Текст книги "Disgrace"

Автор книги: Jussi Adler-Olsen

Соавторы: Jussi Adler-Olsen
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Carl sat in silence. A few years ago, a rape at the school had nearly destroyed its reputation. What damage might this case cause?

Jesus Christ. Lars Bjørn had been a student at the school. If Bjørn was an active player in all this, was it as the school’s lackey and defender? Or what? Once a boarding-school pupil, always a boarding-school pupil. That’s what people said.

He nodded slowly. Of course. It was that simple.

‘OK, Hardy,’ he said, drumming on the sheets. ‘You’re simply a genius. But who would ever doubt that?’ He stroked his old colleague’s hair. It was damp and lifeless to the touch.

‘You’re not angry with me, Carl?’ Hardy said behind his mask.

‘Why would you say that?’

‘You know why. The nail-gun case. What I told the psychologist.’

‘Hardy, for God’s sake. When you get better, we’ll solve the case together, OK? You’re lying here getting strange ideas. I understand that, Hardy.’

‘Not strange, Carl. There was something. And there was something about Anker. I’m more and more certain of that.’

‘We’ll solve that together when the time is right. How does that sound, Hardy?’

He lay silently for some time, letting the respirator do its work, and Carl couldn’t do anything but follow Hardy’s heaving chest.

‘Would you do me a favour?’ Hardy said, interrupting the monotony.

Carl pulled back in his seat. It was precisely this moment he feared whenever he visited Hardy. This eternal wish that Carl would help him die. Euthanasia, to use a classy term. Mercy killing, to use another. They were both terrible.

It wasn’t the punishment that he feared. It wasn’t the ethical considerations, either. He just couldn’t do it.

‘No, Hardy. Please don’t ask me any more. I don’t want you thinking that I haven’t considered the possibility. But, I’m really sorry, old boy, I just can’t do it.’

‘It’s not that, Carl.’ He moistened his dry lips, as if to give the message an easier time coming out. ‘I want to ask you if I can come home to yours, instead of being here.’

The silence that followed was heart-wrenching. Carl felt paralysed. All the words were stuck in his throat.

‘I’ve been wondering, Carl,’ he went on softly. ‘Can’t that guy who lives with you look after me?’

Now his desperation felt like the stab of a dagger.

Carl shook his head imperceptibly. Morten Holland as a nurse? At his place? It was enough to make him cry.

‘You can get a lot of money for home care, Carl. I’ve looked into it. A nurse will come several times a day. It’s a simple matter. You needn’t be afraid.’

Carl looked at the floor. ‘Hardy, I don’t have the right set-up for something like that. My house isn’t very big. And Morten lives in the basement, which isn’t actually legal.’

‘I could be in the living room, Carl.’ His voice was hoarse now. It sounded as if he were fighting hard not to cry, but maybe it was just his condition. ‘Your living room’s large, isn’t it, Carl? I just need a corner. No one has to know about Morten in the basement. Aren’t there three rooms upstairs? You could just put a bed in one of them, then he could still spend his time in the basement, couldn’t he?’ The big man was begging him. So big and so small at the same time.

‘Oh, Hardy.’ Carl almost couldn’t say it. The idea of this behemoth of a bed and all kinds of medical apparatus in his living room was more than frightening. The difficulties would split his home apart – what little of it remained. Morten would move out. Jesper would be carping constantly about everything. There was no way it could be done, however much he might wish it – in theory.

‘You’re too ill, Hardy. If only you weren’t in such bad shape.’ He held a long pause, hoping Hardy would release him from his anguish, but he said nothing. ‘Get a little more feeling back first, Hardy. We’ll wait and see what happens.’

He watched his friend’s eyes slowly close. The busted hope had snuffed out the spark in him.

‘We’ll wait and see,’ he’d said.

As if Hardy could do anything else.

Not since his first, green years in the homicide division had Carl got to work as early as he did the next morning. It was Friday, but the Hillerød motorway was devoid of traffic for several long stretches. The officers arriving in the garage at headquarters slammed their car doors sluggishly. The clocking-in desk smelled of Thermos coffee. There was plenty of time.

Entering his basement was something of a shock. A ruler-straight row of tables in the corridor, nicely elevated to elbow height, bid welcome to Department Q’s domain. Oceans of paper were lined up in small stacks, apparently sorted according to a system that was bound to create some problems. Three noticeboards hung in a row on the wall with various clippings from the Rørvig case. On the very last table Assad lay in a deep sleep, snoring in the foetal position on a small, lavishly decorated prayer rug.

