Fatal Crossing

by Lone Theils

  Lulu shook her head and carried on with her story: ‘I cried a lot at the start. Lisbeth promised me that I’d be allowed to leave after six months. I just had to do them one small favour, then they would give me the negatives of the pictures and let me go. Eventually I said I’d do it though I knew it was wrong.’

  ‘What did you have to do, Lulu?’

  ‘I don’t remember her name. I think it might have been ... Angela ... something like that. We found her on Brighton Pier. Bill spotted her,’ Lulu said, and sat still for a while.

  ‘And what happened?’ Nora said at length.

  Lulu heaved a deep sigh. ‘Angela — or whatever her name was — came out from a fortune teller's tent in floods of tears. She had just had a Tarot reading. We followed her. She was heading into town, and me and Bill walked up to her together. He thought that if there was another woman there, the girl wouldn’t worry about coming with him. He was right. We talked her into going with us to Bill's studio to have her photo taken. I told her she was as pretty as Bill said she was. Of course she came with us. Young women are easily taken in by flattery, and I was there to reassure her that she was perfectly safe. Lisbeth was waiting in the studio. I did know that something bad was going to happen to her. After all, it had happened to me, but I thought it was someone else's turn. I wanted out. I’d no idea that they would ... that they would...’

  ‘Would do what?’ Nora said.

  ‘They gave her a glass of water with something in it. I don’t know what. The girl had dropped her guard because Lisbeth and I were there. It never crossed her mind that something bad could happen to her.’

  ‘But you knew?’

  ‘I thought they might take pictures of her, like they had done with me. I couldn’t stop them. They were going to do it anyway, with or without my help, and I thought rather her than me. I hoped that after I’d helped them, they would let me go. And I thought, well, at least she was drugged.’

  Nora tried running through the names of the many missing girls in her mind, but couldn’t recall an Angela.

  ‘What happened next?’

  Lulu took a deep breath and let it out in small puffs.

  ‘What happened next?’ Nora insisted.

  ‘She passed out before she had managed to pose for even one picture. They tied her to a chair. And then they did it.’

  Silence.

  ‘What did they do, Lulu?’ Nora asked, trying to make her voice as neutral as possible.

  ‘They cut out her tongue! With a scalpel. They opened her mouth and Bill cut away at it, only the last bit wouldn’t come out, so he started pulling it. He ripped the tongue out of her mouth and stuffed it into his own mouth. I was screaming and screaming. I tried to run, but Lisbeth grabbed me. Forced me to watch. Bill was laughing. I think that Lisbeth was scared too, but she still held me back. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t get out.’

  She repeated this sentence like a dismissal prayer, which ended in a dry sob.

  ‘There was so much blood. Much more than you’d think. It just kept pouring out. She died in the studio. I think she bled out. When she had stopped moving, Bill gouged out her eyes. I was told to clean up. Bill and Lisbeth took the girl and they were gone for hours. There was linoleum on the floor. I washed it over and over with bleach. I cried as I knelt on the floor. I was so scared. Finally Lisbeth came back to get me. She took away all the cleaning cloths, and when we got home, we burned them on a bonfire in the garden. Afterwards I asked what they’d done with the girl. But Lisbeth didn’t want to talk about it. It was weeks before Bill started coming down to the basement again.’

  ‘Why didn’t you run away?’ Nora said.

  ‘Lisbeth said I was an accessory to murder. And where would I have gone? She said she would make it look as if I had done it. As if it was all my fault. That people would have seen me talking to the girl on Brighton Pier. I had cleaned up after the killing and my fingerprints would be everywhere. So I stayed and there were more girls. Lots more.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I don’t know. Lots.’

  ‘More than ten? Twenty?’

  Silence descended upon them again. Lulu stared at the floor.

  ‘What did they do with them — the girls?’

  ‘Bill always kept their tongues. But the rest of them ...’ she glanced nervously at Nora.

  ‘The rest of them ... was cut up and fed to the dogs.’

  Nora could feel herself break out in a cold sweat. ‘The dogs?’

