A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  At this point he began to perspire. It had been a long time indeed since he had lost control. And nothing felt worse.

  “It’s all right, no need to worry. Your keys are back where I found them. And your driver’s license. And the registration certificate for the van, and your credit cards, and all the rest of it, for that matter. It’s all where I found it in the van. Tucked away underneath the mats.”

  He studied her neck. It was not the delicate kind, and his grip would need to be strong. It would take a couple of minutes, but he had plenty of time.

  “It’s true, I’m a very private person,” he said, stepping forward and placing a hand cautiously on her shoulder. “Listen, Isabel. I’m very much in love with you, but I simply haven’t been able to be honest with you. I’m married, you see. There are children involved, and this has been getting out of hand for me. That’s why it has to stop now. Do you understand?”

  She tossed her head in a proud swagger. Wounded, but not defeated. She had known married men before who had lied to her, he was certain of it. As certain as he was that he would now be compelled to make sure he was the last man ever in her life who could cheat on her.

  She swept his hand away. “I don’t know why you haven’t told me your real name, and I don’t know why everything else you told me was lies. You’re trying to tell me it’s because you’re married, but do you know what? I don’t believe that, either.”

  And with that she stepped away from him, as though having read his mind. As though preparing to grab a weapon that lay hidden and ready.

  When you suddenly feel like you’re adrift on an ice floe in the company of a slobbering polar bear, you do well to consider what avenues might be available. Right now, he had four.

  Jump into the water and swim.

  Leap onto another ice floe.

  Wait and see whether the bear is hungry or not.

  Kill the bear.

  All four possibilities had their obvious advantages and drawbacks, but he was in no doubt that the fourth was the only real solution. The woman who had confronted him was injured and would defend herself by all means possible. Clearly because he had made her fall so deeply in love with him. He should have seen it coming. Experience had taught him that in situations such as this women easily became irrational. Often, the consequences would be fatal.

  At this moment, he was unable to fully assess the scale of the damage she might inflict, and for that reason alone he would have to get rid of her. He would take the body with him in the van. Dump her somewhere, like the others before. Destroy her hard disk, make sure all traces of his presence in her home were removed.

  He looked into her beautiful green eyes and wondered how long it would take before they ceased to sparkle.

  “I’ve sent my brother an e-mail telling him all about you,” she said. “So now he’s got your car reg number, the number of your driver’s license, your name, civil registration number, and the address on the vehicle registration certificate. It’s not the sort of thing he normally deals with, but he’s inquisitive by nature. So if it turns out you’ve stolen anything from me, he’s going to find you. Get it?”

  For a second, he was stunned. He wasn’t stupid enough to drive around with any document or credit card that might reveal his true identity. His sudden paralysis now was because until this moment he had never been in a situation where he could be linked to anything at all, and certainly he had never had the police lurking in the background. He found himself momentarily unable to grasp how he had got himself into this. What had he missed, where had he gone wrong? Was it really down to something as simple as not asking her what exactly her job in the local authority involved? He supposed that had to be it.

  And now he was in a squeeze.

  “I’m sorry, Isabel,” he said softly. “I’ve gone way over the mark here. Forgive me. I’m besotted with you, that’s all. Don’t think about what I said last night. I just didn’t know what to do. Was I supposed to tell you I was married with kids, or tell you lies? I’d lose everything back home if I really fell for you in a big way, and I almost did. I’ve been so on the verge, I needed to know everything about you. I couldn’t resist that, can’t you see?”

  She looked at him scornfully as he considered what to do on his ice floe. The bear would hardly pounce without reason. If he drove away and never again showed himself in these parts, she would be unlikely to draw on her brother for information about him. Why should she? But if he killed her or abducted her, the police would already have something to go on. Even his most meticulous efforts to erase all traces of himself here would not be sufficient to remove that one pubic hair, that tiny semen stain, a fingerprint. They would put together a profile, no matter that they would be unable to find him in their registers. Burning the place down was unfeasible. The fire services might quickly extinguish the blaze, and someone might have seen him drive away. It was too much of a risk. And now there was a police officer by the name of Karsten Jønsson who was in possession of the license plate number of his van. He would have a description of the vehicle. Maybe she had even given her brother a description of him.

  He stared blankly into space while she took stock of his movements. Though he was expert at sloughing his skin, though he always operated under one or another assumed identity, her e-mail may have contained exact details of his height and build, the color of his eyes, and perhaps even of more intimate parts of his body. He had no way of knowing what she had put in that mail, and that was where the whole thing imploded.

  He looked into the harshness of her gaze, and it struck him that she was not a polar bear at all. She was a basilisk. Serpent, cockerel, and dragon in one venomous reptile. And if a man looked into the eyes of the basilisk, he would turn to stone. Even crossing its path would be enough to cause death by its noxious influence. No being could crow out its version of truth to the world like the basilisk. And only its own image was powerful enough to kill it. This he knew.

  Therefore he said: “No matter what you might say, Isabel, I shall think of you. You’re so beautiful, such an amazing woman, I only wish I could have met you at some earlier time in my life. Now it’s too late. I’m sorry, and I apologize. I never intended to hurt you. You’re so lovely. I’m sorry.”

