Smoke Screen

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Smoke Screen Page 25

by Jorn Lier Horst


  ‘Sorry,’ she said, her tone sharp. ‘But I’ll need to take that.’

  She pointed to Caroline’s phone.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because…’ Ruth-Kristine looked away as she searched for the right words. ‘Because I need you to sit down and pay attention to everything I say,’ she said eventually. ‘This is a story you need to hear. A story about your parents.’

  Caroline’s eyes darted to her mother, before settling back on Ruth-Kristine again.

  ‘And about you.’

  70

  7th August, 2009

  The scream made Ruth-Kristine sit bolt upright and mute the TV. There were a few moments of complete silence before another shriek cut through the wall between her and the neighbouring flat.

  Jette.

  Ruth-Kristine stood up, feeling a cold shiver run down her spine. She rushed out into the hall without bothering to put her shoes on and knocked on her neighbour’s door. No answer. She tried the bell, unsure if it even worked, before hammering her fist against the door. Behind it, she heard a thump, like something had hit the wall or floor, and then the sound of someone wailing.

  She turned the door handle – it was unlocked.

  She stepped inside. Shouted: ‘Hello?’ Cleared her throat. ‘Jette? Is everything alright?’

  No answer. Shit, she must have really hurt herself, Ruth-Kristine thought as she edged her way further into the flat. No signs of Jette or Jens-Christian.

  ‘Hello?’

  Nothing. She followed the sound, a groan that seemed to be coming from the bathroom. She knocked twice, lightly, just with the edge of her knuckles, before pushing the door open.

  There she was. Jette, on the floor, her back against the wall. Caroline in her lap. Naked, wet.

  Jette was rocking back and forth. Ruth-Kristine wasn’t sure if her neighbour had even registered the fact that she was there. She just cried, shaking her head. Her hair was wet, her clothes soaked through. The bathtub was full. There was a yellow rubber duck on the floor, several towels. Jette adjusted her position slightly. There was blood on the wall behind her head.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Ruth-Kristine asked.

  Jette tried to say something, opened her mouth once or twice, but couldn’t, overcome with a fresh wave of tears and despair.

  Ruth-Kristine walked into the room. Stooped down and touched her friend’s knee. Tried to get her to look her in the eye.

  ‘I was just…’ Jette was clutching the child. ‘I only went into the kitchen for two minutes,’ she hiccupped. ‘I was just going to get my phone, to take some photos, and then it started ringing … it was Jens-Christian. He had so much to say. His new job … he was so happy…’

  The muscles on Jette’s arms had completely tensed up. Ruth-Kristine was scared that her neighbour was about to squeeze her daughter to death, until she realised that the damage had already been done.

  ‘What am I going to say when he … when he…?’

  Again, Jette was overwhelmed with grief. Emma lay her hand on the child. The baby’s soft skin was cold, wet.

  ‘Did she drown?’ Ruth-Kristine asked calmly.

  Jette couldn’t answer.

  ‘Have you tried to revive her?’

  Jette nodded.

  ‘Did you call for help?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t,’ she begged. ‘Don’t call the police.’

  ‘What should we do then?’

  ‘You have to help me.’

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘By … by…’

  Jette slammed her head against the wall, again and again.

  ‘What should I do?’ she sobbed.

  ‘There’s not much we can…’

  Ruth-Kristine stopped herself.

  ‘When will Jens-Christian be home?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jette said, hesitating. ‘He … he’s going to … we can’t have more children.’

  She raised her head to look at Ruth-Kristine. Her bloodshot eyes boring into hers, pleadingly.

  ‘You have to help me. Please, you have to do something.’

  Ruth-Kristine didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I’ll be here when Jens-Christian comes home,’ she said at last.

  ‘He’s going to leave me, he’s going to hate me for the rest of his life, he’s going to…’

  ‘…understand that it was an accident,’ Ruth-Kristine finished.

  Jette shook her head. ‘They’ll lock me up,’ she cried.

  ‘No,’ Ruth-Kristine said. ‘That won’t happen.’

