The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  He heard Morten twittering in the background but was oblivious to what he might actually be telling him. “Say that again?” he said after a moment.

  “I said breakfast’s ready, Carl,” his lodger replied. “A big hearty meal for hungry tummies and a pair of boys madly in love.” His eyelashes fluttered berserkly at the mere mention.

  The lad was head over heels, Carl thought to himself. About time and all.

  Morten arranged his culinary creations on the kitchen table. “There you go. Fried garlic on slices of smoked lamb sausage and goat’s milk cheese. Vegetable juice and rose-hip tea with honey.”

  “Christ on a bike,” Carl muttered under his breath, and thought about going back to bed.

  “We’re kicking off Hardy’s exercise program today,” Mika announced from the front room. “And we want it to hurt at some point, don’t we, Hardy?”

  “It’d be marvelous if it did,” Hardy replied.

  “Without building up any expectations, of course.”

  “I don’t expect a thing; all I do is hope.”

  Carl turned toward him and gave him a thumbs-up. How could he stand here feeling sorry for himself with Hardy bearing up like that?

  “You’re to ring Vigga, Carl,” said Morten.

  OK. There was his answer.

  • • •

  Carl sat grumbling over his sausage, ignoring the sulking Jesper. This business with Vigga was no good. He’d actually given up thinking about it when the solution suddenly appeared to him in all its logical simplicity, a revelation that induced him to politely thank Morten for the meal, though he had seldom, if ever, tasted anything quite as disgusting in his life.

  “I’m glad you rang,” said Vigga. For once, she sounded tense. This was a woman who tended to proceed from the assumption that the world adapted itself to her needs rather than the other way round. But it wasn’t his fault she was arranging to get married before she’d even got divorced.

  “Have you spoken to the bank yet, Carl?” she asked, straight to the point.

  “And a very good morning to you, too, Vigga. No, I haven’t. Didn’t need to, did I?”

  “I see. So now you’re going to tell me you can raise six hundred and fifty thousand without a bank loan, is that it? Hardy’s going to help you out, is he?”

  Carl laughed. The sarcasm would fizzle out in a minute.

  “The figure you’re asking’s fine by me, Vigga. Half the equity in the house is yours.”

  “Well, Carl, I must say . . .” She was speechless.

  Carl chuckled to himself. He wasn’t finished yet.

  “But apart from that, there are some accounts outstanding. I’ve added them up.”

  “Outstanding accounts?”

  “Indeed, darling. You may still be living in the hippie era, but I’m afraid the rest of us no longer reside in a world of flowers and free love. This is the age of the ego, and these days everything’s marked up in kroner and øre.”

  He savored the silence that ensued. To think she could be so quiet. It was like having two days off for Christmas.

  “OK, listen. First there’s the five or six years Jesper’s been living on his own with me. Three years at upper secondary haven’t been cheap, regardless of whether he got through or not. His college is costing, too. But let’s just say we split the expense, eighty thousand a year. The court would find that reasonable.”

  “Wait a minute,” she interjected. Now it sounded like the fight had started. “I’ve been paying for Jesper all along. Two thousand kroner a month.”

  Now it was Carl’s turn to be taken aback.

  “You what? I hope you’ve got receipts, because I’ve never seen a penny of it.”

  It was a killer return. She fell silent again.

  “OK, Vigga. Looks like we’re thinking the same thing. Your little cherub’s been lining his pockets.”

  “The little sod,” she hissed.

  “All right, Vigga, listen. There’s not much we can do about that now. We need to move on. You want to get hitched to this Gherkin bloke in Currystan, yeah? So what happens is I give you the six hundred and fifty grand, and you give me six times forty grand for Jesper’s final year at comprehensive, his three years in upper secondary, and the two years he’s got ahead of him at his prep college. If you don’t pay for the college, then you just give me a hundred and fifty thousand and have him stay with you until he’s ready for university or whatever. It’s up to you.”

