Merete had a great deal to pay for.
Time was about to run out; she knew that. Anxiety and relief grew inside of her at the same time. The almost five years in this loathsome captivity was consuming her, but eventually it would have to come to an end. Of course it would.
By the time New Year’s Eve arrived in 2006, the pressure in the room had long since been increased to six atmospheres, and since then all of the fluorescent lights but one had flickered constantly. A festively clad Lasse appeared, together with his mother and brother on the other side of the mirrored panes to wish Merete a Happy New Year, adding that this would be the last New Year of her life.
“We know the date of your death, if we think about it, don’t we, Merete ?” he’d said at the time. “It’s so logical. If you add up the years and months and days that I was forced to be away from my family until the day when I captured you like the animal you are, then you’ll know when you’re going to die. You must suffer in loneliness exactly as long as I did, but no more. Figure it out, Merete. When the time comes, we’ll open the airlock. It will be painful, but it probably won’t last long. The nitrogen has been accumulating in your fatty tissues, Merete. Of course you’re very thin, but you have to remember that there are pockets of air everywhere inside your body. When your bones expand and the bone fragments start bursting inside your tissues, when the pressure under your fillings makes them explode in your mouth, when you feel the pain whistling through your shoulder and hip joints, then you’ll know that the time has come. Figure it out. Five years, two months, and thirteen days, starting on March 2, 2002, then you’ll know what it will say on your tombstone. You can always hope that the blood clots in your lungs and brain will paralyze you, or that your lungs will explode and knock you unconscious or kill you fast. But don’t count on it. And who says that I’ll let it happen quickly?”
So she was going to die on May 15, 2007. If she was right in calculating that today was February thirteenth, then it would be ninety-one days from now—exactly forty-four days since the start of the new year. She had lived every day since New Year’s Eve in the awareness that she would put an end to things before they ever reached that date. But until that time, she was determined to carry on, ignoring all gloomy thoughts and cherishing the best of her memories.
This was how she was mentally preparing herself to say good-bye to the world. She often held up the tongs to look at the sharp jaws, or picked up the longer plastic stiffener from her jacket and considered snapping it in half and sharpening the two pieces on the cement floor. It was going to have to be one of these tools. She would lay down in the corner under the mirrored panes and puncture the arteries in her wrists. Thank God they were easy to see, since her arms were so thin.
It was this state of mind that had kept her going until today. After the airlock delivered the food bucket, she once again heard the voices of Lasse and his mother outside. Both sounded irritable, and their argument took on a life of its own.
So the bastard and the bitch don’t always see eye to eye, she thought. This cheered her up.
“What’s the matter, little Lasse, can’t you keep your mother under control?” she shouted. Of course she knew that an insolent remark like that would bring reprisals; she knew what the witch out there was like.
But it turned out that she didn’t know her well enough. She’d thought the woman’s spitefulness would mean she’d get little or no food for a couple of days. Merete had no idea it would rob her of the right to determine her own life.
“Watch out for her, Lasse,” snarled the old woman. “She’ll turn us against each other, if she can. And she’ll cheat you, believe me. You’d better watch out for her. She’s got a pair of tongs in there, and she could easily try to use them on herself if need be. Do you really want her to have the last laugh? Do you, Lasse?”
There was a pause that lasted only a couple of seconds, then the sword of Damocles was hanging over her head.
“You heard what my mother said, didn’t you, Merete?” His voice sounded cold coming through the loudspeakers.
What good would it do for her to reply?
