Next of Kin (19 page)

The new cleaner looked as though she had spent her life eating spinach and raw steak. Popeye-style muscles bulged from under the thin material of her T-shirt and she gave the impression that she could swing a bucket in one hand while wringing a dishcloth with the other.

Maibritt's new discovery, who was to ease their daily travails and give them more time together, was called Kiki Jensen. Of course, he had smelled a rat from long off: she wanted more time to keep an eye on him; he wasn't a psychologist for nothing.

‘Can I make a start in here?'

She must have noticed he was on his way out. Ole Nyborg Madsen gave a brief nod, stuffed some papers into a drawer and locked it. The most sensitive material was under lock and key in the computer, of course, but you can never be too careful. Like with the print-outs about the trial of Nanna's murderer. It was none of a cleaner's business. It was no one's business that he had begun to think about it as just that, premeditated murder, and the urge to extract his revenge could be triggered by the smallest detail. Such as the decapitation story, which seemed to have penetrated his consciousness and would not let him rest, not even at night.

‘I'm off now. I have a meeting in town.'

He was immediately annoyed with himself. He needed neither to defend nor explain himself for leaving his office at three o'clock on a normal workday. It had nothing to do with her if he wanted to frequent prostitutes' hangouts and take in a casino afterwards, which was quite within his capabilities. The latter, that is, he added in his head. He had never really had any need for any other sex than the quota he got in his marriage.

He and Morten had arranged to meet at Café Casablanca, which was semi-deserted, ready for people to finish work. He sat down on one of the brown leather benches, replicas of old-fashioned train seats. There was a newspaper lying around that someone had forgotten to put away, and he cast a glance at the front page: widespread unease and fear of terrorism, an opinion poll showing support for the death sentence and something about people's reactions to the Mohammed cartoons, which had become a political football. For a moment he wondered how a foreigner who had just arrived in Denmark would interpret this news. Perhaps they would think civil war had broken out, or rather a religious war? Perhaps they would wonder how all these forceful opinions could come from a country in which its people appeared to lack for nothing.

The waiter came, and he ordered a bottle of red wine and two glasses. My God, they could easily drink it between the two of them, knowing Morten as he did, and of course it would help free up the atmosphere since they hadn't seen each other for many years.

He conjectured as to what Morten would look like now, but his thoughts didn't have time to get off the ground for Morten burst in through the door, his hair somewhat thinner and his body a little fuller than he remembered. But still unmistakeably Morten. His presence soon filled the whole room with his permanent grin and eyes that always had time to encompass a pair of attractive legs or a well-formed, arched neck.

‘Hi, Ole. Good to see you. Hey, what happened to the rug?'

‘Same to you, I think I can say,' Ole said, eyeing the other's lack of hirsute splendour.

He stood up. They hugged each other like brothers, and at that moment it felt real. Partners in crime, wasn't that the term? They had scored so often, with each other's help. Well, mostly with Morten's help. Women, cheap political points and the odd Thai stick or two; the hangovers had come later when the high from the joint had evaporated and the polit-rock band Røde Mor had thrown in the towel.

‘You know what they say,' Morten said, running his hand over the short, blond hair which—perhaps, perhaps not—had been bleached by a skilled hairdresser. ‘A man's potency is inversely proportional to the amount of hair on his head.'

Ole laughed. ‘Well, as you know, there's never been anything wrong in that department. Red wine?'

Morten slipped onto the bench opposite and stripped off his leather jacket with a nod of appreciation. ‘Why not? I left the car at home.'

‘You came by bike?' Ole asked, thinking of all the times they had wobbled back from parties along Aarhus's cycle paths.

‘Astrid brought me.'

‘Have you come straight from work?'

Morten nodded. ‘Ninth class, Danish. Two-thirds girls.'

‘Some people have all the luck.'

Ole said it for the main part because it was expected of him. Because he could see in Morten's eyes that the glint was still there, the desire to sample female flesh of all shades and hues. How did he maintain the interest? Where did he get the energy from? Then he recalled that Morten had always had that kind of energy. He had attributed it to youth, but perhaps it was genetic.

