The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Carl felt his shoulders droop at least a couple of degrees.

  “He was pretty tall, quite well built as far as I could make out, and his clothes were all dark. He was wearing a coat or a big anorak, something like that. And a black knitted beanie like Peter’s. I noticed his hair, though. Very fair hair, it was, almost white. And there was like a gas bottle of some sort on the ground at his side.”

  Almost white. The information on its own was nearly enough. If Carl was right, Curt Wad’s flaxen-haired gorilla, the man they’d seen in Halsskov, was skilled at more than just driving a van.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You’re very observant, and you’ve been a great help indeed. You did right, coming over.”

  She squirmed with embarrassment again.

  “Did you notice if he was wearing gloves, by any chance?”

  “Oh, I forgot about that,” she said, momentarily suspending her physical contortions. “He was, yeah. The kind with holes at the knuckles.”

  Carl nodded. In that case he needn’t bother getting the lock cylinder checked for prints. The issue was whether they could trace the rather special-looking regulator, but he doubted very much it would lead them anywhere, for there was bound to be loads of them knocking about.

  “Right, if everything’s OK here, I’ll be off to HQ then,” he announced to the assembled household a moment later, only for Vigga to grab hold of his sleeve.

  “Sign this before you go. There’s one copy for you, one for the regional state administration, and one for me,” she informed him, laying all three out on the kitchen counter. Agreement on Division of Property, it read at the top.

  He read through it quickly. It was exactly as they had agreed the day before. Saved him doing it himself.

  “That’s fine, Vigga. It’s all in there, I can see that. Right down to the bit about visiting your mother. I’m sure the authorities will be pleased to know you’ve given me eight weeks’ holiday in that respect. Very generous.” He laughed sarcastically and signed his name next to her own spidery hand.

  “Then there’s the divorce petition,” she said, shoving another document in front of him. He signed it without hesitation.

  “Thanks, lover.” She almost sniffled.

  It was nice of her, but the word only made him think of Mona’s Rolf, which wasn’t the most desirable association. He was a long way off coming to terms with the hurt. Mona wasn’t just anybody. It would take an age for him to get over it.

  He snorted. Lover. A bit over the top for a parting salute, he thought, considering how stormy their marriage had turned out.

  He gave the documents to a smiling Gurkamal, who bowed before extending his hand.

  “Thank you for your wife,” he said in what Carl presumed was a Sikh accent. It was a deal.

  Vigga beamed. “Now that all the formalities have been dealt with, I can tell you I’m moving in with Gurkamal above his shop next week.”

  “Hope it’s warmer than the last place,” Carl rejoined.

  “Oh, now you mention it, I sold it yesterday for six hundred thousand. That’s a hundred thousand more than we reckoned it was worth in our agreement. I thought I might keep the change, if that’s all right with you.”

  Carl was lost for words. That Gherkin of hers had certainly taught her a thing or two about business. He was quicker than a camel could shite, as Assad most likely would have put it.

  • • •

  “Good thing I bumped into you, Carl,” said Laursen, on the stairs of the rotunda back at HQ. “Come upstairs a minute, eh?”

  “Actually, I was on my way up to see Marcus Jacobsen.”

  “I’ve just taken him his lunch. He’s in a meeting. Everything all right?”

  “Fine,” Carl replied. “Apart from the fact that it’s Monday, I just got fleeced by my soon-to-be ex, my girlfriend’s shagging someone else, we all got poisoned with gas last night, and the house nearly blew up. Add to that the trouble and strife this place is giving me, and I couldn’t be better. Even got rid of that diarrhea.”

  “That’s all right, then,” said Laursen, three steps ahead of him. He’d heard fuck all.

  “Listen,” he said eventually as they sat in the back room behind the kitchen, surrounded by fridges and stocks of vegetables. “There’s been a development in the nail-gun case. That photo of you and Anker together with the bloke who got done in. They’ve had various labs analyze it, and I can put your mind at rest and tell you most of them reckon it’s a digital composite, put together from various sources.

  “Of course it is, that’s what I’ve been saying all along. It’s a setup. Maybe someone I wound up the wrong way once. You know how vengeful some of these bastards can be. They can sit around in prison for years, working out how to get their own back one day. Stands to reason it has to happen once in a while. But I can tell you this much: I never knew this Pete Boswell they’re trying to get me mixed up with.”

  Laursen nodded. “The photo’s got no halftone dots. It’s like all the tiniest elements are all merged together. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you can’t see the join, basically. It may be several photos edited together and then photographed incrementally using a Polaroid camera, for instance, with the Polaroid image eventually being photographed with an analog camera with regular film in it and then developed. Or it might have been blurred in a digital-image editing application before being printed. They don’t know for sure. The paper itself doesn’t tell us anything either.”

  “Sounds like gibberish to me.”

  “Yeah, but the possibilities are endless these days. Or, more precisely, two years ago when Pete Boswell was still among the living.”

  “All right, so everything’s turning out for the better, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Laursen handed Carl a beer, which he declined. “They’ve not reached any conclusion yet, and the fact of the matter is that not everyone out there at the labs thinks it’s a fake. At the end of the day, what I just told you proves nothing, only that it’s all a bit suspect. But from what I’ve heard, most of them reckon someone’s done their best to make it look genuine.”

