A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  She took a tight hold of his arm. “It’s got nothing to do with the money. Not anymore. You just follow his instructions. As soon as you see the light flashing, throw the bag out of the window, but leave the money in the duffel bag. We’ll be following the train as closely as we can. Don’t do anything on your own, but make sure you can tell us exactly where the train is if we should ask. Do you understand?”

  He nodded but with obvious reluctance.

  “All right, give me the duffel bag with the money in it,” she said. “I don’t trust you.”

  He shook his head.

  So she was right.

  “Give me the money,” she demanded, raising her voice now, but still he refused. And then she slapped him hard in the face, just under his right eye, and snatched the duffel bag from his hand. Before he realized what had happened, she had passed the money on to Isabel.

  Rachel grabbed the empty bag and stuffed the kidnapper’s clothes inside, apart from the shirt with the single hair inside the collar. On top she laid the padlock and the clasp and the letter Joshua had written.

  “Here. And make sure you do what we’ve agreed. Otherwise we’ll never see our children again. Believe me, I know.”

  Keeping pace with the train proved harder than she had imagined. Though they had a head start out of Odense, they were already behind before they reached Langeskov. Joshua’s reports gave cause for concern, and Isabel’s comments as she compared the GPS positions of the car and the train grew increasingly frantic.

  “We need to swap places, Rachel,” Isabel urged. “You haven’t the nerve for this.”

  Rarely had words had such a forceful effect on Rachel. She put her foot to the floor, and for five minutes the roaring engine was pushed to the maximum. It was the only sound they could hear.

  “I can see the train!” Isabel suddenly exclaimed as they approached Nyborg, where the E20 motorway bridged the railway. She pressed a key on the mobile, and a few seconds later she had Joshua on the other end.

  “Look to your left, Joshua. We’re just ahead of you,” she instructed. “The road veers away for the next few kilometers, so you won’t see us in a minute. We’ll try to catch up with you again on the Storebælt Bridge, but it won’t be easy. We’ll have to stop at the toll station on the other side. Has he called?” She listened for a moment to his reply, then snapped the phone shut.

  “What did he say?” Rachel asked.

  “Still no contact with the kidnapper. But Joshua didn’t sound like he was bearing up at all. He refused to believe we could get there in time. He kept stuttering, saying maybe it didn’t matter anyway. As long as the kidnapper understood the message in the letter.”

  Rachel pressed her lips together. He had said it didn’t matter. But it did. They would be there when the kidnapper turned on his strobe. They would be there, and the bastard who had taken her children would find out exactly what she was capable of.

  “You’re not saying anything, Rachel,” said Isabel. “But it’s true what Joshua says. There’s no way we can make it.” Her eyes were glued to the speedometer. But the car couldn’t go any faster.

  “What are you going to do when we get to the bridge? There are cameras everywhere, and traffic. And what about the tollbooths at the other side?”

  Rachel considered Isabel’s questions for a moment as she swept along in the fast lane, flashing the headlights to clear the way ahead.

  “Don’t worry, Isabel,” was all she said.

  31

  Isabel was terrified.

  Terrified by Rachel’s insane driving and her own inability to do even the slightest thing about it.

  Only two or three hundred meters farther on, they would hit the toll booths of the Storebælt Bridge, and Rachel wasn’t slowing down. In just a few seconds, the speed limit would be thirty kilometers an hour, and they were doing one hundred and fifty. Ahead of them, the train with Joshua on board tore through the landscape, and this madwoman was hell-bent on catching up with it.

  “Slow down, Rachel!” Isabel screamed, as the toll station loomed up in front of them. “BRAKE!”

  But Rachel gripped the wheel tighter. She was in a world of her own. She was going to save her children.

  Whatever else might happen was of no consequence.

  They saw toll officers by the lorry bays waving their arms, and a couple of cars in front of them veered sharply out of their way.

  And then they smashed through the barrier with an enormous crash, and debris was slung out to the side and on to the windscreen.