Morten's eyes scanned the room and settled on the newspaper on the table. He seemed to gasp and lunged for the paper with both hands. Strange reaction, Ole thought in retrospect.

‘I'll just have a look at this.'

He flicked through the paper, mumbling to himself. Ole watched the colour drain from his face. He looked older, or perhaps now it was his real age.

‘Something up?'

Morten shook his head and clutched at the paper. Then he seemed to pull himself together and he showed Ole an article with a photo of a woman he would have guessed was in her early forties. She was very distinctive with full, messy hair and what seemed to be a scar pulling her lips upwards into a serious smile.

‘As time passes, you meet them everywhere,' Morten sighed with affected nonchalance. ‘Ex-lovers, you know. Can be a problem.'

Ole scrutinised the article. It was the journalist who had sent in the film of the beheading. His first reaction was sympathy. Then a form of solidarity. ‘An ex-lover, you say? A long time ago?'

‘Several ice ages,' Morten said with an equal amount of coldness in his voice.

‘Where do you know her from?'

Morten flourished a hand in the air, as though waving away smoke. ‘Oh, lost in the mists of time. In the mid-seventies some time.'

Ole had another look at the picture. He tried to deduct thirty years, but this was a face that had been shaped by life's vicissitudes. Innocent, fragile beauty may have lain several layers beneath, but it was like looking at a painting that had been painted over and over again by a restless artist.

‘She must have been very young,' he concluded.

Morten nodded. ‘Between fifteen and sixteen.'

He thought of Nanna when she had been that old. A child. No more, no less. He wanted to say it bordered on paedophilia, but he suspected Morten wouldn't understand.

‘You were her teacher?' he asked tentatively.

Morten regarded him. To his credit, he looked embarrassed.

‘It's not something I'm proud of.'

But he was, somewhere, thought Ole. Virgins were a prized scalp, even then. For Morten it had been like a notch on his bedpost. He would have been willing to pay dearly for that, and you could only guess what the price had been.

While Morten picked up the paper and read the article again, Ole wondered how this Dicte Svendsen was coming to terms with the beheading. Had it had an effect on her family life? Could she sleep at night? Or did she lie awake at night, as he did? Searching for a way out: redemption from her heightened emotions? Was she afraid something would happen to her family? To her? Did she also think about putting an end to it all—pulling up the evil by its roots?

‘And then there's the reunion,' Morten said cheerily, as though nothing in the world had changed.

Names spilled out. Morten had the list and had done some research. There was a column of telephone numbers, and they agreed to split the task of ringing round.

‘Where shall we have it?' Ole asked.

‘What about the top floor of Jacob's in Vestergade? If it still exists.'

‘I can check it out,' Ole offered. ‘Perhaps some others would like to be on the party committee? Some of the girls?'

They talked for a while longer as the level in the bottle sank. Gradually the old familiarity returned. Partners in crime, Ole thought again, and, inside, something switched back to Nanna's murderer.

‘It must be rough,' Morten said suddenly.

‘What?'

‘Knowing that someone is walking round bearing the guilt of your daughter's death.'

The word death was only used because the red wine had done its job, of that he was sure. However, also somewhere inside, he was happy that it had been released.

‘It's unendurable,' he confessed, and the urge to say more bit into him. Perhaps that was how it was with an old friendship, even though years had passed and illusions lay shattered. A sort of reflex action, the same way your legs couldn't keep still when the Stones played ‘Satisfaction'.

‘Is there anything you can do?' Morten asked. ‘Could there be a re-trial? Six months isn't long for taking a life.'

‘Four,' Ole said. ‘He was out after four.'

They sat without speaking. Then Morten got up and went to the bar. He came back with another bottle of wine and poured.

‘I drove out to the family's house in Højbjerg,' Ole said, after the first sip.

