Disgrace

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Kassandra knew that question was coming. She was repulsed. Just the word ‘father’ was enough. If anyone hated Willy K. Lassen, it was her.

  ‘I don’t understand why you want to know. For all you care, he could burn in hell, couldn’t he? Or do you just want to make sure he is? Because I can assure you, you daft girl, that your father is indeed burning in hell.’

  ‘Is he ill?’ she asked. Maybe what the policeman had told Tine was true.

  ‘Ill?’ Kassandra snuffed out her cigarette and stretched her arms with fingers spread and nails jagged. ‘He’s burning in hell with cancer in all his bones. I haven’t spoken to him, but I’ve heard from others that he’s suffering terribly.’ She pursed her lips and exhaled heavily as if she were expelling Satan himself. ‘He’s suffering terribly and will be dead by Christmas, and that’s fine with me, do you hear?’

  She smoothed her dress a little and pulled her glass of port on the table towards her.

  That meant Kimmie, her little one and Kassandra were the only ones left. Two cursed K’s and the tiny guardian angel.

  Kimmie lifted her bag off the floor and put it on the table beside Kassandra’s carafe.

  ‘Tell me, were you the one who let Kristian in when I was expecting the little one here?’

  Kassandra watched as Kimmie opened the bag a bit.

  ‘Dear God! Don’t tell me you have that hideous thing in that bag!’ She could tell from Kimmie’s face that indeed she did. ‘You’re sick in the head, Kimmie. Take it away.’

  ‘Why did you let Kristian into the house? Why did you let him come to me, Kassandra? You knew I was pregnant. I’d told you I wanted to be left alone.’

  ‘Why? I didn’t care one iota about you and your bastard child. What did you expect?’

  ‘And you just sat here in the living room while he beat me up. You must have heard it. You must have known how many times he punched me. Why didn’t you call the police?’

  ‘Because I knew you deserved it. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I knew you deserved it,’ she’d said, and the voices began sounding off in Kimmie’s head.

  Punches, dark rooms, derision, accusations – all of it making a racket in Kimmie’s head, and now it had to stop.

  In one bound she leaped forward and seized Kassandra’s hairdo, forcing her head back so she could pour the rest of the port into her. The woman stared in confusion and surprise at the ceiling as the liquid drained into her windpipe and made her cough.

  So she clamped Kassandra’s mouth shut and clutched her head in a headlock as her coughing fit and attempts to regurgitate grew stronger.

  Kassandra grabbed Kimmie’s forearm and tried to shove it away, but life on the streets creates a sinewy strength that dwarfs that which an elderly woman gets from spending her days ordering people around. Her eyes grew desperate as her stomach contracted, driving gastric acid up to the mounting catastrophe about to take place somewhere between her windpipe and oesophagus.

  A few, quick, futile inhalations through her nose caused further panic in Kassandra’s body, which now flailed with all its limbs to get free. Kimmie held tight and closed off every opportunity for life-giving oxygen to get in, and Kassandra went into convulsions as her chest heaved frantically, drowning her whining.

  And then she became still.

  Kimmie allowed her to fall right where the battle had been fought, letting the smashed port glass, the coffee table that had been knocked out of place, and the regurgitation that flowed from the woman’s mouth speak for itself.

  Kassandra Lassen had always enjoyed the good things in life, and now they had taken that life from her.

  An accident, some would say. Predictable, others would add.

  Those were precisely the words one of Kristian Wolf’s old hunting mates had been quoted as saying when they found him with a severed femoral artery down at his Lolland estate. An accident, yes, but predictable. Kristian was known for being careless with his shotgun. One day something was bound to go wrong, the hunting buddy said.

  But it was no accident.

  Kristian had controlled Kimmie from the day he first laid eyes on her. He had coerced her and the others to participate in his games, and he had used her body. He had pushed her into relationships and pulled her out again. He had gotten her to lure Kåre Bruno to Bellahøj with promises of them getting back together. He had goaded her into shouting for Kristian to shove Kåre over the edge. He had raped her and beaten her, once, then a second time, so the baby didn’t survive. He’d transformed her life on multiple occasions, each time for the worse.