  ‘It will!’ Jette protested. ‘And I’d deserve it, too. Deserve to…’

  She threw her head back against the wall again, hard. Ruth Kristine tried to think.

  There was nothing to do.

  Or, maybe.

  No, she told herself. That wouldn’t work. You can’t.

  But the thought had taken hold. There was one possibility. Christer, the bastard, had practically taken away her right to be with her own child, had taken away any chance she had of a future with her. It was his fault that Patricia no longer recognised her.

  She needed a cigarette.

  She needed something stronger.

  Jesus, there was a dead child in front of her – she had to think fast. And Jens-Christian would be home soon.

  Ruth-Kristine stood up, ran a hand through her hair. She saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror as Jette continued to cry. Ruth-Kristine leant forwards, turned on the tap and rinsed her hands under the icy water. She pressed them to her face, felt how hot her cheeks were. She looked up, met her own gaze, moved down to her slightly crooked mouth. The moles, the liver spots, the tired, worn-out skin. The straggly hair. She thought of Patricia, of Christer, how she could give him exactly what he deserved, make him feel the pain she felt, all while plotting a better future for herself.

  Ruth-Kristine turned to Jette, tried to talk, but the words got stuck in her throat.

  She tried again, and at last, managed to say:

  ‘We can swap.’

  71

  It began to dawn on Emma what had happened. The journalist in her wanted to interrupt Ruth-Kristine, ask for answers, but she kept quiet, instead focussing on trying to find a way to get them all out without anyone getting hurt.

  She looked at Caroline, who was still standing in front of Ruth-Kristine and occasionally glancing over at Jette, who couldn’t bring herself to do anything other than stare at the floor and rub her hands. Lift one of them to her face every so often to wipe away a tear.

  Ruth-Kristine’s eyes were fixed on Caroline as she spoke.

  ‘I wasn’t very well at that time,’ she said. ‘There were a lot of reasons for that.’

  She had a distant look in her eye, as if the memories were coming back to her.

  ‘I was frustrated. Angry. And there was one man I was angrier at than any other, because…’ She stopped herself abruptly. Her voice had become harsh, like she was reliving it.

  ‘Please,’ Jette pleaded. ‘She doesn’t need to know all this.’

  ‘It’s too late for that now,’ Ruth-Kristine barked.

  ‘But what good do you think it will do? Now? You’re going to ruin her life!’ Jette raised her head.

  ‘She deserves to know her story, where she is really from,’ Ruth-Kristine said.

  ‘And what do you hope to achieve with that?’ Jette continued.

  ‘Justice,’ Ruth-Kristine said. ‘Vengeance.’

  ‘Vengeance?’ The question came from Britt this time. ‘You said you wanted to make up for what you’ve done. That’s why you came to me for help. To finally put an end to all this and sort your life out.’

  ‘That was before they tried to murder me,’ Ruth-Kristine spat, frowning at her sister. ‘They killed my best friend. They killed Nina.’

  ‘So you lied to me?’ Britt had stood up. ‘To convince me to come here with you. Or did you just need my money?’

  Ruth-Kristine didn’t answer.

  Carol
ine looked between them, a confused expression on her face. ‘I don’t understand…’ she said.

  Ruth-Kristine tried to smile at her. ‘No, and that’s understandable. But you will. Soon. I promise.’

  Caroline looked like she was concentrating, thinking it through.

  ‘But … there was a child who died then?’

  Jette hiccupped. Ruth-Kristine waited a moment before nodding.

  ‘It was a mistake. An accident. She drowned.’

  ‘But…’ Caroline still looked as if she didn’t understand.

  ‘Can you not just sit down, please?’ Ruth-Kristine asked, as gently as she could.

  ‘I don’t want to sit,’ Caroline replied.

  ‘Well, it’s stressing me out, you standing there.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a shame for you then,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘Sit down,’ Ruth-Kristine said, more firmly this time. Eventually adding: ‘Please?’

  Caroline rolled her eyes and pulled a chair through from the kitchen. Picked her phone from the table, but put it back down, having checked the screen quickly.

