Текст книги "Disgrace"

Автор книги: Jussi Adler-Olsen

Соавторы: Jussi Adler-Olsen
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

28

It was a lethargic Saturday evening, and the radio news gave equal attention to the birth of a tapir in Randers Rainforest and the Conservative Party chairman’s threat to abolish the new county delineations he himself had demanded be established.

Carl punched in a number on his mobile, glanced across the water at the sunbeams reflected on the surface, and thought, Thank God there’s still something they can’t mess with.

Assad picked up at the other end. ‘Where are you, boss?’

‘I just crossed Zealand’s Bridge on the way to Rødovre High School. Is there anything special I should know about this Klavs Jeppesen?’

When Assad was thinking, one could actually hear it. ‘He’s frust, Carl. That’s the only thing I can say.’

‘Frust?’

‘Yes. Frustrated. He sounds slow, but that’s probably just emotions blocking the free word.’

The free word? Next Assad will be waxing lyrical about the ‘light wings of thought’.

‘Does he know why I’m coming?’

‘More or less, yes. Rose and I have been working on the list the entire afternoon, Carl. She would like to talk to you about it then.’

He was about to protest, but Assad was gone.

So was Carl, in a way, once Rose set her acid tongue in motion.

‘Yes, we’re still here,’ she said, shaking Carl out of his train of thought. ‘We’ve been studying this list all day and I think we’ve pinpointed something we can use. Would you care to hear it?’

What the hell did she think?

‘Yes, please,’ he said, almost missing the left-turn lane towards Folehaven.

‘Do you recall the case on Johan’s list with the couple who disappeared on Langeland?’

Did she think he was suffering from dementia, or what?

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Good. They were from Kiel, and they vanished. Some effects were found near Lindelse Cove that could have belonged to them, but it was never proven. I’ve been tinkering around with the case a little.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I found their daughter. She lives in her parents’ house in Kiel.’

‘And?’

‘Take it easy, Carl. Surely someone who’s done such damn fine police work is allowed to draw the story out a bit?’

He hoped she couldn’t hear his deep sigh.

‘Her name is Gisela Niemüller, and she’s actually rather shocked by how the case was handled in Denmark.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘The earring. Do you remember that?’

‘Come on, Rose, for Christ’s sake. We were just talking about it this morning.’

‘About twelve years ago she contacted the Danish police and told them she could now identify with absolute certainty the earring found near Lindelse Cove as her mother’s.’

At this point Carl was as close as humanly possible to torpedoing a Peugeot 106 with four noisy young men inside. ‘What?’ he shouted, as he slammed on the brakes. ‘One moment,’ he continued, pulling to the side of the road. ‘She couldn’t identify it back then, so how could she now?’

‘The daughter had been at a party with some relatives in Albersdorff, in Slesvig, and she’d seen some old photographs of her parents at a family gathering. And what do you think her mother was wearing in the photos? Just asking.’ She emitted a pleasure-filled growl. ‘Yes, the earrings, damn it!’

Carl closed his eyes and clenched his fists. ‘Yes!’ his brain screamed. Exactly how test pilot Chuck Yeager must have felt the first time he broke the sound barrier.

‘I’ll be damned.’ He shook his head. It was a major breakthrough. ‘Hell’s bells. Terrific, Rose. Terrific. Did you get a copy of the photograph showing the mother with the earring?’

‘No, but she says that she sent it to the Rudkøbing Police around 1995. I’ve talked to them, and they say all the old archives are in Svendborg now.’

‘She didn’t send the original to them, did she?’ He prayed she hadn’t.

‘Yes, she did.’

Bloody hell. ‘But she probably kept her own copy. Or a negative. Or someone has it, don’t you think?’

‘No, she didn’t think so. That was one of the reasons she was so angry. She’s never heard back from them.’

‘You’ll call Svendborg right away, won’t you?’

She let out a noise that sounded mocking. ‘You evidently don’t know me very well, Mr Deputy Detective Superintendent.’ Then she slammed down the phone.

In less than ten seconds he’d phoned back.

‘Hi, Carl,’ came Assad’s voice. ‘What did you tell her? She looks strange.’

‘Never mind, Assad. Just tell her that I’m proud of her.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now, Assad.’

Assad lay down the receiver.

