The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “One last thing. What do you think it’s like, having your best mates piled on top of you all of a sudden with blood gushing out of them, and then realizing you’ve just been shot yourself? I reckon you should have a ponder about that. Suffice to say it fucks you up.”

  “No one’s accusing you of anything, Carl,” said Ploug. A reaction at last. “Anyway, that’s not what we’re here to discuss.”

  Carl scanned the room. What was going on in those thick heads of theirs? Several of them couldn’t stand the sight of him, he knew that. It was mutual, too. Bloody morons.

  “Right, then. In that case, I suggest that from now on you lot keep your shit-spouting mouths shut and think before you fucking open them again. End of fucking message!”

  He slammed the door so hard that it echoed through the building, and he didn’t break stride until he flung himself down on his chair in the basement, fumbling for a match to light the cigarette that trembled between his lips.

  They’d found a coin with his prints on it in the pocket of a corpse, and he had no idea how it had got there or why. What a pile of shit.

  His thoughts churned. Why, why, why? It was impossible for him to turn his back on the case now. The mere thought of it made him feel sick.

  He inhaled deeply through clenched teeth and felt his heartbeat rocket again. Think about something else, he told himself. No way did he want to find himself writhing on the floor again with pains in his chest that could do away with hardier men than him.

  “Switch focus,” he muttered under his breath, closing his eyes.

  Right now there was one person more deserving than any other of being flattened by the tornado that raged inside him, and that person was Bak.

  “I’ll teach you, you fucking twat,” he growled, searching for his number.

  “What are you doing, Carl, sitting alone here talking to yourself?” said Assad from the doorway. The man had so many furrows in his brow, his face looked like a washboard.

  “Nothing for you to worry about, Assad. I’m about to give Bak the bollocking of his life for the shite he’s been spreading round the place about me.”

  “I think you should listen to this first, Carl. I’ve just been on the phone to a man called Nielsen from the police academy. I talked to him about Rose.”

  What a bloody time to pick. Just when he’d got himself worked up into a nicely constructive rage. Was it just going to fizzle out?

  “All right, tell me, if it can’t wait. What did he say?”

  “When Rose came to us the first time, do you remember Marcus Jacobsen telling us she was not a police officer, because she failed her exams and drove a car like a blind man with no arms?”

  “Something like that, Assad, yeah. So what?”

  “It is true that she was no good at driving. Nielsen said she turned over on a bend and smashed three very fine vehicles to figurines.”

  “I think that’d be smithereens, Assad. But pretty impressive, all the same. Three, you say?”

  “Yes. The one she was in, the instructor’s from the training facility, and one more that was in the way.”

  Carl tried to picture the scene. “Pretty good going, that. I don’t reckon we should lend her the keys to the pool car for the time being, though,” he grunted.

  “That’s not all, Carl. Rose had her Yrsa turn up in the middle of it all. With the cars still upside down.”

  Carl sensed his jaw drop, but the words that came out of his mouth were beyond his control: “Holy jackpot!” he spluttered, unsure of what it meant. If Rose had morphed into her twin-sister alter ego Yrsa in that situation, it certainly wasn’t for the fun of it. It meant she’d completely lost touch with base.

  “OK, not so good. What did the instructors at the academy do about it?”

  “They had a psychologist take a look at her. By that time she was Rose again.”

  “Good grief, Assad, have you spoken to Rose about this? And please say no.”

  Assad gave him a look of disappointment. Of course he hadn’t.

  “There’s more, Carl. She had an office job at Station City before coming to us. Do you remember what Brandur Isaksen said about her?”

  “Vaguely. Something about her reversing into a colleague’s car, and then something else about her destroying some important documents.”

  “Yes, and about drinking.”

  “Yeah, she shagged a couple of her colleagues at a Christmas do that got out of hand. Brandur, that little puritan, told me to be wary about giving her alcohol.”

  For a brief moment Carl’s thoughts went back longingly to the Lis he’d known before she met that Frank bloke of hers. In her case he reckoned a bit of a frolic at the Christmas do wouldn’t be half bad. He smiled to himself.

