The Absent One (15 page)

He shouted for Morten, then went and yanked Jesper from his stupor in front of the flat-screen TV, and showed them the blood spots while they gave him looks of disgust and indignation, respectively.

No, Morten had nothing to do with this revolting mess.

And no, damn it, Jesper had nothing to do with it, either. Nor did his girlfriend, if that was what Carl was thinking. Was he going soft in the head?

Carl glanced at the blood again and nodded.

With the right equipment it would take at most three minutes to break into the house, find an object Carl was sure to see fairly often, rub on a little animal blood and then hightail it out. Wouldn’t it be easy to find three unobserved minutes, given that Magnolievangen – in fact all of Rønneholtparken– was as good as deserted from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon?

If someone thought such shenanigans would make him give up the investigation, then they weren’t just unbelievably stupid.

The bastards, in one way or another, were also culpable.

The only time she could dream good dreams was after she’d been drinking. Which was one of the reasons she did it.

If she didn’t take a couple of generous swigs from the whisky bottle, then the outcome was assured. After dozing for hours with the voices whispering in her head, her gaze would fall from the poster hanging on her door – the one with the children playing – and she’d glide into dark nightmares. Those damn images were always cued up when she drifted off. Memories of a mother’s soft hair and a face rigid as stone, of a little girl trying to become invisible in the nooks and crannies of the family mansion. Horrible moments. Faded glimpses of a mother who simply left her. Ice-cold embraces from the women who succeeded her.

And when she awoke with sweat on her forehead and the rest of her body shaking with cold, the dreams had usually reached the point in her life where she turned her back on the bourgeoisie’s insatiable expectations and false niceness. She wanted to forget all of that. That, and the time that followed.

The previous evening she had drunk steadily, so the morning was relatively uncomplicated. She could easily handle the cold, the coughing and the splitting headache. As long as her thoughts and the voices were at rest.

She stretched, put her hand under the bed, and pulled out the cardboard box. It was her pantry, and the procedure was simple. The food on the right side of the box always had to be consumed first. When that side was emptied, she rotated the box 180 degrees and again ate what was on the right. Then she could fill the empty left side with new goods from Aldi. Always the same procedure, and never more than two or three days at a time in the box. Otherwise the food spoiled, especially when the sun was baking the roof.

She gobbled up yoghurt without any real pleasure. It had been years since food had meant anything to her.

She shoved the box back under the bed, fumbled around until she found the coffin, caressed it a moment, and whispered: ‘Mommy has to go into town now, my precious. I’ll be home soon.’

Then she sniffed her underarms and decided that it was time to take a shower. She used to do it in the central train station once in a while, but not any more; not after Tine had warned her about the men searching for her. If she absolutely had to go back there, she needed to take special precautions.

She licked her spoon and tossed the plastic cup in the rubbish sack beneath her, considering her next steps.

She had been to Ditlev’s house the evening before. For one hour she’d waited outside on Strandvejen, watching through the mosaic of luminous mansion windows before her voices gave the green light. It was an elegant house, but clinical and emotionless, like Ditlev himself. What else would one expect? She’d smashed a window and had a good look around before a woman in a negligee suddenly
appeared. She had stared anxiously as Kimmie drew her pistol, but her expression became more subdued as soon as she discovered her husband was the target.

So Kimmie had given the woman the pistol and told her she could use it however she wished. She had looked at it for a moment. Weighed it in her hand, and smiled. Indeed she seemed to know what to use it for. Exactly as the voices had predicted.

And Kimmie had wandered back towards the city with a bounce in her step, assured that by now the message was crystal clear to everyone. She was after them. None of them could feel safe anywhere. She had them in her sights.

If she was right about them, they’d put more people on the streets to track her down, and that thought amused her. The more there were, the greater the evidence of their attentiveness.

She would make them so vigilant they wouldn’t be able to think of anything else.