  After she’d been living on the streets for six weeks, she saw him on the front page of a tabloid. He was smiling, had made some terrific business deals and was about to leave for a few days of relaxation on his Lolland estate. ‘No animal on my grounds should feel safe,’ he had said. ‘My aim is excellent.’

  She stole her first suitcase, put on impeccable clothes and took the train to Søllested, where she got off and walked the last three miles in the twilight until she reached the estate.

  She spent the night in the bushes, listening as Kristian’s constant yelling inside finally forced his young wife to flee upstairs. He slept in the living room and after a few hours was more than ready to take out his personal shortcomings and general frustrations on vulnerable pheasants and any other living creature within range.

  The night had been ice-cold, but not for Kimmie. The thought of Kristian’s blood, which would soon be spilled for his sins, felt like a summer heat wave. It was life-giving and inspiring.

  Ever since boarding school she had known that Kristian’s restless soul drove him out of bed long before anyone else. A couple of hours before a hunt, he would stroll round the hunting grounds to get a feel for the terrain and to ensure the best cooperation between beaters and hunters. Several years after he’d been murdered, she could still clearly recall the moment when she finally spotted him walking through the gates of his estate and out to the fields. Fully equipped in the manner the upper classes considered fitting for a killer to look: squeaky clean, foppish, and with shiny, laced-up boots. But what did they know about real killers?

  Moving swiftly, she had followed him at a distance through the windbreaks, sometimes fearing that the noise of crackling leaves and twigs would alert him. If he saw her he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. An accident, he would call it. A misunderstanding. A false assumption that he’d seen a deer or some wild animal.

  But Kristian didn’t hear her. Not until the moment she leaped out at him and jammed the knife into his sex organs.

  He fell forward and thrashed about, eyes wide open in recognition that the face above him would be the last thing he’d see.

  She pulled his shotgun over towards her, and let him bleed to death. It didn’t take long at all.

  Then she turned him around, tucked her hands inside her sleeves and wiped off the weapon, stuck it in the corpse’s hand, aimed the barrel at his groin and fired.

  The police report concluded that it was an accidental shooting and the cause of death was given as exsanguination following the severing of a major artery. It was the most talked-about hunting accident of the year.

  Yes, it was labelled an accident, but not for Kimmie, and a rare peace settled over her.

  Unlike the other gang members. She had vanished without a trace, and they all knew that Kristian would never have died in such a way without assistance.

  Inexplicable, people called Kristian’s death.

  But Kimmie’s old friends didn’t buy it.

  It was at this point that Bjarne turned himself in.

  Maybe he knew he would be next. Maybe he’d made a pact with the others. It didn’t matter.

  She read about the case in the newspapers. About how Bjarne accepted the blame for the Rørvig murders, and thus she could now live in peace with the past.

  She called Ditlev Pram and told him that if he, Ulrik and Torsten wanted to live in peace, too, they’d have to pay her a certain amount
of money.

  The procedure was agreed upon and they kept their word.

  That was smart. At least it bought them a few years before their fates caught up with them.

  For a moment she looked at Kassandra’s body, wondering why she didn’t feel a greater sense of satisfaction.

  It’s because you’re not finished yet, said one of the voices. No one can feel happiness halfway to paradise, said another.

  The third voice was silent.

  She nodded and removed the bundle from her bag, then slowly made her way up to her rooms, explaining to the little one how she’d once played on those stairs, sliding down the banister when no one was watching. How she’d always hummed the same song over and over when Kassandra and her father couldn’t hear her.

  Small moments in a child’s life.

  ‘You can stay here while Mummy finds Teddy for you, my love,’ she said, laying the bundle carefully on the pillow.

  Her bedroom was exactly as she’d left it. It was here she’d lain for a few months, feeling her belly growing. Now this would be her final visit.

