She seemed remote when he spoke about people’s sorrow at having lost a loved one. About how not knowing who had murdered their children or how their parents had disappeared had scarred them for life. People Kimmie hadn’t known. The others who had suffered besides the victims themselves.
None of this seemed to register with her. She simply wandered ahead of them through the forest, her arms limp at her side and her broken finger jutting out. The killing of her three former friends had clearly also meant the end for her as well. She had said as much herself.
People like her don’t survive long in prison, he thought to himself. He just knew.
They reached the railway a good hundred yards from the platform. Here the tracks sliced through the forest as if drawn with a ruler.
‘I’ll show you where my bag is,’ she said, heading towards a bush close to the rails.
‘Don’t pick it up, I’ll do it,’ Assad said, forcing his way ahead of her.
He gathered up the duffel bag and walked the last twenty yards to the platform, holding the bag away from his body as if some mechanism inside would spear him if he shook it too much.
Good old Assad.
When they reached the end of the platform, he unzipped it and turned it upside-down, despite her protests.
Sure enough, there was a notebook inside. A quick riffling through it revealed that the first few pages were packed with descriptions of locations, incidents and dates.
It was an incredible sight.
Then Assad reached for a small, cotton bundle and yanked at its corner as the woman gasped and raised her hands to her head.
So did Assad when he saw what was inside.
A tiny mummified person with empty eye sockets. Its head completely black, its stiff fingers sticking out. Dressed in clothing scarcely bigger than a doll’s.
They saw her rush to the child’s corpse and made no move to stop her from snatching it up and clutching it tightly.
‘Little Mille, little Mille. Everything’s OK now. Mummy’s here and she will never leave you again,’ the woman sobbed. ‘We’ll always be together. You’ll get a little teddy, and we’ll play together every single day.’
Carl had never experienced that definitive, interconnected feeling people have when they hold their offspring in their arms immediately after birth. But he’d felt the absence of that feeling, at least theoretically. At a slight distance.
Now he looked at the woman and felt a sharp pang of regret and loss, so deep in his heart that it made him able to understand. And he raised his injured arm to his breast pocket, pulled out the small talisman – the teddy bear he had found in Kimmie’s metal box – and handed it to her.
She said nothing. Stood as if paralysed, staring at the toy animal. Slowly she opened her mouth and cocked her head. Stretched her lips as if she were about to cry, vacillating for an endless moment between a smile and tears.
At her side stood Assad, uncharacteristically disarmed and vulnerable. With a wrinkled brow and an inner stillness.
She reached cautiously for the teddy bear. As soon as she felt it in her hand, she loosened up, filled her lungs to capacity and threw back her head.
Carl wiped his nose, which had begun to drip, and tried to look away so he wouldn’t surrender to the tears. Glanced down the tracks to where a group of travellers was waiting for a train, and where Carl’s car was parked beside the whistle-stop’s shelter. He turned around and saw the train creeping towards them from the other side.
He focused again on the woman, who was now breathing calmly and hugging the teddy bear and the child’s corpse close to her.
‘Well,’ she said, exhaling a sigh capable of loosening decades of emotional knots, ‘now the voices are completely silent.’ She gave a short laugh as tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘The voices have ceased, they’re gone,’ she repeated, raising her eyes up to the sky. Suddenly she radiated a peacefulness Carl didn’t understand.
‘Oh, little Mille, now it’s just you and me. It has finally come to pass.’ A sense of release sent her spinning around and around, embracing the corpse in a dance without steps that seemed to make her levitate.
And when the train was ten yards away, Carl watched as her feet danced to the side and hit the edge of the platform.
Assad shouted a warning just as Carl raised his head and gazed directly into Kimmie’s eyes, which were full of gratitude, her mind now seemingly at peace.
‘Just you and me, my beloved, little girl,’ she said, stretching out the one arm.
A second later she was gone.
Only the frantic screeching of train brakes remained.
Epilogue
It was a twilight lit up by columns of blinking, blue lights coming from the train crossing and along the road heading towards the estate. The entire landscape was awash with this blueness and the air rang with the yowling sirens of fire engines and police vehicles. Police badges were everywhere, along with ambulances, a sea of journalists and cameras, and inquisitive locals standing on the fringes as people received crisis counselling. Down on the tracks themselves, crime-scene techs and paramedics were busy, all getting in each other’s way.