Morten waited to hear more as he swirled the wine round in the glass and held it up to the light. They hadn't been like that in the old days: the thought flashed through Ole's mind. Then it had been a case of swilling the rotgut down and on to the next glass.

‘I hurled a rock through a window.' He hadn't told anyone. Sharing it felt good.

‘Did that help?'

‘A little, maybe.'

‘But not enough,' Morten articulated.

Ole shook his head.

‘What will help, do you think? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?'

Was that the devil sitting opposite him, tempting him? There was a glint of excitement in Morten's eyes, daring him, he could see that through the mist.

Ole swallowed a mouthful of wine. The heat from the alcohol coursed through his veins and went to his head. The café had begun to buzz and vibrate with energy, and it spread. At that moment he knew that psychology and his attempts to rationalise his feelings were the merest veneer over a primeval drive that was stronger even than the sexual urge. He looked at Morten, who, naturally, knew all about that.

‘A life for a life,' he said, without blinking.

The night played out a kind of shadow theatre through the gaps in the blinds. A car's headlights climbed from wall to wall and swept across the duvet and onto the floor before slipping under the chest of drawers where they finally allowed themselves to be swallowed up by the darkness.

Dicte listened to the engine and other sounds that drifted though the house. Faint voices and the barking of a dog mingled with the sound of a branch gently knocking against the roof gutter. Svendsen, patrolling downstairs in the hallway, her claws echoing on the tiles. The darkness had its own melody and rhythm. What was waiting for her in all that pitch black? What ancient, unresolved, unfinished business was hidden there? Events that continued to haunt her, precisely like Rose's fateful love for Aziz leading to consequences she was powerless to control. The ties that bind, she thought, listening to Bo's regular breathing ten centimetres away from her. We enter into relationships with other people either through love, or maybe the opposite. We launch unsuspecting ships and they sail off with all sails set and one day they return to us expecting to find a place to dock or at least somewhere to anchor, carrying a cargo of unresolved emotions and pent-up frustrations. They demand more answers from us than we can give; we are drained of more energy than perhaps we have. And those closest to us demand the most. They cannot be turned away, they are a part of us, and if they go down, we go down with them.

She followed another beam of light with her eyes and listened to the sound of the car at the crossroads. A feeling of helplessness seemed to have leached though the gaps in the blinds with the car's headlights. What could she do? Her daughter was asleep in her old room, doped up with sedatives, with scars to her body and soul that Dicte wished she could erase. How was Rose's world going to be shaped from now on? What would this do to her?

Anger churned inside her as it had done ever since the attack, but what was she supposed to do with it? Hatred welled up in her, against her will, and in the absence of a target was directed at immigrants in general, and young men from immigrant communities with no respect for Danish girls, in particular. And somewhere out there was yet another tie, tightening like a noose around her neck. Someone was trying to draw her in. Someone was baiting her, wanted something from her, and knew exactly how to hit her with the greatest impact. She thought about the text message.

Even under the warm duvet she shivered and snuggled up to Bo, who, half asleep, pulled her towards him. She was afraid to tell him. She was afraid to say that what she had feared more than anything in the world might be about to happen. ‘I am the child you should have listened to.' The words were on a loop like the electronic newspaper in Aarhus town hall square. ‘I am the child you should have protected.'

She pressed against Bo, who muttered something and stroked her lower back. She could only approach him when he was asleep and then she became conscious of her desire, the warmth between her legs. It was so long since she had been caught unawares like this and she clung to it because it dispersed everything else. She realised she'd been missing this feeling desperately.

He woke up. In the dark she sensed his surprise and his eyes, in which sleep was twinned with desire.

‘What is it, sweetheart?'

His voice was thick with the land of dreams, coming from a place of spontaneous erections and bullet-shaped testosterone ready to penetrate. At once the scent of him was so overpowering that she was urgent to explore his skin and lips, so close at hand.

‘Can't you sleep?'

He whispered across to her and placed other meanings in those three innocent words. Salty lips followed, exploring and piercing the innocence. Tongues entwined in an intimate dance.

