The Purity of Vengeance

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  He climbed up and looked around a room cluttered to the gills with framed pictures, old mattresses, and heaps of black bin liners from which old clothes spilled.

  He shone the flashlight over the sloping, hessian-clad walls and found himself thinking the place must have made a great den for the youngsters who had grown up here.

  “Oh, God! Carl!” Rose suddenly exclaimed from below.

  She was standing at the deep freezer with the lid raised and her head drawn back. Carl’s heart began to pound.

  “This is gross!” she said, twisting her face in disgust.

  OK, Carl thought to himself. If it was Assad she’d found in there, she’d have said something else.

  He climbed down and peered into the freezer. It contained a number of transparent plastic bags, inside which were human fetuses. He counted eight. Eight small lives that never were. He wouldn’t have called it gross. The sight that confronted him gave rise to quite different emotions.

  “We don’t know the circumstances here, Rose.”

  She shook her head and tightened her lips. It was obvious she was deeply affected.

  “The blood you saw out there could be from one of these bags. Maybe the new doctor dropped one in the driveway, maybe it dripped onto the flagstones. That could explain the fingerprints as well.”

  Again she shook her head. “No, the blood out there is fresh, and these fetuses are frozen stiff.” She gestured toward the contents of the freezer. “Do you see a hole in any of these bags?”

  It was an excellent observation. He seemed to be lagging behind at the moment.

  “Listen, we’re not going get this sorted without help,” he said. “As I see it, there are three options. Either we get out of here while we’ve still got time, or we call Glostrup and inform them of our suspicions, which I reckon is what we should do. The third thing is we ought to try Assad’s office phone again,” he added. “He might be back now, for all we know.” He nodded as if to convince himself. “Maybe he’s finally got his mobile charged.”

  He took out his phone. Rose shook her head. “Can you smell something burning?” she asked.

  Carl couldn’t. In the meantime he got Assad’s voicemail at HQ again.

  “Look,” said Rose. “There.” She pointed toward the ceiling.

  He glanced up as he dialed Assad’s mobile. Was that smoke up there or just dust swirling in the dim light?

  He watched as Rose’s swaying backside disappeared up the ladder while a phone company message informed him the subscriber was unavailable.

  “There is something smoldering,” she called down to him. “But it’s coming from where you are.”

  She was down the ladder in no time. “That loft extends farther than the space down here. There must be another room behind there,” she said, pointing to the end wall. “And right now there’s smoke coming from somewhere inside it.”

  Carl saw right away that the wall seemed to consist of two large sheets of plasterboard.

  If there’s a room behind that wall, there’s no way in from here, he thought, then saw the first wisps of smoke begin to seep out.

  Rose leaped forward and started thumping her fist exploratively against the wall elements. “Listen! That one’s solid enough, but this one sounds hollow,” she said excitedly. “Like it’s metal or something. There’s a sliding door here, Carl, I know there is.”

  He nodded and glanced around. Unless the door was activated by remote control, somewhere in the room there had to be the means to open it.

  “What are we looking for?” Rose asked.

  “A switch, wiring, anything on the wall that looks out of place,” he replied with a rising sense of panic.

  “What about over there?” she said, pointing at the wall above the freezer.

  Carl’s eyes scanned the surface until he saw what she meant. She was right. There was a line, a crack that seemed to indicate a repair of some kind.

  His eyes followed its path to an old brass fitting above the freezer that looked like it had once belonged on a ship or to some large machine.

  He lifted it from the nail on which it hung and behind it discovered a small metal flap, which he opened.

  “Shit,” he blurted, as the smoke leaking out between the plasterboards thickened. Instead of a switch, the little panel behind the flap contained a display and a keypad with letters and numbers on it. Finding the combination that would activate the mechanism and open the sliding door seemed out of the question.

  “People use all sorts of things for codes: the names of their kids, civil registration numbers, the wife’s birthday, lucky numbers. What the hell are we supposed to do?” Carl ranted, as he began to look around for something that might break down the wall.

  In the meantime, Rose’s contrastingly calm systematic logic kicked in.

  “We begin with what we can remember, Carl,” she said, stepping up to the keypad.

  “Which is sod all in my case. The man’s name is Curt Wad and he’s eighty-eight years old. That’s all I can remember.”

  “All right, no need to get your knickers in a twist. I get your drift,” Rose rejoined.

  She typed in some characters: P-U-R-I-T-Y-P-A-R-T-Y. Nothing. T-H-E-

  C-A-U-S-E. Nothing.

  One by one she tried names and figures from the records and cuttings on Curt Wad that she’d been poring over during the past days. Even his wife’s birthday had stuck in her memory.

  Then she paused for a moment and pondered, while Carl’s attention was divided between the smoke coming out of the wall and the passing headlights that occasionally swept over the building.

  All of a sudden she lifted her head toward him, indicating that behind the emo eyeliner and Gothic demeanor resided the germ of an idea that seemed both logical and plausible.

  He watched her fingers as they typed.

