by Lone Theils
Lulu gave a light shrug, put down the bucket on the floor and started peeling one of the bananas. She offered it to Nora, who took a bite.
‘What's going to happen to me? Will I end up like Oluf?’
Again Lulu jumped. For the first time she looked straight at Nora. ‘Oluf went back to Denmark,’ she said in a trembling voice that revealed how nervous she was.
‘You know what Lisbeth is like. What makes you think he was allowed to leave?’ Nora asked calmly.
‘But she said ...’
Nora shook her head as if talking to a child. ‘Lulu. You’re not like Lisbeth. I know that. Tell me what happened. Tell me what happened to Oluf,’ she said with as much authority in her voice as she could muster.
‘Nothing happened to Oluf,’ Lulu said in a quivering voice. ‘I have to go now.’
She hurried away, leaving Nora behind in the basement. With the humming chest freezer and its evil, green eye.
Nora saw her only chance disappear and found her pleading voice. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Please would you ... Please would you help me have a pee? I’m really desperate.’
Lulu hesitated near the door, then she turned and came back. She eyed Nora suspiciously.
‘I really need a pee — please would you loosen my restraints? Just so I can sit on the bucket,’ Nora begged.
Lulu shook her head and pressed her lips together.
‘Did you know that your dad is still looking for you?’
Lulu snorted so emphatically that Nora realised her mistake at once. Instead she tried again to appeal to Lulu's common sense.
‘Look at me. I can’t pee into that bucket unless you untie me. Please. I’m about to wet myself. And you know that Lisbeth wouldn’t want that.’
Lulu glanced nervously at the door, hesitated, but then produced a blunt pair of kitchen scissors from her back pocket.
‘I’ll free one hand and your legs. Any sign of trouble and I’ll set the dogs on you,’ she warned her.
Nora nodded gravely. ‘I won’t try anything. I promise.’
She felt cold metal against the skin on her arm, then pain as the blood returned to the veins that had been almost completely cut off by the tight tape.
She clenched and unclenched her hand tentatively. It very nearly refused to obey her and her knuckles felt sore and stiff. Nora gritted her teeth in response to the pain, and looked up apologetically at Lulu, while trying to appear as harmless as possible.
‘I’m being very, very still. But I can’t undo my trousers with just one hand.’
Lulu chewed her lip. ‘OK, but then -’
‘Lulu! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Lisbeth was standing in the doorway, her voice sliced through the room.
‘I was only —’ Lulu began, turning towards the voice. In that split second Nora seized the chance to kick her.
If she had learned anything from kickboxing, it was that whoever hesitates bites the dust. There was no room for thinking. Only action.
The scissors clattered to the floor. At virtually the same moment as her foot made contact with Lulu's hand, Nora bent down, quick as lightning, grabbed them with her aching fingers and pressed them against Lulu's throat.
‘Take another step and I’ll cut her,’ she snarled at Lisbeth.
Lulu stood paralysed like a deer that had strayed on to a motorway at night.
Lisbeth wavered for a few seconds, then she laughed scornfully.
‘Go on. Stab away.’
Nora looked quickly up at her. ‘I mean it.’
Lisbeth's voice was just as steady as when she pretended to be Mrs Rosen. ‘So do I. In fact, you two idiots deserve each another. So why don’t you take the time to get to know one another. It’ll be the last thing either of you will ever do. Have fun,’ she said.
Then she turned on her heel, slammed the door and turned the key in the lock. Twice.
34
With her eyes fixed on Lulu, watching for the slightest sign of a counter-attack, Nora very carefully lowered the scissors.
Lulu slumped even further. Then she burst into tears.
Nora cut her other hand free, crouched on the bucket and was finally able to relieve her bladder, while Lulu sobbed compulsively. Nora let her cry for a few minutes, before putting her arm around her shoulder.
‘Lulu. It doesn’t have to be this way.’
‘Yes, it does,’ she choked.
‘You can be free. I can help you.’
‘No. You can’t help me.’
‘Yes. We can help each other.’