Further down the hall, from Rose’s office, came a noise that at best could be described as a Bach melody set to unrestrained whistling – all in all, quite an organ concert.

Ten minutes later Rose and Assad were sitting before him, cups steaming, in the office which Carl, the day before, had called his, but now almost couldn’t recognize.

Rose watched as he removed his coat and draped it over the back of the chair. ‘Nice shirt, Carl,’ she said. ‘You remembered to put the teddy bear in this one, I can see. Well done.’ She pointed at the bulge in his breast pocket.

He nodded. It was to remind him to shoo Rose on to a new, unsuspecting department when the opportunity presented itself.

‘What do you say then, boss?’ Assad said, making a sweeping gesture round a room where nothing seemed visibly out of order. A joy to behold for Feng Shui fans. Clean lines, the floor included.

‘We got Johan to come down here and help us. He came back to work yesterday,’ Rose said. ‘After all, he was the one who set everything in motion.’

Carl tried to put a little glow into his frozen smile. It wasn’t that he wasn’t pleased. Just a little overwhelmed.

Four hours later they sat at their respective desks waiting for the Norwegian delegation to arrive. They all had their roles to play. They’d discussed Johan’s list of assaults and had received verification that two easily identifiable fingerprints found on one of the Trivial Pursuit cards matched those of the murdered Søren Jørgensen, and another one, less well preserved, matched the sister. Now the question was, who had taken the cards from the crime scene? If it was Bjarne Thøgersen, then why were the cards in a box found at Kimmie’s house in Ordrup? And if others had been in the summer cottage beside Thøgersen, it would really be a radical departure from the court’s interpretation of events at the time of sentencing.

The euphoria spread all the way into Rose Knudsen’s office, where Bach’s mistreatment had now been supplanted by a concentrated effort to dig up facts about Kristian Wolf’s death, while Assad tried to get leads on where a ‘K. Jeppesen’ – Kimmie & Co.’s Danish teacher – now lived and worked.

There was quite enough to do before the Norwegians came.

When it got to twenty minutes past ten, Carl knew what that meant.

‘They’re not coming down here unless I fetch them,’ he said, setting off with his briefcase.

He trotted up the rotunda’s stone steps to the third floor.

‘Are they in there?’ he shouted to a pair of his weary colleagues, who were busy untying Gordian knots. They nodded.

There were at least fifteen people in the canteen. Besides the homicide chief there was Deputy Commissioner Lars Bjørn, Lis with her notebook, a pair of alert young blokes in boring suits who Carl guessed were from the Justice Ministry, and five colourfully dressed men who, in contrast to the rest of the gathering, received him with polite, toothy smiles. One point for the guests from Oslo-stan.

‘Oh my, if it isn’t Carl Mørck, what a pleasant surprise,’ the homicide chief exclaimed, meaning the opposite.

Carl shook hands with everyone, including Lis, and introduced himself extra clearly to the Norwegians. He himself didn’t understand a lick of what they were saying.

‘Soon we’ll continue the tour in the lower chambers,’ Carl said, ignoring Bjørn’s glare. ‘But first I would like to quickly explain my principles as head of the newly established unit, Department Q.’

He stood in front of the whiteboard, the notations on which they’d apparently been discussing, and said: ‘Do all you guys understand what I’m saying?’

He noted their eager nods and the four scallops on Lars Bjørn’s dark blue tie.

For the next twenty minutes he walked them through the Merete Lynggaard investigation, which the Norwegians – judging by their facial expressions – were well acquainted with, and topped it off with a brief account of their current case.

It was clear the chaps from the Justice Ministry were unacquainted with the latter. They’d never heard of that case, he figured.

He turned to the homicide chief.

‘During our investigation we’ve come into the possession, just yesterday, of highly unambiguous evidence that at least one member of the gang, Kimmie Lassen, can be connected directly or indirectly to the crime.’ He outlined the events, assured everyone there was a reliable witness to his removal of Kimmie’s box from the house in Ordrup, and watched as Lars Bjørn’s look grew darker and darker.

‘She could have got the metal box from Bjarne Thøgersen. She lived with him!’ the homicide chief interjected. True enough. They had already discussed that possibility down in the basement.

