A Conspiracy of Faith

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Carl swallowed. This was enough to turn any man’s saliva to sandpaper. Vigga’s mother! A completely deranged individual who hadn’t even fathomed that Carl and Vigga were married until four years after the event. A woman who lived life in the firm conviction that God had created the world entirely for her own amusement.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Carl, but she’s not nearly as bad as she used to be. Not since her Alzheimer’s set in.”

  Carl took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I’ve time once a week, Vigga,” he ventured, noting the immediate pursing of her lips. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  She extended a hand. It was odd, but they always seemed to be shaking hands on something that put him in shackles yet imposed on her only a bare minimum of inconvenience.

  He parked the car in a side road by Utterslev Mose and felt very alone. There was life in his house, but it wasn’t his. At work, he was mostly in a dream. He had no interests and didn’t play any sport. He hated being with people he didn’t know and wasn’t thirsty enough to drown his sorrows in a local drinking establishment.

  And now some bloke in a turban, straight out of the starting blocks, had swept his ex off her feet quicker than you could find Internet porn.

  His so-called partner at work wasn’t living at the address he had given, so hanging out with him was out of the question, too.

  No wonder he was feeling downhearted.

  He breathed in slowly, drawing in the marshy air, and felt goose bumps appear on his arms once more as sweat ran from all his glands. Was he about to hit bottom again? Twice in less than twenty-four hours?

  Was he ill?

  He picked up his mobile from the passenger seat and stared at the number he selected. Mona Ibsen, the display read. It had to be worth a go.

  He sat there for twenty minutes, feeling the pounding of his heart increase, before eventually pressing the number and praying that counselors were willing to work on a Sunday evening.

  “Hi, Mona,” he said softly when he heard her voice at the other end. “It’s Carl Mørck. I’m…” He was about to say that he wasn’t feeling well. That he needed to talk. But he never got that far.

  “Carl Mørck!” she exclaimed, though without sounding particularly pleased. “I’ve been waiting for you to call ever since I got home. It’s about time.”

  Sitting on her sofa in a living room so fragrant with the scent of woman reminded him of that time behind some wooden pavilions on a school outing to Tolne Bakker with the hand of a tall and slender girl down the front of his trousers. It was all so madly exciting and off-limits, and yet he hadn’t a clue what to do.

  Mona wasn’t just your average girl next door, so much was plain from the way his body was reacting. Hearing her moving around in the kitchen, he felt a treacherous pounding in the region of his breast pocket. Unpleasant as hell. It would be just his luck to pass out now.

  They had exchanged pleasantries and broached his latest attack. They had enjoyed a Campari and soda and then a couple more, allowing themselves to be carried along by the moment. They had talked about her spell in Africa and had come very close to kissing.

  Maybe it was the thought of what ought to happen now that was making the panic kick in.

  She returned with some little triangles of bread, her stab at a midnight snack, but who cared, now that they were alone and her blouse clung so magnificently to the curves of her body?

  Come on, Carl, he told himself. If a bloke called Gherkin with a braided beard can do it, you can, too.

  22

  He had shut his wife away in a prison, trapped under heavy boxes, and there she could stay until it was over. She knew too much.

  He had heard her scraping against the floor upstairs for a couple of hours, and later, when he came home with Benjamin, he heard her muffled groans.

  Only now, after he had packed the boy’s things into the car, was she silent.

  He inserted a CD of children’s songs in the car stereo and smiled at his son in the rearview mirror. An hour on the road and the boy would be asleep. A trip across Sjælland always did the trick.

  His sister sounded sleepy on the phone but livened up no end when he told her how much he would give them for looking after Benjamin.

  “You heard right,” he said. “Three thousand kroner a week. I’ll come by once in a while and make sure you’re doing it properly.”

  “We’ll want a month in advance,” she said.

  “OK.”

  “As well as the usual on top.”

  He nodded to himself. It was a predictable demand. “Same as usual, no need to worry.”

  “How long will your wife be in the hospital?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes. She’s very ill. It might take time.”

  No words of sympathy or regret were forthcoming.

  Eva wasn’t like that.

  “Go to your father,” his mother ordered him sharply. Her hair was tousled and her dress twisted up around her midriff. So his father had been rough with her again.

  “What for?” he asked. “I’m supposed to finish reading Corinthians for the prayer meeting tomorrow. He told me to himself.”

  With childlike naivete, he had believed his mother would save him. That she would intervene, extricate him from his father’s suffocating grip, and get him off the hook, just this once. His Chaplin impersonation was a game he liked to play. It was of no harm to anyone. Jesus must have played, too, when he was a child. They knew that.

  “Get in there, now!” His mother’s lips tightened, and she took him by the scruff of the neck. It was the same grasp that had marched him off so many times before to beatings and humiliation.

  “I’ll tell him you look at the neighbor when he takes his shirt off in the field,” he said.