  “So where does that leave me? Are they still wanting to hang me out to dry? Are you telling me there’s a suspension on its way?”

  “No, it’s not that. What I’m trying to say is that all this is going to take time. But I think Terje’s the one to fill you in on it.” He gestured toward the dining area.

  “Terje Ploug’s here?”

  “Yeah, he comes in every day at the same time, if he’s not out and about. One of my most faithful customers, he is, so be nice to him.”

  He found Ploug sitting in the far corner.

  “Playing hide-and-seek, Terje?” he quipped, sitting down and planting his elbows on the table in the close vicinity of Ploug’s painfully PC plate of vegetables.

  “Good to see you, Carl. You’re a hard man to find these days. Laursen tell you about the photo?”

  “He did, yeah. Seems I’m not out of the woods yet.”

  “Out of the woods? No one’s accusing you of anything as far as I know. Or are they?”

  Carl tossed his head back. “Not officially, no.”

  “Well, then. Anyway, here’s where we’re at. We’re all going to get our heads together. Meaning me, those we’ve got investigating the murders at the repair shop in Sorø, and the Dutch lot working on the killings in Schiedam in the Netherlands. In a few weeks, a couple of months, maybe, we’re going to collate everything we’ve got on these nail-gun cases. Facts, evidence, background material, the lot.”

  “And now you’re going to tell me I’ll be called in as a witness.”

  “No, just the opposite. You won’t.”

  “Why not, because I’m under susp
icion?”

  “Take it easy, Carl. Someone wants to drag you through the mud, we realize that. So no, you’re not under suspicion. But once we get as far as drawing up a joint report, we’d like you to assess it.”

  “I see. And that’s despite my prints being on the coins, the dodgy photo, and Hardy reckoning Anker was mixed up with our colored friend, and that maybe I knew Georg Madsen?”

  “Despite that, yeah. As I see it, you’re the one who’s got most to gain by this case being investigated as thoroughly as possible.”

  He gave the back of Carl’s hand a gentle pat. It was quite touching really.

  • • •

  “It’s a good, honest policeman’s best shot at doing things properly, and I think we should respect Terje for that, Carl,” said the chief. Jacobsen’s corner office was still reeking of Laursen’s “Dish of the Day.” Had Ms. Sørensen gone that soft as to allow dirty plates and cutlery lying around for more than five minutes?

  “Yeah, if you look at it like that.” Carl nodded. “But I’m still riled. That case is getting on my nerves.”

  Marcus nodded back. “I’ve spoken to Erling from Fire Investigation. I hear you had visitors last night.”

  “No harm done.”

  “No, and thank Christ for that! But why did it happen, Carl?”

  “Because someone wants me the fuck out of it. And I don’t think it’s one of my stepson’s jilted girlfriends either.” He tried to smile.

  “Who, then?”

  “Most likely one of Curt Wad’s people. The Purity Party guy.”

  Jacobsen nodded again.

  “We’re bothering him. That’s why I’m here. I want to put a tap on his phone. Likewise a gent by the name of Wilfrid Lønberg and a journalist called Louis Petterson.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t authorize that, Carl.”

  Carl probed into why not, annoyed to begin with, then turned sulky before eventually submitting with an exasperated shrug. The only thing he was coming away with was a warning to take care, and strict instructions to report back if anything unusual occurred.

  Unusual. Fucking odd word to bandy about the place. Everything in their line of work was unusual, and just as well for that.

  Carl got to his feet. Unusual? He wondered what his boss would say if he knew about the stack of files piled up in the dimly lit offices of Department Q, the archive material they’d procured in a manner which even by their standards was more than unusually dodgy.

  • • •

  For once, both secretaries waved cheerily to him from the front desk as he came out.

  “Hi, Carl,” said Lis, sweet as sugar, Ms. Sørensen chirping an identical greeting a second later. Same words, same tone, same inviting smile.

  A turnabout if ever there was one.

  “Erm . . . Cata!” he stuttered, directly addressing the woman whose mere presence had formerly been sufficient to prompt teams of hardened investigators, among them Carl himself, into making long detours just to avoid having to walk past her.

  “Do you fancy letting me in on what this NLP course you’ve been on is all about? It wouldn’t be contagious, would it?”

  She drew her shoulders up, a flourish of body language possibly intended to display delight at having been asked, then beamed a smile at Lis before stepping intimidatingly close to Carl.

  “Neurolinguistic programming, it stands for,” she said, her voice suddenly full of mystery, as though she were about to seduce an Arab sheik. “It’s rather hard to explain fully, but let me give you an example.”

  The shoulders came up again, like a little foretaste of what lay in store.

  She picked up her handbag and fished around in it, eventually producing a piece of chalk. An odd item for a woman to be carrying around. Wasn’t chalk meant for the trouser pockets of cheeky schoolboys? Was it gender equality again?

  She bent down and drew two circles on the floor, which in itself would have been enough to make her faint only a few weeks earlier. Others, too, for that matter. Then she drew a minus sign in one and a plus sign in the other.