‘Yes, but I don’t think so. Look at the date on the newspaper. It’s from the day that Kimmie, according to Bjarne Thøgersen, moved in with him. I believe she folded it up and hid it because she didn’t want him to see it. But there may be other explanations. We can only hope we track down Kimmie Lassen, so we can interrogate her. To that end we will request an all-points bulletin be sent out, plus reinforcements of a few men to monitor the area around Copenhagen’s central station and shadow the drug addict Tine and, not least of all, Messrs Pram, Dybbøl-Jensen and Florin.’ Here he glanced at Lars Bjørn with a venomous glint in his eye before turning to the Norwegians. ‘Three of those pupils who were once suspected of committing the double murder in Rørvig. They are now well-known men in Denmark,’ he explained, ‘who today live as respectable citizens in the upper echelons of Danish society.’

Now the homicide chief’s forehead, too, was beginning to display a frown.

‘You see,’ Carl said, directly addressing the Norwegians, who were knocking back their cups of coffee as if they had sat through a sixty-hour flight without food or drink, or at the very least came from a country that hadn’t seen a coffee bean since the German invasion, ‘as you know through your and Kripo’s generally fabulous work in Oslo, such lucky coincidences often throw light on other crimes that were never solved, or even reveal other cases not previously classified as crimes.’

At this point one of the Norwegians raised his hand and asked a question in his sing-song dialect that Carl needed to have repeated a couple of times before a liaison officer came to his rescue.

‘What Superintendent Trønnes would like to know is whether a list has been drawn up of the possible crimes that could be linked to the Rørvig murders,’ came the translation.

Carl nodded politely. How the hell could the man find so much coherent meaning in all that chirping?

He pulled Johan Jacobsen’s list from his briefcase and fastened it to the whiteboard. ‘The homicide chief assisted in this part of the investigation.’ He glanced appreciatively at Marcus, who in return smiled politely around at the others, while simultaneously resembling a bundle of question marks.

‘Our homicide chief has placed a civil employee’s personal investigative work at Department Q’s disposal. Without fine colleagues like him and his team, and without cross-disciplinary collaboration, it would be impossible to get so far in an investigation in such a short period of time. We must remember that this case, which is more than twenty years old, has been the object of our interest for two weeks only. So thank you, Marcus.’

He raised an imaginary glass to Jacobsen, knowing that all this would boomerang on him sooner or later.

Despite attempts – Lars Bjørn’s being especially eager – at redirecting Carl’s agenda, it was very easy to hustle the Norwegians down to the basement.

The liaison officer made an effort to keep Carl abreast of their Norwegian brothers’ commentary. They apparently admired Danish thrift and considered that results should always take precedence over daily demands for resources and fringe benefits. That interpretation would most likely be met with a certain amount of irritation when it made the rounds upstairs.

‘There’s a guy here who’s asking me questions all the time I can’t understand a word of. Do you speak Norwegian?’ he whispered to Rose, as Assad heaped praises and medals on the Danish Police’s policy for integrating foreigners and also explained his present slave labour with surprising skill and comprehensiveness.

In the most intelligible and perhaps most attractive-sounding Norwegian Carl had yet to lend an ear to, Rose said, ‘Here we have the key to our work process,’ and proceeded to go through a stack of papers she had systematized during the early hours of the morning.

As much as he hated to admit it, the presentation was rather impressive.

When they reached Carl’s office, the large-screen TV was displaying a sunny, guided tour of the Holmekollen ski resort. Assad had put in a DVD promoting the wonders of Oslo that he’d purchased around the corner at Politiken’s Bookshop ten minutes earlier, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The justice minister would be flashing his teeth in an ecstatic smile when they gathered for lunch in another hour.

The Norwegian who’d been asking all the questions, who by now had mumbled his name and was apparently the senior officer, invited Carl over to Oslo with a heartfelt discourse on brotherhood. If he couldn’t get Carl to Oslo, then at the very least he would have to join him for lunch, and if he didn’t have time for that either, then, if nothing else, there had to be time for a warm handshake, because he’d earned it.

After they’d gone, Carl looked at his two assistants with something that for a fleeting moment could be construed as warmth and gratefulness. Not because the Norwegians had been shepherded so smoothly through the department, but because he predicted that he would soon be called up to the third floor to continue his brief on the case and have his badge returned. If he got it back, that meant his suspension was a thing of the past, almost before it had started. And if it was a thing of the past, then he wouldn’t have to attend psychotherapy sessions with Mona Ibsen. And if he didn’t have to do that, then they had a dinner date. And if they had a dinner date, then anything was possible.

He needed to offer some nice words of thanks to Assad and Rose, which, while not praising them to the stars, would at least express a promise that in honour of the occasion they could go home an hour early.

The next phone call changed that plan.

