stepped backward into the space between the ground floor’s tiny flower beds so the light illuminated his features.

  A moment passed before a window opened at the top and a head appeared.

  Carl held his badge as high as he could.

  Thirty seconds later the entry phone buzzed.

  After a seemingly endless and increasingly breathless ascent to the fourth floor, they found the door of the apartment already wide open, so she obviously wasn’t that careful.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, startled as Carl stepped into the slightly musty hallway with Assad lurking behind his shoulder. The ongoing menace of Nørrebro’s immigrant gangs had left its mark here, too.

>   “Ah, I’m sorry, but you’ve no need to be alarmed by my assistant. Salt of the earth, he is,” Carl lied.

  Assad extended a hand in greeting. “How do you do, Ms. Hermansen.” He bowed like a schoolboy of old asking for a dance at the end-of-term ball. “Hafez el-Assad, but you can call me Assad. A pleasure to meet you.”

  She hesitated a moment before accepting the gesture.

  “Would you care for a cup of tea?” she asked, seemingly oblivious to Carl vigorously shaking his head.

  The living room was like most others belonging to a lady of her age and standing. A vibrant jumble of heavy furniture and reminders of a long life. Only the absence of framed family photos seemed conspicuous. Carl recalled Rose’s brief outline of Nete Hermansen’s life. There were reasons enough for such portraits to be missing.

  She came in with the tea on a tray, limping slightly, but good-looking for all her seventy-three years. Blonde hair, presumably dyed, and rather elegantly cut. It was obvious that money had rubbed off well in spite of the misfortunes that had befallen her. Money generally did.

  “What a lovely dress,” said Assad.

  She said nothing, but poured his tea first.

  “This is about the shooting on Blågårdsgade last week, isn’t it?” she asked, sitting down between them and nudging a small plate of cookies in Carl’s direction.

  Carl declined and shifted in his armchair.

  “Actually, no, it’s about something else. In 1987 a number of people disappeared and never turned up again. Our hope is that you, Nete . . .” He paused. “May I call you Nete?”

  She nodded. A tad reluctantly perhaps, though it was hard to tell.

  “Our hope is that you might be able to help us find out what happened to them.”

  A pair of fine wrinkles rose on her brow. “Well, if I can be of any use.”

  “I’ve got a summary here outlining a certain period of your life, Nete. I can see that you endured some considerable hardship. I want you to know that those of us conducting these investigations are outraged by the abuse you and women like you were subjected to.”

  She raised an eyebrow. Was this too uncomfortable for her? Most likely it was.

  “I’m sorry to have to open old wounds, but the fact is that several of these missing persons were linked to the women’s home on Sprogø. I’ll get back to that in a minute.” He took a sip of his tea. Rather bitter for his liking, but a vast improvement on Assad’s wallpaper paste. “Our main reason for being here is because we’re investigating your cousin Tage Hermansen’s disappearance in September 1987.”

  She looked at him askew. “Cousin Tage? Disappeared? I’ve not heard from him in years, but still I’m sorry to hear it. I had no idea.”

  “I see. We were at his workshop in Brenderup earlier on today. We found this envelope there.”

  He removed it from its plastic sheath and showed it to her.

  “Yes, I remember. I wrote and invited Tage to come over and see me. Now I understand why he never replied.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d have a copy of that letter? A carbon copy, or a printout, perhaps?”

  She smiled. “I’m afraid not. It was a handwritten letter.”

  Carl nodded.

  “You were at the women’s home at the same time as a nurse by the name of Gitte Charles. Do you remember her?”

  The wrinkles on her forehead appeared again. “Yes, I most certainly do. I’ll never forget anyone from Sprogø.”

  “Gitte Charles disappeared, too, around the same time as your cousin.”

  “How strange.”

  “And Rita Nielsen.”

  This seemed to catch Nete slightly unaware. Her brow smoothed, and she drew back her shoulders.

  “Rita? When was this?”

  “The last thing we know is that she bought a pack of cigarettes in a kiosk just up the road from here on Nørrebrogade on the fourth of September 1987, at ten past ten in the morning. Besides that, her Mercedes was found on Kapelvej. Not far from here either, is it?”

  Her lips tightened. “But that’s awful. Rita came to see me that day. The fourth of September, you say? I remember it was late summer, though not the exact date. I’d reached a point in my life where I felt the need to confront my past. I’d lost my husband a couple of years before and found myself unable to move on. That’s why I invited Rita and Tage.”

  “So Rita Nielsen visited you?”

  “She did, yes.” She gestured toward the table. “We sat there and had tea. The same cups we’re using now. She was here for a couple of hours. I clearly remember that seeing her again was strange, and yet salubrious at the same time. We sorted things out, you understand. We hadn’t always been the best of friends in the women’s home.”

