The Purity of Vengeance (37 page)

Carl declined and shifted in his armchair.

“Actually, no, it’s about something else. In 1987 a number of people disappeared and never turned up again. Our hope is that you, Nete . . .” He paused. “May I call you Nete?”

She nodded. A tad reluctantly perhaps, though it was hard to tell.

“Our hope is that you might be able to help us find out what happened to them.”

A pair of fine wrinkles rose on her brow. “Well, if I can be of any use.”

“I’ve got a summary here outlining a certain period of your life, Nete. I can see that you endured some considerable hardship. I want you to know that those of us conducting these investigations are outraged by the abuse you and women like you were subjected to.”

She raised an eyebrow. Was this too uncomfortable for her? Most likely it was.

“I’m sorry to have to open old wounds, but the fact is that several of these missing persons were linked to the women’s home on Sprogø. I’ll get back to that in a minute.” He took a sip of his tea. Rather bitter for his liking, but a vast improvement on Assad’s wallpaper paste. “Our main reason for being here is because we’re investigating your cousin Tage Hermansen’s disappearance in September 1987.”

She looked at him askew. “Cousin Tage? Disappeared? I’ve not heard from him in years, but still I’m sorry to hear it. I had no idea.”

“I see. We were at his workshop in Brenderup earlier on today. We found this envelope there.”

He removed it from its plastic sheath and showed it to her.

“Yes, I remember. I wrote and invited Tage to come over and see me. Now I understand why he never replied.”

“I don’t suppose you’d have a copy of that letter? A carbon copy, or a printout, perhaps?”

She smiled. “I’m afraid not. It was a handwritten letter.”

Carl nodded.

“You were at the women’s home at the same time as a nurse by the name of Gitte Charles. Do you remember her?”

The wrinkles on her forehead appeared again. “Yes, I most certainly do. I’ll never forget anyone from Sprogø.”

“Gitte Charles disappeared, too, around the same time as your cousin.”

“How strange.”

“And Rita Nielsen.”

This seemed to catch Nete slightly unaware. Her brow smoothed, and she drew back her shoulders.

“Rita? When was this?”

“The last thing we know is that she bought a pack of cigarettes in a kiosk just up the road from here on Nørrebrogade on the fourth of September 1987, at ten past ten in the morning. Besides that, her Mercedes was found on Kapelvej. Not far from here either, is it?”

Her lips tightened. “But that’s awful. Rita came to see me that day. The fourth of September, you say? I remember it was late summer, though not the exact date. I’d reached a point in my life where I felt the need to confront my past. I’d lost my husband a couple of years before and found myself unable to move on. That’s why I invited Rita and Tage.”

“So Rita Nielsen visited you?”

“She did, yes.” She gestured toward the table. “We sat there and had tea. The same cups we’re using now. She was here for a couple of hours. I clearly remember that seeing her again was strange, and yet salubrious at the same time. We sorted things out, you understand. We hadn’t always been the best of friends in the women’s home.”

“There were appeals for information following her disappearance. A lot of attention in the media. Why didn’t you go to the police, Nete?”

“Oh, this is dreadful. What on earth can have happened to her?”

She stared into space for a moment. If she didn’t answer Carl’s question, it was because something was wrong.

“Why didn’t I go to the police?” she repeated eventually. “Well, I couldn’t, you see. I went to Mallorca the day after she was here, to buy a house there. I don’t think I saw a Danish newspaper for six months or more. The house is in Son Vida. I go there for the winter. The only reason I’m not there now is that I’ve been having some bother with kidney stones, and I prefer to have them treated here.”

“I assume you’ve got the deeds to this property.”

“Of course. But now I get the feeling you’re interrogating me. If you suspect me of anything, then I would ask you to be frank about it.”

“That’s not the case at all, Nete. But we do need to account for certain things, one of which being why you didn’t react to the missing persons bulletins that were out on Rita Nielsen. May we have a look at those deeds?”

“Well, it’s a good thing they’re not still in Mallorca, isn’t it?” she said, slightly offended. “They were, actually, until last year when there was a spate of break-ins in the area. One has to take precautions.”

She knew exactly where the documents were, placing them in front of Carl and indicating the date of purchase. “I bought the place on the thirtieth of September 1987, but by that time I’d been looking for somewhere suitable and negotiating for three weeks. The owner was trying to pull a fast one on me. He failed, of course.”

