Carl was surprised by the articulate monologue. Had the guy studied rhetoric in his youth?
“I don’t think you should underestimate everyone else’s work, Andersson. Police work can be quite savage too, so of course I can relate to what you’re saying.”
“Yes, or being stationed as a soldier. Or being a paramedic or fireman,” interjected Assad.
“Maybe, but it’s still not the same, because in that line of work you have to be prepared for what might happen, but not everyone is at a plant like this. And I don’t think Rose was. In that work environment it was a blessing for the rest of us to have her there. There’s the contrast again, you see? Because when a young, vulnerable girl like Rose ends up in such a brutal place, where everything is so savage—the steel, the mill, the heat—and where the men are so hardened and hardy, the contrast can become too much. Rose was too young and unprepared for that place; that’s all I’m saying.”
“What was your job at the plant, Benny?” asked Carl.
“Sometimes I was sitting in the control cabin managing the rolling mill at the old control desk. Other times I was in charge of inspecting the workstations.”
“That sounds like a very responsible position to hold.”
“All employees have responsible positions. A workplace like that can be very dangerous if someone screws up.”
“And Rose’s dad screwed up?”
“You’ll have to ask someone else about that. I didn’t see what happened.”
“But what exactly did happen?”
“Ask someone else. I said I didn’t see it.”
“Shouldn’t we just take him with us to HQ, Carl?” asked Assad.
Carl nodded. “I know that you and others have been informed by Leo that we’re investigating this case and that we would like to know more about the accident. I just don’t understand your interest in it. Why you made an anonymous call and why you’re being so uncooperative. So now my suggestion to you, Benny Andersson, is that you either start cooperating with us here in the lovely odor of your home or you put your jacket on, come with us, and wave good-bye to home sweet home for the next twenty-four hours. Which do you prefer?”
Please don’t choose the latter, thought Carl, thinking about how this guy would ruin his backseat.
“Are you going to arrest me? For what?”
“We’ll work that out. No one makes an anonymous call in the way you did without trying to cover something up. You hinted on the phone that Rose was involved in her dad’s death. But what did you mean by that?” he pressed him to answer.
“I certainly did not.”
“That’s not how we see it.” Assad leaned fearlessly forward over the sticky coffee table. “You should understand that Rose is a well-liked colleague of ours and we don’t wish her any harm. So now I’m going to count down from six, and if you don’t tell us what you know before I get to zero, I’ll take that old chicken bone lying over there in a layer of stale sauce and stuff it down your throat. Six, five, four . . .”
“Ha-ha, you sound ridiculous. Do you think you can threaten me with that, you . . . ?”
He obviously had something racist on the tip of his tongue when Assad finished the countdown and got up to grab the chicken bone.
“Hey!” shouted Benny Andersson as Assad picked up a jagged wing bone. “Stop right there. You’ll have to ask someone else what really happened because, as I said, I don’t know. All I can say is that Arne Knudsen was standing under the overhead crane in the old section when one of the magnets failed while lifting a ten-ton steel slab.”
“I thought he was pulled into a machine.”
“No, that’s what they wrote in the newspapers, wherever the hell they got that information from. But it was the magnet that failed.”
“So the steel slab fell on him?” asked Carl while Assad dropped the bone and returned to his grubby seat.
“Yes, and it completely crushed him from here down.”
He pointed at a spot just beneath his breastbone.
“And he died on the spot?”
“Not from the way he was screaming, no. But it didn’t take long. His entire lower body was squashed.”
“I see. That sounds unpleasant. And what was Rose doing in that section that she’s never told us about? Her sister once told me that she was a summer temp.”
He laughed. “Summer temp? No, she certainly wasn’t. She was on an apprenticeship as a feeder operator.”
Carl and Assad both shook their heads. A feeder operator?
“That’s the person who decides which slabs go in the furnace before they are transported to the rolling mill.”
“Slabs are the big pieces of metal that are rolled into steel plates,” explained Carl to Assad, recalling Leo Andresen’s words. “And what was your role in this process, Benny?”
“When the slab came out red-hot from the furnace on the other side, I was sometimes the one who took over and did the rolling.”
“And was that your job on this particular day?”
He nodded.
“And yet you didn’t witness the accident?”
“Well, I couldn’t have, could I? I was on the other side of the furnace.”
Carl sighed as he tried in vain to picture the scenario.
There was no way to avoid it: Leo Andresen would just have to give them a guided tour.
30
Thursday, May 26th, 2016
Rose hadn’t wasted any time. Cups smashed in confusion, souvenirs thrown off the shelves in frustration, furniture tossed around the room in anger. It took only a few minutes to vandalize most of the sitting room. It should have felt good, but it didn’t. All she saw was Rigmor Zimmermann’s face.