  She opened the balcony door and felt her way in the fading light towards the loose tile. There it was, right where she remembered it. The tile moved surprisingly easily, which she hadn’t been expecting at all. It was like opening a door that had just been oiled. Dark forebodings came over her, making her skin grow cold. Then, when she put her hand in the hollow space and found it empty, the cold became a warm, burning sensation.

  Her eyes feverishly scanned the tiles surrounding the loose one, but she knew it was in vain.

  Because it was the right tile, the right hollow. And the box was gone.

  Now all the nasty K’s in her life lined up before her as the voices howled inside her, laughing hysterically as they gave her a scolding. Kyle, Willy K., Kassandra, Kåre, Kristian, Klavs and all the others who’d crossed her path. Who had crossed it this time and removed the box? Was it the very ones whose throats she’d planned to stuff the evidence down? Was it the survivors, Ditlev, Ulrik and Torsten? Could they really have found the box?

  Trembling, she noticed how the voices had gathered into one. How they made the veins in the back of her hand throb visibly.

  This hadn’t happened in years. The voices concurring.

  The three men had to die. For once the voices were in total agreement.

  Exhausted, she lay down on the bed next to the little parcel, brimming with past humiliations and subjugations. Her father’s first, hard punch. The alcohol breath behind her mother’s fiery red lipstick. The sharp fingernails. The pinches. The yanking of Kimmie’s fine hair.

  After they’d given her a thrashing she would sit in the corner, her shaking hands hugging little Teddy. It was someone she could talk to and be consoled by. Small as he was, Teddy spoke with authority. ‘Take it easy, Kimmie,’ the stuffed animal had said. ‘They’re just evil people. They will disappear one day. Suddenly they’ll be gone.’

  When she grew, the tone changed. Now the teddy bear would say that she should never, ever let anyone hit her. If anyone was going to do the hitting, it should be her. She mustn’t tolerate being mistreated.

  And now Teddy was gone. The only thing in her life that called forth small glimpses of happy, childhood moments.

  She turned to the bundle, stroked it softly and, overcome with remorse at not being able to keep her promise, said: ‘You can’t have your teddy bear now, little angel. I’m so sorry.’

  34

  As usual, Ulrik was the one who was best informed of the latest news, but then he hadn’t spent the weekend practising with his crossbow, as Ditlev had. That was the difference between them, and always had been. Ulrik, when possible, preferred to take a more laid-back approach to life.

  When his mobile rang, Ditlev stood facing the Sound, shooting series of bolts at a target. At first he’d shot some right past the target and into the water, but in the last two days hardly any had been launched without hitting their mark. It was Monday and he’d just amused himself by arranging five bolts in the shape of a cross in the target’s centre when Ulrik’s panicked voice put an end to his fun.

  ‘Kimmie killed Aalbæk,’ he said. ‘I heard about it on the news, and I just know it was her.’

  For a split second this information occupied Ditlev’s entire being. It felt like a premonition of death.

  He listened intently to Ulrik’s short and rather disjointed account of Aalbæk’s fatal fall and the details surrounding his death.

  As far as Ulrik could glean from the media’s interpretation of the vague police reports, it was impossible to definitively call it a suicide. Which meant it was equally impossible to rule out murder.

  It was very sobering news.

  ‘The three of us have to meet, do you hear?’ Ulrik whispered, as if Kimmie had already scented him out. ‘If we don’t stick together she’ll pick us off one by one.’

  Ditlev looked at the crossbow dangling from the strap around his wrist. Ulrik was right. From now on things would have to change.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘For now, we’ll do as we’ve planned. We’ll meet for the hunt early tomorrow morning at Torsten’s, and afterwards we’ll talk things over. Remember, this is only the second time in over ten years that she’s struck. We still have time, Ulrik. That’s my gut feeling.’

  He gazed out across the water, his eyes slipping out of focus. There was no ignoring it now. It was either her or them.

  ‘Listen, Ulrik,’ Ditlev said. ‘I’m phoning Torsten to let him know. In the meantime, call around and find out what you can. Call Kimmie’s stepmother, for example, and tell her what’s going on, OK? Ask people to let you know if they hear anything. Anything at all.’