“From now on, you’re keeping back from the windows. I want to be able to see you at all times. Get it? Move the toilet bucket over to the far wall. Now! If you in any way try to starve yourself or hide or injure yourself, I promise you that I’ll lower the pressure in the room faster than you can react. Then if you stab yourself, the blood will gush out of you like a waterfall. You’ll feel everything exploding inside before you black out, I promise you. I’m going to set up cameras so we can observe you night and day from now on. We’ll aim a couple of floodlights at the windows at full power. And I can change the air pressure by remote control, by the way. So you can go to the guillotine now, or you can wait until later. But who knows, Merete? Maybe we’ll all drop dead tomorrow. Maybe we’ll be poisoned by the lovely salmon we’re going to have for dinner. You never know. So just hold on. Maybe one day a prince will arrive on a white horse and give you a lift. Where there’s life, there’s hope—am I right? So hold out, Merete. But stick to the rules.”
She looked up at one of the panes. She could just barely make out Lasse’s silhouette. A gray angel of death—that’s what he was. Hovering out there in life, nursing a sick, sinister mind that she hoped would torture him forever.
“How did you kill your foster father? The same bestial way?” she shouted, expecting to hear him laugh. But she didn’t expect to hear the other two laughing as well. So all three were out there now.
“I waited ten years, Merete. And then I went back, with forty pounds more muscle weight, and with so much contempt for the man, I thought that, alone, might be enough to kill him.”
“And you figured that would get you some respect?” she retorted and then laughed at him.
Anything that might rain on his victory parade was worth dishing out.
“I beat him to death. That made him respect me, don’t you think? Not exactly a refined method, but so what? I took my time bashing him to pieces. I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine—nothing else would satisfy me.”
Merete felt her stomach turn over. The man was completely insane. “You’re just like him, you ridiculous sick animal,” she whispered. “It’s too bad you weren’t caught back then.”
“Caught? Did you say caught?” Again he laughed. “How would that happen? It was harvest time, and his old, piece-of-shit reaping machine was standing ready, out in the field. It wasn’t hard to tip him into the machinery once it was going. He’d always had lots of peculiar ideas, the prick—such as going out to work in the fields at night. So no one was surprised when he died that way. And he wasn’t missed, let me tell you.”
“Oh, you’re really a big man, Lasse. I’m so impressed. Who else have you killed? Do you have something more on your conscience?”
She hadn’t figured he would stop there, but she was still deeply shocked when he told her how he’d exploited Daniel Hale’s profession to get close to her, and how he’d impersonated the man and then murdered him. Daniel Hale had never done anything to Lasse; he just needed to be eliminated so that Lasse’s real identity wouldn’t be revealed by chance. And the same went for Lasse’s helper, Dennis Knudsen. He too had to die. No witnesses. Lasse was cold as ice.
“My God, Merete,” she whispered to herself. “How many people have you destroyed without even knowing it?”
“Why didn’t you just kill me, you asshole?” she shouted at the window. “You had the chance. You said yourself that you’d been watching me and Uffe. Why didn’t you just stab me with a knife when I was out in the garden ? I’m sure you were there, weren’t you?”
For a moment he didn’t speak. When he did, he carefully enunciated each word, so she’d understand the depth of his cynicism. “First of all, that would have been too easy. I wanted us to watch you suffer for the same amount of time as we had. Besides, dear Merete, I wanted to get close to you. I wanted to see you vulnerable. I wanted to shake up you
r life. You were supposed to learn to love this Daniel Hale, and then you were supposed to learn to fear him. You would take one last trip with Uffe, convinced that something remained unresolved and waiting for you when you came home. That gave me a great sense of satisfaction, I want you to know.”
“You’re sick in the head!”
“Sick? Am I? I can tell you this is nothing compared to what I felt on the day I found out that my mother had applied to the Lynggaard Foundation for help so she could move back home after she was discharged from the hospital. Her application was denied on the grounds that the fund was intended exclusively for use by the descendants of Lotte and Alexander Lynggaard. My mother was asking your fucking filthy-rich foundation for a measly hundred thousand kroner, and the board said no, even though they knew who she was and what had happened to her. So she had to spend several more years in institutions. Now do you understand why she hates you so much, you spoiled bitch?” The psychopath had started to cry. “A fucking hundred thousand kroner. What difference would that have made to you and your brother? None whatsoever!”
