“I must admit, it’s a bit of a mess. Our electrician has removed the cover plates from the junction boxes, so we have to be careful,” she warned, getting ready to push Shirley’s hand into the snake’s nest of wires.
“Nothing much would happen,” answered Shirley, unimpressed. “The effect isn’t very high, and it would be very difficult to be killed by direct current. You’d have to be unconscious and have one negative and one positive wire attached to each side of your body. Then your insides would be more or less boiled. Like being inside a microwave.”
She said that in the very moment Pirjo stretched her arm forward, getting ready to press Shirley’s hand into the trap.
So she let her hand drop. Unconscious, she said? Wires on each side of the body?
Shirley looked at her authoritatively. “Didn’t you know that the first electric chair was supposed to have used direct current, but that Thomas Edison guy warned the authorities, telling them that direct current wouldn’t kill without excessively prolonged torture? He was the one who suggested alternating current instead. Crazy, isn’t it? Edison himself! No, this direct current would only sting a little. Perhaps it’d be different later in the day, when the sun was at its strongest, but not now. Shouldn’t I screw those cover plates back on for you, by the way? After all, it isn’t completely safe if worse comes to worst.”
Pirjo was stunned. “Er, yes please. How on earth do you know stuff like that, Shirley?”
“Oh, my dad was an electrician. Guess what he entertained the family with over dinner, the few times he preferred to spend time with his family rather than his pals down at the pub.”
Pirjo tilted her head to the side. Shirley’s father was an electrician. Had she mentioned that when she filled out her enrollment papers?
“No, just leave those cover plates, the electrician can fix that when he comes back. I’ll lock the doors so no one gets hurt in the meantime.”
So, Pirjo’s plan A had suddenly been replaced by a plan B when they sat down in her office.
“Listen, Shirley,” she said after a brief pause. “I’m afraid we’ve decided not to accept you as a permanent member of the academy. I’m sorry, because I know how disappointing it must be for you,” she said, expecting a reflex protest. Nothing happened.
On the contrary, Shirley just sat there, her eyes and face expressionless, wringing her plump hands in her lap. Judging by her quivering lower lip, the message had taken her completely by surprise.
“Yes, it’s a shame. But we simply don’t have any free places. Otherwise there might have been a chance. So it won’t happen for the time being, Shirley, I’m sorry.”
“But I don’t understand. Jeanette’s room is still free,” she said, still with a hint of hope in her voice.
“Well, that’s true, but Jeanette’s coming back, Shirley.”
Shirley sat still for a minute. Her hands were resting now, her expression no longer lost.
“That’s a complete lie, Pirjo,” she suddenly snarled.
Pirjo was just about to explain Jeanette’s situation, but the words stuck in her throat. She’d also have clarified that there was a slim chance of Shirley being accepted later, if she could remain patient, but now the gauntlet had been thrown down instead.
“I don’t know why you’re snarling like that and calling me a liar, Shirley. It’s actually quite hurtful,” she said. “I think I need to remind you that I’m the chief administrative manager of this center, so the decision about your future lies in my hands, no matter what you say or do. So why don’t we . . .”
“That may be, but you’re lying, and I’m not going anywhere.” The last part came out as a shout.
“I see. I’ll choose to ignore that,” said Pirjo coldly. “But we do have an offer to make . . .”
“People are starting to doubt you, Pirjo. They’re beginning to put two and two together. You seem so cooperative, but you’re just yanking our chains. Right now I feel the same way about you as when a man pulls the chair out from the table for you, expecting that’ll buy him the right to touch your breasts. You feel you’ve been taken for a ride, but not just that. You also feel incredibly manipulated, and of course I can only speak for myself, but I really hate that.”
“You always seem to speak for yourself only, Shirley. Maybe that’s actually one of the reasons why it’ll be hard to find a place for you.”
At this, Shirley got up suddenly to point an accusing finger at Pirjo, her entire voluptuous body quivering.
“If you think you can stop me by sending me away, you’re wrong.”
Pirjo squinted. “I don’t get it. Stop you how?”
“Here we go again. You’re just being manipulative. Stop me before I tell the world that you know what happened to Wanda Phinn, of course.” She pinched her lips, trying to compose herself, but her anger and all the thoughts she was grappling with made her burst out crying.
Pirjo breathed a sigh of relief. Just a few tears and she knew she’d have the situation under control.
“My, oh my, Shirley, are we back to that story about the belt? Come over here to my side of the table, and I’ll show you something. Then you’ll see that you’re completely wrong about me and the whole situation.”
When Shirley didn’t show any sign of obeying, Pirjo turned the screen toward her.
“Look what I found on the Net. I felt I had to, after our last talk about that belt.” She clicked on the first link, and a webpage called Fashion Belts appeared.
“See how many belts look like the one you said Jeanette brought down from the attic.” She pointed at a few. “Look, diagonal stripes in red and grey.” She clicked on another link. “And this company also has some that look like the one you gave Wanda Phinn. Six months ago that was how belts should look. It’s a completely common belt.”
