Disgrace

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  ‘I so looked forward to having you and to our living in our house, just like other people do. Your mother was going to find a job as soon as you were born, and after Mum picked you up from the day nursery, we were just going to be together all the time.’

  She pulled out a bag, set it on the bed and stuffed one of the hotel’s pillows into it. It looked secure and warm.

  ‘Yes, you and I were supposed to live in that house, just the two of us, and Kassandra just would’ve had to go.’

  Kristian Wolf began calling her during the weeks before his wedding. The thought of being shackled made him desperate, as did her repeated rejections.

  The summer was a grey one, yet it was a blissful time for Kimmie, who began to take control of her life. She had put the terrible things they’d done behind her. Now she was responsible, beginning anew.

  The past was dead.

  It wasn’t until Ditlev Pram and Torsten Florin were standing in Kassandra’s living room, waiting for her one day, that she realized how impossible it was to escape the past. When she saw them scrutinizing her, she remembered how dangerous they could be.

  ‘Your old friends have come to visit you,’ Kassandra chirped, in her nearly transparent summer dress. She protested at having to leave her domain – ‘My Room’ – but what was about to happen wasn’t intended for her ears.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re here, but I want you to leave,’ Kimmie said, fully aware that that was just the beginning of negotiations over who would be in charge and who wouldn’t by the time the meeting was over.

  ‘You’re too deeply involved in everything, Kimmie,’ Torsten said. ‘We can’t have you pulling out. Who knows what you might do.’

  She shook her head. ‘What are you talking about? That I’d commit suicide and leave ugly letters behind?’

  Ditlev nodded. ‘For example. There are also other things we could imagine you might do.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Torsten said, coming closer.

  If they grabbed hold of her again she would smash them with one of the massive Chinese vases standing in the corner.

  ‘The main point is that we know where we’ve got you when you’re with us. You can’t live without it either, just admit it, Kimmie,’ he went on.

  She smiled crookedly. ‘Maybe you’re going to be a father, Torsten. Or maybe you, Ditlev.’ She hadn’t intended to say it, but it was worth it to see their faces tighten. ‘Why would I want to go with you?’ She laid a hand on her belly. ‘You think it’s good for the child, maybe? I don’t.’

  She knew what they were thinking as they exchanged glances. They both had children, and they’d both been through a number of divorces and domestic scandals. Another one wouldn’t destroy their reputations. Her insurrection was all that troubled them.

  ‘You’ll have to get rid of that child,’ Ditlev said, unexpectedly harsh.

  ‘Get rid of’, he’d said. With those three words, she knew the child was in mortal danger.

  She raised her hand towards them to demonstrate the distance between them.

  ‘If you want to protect your interests, then let me be, understand? Just leave me alone – totally.’

  She noted with satisfaction how her shift in tone made them screw up their eyes.

  ‘If you don’t, then you should know I have a box which contains items that could completely destroy you. That box is my life insurance. Rest assured, if anything should happen to me, the box will see the light of day.’ In fact she’d never planned it this way. Granted, she did have the box tucked away, but she’d never considered showing it to anyone. They were just her trophies. A little object for each life they’d snuffed out. Like the Indian’s scalps. Like the matador’s bull’s ears. Like the hearts of the Incas’ victims.

  ‘What box?’ Torsten asked, as the wrinkles in his fox-face became more pronounced.

  ‘Just things I’ve collected from our assaults. With the contents of that box, everything we’ve done can be exposed, and if you touch me or my child, you’ll die behind bars, I promise you.’

  Ditlev clearly bought it. Torsten, on the other hand, seemed sceptical.

  ‘Name one thing,’ he said.

  ‘One of the earrings from the woman on Langeland. Kåre Bruno’s rubber anklet. Remember how Kristian grabbed him and shoved him off the board? Then maybe you also recall how he was standing outside Bellahøj afterwards with the anklet, laughing. I don’t think he’ll laugh when he finds out it’s currently keeping company with a couple of Trivial Pursuit cards from Rørvig, do you?’