She could tell him that she knew nothing about this, but it didn’t matter. She’d already paid her debt to him. Long ago.
That very evening Lasse and his brother set up cameras and turned on the floodlights. Two blindingly bright objects that turned night into day and revealed the overwhelming squalor of her prison; once again she had a full view of the room in all its filthy detail. It was so terrible to be confronted with her own degradation that she chose to keep her eyes closed for the first twenty-four hours. The place of execution may have been put on display, but the condemned chose darkness.
Later they stretched wires across both mirrored panes to a pair of detonators, which could break the glass in a so-called emergency. Finally, right outside, they rolled into position cylinders containing compressed oxygen and hydrogen, as well as “flammable liquids,” as they called it.
Lasse informed her that everything was ready. After her body had exploded, they would run her through their composter, and then they’d blow up the whole fucking place. The explosion would be audible for miles. This time the insurance company would have to pay. Unforeseen accidents such as this had to be prepared meticulously, and all evidence permanently obliterated.
“Believe me, that’s not going to happen,” she said to herself, planning her revenge.
After a couple of days she sat down with her back to the windows and began digging in the concrete with the tongs. In a few more days she’d be finished, and the tongs surely would be too. Then she’d have to use the plastic toothpicks to puncture her arteries, but that didn’t matter. It could be done, and that was enough.
The digging took her more than a few days. It was more like a week, but by then the grooves were deep enough to withstand almost anything. She’d covered them with dust and dirt from the corners of the room. One letter after another. Once the fire experts from the insurance company came to inspect the scene to find out what had caused the blaze, she was certain that at least a few of the words would be discovered, and then they’d probably be able to figure out the rest of the message. It said:
Lasse, the owner of this building, murdered his foster father and Daniel Hale and one of his friends, and after that he murdered me.
Take good care of my brother, Uffe, and tell him that his sister thought about him every single day for more than five years.
Merete Lynggaard, February 13, 2007, kidnapped and imprisoned in this godforsaken place since March 2, 2002.
35
2007
What As sad had come across was a name mentioned in the police report from the deadly accident on Christmas Eve 1986, when Merete Lynggaard’s parents died. The report listed three individuals who were killed in the other vehicle: a newborn baby, a girl who was only eight, and the driver of the car, Henrik Jensen, who was an engineer and the founder of a company called Jensen Industries. After that the report became less specific, as indicated by a row of question marks in the margin. According to a handwritten note, the firm was supposedly “a flourishing enterprise that produced airtight steel containment linings.” There was another brief remark underneath. It said: “a source of pride for Danish industry,” and was apparently also a statement by a witness.
Assad had remembered correctly. Henrik Jensen was the name of the driver killed in the other car. And it was true that name was exceedingly similar to Lars Henrik Jensen. No one could claim that Assad was stupid.
“Take out the tabloids again, Assad,” said Carl. “Maybe they published the names of the survivors. It wouldn’t surprise me if the boy in the other car was Lars Henrik, named after his father. Do you see his name anywhere ?” Carl suddenly regretted making Assad do all the work, so he stretched out his hand. “Give me a few of the tabloid articles. And a couple of those over there,” he said, pointing at clippings from the morning papers.
There were horrifying photos from the accident. They were displayed in a lurid context, side by side with pictures of inconsequential people, greedy for fame. The sea of flames surrounding the Ford Sierra had consumed everything, as the photo of the charred wreck documented. It was a real miracle that a couple of medics happened to be driving past and were able to pull the passengers out before the cars burned. According to the police report, the fire department hadn’t been able to reach the scene as quickly as normal. The slippery road had simply been too dangerous.
“Here it says then that the mother was named Ulla Jensen, and both her legs were crushed,” said Assad. “I can’t tell you the name of the boy. It doesn’t say. They just call him the ‘couple’s eldest child.’ But here they write that he was fourteen years old.”