  She sat down near Jette. Emma noticed that there was a stiffness to the girl’s body language now that wasn’t there before. Not as if she were scared though, just resilient.

  ‘The people who you have come to know as your parents,’ Ruth-Kristine said, turning to Caroline again, ‘are not particularly good people.’

  ‘Oh, coming from you,’ Jette exclaimed. Her eyes were overflowing with tears.

  ‘I was just trying to help your family,’ Ruth-Kristine argued back. ‘Help you.’

  ‘But at what cost?’

  Ruth-Kristine snorted. ‘So you’re saying it shouldn’t have cost you anything? You mean that saving you from prison, the fact that I saved your family, maybe even your marriage – none of that has any value?’

  ‘Of course it does, and we agreed on a price in advance. And we – we – stuck to our half of the deal.’ It seemed as if Jette had completely forgotten that Caroline was there. Her eyes flashed.

  ‘What are you two talking about?’ Caroline asked again. She looked anxious now, scared.

  Ruth-Kristine took a deep breath.

  ‘We are talking about a deal I made with your parents,’ she replied. ‘Almost ten years ago.’

  72

  7th August 2009

  Ruth-Kristine looked at the tiny bundle of a child, the few tufts of hair on her head. Lying in Jette’s lap as she was, it was almost like she was just sleeping.

  A cold determination came over her. It was not a child. It was an object.

  ‘We need to decide what to do, and fast,’ Ruth-Kristine said, crouching in front of Jette. ‘We have a lot to get done, in a short amount of time.’

  ‘It’s not going to work,’ Jette wept.

  ‘This is the only way,’ Ruth-Kristine said.

  ‘What is Jens-Christian going to say?’

  ‘He’s going to go along with it,’ Ruth-Kristine assured her. ‘He’ll do it for you. For both of you.’

  Jette pulled herself up a little.

  ‘What are you going to do with her?’ she sniffed, gazing down at the girl in her lap.

  ‘I’ll make things nice for her,’ Ruth-Kristine replied. ‘Don’t think about it.’

  Jette lifted her chin so she was looking right at her.

  ‘And you would do this for me?’

  Ruth-Kristine answered without skipping a beat.

  ‘I’m sure we can agree on a price,’ she said.

  Jette gawked at her for a few more seconds before nodding and lowering her head.

  ‘Can you find a bedsheet?’

  Jette remained still for a long time, before giving the baby to Ruth-Kristine.

  Ruth-Kristine looked down at the dead, naked child. The dead, naked thing, she reminded herself. The thing couldn’t have weighed more than ten kilos.

  Jette returned. A white sheet in hand.

  ‘Lay it out flat for me,’ Ruth-Kristine said. ‘On the floor.’

  With slow, apathetic movements, Jette did as she was told. Ruth-Kristine bent down and placed the object in the centre of the rectangle. She could hear Jette gasping behind her, before it turned into hyperventilating.

  ‘Maybe it would be best if you go and wait in the living room,’ Ruth-Kristine said.

  Jette started to sob again; it took a long time before she was able to calm herself down.

  ‘I just want to be with her for as long as possible,’ she stuttered and hiccupped between rapid inhaling and exhaling.

  ‘I understand,’ Ruth-Kristine said in a resolute voice. ‘But we need to get a move on.’

  Jette wiped her tears away and sniffed loudly a few times. She looked at her child one last time, before her eyes filled with tears again. She turned and left the bathroom.

  Ruth-Kristine folded the fabric over and around, making sure there were no gaps anywhere. It only took a minute, and she was done.

  The front door opened. The sound of keys clanking against a bowl or hook on the wall.

  ‘Jette?’ Jens-Christians’ voice travelled through the hallway. His voice was low, as if he were afraid to wake his sleeping daughter.

  Ruth-Kristine was alone in the bathroom with the dead child. She could hear the sound of him slipping his shoes off, hanging up his coat. The sound of Jette gasping, before she started hyperventilating again, weeping loudly.

  The sound of Jette trying to speak. Of Jette trying to explain. It came out completely jumbled, none of it making sense. Completely impossible to follow what she was trying to tell him.

