The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “We’re investigating four cases involving missing persons,” said Carl. “Does the name Gitte Charles mean anything to you? She was an auxiliary nurse, lived on Samsø.”

  Petterson shook his head.

  “Rita Nielsen, then? Or Viggo Mogensen?”

  “Nope. When did they go missing?”

  “Beginning of September 1987.”

  Petterson put on a smirk. “I’d have been twelve at the time.”

  “So it wasn’t you, then,” Assad smirked back.

  “How about Philip Nørvig? Ring a bell?”

  Petterson leaned his head back and pretended to rack his brains, but Carl saw right through him. The journalist clearly knew full well who Philip Nørvig was. He might just as well have put it up in lights.

  “He was a lawyer in Korsør, lived in Halsskov,” Carl said, applying a smile of his own. “Formerly active in the Purity Party, excluded in 1982. But you were only seven then, so that won’t have been your fault either.”

  “Can’t say I’ve heard of him. Should I have?”

  “Considering the amount of copy you’ve put out on the Purity Party, let’s say I’d be surprised if you hadn’t.”

  “OK, I may have done. Just not certain, that’s all.”

  And why not? Carl thought.

  “We can always check up in the newspaper archives. The police are good at that sort of thing, or maybe you didn’t know?”

  Petterson paled.

  “What have you written about The Cause?” asked Assad. A bit prematurely, but still.

  The man shook his head. It was supposed to mean “nothing,” and maybe it was the truth.

  “You realize we’re going to check this, don’t you, Louis? And let me say this: your body language tells me you know considerably more than you’re letting on. I don’t know what, and it may even be immaterial, but I think you should start talking right now. Are you working for Curt Wad?”

  “Everything OK, Louis?” asked his friend, Mogens, who’d cautiously approached them again.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. But these two are barking up the wrong tree.” He turned back to Carl. His voice was calm. “I’ve nothing to do with that man, nothing at all. I work for an organization called Benefice. It’s an independent body run on voluntary funding. My job is to gather information on the mistakes of the Denmark Party and the government coalition over the past decade. Let’s just say there’s enough there to keep me going.”

  “Yeah, you must be a busy man. OK, so we’ll drop that angle. But who would that information be for?”

  “Anyone who asks for it.” Petterson straightened up. “Listen, I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. If you want to know about Curt Wad, you can read up on him. It sounds like you’ve got all my articles, but I’ve moved on since then. So unless you’ve got any specific questions about these missing persons of yours, I’d be grateful if you’d let me enjoy what’s left of my day off.”

  • • •

  “Bit of a turn he took there,” Carl mused, when they were back on the street a few minutes later. “All we asked him for was a quick briefing on this Curt Wad. What the fuck’s he up to, I wonder?”

  “I will tell you in a short time, Carl. Right now the man is making a whole lot of phone calls. Don’t look, because he is watching us through the window. But I think we should get Lis to find out who he is calling.”

  22

  September 1987

  That Friday morning Nete awoke in her apartment with a thumping headache. Whether it was due to her olfactory experiments the day before, or the knowledge that on this momentous day she would be killing six individuals within twelve hours, she had no idea.

  All she knew was that if she didn’t take her migraine tablets, everything would go down the drain. Two tablets may have been sufficient, but she took three, and for the next hour or two she sat staring at the clock until the capillaries of her brain finally relaxed and light could strike her retinas without it feeling like an electric shock.

  Then she put the teacups out on the mahogany sideboard in her stylish living room, laid out the silver teaspoons in a neat row, and placed the decanter of henbane extract at the ready so when the time came she could pour her guests the correct amount with a minimum of fuss.

  She went over the procedure in her mind for the tenth time before sitting down once more to wait, the English grandfather clock ticking away behind her. Tomorrow afternoon she would fly to Mallorca, and Valldemossa’s luscious green would fill her senses and expel the past and all its demons from her mind.

  But first the burial chamber was ready for occupation.

  • • •

  The family to whom her father had been referred following her miscarriage in the stream received Nete as an outcast, and an outcast she would remain.

  The maid’s room was set apart from the rest of the house and the work she was expected to do during the day was demanding, so the only time she was together with the family was at meals, and these passed in the deepest silence. On the few occasions she ventured to open her mouth, they shushed her, though she did her utmost to speak nicely. Even the daughter and son, who were almost the same age as she, tended to ignore her. She was a foreign body, a stranger, and yet they treated her as though they had the power of life and death over her. Apart from work, her life offered nothing in the way of distraction, and a fond word was never uttered. Sternness, admonishment, and rules were the order of the day.

  Twenty kilometers separated Nete from her childhood home, a mere hour by bicycle. But Nete had none and her days were spent hoping her father would stop by to visit. He never did.

  After she had been with the family for a year and a half she was summoned to the drawing room, where the local policeman stood conversing with her foster father. He was smiling, but the moment he caught sight of Nete his expression changed.