Carl was still dizzy, but his shoulder wound was no longer dripping blood; the medics had made sure of that. It was inside that he was bleeding. The lump in his throat was still large.
He sat on the wooden bench at the Duemose whistle-stop, leafing through Kimmie’s notebook. Her notes disclosed the gang’s deeds – they were mercilessly honest. The assault on the brother and sister in Rørvig. How they’d been selected at random. How they had humiliated the boy and undressed him after the fatal blow. The twin brothers whose fingers they’d chopped off. The couple that had vanished at sea. Kåre Bruno and Kyle Basset. Animals and people, one after another. Everything was there. Plus the fact that it was always Kimmie who had committed the murders. The methods were different, and she’d documented each one in detail. What was incredibly difficult for Carl to comprehend was that this was the same person who had saved his and Assad’s lives. The same woman who lay there, under the train, together with her dead child.
Carl lit a cigarette and read the final pages. They spoke of remorse. Not in Aalbæk’s case, but in Tine’s. That she hadn’t wanted to give her an overdose. There was a tone of tenderness in the ugliness of the words, a kind of presence and insight that was missing in her descriptions of all the other atrocious acts. She’d used words like ‘farewell’ and ‘Tine’s last, heavenly high’.
This notebook would send the media into a frenzy and stock values plunging, once those men’s complicity was revealed.
‘Take the notebook to headquarters and make copies immediately, OK, Assad?’
He nodded. The aftermath would be hectic, but short. With no one else other than this trio implicated, apart from the man who was already in prison, it was primarily a question of informing bereaved relatives and ensuring proper distribution of the no doubt enormous damages to be paid by the estates of Pram, Florin and Dybbøl Jensen.
He gave Assad a quick hug and waved off the crisis psychologist who had decided it was now Carl’s turn.
When the time came, he had his own crisis psychologist.
‘I’m driving to Roskilde now, so you go with the crime-scene techs back to headquarters, OK? I’ll see you tomorrow, Assad. Then we’ll talk about all of this, eh?’
Assad nodded again. He’d already resolved it all in his head.
At that moment things between them were good.
The house on Fasanvej in Roskilde seemed so dark. The blinds were shut and all was quiet. On the car radio they were reporting on both the violent events in Ejlstrup and the arrest of a dentist whom the police were convinced was behind the rubbish-bin assaults downtown. He had been arrested during an attempted attack on an undercover female officer on Nikolaj Plads near Store Kirkestræde. What the hell had the idiot been thinking?
Carl glanced at his watch and then again at the darkened house. Old people go to bed early, h
e knew, but it was only half past seven.
Then he nodded at the nameplates that read JENS-ARNOLD & YVETTE LARSEN and MARTHA JØRGENSEN and rang the doorbell.
His finger was still on the bell when the frail woman opened the door and attempted to shield herself against the cold with her thin kimono.
‘Yes?’ she said sleepily, looking up at him in confusion.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Yvette Larsen. It’s Carl Mørck. The policeman who came to visit you recently. You remember, don’t you?’
She smiled. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘That’s right, now I remember.’
‘I have some good news, I think. I would like to share it personally with Martha. We’ve found her children’s killers. Justice has been served, one could say.’
‘Oh,’ she said, placing a hand to her breast. ‘What a shame.’ Then she smiled an unusual smile. Not simply sad, but also apologetic.
‘I should have called, I’m very sorry. You could have saved yourself the long drive here. Martha is dead. She died the same night you were here. Though not because of your visit, of course. She simply didn’t have any more strength.’
She put her hand on Carl’s. ‘But thank you. I’m sure that it would have been an immense relief for her to know.’
For a long time he sat in his car, staring out across Roskilde Fjord. Lights from the city showed way out over the dark water. Under other circumstances it would infuse him with calm, but just now there was none to be found.
The phrase ‘Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today’ rotated ceaselessly in his head. Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today, because suddenly there are no tomorrows.
Had it been just a few weeks earlier, Martha Jørgensen could have died with the knowledge that her children’s executioners were dead. What peace of mind it would have given her. And what peace of mind it would have given Carl, knowing that she knew.
‘Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today.’
He looked at his watch again, then picked up his mobile. Stared a long while at the display before he finally punched in the numbers.
‘This is the spinal clinic,’ said a voice. In the background the television was on at high volume. He could make out the words ‘Ejlstrup’, ‘Dueholt’, ‘Duemose’ and ‘comprehensive animal-rescue mission’.