How often had Rigmor been there for Rose when her loneliness had become too much? How often had she bought groceries for Rose when she had gone a whole weekend without the energy to do so much as open her blinds? And now that Rose needed her most, she wasn’t here anymore. And why?
Murdered, they said. But how? And by whom?
She picked up her laptop from the floor, switched it on, and realized with a certain irrational sense of relief that she could still log on to the Internet even though the screen was smashed. She sat down and entered the password to access the internal police home page.
There was little information to find about her neighbor, but she managed to find enough to discover not only that she was dead but also where she had died and how.
“Severe trauma to the neck bones and the back of the head,” the report read coldly. Where had she been when all this happened? Had she just been absorbed in her own problems in her apartment for two weeks without realizing that everything was quiet next door?
“What sort of person have you become, Rose?” she asked herself without crying. She couldn’t even produce tears.
When her phone rang in her back pocket, she was back where she had been half an hour ago. Finished with existence. Out of sync with life.
The phone rang five times within the next few minutes before she finally took it out and looked at the display.
It was her mother calling from Spain. There was no one in the world she felt less inclined to talk with about her present situation. The hospital must have contacted her, so it wouldn’t be long before she called Rose’s sisters.
Rose looked at her watch. How much time did she have? Twenty to twenty-five minutes before her sisters turned up demanding an explanation as to why she had left the hospital.
“I can’t let that happen!” she shouted while she considered smashing the phone so hard against the wall that it would break into pieces.
She took a deep breath while she wondered what she should write. Then she pressed MESSAGES and began texting:
Dear Mom, I’m on the train just now to Malmö. The connection is bad so I’m texting instead of calling. Don’t worry ab
out me. I’m fine. I discharged myself today because a good friend in Blekinge has offered to let me stay in their lovely house for a while. It will do me good. Will be in touch when back. Rose
One tap and the message was sent. She put down the phone in front of her, and safe in the knowledge that her mother wouldn’t take it any further, she pulled open a drawer and took out a couple of sheets of paper and a pen. Then she went to the bathroom, opened the cabinet, and looked at the contents. Antidepressants, acetaminophen, half a bottle of sleeping pills, aspirin, codeine tablets, the scissors she used to cut the hair on her head and under her arms, disposable razors, the old Gillette razor, a couple of suppository tablets from her mother, and licorice-flavored cough mixture that she had had for almost twenty years. If she used this arsenal with care and in the right dose, it would make a deadly cocktail. She emptied out her cotton balls and tampons from a small plastic basket into the trash can, sorted out her personal pharmacy, threw out the harmless tablets and potions, and then proceeded to fill the plastic basket with the rest.
She stood there by the sink for five minutes with her thoughts wandering between various deaths and the unpredictability of life. Everything she couldn’t deal with was compressed to nothingness and turned on its head. Everything became pointless.
Finally, she grabbed the Gillette razor, which she had taken from her father’s belongings after his death with the intention of using it to shave her pubes in disrespect. Something else she had never gotten around to doing.
She unscrewed the dirty blade and looked at it for a moment. Some of her father’s stubble was caught in the soap residue, bringing on a feeling of loathing so strong that it almost knocked her out.
Was she really going to end up with the remains of her damned father in her mortal wound? Was her blood going to cleanse that bastard’s razor?
Rose was about to throw up but forced herself to clean the blade in the kitchen sink, cutting herself on the blade and leaving her fingers smothered in blood and bristles from the dish brush.
“The time has come!” she said feebly, with tears in her eyes at the sight of the shining blade. Now all she had to do was write a few sentences on the paper she had found so her sisters could be in no doubt that she had done this voluntarily and that they were to have her belongings.
How will I get through this? she thought.
Tears had previously been a comfort to Rose when she grieved over the life she had been allotted, but now that the end was in sight, they only emphasized her feelings of powerlessness, regret, and shame. Now her tears were just rivers of despair flowing throughout her entire system.
She carefully placed the razor blade on the dining table next to the sheets of paper, the pen, and the basket with all the different medications, opened the TV cabinet, and unscrewed the lids of all the bottles of alcohol. The vase on the shelf had never been used for the simple reason that no one had ever given her flowers, but it came in handy now as she emptied all the dregs into it and mixed them together to create an indeterminable and pungent brown cocktail.
While she was gulping down the contents of the vase, her eyes wandered from the plastic basket to the computer screen, and paradoxically her thoughts became momentarily clearer.
She looked around the chaotic sitting room with a smile, knowing that now at least she had spared her sisters the trouble of deciding what to get rid of and what to keep.
She took the first sheet of paper and wrote:
Dear sisters,
There has been no end to my curse, so don’t despair over my death. Now I’m in a place where peace can no longer be disturbed. A place my thoughts have longed for. And that’s a good thing. Make the best of your lives and try to think of me with a hint of love and friendship. I loved and respected you all, and still do even in this moment of transgression. Pardon my solemnity, but after all it isn’t every day I have allowed myself to say these things to you. I’m sorry for all the bad things I’ve done. Please humbly accept all my worldly possessions and divide them between you. Farewell.
