And no, damn it, Jesper had nothing to do with it, either. Nor did his girlfriend, if that was what Carl was thinking. Was he going soft in the head?
Carl glanced at the blood again and nodded.
With the right equipment it would take at most three minutes to break into the house, find an object Carl was sure to see fairly often, rub on a little animal blood and then hightail it out. Wouldn’t it be easy to find three unobserved minutes, given that Magnolievangen – in fact all of Rønneholtparken– was as good as deserted from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon?
If someone thought such shenanigans would make him give up the investigation, then they weren’t just unbelievably stupid.
The bastards, in one way or another, were also culpable.
15
The only time she could dream good dreams was after she’d been drinking. Which was one of the reasons she did it.
If she didn’t take a couple of generous swigs from the whisky bottle, then the outcome was assured. After dozing for hours with the voices whispering in her head, her gaze would fall from the poster hanging on her door – the one with the children playing – and she’d glide into dark nightmares. Those damn images were always cued up when she drifted off. Memories of a mother’s soft hair and a face rigid as stone, of a little girl trying to become invisible in the nooks and crannies of the family mansion. Horrible moments. Faded glimpses of a mother who simply left her. Ice-cold embraces from the women who succeeded her.
And when she awoke with sweat on her forehead and the rest of her body shaking with cold, the dreams had usually reached the point in her life where she turned her back on the bourgeoisie’s insatiable expectations and false niceness. She wanted to forget all of that. That, and the time that followed.
The previous evening she had drunk steadily, so the morning was relatively uncomplicated. She could easily handle the cold, the coughing and the splitting headache. As long as her thoughts and the voices were at rest.
She stretched, put her hand under the bed, and pulled out the cardboard box. It was her pantry, and the procedure was simple. The food on the right side of the box always had to be consumed first. When that side was emptied, she rotated the box 180 degrees and again ate what was on the right. Then she could fill the empty left side with new goods from Aldi. Always the same procedure, and never more than two or three days at a time in the box. Otherwise the food spoiled, especially when the sun was baking the roof.
She gobbled up yoghurt without any real pleasure. It had been years since food had meant anything to her.
She shoved the box back under the bed, fumbled around until she found the coffin, caressed it a moment, and whispered: ‘Mommy has to go into town now, my precious. I’ll be home soon.’
Then she sniffed her underarms and decided that it was time to take a shower. She used to do it in the central train station once in a while, but not any more; not after Tine had warned her about the men searching for her. If she absolutely had to go back there, she needed to take special precautions.
She licked her spoon and tossed the plastic cup in the rubbish sack beneath her, considering her next steps.
She had been to Ditlev’s house the evening before. For one hour she’d waited outside on Strandvejen, watching through the mosaic of luminous mansion windows before her voices gave the green light. It was an elegant house, but clinical and emotionless, like Ditlev himself. What else would one expect? She’d smashed a window and had a good look around before a woman in a negligee suddenly appeared. She had stared anxiously as Kimmie drew her pistol, but her expression became more subdued as soon as she discovered her husband was the target.
So Kimmie had given the woman the pistol and told her she could use it however she wished. She had looked at it for a moment. Weighed it in her hand, and smiled. Indeed she seemed to know what to use it for. Exactly as the voices had predicted.
And Kimmie had wandered back towards the city with a bounce in her step, assured that by now the message was crystal clear to everyone. She was after them. None of them could feel safe anywhere. She had them in her sights.
If she was right about them, they’d put more people on the streets to track her down, and that thought amused her. The more there were, the greater the evidence of their attentiveness.
She would make them so vigilant they wouldn’t be able to think of anything else.
For Kimmie, the worst part about taking a shower around other women wasn’t their stares. It wasn’t the little girls’ curious peeks at the long scar on her back and stomach. Nor was it the unmistakable delight the mothers and their children took in doing something together. It wasn’t even the carefree noises and laughter out at the pool.