Yes, the news had even reached there.
‘Carl Mørck speaking,’ he said. ‘I’m a close friend of Hardy Henningsen. Would you be so kind as to tell him that I’ll be visiting him tomorrow?’
‘Of course. But Hardy’s asleep right now.’
‘OK, but please tell him first thing tomorrow morning.’
Staring out over the water again, he bit his lip. He had never made a bigger decision in his life.
And misgivings settled in him like a knife to the abdomen.
Then he breathed deeply, punched in the next number and waited year-long seconds before Mona Ibsen answered.
‘Hi, Mona, it’s Carl. I’m sorry about how things ended last time.’
‘Never mind that.’ She sounded as if she meant it. ‘I heard what happened today, Carl. It’s on every TV station. I’ve seen pictures of you. Lots of pictures. Are you badly hurt? That’s what they’re all saying. Where are you now?’
‘I’m sitting in my car, looking out over Roskilde Fjord.’
She was silent a moment, probably trying to gauge the depths of his crisis.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I can’t say that I am.’
‘I’ll come right away,’ she said. ‘Stay where you are, Carl. Don’t move an inch. Look at the water, be calm. I’ll be there in no time. Tell me precisely where you are, and I’ll be there.’
He sighed. That was sweet of her.
‘No, no,’ he said, allowing himself a little chuckle. ‘No, don’t worry about me. I am OK. I just have something to discuss with you. Something I’m not sure I can handle on my own. If you can meet me at my place, that’ll make me very, very happy.’
He had spared no pains. Neutralized Jesper with money to be spent at Pizzeria Roma and Allerød Cinema. More than enough for two people, plus a shawarma down at the station afterwards. He had called the video-rental store and asked Morten to go straight down to the basement when he got home from work. He’d made coffee and boiled water for tea. The sofa and coffee table were as tidy as they’d ever been.
She sat beside him on the sofa, hands folded in her lap. Her eyes were intense. She listened to every single word he said, nodding when his pauses were too long. But she said nothing herself until he was as finished as he possibly could be.
‘You want to take care of Hardy in your house, and you’re afraid,’ she said, nodding once more. ‘Do you know what, Carl?’
He felt his whole physical presence shift gear, slipping into slow motion. Felt as though he’d been shaking his head for an eternity. That his lungs were working like a leaky bellows. ‘Do you know what, Carl?’ she’d said. Whatever her question would turn out to be, he wouldn’t know the answer. He just wanted her to sit there for ever, her unasked question hanging on lips he would die for to kiss. Once she received an answer, there would be all too little time before her scent became just a memory, the sight of her eyes fading into unreality.
‘No, I don’t know,’ he said hesitantly.
She laid a hand on his. ‘You are simply gorgeous,’ she said, and leaned herself against him so that her breath met his.
She’s wonderful, was what he thought, just as his mobile rang. She insisted he answer it.
‘Hi, it’s Vigga!’ came the strongly provocative voice of his runaway wife. ‘Jesper called. He says he wants to move in with me,’ she said, as the feeling of Paradise that had just begun to settle in Carl’s body was torn from him.
‘But that won’t work at all, Carl. He can’t live with me. We have to talk about it. I’m on my way over. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.’
He was about to protest. But Vigga had already hung up.
Carl met Mona’s enticing gaze and smiled apologetically.
This was just his life in a nutshell.
Acknowledgements
A warm thanks to Hanne Adler Olsen for her daily encouragement and tremendous insight. Thanks, too, to Elsebeth Wæhrens, Freddy Milton, Eddie Kiran, Hanne Petersen, Micha Schmalsteig and Henning Kure for indispensible and thorough commentary, as well as Jens Wæhrens for his consultation and Anne C. Andersen for all the juggling and her eagle eye. Thanks to Gitte and Peter Q. Rannes and the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators at Hald Hovedgaard for their hospitality when the urge struck, and to Poul G. Exner for being uncompromising. Thanks to Karlo Andersen for his all-round knowledge of hunting, among other things, and to Police Superintendent Leif Christensen for his generosity with his experience and for his sharp corrections on police procedures.
Thanks to you, all the fantastic readers who’ve visited my website, www.jussiadlerolsen.com, and encouraged me to keep writing.
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First published in Denmark as Fasandræberne by Politikens Forlag, 2008
This translation first published 2012
Disgrace Page 40