  “Brandur was just jealous of the blokes Rose had cast her oddly cloaked womanhood upon, don’t you think? Anyway, what Rose does at a Christmas party is her own concern and that of whoever else happens to be involved. Nothing to do with Brandur, me, or anyone else, surely?”

  “I don’t know anything about Christmas dos, Carl, or any other spicy matters. But I do know that when Rose did what she did at that party, she was all of a sudden Yrsa again. I just spoke to two people from Station City, and everyone remembers it.” Assad raised his eyebrows. Carl took it to mean “What do you think of that?”

  “She most definitely was not Rose, that much is certain, because she spoke in a different voice and behaved quite differently, they said. Perhaps there is even a third person inside her,” Assad mused, his words trailing away as his eyebrows plunged again.

  The idea was mind-boggling. A third personality? Christ on a bike!

  Carl sensed that the steam had gone from the bollocking he’d planned for Børge Bak. The feeling riled him. The twat deserved all that was coming to him.

  “Do we know what’s actually wrong with her?” he asked.

  “She has never been admitted to the hospital, Carl, if that’s what you mean. But I’ve taken down the number of Rose’s mother, so maybe you can ask her.”

  “Rose’s mother?” Assad certainly wasn’t daft. Straight to the heart of the matter, why not?

  “Good idea, Assad. Why don’t you call her yourself?”

  “Because . . .” He gave Carl a pleading look. “Because I just don’t want to, that’s all. If Rose finds out, it will be better if it’s you she’s angry with, OK?”

  Carl threw up his hands in resignation. This was apparently one of those days over which he had no control whatsoever.

  He reached out for the number Assad handed him and gestured for his assistant to leave him to it, dialed the number, and waited. It was a phone number from the good old days with a 45-prefix. Lyngby or Virum, as far as he remembered.

  It may have been a crap day, but at least his call was answered.

  “Yrsa Knudsen,” said the voice at the other end.

  Carl didn’t believe his own ears. “Yrsa?” For a moment he was in doubt, until he heard Rose call out to Assad farther down the corridor. So she was still there. “Er, yes, I’m sorry,” he went on. “This is Carl Mørck, Rose’s boss. Is this Rose’s mother?”

  “I hope not.” She laughed, a deep, resounding laugh. “No, I’m her sister.”

  This was a turn-up. So Rose really did have a sister called Yrsa? The voice sounded fairly close to Rose’s interpretation of Yrsa’s, but was different nonetheless.

  “Rose’s twin sister?”

  “No.” Yrsa laughed again. “There aren’t any twins among us, but we’re four sisters in all.”

  “Four?” Carl spluttered, perhaps rather too audibly.

  “Yeah. Rose, me, Vicky, and Lise-Marie.”

  “Four sisters . . . and Rose is the eldest. I had no idea.”

  “There’s only a year between us. Mum and Dad tried to get it all over with as quickly as possible, but
when no boys appeared, Mumsy eventually decided to stick a cork in it.” She guffawed, a throaty cackle that could have been Rose any day.

  “I see. Well, I’m sorry, but the reason I was calling was to speak to your mother. Would that be OK? Is she there?”

  “I’m afraid not. Mum hasn’t been home in over three years. Her new bloke’s apartment on the Costa del Sol suits her better, apparently.” She laughed again. The jolly type, it seemed.

  “OK, then I’ll get to the point. Can I speak to you in confidence? What I mean is that Rose mustn’t know I’m calling until I tell her personally.”

  “No can do!”

  “You mean, you’ll tell Rose I rang? I’d much rather you didn’t.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. We don’t see Rose at all these days. But I’ll tell the others. We’ve no secrets from each other.”

  This was weird. Utterly off the map.