  ‘Yes. In little bits, so as not to leave any evidence. Vanessa's hunting dogs. They’ll eat anything. We have a kennel here. There are always at least ten hungry dogs.’

  Nora's disgust must have been plain to see because Lulu looked straight at her and said: ‘You’ll end up like the others. Lisbeth helps Bill. When you least expect it, she’ll cut out your tongue and give it to Bill. She always brings him a tongue when she visits him in prison. She puts it in a sandwich. They check her packed lunch, but they never lift up the bread to see what's underneath.’

  Lulu started giggling like a little girl.

  ‘Once, when Lisbeth was visiting Bill, she told me they had asked her what was in the sandwich. And she said tongue.’

  Nora shook her head.

  ‘Lulu, will you help me? Do you want to leave this place?’

  ‘And go where?’

  Nora abandoned her efforts and returned to the cupboard. She bashed the hinge with renewed strength. Whacked the spade against the doors over and over, and was eventually rewarded with the sound of splintering wood when one door gave up holding on to the hinge. She pulled at the remaining wood and felt it give.

  When the cupboard turned out to be nearly empty, she wanted to burst into tears. No toolbox. Nothing that could serve as a weapon. Only a pile of old cloths and two bottles of cleaning fluid. Nora picked one of them up. Bleach. The other was a small, blue plastic bottle. White spirit. An idea began to take shape.

  Lulu sat passively with her hands in her lap.

  ‘Give me your lighter,’ Nora ordered her.

  Lulu looked up lethargically.

  ‘Give me your lighter.’

  Lulu fumbled in her pocket, found the lighter and handed it to Nora indifferently.

  Nora shook the bottle of white spirit. There was just about enough. Now it was a question of timing.

  ‘Lulu. Listen. Where do you think Lisbeth is? Is she still upstairs?’

  Lulu shrugged.

  Nora gritted her teeth and was sorely tempted to shake her. The girl who had disappeared from the England ferry was long gone. The girl whose gentle nature Bjarke still remembered was nothing but an empty shell.

  She cut the cloths into strips with the scissors. Her hands still hurt when she used the scissors. Then she soaked the strips in white spirit and stuffed them into the bottle. A sharp smell hit her nostrils. It reminded her of winter mornings when she would potter down to the living room in Bagsvӕrd and light a fire in the wood burner.

  Then she picked up the spade again, aimed it at one of the two small windows and hit it hard. A crack appeared in the glass. It spread and turned into a star until finally she managed to whack a hole for fresh air.

  Nora could hear hysterical dog-barking very close and feel cold air whistling in. She took a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs: ‘Lisbeth! Come down here right now or I’ll burn down the house!’

  No response.

  ‘Let me out or we’ll burn it! The fire brigade will turn up! How are you going to explain to them that you’ve got me locked up in your basement?!’

  Suddenly she noticed that the barking had changed. As if someone was trying to settle the dogs. She took out the lighter and walked closer to the door with her home-made Molotov cocktail at the ready.

  When she heard footsteps above, she flicked the lighter. At that very moment she saw Lulu get up.

  ‘Stop! You can’t —’ Lulu called out.

  The door opened.

 
; Nora lit the flame and as soon as it had caught, she hurled the bottle at Lisbeth. She heard it smash into the wall and saw the orange flare out of the corner of her eye as she pushed Lisbeth aside and raced up the steps. She was free at last and found herself in a back garden enclosed by a high wall. A big, dark grey house was blocking her path to freedom.

  The barking grew louder and she saw the dogs. Her knees almost buckled when one snarling cur got hold of her trouser leg. She shook it off with much difficulty and ran towards the house. She could hear Lisbeth shouting behind her.

  Nora twisted her ankle as she stumbled up the steps to the back door. She hobbled the last stretch and managed to push open the door while she kicked out at the two barking dogs still at her heels.

  Then she slammed shut the door behind her and locked it.