‘You don’t know what we’ve done. You don’t know what we’ve done.’ Lulu clasped her hand over her mouth and shook her head, as if she could physically keep the terrible words inside her head.
Nora gently helped her up on to the chair and handed her the other banana. ‘Eat this and try to calm down. We’ll be all right,’ she said with more conviction than she really possessed.
Lulu did as she was told. Nora had a hunch that she had done so ever since she first met Lisbeth. Possibly even before that. Probably her whole life.
‘Lulu. Lisbeth doesn’t care about you. She's willing to sacrifice you. Why are you protecting her? Oluf is dead. And the police know about it. I’ve already told them what I know. They can be here any minute. And if you help me now, I’ll help you later. The police are definitely on their way,’ Nora lied.
Lulu only slumped even further, falling through the years, turning into a timid teenager having to confess a misdemeanour to the head teacher. Her dark hair had thinned and there were streaks of grey, she had bags under her eyes and wrinkles that dragged her mouth downwards in a sad and beaten expression. But it was Lulu, sweet little Lulu, as her drug addict dad had called her. Lulu from Vestergården.
Nora tried to catch her eye. ‘What happened to Oluf? How did you meet him?’
‘It happened some years after ... after we had come here. No one knew us. Lisbeth and me and Bill were ... It was just a night out. We had never been out all three of us, and Bill really wanted to watch the boxing. A colleague got him tickets. So we drove up to Liverpool. It was meant to be a fun evening.’
‘But that wasn’t how it turned out?’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Lulu replied. ‘When we got there, everything was all right at first. We had really good seats, right up close. The boxers were just hitting each other, and I wasn’t interested in that. But I liked watching everything else. The women in their glamorous dresses. The men shouting the whole time.’
She heaved a sigh. ‘It happened after the third fight. I hadn’t noticed anything, but Lisbeth spotted him immediately. Oluf was in the ring. Oluf from back home. I wanted to leave before he saw us, but Lisbeth just laughed and said no. We could talk to Oluf afterwards, and she would make sure that he kept his mouth shut for the rest of his life. Because she had seen him do something on the ferry that night when we ... That night we sailed to England.
‘I never heard what they said. But afterwards Bill told me to wait by the car. I did as I was told. You always did around Bill.’
She narrowed her eyes, and Nora wondered whether it was to bring back a clearer memory from that night or an attempt to suppress it.
‘Half an hour later, they came out to the car. Oluf was drunk. I don’t know how he got drunk so quickly. Perhaps they had put something in his beer. Bill was sober because he was driving, and Lisbeth was only pretending to be tipsy. She got in the back with Oluf.’
Lulu's voice had grown small and scared. ‘She kept quizzing him about the investigation back home in Denmark. Had they looked for us for a long time? Did the police have any leads? Had any witnesses come forward?’
She gulped before she continued. ‘Oluf was really drunk. Bill lost his rag every time Oluf switched to Danish, and kept shouting towards the back: “In English! In English!” But Lisbeth just laughed. Bill was getting more and more angry. I tried making myself invisible and looked out the window without saying anything, but it w
as no good. He couldn’t reach Lisbeth, so he started hitting me instead.’
‘And then what happened?’ Nora interjected.
‘When we were nearly home, Oluf started kissing Lisbeth, and Bill could see them in the rear-view mirror. He was seething with rage. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so mad. It was very, very scary. When we pulled into the yard, he stopped the car without saying a word. He and I sat in silence, while we heard Lisbeth giggle in between the slobbering.’
Again Lulu closed her eyes. This time it took a while before she opened them and resumed her story.
‘Not much else to tell really. Bill told me to go to bed. Told me to wait for him. I was terrified. He was usually so together, so calm. Even when we ... Well. I mean, he was always calm. Measured. But that night, he was red hot with rage. I went to check on Mrs Hickley. She was asleep, so I went to bed. I might have heard Lisbeth scream once during the night. I remember waking up with a jolt without quite knowing why.’