Shirley huffed. Her eyes were glistening. At that very moment, they were balancing on a knife’s edge, and they might both fall, so Pirjo had to be extremely careful to maintain the balance. Keep Shirley convinced that they were fighting for the same cause.
“I know what you’re thinking right now, Shirley. The belts on the Net aren’t used, and the scratch on the buckle and the dent in the belt can’t be explained by this. But look what I also found.”
She clicked on a couple of links to pages where women sold clothes from their own wardrobes. On two of the pages, there were used belts for sale that looked more or less like the one Shirley was talking about.
It had taken her all night to find them.
“Look, Shirley. One of these belts has a scratch, and they both have dents around the hole that are actually identical to the one you showed me. Can you see the resemblance? Four holes in and there’s the mark from wear, exactly like on the belt you thought was Wanda’s. They’re just pretty ordinary marks of wear and tear on a belt, don’t you see?”
Shirley’s eyes fixed on the screen; her tears began to flow uncontrollably, both from sadness and relief.
Pirjo let her cry while she considered the situation.
Just now, the woman was both disappointed and confused, but the problem was that in a few days she might not be confused anymore, only disappointed. Perhaps she’d be sitting in London, imagining that somehow she’d be able to track Wanda down. That she had a mission. And when another month or two had passed, and she’d talked to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, including Wanda’s parents, and found out that the girl in fact had disappeared, her alarming ideas would reemerge.
And then what? Would her suspicion also reemerge with renewed strength? Pirjo was certain that it would.
Of course, it would take convincing proof for Shirley to be able to substantiate her accusation against Pirjo and the center, but what if her timing proved fatal? If she launched her attack just as the Danish police drew in? There might only be a slim chance of that happening, but the baby was growing and kicking inside Pirjo,
and she’d made a sacred promise to this child.
Nothing would ever be allowed to harm them.
She looked at Shirley for some time, and then placed her hand on hers. “I feel the same way as you, Shirley. I don’t like it when people turn their backs on me either. When they suddenly show sides of themselves that couldn’t have been predicted. When they flush me out of their lives, coldly and cynically, as if I’d never been a part of it. Yes, I really do understand you, Shirley,” she said, when their eyes finally met. “But listen, why don’t we forget about what happened between us just before? I know you’re very disappointed with our decision that you can’t stay, and that we can’t accept you into our inner circle. But we do still have a suggestion for you, Shirley.
“You see, Valentina has been given an assignment today. She’s to go to our office in Barcelona to recruit local course members. Perhaps you could do the same for us from our London office? Do you think that could interest you? It would be wonderful, because I actually think you’d be really good at it.”
Pirjo sent her a hesitant smile. If the gullible woman was ever going to buy it, it had to be now.
“I know you’ll be out of a job when you return. But the job I’m talking about will be paid. I know the salary is commission-based, but we usually have a lot of applicants in London, which would be to your benefit. And it’s important to remember that there’s also a small apartment that comes with the job. What do you say, wouldn’t that be exciting?”
Shirley remained silent.
“But before we can do this, you’ll have to be led through our purification process, just like the one Valentina went through about a year ago. As always, that requires you to be isolated for a month, so you can forget about everything that’s worldly, and spend all your energy on letting the nature absorption settle within you—become neutralized, as we call it. If you’re willing to do that, and if you accept the job, I see no reason why we shouldn’t begin straightaway.”
Pirjo scrutinized her face. Often, the order in which the parts of a face reacted would give away whether or not an answer was honest. Smile lines around the eyes, for instance, would often be the result of cool calculation; it was the same with smiles, so you couldn’t trust that kind of reaction, just like the far too short answers “okay,” or just “yes.” On the other hand, if there were signs of the person being touched, before the smiles or short answers, then you were on fairly safe ground.
At the moment, Shirley’s face was completely blank. It was impossible to tell what was going on inside. Would her next sentence be a burst of anger or a declaration of surrender?
Pirjo waited, aware of the seriousness of the situation. Their eyes were almost united in symbiosis. For a moment she thought Shirley would get up and slam the door, but then the corners of her mouth moved downward, as if she was about to start crying again.
That’s when Pirjo knew she’d won the battle.
“Is Atu okay with this arrangement?” asked Shirley quietly.
Pirjo nodded. “Yes, of course. We’ve been talking about it for some time. Actually, I believe you’ll be able to recruit many new people with your fine, gentle nature and honest face.”
That brought the smile out. Not too much, not too little, and at the right time.
“Well, in that case I’ll accept,” she said, her eyes avoiding Pirjo’s. It was difficult to tell what that indicated. Maybe it was a sign that she was ashamed of having attacked and accused Pirjo, but of course there was also the possibility that she was trying to memorize the sight of a place she wouldn’t be seeing for some time now.
Pirjo smiled.
If it was the latter, then she had no idea how right she’d turn out to be.
She’d certainly never see this room again.
This room, or any other room like it for that matter.
38
Monday, May 12th, 2014
Carl looked over at the TV, where the usual bunch of laughing hosts and overly energetic chefs were trying to teach Denmark how to make a salad of pointed cabbage and sesame seeds, boldly arranged around a small, balsamic vinegar–marinated filet mignon au pimentos, or whatever the hell they were saying. Carl glanced despondently down at his pale scrambled eggs and Hardy’s stale oatmeal porridge. What a bloody nerve TV2 had to abuse bachelors and other poor souls at seven in the morning with that sort of utopian dream.