  She gave a start. They both knew it wasn’t true. That even the slightest glimpse toward liberty and a new life was a direct pathway to the inferno. They were reminded of it in church, in the prayers at table, and in each and every word read from the black volume residing close at hand in his father’s pocket. In every glance exchanged between man and woman, Satan lurked. Satan was in every smile and in every touch. That was what the book said.

  No, it wasn’t true that his mother had eyes for the neighbor, but his father had never been known to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

  And then his mother said the words that divided them forever.

  “You spawn of the Devil,” she spat, cold as ice. “May Satan drag you down to where you belong. May the inferno sear through your skin and deliver you into pain from this day forth.” She nodded emphatically. “Yes, you may well be frightened, but Satan has already taken you. You are no longer ours to care about.”

  She flung open the door and thrust him into the sherry fumes of his father’s study.

  “Come here,” his father commanded, winding the belt around his hand.

  The curtains were drawn, allowing only a sliver of light into the room. Behind the desk stood Eva, a pillar of salt in her white dress. Apparently, he had not beaten her, for his sleeves were still rolled down, and her sobs were restrained.

  “Still playing Chaplin, are we?” his father barked.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eva avert her gaze.

  This would be violent.

  “Here are Benjamin’s documents. Best they’re with you, in case he falls ill.”

  He handed his brother-in-law the boy’s various certificates.

  “Is that likely?” his sister asked anxiously.

  “No, of course not. Benjamin’s a healthy boy.”

  He saw it already in his brother-in-law’s eyes. Villy wanted more money.

  “A boy Benjamin’s age eats a lot,” he said. “That’ll cost us a thousand a month on its own.” If he didn’t believe him, they could look it up on the Internet.

  Villy rubbed his hands together like Ebenezer Scrooge. Five thousand extra, once and for all, was what they seemed to be asking.

/>   But they wouldn’t be getting a penny more. Most likely it would be passed on to some preacher of the kind who couldn’t care less who was footing the bill or why.

  “If you and Eva should cause me any difficulties, our arrangement may have to be reconsidered. Are you with me?” he said, and left it at that.

  The brother-in-law agreed reluctantly, but his sister was already far away, her hands, unused to children, investigating the boy’s soft skin.

  “What color is his hair now?” she asked, her blind eyes turned upward in delight.

  “The same as mine when I was a boy, if you remember,” he said and noted how the lusterless eyes then dropped.

  “And spare Benjamin the bloody prayers, understand?” he said finally, before handing them the money.

  He saw them nod but didn’t care for their silence.

  The ransom would be paid in twenty-four hours. One million kroner in used notes. He was in no doubt.

  Now he would drive up to the boathouse and make sure the kids were in a decent state. Tomorrow, when the payoff had been made, he would go there again and kill the girl. The boy would be chloroformed and dumped in a field near Frederiks on the Monday night.

  He would give Samuel instructions as to what to say to his father and mother, so they would know what they had to contend with. He was to say that his sister’s killer had his informants and would always know where the family were and what they were doing. That they had enough children for him to strike at them again, so they should never, ever feel safe. If he had the slightest suspicion that they had informed anyone of what had happened, it would cost them another child. This was what Samuel was to tell them. It was a threat with no expiration date. Moreover, they were to know that he operated only under an assumed identity. The man they thought they knew did not exist. He would appear again only in a new guise.

  It had worked every time. The family had their faith to fall back on and would immerse themselves in it. The dead child would be mourned and the living would be shielded. The story of Job’s faith under trial was their anchor.

  And all around them, in the circles in which they moved, their explanation of the child’s disappearance would be that she had been ostracized. In this case, it would be easy to believe. Magdalena stuck out, she shone, and in their community this was no advantage. Her parents would say that she had been sent away to family. And the community would concern itself no more with the issue. He would be safe.

  He smiled to himself.

  Soon there would be one fewer of those who put God before man to pollute the world.

  The dissolution of the pastor’s family occurred one day in winter, just weeks after his fifteenth birthday. In the months before, he had become aware that his body was changing, oddly and inexplicably. Sinful thoughts of the kind the community warned against had begun to pursue him. He saw a woman bend forward in a tight skirt, and that same evening he experienced his first, sudden ejaculation with her image on his retina.

  He felt the sweat seeping from his armpits, and his voice trembled and lurched in all directions. The muscles of his neck became taut, and hair sprouted everywhere, dark and crinkly.

  He felt like a molehill on a flat field.

  When he made an effort, he could vaguely see himself in the boys of the congregation who had undergone the same transformation before him, but he had no idea what it was all about. The subject was never ever broached in the house his father referred to as “the home of God.”

  For three years, his mother and father had addressed him only when it could not be avoided. They never saw the efforts he made, never noticed him trying hard to make amends at prayer meetings. To them, he was Satan’s image in the name of Chaplin. Nothing else. And whatever he might say or do could make no difference.

  The congregation said he was strange and possessed, and they gathered in prayer so that no other child might become like him.