If the photo of the missing woman’s earring was now found in the Svendborg Police archives, and if an expert could guarantee that the earring found on the beach near Lindelse Cove matched the one he’d found in Kimmie’s stashed metal box and that they were, in fact, the same pair of earrings as in the photograph, then they’d have a case. They’d have enough to go to trial. Jesus Christ, they were holding the right end of the stick now. It had taken twenty years, but nevertheless, Florin, Dybbøl Jensen and Pram were going to be dragged through that long, tenacious process known as the mucky machinations of justice. They just needed to find Kimmie first; after all, he’d found the box at her place. Tracking her down was no doubt easier said than done, and her junkie friend’s death didn’t exactly make it easier. But she had to be located.

‘Yes,’ Assad said suddenly, on the other end of the line. ‘She was pleased. She called me her little sand worm.’ He laughed so that it grated in Carl’s ear.

Who but Assad would take such a clear insult with such good humour?

‘But, Carl, I don’t have good news like Rose,’ he said, after his laughter had subsided. ‘You shouldn’t count on Bjarne Thøgersen being willing to talk to us any more. Then what then?’

‘Did he refuse to let us visit? Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘In a way that could not be misunderstood then.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Assad. Tell Rose that she has got to get hold of that photograph. Tomorrow is our day off, and that’s a promise.’

Carl glanced at his watch as he turned up Hendriksholms Boulevard. He was early, but maybe that was OK. In any event, this Klavs Jeppesen seemed like someone who would rather be too early than too late.

Rødovre High School was a collection of compressed boxes stacked on the asphalt, a chaos of buildings that ran into each other and had probably been expanded many times during the years when a high-school education was taking root among the working class. A walkway here, a gymnasium there, new and old yellow-brick boxes that were supposed to upgrade the privileges of suburban youths to the level north-coast kids had been elevated to long ago.

By following the arrows directing him towards the alumni’s ‘Lasasep’ party, he managed to find Klavs Jeppesen outside the assembly hall, his arms full of packages of paper napkins and in conversation with a couple of quite pretty, older students of the opposite sex. He was a nice-looking guy, but dressed in that vapid way of his profession, with a corduroy jacket and full beard. He was a high-school teacher with a capital ‘H’.

He released his audience with an ‘I’ll see you later’, spoken in a tone of voice that signalled a free-range bachelor, and led Carl down to the teachers’ staffroom where other graduates were chatting nostalgically.

‘Do you know why I’m here?’ Carl asked, and was told that his pidgin-speaking colleague had explained things to Jeppesen.

‘What do you want to know?’ Jeppesen asked, gesturing for Carl to take a seat in one of the staffroom’s aged designer chairs.

‘I want to know everything about Kimmie and the gang she associated with.’

‘Your colleague implied that the Rørvig case has been resumed. Is that true?’

Carl nodded. ‘And we have strong reason to suspect that one or more of this gang are also guilty of other assaults.’

Here Jeppesen’s nostrils flared as though he lacked oxygen.

‘Assaults?’ He stared into space and didn’t react when one of his colleagues poked her head in.

‘Are you in charge of the music, Klavs?’ she asked.

He glanced up as if in a trance and nodded absent-mindedly.

‘I was head over heels in love with Kimmie,’ he said, when he and Carl were alone again. ‘I wanted her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. She was the perfect blend of devil and angel. So fine and young and gentle like a kitten, yet totally dominating.’

‘She was seventeen or eighteen when you began having a relationship with her. And a pupil at the school, besides! That wasn’t exactly playing by the rules, now, was it?’

He looked at Carl without raising his head. ‘It’s not something I’m proud of,’ he said. ‘I just couldn’t help myself. I can still feel her skin today, do you understand? And it’s been twenty years.’

‘Yes, and it was also twenty years ago that she and some others were suspected of committing homicide. What do you think about that? Do you think they could have done it together?’

Jeppesen grimaced. ‘Anyone might be capable of doing something like that. Couldn’t you kill a person? Maybe you already have?’ He turned his head and lowered his voice. ‘There were a few episodes that made me wonder, both before and after my affair with Kimmie. In particular, there was a boy at the school I remember very well. A real arrogant little jerk, so maybe he simply got what he deserved. But the circumstances were strange. One day he suddenly wanted to leave the school. He’d fallen in the forest, he said, but I know what bruises look like after a beating.’

‘What does this have to do with the gang?’

‘I don’t know what it has to do with them, but I know that Kristian Wolf asked about the boy every single day after he’d left the school: how was he? Had we heard from him? Was he coming back?’

‘Couldn’t it have been genuine interest?’