  H-E-R-M-A-N-S-E-N

  There was a click. The wall elements slid open and revealed a hidden room filled with smoke that now billowed forth toward them. At the same moment the abrupt infusion of oxygen sent a flame leaping into the air.

  “Shit!” Carl yelped. He snatched the flashlight from Rose’s hand and plunged into the room.

  He saw another freezer and shelving that looked like it housed an archive. But it was the limp figure that lay outstretched on the floor that focused his gaze and all of his senses.

  The fire licked at Assad’s trouser legs. Carl dragged him out, yelling for Rose to throw her coat over their colleague and suffocate the flames.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God, he’s hardly breathing,” she stuttered in a frenzy, Carl glancing back into the room only to note that the fire had taken hold to the extent that the idea of retrieving anything at all from inside was futile.

  The last thing he noticed before they dragged Assad outside were the words daubed in blood on almost every available surface of the cramped little room, “ASSAD WAS HERE!” And then, on the floor by the deep freezer, the melting remains of a lighter that looked remarkably like the one Carl had left on his desk only hours before.

  • • •

  The paramedics arrived first and attended to Assad. They put him on a stretcher, an oxygen mask pumping life back into his lungs.

  Rose was silent as the grave. The way she looked, she was liable to break down any minute.

  “He’s going to be all right, yeah?” Carl asked the ambulance crew, struggling to contain a turmoil of emotions he hardly knew he possessed. He raised his eyebrows in a feeble attempt to stem the tears, but they came anyway. “For fuck’s sake, Assad. Come on, mate!”

  “He’s still alive,” one of the men replied. “But a case of smoke inhalation like this is often going to be fatal. There can be thermal damage, burns to the respiratory system, poisoning. You should be prepared for the worst. The blow to the back of his head looks nasty, too. There may well be a fracture
of the skull and internal hemorrhaging. Do you know him well?”

  Carl gave a slow nod. This was hard on him, but nothing compared to how Rose was taking it.

  “There’s always a hope,” said the paramedic, as firemen shouted instructions to one another and began rolling out hoses.

  Carl put his arm around Rose and felt her trembling.

  “It’s going to be OK, Rose. He’ll pull through, I know he will,” he told her, realizing how empty the words sounded.

  When the medic arrived in a response vehicle a moment later, he proceeded to tear open Assad’s shirt to gain a quick impression of his heart rate and breathing, but something seemed to get in the way. He tore some more, and removed a handful of papers from Assad’s clothing, tossing them aside onto the ground.

  Carl picked them up.

  There were two distinct sets. One consisted of a number of sheets stapled together. On the front was written THE CAUSE: MEMBERSHIP LIST.

  The second was a thin folder: FILE NO. 64.

  40

  September 1987

  It was twenty past five and Nete had knitted row upon row.

  Beneath the wide-open windows, people of all shapes, sizes, and ages had passed by, some even pausing momentarily in front of the building. But there had been no sign of Curt Wad.

  Nete tried to recall her last conversation with him. The exact moment she had put the phone down. Hadn’t she been left feeling that he had swum into her net? And yet she had been mistaken. Or had she?

  Perhaps he was standing down there behind the trees, keeping watch. Could he have seen Philip Nørvig enter and fail to come out again? Was that it?

  She rubbed the back of her head pensively. Without Curt Wad there would be no triumph, no peace of mind, and now she felt nervous tension building into a headache. If she didn’t take her medicine straightaway, the migraine would set in and she had neither the time nor the energy to contend with it. At this moment she needed more than ever to think clearly and be at the ready.

  She went into the bathroom, her head beginning to pound, took her pills from the medicine cabinet, and realized there was only one left.

  No matter, there’s another bottle in the cupboard with the table linen, she thought. She stepped back out into the hallway and looked along its length at the closed door of the dining room. She would have to go in there again, to the sight of the silver cutlery, the decanter, the crystal glasses, and the corpses that had now consumed their last supper.

  Resolved, she opened the door of the airtight room as swiftly as she was able, closing it behind her in the same manner. Even now, the smell was pungent in the air, mostly on account of Philip Nørvig.

  She stared at his corpse with disdain. She would have a job on her hands with him once the bodies were to be made ready. Perhaps even with all of them, she thought to herself as she found her extra tablets.

  She sat down at the head of the table and studied her victims one by one.

  Apart from Tage, who still lay on the floor like a beached walrus, they all sat nicely in a row. Rita, Viggo, and Philip.

  She poured herself a glass of water, put three pills into her mouth, aware that two would suffice, then raised her crystal glass to the dull eyes and hanging heads.

  “Skål, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, and swallowed her pills.

  She chuckled at her toast and thought of all the formalin she would soon be forcing down the throats of her silent guests. It would stem the worst of their decomposition.

  “Patience, now. You’ll have your drinks soon enough. And in a short while you’ll be receiving company. One or two of you know her already. Gitte Charles is her name. That’s right. That nasty blonde woman who made life miserable for some of us on that infernal island. She was a decent sort once, so we must hope she has retained some of the same quality. We don’t want her bringing down our standards, do we?”