  Torsten Florin looked away from her. As if he wanted to be certain that no one was listening on the other side of the door.

  ‘No, Kimmie, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he will, either.’

  Kristian visited her one night when Kassandra was passed out cold from drinking.

  He stood over her by the bed and said the words so slowly and emphatically that every single one of them bored into her.

  ‘Tell me where the box is, Kimmie, or I will kill you right now.’

  He pounded her brutally until he almost couldn’t raise his arms. Pounded her abdomen and her groin and ribcage until bones cracked. But she didn’t tell him where the box was.

  Finally he left. Totally drained of aggression. Fully confident that his mission was completed and that Kimmie had simply made up the story about the box and its contents.

  When she came to, she was just about able to call the ambulance herself.

  33

  She awoke with an empty stomach and no appetite. It was Sunday afternoon and she was still at the hotel. An hour’s worth of dreams had given her the assurance that everything would fall into place. What other sustenance did she need?

  She turned to her bag containing the bundle, which was on the bed beside her.

  ‘Today I’m giving you a present, little Mille. I’ve thought about it. You shall have the best toy I’ve ever had in my entire life, my little teddy bear,’ she said. ‘Mummy has thought about giving it to you so often, and today’s the day. Doesn’t that make you happy?’

  She sensed the voices lurking, waiting for her to make a blunder, but then she stuck her hand into the bag, felt the bundle, and let the warm feelings take over.

  ‘Yes, I’m calm now, my love. I’m completely calm. Today nothing will be able to hurt us.’

  When she’d been brought in with massive haemorrhaging in her abdomen, the staff at Bispebjerg Hospital had asked her repeatedly how something like that could have happened. One of the head doctors even suggested calling the police, but she talked them out of it. The bruises on her body, she assured them, were the result of a fall from the top step of a long, steep staircase. She’d been having dizzy spells sometimes, and she’d had one as she was standing on that top step. No one had tried to kill her, she swore. She lived alone with her stepmother. It was just a foolish and ugly accident.

  The following day the nurses had given her faith that the child would survive. It wasn’t until they brought her greetings from her old school friends that she knew she needed to be careful.

  Bjarne came to visit in her private room on the fourth day. It was hardly a coincidence that he was the one who’d become their errand boy. For one thing, Bjarne, unlike the others, was not a public personality; for another, nobody could bring a conversation down to basics like he could, to where empty rhetoric and offhand lies were unable to take root.

  ‘You say you have evidence against us, Kimmie. Is that true?’

  She didn’t respond. Simply stared out the window at the pompous, run-down buildings.

  ‘Kristian apologizes for what he did to you. He wants me to ask if you’d like to be transferred to a private hospital. The baby’s OK, isn’t it?’

  She’d given him an angry glare. It was enough to make him avert his eyes. He was well aware that he didn’t have the right to ask her anything at all.

  ‘Tell Kristian that it was the last time he’s ever going to
touch me or have anything to do with me. Get it?’

  ‘Kimmie, you know Kristian. He’s not easy to get rid of. He says you don’t even have a solicitor. One that you’ve confided in about us, Kimmie. He also says he’s changed his mind and now believes you do have a box with those items you claim to have. That it seems like something you’d do. He actually grinned when he told me.’ Bjarne made an unsuccessful attempt at conveying the impression by grunting like Kristian, but Kimmie was unimpressed. Kristian never laughed at anything that could threaten him.

  ‘And if you don’t have a solicitor, then Kristian’s wondering who you’ve allied yourself with. You have no friends, Kimmie, apart from us. We all know that.’ He touched her arm, but she jerked it away. ‘I think you should just tell me where the box is. Is it in the house, Kimmie?’

  She turned on him suddenly. ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

  It was clear that he bought it.

  ‘Tell Kristian that if he just stays away from me, you can keep doing what you do, for all I care. I’m pregnant, Bjarne, haven’t you lot realized that? If those items see the light of day, then I will be hung out to dry, and my baby, too. Don’t you see that? The box is just an absolute emergency solution.’