He turned to Carl. This was a high-school teacher in whose competent hands decent people entrusted their children’s continued development. A person who’d been with his students for years. If he’d ever shown this same expression to anyone at parents’ evenings they’d probably be concerned enough to take their kids out of school. No, thank God. It was rare to see a face so embittered by vengefulness, spite and a loathing of humanity.

‘Kristian Wolf showed no genuine interest in anyone but himself,’ he said, full of contempt. ‘Trust me, he was capable of anything. But he was terribly afraid of being confronted with his own deeds, I think. That’s why he wanted to be sure the boy was gone for good.’

‘Give me examples,’ Carl said.

‘He started the gang, I am sure of that. He was the activist type, burning with evil, and he quickly spread his poison. He was the one who ratted on Kimmie and me. It was thanks to him that I had to leave the school and she was expelled. He was the one who pushed her towards the boys he wanted to pick on. And when she snared them in her web, he pulled her away again. She was his female spider, and he was the one pulling the strings.

‘You’re no doubt aware that he’s dead? The result of a shooting accident.’

He nodded. ‘You probably think that makes me happy. Not at all. He got off too easily.’

There was laughter in the corridor, and he came to himself for a moment. Then the anger settled in his face again, yanking him back down. ‘They attacked the boy in the forest, so he had to go away. You can ask him yourself. Perhaps you know him? His name is Kyle Basset. He lives in Spain now. You can find him easily. He owns one of Spain’s largest contractors, KB Construcciones SA.’ Carl nodded as he jotted down the name. ‘And they killed Kåre Bruno. Trust me,’ he added.

‘The thought has crossed our minds, but why do you think that?’

‘Bruno sought me out when I was fired. We had been rivals, but now we were allies. Him and me against Wolf and the rest of them. He confided in me that he was afraid of Wolf. That they knew each from before. That Kristian lived near his grandparents and never missed an opportunity to threaten him.’

Jeppesen nodded to himself. ‘It’s not much, I know, but it’s enough. Wolf threatened Kåre Bruno, that’s how it was. And Bruno died.’

‘You sound as though you’re certain of these things. But the fact is you’d already broken up with Kimmie when Bruno died, and the Rørvig assaults occurred after you left.’

‘Yes. But before that I’d seen how the other pupils drew away when the gang strutted down the corridors. I saw what they did to people when they were together. Admittedly not to their classmates, since solidarity is the first thing one learns at that school, but to everyone else. And I just know they attacked the boy.’

‘How can you know?’

‘Kimmie spent the night with me a few times during school weekends. She slept badly, as if there was something inside her that wouldn’t let her alone. She called out his name in her sleep.’

‘Whose?’

‘The boy’s! Kyle’s!’

‘Did she seem shocked or tormented?’

He laughed a moment. It came from down where laughter is a defence and not an outstretched hand. ‘She didn’t seem haunted, no. Not at all. That’s not how Kimmie was.’

Carl considered showing him the teddy bear, but was distracted by the coffee machine’s gurgling. If the coffee makers kept on like that until the dinner was over, all that would remain would be tar.

‘Maybe we could have a cup?’ he asked, without expecting an answer. A cup of mocha would hopefully make up for the hundred hours he hadn’t eaten properly.

Not for me, Jeppesen gesticulated.

‘Was Kimmie evil?’ Carl asked, pouring his coffee and practically inhaling it.

He heard no answer.

When he turned round with the cup to his mouth, nostrils titillated by the aroma of a sun that had once shone on a Colombian coffee farmer’s fields, Klavs Jeppesen’s chair was empty.

The audience was over.

29

She’d walked round the lake from the planetarium to Vodroffsvej and back, taking ten different routes. Up and down the stairs and paths that connected the lake with Gammel Kongevej and Vodroffsvej. Back and forth without getting too close to the bus stop across from Teaterpassagen, where she imagined the men would wait.

Now and then she sat on the planetarium terrace, her back to the window and her eyes focused on the play of light in the lake fountain. Someone behind her marvelled at the sight, but Kimmie couldn’t have cared less. It had been years since she’d abandoned herself to such things. All she wanted to do was see the men who’d done the job on Tine. Get a sense of who her pursuers were, of who was working for the bastards.

Because she didn’t doubt for an instant that they’d return. That was what Tine had been afraid of, and no doubt she’d been right. If they wanted to get hold of Kimmie, they wouldn’t just give up.

And Tine had been the link. But now Tine was no more.