  “Oh, I see! Then I’ll just ask you, then. Has Rose ever suffered from psychiatric problems? A personality disorder, perhaps? Has she ever undergone treatment for anything like that?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’d call it treatment, but she guzzled most of the pills our mother was prescribed when our dad died. Not to mention getting out of her head on weed, snorting her brains out on various substances, and boozing herself up to the eyeballs. So in a way you could say she’s been on medication, I suppose. Don’t know if it’s helped much, though.”

  “Helped in respect of what?”

  “In respect of her not wanting to be Rose anymore when she was down. She wanted to be one of us instead, or someone else altogether.”

  “So what you’re actually saying is she’s not well, right?”

  “Not well? I wouldn’t know, to be honest. What I do know is she’s off her rocker.”

  This, at least, came as no surprise. “Has she always been like this?”

  “As long as I can remember, yeah. Only it got worse after our dad died.”

  “I understand. Any particular reason? I’m sorry, that sounds wrong doesn’t it? What I meant was, were there any unusual circumstances surrounding your father’s death?”

  “Yes, there were. He was killed in an accident at work. He got pulled into a machine. They had to gather him up in pieces in a tarpaulin. Apparently when the ambulance crew dropped him off for the postmortem, all they said was: ‘See if you can put this back together.’”

  She spoke with surprising coolness. Cynically, almost.

  “I’m sorry to hear it. Sounds like a dreadful way to die. I can see how that must have affected you all very deeply indeed. But Rose lost her grip, is that what you’re saying?”

  “She had a summer office job at the steelworks in Frederiksværk where our dad worked. She saw them drag him out. So, yeah, Rose was the one who lost her grip.”

  It was a terrible story. Who wouldn’t have cracked up?

  “All of a sudden she just didn’t want to be Rose anymore. It’s as simple as that. One day she was a punk, the next an elegant lady, or one of us sisters. I don’t know if I’d call her ill, but Lise-Marie, Vicky, and I don’t want to be with her when she keeps changing into one of us. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  “Why do you think it’s affected her like this?”

  “Like I said before, she’s off her rocker. You must have realized that, seeing as how you’re calling.”

  Carl nodded. Rose wasn’t the only one in her family with keen powers of deduction.

  “One last thing, just to satisfy my curiosity. Is your hair blonde and curly? And do you like pink and wear pleated skirts?”

  There was an eruption of laughter at the other end. “You mean she’s already done that one on you? The blonde hair and curls is right enough. The pink, too, for that matter. I’m wearing pink nail polish and lipstick right now, as a matter of fact. But I definitely haven’t worn the pleated skirt for years.”

  “A tartan pleated skirt?”

  “That’s it, yeah. It was all the rage around the time I got confirmed.”

  “If you have a look through your wardrobe or wherever you might have put it last, Yrsa, I think you’ll discover you no longer have full possession of that skirt.”

  After he’d hung up he sat for a while with a smile on his face. He didn’t know much about these sisters, but he reckoned he and Assad could deal with them if suddenly they happened to turn up looking suspiciously like their Rose.

  • • •

  The Tivoli Hall was indeed situated on the corner opposite the Rio Bravo, but a hall it was not. Not unless you could call a low-ceilinged cellar a hall.

  Carl’s cousin sat toward the back of the room in comfortable proximity to the men’s toilets. Once Ronny planted himself in a place like this, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry apart from the gents, so his bladder could keep abreast of activities at the other end of his all-consuming anatomy.

  Ronny waved his hand in the air, as if Carl wouldn’t be able to recognize him. He was looking older and had put on weight, but other than that he regrettably didn’t seem to have changed a bit. His hair was Brylcreemed into a quiff of sorts, though hardly rock ’n’ roll, more like a has-been crooner in an Argentinian soap for yearning suburban housewives. Vigga would have called him vulgar. Kitted out in a tight-woven, shiny mafioso jacket and a pair of jeans that fitted neither the rest of his getup nor Ronny’s fat-arsed, skinny-legged frame. It all might have seemed becoming had he been a flirtatious signorina from Napoli, but he was Ronny. Right down to his winklepicker shoes. It was pathetic.

  “I’ve already ordered,” Ronny announced, indicating two empty beer bottles.