  It was the last thing she should have said.

  Emergency solution. If there was anything that could threaten Kristian, it was those words.

  After Bjarne’s visit she could no longer sleep at night. Just lay there in the darkness, on guard, with one hand on her belly and the other next to the cord to call the nurse.

  He came wearing a doctor’s white coat on the night of 2 August.

  She had dozed off for only a moment when she felt his hand on her mouth and the hard pressure of his knee on her chest. He put it bluntly: ‘Who knows where you’ll disappear to when you’re released, Kimmie? We’re keeping an eye on you, but still, you never know. Tell me where the box is, and we’ll leave you in peace.’

  She didn’t respond.

  He punched her hard in the belly with his free hand, and when she still didn’t answer he punched her again and again until the contractions began, her legs jerked and the bed rocked.

  He would have killed her if the chair beside her bed hadn’t been flung over and filled the dead silence in the room with an infernal racket. If the headlights from an ambulance hadn’t lit up the room and nakedly exposed him in all his gruesome wretchedness. If she hadn’t laid her head back and gone into shock.

  If he hadn’t felt certain that she was about to die anyway.

  She didn’t check out of her hotel. She left her suitcase and simply took the bag with the little bundle and a few other things and walked the short distance to the central station. It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon. Now she was going to fetch the little teddy bear for Mille as she’d promised. And after that she would complete her task.

  It was a clear autumn day and the S-train was filled with happy nursery-school children and their teachers. Maybe they were heading home from a museum, maybe they were on their way to the park for a few hours. Maybe the little ones would return home this evening to Mum and Dad with flushed cheeks, brimming with tales of multicoloured foliage and flocks of deer on the plains surrounding Eremitage Castle.

  When she and Mille were finally reunited, it would be even lovelier than all those things. In the infinite beauty of Paradise. They would gaze at each other and laugh.

  For all eternity, that’s how it was going to be.

  She nodded and stared across Svanemøllen’s barracks in the direction of Bispebjerg Hospital.

  Eleven years ago she’d got out of her hospital bed and taken the little child that lay under a sheet on the steel table at the foot of the bed. They had left her alone for only a moment. A woman in the next room had gone into labour, and there had been serious complications.

  She had risen, dressed and swaddled her child in the sheet. And an hour later, after she’d been humiliated by her father at Hotel D’Angleterre, she’d taken the exact same route out to Ordrup that she was taking now.

  On that occasion she’d known she couldn’t stay in the house. That the gang would come after her, and the next time would mean the end.

  But she also knew that she badly needed help because she was still bleeding, and the pain in her abdomen felt unreal and frightening.

  So she was going to ask Kassandra for more money. Make her give her what she needed.

  Once again on that day she’d found out what people whose name began with ‘K’ could do to her.

  All that Kassandra had angrily shoved into her hand was a lousy two thousand kroner. Two thousand from her and ten thousand from her so-called father, Willy K. Lassen, was as much as they were willing to inconvenience themselves with. And that was far from enough.

  When she’d been asked to leave the house and found herself on the street with the bundle hugged to her chest and the sanitary pad between her legs once again completely soaked in blood, she knew the day would come when everyone who had mistreated her and forced her to her knees would pay for what they’d done.

  First Kristian, then Bjarne. Then Torsten, Ditlev, Ulrik, Kassandra and her father.

  Now, for the first time in many years, she stood in front of the house on Kirkevej, and everything looked exactly the same. The church bells up the hill no doubt still called the staid bourgeoisie to Sunday services, and the homes in the neighbourhood still towered unashamedly. The door of the house was still just as hard to open.

  She recognized not only Kassandra’s preserved face when she opened the door, but also the attitude her presence always provoked in her stepmother.