For Kimmie, the worst part about taking a shower around other women wasn’t their stares. It wasn’t the little girls’ curious peeks at the long scar on her back and stomach. Nor was it the unmistakable delight the mothers and their children took in doing something together. It wasn’t even the carefree noises and laughter out at the pool.

It was the women’s bodies that shone with life. That was the worst. Gold rings on fingers that had someone to caress. Breasts that nurtured. Potbellies waiting to bear fruit. It was sights like these that fuelled the voices.

So Kimmie quickly tore off her clothes and heaped them on top of the lockers without looking at anyone,
letting the plastic bags filled with new clothes lie on the floor. The whole procedure should be done quick enough that she could be gone before her eyes began to wander on their own.

While she was still in control.

So within twenty minutes she was standing on Tietgens Bridge in a tailored coat, her hair up, an unaccustomed mist of exclusive perfume on her skin, staring across the tracks that vanished inside the central station. It had been quite some time since she’d dressed like this, and she didn’t like it one bit. At this moment she was the spitting image of everything she fought against. But it was necessary. She would head slowly down the platform and up the escalator and all the way round inside the central hall like any other woman. If she didn’t notice anything unusual in the first pass, she would sit at the corner of Train Fast Food with a cup of coffee, occasionally glancing at the clock. She would resemble anyone waiting to go anywhere. Streamlined, with eyebrows finely drawn above her sunglasses.

Just another woman who knew what she wanted in life.

She’d been sitting for an hour when she saw Rat-Tine waddle past with her head canted sideways, gaze fastened on the empty space a half-yard in front of her. The emaciated woman smiled soullessly to everything and nothing; clearly she’d shot some heroin recently. Never before had Tine seemed more vulnerable and transparent, but Kimmie didn’t move. Simply watched her until she disappeared somewhere behind McDonald’s.

It was during this long, scrutinizing stare that she saw
the lean man standing against the wall, talking to two other men in light coats. It wasn’t three men huddled together that caught her attention. It was that they didn’t look each other in the eye as they spoke, but instead kept stealing glances around the hall. That, and the fact that they were wearing nearly identical clothes, caused her warning lights to flash.

She rose slowly, adjusting the glasses on her nose, and with long, sweeping stiletto-heel steps walked directly towards the men. When she was close she could see they were all around forty years old. Deep creases at the corners of their mouths indicated a hard life. They were not the kind of lines businessmen earned under the sickly glare of office lights while stacks of paper flowed across their desks during the wee hours of the morning. No, they were more like furrows carved by the wind, the elements and endless, boring assignments. These were men hired to wait and observe.

When she was a few yards away, they all looked at her in the same instant. She smiled at them and avoided showing her teeth. Then she passed close by and felt the silence cement the men together. When she was a little further ahead, they began talking once more. She stopped to rummage in her purse. One of them, she overheard, was called Kim. Of course it had to be a name with the letter K.

They were discussing times and locations and weren’t the faintest bit interested in her, which meant she could move around freely. The person she was pretending to be didn’t fit the profile they were looking for. Of course not.

She made a pass round the hall, accompanied by whispering voices, bought a women’s magazine in the kiosk at
the other end and returned to her point of departure. Only one of the men remained. He was leaning against the brick wall, clearly ready for a long wait. Every one of his movements was slow, only his eyes were busy. These were precisely the kind of men Torsten, Ulrik and Ditlev associated with. Lackeys. Cold-hearted pricks. Men who did almost anything for money.

Jobs you wouldn’t read about in the classifieds.

The more she watched him, the closer she felt to the bastards she wanted to destroy. Excitement swelled inside her as the voices in her head contradicted one another.

‘Stop it,’ she whispered, dropping her gaze. She noticed how the man at the neighbouring table glanced up from his plate, trying to ascertain the target of her anger.

That was his problem.

Stop
, she thought, catching sight of a tabloid headline:
KEEP YOUR MARRIAGE ALIVE
it read in large capital letters. But it was only the letter K she noted.

A big, capital K in a curved font. Another K.

