She pursed her lips. It just couldn’t be right. Should she just sit here and wither away? Should Pirjo come one fine day and dispose of her mummified body, by that time as light as a feather, and get away with murder?
Shirley clenched her teeth together and tried to judge the distance up to the skylight. She’d imagined it to be about six to seven meters, but maybe it wasn’t even as much as that.
She turned to her toiletry bag again, emptying the contents.
She weighed the toothpaste, her face powder, and her deodorant, judging that none of these objects were nearly as heavy as her jar of wrinkle cream. Actually, it was a relic from the days when she thought there could be a miracle hidden in the product. That ageing and loose skin would be a thing of the past, if only she remembered to apply it generously every day.
When she realized after a month that the only thing the cream did for her was to lighten her purse, she forgot about it in the bottom of her toiletry bag. You don’t throw away that sort of cream, which cost almost two days’ wages if not more.
And now it was finally going to live up to its cost.
It was one thing to throw six to seven meters horizontally, that much was straightforward enough, even if like Shirley you hadn’t thrown anything since you were a child. But it was another thing altogether if you had to throw an object vertically up in the air with such precision and force that some of the windowpanes, which looked as if they could withstand more than a particularly heavy hailstorm, would smash.
Shirley’s jar was also made of porcelain, so if she made a mistake the first time around, there wouldn’t be a second chance.
She sat thinking about her dad, the electrician from Birmingham, who’d always given as good as he got, unless it was about general knowledge because he didn’t know so much about that.
“Try first,” he always said. “Damn it, woman, if you’re not sure, try first.”
Shirley smiled. He hadn’t been happy to be reminded of that sentence when she dragged home her third guy within the space of a week. She grabbed her face powder and took aim. The interior mirror might get broken on the way back down again, but just now she had other things to worry about than seven years’ bad luck.
The first throw hit the roof a good two meters from the skylight. The second hit a meter to the side. The third throw never made it that far, and she already felt a pain in her shoulder.
When she and her cousin used to play around as children, they always took their old aunt by her forearm under the pretence of wanting to help her up. The loose wobbly skin she had there, and which they were free to fondle, could make them laugh for hours. It was all so funny back then, but just now she realized that she wasn’t much better off than her old aunt had been. She certainly didn’t have any muscles.
She took a pause, decided to drink the last of the water in the toilet, dried her mouth, and stared threateningly at the window above.
She remembered how the mantra of every cricket coach at her school had been that success depended on putting a bit of your soul in the target and the rest in the ball.
So she divided her soul in two and rammed the face cream up to the skylight with everything she had.
She heard a cracking sound from up above, so she’d hit her target. Encouraged by this success, she grabbed the jar of wrinkle cream and did exactly the same one more time. Whether it was the windowpane or the jar that made everything in the room rattle when it all tumbled down, was difficult to say. But the hole in the glass was established and the direct rays of the sun caressed her face.
She closed her eyes. “Horus, Horus, blessed by the star, infused by the sun, be now my servant, and show me the power you bestow on us. Let me follow your path and worship it, and never forget the reason for your presence,” she prayed.
Afterward, she screamed as loud as she could in a final hope that someone would hear her now that there was a hole in the skylight. She stopped after ten minutes. The house was so well insulated that no one heard her.
Logically, the situation should have made her sad and afraid, but it didn’t. Actually, she laughed about it for a moment. It felt totally crazy. If she’d known earlier what a feeling of euphoria came from hunger and thirst, and how light and free and strong you could be, she’d definitely have done it more often.
She got down on her knees, took her glasses again, and collected the rays of the sun in a small bright point, at first on the wall itself and then on one of the crumpled pieces of paper from the blue notebook that slowly but surely turned darker and darker.
—
When Pirjo was almost six years old, the summer turned out to be ideal for picking bilberries. The forests were abundant and Pirjo’s dad suddenly saw the chance for increasing his earnings. As everyone knows, bilberries from the forest are free, so if you multiplied this hundred percent profit with the expected daily sales to tourists from Tampere, it had to add up to many, many Finnish marks in a single season. In fact, Pirjo’s dad sat every night working out what it might add up to if the hordes of tourists were supplemented by those from Turku and all the Swedes who sometimes strayed to these parts. The profit would be enormous, he said, as he dreamt of a delivery van and his own supermarket. Yes, he dreamt and dreamt, and all these profitable bilberries had to be picked for him by Pirjo and her mother.
They collected bucketsful, despite nasty bites from gadflies, horseflies, and mosquitoes, but the tourists stayed away, leaving the bilberries to sit and ferment.
“We’ll make schnapps, cordial, and jam from them,” said her dad and sent Pirjo off on her own after more, now that her mother was busy in the kitchen.
When she came home with the next bucketful, her mother was sitting in the kitchen with her hands in her lap and had given up. She couldn’t keep up and the sugar was too expensive.