  She laughed heartily until her headache told her enough was enough. Then she got to her feet, curtsied to her guests, and hurried back out.

  She didn’t want Gitte Charles to wait.

  • • •

  After breakfast Rita Nielsen drew her aside. “Listen, Nete. When Gitte gets tired of you she’ll dump you, and that’s when your problems will start. You saw what happened to me.”

  She thrust out her arm and showed Nete the needle marks. Five in all, Nete counted. Four more than she had received herself.

  “My life’s sheer hell here now,” Rita went on, glancing around warily. “Those bastard wardens are always shushing me and slapping me about if I don’t watch out. They’ve got me cleaning the toilets, washing menstrual rags, and running slops to the compost heap. The worst jobs, with the worst idiots, all day long. They’re always on at me, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’ and ‘We’ve already told you once.’ It’s like it’s all right for them to be getting at me all the time now. And it’s Gitte’s fault. Have a look at this.”

  Rita turned her back, loosened the straps of her overalls, pulled them all the way down, and displayed a bloom of blue-red bruises across the back of her thighs, just below her buttocks. “Do you think they just appeared on their own?”

  She turned back to face Nete, index finger raised in the air. “And I just know that next time the doctor comes they’ll talk him into having me sterilized. That’s why I’ve got to get away now, and you’re coming with me, do you hear? I need you.”

  Nete nodded. Gitte Charles’s threats to poison her with henbane were one thing, but her ice-cold demeanor toward the other girls was quite another. The way she howled with laughter when describing how she did with them as the fancy took her, recommending them for sterilization as she saw fit, no matter their willingness to please.

  Nete, too, had become afraid of Gitte’s whims.

  “How are we going to cross the strait?” Nete asked.

  “Leave that to me.”

  “Then what do you need me for?”

  “To get us money.”

  “Money? How?”

  “You’re going to steal Gitte’s savings. She boasted about them when I was her little pet. I know where she keeps them.”

  “Where?”

  “In her room, silly.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

  Rita smiled and indicated her clothing. “Do you think they let us girls in overalls wander about the corridors in there?” Her face grew serious again. “It’s got to be done in the daytime, while Gitte’s bossing us about outside. You know where she keeps her key. You said so yourself.”

  “You want me to do it in the daytime? But I can’t.”

  Rita clenched her fist and pressed it hard against Nete’s chin. She was white in the face, her cheek muscles tensed.

  “You can, and you will, if you know what’s good for you, understand? What’s more, you’re going to do it now. We can get away tonight.”

  • • •

  Gitte’s room was on the floor above the sewing room. Nete sat for most of the morning with beads of perspiration on her upper lip, waiting for a suitable moment to nip out unseen for a few minutes. But the moment wouldn’t come. The work that day was easy and the warden sat quietly at the window with her embroidery. There was an unusual calm about the place. A day without tumult, and no errands to run.

  Nete looked around. There would have to be a commotion of some sort. The question was where and how.

  And then she had an idea.

  In front of her sat two girls who had been living as prostitutes, working the old Pisserenden area of inner Copenhagen. They went by the names of Bette and Betty on account of their always going on about Bette Davis and Betty Grable, whom they admired and did everything they could to model themelves on. Nete had no idea who these two Hollywood stars were, for she had never been to a cinema in her life, and the girls’ incessant chatter about them had long been getting
on her nerves.

  And then there was another tart, Pia from Århus, who sat behind Nete with her weaving. Pia was less talkative than most, perhaps because she was rather slow-witted, one of the older prostitutes who had been on the game for a long time and done just about everything that could be done with a man. She and Bette and Betty had plenty of stories to exchange about their profession, but could do so only in brief moments when the warden was not present. These were stories of crabs and the clap, of process charged for various sexual services, of malodorous men and how surprisingly effective a well-aimed kick in the gonads could be when it came to prompting a recalcitrant punter into paying up.

  Nete looked over her shoulder. The girl from Århus looked up and smiled at her. She had three pregnancies behind her and all three children had been forcibly removed for adoption immediately after birth. Her history indicated that she would more than likely soon be on her way to be sterilized at the hospital in Korsør. Nete knew all too well what happened there, and talk was always rampant among the girls. Upon request of the head physicians of the mental asylums, the Ministry of Social Affairs referred many girls for sterilization without their knowledge. It was a time bomb in their lives that could go off at any minute. All of them knew it, including Pia from Århus. For that reason, she kept her head down and immersed herself in daydreams. Everyone on the island had their dreams, and most of them were about family and children.

  Pia’s and Nete’s, too.

  Nete turned toward her and put her hand up to cover her mouth as she whispered. “I’m sorry to have to tell you, Pia, but Bette and Betty have been blabbing. I heard them say to the warden that you’d told them you could make a hundred kroner in one morning by sucking men off, and that you’d be doing it again if you ever got out of here. Just so you’re warned. I think Gitte Charles might already know. I’m really sorry to have to tell you, but that’s how it is.”