  She walked through a small hallway and found herself in a filthy kitchen. The sink was full of dirty plates, the tap was dripping, and the curtains were closed. She went back out into the hall and onwards into the house, looking for a telephone, and found a dining room with cumbersome, dark furniture. From there Nora could see into a crammed living room, which lay in twilight. She limped on her sore ankle and looked over her shoulder. She could hear the dogs scratching the back door and barking in frustration at their prey that had got away.

  She quickly scanned the living room. On the small side table by the window was an old-fashioned telephone with a dial. Nora said a silent prayer as she tottered towards it.

  ‘Who are you? And where's Liz?’

  The voice was simultaneously fragile and titanium hard. Nora jumped and tried to work out where it had come from.

  In the remotest corner of the darkness, slumped in front of a flickering TV with the sound turned down, an old lady was peering at her through a pair of spectacles.

  The woman raised her voice. ‘Who are you and what are you doing in my house?’

  Nora tried to think of an answer while making her way to the small table with the telephone, desperate to buy time.

  ‘Mrs Hickley...I’m—’

  She got no further before the woman started screaming: ‘Help! Help! Thief!’

  Nora picked up the handset and dialled 112. There was no ring tone. She shook the handset and followed the cable to see if the telephone was even plugged in.

  She sensed the cold air before she saw the door move. Then she looked up and right into a pair of black eyes watching her under a dark fringe.

  ‘I warned you, bitch!’ Bill Hix said.

  35

  Slowly he walked up to her with an icy smile on his lips. In one hand he held a kitchen knife that had been sharpened so many times the blade looked stiletto thin.

  Nora didn’t dare take her eyes off him.

  ‘Bill, what's going on? Why are you here? Who's that girl? Where is Liz?’ Mrs Hickley's confused chatter, however, wasn’t rewarded with as much as a single glance from Hix.

  Nora scanned the room frantically for a weapon. Anything that would give her a small advantage. Hix smiled indulgently when he saw her eyes dart around the living room.

  ‘Oh, Nora, Nora, Nora,’ he chanted. ‘You know that the more you resist, the more fun it’ll be for me. What a good girl you are,’ he said, and pulled the corners of his mouth into a grim imitation of a smile.

  There was scrambling at the back door that Nora had locked. Then she heard the jingling of keys and in the distance the hysterical barking of the dogs. The back door was opened, and soon afterwards a furious Lisbeth appeared in the living room. She looked first at Nora, before she discovered Hix.

  ‘Bill! You came!’ she cried out.

  Hix didn’t turn around to look at her. ‘You fucking well stay out of this. She's mine,’ he merely snarled.

  Lisbeth lingered in the doorway, not knowing what to do with herself. Behind her the dogs were going crazy.

  ‘I said get out of here!’ Hix screamed and glared viciously at Lisbeth.

  In that split second Nora spotted her chance. With lightning speed she lunged forwards and grabbed a brass candlestick from the coffee table, and in an almost fluid movement, as hard as she could, she hit Hix across the hand holding the knife.

  Enzo had drilled it into her: For the best possible odds, always disarm your enemy. Faced with an unarmed Hix now distracted by a screaming Lisbeth in the doorway and a confused old woman at the other end of the room, she had a chance.

  He dropped the knife, bellowed in agony and instinctively clutched his injured hand. At that moment Nora delivered him a left hook, which sent him straight into a large vase and onwards into a radiator.

  The pain, which reached her knuckles two seconds later, was so fierce that she almost closed her eyes, but she didn’t give into it. She raced to the hallway only to find Lisbeth blocking the front door.

  Nora ran back to the kitchen, slamming the kitchen door behind her and wedging a chair under the handle, while she tried getting a grip on the situation. She tore open the top drawer and found a huge carving fork with long, sharp tines. The knife block on the table was empty, and Nora guessed that the only sharp knife in the house was currently held firmly in Hix's other, uninjured hand.

  She could hear him roar out in the passage. ‘You fucking bitch! Just you wait. I’ll get you!’

  Then he was outside the flimsy woodchip door where only a kitchen chair was keeping him out. Her hand was throbbing with pain and the bruising had already caused her knuckles to swell to double size.

