The Absent One (39 page)

‘Well, I’ll tell you then. I was a completely random victim, I’m convinced of that. And how it turned out was just as random.’ He put his hand on his chest and leaned forward slightly. ‘Three of my ribs were broken, the rest were separated from my collarbone. I peed blood for days afterwards. They could’ve easily killed me. The fact they didn’t was also totally accidental, I can assure you.’

‘Uh huh, but where are you going with this? It doesn’t explain why your revenge should only be exacted on Kimmie Lassen.’

‘You know what, Mørck? They taught me something the day they attacked me, those bastards. Actually, in a way I’m grateful.’ With each word of his next sentence he tapped on his desk. ‘I learned that when opportunity presents itself, you take it, whether it’s random or not. Without considering fairness or another person’s guilt or innocence. That’s the business world’s alpha and omega, you understand? Sharpen your weapons and use them constantly. Just go for it. In this case my weapon was being able to influence Kimmie’s father.’

Carl took a deep breath. It didn’t sound especially sympathetic to his provincial ears. He squinted his eyes. ‘I still don’t think I completely understand.’

Basset shook his head. He had expected as much. They were from different planets.

‘I’m just saying that since it was easiest to go after Kimmie, then she was the one who’d have to suffer my revenge,’ he said.

‘You didn’t care about the others?’

He shrugged. ‘If I’d had the chance, I would have avenged myself on them, too. I simply haven’t had that
chance. You and I each have our own hunting grounds, you might say.’

‘Then Kimmie wasn’t any more actively involved than the others? Who would you say was the prime mover in that gang?’

‘Kristian Wolf, of course. But if all those devils were on the move at once, I believe Kimmie is the one I would stay farthest away from.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She was very neutral when they began on me. Mostly it was Florin, Pram and Kristian Wolf. But when they’d had enough – I was bleeding from my ear, after all, so they were probably scared –
then
Kimmie started in.’

He flared his nostrils as if he were still able to sense her proximity. ‘They wound her up, you see. Especially Wolf. He and Pram groped her until she was worked up and then they shoved her towards me.’ He clenched his fists. ‘At first she only tapped a little, then it got worse and worse. When she noticed how much it hurt, her eyes grew wider and wider, she breathed deeper and deeper and hit harder and harder. She was the one who kicked me in the abdomen – with the toe of her shoe. And hard.’ He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray that looked identical to a bronze statue on the roof across the street. Basset’s face seemed wrinkled. Only now in the sharp sunlight did Carl notice. Fairly early for such a young man.

‘If Wolf hadn’t intervened she would have continued until I was dead. I’m certain of that.’

‘And the others?’

‘Yes, the others.’ He nodded to himself. ‘I’d say they could barely wait until the next time. They were like spectators
at a bullfight. Believe me, I know a thing or two about
that
.’

The secretary who’d given Carl his coffee entered the office. Slender and attractive in clothes that were dark like her hair and eyebrows. In one hand she held a small envelope that she gave to Carl. ‘Now you have some euros and a boarding pass for the trip home,’ she said in English, offering him a friendly smile.

Then she turned to her boss and slipped him a sheet of paper, which he scanned quickly. The unbridled anger this document induced reminded Carl of the wide-eyed Kimmie that Basset had just described for him.

Without hesitation Basset ripped the paper to shreds and bombarded the secretary with recriminations. His face looked wild, the wrinkles obvious now. The fierce reaction caused the woman to tremble and cast her eyes at the floor in shame. The scene definitely wasn’t nice to witness.

When she closed the door behind her, Basset smiled at Carl, seemingly unaffected. ‘She’s just a stupid little office mouse. Don’t concern yourself with her. Will you be able to make it home to Denmark now?’

He nodded silently and tried to express some form of gratitude, but it was difficult. Kyle Basset was just like the people who’d once done him harm. Devoid of empathy. He had demonstrated it right before Carl’s eyes. To hell with him and everyone like him, the dumb prick.

‘And Kimmie’s punishment?’ Carl said finally. ‘What was that?’

He laughed. ‘Ah, it was pure happenstance. She’d miscarried and had been seriously beaten up. All in all she was quite ill, so she went to her father for help.’

