The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Happily, such days were gone. Here, in the 1980s, every man was the architect of his own fortune. And many were indeed industrious, so much was evident, for each day new contributions to Curt Wad’s Purity Party came pouring in from upstanding citizens, foundations, and trusts.

  The results showed. Two office ladies had already been taken on to deal with the party’s accounts and distribution of information, and at least four of the party’s nine branches were growing at a rate of five members a week.

  At long last, aversion to homosexuality, drug addiction, juvenile crime, promiscuity, immigration, political asylum, and the propagation of poor genetic material had begun to sweep through large segments of the population. As if to underline the point, the AIDS virus had arrived, and served to remind of what Christian communities referred to as “the finger of God.”

  The leverage such issues provided in helping do away with these evils had been superfluous in the fifties, but in those days there had been much better means by which to strike back.

  No matter. These were promising times indeed. Though not uttered aloud, the guiding ethos of the Purity Party spread like wildfire: bad blood should never be mixed with good.

  • • •

  The association for the defense of the nation’s unblemished blood and moral values had gone by three different names since Curt’s father had founded the movement in his stubborn endeavors to ensure racial purity and the raising of public morals. In the 1940s he had called it the Anti-Debauchery Committee. Later it became the Community of Danes, then eventually the Purity Party.

  What had been conceived in the mind of a general practitioner from Fyn, and since refined by his son, was no longer a private matter. The association now numbered some two thousand members, all of whom were only too happy to pay a tidy annual subscription. These were respected citizens ranging from lawyers, doctors, and police officers to care workers and priests. People who in their daily work were witness to much that was deplorable and possessed the insight and ability to do something about it.

  Had Curt’s father still been alive he would have been proud to see how far his son had carried these thoughts and gratified by the way in which he had administered what the two of them eventually began to refer to as “The Cause.” This was the framework within which he and like-minded supporters clandestinely carried out the illegalities they were striving to legitimize through the activities of the Purity Party, most notably the separation of fetuses deemed not to be deserving of life from those that were.

  Curt Wad had just completed a recorded radio interview in which he again expounded upon the official version of the Purity Party’s fundamental ideas, when his wife placed a pile of letters in front of him in a shaft of sunlight that shone on the middle of his oak wood desk.

  The mail was always a mixed bag.

  The anonymous letters went into the wastebasket without further ado. Which took care of about a third of what came in.

  After that came the usual hate mail and threats. In such cases Curt carefully noted down the names and addresses of the senders, subsequently passing the letters on to the office in town. If the ladies there noticed repeated harassment by the same individuals, Curt would call local branch spokesmen, who would then make sure that no further correspondence ensued. Since most people had secrets they didn’t want to get out, there were many ways by which to tackle such matters, and local lawyers, doctors, and priests had access to a large number of archives. Some would call it blackmail. Curt called it self-defense.

  Then there were those applying for membership, and these cases called for particular alertness. Infiltration could be a tricky matter once it had occurred, and for that reason one had to proceed with caution from the start. Which was why Curt Wad opened his mail himself.

  Finally came the more typical expressions of opinion spanning a broad spectrum, from kudos to whining and rage.

  Among the last of the day’s batch Curt Wad came upon the letter from Nete Hermansen. He couldn’t prevent himself from smiling when he saw the sender’s name on the back of the envelope. Not many cases over the years had turned out as successfully as hers. On two separate occasions in his life he had put a stop to this woman’s immoral behavior and depravation. The whore.

  But what did this miserable specimen want with him now? Would it be tears or rebuke? If truth be told, he didn’t care. To him, Nete Hermansen was a nobody. Always had been and always would be. The fact that she was now on her own after that stupid husband of hers had got himself killed in a car crash the same night he’d bumped into her last prompted little more than a shrug.

  She deserved no better.

  He tossed the unopened envelope onto the pile of unimportant mail. He wasn’t even curious. Not like he’d been all those years ago.

  • • •

  The first time he heard about Nete was when the chairman of the school board came to Curt’s father’s surgery with reports of a girl who had fallen into the mill stream at Puge and suffered abdominal bleeding as a result.

  “She may have aborted. Much would seem to indicate so,” said the chairman. “Any talk of schoolboys being responsible should not be taken seriously. It was an accident, and should you be called out to the home, Dr. Wad, please note that any sign of violence is due only to the girl’s falling into the stream.”

  “How old is she?” his father asked.

  “Just turned fifteen.”

  “Hardly natural to be pregnant at that age,” said his father.

  “Well, she’s hardly a natural girl,” the chairman rejoined with a snort. “She was thrown out of school years ago on account of various depravities. Lewd behavior, inviting fornication with the boys, foul language. Simple of mind and action, and violent toward her fellow pupils and schoolmistress.”