Lulu's voice was monotonous, as if she needed to reel off her account in order to get it over with: ‘Bill didn’t come to me that night, so I figured he was with Lisbeth. The next morning they came down for breakfast as if nothing had happened. But Oluf wasn’t with them. Later I asked Lisbeth about him, but she just pulled a face and asked if I was jealous because Oluf didn’t want me. When I asked her again later, she said that Oluf had gone back to Denmark, and that he had promised to keep his mouth shut about having seen us. I thought she must be right because we never heard anything.’
‘They threw him in the harbour. He was eaten by the fish,’ Nora said harshly.
Lulu clasped her hand over her mouth. And, at that moment, she looked like the petite fifteen-year-old who had gone missing from a ferry. Her eyes were round and trusting and she had a puzzled expression as if she was constantly asking a question she already knew would be answered with a hard slap across the face.
‘No!’
Nora nodded. ‘I’ve seen a picture of his body. There's no doubt. He was found off the coast of Brine.’
‘No,’ Lulu repeated automatically.
The silence spread across the basement, while Lulu stared into space like a zombie. Nora checked out the room. Apart from the spade and the chest freezer, which she could now see had a padlock, there was a dark brown cupboard, also locked. She shuddered, then crawled up on to the freezer to see if she could reach the small windows near the ceiling.
They were made from thick, frosted glass, which made it impossible to see what was on the other side. Even if she managed to break the window, the frame itself would be too small to allow either her or Lulu to crawl through it and get help. And the risk that Lisbeth would discover what she was up to before she managed to bash the spade through the glass was high.
‘Where are we, Lulu? Where is this place?’
There was no reply.
The only way out was through the door. But how?
Nora checked to see if it was possible to force the door, but the blade of the spade was too thick to be eased in between the door and the frame. She decided to open the cupboard to see if that contained anything useful.
Nora attacked the lock on the cupboard with a well-aimed kick. She felt the pain start in the ball of her foot and shoot up her knee. It was completely different from kicking a living opponent with a yielding body wrapped in padded protection. The lock didn’t budge. The wardrobe stayed where it was.
Nora tried again to rouse her fellow prisoner. ‘Lulu. Are we in the countryside? Are we in the city? Where is Lisbeth? Talk to me.’
Lulu had withdrawn into herself. She sat in silence shaking her head.
Nora tried kicking the lock again. This time she used her other leg and made sure to hit it with her heel, like Enzo had taught her. It didn’t hurt quite as much and one door seemed to give slightly.
The light in the room was growing dimmer. The grey squares of light from the windows had changed slowly from mother-of-pearl to dark grey. Lulu watched her passively.
The cupboard got another kick. One hinge eased enough to allow her to force the blade of the spade underneath it and wriggle it lose. Nora fetched the spade. Lulu sat as if she had long since left behind her body in the basement like an empty shell.
Nora tried getting through to her again; she walked right up to her and looked straight into her eyes. ‘Lulu, tell me where we are?’
‘But we’re at home,’ she said, baffled, as if she had woken up from a dream.
‘Where is home?’
‘We moved in here when the terrible thing happened. When the police took Bill. Back then the house belonged to his grandfather, but we never met the police officers because we moved in here before they came to Vanessa's house, to Mrs Hickley's. Vanessa's father had died a long time ago and his house was empty. Apart from the dogs.’
Nora continued to battle with the lock, while glancing across to Lulu. Finally she put down the spade and focused her full attention on Lulu.
‘Tell me about Bill. How did you meet him?’ she asked her in the softest voice she could muster. Her hand was throbbing, and she had a constant pain in one ankle, which she tried to ignore while Lulu took a deep breath and started talking.
‘We met him on the ferry. He said his name was Ian and that he was a photographer. He wanted to take pictures of us. Lisbeth wanted to go to London to become a supermodel. He said he knew George Michael and might be able to get us featured in a music video, like the ones they show on MTV. We fell for it hook, line and sinker. Lisbeth wanted him all to herself. She tried to get me to go back to the others. I don’t know how many times I’ve lain awake at night wishing I had. But Bill wouldn’t hear talk of it. He said we suited one another. That he wanted to take pictures of us together.’