“That fits with the year Lars Henrik Jensen was born, if we can rely at all on that manipulated Civil Registry number from Godhavn,” said Carl. He was studying a couple of clippings from the noon editions of the newspapers.
There was nothing in the first one. The story was printed next to some unimportant reports about political squabbles and minor scandals. The trademark of this newspaper was to follow specific guidelines for what was guaranteed to sell, no matter what it might be. This was apparently an enduring precept because if Carl exchanged this five-year-old issue with one from yesterday, he’d be hard-pressed to know which was more recent.
He was cursing the media and leafing through the next newspaper, when he turned the page and saw the name. It practically jumped out at him. Just what he’d been hoping for.
“Here it is, Assad!” shouted Carl, his eyes nailed to the page. At that moment he felt like a hawk that had spotted its prey from the treetops and then dove in for the kill. A fabulous find. The pressure in Carl’s chest vanished, and an odd feeling of relief passed through his body.
“Listen to this, Assad. ‘The survivors in the vehicle that was torpedoed by wholesaler Alexander Lynggaard’s car were Henrik Jensen’s wife, Ulla Jensen, age forty, one of her newborn twins, and their eldest child, Lars Henrik Jensen, age fourteen.’”
Assad put down the clipping he was holding. His dark brown eyes were squeezed almost shut by a huge smile.
“Hand me the police report from the accident, Assad.” Carl wanted to see whether the CR numbers of those involved might be listed. He ran his finger down the report but found only the numbers for the two drivers, Merete’s father and Lars Henrik’s father.
“If you have the father’s CR number, can you just also find the son’s number fast, Carl? Then we can maybe compare it to the one we got on the boy from Godhavn.”
Carl nodded. That should be easy enough. “I’ll check and see what I can find out about Henrik Jensen, Assad,” he said. “In the meantime, go and ask Lis to check up on the CR numbers. Tell her that we’re looking for an address for Lars Henrik Jensen. If he doesn’t have a place of residence in Denmark, ask her to find out where the mother lives. And if Lis does find his CR number, get her to print out all his addresses since the accident. Take the folder with you, Assad. And hurry.”
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Carl got on the Internet and searched for “Jensen Industries,” but came up empty. Then he searched for “airtight steel containment linings for nuclear reactors,” which resulted in a list of various companies, especially in France and Germany. Then he tried the words “lining for containments,” which, as far as he knew, covered more or less the same terminology as “airtight steel containment linings for nuclear reactors.” That didn’t get him anywhere either.
He was about to give up when he found a PDF file that mentioned a company in Køge, and there he saw the sentence “a source of pride for Danish industry”—exactly the same wording as had been included in the police accident report. So this must have been where that quote came from. He sent a silent thank-you to the traffic cop who had dug a little deeper into the material than was normally required. Carl bet the man had eventually ended up working as a detective.
That was as much as he could find out about Jensen Industries. Maybe he had the name wrong. He put in a call to the Registry of Companies and learned that no firms were listed under any Henrik Jensen with that particular CR number. Maybe the company was owned by foreigners, maybe it was registered under another name by a different group of owners, or it could be part of a holding company and registered under the holding company’s name.
Carl took out his ballpoint pen and crossed off the company name on his notepad. As things now stood, Jensen Industries was nothing more than a blank spot in the high-tech landscape.
He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise up to the network of pipes on the ceiling. One day the smoke alarms out in the corridor were going to catch a whiff and set off an infernal racket that would send all the employees in the building out on the street in infernal disarray. He smiled and took an extra-deep drag before blowing a thick cloud toward the door. It would put a stop to his little illegal pastime, but it would almost be worth it just to see Bak and Bjørn and Jacobsen standing outside looking up with anxious annoyance at the windows of their offices, with their hundreds of yards of shelf space filled with archived atrocities.
The Keeper of Lost Causes Page 31