  “Nete Hermansen, I’m sorry to have to inform you that your father hanged himself in his home last Sunday. The authorities have therefore decided that the good family here be named as your permanent guardians. That means they’ll have full authority over you until your twenty-first birthday. Think yourself lucky. Your father left only his debts.”

  It was as matter-of-fact as that. No condolences, nothing about any funeral.

  They nodded curtly to her by way of conclusion. Nete’s life had collapsed. The audience was over.

  She cried in the fields, and the farm workers whispered like people do about those outside the fold. Sometimes she felt so lonely the pain of it became physical. At other times she was totally indifferent.

  If only there had been kindness, an occasional pat on the cheek. But Nete learned to live without.

  When the fair came to the nearby town that weekend, the other girls on the farm took the bus without telling her. That was why she stood at the side of the road with two kroner in her pocket, jerking her thumb at any vehicle that happened to pass.

  The one that stopped was hardly a sight for sore eyes. A beaten-up truck with moldering seats, but the driver smiled.

  Obviously, he had no idea who she was.

  He said his name was Viggo. Viggo Mogensen, all the way from Lundeborg. He was carrying smoked fish in the back for a stallholder who would sell them at the market. Two full crates smelling of smoke and the sea, and she could hardly recall so much excitement.

  When the other girls saw her strolling among the merry-go-rounds and shooting galleries with an ice cream in her hand and a good-looking young man at her side, their eyes grew wide with something she had never seen before. Later she would think of it as envy, but at the time she was simply taken aback, and for good reason.

  The weather was hot, like her summers with Tage, and Viggo spoke so vividly of the sea and the free life that Nete almost felt it to be her own. An increasing sense of happiness warmed her being and made everything so much easier for Viggo than mig
ht otherwise have been the case.

  She let him put his arm around her shoulders as he drove her home, and she looked at him with hope in her heart, cheeks blushing when he stopped the truck behind some trees and drew her toward him. And she felt no alarm when he put on the rubber and told her it meant that everything would be pleasure and there would be no worries.

  But afterward, when he withdrew from her and saw the condom had burst, his expression changed. She asked if she would now become pregnant, perhaps hoping he would say she might, and that he would at least take her home with him.

  While the latter was wishful thinking, she had indeed become pregnant, and the other girls were quick to find out.

  “Sick in the cornfield means a bun in the oven,” one of them shouted after her. And they laughed until their headscarves came undone under their chins.

  Half an hour later she stood before her foster mother, who in a trembling voice threatened to bring the house down on her, not to mention the police, if she did not agree to have the fetus removed.

  The same day, a taxi drew up in the yard and the son was sent away, the family wishing to spare him from being exposed to the vileness Nete had imposed upon their lives. Nete declared the culprit to be a decent young man from Lundeborg whom she had met at the fair, but the girls who had seen them together insisted he was just the kind of reprobate who took advantage of young girls for his own pleasure and nothing but.

  The upshot was an ultimatum. Either she went back to her former physician to have it removed or else the family would have to ask the social authorities to hand the matter over to the police.

  “You’ve got rid of them before, you know what it’s like,” said her foster mother, without the slightest sympathy, whereafter the woman’s husband drove her in the car and dropped her outside the surgery. She could take the bus home when it was done, he said, for his time was too precious for him to hang about all day. He refrained from wishing her luck, though he may have smiled sheepishly, perhaps to conceal his glee.

  Nete never knew what was on his mind.

  • • •

  She sat for some time, slapping her knees together, rocking gently back and forth in the green waiting room. The smell of camphor and medicine made her feel queasy and afraid. The fear of medical instruments and the doctor’s couch descended upon her, the minutes dragging by as coughing patients were treated one by one behind the closed door of the consulting room. She heard the sound of the physician’s voice. It was deep and calm, but in no way soothing.

  When at last her turn came, the final patient of the day, a doctor younger than the one she had been expecting took her hand and greeted her with what sounded like kindness in his voice. It was because of his voice that she let go of her most immediate reservations. And when he added that he remembered her well and then asked if she was happy in her new family, she nodded quietly and placed herself in his hands.

  She found no cause for concern when he sent the secretary home, nor when he locked the door, though she wondered why it was the son and not the father who now looked upon her as though they had met on many occasions before. They had only ever seen each other the time the old doctor had come to their home after her miscarriage.

  “You have the honor of being my very first gynecological patient, Nete. My father only recently handed on his practice to me, so now I’m the one you should address as ‘Doctor Wad.’”

  “But when my guardian called, it was your father he spoke to, Doctor. Do you know what’s supposed to happen?”

  He stood for a moment and looked her up and down in a way she didn’t care for. He went over to the windows and drew the curtains, turning to face her with an expression that indicated to her that his white coat concealed interests more private than professional.

  “I most certainly do,” he replied after a while, sitting down opposite her and finally taking his eyes off her body. “Regrettably, the law in this country imposes certain restrictions on induced abortions, so you can thank your lucky stars I’m as compassionately disposed as my father in that respect. But then I assume you know all that,” he said, placing his hand on her knee. “Just as I assume you know that you and I can get into a lot of trouble indeed if what we’re going to do today should be divulged.”