She’d got away swiftly when the grenades went off and the house blew up. A couple of children might have seen her racing past the swimming centre, but that was it. On the other side of the buildings down on Kvægtorvsgade she’d shaken free of her coat and tossed it in her suitcase. Then she’d pulled on a suede jacket and covered her hair with a black scarf.

Ten minutes later she stood at Hotel Ansgar’s well-lit reception desk on Colbjørnsensgade, flashing the Portuguese passport she’d found a few years earlier in one of her stolen suitcases. It wasn’t a one hundred per cent likeness, but on the other hand it was six years old, and who didn’t change during that amount of time?

‘Do you speak English, Mrs Teixeira?’ the friendly porter asked. The rest was just a formality.

For about an hour she sat in the courtyard under the gas heaters with a couple of drinks. That way the hotel staff would get to know her.

Afterwards she slept for nearly twenty hours with her pistol under her pillow and images of a trembling Tine in her head.

It was from there that her world led her as she walked down to the planetarium and after eight hours of waiting finally found what she was looking for.

The man was thin, almost emaciated, and his focus shifted between Tine’s window on the fifth floor and the entrance to Teaterpassagen.

‘You’ll be waiting a long time, you shit,’ Kimmie mumbled, as she sat on the bench in front of the planetarium on Gammel Kongevej.

When it was approximately 11 p.m. the man was relieved of his watch. There was no doubt that the one replacing him had a lower rank. It was evident from the way he approached. Like a dog that was headed for its food bowl, but first had to sniff around to see if it was welcome.

That was why he was the one who had to do the Saturday-night shift, and not the first man. And that was why Kimmie decided to follow the one who was leaving.

She tailed the thin man at a safe distance, and reached the bus at the same moment its doors were closing.

It was then that she saw how mashed up his face was. His lower lip was split, and he had a stitched-up gash above one eyebrow and bruises that ran along his hairline from ear to throat, as if he’d dyed his hair with henna and not rinsed it all off properly.

He was looking out of the window as she climbed aboard. Just sat scowling out across the pavement, hoping to spy his target in his last glimpse. Only when the bus reached Peter Bangsvej did he begin to relax.

He’s off duty now and not busy, she thought, with no one to come home to. That was evident by his attitude. His indifference. Had someone been expecting him, a little girl or a puppy or a warm living room where he could hold his girlfriend’s hand and they could listen to each other’s sighs and laughter, then he would be breathing more deeply and freely. No, he couldn’t hide the knots in his soul and stomach. He had nothing to go home to. No reason to hurry.

As if she didn’t know what that was like.

He got off at the Damhus Inn and didn’t ask any questions about the evening’s entertainment. He was late, something he apparently already knew. Many of the patrons had already paired off and were on the way out to their one-night stands. So he hung up his coat and walked into the spacious room, evidently without ambitions. And how could he have any, the way he looked? He ordered a pint and sat at the bar, glancing across the tables at the throng to see if there was a woman, any woman, who’d look his way.

She removed her headscarf and suede jacket and asked the cloakroom attendant to watch her handbag carefully. Then she glided into the room, her self-confident shoulders back and breasts softly signalling to anyone who could still focus. Some low-ranking, high-volume band on the stage accompanied the cautiously groping dancers. No one on the dance floor under the crystalline sky of glass tubes seemed to have found their special somebody.

She felt the pack of eyes fastened on her and the tension that had already begun to spread along the tables and barstools.

She wore less make-up than all the other women, she realized. Less make-up and less fat on her bones.

Does he recognize me? she wondered, her eyes wandering slowly past imploring glances, all the way to the thin man. There he was, just like all the other men, coiled and ready to pounce at even the slightest signal. He put his elbow nonchalantly on the bar and lifted his head slightly. Professional eyes weighed whether she was waiting for someone or free prey.

When she was halfway past the tables she smiled at him, causing him to take a deep breath. He couldn’t believe it, but Christ, he would sure love to.

Not two minutes passed before she was out on the dance floor with the first sweaty, eager man, bouncing in the same steady rhythm as everyone else.

But the thin man had noticed her glance, and that she had made her choice. He straightened his back, adjusted his tie and tried as best he could to make his lean, beaten face seem relatively attractive in the smoke-coloured light.

He approached her in the middle of a dance, taking her by the arm. He clasped her back a bit clumsily and squeezed a little. His fingers weren’t practised, she could tell. His heart was hammering hard against her shoulder. He was an easy catch.