Hardy certainly looked less than enthusiastic at the spoon Morten was about to shove into his mouth.
“But the porridge will get the peristalsis going, Hardy. So won’t you please open your mouth and wipe that frown off your face?”
Hardy swallowed the lump, and breathed deeply. “If you’d eaten as much porridge as me over the past seven years, Mr. Holland, I’d like to see who’d be doing the whining. And allow me to quote Assad: It tastes like camel tonsil hockey.”
“Tonsil hockey . . .”
“French kissing an eager camel.” He tried to laugh, but didn’t have sufficient air in his lungs.
Carl put his newspaper aside, and looked at the glowing screen on his cell. It was one of the local numbers from Police Headquarters.
He glanced at Hardy a couple of times as he read the message. No doubt his old partner had understood what was going on.
“It’s about our case, isn’t it?” he said when Carl put his cell back down.
Carl nodded. “Yes, there’s been a new development in the nail-gun case.”
Morten put a hand on Hardy’s shoulder. He was having a hard time coping with that case, everyone knew that.
“It seems they may have found the firearm that killed Anker, and nearly us, too,” said Carl. “Apparently there’s been a raid somewhere, and because a Danish policeman was killed with the weapon, Lars Bjørn has called a press conference.”
Hardy didn’t say anything.
“In an hour and a half,” continued Carl.
Still not a word from Hardy.
“Damn it, Hardy.” Carl could see the pain in his eyes. Even though it hurt to think about the bloody weapon, it also felt good to be given just a little bit of hope that this might be over soon, and the murderer brought to trial.
Carl walked around Hardy’s wheelchair to give him a hug.
“They wanted to send a car so you could come. Do you want to?”
Hardy quietly shook his head. “Not until it’s definitively over,” he said. “I’m not being put on display.”
* * *
Lars Bjørn reached over Carl’s head to point at Head of Communications Janus Staal, who thanked everyone for coming. Then he presented the agenda, and sat down, leaning over toward Carl.
“You didn’t manage to get Hardy to come?”
Carl shook his head.
“I can understand him, but it was Bjørn’s idea. A man like Hardy is great publicity.”
“What the hell is this about?” whispered Carl, looking around him. Anything and anyone who could creep and crawl in the world of crime reporters was present, and TV2 News had already started filming. The crime reporter from DRTV already had his microphone out, and even a couple of tabloid magazines had turned up, as always with Gossip in the front row.
“It’s not my case anymore, so why did I have to come? What’s happened, Janus?”
Staal raised a hand in the air, pointing to his watch. “We begin in twenty seconds, Carl. Then you’ll know everything. Good thing you made it.”
Was it, though? Carl placed his briefcase on the floor next to his chair.
“Thank you for turning out in force,” began Lars Bjørn. Then he introduced the gathered assembly to Carl Mørck, followed by his head of communications, and his deputy assistant commissioner Terje Ploug, who’d been in charge of the investigation of the case since Carl and his team were shot down.
After this, he turned toward a man Carl definitely knew, although he couldn’t
recall his name or where he’d last seen him.
“And this is Hans Rinus, who’s been in charge of a similar case in a suburb of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Carl Mørck was our observer in connection with the Dutch case, and he’ll tell you what happened there. Would you start, Carl?”
Yes, now Carl remembered him. The policeman who’d trampled through a crime scene with a lack of overview like a Danish politician on a bad day, wearing something that looked like safety shoes. What the heck was going on, and why was that buffoon here?
“Sure,” said Carl, quickly recapping his visit to the Netherlands and the description of the two men who’d been shot with a nail gun with 90mm Paslode nails, their mouths stuffed with cocaine of legendarily poor standard.
“We were unable to establish a link between the crimes in Denmark and the one in the Netherlands, so we handed over the Schiedam case to our Dutch colleagues, who continued work on it as a local case.”
“Which was a mistake,” added Terje Ploug with ill-concealed innuendo that it wasn’t his fault, then. “But Hans Rinus can tell you much more about that, which is why we’ve invited you here. The murder of Anker Høyer, the permanent physical damage to Hardy Henningsen, who unfortunately couldn’t make it today because he is still extremely marked by the episode, and the shooting of Carl Mørck, all of which happened on January 26th, 2007, more than seven years ago, all these crimes were committed with the same weapon, of which we’re now in possession.”
There was bustling among the reporters when he pulled a heavy semiautomatic pistol from his lap and held it up in the air. Carl slowly turned his eyes toward it, feeling the pressure rise in his head, and a couple in the crowd got up.
“How does it feel to see the weapon, Carl Mørck?” one of them shouted, the result being that Lars Bjørn asked everyone to remain calm and sit down.
How did it feel? Right now the muzzle was pointing straight at him. It was the same muzzle from which five 9mm projectiles had been fired, ruining life for quite a few people, including his own. How did it feel?
The Hanging Girl Page 36