It was what they did best and no more words were needed; gone were the day's mutual accusations and the jealousy that could distort feelings beyond recognition.

He opened her and with surgical precision found the places where the need was greatest and her desire at its peak. Not with a doctor's calculated ministrations, but with instinct and lust as his driving force and a clear desire to give her what she craved. But as the aftershock reverberated through her body she couldn't help wondering if she had opened him too.

‘He mustn't find out.'

Rose had that look which concentrated all of her soft stubbornness into one laser-like beam. It cut through everything, including her mother's objections.

‘But Aziz is part of it all,' Dicte protested as she let the dog loose across the fields.

In ecstasies, Svendsen galloped off after a flock of crows, which cawed hoarsely and soon scattered.

‘I'll deal with it on my own,' Rose mumbled.

To emphasise her point, she tucked her arm under Dicte's as they walked down the path to Kasted Mose. The sun radiated bright autumnal light and the air was sharp with a touch of chill coming from the east; the fields lay black and freshly ploughed, stretching down towards the lake where swans glided around like white silhouettes.

Dicte took a deep breath. If she repressed the events of yesterday, it would almost be possible to experience a kind of happiness, especially after last night's love-making. Here she was, walking arm in arm with her beautiful daughter, on a radiant autumn day feeling the sun warm her back through her coat. She had a dog, a house, a boyfriend, a family and a job thousands would envy. Come on, Dicte, she thought. It can't be all that bad.

But it could, because the world no longer looked the way it had done only one month ago. And yesterday a black cloud had enveloped her life, and, of course, Rose's life most of all.

‘What do you mean you'll deal with it?' she asked. ‘What precisely are you going to deal with and why don't you want Aziz to be involved?' She stopped in the middle of the path and tried to get eye contact. Rose avoided her gaze and watched the dog chasing the crows.

‘I'm not exactly sure,' her daughter mumbled. ‘But Aziz doesn't need to be a part of this.'

Dicte put both her hands on Rose's shoulders, which were as fragile and delicate as the rest of her. Nevertheless, she shook her. ‘What on earth is going on in your head? For God's sake, don't tell me you were considering seeing the community for yourself?'

She heard her own fear and didn't try to hide it, either. ‘How can you even think you can deal with anything when it comes to Aziz's friends? You don't know them. Besides they're dangerous.'

Rose merely shrugged. ‘They were friends once. Aziz and Mustapha and Eihan.'

‘But now they're enemies,' Dicte said. ‘And in those circles hatred is a very serious business, no joking matter.'

‘I'm not joking,' Rose said. ‘Don't worry.'

Rose telling her not to worry was what worried her most. ‘Perhaps you should take a break from each other,' Dicte suggested, knowing what the answer would be.

‘We took a year's break and it was no good. I need to do something completely different.'

Dicte tried to imagine what, but her imagination failed her. How could you turn hatred and a lust for revenge into reason and respect? How could Rose do that?

She didn't have the breadth of vision to comprehend or help. Nor did she have the power to prevent Rose from dealing with the matter on her own. If she contacted Aziz, Rose would never forgive her and the police would only get involved if any more damage was done. She thought again of the metaphor of the ship. And she thought about the text message which she was too scared to tell anyone about, but which might, or might not, come from a totally different boat, one she had launched herself many years ago, unaware that one day it would call at her port and make demands of her. She had no idea where it came from, but suspected some primal instinct when she was struck by the thought: you are prepared to die for your children at any moment, but sometimes not even that is enough to save them. She would do anything for Rose, but she was unable to help her at this point. And the other child? The one Bo had complained that everything in her life ultimately revolved around? A son brought into the world by a mother who was far too young and then put into unknown hands. Had this ship returned to port and, if so, what was its cargo? Did it bring hatred, terrorism, death and a torn Jolly Roger flapping in the wind from a broken mast?

Slowly Dicte allowed Rose and the dog to drag her home, as the text message scrolled through her head with images of a sabre slicing off a man's head.

For whose child was it that the message referred to, if not her own?