  Only Eva stuck with him, and even she occasionally deserted him, and under pressure from their father would declare solemnly that he had spoken ill of his parents and wished not to obey them and heed the word of God.

  Subsequently, his father had made it his second mission in life to break him down. Commands with no obvious point. A daily diet of ridicule and chastisement, with beatings and psychological terror for dessert.

  To begin with, he had been able to seek comfort from one or two members of the congregation, but soon they too turned their backs on him. In such communities, the wrath of God towers tall above human compassion, and in its shadow the God-fearing individual looks only to the Lord and takes care of himself.

  They chose sides and shied away. Eventually, all he could do was turn the other cheek.

  Exactly as the Bible said.

  And in this shadowy home in which nothing could breathe, the relationship between him and Eva slowly withered. How many times had she said she was sorry, and how many times had he turned a deaf ear?

  Eventually, he no longer had even his sister, and on this day in winter everything broke.

  “You sound like a squealing pig with that voice,” his father told him as they sat down at the table in the kitchen. “You look like one, too. A swine. Look at yourself. See how repulsive and fat you are. Use that ugly snout to sniff in your foul odor. Go and wash, you disgusting creature!”

  Such was the baseness, such were the snide commands, one after another. Matters of little consequence, like this order to wash his hands before dinner, accumulated, until finally he felt he could no longer cope. And when his father’s outburst was over, he would no doubt have him scrubbing the walls of his room so that his smell might be purged.

  So why not stand up to him?

  “I suppose you want me to scrub my room with detergent before you’re satisfied and finished with all your ridiculous orders? Well, you can do it yourself, you old fart,” he spat.

  And then his father began to perspire, and his mother to protest. Who was he to speak to his father like that?

  His mother would try to drive him into a corner. He knew her. She would tell him to vanish from their lives, and when eventually he was exhausted by all their unreasonableness, he would slam the door behind him and stay away half the night. These were her tactics, and they had worked so often when things came to a head. But tonight they would fail.

  He sensed his new body tighten, felt the blood pump in his veins, his muscles warming. If the clenched fist of his father should come too close, it would be met in kind.

  “Leave me alone, you monster,” he warned. “I hate your guts. I hope you die, you bastard. Stay away from me.”

  Seeing such a pious individual as their father disintegrate into a storm of invective only Satan could have delivered was too much for Eva. The retiring little girl who hid behind her apron and absorbed herself in her daily chores now leaped forward and pounded her fists against her brother’s chest.

  He would not be allowed to ruin their lives more than he had done already, she screamed at her brother as their mother intervened to pull them apart, their father suddenly darting to produce two bottles from the cupboard under the kitchen sink.

  “Get thee to thy room, Chaplin-devil, and scour thy walls with lye!” he hissed, his face flushed with rage. “And if you don’t, then mark my words I’ll make sure you can’t get out of bed for a week, do you understand me?”

  And then his father spat in his face, pressing one of the bottles into his hand before standing back with a sneer to watch his saliva running down the boy’s cheek.

  His son unscrewed the lid of the bottle and began slowly to pour its corrosive contents onto the kitchen floor.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy?” his father bellowed, snatching the bottle from his hand. And an arc of caustic soda sloshed into the air and splashed to the floor.

  His father’s roar was deep and resonant. But it was nothing compared to the scream that came from Eva.

  Her entire body shook, her hands flapping in front of her face as though
she didn’t dare to touch. In the few seconds that passed, the caustic soda ate into her eyes and removed her sight forever.

  And as the room filled with their mother’s cries and Eva’s screams, and his own horror at what he had done, his father stood and stared at his hands as they blistered from the alkali, his face changing from red to blue.

  Then suddenly his eyes widened and he clutched at his chest, doubling up and staggering forward, gasping for breath, lips twisted in surprise and disbelief. And when finally he fell to the floor, the life they had known was over.

  “Lord Jesus Christ, Almighty Father, I rest in Thy hand,” he rattled with the last of his breath, and then he was gone. Arms folded in a cross on his chest, a faint smile on his face.

  He stood for a moment and stared at his father’s frozen death mask while his mother begged for God’s mercy and Eva howled.

  The thirst for vengeance that had kept him going for so many months had lost its source of nourishment. His father was dead from a heart attack with a smile on his face and the word of God on his lips.

  It wasn’t what he had envisaged.

  Five hours later, the family was split apart. Eva and his mother were in the hospital in Odense, and he was in a boys’ home. The congregation had taken care of matters, and this was his reward for a life spent in the shadow of the Lord.

  Now all he had to do was to pay them back.

  23

  It was a gorgeous evening. So still and dark.

  Out on the fjord, the lights of a couple of sailing boats winked, and in the meadow south of the house, the grass whispered of spring. Soon the cattle would be out to pasture and summer would be near.

  This was Vibegården at its best.

  He loved the place. In time, he would render the redbrick walls, demolish the boathouse to get a clear view of the fjord.