  ‘What the hell are you saying?’ He was anxious now. She could hear it in his voice.

  Some words occasionally broke through Jette’s crying. Words like ‘dead’ and ‘drowned’. ‘Phone’. ‘Bathroom’. ‘Ruth-Kristine’. ‘Bedsheet’.

  Followed by heavy steps surging across the floor. The door in front of her was torn open.

  Jens-Christian Kvist stared at her.

  At the bundle in her arms.

  His eyes widened. Mouth opened in surprise.

  He looked at the sheet, the outline of a skull so clear beneath the cloth. The rest of the little body. The legs. The feet.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Ruth-Kristine said. ‘If you hadn’t called her when you did, and if you hadn’t insisted that she always has to answer whenever you call, then this wouldn’t have happened.’

  Distribute the guilt, make sure Jette doesn’t take all the blame. Ruth-Kristine knew that they would eventually talk about this moment again, how this happened, in the years to come. It would be dredged up in arguments, and the guilt would destroy them. They would try to blame each other. Or maybe they wouldn’t say anything at all. Maybe they would just try to forget the entire affair.

  Jens-Christian moved closer, folded back one of the corners of the sheet, revealing his daughter’s face. He inhaled, a sharp, painful gasp, before the convulsions took over and the crying began.

  Ruth-Kristine waited.

  ‘Has she told you about my proposal?’

  She knew that Jette hadn’t managed to get that far, but she wanted to take his mind off the situation and onto the solution, and as soon as possible. Away from the despair. But she wasn’t sure if he had even heard her. He just stood there, shaking.

  Ruth-Kristine had never liked Jens-Christian.

  On the occasions he had come home while she was visiting Jette, he’d never greeted her, never smiled at her. Just had that look on his face, the disappointment that Jette was friends with people like her. Ruth-Kristine knew it. She had encouraged Jette more than once to stand up for herself, not to be so submissive and obedient, but Jens-Christian had some kind of power over her. Sometimes one look was all it took, and Jette would know what he wanted her to do. Even now, as he stood there in front of her, his upper body sagging forwards, trembling, hunched over as if someone had punched him, Ruth-Kristine found it impossible to muster up any compassion for him.

  A solu
tion.

  Progression.

  They didn’t have much time. She didn’t have much time.

  ‘I know of a way out of this,’ Ruth-Kristine said. ‘But for this to work, you have to do exactly what I say.’

  73

  ‘As I said, I had my own child at that time. A gorgeous baby girl, but I was never allowed to see her. I…’

  Ruth-Kristine stopped herself and looked down at her feet.

  ‘And I thought they were going to restrict my visits even more, that they were going to take her away from me altogether, so I…’

  She paused again, before carrying on:

  ‘Jens-Christian wouldn’t hear of it, to begin with. It was out of the question, he said. Never in all his life would he even think of doing that. “Are you completely insane?”’ Ruth-Kristine imitated him. ‘He couldn’t see yet, how we were going to make it work. But he understood that there was nothing we could do to bring his daughter back. By swapping, as I suggested, they could carry on with their lives, in a way. They could go back home, to Denmark, with a child around the same age, who didn’t look all that different. And children change so much in such a short amount of time anyway – they grow, get taller, their teeth come in, their faces change, even their hair changes colour…’

  She threw her arms up.

  ‘If you tell a story with enough confidence and conviction, there’s almost nothing you can’t persuade people to believe. But convincing your parents to go through with this, that was the one, the only thing, we needed to be absolutely sure of. The second, the most important thing, was…’

  She stopped.

  ‘…that we got hold of my daughter in such a way that the kidnapping couldn’t be traced back to any of us. I couldn’t just pick her up from nursery. I had to…’

  Ruth-Kristine looked away.

  ‘I got someone to help,’ she continued. ‘A guy, who…’ She hesitated. ‘And then I got help from…’ She pointed to Jette.

  Emma thought it looked like Caroline had stopped trying to follow the story.

  ‘Jette came shopping with me that day, when Patricia was … collected. And we hammed it up for the media afterwards when we helped to look for her.’

 

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