  Had her Mondeo been in better condition, they would now have been sharing its interior with a pair of exploding airbags. The mechanic had told her they were defective and needed replacing, but the cost had been prohibitive. She had wanted to have the work done for a long time, but now she was glad she hadn’t. If the airbags had deployed into their faces as they hurtled through the toll station at this speed, things would have gone terribly wrong. But now the only signs of this willful destruction of government property were a huge dent in the hood and an ugly crack that spread across the windscreen.

  Behind them, all hell was breaking loose. If the police had not yet been alerted about a car registered in her name having smashed through the toll barrier of the Storebælt Bridge, then someone must have been fast asleep.

  Isabel exhaled sharply and pressed Joshua’s number again. “We’re over the bridge! Where are you?”

  He gave the coordinates from his GPS and she compared them to her own. He couldn’t be far ahead.

  “I’m not happy with this,” he said. “It’s wrong. What we’re doing is wrong.”

  She tried to calm him down as best she could, though with little success.

  “Call when you see the strobe,” she said and snapped the phone shut.

  Approaching exit 41, they saw the train on their left. A sleek necklace of light sweeping through the darkened landscape. And there in the third carriage was a man whose heart was pounding.

  When would the bastard make contact?

  Isabel clutched the mobile in her hand as they pelted along the stretch between Halsskov and exit 40. There were no flashing blue lights in sight.

  “The police will stop us at Slagelse, Rachel, you can be sure of it. Why did you have to demolish that tollgate?”

  “You can see the train, can’t you? It would have been gone if I’d slowed down and stopped even for twenty seconds. That’s why!”

  “But I’ve lost it. I can’t see it anymore,” Isabel replied frantically. She stared at the map on her knee. “Damn it, Rachel. The track veers off north here and passes through Slagelse. If he gives the signal to Joshua between Forlev and Slagelse we haven’t a chance. Unless we get off the motorway, NOW!”

  Exit 40 disappeared behind them as Isabel turned her head.

  She bit down on her lip. “Rachel, if he does what I think he will, then Joshua’s going to see that strobe any minute now. Three roads cross the railway before we get to Slagelse. Any one of them would be a perfect place to dump the ransom. But we can’t get off the motorway now, because we just passed the exit.”

  Isabel saw right away that she had struck a chord. Rachel’s eyes became desperate again. For the next couple of minutes, the mobile chiming was the last thing in the world she wanted to hear.

  Suddenly she stepped hard on the brake and pulled onto the hard shoulder.

  “I’m going to reverse,” she explained.

  Had she lost her mind? Isabel flicked on the hazard lights and tried to slow her pulse.

  “Listen, Rachel,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Joshua will do this just fine. We don’t need to be there when he throws out the bag. Joshua’s right. The kidnapper’s going to get in touch with us anyway once he sees what’s in the bag,” Isabel said. But Rachel wasn’t listening. She had a different agenda, and Isabel understood.

  “I’m going to reverse along the hard shoulder,” Rachel said again.

  “Don’t, Rachel.”

  But she di
d.

  Isabel pulled off her safety belt and turned in her seat. Behind her were columns of traffic coming toward them. “You must be insane, Rachel! You’ll get us killed. What good’s that going to do Samuel and Magdalena?”

  But Rachel said nothing. She sat there, the engine whining in reverse, as they tore back along the asphalt.

  And then Isabel saw the blue lights come over the hill, some four or five hundred meters behind.

  “STOP!” she screamed. It was enough for Rachel to lift her foot from the accelerator.

  Rachel looked back at the blue lights, recognizing the problem at once. The gearbox protested audibly as she went straight from reverse into first. Within seconds, they were doing a hundred and fifty again.

  “Just pray that Joshua doesn’t call in the next couple of minutes to say he’s dumped the bag. If he doesn’t, we might still have a chance. But you need to turn off at exit 38, rather than 39,” Isabel groaned. “The police will be waiting at 39. They may be there already. Get off at 38. We’ll take the main road instead, it’s closer to the railway. The train goes through farmland all the way to Ringsted, away from the motorway.”