  And then he brushed his fingers gently against her cheek. It seemed to work. Her lips quivered slightly.

  “I think you should go now. I don’t want to see you again,” was what she said, though without conviction.

  She would mourn the loss for a long time to come. What they had together was the kind of thing that didn’t come around so often at her age.

  That was where he leaped from this ice floe to another. Neither the basilisk nor the polar bear would pursue him.

  She let him go, and it wasn’t even seven o’clock.

  16

  He called his wife as usual just before eight, still holding back on the contentious issue but relating experiences unlived and feelings for her which at present he did not possess. Leaving Viborg, he stopped at a Løvbjerg supermarket and freshened himself up as best he could in the customer toilets before heading toward Hald Ege and on to Stanghede, where Samuel and Magdalena were waiting for him.

  Nothing was going to stop him now. The weather was OK. Looking ahead, he would be there just before dark.

  The family received him with the smell of fresh-baked bread and lofty expectations. Samuel had been training all morning despite his injured knee, and Magdalena stood with eyes sparkling and her thick hair in long waves glossy from eager brushing.

  They were so ready.

  “Do you think we should stop by the hospital first and let them have a quick look at Samuel’s knee, just to be on the safe side? I think we’ve time.” He swallowed the last bit of his bread roll as he glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to ten, and he knew they would decline.

  Disciples of the Mother Church did not frequent hospitals if it could be avoided.

  “No, it’s just a sprain, but thanks all the same.”
Rachel handed him a coffee cup and indicated the milk on the table. He could feel free to help himself.

  “So where is this karate tournament?” said Joshua. “Maybe I can come along later in the day, if I’ve got time?”

  “Oh, leave off, Joshua.” Rachel swatted at him. “You know full well when you’ve got time and when you haven’t.”

  Never, as far as he could make out.

  “It’s in the sports hall at Vinderup,” he told the father. “The Bujutsu Club are organizing it. Perhaps there’s some more information on the Internet.”

  There wasn’t, but then there was almost certainly no Internet in the house. Another one of those ungodly inventions the Mother Church shunned.

  He put his hand to his mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. How stupid of me. I forgot, you won’t have an Internet connection. It’s nothing but a nuisance, anyway.” He did his best to look repentant, noting that the coffee was decaf. It was all PC here. “But, yeah, it’s all going on in the sports hall at Vinderup.”

  They waved. The whole family lined up in front of the farmhouse at the bend in the road, never again to rest in the peace and comfort of what once was. Smiling faces soon to contort in the pain of learning that the evils of this world cannot be kept at bay with weekly devotions and renunciation of the good things of modern life.

  He did not feel sorry for them. They had chosen the pathway on which they would tread, and now it had crossed his own.

  He looked at the two youngsters sitting on the seat next to him, waving back at their family.

  “Have you got enough room, you two?” he asked as they drove through bare fields dashed with the dark stubble of maize. He stuck his hand into the side pocket of the door. His weapon lay at the ready. Not many would recognize it for what it was. It looked like the handle of an attaché case.

  He beamed a smile when they nodded. They were sitting comfortably, and their minds were astray, unused to any departure from their quiet, restrictive lives. For them, this was a highlight.

  There would be no difficulties here.

  “I thought we might go by way of Finderup, just for the drive,” he said, offering them miniature chocolate bars. Against the rules it may have been, but nonetheless a way of establishing community. Community was security. And security made his work that much easier.

  “Oh, I’m forgetting, aren’t I?” he said, noting their hesitation. “I’ve brought some fruit with us, too. Would you rather have a tangerine?”

  “I think we’d like the chocolate best.” Magdalena smiled irresistibly, revealing the braces on her teeth. It wasn’t hard to imagine that this was a girl with secrets concealed in the garden.

  He waxed lyrical on the beauty of the Jutland heath and told them how excited he was about moving to the area permanently. And by the time they reached the crossroads at Finderup, the mood was quite as he had hoped—relaxed, trustful, and chummy. That was where he turned off the road.

  “Hey, not yet,” said Samuel, leaning forward in his seat. “The Holstebro road’s the next one.”

  “I know, but when I was driving around looking at houses the other day, I found this shortcut that leads up to Route 16.”

  He turned again, a few hundred meters from the memorial stone for the medieval king Erik Klipping.

  Hesselborgvej.

  “It’s along here. A bit bumpy, I know, but a good little shortcut,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” Samuel read the sign as they passed: Military vehicles strictly prohibited on bypaths. “I thought this road just petered out,” he said, and sat back in his seat.

  “You’ll see, it carries on beyond that yellow farmhouse there on the left, then on past another farm on the right that’s all broken down, and then we turn left.”

  He nodded to himself a couple of hundred meters farther on. The unmade road turned into wheel tracks. Here was a landscape of stubble, undulating and dotted with woodland. One more bend and they were there.

  “Hey, what did I tell you,” Samuel exclaimed, pointing up ahead. “You can’t get through here at all.”