  “There you go, Carl. A positive circle and a negative circle. Now I want you to stand first in one, then the other, and say exactly the same sentence. In the negative circle you pretend you’re speaking to someone you dislike, and in the positive circle, to someone you’re fond of.”

  “I see. This was the upshot of it, was it? Because I can do that already.”

  “Come on, let’s hear it, then,” Lis urged, folding her arms under her scrumptious bosom and stepping closer. Who could say no?

  “Choose something simple, like: ‘I see you’ve had your hair done.’ Say it nicely first, then not so nicely.”

  “I don’t get it,” he lied, scrutinizing both women’s short-cut hair. This was going to be too easy. Ms. Sørensen’s thatch didn’t have quite the same appeal as Lis’s, if he was to say so.

  “All right, let me demonstrate the positive,” said Lis. “Then Cata can do the negative.”

  Hang on, that ought to be the other way round, Carl thought to himself, distractedly tracing a little circle with his foot.

  “I see you’ve had your hair done!” Lis was all smiles as she spoke. “That’s how you talk to a person you like. Now it’s your turn, Cata.”

  Ms. Sørensen laughed, then collected herself. “I see you’ve had your hair done!” she spat with envy. She looked truly gruesome. Just like the good old days.

  Both women fell about, spluttering with laughter. This was getting girlish.

  “Was that it? Not exactly an earth-shattering difference, was it? What am I supposed to get out of that?”

  Ms. Sørensen pulled herself together. “The point is that exercises like this teach you to understand how subtle little changes of tone can impact on your surroundings in different ways. It gives you an insight into the effects of what you say and the kind of signals you send. And not least, as an extra plus, how it all rubs off on your own self.”

  “Isn’t that just the same as saying what goes around, comes around?”

  “You could call it that. Do you know how you impact on your surroundings, Carl? That’s what the course can teach you.”

  I learned that when I was seven, he thought to himself.

  “Sometimes the things you say can seem rather harsh, Carl,” Ms. Sørensen went on.

  Thanks for the compliment. Rather choice coming from you, he mused. “Well, thank you both for making me aware in such a considerate fashion,” was what he eventually said, now eager to be on his way. “I’ll be certain to give it some thought.”

  “Try the exercise first, Carl. Step into one of the circles,” urged Ms. Sørensen aka Cata. She gestured to indicate which one he should start with, only to discover he’d succeeded in erasing most of it with the toe of his shoe while they’d been playing charades.

  “Oops,” he said. “I truly am sorry, indeed.” He withdrew from their aura. “Afternoon, ladies. Stay cheerful, eh?”

  34

  September 1987

  As she stood there gazing out of the window, part of her hatred had gone. It was as though the blow to Viggo’s temple and his final intakes of breath after she had given him the henbane had drawn a splinter from her mind.

  Her eyes passed along Peblinge Dossering and the swarms of people enjoying the last of summer. Ordinary people, each with their own lives and destinies, and most probably their secrets and skeletons, too.

  Her lips began to quiver. All of a sudden she felt overwhelmed by emotion. Even Tage, Rita, and Viggo were human in the eyes of the Lord, and now they were dead by her hand.

  She closed her eyes and pictured it all. Viggo’s face had expressed such warmth when she opened the door. Tage had been so grateful. And now it was Nørvig’s turn. The lawyer who wouldn’t listen when she’d desperately needed help. The man who had guarded Curt Wad’s
reputation so fiercely and with such scant regard for her life.

  But was she entitled to do unto him as he had done unto her? To take his life away?

  The doubt remained inside her when she spotted his wiry figure by the lakeside in front of her building.

  Although more than thirty years had passed, she recognized him immediately. Still fond of his tweed jacket with its leather buttons. Still the brown attaché case under his arm. A man who seemingly had not changed, yet she could sense from his body language that perhaps not everything was the same as before.

  He wandered a few steps back and forth beneath the chestnut trees, glancing out over the lake. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his face as though wiping away perspiration or perhaps tears.

  And then she noticed his jacket was too big for him, his polyester slacks, too, sagging at the shoulders and knees, respectively. An outfit bought in better times, for a frame of greater substance.

  For a second she felt sorry for the man, who at this moment stood oblivious, soon to enter the grave.

  What if he had children who loved him? Grandchildren?

  The very thought made her clench her fists. Her eyelids twitched uncontrollably. Had she ever had children to love her? And whose fault was that?

  No. She needed to look out for herself and stay focused. Tomorrow afternoon she would leave this life behind her. But first she had to complete what she had now begun. She had promised this man who was a lawyer by profession that he would receive ten million kroner. She had done so in writing, and a man like him would never allow her to rescind her word.

  Not Philip Nørvig.

  • • •

  He stood there, not quite as tall as she remembered him, staring at her like a repentant puppy dog, eyebrows aloft. As though this meeting with her was of immeasurable importance to him and the first impression he gave was crucial.

  His eyes had been considerably colder the time he’d lied in court and coerced her into uttering foolish words. Not once had he blinked or allowed himself to be moved by her emotional outbursts. Her sobs had only made him deaf, just as her tears made him blind.