I love you. Rose
She dated the good-bye letter, read it over a couple of times, and placed it in front of her. What a pathetic letter, she thought, crumpled it up, and threw it on the floor.
Rose brought the vase up to her mouth and gulped down a few more mouthfuls, which seemed to sharpen her perception.
“It has to be this way.” She sighed, picking up the crumpled piece of paper and smoothing it out.
Then she took the second piece of paper and this time wrote in large letters:
Stenløse, Thursday 5.26.2016
I hereby donate my body to organ donation and research. Best regards, Rose Knudsen
Rose’s hands were shaking when she wrote her national health number, signed, and placed the sheet in a visible spot on the dining table. Then she took her phone and dialed the number for emergency services. While the number rang, she inspected the veins on her left wrist, considering how far up the arm she should cut. Her pulse was strong, so it probably didn’t matter where she did it. And when she finally got through to the operator, she was as determined and ready as she could possibly be. She was just about to tell the operator what the situation was—that in a brief moment she would be dead—so they had to hurry up if they wanted to use her organs. She wanted to finish by saying that they should bring freezer bags with them, and then hang up and make a deep, clean cut in both her wrists.
At this precise moment, when the operator’s voice repeated the question of who she was and where she was calling from, Rose heard a loud bang against the wall in Rigmor Zimmermann’s apartment.
Rose gasped for air. What was going on? And why now?
“I’m sorry. It was a mistake,” she stammered and hung up. Her heart was beating so fast it made her head hurt. Her calm and resolve had been disturbed. She was in shock, but Rose the investigator took over. What was going on next door? Was she already so intoxicated that her mind was playing tricks on her?
She covered all the pills and her two farewell notes with her jacket and stepped into the entryway.
From here the unexpected sounds were also clearly audible. Was it laughter or screaming?
Rose frowned. In all the years she and Zimmermann had been neighbors, she had only once heard another voice from in there. Slightly raised voices; that was all. As far as Rose knew, no one in the building apart from her had bothered to have any contact with Rigmor Zimmermann. When they had gone to the supermarket together, Rose had noticed how people actually tried to avoid contact with her.
But if it wasn’t Rigmor Zimmermann in there, who was it?
Rose opened the drawer to her entryway cupboard and took out Zimmermann’s key. Rigmor had had to get help from her daughter a few times when she had locked herself out, but six months ago she had given Rose an extra key to avoid that situation.
She staggered out of her front door without closing it behind her, and tiptoed over to Zimmermann’s apartment. She stood outside for a moment listening quietly. She could hear voices inside. A couple of girls, she thought, based on the way they spoke.
In a haze, she knocked on the door a couple of times. When to her surprise no one answered, she put the key in the lock and turned it.
31
Thursday, May 26th, 2016
Gordon looked weary, but then again the type of repulsive tasks Carl made him do were probably not what his nice upbringing and background made him most suited for.
“And you’ve got all the information the Simon Wiesenthal Center could dig up?” asked Carl.
“Yes, it seems so. And I’ve showed Tomas Laursen a couple of photos of how Fritzl Zimmermann executed prisoners with a club to the back of the head, like you asked me. Tomas confirmed that the method was probably similar to the way Stephanie Gundersen and Rigmor Zimmermann were murdered.”
“Okay, so far, so good. Thanks.”
“Stephanie Gundersen was murdered in 2004. Do I need to point out that Fritzl Zimmermann was still alive at that time?”
“Mmm!” grunted Carl, leafing through the atrocious photos. “No, you don’t. But he wasn’t when his wife was murdered a month ago.”
Gordon pointed a chalky finger at him. “No, and hurrah for that,” he said. Not an expression Carl would recommend that he use in this context—or any context for that matter.
Carl turned down the volume on TV2 News. “Gordon, the question remains: Who did it, then? Are you thinking about Birgit Zimmermann or her daughter, Denise? They are the only suspects with a motive so far. As far as I’m concerned, you can take your pick.”
“Er, thanks. I don’t know anything about the granddaughter, but the daughter may well have done it. She certainly has a more than healthy taste for alcohol, according to Assad, and that doesn’t come cheap.”
Carl nodded. “True. Maybe you think it’s likely that she came running down the street in the pouring rain to bash her mother over the head with a club? And that the terrified Rigmor Zimmermann hid from her daughter in a bush full of dog shit? A peculiar scene when you put it like that, don’t you think?”
Gordon looked dejected. That was just part and parcel of police work. Paradoxes, euphoria, disappointment, and pure doubt galore.
“Where do I go from here, Carl?”
The Scarred Woman Page 26