  At this, Curt’s father leaned back his head and nodded in full understanding.

  “Ah, one of those,” he said. “Retarded, I imagine.”

  “Most certainly,” said the chairman.

  “Would the good children whom this contemptible child might wish to accuse by any chance include a personal acquaintance of the chairman among their number?”

  “Yes, as it happens,” the chairman replied, reaching to accept one of the cigars that lay neatly arranged in the box on top of the doctor’s desk. “One of the boys is the youngest child of my brother’s sister-in-law.”

  “I see,” said Curt’s father. “A clash of social categories, if ever there was one.”

  Curt was thirty years old at the time and already on his way to taking over his father’s practice, but he had yet to encounter a patient such as the girl in question.

  “What does she do, this girl?” Curt inquired, receiving an encouraging nod from his father.

  “Well, I’m not that informed, I’m afraid. But it seems she helps her father out on his smallholding.”

  “And the father is?” Curt’s father asked.

  “As far as I recall, his name’s Lars Hermansen. A common man, rather the brawny type, I believe.”

  “I know him,” said Curt’s father. Of course he did. He had even assisted when the girl had been born. “A bit funny in the head, exacerbated by his wife’s death. In any case a strange, insular sort. No wonder if the girl’s a bit odd, too.”

  And that was that.

  As expected, Dr. Wad was called out to Nete’s father’s smallholding, there to conclude that the girl had foolishly slipped and fallen into the stream and then thrashed around in the current, thereby injuring herself on branches and rocks that lay beneath the embankment. Any other explanation she might provide could only be down to shock and distress. Her bleeding, however, was regrettable. Had she perhaps been pregnant? he asked the father.

  Curt had been present, as on all his father’s house calls of late, and he clearly remembered how the girl’s father paled at the question and slowly shook his head.

/>   Police involvement would be unnecessary in that respect, the father had said.

  And thus the case was pursued no further.

  • • •

  Toward evening the association’s activities were again in motion and Curt Wad was looking forward. In ten minutes he would be meeting with three of the Purity Party’s most diligent members who were not only in close touch with prominent figures in the right-wing parties, but also well connected with civil servants in the ministries of justice and internal affairs who looked dimly upon the way the country was progressing, particularly when it came to immigration and family reunification policies. And the motivation for their involvement was the same as for all other members: far too many foreign elements, undesirable and lower-standing individuals, had already wangled their way into the country.

  “A threat to society and the public in general,” came the cry from several quarters, and Curt Wad could not have agreed more. It was all a matter of genes, and people with slanting eyes or brown skin had no part in the idealized narrative of flaxen-haired girls and boys with strong, muscular frames. Tamils, Pakistanis, Turks, Afghans, Vietnamese, all had to be stopped in the manner of any other invasive impurity. Effectively and without hesitation.

  They spoke at length that evening about what measures the Purity Party might take, and when two of the men had left, Curt remained with the one he knew best. An excellent man indeed, a doctor like himself with a lucrative practice north of the capital.

  “We’ve talked about The Cause many times now, Curt,” the man said, studying him with a firm gaze before continuing. “I knew your father, of course. He made me aware of my responsibility back when I was a young physician at the university hospital in Odense. He was a fine man, Curt. I learned a great deal from him, professionally as well as in regard to ethical issues.”

  They nodded to each other. It had been a source of considerable gratification to Curt that his father had lived until Curt’s sixty-second year. Now it was already three years since he had finally succumbed to advanced age, ninety-seven years old. Time passed so quickly.

  “Your father told me I should come to you if ever I wanted to become active,” said his guest, pausing for a moment as though aware that whatever step he took next would lead him directly into a complex of difficult questions and treacherous pitfalls.

  “I’m glad,” said Curt eventually. “But why now, if I may ask?”

  The man raised his eyebrows and allowed himself time before answering. “For several reasons. Our talk here, tonight, is one. Another is that we’ve more than our fair share of foreigners in Nordsjælland, too. Immigrants, often closely related, and still they intermarry. As we know, unhealthy offspring are far from seldom in cases of inbreeding.”

  Curt nodded. This was true. They were all over the place.

  “Basically, I’d like to do my bit as far as that’s concerned,” the man said quietly.

  Curt nodded again. Another able and upstanding citizen had joined the fold.

  “You realize you’ll be taking on work which under no circumstances may be discussed with anyone other than those we’ve specifically approved, and that this restriction will apply for as long as you live?”

  “Yes,” said the man. “I’d imagined that would be the case.”

  “Little of what we do within the framework of The Cause can bear the light of day in present circumstances, but you’ll be aware of that, obviously. We’ve a lot at stake.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Many would prefer to see a person vanish from the face of the earth rather than put up with him carrying out his work without due care and discretion.”