Lulu searched her pockets and found what seemed to be her last cigarette. She carried on rummaging and was rewarded with a white, promotional lighter. Soon the tip of the cigarette lit up in a bright orange glow.
‘He took pictures of us on the deck. His camera looked really professional, and he said all the things a photographer would say. That we looked great, but that the light was bad. It was far too bright on the deck, he said ...’ she trailed off and stared at the tip of her cigarette.
‘We went with him down to his cabin. I remember thinking that nothing bad could happen as long as there were two of us.’ Her smile was bitter.
‘I can still remember the number of his cabin. 317. I don’t know why. There was a bottle of rum and some Coke. He mixed the drinks and he talked about collarbones. Saying how they brought out your facial features. That the only way he could really show your beauty was if you were willing to show your collarbone. But that it was up to us, of course, if we wanted to meet George Michael.’
‘So that's how he got you to undress?’ Nora asked.
‘Lisbeth took off her top first. So I had to follow suit. What an idiot I was! Ha!’ she said with a small, hard laugh.
‘First I covered my breasts with my hands, but then we started competing for his attention. He gave us more rum, but he must have put something in it. The last thing I remember was Lisbeth laughing.’ The cigarette had almost burned down, and Lulu's hands were shaking.
‘It doesn’t sound like it was your fault, Lulu,’ Nora said quietly.
‘But you haven’t heard the whole story,’ Lulu interrupted her. ‘When I woke up again it was dark, my body was sore and my head hurt. I felt like throwing up, but I couldn’t. I had been gagged ... I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I was naked and shivering from cold. My legs were cramping, but I couldn’t stretch them out. I was in a tiny room. At first I thought it was a coffin, and I screamed and I screamed, but hardly a sound came out. When I calmed down, I realised that I was in the boot of a moving car. We must have got off the ferry. I was terrified. I was convinced that he had killed Lisbeth, and that I would be next.’
They sat for a while, silent in the darkness, listening out for any signs that Lisbeth was on her way, then Lulu contin
ued: ‘I don’t know how long we drove. One hour. Maybe four. I lost track of time. I was sobbing, but no one heard me. Eventually I felt the car slow down. We joined a bumpy road. Then we stopped, and I heard a car door slam. I was sure I was going to die. I was so scared that I wet myself.’
Lulu's face was a frozen mask.
‘At first I couldn’t see anything. Someone was pointing a torch at my face. But then I heard them. Lisbeth and Bill. They were laughing at me. Bill called me a bitch. He still does. I didn’t understand what was so funny. They could see that I was awake, but they talked about me as if I wasn’t there. Lisbeth said that I could make myself useful. She may have saved my life.’
The hooting of an owl broke the silence of the night, and Nora jumped. Lulu was far away and oblivious of the noise.
‘We went inside the house. Bill herded us down to the basement. We didn’t meet his mum until later. I didn’t want to be there. I was crying and begging them to let me go. First Bill locked me inside a small, stinking room with no windows. They left me there for some days, I think. There was a tap, so I had water to drink. But no food. I found a sheet I could wrap around myself.’
She was trembling as if her body could still remember the cold and the terror.
‘Lisbeth came down on her own. At first I thought she had come to set me free. I pleaded with her. Talked about Bjarke, about life back at Vestergården. I said we could go to London and look for the others. Anything to make her take my side. But her voice was hard. She showed me pictures they had taken of me while I was unconscious. In one of them, Bill was having sex with me, in another Lisbeth was pushing a bottle into me. I recognised her hands in that picture, those bitten nails could only be hers. Lisbeth said that if I didn’t do as I was told, the pictures would be sent to my dad.’
A tear trickled from the corner of her eye, and she wiped it away.
‘My dad. I would do anything to prevent that. Eventually I said I would. I had no choice. Lisbeth was in the house as Bill's girlfriend, and I was their servant. His mother just accepted the situation. She never asked where we had come from or who we were. We didn’t leave the house for months. Lisbeth dyed her hair red and cut it short. They started arguing almost immediately. Sometimes, after the really big rows, Bill would come down to me in the basement at night. I let him do what he wanted. He was no worse than my dad.’