  She nodded silently and handed him the envelope. In it were all her savings from the last two years, minus the five two-kroner coins in her pocket, plus a hundred-kroner note donated by her foster mother. Four hundred kroner in all. She only hoped it was enough.

  “Let’s leave that for a moment, shall we, Nete? First we need to get you onto the examination couch. Leave your knickers on the chair here.”

  She did as she was told, staring at the metal stirrups and thinking she would never be able to lift her legs that high. She giggled, despite being afraid. It all seemed so unreal and comical.

  “Now, if you’d just lie back,” he said, helping her legs into place. And there she lay with her genitals exposed, wondering how long it would take.

  She raised her head for a moment and saw him peering darkly between her legs.

  “Keep still now,” he said, with a slight jiggle of his lower body, as though he were dropping his trousers.

  And a second later she realized that was exactly what he had done.

  First she felt his hairy thighs against hers. It tickled, and then came the thrust against her groin, causing her to arch her back like a bow.

  “Ow,” she cried. He drew away only to thrust again and again, holding her knees tightly, making her unable to close her legs or twist away. He said nothing, simply stared down between her thighs, eyes wide.

  She tried to protest, to make him stop, but her windpipe seemed only to contract, allowing no words to pass. Then he bore down on her with all his weight, eyes now glazed and empty. It wasn’t at all nice, as it had been with Tage and Viggo. Not even remotely. Just the smell of him made her feel sick.

  After a short while he raised his head toward the ceiling and his mouth opened to expel a groan.

  When he was finished he buttoned his trousers and ran his fingers slowly up and down her tender, wet crotch.

  “You’re ready now,” he said. “That’s how it’s done.”

  Nete bit her lower lip. A feeling of shame planted itself inside her and had been there ever since. The feeling that her body and her mind were two separate things, and each could be played off against the other. She felt disconsolate and angry, and very, very alone.

  She watched as he prepared the anesthesia mask and felt the sudden urge to flee. But before she knew it, the sickly smell of ether filled her nostrils. Her head spun in the haze, her final thought being that when it was all over she would spend the ten kroner she had left on a train ticket to Odense, where she would find the place they called the Council for Unwed Mothers. She’d heard they could help people like her. And what Curt Wad had done to her she would avenge.

  Thus the foundation of a lifelong catastrophe was laid.

  • • •

  The following days brought one disappointment after another. The women at the council were at first accommodating. They gave her tea and held her hand, and she felt there was nothing they wouldn’t do to help her. But when she told them the details of her rape, the subsequent abortion, and the money she had paid, their faces turned grave.

  “To begin with, Nete, you must realize that such charges are serious indeed. Furthermore, we don’t quite understand why you first have an abortion and then come to us. It seems so back-to-front. I’m afraid we shall have to hand the matter over to the authorities. You understand, I hope? We must do things by the book here.”

  Nete thought about telling them it was her guardians who wanted it that way. That what they most certainly did not want was a girl in their charge who flaunted her depraved and despicable ways in front of their children and the young farmhands in their employ. But Nete said nothing, feeling
some loyalty for their at least having taken her in. It was a loyalty that was far from reciprocated, as she later discovered.

  Shortly afterward two uniformed officers appeared in the office and asked her to accompany them. She was to make a statement at the police station, but first they would have to go to the hospital so they could determine whether she was telling the truth.

  When they were done she could stay the night in the city under the council’s watchful eye.

  They examined her thoroughly and found evidence of a gynecological intervention. Men in white coats put their fingers inside her and women with nurses’ badges wiped her clean.

  Questions were put. She answered truthfully and to the best of her ability. The doctors’ faces were solemn, and their whispers when they withdrew to a corner of the room seemed laden with concern.

  She felt in little doubt these people were on her side, and for that reason her sudden confrontation with a free and smiling Curt Wad in the interview room of the police station filled her with fright. He seemed chummy with the two uniformed officers, and the man at his side, who introduced himself as Philip Nørvig, a lawyer, was clearly prepared to give her a hard time.

  They asked Nete to sit down and nodded to the two women who entered the room. One of them she knew from the council, the other was not introduced.

  “We’ve spoken to Dr. Wad here, and he has confirmed to us that he performed what’s technically known as dilation and curettage on you, Nete,” the second woman said. “We have Dr. Wad’s case record here.”

  She placed the folder on the table in front of her. On the cover was a word she couldn’t read, and underneath it the figure “64.” That, at least, she could understand.

  “This is what Dr. Wad wrote down after you left his surgery,” the lawyer explained. “It states quite unequivocally that you received a D and C following heavy, irregular bleeding, and that this in all probability relates back to a miscarriage you suffered almost two years ago. Moreover, it states that in spite of your young age you have admitted to having had sexual relations with strangers, a claim supported by your guardians. Would that be correct?”