  Kimmie didn’t know how the hostility between them had begun. It had probably been back when Kassandra, in her misguided attempts at child-rearing, had locked Kimmie in dark wardrobes, bombarding her with torrents of cruel words, the half of which the little girl didn’t understand. That Kassandra herself had suffered in this insensitive household was arguably a mitigating factor when taking her behaviour into account. But it was no excuse. Kassandra was a devil.

  ‘I’m not letting you in,’ Kassandra hissed, trying to force the door closed. Exactly as she’d done the day after the miscarriage when Kimmie stood there, injured and in deep despair and need, with the bundle in her arms.

  Back then she’d been told to go to hell, and it truly was hell that awaited her. Despite the horrible shape in which Kristian’s blows and the miscarriage had left her, she had been forced to walk the streets for days, hunched over, without anyone offering to help her, or even approach her.

  People saw only her cracked lips and filthy hair. Edging away from the repulsive bundle in her hands and her sleeves stained brown by dried blood, they didn’t see a fever-ravaged fellow human in need. They didn’t see a person falling to pieces.

  And she’d considered it her punishment. Her own purgatory that she had to endure to atone for all her terrible misdeeds.

  It was a junkie from Vesterbro who saved her. Only Tine, that stick-thin waif, ignored the smell that rose from the bundle and the caked-on spittle that had accumulated in the corners of her mouth. She had seen far worse, and she took Kimmie to a room down an alley in Sydhavnen to another drug addict who once, at the dawn of time, had been a doctor.

  It was his pills and D&C that got rid of the infection and staunched her bleeding. The price she paid was that she never bled again.

  The following week – around the time the little parcel stopped reeking – Kimmie was ready to start a new life on the street.

  The rest was history.

  Entering the rooms where Kassandra’s thick perfume hung heavy, and all the lingering ghosts laughed at Kimmie as they had always done, was like being frozen in the middle of a nightmare.

  Kassandra raised a cigarette to her lips. Her lipstick had long ago been sucked into dozens of earlier cigarettes. Her hands trembled slightly, but through the smoke her eyes followed Kimmie watchfully as she set her bag on the floor. It was obvious that Kassandra felt unco
mfortable and her eyes would soon begin darting around. This was not a scenario she had planned for.

  ‘What do you want here?’ Kassandra asked. Precisely the same words as eleven years before. After the rape and the miscarriage.

  ‘Do you wish to keep on living in this house, Kassandra?’ Kimmie retorted.

  Her stepmother tipped her head back, but otherwise remained still for a moment, thinking, her wrist limp, the blue smoke swirling around her greying hair.

  ‘Is that why you’ve come? To throw me out? Is that it?’

  It was refreshing to watch her struggle to remain calm. This person who’d had the opportunity to take a little girl by the hand and lift her out of a cold mother’s shadow. This miserable, self-loathing, egocentric woman who’d dominated Kimmie’s life with emotional abuse and daily neglect. This woman who’d nurtured in Kimmie all that had led her to where she was today: mistrust, hatred, cold indifference and lack of empathy.

  ‘I have two questions that you’d be wise to answer nice and snappy, Kassandra.’

  ‘Then you’ll leave?’ She poured a glass of port from the carafe she’d no doubt made attempts at emptying before Kimmie arrived, and took a measured mouthful.

  ‘I’m not making any promises,’ Kimmie said.

  ‘What are your questions?’ Kassandra sucked the cigarette smoke so deeply into her lungs that nothing exited when she exhaled.

  ‘Where’s my mother?’

  She tilted her head back, her mouth slightly open. ‘Oh my God. Is that your question?’ She turned abruptly to Kimmie. ‘Well, she’s dead, Kimmie. She’s been dead for thirty years, the poor thing. Didn’t we ever tell you?’ Once again she tilted her head back and made a few sounds that were supposed to express surprise. Then she turned again to Kimmie. This time her face was hard. Merciless. ‘Your father gave her money, and she drank it. Need I say more? Amazing that we never told you. But now that you know, does it make you happy?’

  The word ‘happy’ permeated all the cells in Kimmie’s body. Happy?!

  ‘What about my father? Have you heard from him? Where is he?’