The message Assad had left with Rødovre High School had resulted in a return call from one of its senior teachers, a certain Klavs Jeppesen.

He’d agreed to meet with Carl, and, yes, he had indeed taught at that boarding school in the mid-eighties. He remembered the time well.

They hadn’t been the best days of his life.

24

She found Tine huddled under the stairwell of a building on Dybbølsgade, close to Enghave Plads. Filthy, bruised and dying for a fix. She’d been there for almost an entire day and refused to budge, one of the resident vagrants had said.

She was sitting as far back in the stairwell as she could. Totally obscured by darkness.

She lurched in surprise when Kimmie stuck her head in.

‘God, is it you, Kimmie, love?’ she called out, relieved, and threw herself into Kimmie’s arms. ‘Hi, Kimmie. Hey, hey, you’re just the person I wanted to see.’ She shook like a fluttering leaf. Her teeth chattered.

‘What happened?’ Kimmie asked. ‘Why are you sitting here? Why do you look like that?’ She stroked Tine’s swollen cheek. ‘Who beat you up, Tine?’

‘You got my message, didn’t you, Kimmie?’ She pulled away and looked at Kimmie with yellow, bloodshot eyes.

‘Yes, I saw it. Well done, Tine.’

‘Do I get the thousand kroner then?’

Kimmie nodded, drying sweat from her friend’s forehead. Her face was terribly battered. One eye was nearly closed, her mouth was crooked, and there were haematomas and bluish-yellow bruises everywhere.

‘You can’t go to the places you used to, Kimmie.’ She crossed her shaking arms over her breast to calm her body. It didn’t work. ‘The men were at my place. It wasn’t too good. But now I’ll stay here, won’t I, Kimmie?’

Kimmie was just about to ask again what had happened when she heard the front door creak open. It was one of the tenants, coming home with the day’s trophies clinking in a plastic grocery bag. Not one of those who’d taken over the neighbourhood recently. Lots of home-made tattoos covered both his forearms.

‘You can’t stay here,’ he said nastily. ‘Sod off, you dirty whores.’

Kimmie stood up.

‘I think you should go up to your room and leave us alone,’ she said, moving a few paces towards him.

‘Because otherwise … ?’ He set the bag between his feet.

‘Because otherwise I’ll beat the shit out of you.’

He loved hearing that, evidently. ‘Hello, bitch, you sound pretty tasty. Either you can sod off and take your disgusting junkie whore with you, or you can come up to my place. What do you say? For all I care that sow can rot wherever she likes, if you come with me.’

He was trying to get his hands on her when his bloated beer belly received her hard fist. Then she punched him again, deforming his surprised expression. There was a crash on the stairway.

‘Argh,’ he groaned, forehead on the floor, as Kimmie returned to the stairwell.

‘Who came? Some men, you say? Where did they come?’

‘The men from the central station. They came to my flat and beat me up when I wouldn’t tell them about you, Kimmie.’ She tried to smile, but the swelling on the left side of her face prevented it. She pulled her knees to her chest. ‘Now I’m just staying here. Fuck ’em.’

‘Who are you talking about? The police?’

Tine shook her head. ‘Them? No way! The cop was kind enough. No, just some arseholes who want to find you because someone’s paying them to. You gotta watch out for them.’

Kimmie clutched Tine’s skinny arm. ‘They beat you! Did you say anything? Do you remember?’

‘Kimmie, please, I need a fix, right?’

‘You’ll get your thousand kroner, Tine. Did you say anything to them about me?’

‘I don’t dare go out on the street now. You’ve got to get it for me, Kimmie, won’t you, please? And some chocolate milk and some smokes. And a few beers, you know?’

‘OK, OK, you’ll get it. Now answer my question, Tine. What did you say?’

‘Can’t you get it first?’

Kimmie looked at Tine. She was obviously terrified that Kimmie wouldn’t give her what she hungered for once she’d told her what had happened.

‘Out with it, Tine!’

‘You promised, Kimmie!’ They nodded at each other. ‘OK. They hit me. They kept hitting me, Kimmie. I said we met on the bench every now and then, and that I’d seen you walk down Ingerslevsgade many times, and that I thought you lived down there somewhere.’ She looked pleadingly at Kimmie. ‘You don’t really live down there, do you, Kimmie?’

‘Did you say anything else?’

Tine’s voice grew thick, her shaking more pronounced. ‘No, I promise you, Kimmie. I didn’t.’

‘And then they buggered off?’