  She watched the door give. Every time Hix kicked it, it would budge another few millimetres. Nora searched frantically under the sink for a weapon. She found a couple of old plastic bottles with crumbling labels, which looked like they had been there for years. She poured half the contents on to a tea towel she found next to the cooker, and the rest out into a small pool in front of the door. It gave off a strong, chemical smell. Hix had stopped shouting and was working methodically on the door. She could hear his breathing and see the old kitchen chair quiver under the pressure.

  She fumbled in her pocket for Lulu's lighter, but realised that she must have lost it when she fled the basement. Panic whizzed around her body like a chainsaw nearing her neural paths.

  Then suddenly, next to the radio on a shelf above the kitchen table, she spotted a box of matches. She opened it. Three left. The first match snapped in her hands.

  She almost squealed out of sheer terror. She stuck the carving fork into the waistband of her trousers, climbed up on to the kitchen table, ready to make her escape through the window at the last minute, while she clutched the box of matches.

  The window refused to budge. It hadn’t been opened for years, and decades of moss and ivy had grown across it.

  She was out of time. The door hinges were giving up. The angle of the window made it impossible for her to open it, so she lay down on her side on the kitchen table and tried with one last, desperate kick to hit one corner of the window frame. It opened slightly with a wounded squeak. She pushed it and finally managed to open the window. She climbed up on to the windowsill and swung her legs over it as she whispered another silent prayer and struck the second last match. It flared up, and Nora threw it towards the pool by the door just as the chair under the handle gave up with a final last snap, and she saw Hix's black eyes stare into the room.

  Then she landed on the grass. She had time to smell the stench of burnt hair, before one dog with bared teeth loomed over her.

  Three seconds later dog number two was at her other side in an attack position, awaiting orders from its master, who had now appeared.

  Lisbeth had red patches on her face where she had been burned during Nora's escape from the basement. They made her look even more furious.

  ‘Sit!’ she ordered the dogs, which were following Nora's slightest movement with bloodshot eyes.

  Flames and black smoke poured out of the kitchen window. Lisbeth stared up at it. Then back at Nora. Then back at the window.

  ‘If you move even an inch, they’ll rip you to
pieces,’ Lisbeth said, then she turned and ran back inside the house.

  Little by little Nora moved herself up into a sitting position. The two hounds gave her a bloodthirsty look and their snarling terrified her. They were so close she could see saliva drip from their needle-sharp teeth, but they obeyed their orders.

  Calmly and without any sudden movements, she eased her uninjured hand behind her back in order to pull out the carving fork.

  ‘There, there, good boy,’ she said in her softest voice. The bigger of the two dogs tilted its head and looked confused. ‘Come here, boy,’ she tempted it, as she moved closer towards it.

  Its growl was deep and ominous. As if to make it quite clear that it was in no way a lapdog, it snapped at her with an angry bark. Nora snatched back her hand. Time for plan B. And be quick about it. It wouldn’t be long before Lisbeth — or Hix — came back for her.

  She got up while holding the carving fork in front of her like a shield. The bigger dog moved closer, ready to attack, while its smaller fellow yakked hysterically.

  Then it went straight for Nora's ankles and tried closing its jaws around her leg, before she managed to pull back her foot and give that bloody dog the worst upper cut it had ever had.

  It keeled over on the grass like a tree stump with all four legs in the air. This seemed to blindside its four-legged friend enough to temporarily forget that their mission was to guard and growl at Nora. It whined as it ran to its unconscious friend and sniffed its face anxiously. It looked bewildered and a tad taken aback at Nora. However, she didn’t have time for lengthy explanations. She raced around to the front of the house.

  Smoke was pouring out of the front door, and it crossed Nora's mind that it would slow Hix down if he decided to save his ageing mother from the flames.

  She hoped that by now someone would have seen the smoke and called the fire brigade. Police cars would arrive along with the fire engines. However, realistically, the nearest fire station was likely to be miles away and staffed by volunteers, who would first have to be contacted. Before help arrived, that psycho Hix would have plenty of time to kill and bury a Danish journalist. Nora felt no urge to hang around to help him realise that particular ambition.