“Eat the bilberries you’ve collected today, Pirjo, so they’re not wasted,” she said, and so Pirjo ate the bilberries until her fingers and mouth and lips were so blue that you wouldn’t believe your eyes.
It backfired in the days following when Pirjo suffered from an abnormal constipation that cost money in medical assistance and gave her indescribable pain.
Though not an exact comparison, it was a touch of the feeling Pirjo had just now. The pain in her stomach was indefinable but worrying. If it continued like this throughout the day, she’d drive to the hospital.
She put her hand on her stomach and felt to see if the kicking from the child inside her had changed. She didn’t think it had, even though it had become more moderate over the last few days. She looked out of the window, sure that this couldn’t be so strange given that room was getting tight now.
Outside her window, in the empty space facing the highway, the team that was building the bicycle sheds had been hard at it all afternoon. The materials had arrived on time, and later in the week she was expecting the delivery of the first bikes.
It would be exciting to see if the project to missionize on the island would lead to anything. Pirjo wasn’t a daydreamer like her dad, but if they could just recruit fifty people here on Öland it would be a success.
Four days had gone by since she’d turned off the water to the house where Shirley was locked up. And even though she’d heard faint scratching sounds on the walls when she went down there to inspect, there was absolutely nothing alarming about the situation. In a few days the sounds would stop, and in a week from now she would assume that Shirley was dead.
In the meantime she’d just keep to herself and let time pass.
She got up and looked out at the men, who one by one stopped with their work. It was time for the communal assembly.
She nodded with satisfaction. In many ways the small building was a handsome and presentable feature out toward the road, where before it had been a little too open in her opinion. If they planted dog roses up against the cycle sheds, the view from her room wouldn’t j
ust be beautiful and harmonious but the noise from the road would be lessened significantly as well.
And while she stood thinking this over, a car with Danish license plates drove very slowly past. The driver looked attentively out of the window toward the buildings but the car didn’t stop.
It wasn’t that unusual. An institution like theirs attracted a lot of curiosity due to the special buildings, the name of the place, and all the people in white robes. And yet this man’s gaze was more intense than they usually were. His age and type and the person next to him didn’t point to them being tourists. So what were they?
She felt a twinge in her side and her pulse soared.
Could it be the men from the Danish police she’d been warned about? The man behind the wheel could easily look like someone of that sort.
Worried, she remained standing for five minutes to see if she had anything to fear, and if the vehicle would turn back.
She was just about to leave the room and head to the assembly hall, relieved that her mind had played a trick on her, when she saw a couple of figures on foot on the other side of the road.
This time she felt the rush of adrenaline that put her entire system on a state of high alert. There was no doubt that the taller of the two was the driver from before and that the man next to him was an immigrant.
They were undoubtedly the two policemen Simon Fisher had warned her about, she just knew it.
You just wait, she thought.
No matter what or how.
They just had to be stopped as quickly as possible.
48
It had been overcast all morning over Skåne and Blekinge, and the police in Sweden had already been informed about their business, so in that respect everything was in good order. Carl and Assad hadn’t said much to each other, the heavy clouds being as evident inside as outside.
Carl was thinking mostly about Mona, but also about whether or not the time was right to find a different job. Would it even be possible at his age if he didn’t want to end up as a security guard escorting half-drunk boys out of shopping malls?
“What are you thinking about, Assad?” he finally said after three hundred kilometers and with the bridge to Öland in sight.
“Are you actually aware why there are camels in the desert and no giraffes?” asked Assad.
“It’s probably got something to do with food, hasn’t it?”
He sighed. “No, Carl. You’re thinking too straightforward. You should try thinking more diagonally for a change. It might work out better.”
God almighty! Was he going to be subjected to a lecture on brain geometry now?
“The answer is simple. If there were giraffes in the desert they’d die of sorrow.”
“Aha! And why’s that?”
“Because they’re so tall, they’d know that there was just endless sand as far as the eye could see. Fortunately for the camel, it doesn’t know this, so it trudges on assuming that an oasis is just around the corner.”
Carl nodded. “I understand. You feel like a giraffe in the desert, right?”
“Yes, a bit. Just right now.”
* * *
The Nature Absorption Academy was situated beautifully with the sea just behind and with a number of architecturally well-designed buildings that sparkled with order and plenty. Between these clusters of houses with glass domes, close to the water’s edge, you could see an open space and the center of a timber circle, which apart from the size in every way resembled those they’d seen in pictures from Bornholm.
A group of men close to the highway were finishing their work of erecting the framework for some outhouses, as Carl and Assad quietly sauntered past.
“Let’s park down the road, Assad. It looks a bit too sectarian for my liking with all those people in white. So if they aren’t inclined to welcome our arrival we can make a quick getaway.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I think we need to start by treating Frank Brennan just like any other witness. He knew Alberte right up until her death, and we’ll ask him to elaborate on that. We need to see how he reacts when we present him with more direct accusations that he might have been involved in her accident. So we’ll see if he falls in the trap. Until then, we won’t give too much away about the case.”