  The silence spoke volumes. So Gherkin and Jesper weren’t the best of mates.

  “And then there’s your own assets. I’ve checked on the web and it says that shack of yours is valued at five hundred thousand, meaning two hundred and fifty would be mine. So all in all, I give you six hundred and fifty thousand, less two hundred and forty thousand, less two hundred and fifty thousand, which leaves one hundred and sixty thousand kroner, plus half the household effects, of course. You can come over and pick out what you want.”

  He glanced around at the furniture and almost had to stifle a laugh.

  “Are you sure you’ve got your sums right?” she asked eventually.

  “I’ll pop a calculator in the post for you if Gherkin can’t get his head around figures that big,” he proffered. “On the upside, you won’t have to pay the two thousand a month for Jesper. He’s had all he’s getting already. And I’ll do my utmost to make sure he gets through his prep college. How does that sound?”

  There was a pause so protracted he could almost hear the phone company rubbing its hands with glee.

  “Not good,” she said after a while. “The answer’s no.”

  Carl shook his head. Of course it was.

  “Do you remember that nice lawyer in Lyngby, the one who sorted out the paperwork when we bought the house?”

  Vigga grunted.

  “She’s moved up the ladder since then, lawyer to the Supreme Court now. Send your claims to her. And remember, Vigga: Jesper’s not my flesh and blood. So any trouble and he’s yours, warts and all. The sums remain the same.”

  Again, money poured into the phone company’s coffers. She’d put her hand over the receiver. He could hear voices, more wooly than usual.

  “OK, Carl. Gurkamal says yes, and so do I.”

  God bless her little Sikh, and all strength to his beard.

  “But we need to get one thing straight,” she went on in a prickly tone. “Our arrangement regarding my mother. We agreed you were to visit her at least once a week, and you haven’t. I want it in writing this time. If you don’t go and see her fifty-two times a year, it’ll cost you a grand every time you miss. Are you with me?”

  Carl pictured his mother-in-law. Others suffering from dementia probably had few long-term prospects to speak of, but with Karla Alsing you never knew. This could turn into a crippling compromise.

  “I’ll need twelve weeks holiday in there,” he ventured.

  “Twelve weeks? You’re not a member of parliament, you know. No one ordinary has twelve weeks holiday. You can have five like everyone else!”

  “Ten,” he rejoined.

  “No way. Seven, and not a day longer.”

  “Eight, or it’ll be that lawyer in Lyngby.”

  Another pause.

  “OK, eight,” Vigga eventually responded. “But at least an hour at a time, starting today. And as for household effects, I don’t want any of your junk, thank you very much. Who’d want a Bang and Olufsen radio from 1982 when Gurkamal’s got a Samsung surround-sound with six speakers? So no, you can forget about that.”

  • • •

  This was brilliant. Hard to believe, almost. He’d sorted it all so he could get divorced from Vigga for a paltry one hundred and sixty thousand kroner. He wouldn’t even have to borrow.

  He looked at his watch and realized he could probably call Mona now, regardless of how
late she’d been at Mathilde’s.

  She didn’t sound like it was OK when eventually she answered.

  “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  “No, not me. You woke Rolf, though.”

  Who the fuck was Rolf? He felt like a whole year of Sunday depressions had suddenly been rolled into one. An instant nosedive, and now he was going down in a spin.

  “Rolf?” he squeaked, a sense of dread looming. “Who’s Rolf?”

  “Don’t worry yourself, Carl. We’ll talk about it some other time.”

  Oh, they would, would they?

  “What’re you calling for, anyway? To say sorry for not knowing my daughter’s name?”

  Straight to the jugular. He may well have been given the lover’s key, but who was to say she couldn’t let someone else in with her own? Some bloke called Rolf, for instance. The glad tidings he’d intended to bring seemed not to matter all of a sudden.