‘Yes. Maybe they’ll come back, but I won’t say more than I already have. I don’t know anything else.’

Their eyes met in the semi-darkness. She was trying to make Kimmie believe her, but she’d said the last thing wrong.

So she must have known more.

‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, Tine?’

The withdrawal symptoms had moved into her legs now, which twitched restlessly on the floor in her bunched-up position. ‘Just that about Enghave Park, that you sit there watching the children play. That’s all.

She had bigger ears and eyes than Kimmie had thought, which meant she picked up tricks further out than Skelbækgade or the stretch of Istedgade that ran from the train station to Gasværksvej. Maybe it was around here that she gave blowjobs to all those men. There were still enough bushes.

‘And what else, Tine?’

‘Aww, Kimmie, c’mon. I can’t remember everything right now. I just can’t think about anything but junk, you know?’

‘But afterwards, then. When you’ve had your fix, will you remember more about me?’ She smiled at Tine.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘About where I go and where you’ve seen me? About my appearance? Where I shop? When I’m on the street? That I don’t like beer? That I look in the windows on Strøget? That I’m always here in town? Is it things like that?’

She seemed relieved to have some help. ‘Yeah, it’s things like that, Kimmie. That’s the kind of stuff I’m not saying.’

Kimmie moved with utmost care. Istedgade was full of nooks and crannies. No one could walk down the street and know for sure that someone wasn’t standing ten yards further ahead, watching closely.

Now she knew what they were capable of. There were probably many of them out looking for her now.

That’s why this moment equalled Year Zero. Once again she’d reached the point when everything came to a standstill and new paths had to be opened.

How many times had it happened in her life? The irrevocable change? The big break-up?

You’re not gonna get me, she thought, hailing a taxi.

‘Drop me off on the corner of Dannebrogsgade.’

‘What are you talking about?’ the taxi driver said, his dark-skinned arm already reaching for the backdoor handle. ‘Get out,’ he said, opening the door. ‘Do you think I can be bothered to drive you three hundred yards?’

‘Here’s two hundred kroner. Don’t bother turning on the meter.’

That helped.

She jumped out at Dannebrogsgade and quickly walked to Letlandsgade. Apparently no one was watching her. Then she circled round across Litauens Plads and edged along the house walls until at last she stood on Istedgade, looking directly across the street at the greengrocer’s.

Just a couple of leaps and I’m there, she told herself.

‘Hi, you. You’re back again,’ the greengrocer said.

‘Is Mahmoud out the back?’ she asked.

Behind the curtain he and his brother were watching Arabic television. Always the same TV studio and always the same drab production.

‘Well,’ Mahmoud said. He was the smaller of the two. ‘Have you already chucked the hand grenades? And the gun, it was OK, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know, I gave it away. I need a new one now, this time with a silencer. And I need a couple of hits of good heroin. I mean really good, you get me?’

‘Right now? You’re crazy, lady. Do you think you can just barge in off the street and get these things? Silencers! Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?’

She pulled a bundle of bills from her trousers. She knew it was more than twenty thousand kroner. ‘I’ll wait out in the shop for twenty minutes. And then you’ll never see me again. Agreed?’

A minute later the TV was turned off and the men were gone.

She was given a chair and the choice between cold tea and a Coke, but didn’t want either.

Half an hour later a man arrived, no doubt a family member, and he didn’t want to take any chances.

‘Come in here, then we’ll talk!’ he commanded.

‘I gave the others at least twenty thousand. Do you have the goods?’

‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘I don’t know you, so raise your arms.’

She did as she was told, and gazed steadily into his eyes as he felt up her calves and ran his hands along her inner thighs directly to her groin, where he left his hand a moment. Then he slid his hands further up over her pelvis, around her back, across her belly, all the way under the fold of her breasts and further round to her neck and hair. Then he relaxed the pressure a little and once again felt her pockets and clothes before finally letting his hands rest on her breasts.

‘My name is Khalid,’ he said. ‘You’re clean. There are no microphones on you. And you have a hell of a fine body.’

Kristian Wolf had been the first to recognize Kimmie’s great potential and tell her she had a hell of a fine body. This was before the assault on the nature path, before she seduced the prefect, before her expulsion following the scandal with the teacher. Kristian had checked out what she was like, here and there and other places, and realized that without much trouble Kimmie was capable of converting her feelings – feelings that for most people develop into real emotions in the course of time – into huge, hard-hitting sexual explosions.

All he had to do was stroke her neck and declare how wild he was about her, and he would reap deep French kisses and all kinds of other sexual favours a sixteen– or seventeen-year-old dreams about.