“And if he doesn’t fall in the trap?”
“Well, then we won’t be coming home anytime soon.”
Assad nodded in agreement. They just had to keep their wits about them.
An extended stay on one remote island would have to do, they were agreed on that.
* * *
In the reception, a woman sitting behind a desk covered with a white cloth asked them in Swedish that was both easily understandable and clear if they’d be so kind as to turn off their cells and leave them with her.
“Here at the center, the residents need to be able to shut out the outside world, if that’s what they need. We’ll look after your cells in the meantime,” she said. She wasn’t someone to be questioned.
They stated their business, saying that they were from the Danish police and would like to talk to Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi concerning an old accident. No indication that it was anything other than a routine case.
“Excellent. But our dumuzi is taking the communal assembly at present. In the meantime, we have a small anteroom for our guests, so you’re more than welcome to participate, but with the understanding that you’ll remain silent. So, if you’d like to come with me,” the woman said.
“Yes, we would. But I’d thought dumuzi was a name,” said Carl.
She smiled. It wasn’t the first time that question had come up.
“We all have one or more names derived from the Sumerian language. For example, my name is Nisiqtu, ‘the appreciated,’ and which I’m infinitely proud of and grateful for. And so Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi is the Sumerian for what our Atu stands for. Atu means ‘guardian.’ Aban means ‘stone.’ Shamash means ‘sun’ or ‘celestial body.’ Dumu means ‘son of,’ and zi means ‘spirit,’ ‘life,’ or ‘lifespirit.’ So the name in full stands for ‘Guardian of the sunstone, lifespirit’s son.’” She smiled again as if she had given them words of wisdom that could bestow upon them lasting power, lifting their souls up toward the infinite.
“What a load of bull,” Carl whispered to Assad as the woman led them into a small gallery from where they could observe between thirty and forty expectant and white-clad people sitting on the floor like snowflakes on a tarmac.
Everyone remained silent and reverent for a few minutes, and then a woman entered, preparing them for who was about to enter, saying, “Ati me peta babka.”
“It means: Guardian, open your gate for me,” whispered the woman.
Carl smiled to Assad but he was totally gone. Carl followed his eyes to a door that slowly opened and from where a man entered, dressed in yellow with colorful ornamentation.
Carl felt a shiver run through him.
The man was tall with dark eyebrows, light-colored skin, long ash-blond hair, and a dimple in his chin.
Assad and Carl looked at one another.
Despite the passage of time, there was absolutely no doubt. This was definitely the man they were looking for.
A collective hush went through the assembly when he spread out his arms toward them and began to rock back and forth while chanting “Abanshamash, Abanshamash, Abanshamash” for several minutes, first alone and then—after a nod from the woman leading the séance—all together.
Carl looked at her with an odd sensation in his body when, as if she had a sixth sense, she unexpectedly caught his eye. Her eyes, intelligent but intense and cold, sent an icy shiver down his spine.
“Who’s she?” he whispered to the woman taking care of them.
“That’s Pirjo Abanshamash Dumuzi, Atu’s right hand, our mother. She’s carrying his child.”
&
nbsp; Carl nodded. “And she’s been with Atu for many years?” he asked.
Nisiqtu nodded and held up a shushing finger in front of her lips.
Carl nudged Assad on the shoulder and pointed. He’d also seen her.
Almost the entire séance now took the form of a monologue in English. Atu gave the people his directions for how to live life in symbiosis with nature, and how they should renounce all dogmas and beliefs, surrendering themselves instead to the universe and the life-giving sun.
Then he turned to the woman who had begun the proceedings.
“Today, I have listened to Zini, spirit of the wind, through whom I have learned the name of our child.”
“When is she due?” Carl whispered to the woman.
She showed him three fingers. In August, so she was six months in.
“If it is a girl, we will call her Amaterasu,” he said, while the people folded their hands toward the ceiling.
“Beautifully thought,” whispered Nisiqtu. “Amaterasu is goddess of the sun in the Shinto religion. The full name is Amaterasu-Omikami, ‘the great god of August who shines in heaven.’”
The woman appeared to be totally elated now. “It’s exciting to know what he’ll call the baby if it’s a boy.”
Carl nodded. Probably not Frank.
“And if you favor us with a son, Pirjo, he shall be called Amelnaru. The singer, who will sing the message out across the whole world.”
He motioned her to come up and join him on the podium, and when she stood with her head bowed before him, he passed her two small stones he had in his hands.
“From today forth, I beseech you, Pirjo Abanshamash Dumuzi, to take my place as the guardian of the sunstones from Knarhøj that can guide in even the brightest of light, and the sunstone amulet from Rispebjerg that binds us together with our ancestors and their faith.”
Then he took off his cloak, leaving him bare-chested, and placed it over her shoulders.
The woman next to Carl covered her mouth. This gesture obviously moved her and everyone else in the assembly.
The Hanging Girl Page 45