“But . . .”

“Yes, it’s some time after the fourth, I realize that, but that’s how it happened. If you’re lucky, I might still have the plane tickets somewhere. In which case you’ll see that I wasn’t at home. But it’ll take me rather longer to find them.”

“A stamp in your passport or some other form of documentation will do just as well,” Carl said. “I’m assuming you’ve kept your old passports, and there’s bound to be some sort of stamp to prove it, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure I have, but you’ll need to come back another day, I’m afraid. I shall have to look for them.”

Carl nodded. She was almost certainly telling the truth. “What was the nature of your relationship to Gitte Charles, Nete? Can you tell me about that?”

“What business would it be of yours?”

“I’m sorry, you’re right. I ought to have worded that differently. The fact is we have very little to go on in Gitte’s case. Hardly anyone who knew her then is alive today, so it’s hard for us to get a picture of the kind of person she was and why she might have disappeared. How would you describe her?”

It was obvious this was traumatic for her. Why should the prisoner speak well of her guard? Clearly, it was something of a dilemma.

“Was she unkind to you? Is that why you cannot answer so easily?” Assad piped up.

Nete Hermansen nodded. “I do find it rather difficult, I must admit.”

“Because Sprogø was a bad place, was it not? And she was one of the ones who kept you there, yes?” Assad went on, his eyes fixed on the plate of cookies.

She nodded again. “I haven’t thought about her for years, to be honest. Or about Sprogø, for that matter. What went on there doesn’t bear thinking about. They kept us isolated from the rest of the country and they made us infertile. They said we were retarded. I’ve no idea why. And while Gitte Charles wasn’t the worst by any means, she never helped me in terms of getting away from the place.”

“You have had no contact with her since?”

“None, thank goodness.”

“Then there is a Philip Nørvig. You remember him, yes?”

She nodded faintly.

“He disappeared that day, too.” It was Carl’s turn again. “We know from his widow he’d received an invitation to Copenhagen. You’ve told us you had come to a point in your life where you needed to confront your past. In a way, Philip Nørvig was to blame for your unhappy plight, was he not? It was thanks to him that you lost the case against Curt Wad, isn’t that right? So wasn’t he one of the people you needed to confront, Nete? Did the invitation he received come from you?”

“No, it most certainly did not. I invited only Tage and Rita, no one else.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. So many all at once, and me knowing them all. What on earth can have happened?”

“That’s why Department Q has been brought in. Unsolved cases, cases requiring special scrutiny, that’s what we deal in. So many disappearances all at once, and all linked, indicates to us that we’re dealing with something out of the ordinary, as you suggest.”

“We have been looking into this doctor, Curt Wad,” Assad chirped. Rather earlier than Carl had intended, but what else was new?

“There are many things about this man that seem to connect him to our missing persons,” Assad continued. “Nørvig, in particular.”

“Curt Wad!” She raised her head like a cat discovering a bird in reach of its claws.

“Yes, we realize he’s most likely where your misfortunes began,” said Carl. “We’ve been through Nørvig’s files and read about the way he rebuffed your charges against him and turned them back on you. I’m sorry to have to bring it up again, but if you can in any way provide us with some kind of plausible connection between Curt Wad and these persons going missing, we’d be grateful indeed.”

She nodded. “I’ll give it some thought, certainly.”

“Your own case was probably the first of many in which Curt Wad succeeded in making a mockery of the truth and turning matters to his own advantage with scant regard for the injustice he thereby occasioned. If charges were to be brought against Curt Wad, it’d be highly likely you’d be called as a witness. How would you feel about that?”

“About taking the stand against Curt Wad? Oh, no, I wouldn’t care for that at all. All that’s water under the bridge for me now. Justice will catch up with him without my involvement. Beelzebub is most likely rubbing his hands with glee as we speak.”

“We quite understand, Nete,” said Assad, leaning forward and looking as though he was about to pour himself another cup.

Carl stopped him with a movement of his hand.

“Perhaps we’ll speak again soon, Nete. Thanks for the tea and hospitality,” he said, informing Assad with a nod that the audience was over. If they got a move on he might just be able to nip home for a change of clothes before seeing if his new key to Mona’s chambers worked like it was supposed to.