‘So this is my place,’ he said, nodding self-consciously towards his living room, which revealed a lacklustre, fifth-storey view of Rødovre’s S-station and lots of parking spots and streets.

He’d pointed at the nameplate in the lobby beside the lift’s lilac-coloured doors. FINN AALBÆK, it read. And then he’d declared that the building was safe, even though it would soon be torn down. He’d taken her hand and led her out on to the fifth-storey walkway as if he were a knight leading her safely across a seething river’s suspension bridge. He held her quite close, so his quarry wouldn’t be allowed to have second thoughts and bolt. Well assisted by anticipation and newly found self-confidence, his imagination already had him groping deep under the blankets, stiff and ready.

He told her she could go out on the balcony to see the view if she wished, and he cleared the coffee table, turned on the lava lamps, put on a CD and unscrewed the cap on the gin bottle.

It struck her that it’d been ten years since she’d been alone with a man behind closed doors.

‘What happened to you?’ she asked, running her hand inquiringly across his face.

He raised his wilted eyebrows, a gesture that was no doubt carefully practised before the mirror. He probably thought it was charming, but it wasn’t by a long shot.

‘Oh that! I ran into a couple of likely lads on my watch. They didn’t get out of the encounter in very good shape.’ He smiled crookedly. Even the smile was a cliché. He was simply lying.

‘What do you do, actually, Finn?’ she finally asked.

‘Me? I’m a private eye,’ he answered, in a way that made the word ‘private’ ooze with sleazy snooping and unseemly prying. It conjured up nothing exotic, mysterious or dangerous, as had doubtlessly been his intention.

She looked at the bottle he was waving about, and noticed her throat tightening. Take it easy, Kimmie, the voices whispered. Don’t lose control.

‘Gin and tonic?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Do you have whisky, by any chance?’

He seemed surprised, but not dissatisfied. Women who drank whisky were hardly sensitive types.

‘Well, well, aren’t you thirsty?’ he said, after she’d downed her drink in a single gulp. To keep pace, he poured another glass for her and one for himself.

By the time she’d had three more in succession, he was buzzed and distant.

Unaffected, she asked about the job he was working on and watched his alcohol-suppressed inhibitions lead him closer to her on the sofa. He gave her a fixed smile while his fingers strolled up her thigh.

‘I’m trying to find a woman who’s capable of making many people’s lives miserable.’

‘Ah, that sounds exciting. Is she an industrial spy or call girl or something like that?’ she asked, and illustrated her rapt submissivness by putting her hand on his and leading it determinedly to her inner thigh.

‘She’s a little of everything,’ he said, trying to spread her legs a bit.

She watched his mouth and knew she would throw up if he tried to kiss her.

‘Who is she?’

‘That’s a trade secret, love. I can’t tell you.’

‘Love,’ he’d said! Again the same pain.

‘But what kind of person hires you for such a job?’ She allowed his hand to move a little further up her thigh. His alcohol breath was hot against her throat.

‘People in the upper crust,’ he whispered, as if it would place him higher in the mating hierarchy.

‘What do you say to another shot?’ she suggested, as his fingers groped their way across her pelvis.

He pulled back slightly, looking at her with a wry smile wrenched into that swollen part of his face. He had a plan, it was clear. She would drink and he would pour, until she was completely lubricated and ready.

For all he cared, she could pass out. He didn’t give a hoot what she got out of it. She knew that didn’t matter.

‘We can’t do it tonight,’ she said, as his mouth ran parallel with his frowning eyebrows. ‘I have my period. We can do it another day, OK?’

It was a lie, of course, but deep within she wished it were true. Eleven years had gone by since she’d bled. Only the stomach cramps remained, and they weren’t caused by anything physiological. Years filled with anger and broken dreams.

She had miscarried and almost died. And now she was sterile.

That’s what she was.

Otherwise things might have turned out differently.

Carefully she stroked his lacerated eyebrow with her index finger, but failed to mitigate his growing resentment and frustration.

She could see what he was thinking. He had hauled home the wrong bitch, and he wasn’t going to stand for it. Why the hell did she go to a singles’ night if she was on the rag?

Kimmie watched his facial features harden. Then she pulled her handbag to her and stood up, stepped over to the balcony window and gazed out across the dismal, barren landscape of terraced houses and stark, distant high-rises. There was almost no light, only the cold gleam of the street lamps a little further up the block.

‘You killed Tine,’ she said softly, reaching into her bag.