And Kristian learned that if you wanted to have sex with Kimmie, you didn’t ask. You just got started.

Torsten, Bjarne, Florin and Ditlev quickly learned the art. Only Ulrik never got the message. Polite and courteous as he was, he seriously believed he needed to court her favour, so he never received it.

Kimmie was conscious of everything that was going on. Even how crazily enraged Kristian became when she later began harvesting blokes outside their circle.

Some of the girls said that he spied on her.

Nothing could surprise her less.

Once both the prefect and the teacher were out of the picture and Kimmie had her own apartment in Næstved, the five lads spent as many of their weekdays with her as they could. The rituals were already prepared. Violent videos, hash, discussing new assaults. And when the weekends came and everyone in theory was on the way home to their indifferent families, they climbed into her faded red Mazda and drove until they no longer knew where they were. Straight out into the blue yonder until they found themselves a park or a strip of forest, pulled on their gloves and masks and took the first person who passed. Age and gender were unimportant.

If it was a man who looked capable of putting up a fight, Kimmie removed her mask and stood in front of the gang with her coat and blouse unbuttoned and her gloved hands on her breasts. Who wouldn’t stop, disoriented, in a situation like that?

After a while they learned to tell which types of prey would keep their mouths shut, and which they would have to force into silence.

Tine looked at her friend as if she had saved her life. ‘Is it good stuff, Kimmie?’ She lit a cigarette and dipped her finger in the bag Kimmie held.

‘Great,’ she said after testing it on her tongue. She looked at the bag. ‘Three grammes, right?’

Kimmie nodded.

‘First tell me what the police wanted with me.’

‘Oh, it was just something about your family, Kimmie. Nothing about the other stuff, that’s for sure.’

‘My family? What does that mean?’

‘Something about your father being sick, and that you wouldn’t contact him if you just sort of found out. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Kimmie.’ She tried to squeeze her friend’s arm, but couldn’t manage it.

‘My father?’ The words alone were like being given a shot of poison. ‘Is he even alive? No way. And if he is, he should just die.’ If that wanker with the bag of beers had still been there, she would have kicked him in the ribs. One for her father, and then one for good measure.

‘The copper told me I shouldn’t tell you, but now I have. I’m sorry, Kimmie.’ She stared longingly at the plastic bag in Kimmie’s hand.

‘What did you say the cop’s name was?’

‘I can’t remember right now, Kimmie. Does it really matter? Didn’t I write it down for you in the message?’

‘How do you know he was a cop?’

‘I saw his badge, Kimmie. I asked to see it, you know?’

The voices in Kimmie’s head were whispering, telling her what she should believe. Soon she wouldn’t be able to listen to anyone or anything any more. A policeman sent to find her because her father was ill? Like hell. A police badge, what did that prove? Florin and the others could easily get hold of one.

‘How could you get three grammes for a thousand kroner, Kimmie? Not so pure, maybe? No, of course it’s not. Boy, am I dumb!’ She smiled at Kimmie beseechingly. Eyes partly shut, skeletal, and shaking with withdrawal.

So Kimmie returned the smile and gave her the bottle of chocolate milk, the crisps, the beers, the bag of smack, a bottle of water and the syringe.

The rest she could do on her own.

She waited until twilight had settled in before she ran from the DGI building over to the wrought-iron gate. She knew what had to happen and this really wound her up.

During the next few minutes she emptied the hollow spaces of cash and credit cards, put two of the hand grenades on the bed and one in her bag.

Then she packed her suitcase with the bare necessities, removed the posters on the door and wall and laid them on top. Last of all she pulled the box out from under the bed and opened it.

The little cloth bundle had become brown and almost weightless. She picked up the whisky bottle, brought it to her mouth and drank until it was empty. This time the voices didn’t go away.

‘OK, OK, I’m hurrying,’ she said, setting the bundle carefully on top in her suitcase, covering it with her blanket. She gently stroked the fabric a few times and snapped the lid shut.

She dragged the suitcase all the way out to Ingerslevsgade. Then all she’d have to do was grab it.

When she stood in the doorway, she took a good look round inside the house so that this momentous intermezzo in her life had time to imprint itself.

‘Thanks for putting me up,’ she said, backing out of the door while releasing the safety catch on a hand grenade and throwing it next to the other one on the bed.

When the house exploded, she was a good distance beyond the gate.

If she hadn’t been, flying chunks of concrete would probably have been the last things she felt in this life.