  ‘And Ulrik,’ he said before they hung up. ‘Stay indoors as much as possible until we see each other, OK?’

  He didn’t even manage to put his mobile back in his pocket before it rang again.

  ‘It’s Herbert,’ said the voice without inflection.

  Ditlev’s older brother never used to call. Back when the police investigated the murders in Rørvig, Herbert saw through his kid brother at first glance, but he never said anything. Never voiced his suspicion, nor did he get involved. But it didn’t foster any love between them. Not that there had been any in the first place. Feelings didn’t suit the Pram family’s style.

  And yet Herbert had been there when it counted. Probably because his relentless fear of scandal trumped all else. The fear that everything he stood for would be sullied had suddenly become too overwhelming.

  That was why Herbert had been the perfect tool when Ditlev was considering how to get Department Q’s investigation put on standby.

  And that’s why Herbert was calling now.

  ‘I’m calling to tell you that Department Q’s investigation is in full swing again. I can’t give you any more details because my contact at police headquarters has withdrawn his antennae, but in any case Carl Mørck, the department head, now knows I tried to influence his work. I’m sorry, Ditlev. Keep a low profile.’

  Now Ditlev, too, felt the panic rising.

  He caught Torsten Florin just as the fashion mogul was backing out of his parking spot at Brand Nation. He’d just heard the news about Aalbæk and, like Ditlev and Ulrik, thought it must be Kimmie’s doing. But he hadn’t heard that Department Q and Carl Mørck were operational again.

  ‘Fuck! It keeps getting worse and worse,’ the irritated voice on the other end of the line shouted.

  ‘Do you want to cancel the hunt?’ Ditlev asked.

  The long silence spoke its own language.

  ‘There’s no point. The fox is going to die on its own anway,’ Torsten finally said. Ditlev could just imagine. Torsten had no doubt spent the entire weekend relishing the demented fox’s torments. ‘You should have seen it this morning,’ he said. ‘Completely insane. But let me think about it a moment.’

  Ditlev knew Torsten. At this moment he was fighting an inner battle between his murderous impulses and t
he basic reasonableness with which he’d managed his professional life and growing empire since the age of twenty. In a moment he would be whispering a quiet prayer. That was another side of him. If he couldn’t solve the problem himself, there was always some god or other he could call upon.

  Ditlev put his mobile’s headphones on, tensed the crossbow’s string and pulled a new bolt from the quiver. Then he loaded the weapon and aimed at one of the wharf piles that still remained from the old pier. The bird had just landed and was busy cleaning the sea fog from its feathers. Ditlev measured the distance and the wind and released the bolt ever so gently – as if it were a baby’s cheek he was stroking with his finger.

  The bird never saw it coming. Pierced by the arrow, it simply lurched backwards into the water and floated there as Torsten prayed almost soundlessly on the other end of the line.

  It was this amazing shot that led Ditlev to his decision.

  ‘We’ll do it, Torsten,’ he said. ‘Get all the Somalis together tonight and instruct them to keep a watchful eye out for Kimmie from now on. Put them on guard, Torsten. Show them a photo of her. Promise them a huge bonus if they see anything.’

  ‘OK,’ Torsten said after a moment’s consideration. ‘What about the rest of the hunting party? We can’t have Krum and all those dunces running around.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter who’s with us. If she appears in the vicinity, we just need witnesses when the bolts go through her.’

  Ditlev patted his crossbow and looked out at the small white blob that was slowly being pulled down into the waves.

  ‘Yes,’ he went on softly, ‘Kimmie’s more than welcome to show up. Don’t you agree, Torsten?’

  He couldn’t hear the response over his secretary’s shouting from Caracas’s terrace. As far as Ditlev could see at that distance, she was waving her hands and raising them to her ears.

  ‘I think there’s someone trying to get hold of me, Torsten. I’m hanging up now. See you early tomorrow morning, OK? Take care.’

  They hung up at the same time, and a second later his mobile rang again.