  Rolf. Bloody stupid name, he thought, endeavoring to suppress the image of a trim male body cavorting about on his turf.

  “Actually, no. I just thought I’d let you know that Vigga and I have reached an agreement regarding the divorce. I called to tell you I’ll soon be a free man.”

  “You don’t say,” she replied with little enthusiasm. “I’m happy for you, Carl.”

  Eventually, he ended the conversation and was left sitting on the edge of the bed, the mobile idle in his hand.

  Talk about falling from a great height.

  “What are you all miserable about, Carlo?” Jesper asked from the landing.

  Of all the moronic questions the anemic teenager could have asked him, that was probably the worst.

  “Your mother and I are getting divorced,” he replied.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “What do you mean, so what? Doesn’t it mean anything to you, Jesper?”

  “No, what the fuck’s it got to do with me?”

  “I’ll tell you what it’s got to do with you, young man. It means the two grand you’ve been lining your pockets with every month these past couple of years is history from this very second. That’s what!”

  Carl clapped his hands together so the lad could see the money box snap shut for himself.

  Oddly enough, the otherwise so inventive adolescent found himself unable to come up with a single item of invective by which to return Carl’s body blow, and had to resort to slamming every door in the house in his wake.

  • • •

  In his miserable state of discontent Carl reckoned he might as well get his chore out of the way and pay a visit on the woman he happily would soon be able to refer to as his former mother-in-law.

  He noticed a young man in a gray-blue suit leaning against a car door in the parking lot, but apart from the guy turning his head away when Carl walked past, he seemed like any other young hopeful waiting for the concrete dwellings to release their fair maidens into the world for a bit of Sunday shenanigans. But Carl didn’t give a shit about anything after he’d woken up Rolf, and Mona had actually had the nerve to have a go at him about it. How low could she get?

  He drove the fifteen kilometers to the Bakkegården nursing home in Bagsværd in a state of oblivion, totally unaware of the traffic. And when a caregiver let him in, he hardly even glanced at her.

  “I’m here to see Karla Alsing,” he said to another staff member in the dementia section.

  “She’s asleep,” came the prompt reply. It suited him fine. “I’m afraid she’s rather a strain at the moment,” the prickly woman went on. “She smokes in her room, though she knows perfectly well it’s not allowed. There’s no smoking anywhere here. We don’t know where she gets them from. Perhaps you might know?”

  Carl pleaded his innocence. He hadn’t been there for months.

  “Well, anyway, we’ve just had to confiscate a pack of cigarillos. It really is a problem for us. Perhaps you could encourage her to take her nicotine pills when she gets the urge to smoke? The only damage they can do is to her purse.”

  “I’ll tell her,” said Carl, though he’d barely been listening.

  “Hello, Karla,” he said, without expecting a response. This former waitress through two ages of Copenhagen nightlife lay on her sofa with her eyes closed, skinny thighs bare for all to behold, in a kimono Carl had seen before, though never quite as open.

  “Oh, darling,” she replied to his surprise, opening her eyes and fluttering her eyelashes in a manner that would make Bambi seem fiendish.

  “Erm, it’s Carl, your son-in-law.”

  “My gorgeous, strapping policeman. Have you come to see me? How delightful!”

  He was going to say something about coming to visit her more frequently, but as usual it was hard to get a word in edgeways in the company of the woman who’d taught Vigga to express herself in sentences so long, it was a wonder she didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen.

  “Would you like a cigarillo, Carl?” she asked, producing a pack of Advokat and a disposable lighter from behind a cushion.

  She opened the pack with exaggerated professionalism and offered him one.

  “You’re not supposed to smoke in here, Karla. Where did you get them from?”

  She leaned toward him, her kimono falling open to expose the rest of her former delights. Carl didn’t know where to put himself.

  “I provide services to the gardener,” she said, digging an elbow into his side. “Of a personal nature, you know.” And then the elbow again.