  “There were appeals for information following her disappearance. A lot of attention in the media. Why didn’t you go to the police, Nete?”

  “Oh, this is dreadful. What on earth can have happened to her?”

  She stared into space for a moment. If she didn’t answer Carl’s question, it was because something was wrong.

  “Why didn’t I go to the police?” she repeated eventually. “Well, I couldn’t, you see. I went to Mallorca the day after she was here, to buy a house there. I don’t think I saw a Danish newspaper for six months or more. The house is in Son Vida. I go there for the winter. The only reason I’m not there now is that I’ve been having some bother with kidney stones, and I prefer to have them treated here.”

  “I assume you’ve got the deeds to this property.”

  “Of course. But now I get the feeling you’re interrogating me. If you suspect me of anything, then I would ask you to be frank about it.”

  “That’s not the case at all, Nete. But we do need to account for certain things, one of which being why you didn’t react to the missing persons bulletins that were out on Rita Nielsen. May we have a look at those deeds?”

  “Well, it’s a good thing they’re not still in Mallorca, isn’t it?” she said, slightly offended. “They were, actually, until last year when there was a spate of break-ins in the area. One has to take precautions.”

  She knew exactly where the documents were, placing them in front of Carl and indicating the date of purchase. “I bought the place on the thirtieth of September 1987, but by that time I’d been looking for somewhere suitable and negotiating for three weeks. The owner was trying to pull a fast one on me. He failed, of course.”

  “But . . .”

  “Yes, it’s some time after the fourth, I realize that, but that’s how it happened. If you’re lucky, I might still have the plane tickets somewhere. In which case you’ll see that I wasn’t at home. But it’ll take me rather longer to find them.”

  “A stamp in your passport or some other form of documentation will do just as well,” Carl said. “I’m assuming you’ve kept your old passports, and there’s bound to be some sort of stamp to prove it, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure I have, but you’ll need to come back another day, I’m afraid. I shall have to look for them.”

  Carl nodded. She was almost certainly telling the truth. “What was the nature of your relationship to Gitte Charles, Nete? Can you tell me about that?”

  “What business would it be of yours?”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. I ought to have worded that differently. The fact is we have very little to go on in Gitte’s case. Hardly anyone who knew her then is alive today, so it’s hard for us to get a picture of the kind of person she was and why she might have disappeared. How would you describe her?”

  It was obvious this was traumatic for her. Why should the prisoner speak well of her guard? Clearly, it was something of a dilemma.

  “Was she unkind to you? Is that why you cannot answer so easily?” Assad piped up.

  Nete Hermansen nodded. “I do find it rather difficult,
I must admit.”

  “Because Sprogø was a bad place, was it not? And she was one of the ones who kept you there, yes?” Assad went on, his eyes fixed on the plate of cookies.

  She nodded again. “I haven’t thought about her for years, to be honest. Or about Sprogø, for that matter. What went on there doesn’t bear thinking about. They kept us isolated from the rest of the country and they made us infertile. They said we were retarded. I’ve no idea why. And while Gitte Charles wasn’t the worst by any means, she never helped me in terms of getting away from the place.”

  “You have had no contact with her since?”

  “None, thank goodness.”

  “Then there is a Philip Nørvig. You remember him, yes?”

  She nodded faintly.

  “He disappeared that day, too.” It was Carl’s turn again. “We know from his widow he’d received an invitation to Copenhagen. You’ve told us you had come to a point in your life where you needed to confront your past. In a way, Philip Nørvig was to blame for your unhappy plight, was he not? It was thanks to him that you lost the case against Curt Wad, isn’t that right? So wasn’t he one of the people you needed to confront, Nete? Did the invitation he received come from you?”

  “No, it most certainly did not. I invited only Tage and Rita, no one else.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. So many all at once, and me knowing them all. What on earth can have happened?”

  “That’s why Department Q has been brought in. Unsolved cases, cases requiring special scrutiny, that’s what we deal in. So many disappearances all at once, and all linked, indicates to us that we’re dealing with something out of the ordinary, as you suggest.”

  “We have been looking into this doctor, Curt Wad,” Assad chirped. Rather earlier than Carl had intended, but what else was new?

  “There are many things about this man that seem to connect him to our missing persons,” Assad continued. “Nørvig, in particular.”

  “Curt Wad!” She raised her head like a cat discovering a bird in reach of its claws.

  “Yes, we realize he’s most likely where your misfortunes began,” said Carl. “We’ve been through Nørvig’s files and read about the way he rebuffed your charges against him and turned them back on you. I’m sorry to have to bring it up again, but if you can in any way provide us with some kind of plausible connection between Curt Wad and these persons going missing, we’d be grateful indeed.”