  She put her belt on again and sat with her eyes fixed on the speedometer for the next ten kilometers. The blue lights behind were apparently taking no risks in the chase. Who could blame them? she thought.

  As they passed exit 39, the road out of Slagelse was a ribbon of blue. The police cars would be there any moment.

  Her fears were confirmed.

  “They’re closing in on us, Rachel. Faster, if you can,” she urged, pressing Joshua’s number on the mobile.

  “Where are you now, Joshua?” she demanded.

  But Joshua didn’t answer. Did that mean he had already dumped the bag? Or had something worse happened? Was the monster on the train? The thought hadn’t occurred to her until now. Could that be it? All that stuff about flashing strobes and throwing the bag out of the window, was it all just a smokescreen? Did he already have the bag in his possession and had found out there was no money in it?

  She swiveled her head and glanced at the duffel bag with the ransom inside it on the backseat.

  What would the bastard do to Joshua?

  They reached exit 38 just as blue lights appeared up ahead on the opposite, westbound side, too. Rachel didn’t touch the brakes as they hit Route 150 with a squeal of tires, as close to colliding with another car as they could possibly get. Had it not been for swift evasive action on the part of the other driver, they would all have been done for.

  Isabel felt the sweat on her back. She was soaking wet. This woman at the wheel was not merely desperate, she was insane.

  “There’s no escape on this road, Rachel. Once the police get behind us here, all they need to do is follow our rear lights,” she yelled.

  Rachel shook her head and bore down so close on the still swerving car in front of them they almost locked bumpers.

  “No, we won’t let them,” she said calmly, and turned off the lights. The automatic driving lights Isabel had been meaning to get fixed went out at the same time.

  They saw the figures of an elderly couple through the rear window of the car in front. Terror seemed a mild interpretation of their frenzied gesticulations.

  “We’ll turn off first chance I get,” Rachel said.

  “You’ll have to turn on the lights again.”

  “Leave that to me. You check the GPS. Where’s the next side road that isn’t a dead end? We need to get out of the way. I can see the police behind us.”

  Isabel glanced back over her shoulder. It was true enough. The lights were there now, flashing blue in the dark. Maybe only four or five hundred meters behind at the motorway exit.

  “There!” she shouted. “Up ahead.”

  Rachel nodded. The headlights of the car in front had picked out a road sign. Vedbysønder, it read.

  She stepped on the brake and veered away, lights out, into the darkness.

  “OK,” she said, slipping into neutral and rolling past a barn and some farm buildings. “We’ll pull in behind the farm here. They won’t see us. You call Joshua again, OK?”

  Isabel looked back over the landscape as the blue lights loomed out of the dark, an ominous aura.

  Then she pressed Joshua’s number again, this time full of trepidation.

  It rang a couple of times, and then he answered.

  “Yes?” was all he said.

  Isabel nodded to Rachel to say Joshua had taken the call.

  “Have you delivered the bag?” she asked.

  “No, not yet,” came his reply. His voice sounded labored.

  “Is something the matter, Joshua? Are there people around you?”

  “There’s one other man in the compartment besides me, but he’s working at his computer and wearing earphones. So that’s all right. But I’m not feeling good. I keep thinking about the children. It’s so awful.” He sounded short of breath and exhausted. Hardly surprising.

  “Just calm down, Joshua.” She knew it was easier said than done. “It’ll all be over in a few minutes. Where’s the train now? Give me the coordinates.”

  He read them out. “We’re moving out of the town now,” he said.

  She was with him. It couldn’t be that far behind now.

  “Get your head down,” Rachel commanded as police cars ripped along the main road and past the turning they had taken. As if anyone could see them here from that distance.

  But in a moment, the elderly couple who had been in front of them would be waved in. They would tell the police about the lunatics they had encountered on the road, tailgating them with their headlights switched off, and how suddenly they had shot off down a side road. And then the police would turn back.