‘Which she didn’t get, I imagine.’ He pictured the young woman whom the father wouldn’t assist, even when she was in the greatest need. Had this lack of love already left its mark in the little girl’s face when she stood between her father and stepmother in the old
Gossip
photo?

‘Oh, it was nasty, I’ve been told. Her father lived at Hotel D’Angleterre at that time – he always does whenever he’s home – and she just came bursting in. What the hell had she expected?’

‘He got her thrown out?’

‘Head first, I can assure you.’ He chuckled. ‘But first she was given the chance to fish around on the floor for some thousand-krone bills he’d tossed at her. So she got
something
out of it, but after that it was goodbye and farewell for ever.’

‘She owns the house in Ordrup. Do you know why she didn’t go there?’

‘But she did. And she received the same treatment.’ Basset shook his head. He was positively indifferent. ‘Well, Carl Mørck, if you want to know more, you’re going to have to take a later flight. You have to check in quite early here, so if you’re going to make your 4:20 flight, you’ll have to leave now.’

Carl took a deep breath. He could already feel the plane’s turbulence arousing the anxiety centre of his brain. Then he remembered the tablets in his breast pocket, so he pulled out the teddy bear and then the pills. He set the teddy bear on the edge of the desk and took a sip of coffee so the pills could glide more easily down his throat.

He glanced over his cup at the chaos of papers on the desk, the pocket calculator, the fountain pen, the half-filled
ashtray and finally at Kyle Basset’s clenched hands and completely white knuckles. Only then did he look up and see Basset’s face. What he saw was a man who probably for the first time in ages had been forced to surrender to the memory of some searing pain, which people are so good at inflicting on others and themselves.

Basset was staring intensely at the guileless, tiny stump of a stuffed animal. It was as if a lightning bolt of repressed feelings had just struck him.

He fell back in his chair.

‘Do you recognize this teddy bear?’ Carl asked, the pills stuck somewhere between his throat and his vocal chords.

Basset nodded, then for a moment drew strength from the rage that came to his rescue. ‘Yes, Kimmie always had it dangling from her wrist at school. I don’t know why. It had a red silk ribbon around its neck that tied it to her wrist.’

For a moment Carl thought Basset was going to give in and cry, but then his face hardened and the man who could humiliate an office mouse as if it were nothing at all was himself again.

‘Yes, I remember it all too well. It was dangling from her wrist when she beat me senseless. Where the hell did you get it?’

It was almost ten o’clock Sunday morning when she awoke in her room at the Hotel Ansgar. The TV was still flickering at the foot of her bed, showing Channel 2 News reruns of the previous night’s events. Even though the police had put in an enormous effort, they hadn’t come any closer to explaining the explosion near Dybbølsbro Station, and therefore the episode had faded somewhat into the background. Now attention was directed more at the American bombing of insurgents in Baghdad and Kasparov’s candidacy for president of Russia, but primarily it was focused on a body that had been discovered in front of the ramshackle red high-rise in Rødovre.

It was probably murder. Several indicators pointed in that direction, the police spokesman said. In particular the fact that the victim had clung to the balcony railing before falling and had been struck on the fingers with a blunt object – possibly the pistol that had been fired at a wooden figurine in the flat the same night. The police were stingy with their information and still did not have a suspect.

That’s what they said, anyway.

She hugged her bundle.

‘Now they know, Mille. Now the boys know I’m after them.’ She tried to smile. ‘Do you think they’re together now? Do you think Torsten and Ulrik and Ditlev are discussing
what they should do when Mummy comes after them? I wonder if they’re afraid now.’

She rocked the bundle. ‘I think they deserve to be, after what they did to us, don’t you agree? And do you know what, Mille? They have good reason to be.’

On the screen the cameraman was attempting to zoom in to the ambulance crew who were moving the body, but it was clearly too dark to get decent footage.

‘Do you know what, Mille? I shouldn’t have told the others about the metal box. That wasn’t the right thing to do.’ She dried her eyes. The tears had come so suddenly.

‘I shouldn’t have told them. Why did I do that?’

She’d moved in with Bjarne Thøgersen, and that was sacrilege. If she was going to fuck anyone, it had to be in secret or with the entire gang; there was no other choice. And now this fatal breaking of all the golden rules. Not only had she picked one member over the others, she had also selected the one at the bottom of the hierarchy.

That was completely unacceptable.