The sixth-form pupils simply called him ‘K’, but his name was Kåre. He was the one who raked in nearly all the fifth-form votes when it was decided which final-year student would be the next prefect. He was the one who resembled a god, the one the girls whispered about on their bunks in the dormitory. But Kimmie was the one who scored him. After three dances at the comedy ball it was her turn, and Kåre felt Kimmie’s fingers where none had been before. For Kimmie understood her body and that of the boys, too. Kristian had made certain of that.

Kåre was in her grip, as though caught in a vice.

People commented on how, from that day forward, the popular prefect’s average began to slide, and how it was strange that so intelligent and focused a pupil could suddenly begin to lose it. And Kimmie enjoyed it. It was her handiwork, her body shaking this goody-two-shoes’s foundation. Her body alone.

Everything had been prepared for Kåre. His future had been determined long ago by parents who never found out who he actually was. All that mattered was keeping their son on track, ensuring he would bring honour to the tenderloin caste.

If a person could make the family happy and harvest success, then that person had found the meaning of life. To hell with the costs.

Or so they thought.

Kåre became Kimmie’s first target for that reason alone. Everything Kåre believed in nauseated her. Winning prizes for diligence. Being the best at shooting birds and the fastest runner on the racetrack. Being an eminent orator at festive occasions. Having hair trimmed a little neater, trousers ironed a little smoother. Kimmie wished all this gone. She wanted to peel him to see what lay hidden beneath.

And when she was through with him, she looked around for more challenging prey. There was plenty to choose from. She wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone.

Only occasionally did Kimmie glance up over her magazine. If the man by the wall left, she would feel it. More than eleven years on the street had sharpened her instincts.

These instincts awoke when, one hour later, she observed
yet another man moving around the hall in an apparently aimless way, as if he were being led by legs set on automatic pilot while his eyes remained fixed on his surroundings. He wasn’t a pickpocket, attentively trying to spot a ripe handbag or loose coat. Nor was he the pickpocket’s little helper, sticking his hand out and asking for spare change while his accomplice did the dirty work. No, she knew the type better than most, and he wasn’t it.

He was a compact little man in shabby clothes. Thick coat, large pockets. It was wrapped around his body like a snakeskin, suggesting a derelict. But that wasn’t quite right. Even there, Kimmie knew better. Men wearing the uniform of the outcast – men who’d given up – didn’t look at other people. They had their sights set on the rubbish bins. On the ground in front of them. On corners where they might find an empty bottle. Maybe even on a random shop window or the offer of the week at Sunset Fast Food. They never scrutinized people’s faces and behaviour like this man was doing from under his bushy eyebrows. Besides, he was dark-skinned, like a Turk or Iranian. Who had ever seen a Turk or Iranian fall so far that he walked Copenhagen’s streets as a homeless person?

She watched him until he passed the man leaning against the wall, expecting they would acknowledge one another somehow, but they didn’t.

So she sat there, peering over the top of her magazine, imploring the voices in her head to keep out of it. And that’s how she was sitting when the little man returned to where he started. Not even on his way back did the two men acknowledge each other.

It was at this point that she rose quietly, pushed the chair carefully under her table and followed the squat, dark man at a distance.

He walked slowly. Now and then he would exit the hall and peer down Istedsgade, but he never walked so far that she couldn’t see him from the stairwell near the train station’s construction site.

There was no doubt that he was searching for someone, someone who could be her. So she stayed back in the shadows, behind corners and signs.

When he was standing near the train station post office for the tenth time, glancing around, he suddenly turned and stared straight at her. This was something she hadn’t prepared herself for, so she turned on her high heels and made her way towards the taxi queue. She would hail one and get away fast; he wasn’t going to keep her from doing that.

The other thing she hadn’t expected was that Rat-Tine would be standing right behind her.

‘Hi, Kimmie!’ she called shrilly, her eyes lustreless. ‘I thought it was you, love. You look smashing today. What’s the occasion?’