  “Hey, I can see the train,” Isabel suddenly exclaimed.

  Rachel was alert. “Where?”

  Isabel pointed south, away from the main road. It was perfect. “Down there! Come on, let’s get going!”

  Rachel switched on the lights, ran through the gears in five seconds, negotiating the two bends through the village in one maneuver, and within moments the chain of lights that was the train crossed the beam of the Mondeo’s headlamps in the darkness ahead.

  “Oh, God, I can see the strobe!” Joshua cried into the mobile. “Oh, dear Lord and Father, please protect us and have mercy on our souls!”

  “Has he seen it?” Rachel said. She had heard the sound of his cry over the phone.

  Isabel nodded, and Rachel bowed her head slightly. “Mother of God. Let Thy holy light shine down and show us the way to Thy splendor. Take us unto Thee as Thy children, and warm us at Thy heart.” She exhaled sharply, then breathed in air to the bottom of her lungs as she pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator.

  “I can see the strobe right ahead of me. I’m opening the window now,” said Joshua over the mobile. “I’ll need to put the phone down on the seat. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  Joshua groaned in the background. He sounded like an old man with only a few steps remaining on the path of life. Too many things left to do, too many thoughts of which to keep track.

  Isabel’s eyes darted around in the darkness. She couldn’t see the light flashing. So it had to be on the other side of the train.

  “The road crosses the railway twice farther along here, Rachel. I’m sure he’s on the same road as us,” she shouted, as Joshua exerted himself audibly at the other end of the phone, trying to get the bag out of the window.

  “I’m letting go of it now,” said his voice in the background.

  “Where is he? Can you see him, Joshua?” Isabel yelled urgently.

  Now he had picked up the phone again. His voice came through loud and clear. “I can see his car. It’s pulled in by some trees where the road cuts in toward the tracks.”

  “Look out of the window on the other side, Joshua. Rachel’s flashing her headlights now.”

  She gave a sign to Rachel, who was hunched over the wheel, peering out of the windscreen in an e
ffort to catch sight of something, anything at all, beyond the train in front of them.

  “Can you see us, Joshua?”

  “YES!” he cried back. “I can see you by the bridge. You’re coming toward us. You’ll be there any sec…”

  Isabel heard him utter a groan. Then came a sound like the phone clattering to the floor.

  “I can see it, the strobe!” Rachel exclaimed.

  She drove on over the bridge and along the narrow road. A couple of hundred meters and they would be there.

  “What’s the man doing now, Joshua?” Isabel demanded, but there was no answer. Perhaps the phone had snapped shut when it fell.

  “Holy Mother of God, forgive me for whatever evil I have done,” Rachel chanted in the seat next to her as they swept past a couple of cottages and a farm at a bend, then another house on its own close to the tracks. And then the headlights picked out his car.

  It was parked on a bend a couple of hundred meters ahead, perhaps fifty from the railway. And behind it there he stood, the bastard himself, peering into the bag. In a windbreaker and light-colored trousers. If they hadn’t known better, they might have taken him for a tourist who had got lost.

  As the full beam of their headlights illuminated him, he lifted his head. It was impossible to see his expression from their distance, but a thousand thoughts must have been racing through his mind. What were his clothes doing in the bag? Perhaps he had already seen that there was a note on top. Certainly he must have realized that there was no money inside. And now these headlights were coming toward him at breakneck speed.

  “I’ll run him down!” Rachel screamed at the same moment as the man threw the bag and himself into the car.

  They were only meters away from him as his wheels found traction and pulled him out onto the road, his engine whining.

  It was a dark Mercedes like the one Isabel had seen near the cottage at Ferslev. So it was him she had seen while Rachel was being sick.

  The road ahead was lined by dense woodland, and the sound of their engine and the car ahead roared through the trees. The Mercedes was more powerful than the Ford. It wouldn’t be easy to keep up, and what good would it do them anyway?