It was the women’s bodies that shone with life. That was the worst. Gold rings on fingers that had someone to caress. Breasts that nurtured. Potbellies waiting to bear fruit. It was sights like these that fuelled the voices.
So Kimmie quickly tore off her clothes and heaped them on top of the lockers without looking at anyone, letting the plastic bags filled with new clothes lie on the floor. The whole procedure should be done quick enough that she could be gone before her eyes began to wander on their own.
While she was still in control.
So within twenty minutes she was standing on Tietgens Bridge in a tailored coat, her hair up, an unaccustomed mist of exclusive perfume on her skin, staring across the tracks that vanished inside the central station. It had been quite some time since she’d dressed like this, and she didn’t like it one bit. At this moment she was the spitting image of everything she fought against. But it was necessary. She would head slowly down the platform and up the escalator and all the way round inside the central hall like any other woman. If she didn’t notice anything unusual in the first pass, she would sit at the corner of Train Fast Food with a cup of coffee, occasionally glancing at the clock. She would resemble anyone waiting to go anywhere. Streamlined, with eyebrows finely drawn above her sunglasses.
Just another woman who knew what she wanted in life.
She’d been sitting for an hour when she saw Rat-Tine waddle past with her head canted sideways, gaze fastened on the empty space a half-yard in front of her. The emaciated woman smiled soullessly to everything and nothing; clearly she’d shot some heroin recently. Never before had Tine seemed more vulnerable and transparent, but Kimmie didn’t move. Simply watched her until she disappeared somewhere behind McDonald’s.
It was during this long, scrutinizing stare that she saw the lean man standing against the wall, talking to two other men in light coats. It wasn’t three men huddled together that caught her attention. It was that they didn’t look each other in the eye as they spoke, but instead kept stealing glances around the hall. That, and the fact that they were wearing nearly identical clothes, caused her warning lights to flash.
She rose slowly, adjusting the glasses on her nose, and with long, sweeping stiletto-heel steps walked directly towards the men. When she was close she could see they were all around forty years old. Deep creases at the corners of their mouths indicated a hard life. They were not the kind of lines businessmen earned under the sickly glare of office lights while stacks of paper flowed across their desks during the wee hours of the morning. No, they were more like furrows carved by the wind, the elements and endless, boring assignments. These were men hired to wait and observe.
When she was a few yards away, they all looked at her in the same instant. She smiled at them and avoided showing her teeth. Then she passed close by and felt the silence cement the men together. When she was a little further ahead, they began talking once more. She stopped to rummage in her purse. One of them, she overheard, was called Kim. Of course it had to be a name with the letter K.
They were discussing times and locations and weren’t the faintest bit interested in her, which meant she could move around freely. The person she was pretending to be didn’t fit the profile they were looking for. Of course not.
She mad
e a pass round the hall, accompanied by whispering voices, bought a women’s magazine in the kiosk at the other end and returned to her point of departure. Only one of the men remained. He was leaning against the brick wall, clearly ready for a long wait. Every one of his movements was slow, only his eyes were busy. These were precisely the kind of men Torsten, Ulrik and Ditlev associated with. Lackeys. Cold-hearted pricks. Men who did almost anything for money.
Jobs you wouldn’t read about in the classifieds.
The more she watched him, the closer she felt to the bastards she wanted to destroy. Excitement swelled inside her as the voices in her head contradicted one another.
‘Stop it,’ she whispered, dropping her gaze. She noticed how the man at the neighbouring table glanced up from his plate, trying to ascertain the target of her anger.
That was his problem.
Stop, she thought, catching sight of a tabloid headline: KEEP YOUR MARRIAGE ALIVE it read in large capital letters. But it was only the letter K she noted.
A big, capital K in a curved font. Another K.