Assad offered his thanks, swiping another cookie in the process, the quality of which he praised before suddenly raising a finger into the air.

“Just a minute, Carl. There was one more person we did not ask about.” He turned to face Nete Hermansen. “A fisherman from Lundeborg went missing, too. His name was Viggo Mogensen. Would that by any chance be anyone you ever ran into? From Lundeborg to Sprogø is not far in a boat.”

She smiled. “No, I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”

 • • • 

“You look tensive, Carl. What is going on inside your head?”

“
Pensive
, Assad. There’s no such word as
tensive
. But apart from that, there’s a lot to think about, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say so, yes. I cannot get my head around this either, Carl. Apart from this Viggo Mogensen, it’s like there are two cases in one: Rita and Gitte and Curt Wad and Nørvig and Nete on the one side. Here, the cousin, Tage, seems not to fit in, not having anything to do with Sprogø as far as we know. But then on the other side there is Tage and Nete. This means she is the only one who has something to do with all of them.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right, Assad, though we’ve no way of knowing for sure. Maybe Curt Wad ties it all together in some way. That’s what we need to delve into now. The idea of some collective suicide, or a coincidence of inexplicable, simultaneous accidents somehow isn’t on my agenda anymore.”

“Say again, Carl. Agenda, and
what
kind of accidents?”

“Forget it, Assad. We’ll talk about it later.”

29

SPROGØ, 1955 / COPENHAGEN, September 1987

A flock of women
stood on the jetty, waving as though Nete and Rita were long-awaited friends. They seemed like children, boisterous and giggling, spick and span. And Nete didn’t understand.

What did they have to smile about? The boat from Nyborg was no lifeboat come to save them. It wasn’t a Noah’s Ark to sail them off to sanctuary. Quite the opposite, from what she’d heard. The boat was a curse.

Nete looked out over the railing at the lighthouse on its hill, and then beyond, at the cluster of red-roofed buildings with yellow walls, their windows like eyes watching over the island landscape and the poor souls upon it. A pair of French doors in the middle building swung open and a small, erect figure appeared on the step, one hand firmly placed on the handrail. An admiral to welcome the fleet, or rather Sprogø’s queen monitoring her realm. She who reigned supreme.

“Have you brought cigarettes?” was the first thing the girls shouted out to them. One even clambered out and took up position on the wooden pilings with arms outstretched. If they had, she’d be first in line.

The girls milled around the new arrivals like a chorus of cackling geese. Names resounded in the air, hands sought contact.

Nete glanced at Rita with concern, but Rita was in her element. Rita had cigarettes, and cigarettes were the pathway to the top of the hierarchy. She lifted the packets above her head to show them off, then returned them just as quickly to her pocket. No wonder she was the one with all the attention.

 • • • 

Nete was given a room up under the sloping roof. A single skylight was her window on the world. The place was chilly, the wind worming its way through the rickety window frame. There were two beds and the little suitcase belonging to her roommate. Had it not been for a crucifix and two small photographs of film stars she didn’t recognize, it would have seemed like a prison cell.

The room was one in a row of many, and outside the door was a terrazzo trough in which they washed.

Throughout her childhood Nete had toiled mucking out the stalls, but she had never been less than thorough with her hygiene, scrubbing her arms and hands with a stiff brush and the rest of her body with the sponge.

“You must be the cleanest kid in the world,” Tage always used to say.

But here ablutions took place at the trough amid a tumult of activity that made it difficult to wash properly. The girls stood there all at once, stripped to the waist, washing frenziedly with only five minutes allocated. The same soap flakes as at Brejning that made their hair stiff like helmets and quite as undecorative. Moreover, they made a person smell worse than before they washed.

The rest of the day was marked out by the ringing of the bell, a set timetable, discipline. Nete hated the place and kept to herself as much as possible, the same way she’d done in her foster home. The advantage was that she could grieve over her fate in peace, and yet one all-consuming shadow prevailed: Sprogø was an island from which escape seemed inconceivable. Perhaps some friendly soul among the staff or a good friend among the girls might have made her time there more tolerable, but the women who watched over them were bossy and obnoxious, and Rita had enough on her own to keep her busy, wheeling and dealing and hustling her way up the ladder, eventually to rule the roost over her simple underlings like a regent upon a throne.