  It was hard to know whether to make the sign of the cross or kneel down in unmitigated admiration of geriatric libido.

  “No need to tell me to take my nicotine pills either. I know all about it.”

  She took out a pack of them and put one in her mouth.

  “They started out giving me the chewing gum, but it didn’t work. All it did was get stuck in my dentures so they kept falling out. Now I get the tablets instead.”

  She tapped a cigarillo from the pack and lit up. “And do you know what, Carl? They’re nice to chew on while you’re having a smoke.”

  31

  September 1987

  “No, thanks. I don’t care for tea,” said Viggo. Nete stood at the sideboard, about to pour.

  She turned in consternation. What now?

  “A cup of coffee wouldn’t be amiss, though. Nothing like a couple of hours traveling to make a man drowsy and in need of a pick-me-up.”

  Nete looked at the clock. Damn it, this was the second time someone hadn’t liked tea. Why on earth hadn’t she foreseen it might happen? She’d just assumed everyone drank tea these days; it seemed to be the fad. Rose-hip tea, herbal tea, peppermint tea, there was no end to the varieties people consumed, which was a good thing indeed, because tea was ideal for masking the taste of the henbane. But then again, coffee was equally suited. Why hadn’t she brought some Nescafé home from the supermarket while she was there?

  She put her hand to her mouth so he wouldn’t hear how deeply she was breathing. What to do now? There was no time to pop down to Nørrebrogade and pick up coffee beans, boil water, prepare the brew, and add the extract.

  “A drop of milk would be nice, too,” Viggo added from his chair. “Stomach’s not what it has been,” he said, and laughed the way he had done all those years ago, the way that had made Nete yield to him.

  “Just a minute, then,” Nete said, and scuttled out into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  She went to the pantry and realized she was right. She was completely out of coffee. She looked down at the toolbox, opened the lid, and stared at the hammer.

  If she was going to use it, she’d have to strike hard. There would be blood. Perhaps even a lot. It didn’t seem like an option.

  For that reason, she picked up her purse resolutely from the counter, opened the front door of the apartment, and stepped across the landing to her neighbor
’s.

  She pressed the bell firmly and waited impatiently, hearing only the little Lhasa apso growl behind the door. Of course, she could wrap a tea towel round the hammer and deliver a blow to the nape of his neck. It would almost certainly knock him unconscious, and then she could pour the henbane extract down his throat at leisure.

  Nete nodded to herself. She didn’t care for the thought of it, but it was what she would have to do. However, as she turned to go back inside and get it over with, the door opened behind her.

  Nete had never really taken notice of her neighbor. Yet now, as they stood facing each other, she recognized the weary features and distrustful gaze behind the thick lenses of the woman’s glasses.

  It took a moment for Nete to realize the woman had no idea who she was. It was understandable. They’d only ever acknowledged each other once or twice while passing on the stairs, and the old biddy was seemingly blind as a bat.

  “I do apologize. I’m your neighbor, Nete Hermansen,” Nete ventured, her eyes on the dog that was growling at the woman’s heel. “I’m afraid I’ve run out of coffee and I’ve a visitor who’s only here briefly, so I was wondering if perhaps . . .”

  “My neighbor’s name is Nete Rosen,” the woman interrupted, full of mistrust. “It says so on the door.”

  Nete took a deep breath. “Yes, I am sorry. Hermansen is my maiden name, you see. It’s the name I’ve reverted to. And that’s what’s on the door now.”

  As the woman bent forward to peer at the evidence, Nete raised her eyebrows, brightening her countenance, endeavoring to appear trustworthy, as a proper neighbor should. But inside, desperation was tearing her apart.

  “I’ll pay, of course,” she proffered, controlling her breathing and opening her purse to produce a twenty-kroner note.

  “I’m sorry, but I haven’t any coffee beans,” the woman replied.

  Nete forced a smile, thanked her, and turned back to her apartment. It would have to be the hammer.