  The man nodded. “Understandably so. I’d feel the same way, I’m sure.”

  “So you’re willing to be initiated into our selection procedures with regard to pregnancy termination and sterilization?”

  “I am.”

  “We employ special terminology in such instances. We have lists of addresses and our own specially developed methods of abortion. If we initiate you into these procedures you will become a full-fledged member. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I do. What is required before I can be approved?”

  Curt scrutinized the man. Was the will present? Would these eyes remain as calm if he faced prison and disgrace? Did he have enough backbone to resist pressure from without?

  “Your family and friends are to be kept in the dark, unless they take active part in our work.”

  “My wife takes no interest in what I do, so there’s nothing to worry about on that account.” His guest smiled. It was just the reaction Curt had hoped for at this point in their discussion.

  “Very well, let’s go into my surgery. You’ll take off your clothes and allow me to check for listening devices. After that I want you to write down some facts about yourself, things you’d want no one in the world to know besides us. No doubt you’ve a couple of skeletons in your cupboard much like the rest of us, am I right? The points in question should preferably concern your medical work.”

  Here his guest nodded. Not everyone did.

  “You want secrets. To be used against me if I get cold feet?”

  “I’m sure you’ve got some.”

  The man nodded again.

  “Plenty.”

  Afterward, when Curt had searched him and watched as he signed his statement, he issued the obligatory strict exhortations to loyalty and silence in respect of The Cause’s activities and fundamental principles. And when this didn’t seem to discourage the man either, Curt delivered a brief introduction to how spontaneous abortions could be provoked without giving rise to suspicion, before informing him, by way of conclusion, of the intervals required between such treatments to ensure the attention of health inspectors and the police would not be aroused.

  When finally they said their good-byes, Curt was left with the splendid feeling of once again having contributed to the good of his nation.

  He poured himself a brandy and sat down at the oak desk, trying to recall how many times he had performed the procedure himself.

  The cases had been many. Nete Hermansen had been one.

  His gaze fell once more on her letter on top of the pile. Then he closed his eyes in pleasant recollection of that very first and most memorable occasion.

  13

  November 2010

  In the late hours of evening on a dark November day such as this, there was something magical about the windows of Police HQ. Like eyes lit up, they seemed almost to be keeping watch. Offices were always awake somewhere in the imposing building, their occupants dwelling on cases that wouldn’t rest and couldn’t keep. This was the hour when the city bared its teeth: the streetwalker was beaten, drinking mates fell out and drew knives, gangs sought confrontation, and wallets were plundered.

  Carl had spent thousands of hours in this building with the street-lamps winking while decent citizens slept in their beds, but he had to admit it had been a while ago now.

  If only his evening with Mona hadn’t been so excruciating. If only he could have sat down on her bed and gazed into her gorgeous brown eyes instead. If only it had been like that, he would never have bothered to see who was calling him so late. But it hadn’t, and Assad turned out to be his savior.

  And now he was stuck with the consequences. He went down the stairs to the basement and shook his head in disbelief as Rose and Assad came toward him.

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” he asked, continuing along the corridor without stopping. “You do realize you’ve been here for nineteen hours now, Assad?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Rose’s traipsing feet behind him didn’t exactly sound like she was full of beans. “And what about you, Rose? How come you’re still here? Scraping up overtime for a day off, is that it?” He threw his coat over the chair in his office. “Something new in the Rita Nielsen case that can’t wait
till tomorrow?”

  Assad raised his bushy eyebrows sufficiently for the redness of his eyes to give Carl a start. “Here are the newspapers we have examined,” he said, dumping a pile onto Carl’s desk.

  “Only we haven’t had that close a look,” Rose added.

  Knowing Rose, this was a rather modest statement. He noted the grin on Assad’s face. They’d almost certainly pored through the pages until the paper had worn thin. Of course they had. First the missing persons department’s files of all reported cases in September 1987, then the newspapers. He knew perfectly well how they operated.

  “There’s nothing in that period to suggest any kind of trouble on the drugs scene or other episodes that could be linked to rape or anything similar in the area,” Rose said.

  “Anyone considered the possibility of Rita Nielsen having left the car somewhere else, and that it wasn’t her who parked it on Kapelvej?” Carl asked. “Maybe we shouldn’t be looking at Copenhagen at all. If she didn’t park the car herself, she could have disappeared anywhere at all between here and the Storebælt ferry.”

  “They already thought of that,” Rose replied. “The thing is, though, that according to the police report, the kiosk owner in Nørrebro remembered her when they turned up to ask about her credit card transaction. So she was in Nørrebro that morning.”

  Carl pressed his lips together. “Why did she leave home so early? Have you thought about that?” he asked.