  “I’m assuming one of them was mine,” Carl ventured, only for Ronny to shake his head.

  “Two more,” he called out, then leaned toward Carl.

  “Nice to see you again, cuz.” He reached out to clasp Carl’s hands, but Carl pulled them away in time. It gave a couple of the other clients something to talk about.

  He looked his cousin in the eye before condensing into two sentences Børge Bak’s claims about Ronny’s mouthing off in a Bangkok bar.

  “So what?” was his only response. He wasn’t even denying it.

  “You drink too much, Ronny. Do you want me to put a word in for you, get you into rehab? Not that I’d pay, you understand, but if you keep on making noises in public about bumping off your dad and me being in on it, you might just end up getting colonic irrigation for free in one of those nice prisons the courts will make available for you.”

  “Bollocks, that case lapsed years ago.” Ronny flashed a smile to the woman who appeared with two more bottles and a plate of food. He’d ordered dried cod.

  Carl cast a glance at the menu. Ronny’s fish cost a hundred and ninety-five kroner. Probably the most expensive dish they had, but he was going to pay for it himself if Carl had any say in the matter.

  “Thanks, but the beer’s not for me,” said Carl, shoving the two bottles across the table to his cousin. No doubt now about who was to pick up the tab.

  “And there’s no time-bar on murder cases in Denmark,” he continued drily, ignoring the start the waitress gave on hearing his words.

  “Listen, mate,” said Ronny, once they were alone again. “No one can prove anything, so lighten up. The old man was a bastard. He may have been nice to you, but he wasn’t to me, in case you didn’t know. Those fishing trips were just a smoke screen to impress your dad. Truth was, he couldn’t be arsed. As soon as we buggered off up the road to those girls, he was going to get himself comfy in his camping chair with his ciggies and a dram, and the fish could kiss his backside. Most of those he ‘caught’ were ones he’d brought with him. Didn’t you suss that out?”

  Carl shook his head. It didn’t at all fit his image of the man his father had been so fond of, and from whom Carl had learned so much.

  “Not t
rue, Ronny. The fish that day were fresh, and your dad hadn’t touched a drop. The autopsy was very clear about that. So why all the crap?”

  Ronny raised his eyebrows and finished chewing before answering. “You were just a big kid at the time, Carl. You only saw what you wanted to see. And the way I look at it now, you’re still a kid. If you don’t want to hear the truth, you can pay the bill and sod off.”

  “So tell me, then. Tell me how you killed your dad and how I was mixed up in it.”

  “All you have to do is think of all those posters in your bedroom.”

  What kind of fucking answer was that? “What posters?”

  Ronny laughed. “Funny I should remember, when you’ve forgotten.”

  Carl took a deep breath. All that supping had obviously addled the man’s brains.

  “Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Chuck Norris.” He executed a couple of karate chops in the air. “Pow! Pow! Way of the Dragon. Enter the Dragon. Fist of Fury. Those posters, Carl.”

  “The kung fu posters? I only had them a short while, and I’d taken them down again long before then. What are you getting at, anyway?”

  “JEET KUNE DO-ooo!” Ronny burst out suddenly, spraying chewed-up cod all over the table and causing the other guests to almost choke on their lager. “That was your battle cry, Carl. Aalborg, Hjørring, Frederikshavn, Nørresundby. If there was a Bruce Lee film on in any of those places, you’d be there. You can’t have forgotten, surely? As soon as you weren’t underage anymore you were there at the front of the queue. So it can’t have been that long before. As far as I’m aware, the age limit’s sixteen, and you were seventeen when the old man died.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Ronny? What’s this got to do with anything?”

  His cousin leaned across the table again. “You taught me kung fu, Carl. And as soon as you eyeballed those girls up on the road, you saw fuck all else. That’s when I gave him a chop to the throat. Not hard, but hard enough to break a bloke’s neck, just like you showed me. I’d been practicing on the sheep at home, so I just aimed at his jugular and let him have it. Followed up with a heel kick and finished him off. Just like that!”