The sixth-form pupils simply called him ‘K’, but his name was Kåre. He was the one who raked in nearly all the fifth-form votes when it was decided which final-year student would be the next prefect. He was the one who resembled a god, the one the girls whispered about on their bunks in the dormitory. But Kimmie was the one who scored him. After three dances at the comedy ball it was her turn, and Kåre felt Kimmie’s fingers where none had been before. For Kimmie understood her body and that of the boys, too. Kristian had made certain of that.
Kåre was in her grip, as though caught in a vice.
People commented on how, from that day forward, the popular prefect’s average began to slide, and how it was strange that so intelligent and focused a pupil could suddenly begin to lose it. And Kimmie enjoyed it. It was her handiwork, her body shaking this goody-two-shoes’s foundation. Her body alone.
Everything had been prepared for Kåre. His future had been determined long ago by parents who never found out who he actually was. All that mattered was keeping their son on track, ensuring he would bring honour to the tenderloin caste.
If a person could make the family happy and harvest success, then that person had found the meaning of life. To hell with the costs.
Or so they thought.
Kåre became Kimmie’s first target for that reason alone. Everything Kåre believed in nauseated her. Winning prizes for diligence. Being the best at shooting birds and the fastest runner on the racetrack. Being an eminent orator at festive occasions. Having hair trimmed a little neater, trousers ironed a little smoother. Kimmie wished all this gone. She wanted to peel him to see what lay hidden beneath.
And when she was through with him, she looked around for more challenging prey. There was plenty to choose from. She wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone.
Only occasionally did Kimmie glance up over her magazine. If the man by the wall left, she would feel it. More than eleven years on the street had sharpened her instincts.
These instincts awoke when, one hour later, she observed yet another man moving around the hall in an apparently aimless way, as if he were being led by legs set on automatic pilot while his eyes remained fixed on his surroundings. He wasn’t a pickpocket, attentively trying to spot a ripe handbag or loose coat. Nor was he the pickpocket’s little helper, sticking his hand out and asking for spare change while his accomplice did the dirty work. No, she knew the type better than most, and he wasn’t it.
He was a compact little man in shabby clothes. Thick coat, large pockets. It was wrapped around his body like a snakeskin, suggesting a derelict. But that wasn’t quite right. Even there, Kimmie knew better. Men wearing the uniform of the outcast – men who’d given up – didn’t look at other people. They had their sights set on the rubbish bins. On the ground in front of them. On corners where they might find an empty bottle. Maybe even on a random shop window or the offer of the week at Sunset Fast Food. They never scrutinized people’s faces and behaviour like this man was doing from under his bushy eyebrows. Besides, he was dark-skinned, like a Turk or Iranian. Who had ever seen a Turk or Iranian fall so far that he walked Copenhagen’s streets as a homeless person?
She watched him until he passed the man leaning against the wall, expecting they would acknowledge one another somehow, but they didn’t.
So she sat there, peering over the top of her magazine, imploring the voices in her head to keep out of it. And that’s how she was sitting when the little man returned to where he started. Not even on his way back did the two men acknowledge each other.
It was at this point that she rose quietly, pushed the chair carefully under her table and followed the squat, dark man at a distance.
He walked slowly. Now and then he would exit the hall and peer down Istedsgade, but he never walked so far that she couldn’t see him from the stairwell near the train station’s construction site.
There was no doubt that he was searching for someone, someone who could be her. So she stayed back in the shadows, behind corners and signs.
When he was standing near the train station post office for the tenth time, glancing around, he suddenly turned and stared straight at her. This was something she hadn’t prepared herself for, so she turned on her high heels and made her way towards the taxi queue. She would hail one and get away fast; he wasn’t going to keep her from doing that.
The other thing she hadn’t expected was that Rat-Tine would be standing right behind her.
‘Hi, Kimmie!’ she called shrilly, her eyes lustreless. ‘I thought it was you, love. You look smashing today. What’s the occasion?’
She thrust her arms towards Kimmie, as if to make sure she was real, but Kimmie dodged her, leaving Tine with arms raised in the air.