She heard him squirm up off the sofa. In a second he would be all over her. He was woozy, but deep inside an instinct of self-preservation stirred.

Then she turned and pulled out the pistol with the silencer.

He saw it as he attempted to manoeuvre around the coffee table, and stopped in his tracks, astounded at himself and the dent that had been made in his professional pride. It was funny to see. She loved this mix of silent astonishment and dread.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that probably wasn’t very smart. You dragged home your work target without knowing it.’

He bent his head and studied her face. Clearly he was adding layers to the image he’d created of a ravaged woman on the streets. Confusedly he ransacked his memory. How could he aim so low? How could he let himself be fooled by clothing and find a bag lady attractive?

Come on, the voices whispered. Take him. He’s nothing but their lackey! Take him now!

‘Without you, my friend would still be alive,’ she said, now registering the alcohol burning in her belly. She looked over at the bottle, golden and half full. One more slurp and the voices and the fire would die down.

‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he said, his eyes darting from her trigger finger to the safety latch. Looking for anything to give him a sliver of hope that she’d overlooked something.

‘Do you feel like a cornered rat?’ she asked. The question was superfluous, but he refused to answer. He hated to admit it, but who wouldn’t?

Aalbæk was the one who’d beaten Tine. The one who’d really shaken her up, made her vulnerable. Aalbæk was the one who’d made her dangerous to Kimmie. Yes, perhaps Kimmie was the weapon, but Aalbæk was the hand that guided it. That’s why he had to pay.

He and the ones who’d given the order.

‘Ditlev, Ulrik and Torsten are behind it. I know,’ she said, fully absorbed by the proximity of the bottle and its healing contents.

Don’t do it, said one of the voices, but she did it anyway. She reached out for the bottle and saw his body first as a vibration in the air, then as a flailing mass of clothes and arms, punching and grabbing hold of her.

In his wild rage he had her thrown to the floor. ‘Humiliate a man sexually and you have an enemy for life,’ she had learned. It was true. Now she was going to have to pay for the hungry looks and servile pawing he’d had to perform in order to get her back to his flat. For him having exposed himself and appeared vulnerable.

He threw her against the radiator, the coils bashing against her skull. He grabbed a large wooden figurine that was standing on the floor and slammed it against her hip. He seized her shoulders and twisted her on to her stomach. Pressed her torso down and twisted the arm with the pistol round her back, but she didn’t let go of it.

His fingers dug into her arm. She had felt pain many times before and it would take more than that to make her cry out.

‘Don’t you dare lead me on. Don’t you dare try and con me,’ he said, banging his fist into her lower back. After that he managed to unclasp her grip on the gun and fling it into a corner. Then he got a hand up under her dress, tearing her tights and pushing her underwear aside.

‘Damn you, bitch, you don’t have your period!’ he shouted. He took a hard grip on her, jerked her round and punched her in the face.

They stared directly at each other as he held her down and boxed her with randomly placed blows. Sinewy thighs in worn polyester trousers straddled her chest. Blood-filled veins protruded from his pounding and hammering forearms.

He beat her until her defences began to wane, and resistance seemed pointless.

‘Are you finished, bitch?’ he shouted, showing her a clenched fist that was ready to resume her punishment. ‘Or do you want to end up like your junkie friend?’

Was it ‘finished’ he’d said?

Not finished until I stop breathing.

She understood that better than anyone.

Kristian knew her best. He was the one who sensed when she felt that surge of excitement. This chemical feeling of being lifted off one’s base as the belly sends shivers of desire to every cell of the body. And when they sat watching A Clockwork Orange in the dark, he showed her where desire could lead.

Kristian was the experienced one. He’d tested girls before. He knew all the code words to their deepest thoughts. Knew which way to turn the key in the chastity belt. And suddenly she was sitting there in the middle of the gang as they lasciviously observed her unveiled body in the flickering light of the horrific images on the TV screen. He showed her and the others how to achieve pleasure in multiple directions at once. How violence and lust went hand in hand.

Without Kristian she never would have learned how to use her body as a lure. Exclusively for the sake of the hunt. What he hadn’t bargained for, however, was that she had also learned how to control the events around herself, for the first time in her life. Perhaps not initially, but later.

And when she came home from Switzerland, she mastered the art to perfection.

She slept with random men. Broke them and broke up with them. That’s how she spent her nights.

During the day everything was routine. Her stepmother’s icy coldness. Her work with the animals at Nautilus Trading. The contact with customers and the weekends with the gang. The occasional assault.