  He was wrong, but there was no need for explanation now.

  “Do you know what, I think you’re right, Samuel,” he said. “We’ll just have to turn around again and go back. Sorry about that, kids. I was certain…”

  He turned the wheel and brought the van to a halt at an angle across the track, then reversed in between the trees.

  He pulled on the hand brake, swiftly drawing the stun gun from the side pocket. In one seamless movement, he released the safety catch, thrust the weapon against Magdalena’s throat, and fired. It was a fiendish device that delivered 1.2 million volts into the body of the victim, resulting in momentary paralysis. Her scream, and not least the sudden, violent way her body jerked, at first threw Samuel completely. Like his sister, he was utterly unprepared. The look in his eyes was of terror, and yet of readiness to fight. In the brief second that elapsed from the moment his sister slumped toward him till he grasped the fact that the object about to be pressed against him was lethal, the full gamut of the youngster’s adrenaline-driven mechanisms was activated at once.

  And so, quick though he was, his sister’s assailant was not quick enough to prevent the boy from shoving his sister aside, tearing at the door handle, and tumbling out before he could discharge his weapon again.

  He gave the girl another shot and leaped out of the vehicle in pursuit of the boy, who had by now managed to limp some way along the lichen-green track, his bad knee buckling beneath him. It was only a matter of seconds before his turn came.

  Reaching the fir trees, the boy turned suddenly. “What is it you want?” he yelled, invoking the assistance of his God, as though from out of the organized rows of fir some heavenly host would appear to defend him. He limped to one side and picked up a heavy stick spiked viciously with the sharp remnants of branches.

  Shit. He should have dealt with the boy first. Why the fuck hadn’t he listened to his instincts?

  “Don’t you come any closer,” the boy screamed, waving his stick in the air. There was no doubt he would use it. The boy knew combat, and would fight as well as he could.

  The thought flashed through his mind that he should have a Taser C2 instead. Armed with one of those, he would be able to incapacitate his victims from a distance of several meters. He knew there was not a second to be lost. They were only a few hundred meters from the farms and, although he had selected the location with care, there was no guarantee that some farmer or woodsman wouldn’t suddenly materialize. And in a few moments, the boy’s sister would recover sufficiently to be able to escape.

  “That won’t help you, Samuel,” he said, and thrust forward to counter the boy’s frantic blows. He felt the crack of the stick as it came down heavily against his shoulder at the same moment as the stun gun made contact with the boy’s arm. The cries they emitted were simultaneous.

  But this was not a battle between equals, and the boy fell to the ground.

  He glanced at his shoulder where Samuel had struck him so cleanly. Shit, he thought again, as his blood spread like the points of a star in the fabric of his windbreaker.

  Wishing again that he had a Taser, he dragged the boy into the back of the van, found the chloroform rag, and covered his face with it. For a moment the boy’s eyes stared emptily, and then he was under.

  He repeated the procedure with the sister.

  Then he blindfolded them, bound their hands and feet with gaffer tape, gagged them in the same way, and put them in the recovery position on the thickly carpeted floor.

  He changed his shirt and put on another jacket, standing for a few minutes, watching them to make sure they didn’t react badly, throw up and choke on their own vomit.

  When finally he was satisfied, he closed the doors and drove away.

  His sister and brother-in-law had settled in a small cottage just outside Årup, with whitewashed walls and close to the road. It was only a few kilometers from the parish church where his father had spen
t his final incumbency.

  It was the last place on earth he would think of settling.

  “So where have you been this time?” his brother-in-law asked without interest, gesturing toward a pair of timeworn slippers that were always left in the hallway and which all visitors were obliged to shuffle about in. As if their floors had ever been worth shit.

  He followed a sound into the front room and found his sister humming in a corner, a moth-eaten shawl draped across her shoulders.

  Eva knew him by his step but said nothing. She had put on a considerable amount of weight since the last time he’d been here. Twenty kilos minimum. Her body had spread, and soon the image he retained of the sister with whom he had so gleefully frolicked in the garden of the pastor’s residence would be gone forever.

  There was no exchange of greetings between them. There never was. But then politeness had never been much cherished in their childhood home.

  “I can’t stay long,” he said, squatting down beside her. “How are you doing?”

  “Villy looks after me,” she answered. “We’ll be eating shortly. Perhaps you’d like something?”

  “Just a spot of lunch. And then I’ll be making tracks.”

  She nodded. Truth was she didn’t care. Since the light had gone out in her eyes, the desire to be with other people and listen to what they had to say about themselves and the world around them had likewise waned. Perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps the faded images of childhood had suddenly taken up too much room inside her.

  “I’ve got some money for you.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “There’s thirty thousand there. That should tide you both over until next time.”

  “Thanks. When will you be back?”

  “In a couple of months.”

  She nodded and got to her feet. He offered his arm, but she declined.

  The oilcloth that draped the table had seen happier days in decades long gone and was now adorned with supermarket liver pâté and indeterminate pieces of roast meat in foil trays. Villy knew all sorts of folk who shot more game than they could eat, so they were never short on calories.