‘
Bjarne?
’ Kristian had thundered. ‘What the hell do you want with that good-for-nothing?’ He wanted everything to remain as it had always been. Wanted their violent forays together to continue, wanted Kimmie to always be available to all of them, and only them.

But in spite of Kristian’s threats and pressure, Kimmie held firm. She’d chosen Bjarne; the others would have to settle for living with their memories.

For a while the group continued its orgies. They met about every fourth Sunday, snorted coke and watched violent films, then went off in one of Torsten’s or Kristian’s
huge, four-wheel-drives in search of someone to harass and beat up. Sometimes they made an agreement with the victims and gave them blood money for the humiliation and pain they’d endured; sometimes they simply attacked them from behind and beat them senseless before they were seen. And there was also the rare occasion, like the time they found an old man fishing by himself at Esrum Lake, where they just knew their victim wasn’t going to leave alive.

This last type of assault was the kind that suited them best. When the conditions were right and they could go all the way. When everyone could play out his role to the fullest.

But something went wrong at Esrum Lake.

She saw how excited Kristian was becoming. He always got worked up, but this time his face grew quite dark and determined. Lips pursed tightly and eyes alert. He turned his frustration inward and stood far too quietly and passively, observing the others and watching how Kimmie’s clothes clung to her as they hauled the man out into the water.

‘Take her now, Ulrik!’ he shouted suddenly, as she squatted in the rushes with her knees apart and her summer dress dripping, watching the body float out into the lake and sink to the bottom. Ulrik’s eyes glinted at the opportunity, mixed with his fear of being inadequate. Time after time in the period before she went to Switzerland he’d had to give up penetrating her and let the others take over instead. It was as though this cocktail of violence and sex didn’t work for him like it did for the others. This letting the pulse rate fall before it could rise again.

‘Come on, Ulrik!’ the others cried, as Bjarne yelled at them to stop. It was then that Ditlev and Kristian grabbed hold of Bjarne and held him back.

She saw Ulrik unzipping his trousers, for once seemingly very ready. What she didn’t see was Torsten, who threw himself at her from behind and forced her to the ground.

If it weren’t for Bjarne’s cursing and wild punching and the subsequent shrivelling of Ulrik’s manhood, they would have raped her that day in front of the thicket of bullrushes.

It didn’t take long, however, before Kristian systematically began to seek her out. He couldn’t care less about Bjarne and the others. As long as
he
could have her, he was content.

Bjarne changed. When he and Kimmie talked together he seemed unfocused. Stopped returning her caresses and was often absent when she got home from work. Spent money he shouldn’t have had. Talked on the telephone when he thought she was asleep.

Kristian courted her favour everywhere. In the Nautilus pet shop, on the way home from work, in the flat she shared with Bjarne after he’d been given a cushy job by the others and was well out of the way.

And Kimmie derided him. Mocked Kristian for his dependency and lack of a sense of reality.

She quickly saw how his anger increased. How the steel in his eyes grew flinty and piercing.

But Kimmie didn’t fear him. What could he do to her that he hadn’t already done so many times before?

It finally happened that day in March when the comet Hyakutake was visible in the sky over Denmark. Bjarne was given a telescope by Torsten, and Ditlev had made his yacht available. The plan was that while Bjarne drank lots of beers and tried to fathom the enormity of the universe, Kristian, Ditlev, Torsten and Ulrik would break into his flat.

She never found out how they had managed to get hold of a door key, but suddenly they were standing there with their pupils small and nostrils itching from the coke. They said nothing, just went right at her, pressing her against the wall and tearing at her clothes until she was adequately accessible.

They didn’t get her to say anything because she knew it would only make them wilder. As if she hadn’t seen it plenty of times when they’d assaulted others.

The boys in the gang hated whining. So did Kimmie.

They threw her on the coffee table without clearing it first. The rape began when Ulrik straddled her stomach and grabbed her knees with his huge paws, forcing her to spread her legs. First she tried pounding his back, but the cocaine frenzy and his layer of fat absorbed the force of her blows. And what was the point, anyway? She knew Ulrik loved it. A thrashing, humiliation, coercion – whatever challenged conventional morality. Nothing was taboo for Ulrik. No fetish went untested. None. Still, he couldn’t get it up like everyone else.