Behind her Kimmie heard the man’s running footfalls.
16
The telephone had rung three times during the night, but each time Carl lifted the receiver the line was dead.
At the breakfast table he asked Jesper and Morten whether they’d noticed anything unusual in the house, but only got sleepy glances in response.
‘Maybe you forgot to close windows or doors yesterday?’ he tried. There had to be some way into their sleep-leaden think tanks.
Jesper shrugged. To get anything from him at this time of the day, you first had to pull the winning number in Utopia’s grand lottery. Morten, at least, grunted a sort of answer.
Afterwards Carl walked round the house without spotting anything abnormal. The front-door lock had no scratches. The windows were as they should be. The break-in had been committed by a person or people who knew what they were doing.
After a ten-minute investigation, he got in his police car that was parked between the grey concrete buildings and noticed how it stank of petrol.
‘Bloody hell!’ he shouted. In a split second he ripped open the Peugeot’s door and lunged sideways on to the ground, rolling several times before taking shelter behind a van, expecting Magnolievangen to be illuminated by a blast powerful enough to blow in windows.
‘What’s wrong, Carl?’ he heard a calm voice say. He turned towards his barbecuing mate, Kenn, who in spite of the morning chill wore a thin T-shirt and seemed nice and warm.
‘Stand still, Kenn,’ he commanded, staring down towards Rønneholtparken. Apart from Kenn’s animated eyebrows, nothing was moving anywhere. Maybe a remote control would activate the explosion the next time he approached the vehicle. Perhaps the spark from the ignition would be enough to set it off.
‘Someone has tampered with my car,’ he said, finally turning his attention from the rooftops and the hundreds of windows in the buildings.
For a moment he considered calling the crime-scene techs, but decided against it. Whoever was trying to frighten him didn’t leave fingerprints or other similar clues. He might as well accept that fact and take the train.
Hunter or hunted? Right now it was all relative.
He hadn’t even removed
his coat before Rose was standing at his office door with arched brows and charcoal-grey lashes.
‘The police mechanics are out in Allerød and report that nothing special is wrong with your car. A loose petrol line, how interesting can that be?’
She closed her eyes resignedly and in slow motion, which Carl ignored. Better to assert his authority right away.
‘You’ve given me a lot of assignments, Carl. Are we going to talk about them, or should we wait until the petrol fumes have evaporated from your belfry?’
He lit a cigarette and settled in his chair. ‘Fire away,’ he said, hoping the mechanics had enough wits about them to bring his car to headquarters.
‘Let’s start with the accident at Bellahøj Swimming Centre. There’s not much to say about it. The guy was nineteen and his name was Kåre Bruno.’ She stared him down, dimples at full strength. ‘Bruno! Seriously!’ She repressed something, maybe a giggle. ‘He was a good swimmer, very athletic across the board, actually. His parents lived in Istanbul, but his grandparents lived in Emdrup, close to the Bellahøj open-air swimming pool. That’s where he usually stayed during his free weekends.’ She riffled through her papers. ‘The report states it was an accident, and that Kåre Bruno himself was responsible. Not paying attention on a ten-metre diving board isn’t particularly smart, you know.’ She stuck her pen in her hair where it could hardly stay very long.
‘It had rained that morning, so the guy probably slipped on the wet surface while showing off for someone, I’d guess. But he was there by himself, and no one saw exactly what happened. Not until he was lying on the tiles underneath with his head rotated 180 degrees.’
Carl looked at Rose with a question on his lips, but she cut him off. ‘And yes, Kåre went to the same boarding school as Kirsten-Marie Lassen and the others from the gang. He was in the sixth form when the others were in the fifth. I’ve not spoken with anyone from the school yet, but I can do that later.’ She stopped as suddenly as a bullet hitting a block of concrete. He would need to get used to her style.
Disgrace Page 12
