Three Dog Night (39 page)

The tape was still stuck to her mouth and the blindfold was so tight it felt like her skull would cave in. She mustn't cry. She must breathe calmly or else all was lost. She tried to change her position. She had tried countless times, but all she'd done was make the metal around her ankles and wrists cut even deeper into her skin. She was sitting upright with her back to an icy wall. Her arms were still stretched out, attached somewhere above her head, and her legs spread-eagled. Her muscles were strained to their limit.

She hoped Maria had felt loved by her mother in her brief life. She believed she had. Maria had been the sunshine in her life from the moment she was born. From that day on everything had been different, and all her feelings, her every thought, had been directed towards this new little being. And it had continued. The bond between them had grown stronger and stronger.

She could still see Maria in her pink leggings, a white dress on top, with white bows in her hair; flawless skin, dark hair from her Spanish genes. A little Snow White ready to steal everyone's hearts. A loving child with no inhibitions towards other people. A child with a God-given ability to wrap her thin arms around others and love them unconditionally.

She heard a sound. Footsteps were approaching, bringing a draught and waves of cold with them.

The footsteps came closer, right up to her. She sensed it was a man from the way he moved and breathed; from the way the air moved out of his way. He bent down to her and she felt the pain as he tore the gaffer tape from her mouth, taking some skin with it.

‘No one can hear you. But if you start screaming, the tape goes back on.'

The voice belonged to the driver who had brought her here. It was also his body. This man filled space. He was broad and muscular, possibly not very tall, but certainly stocky. She could smell his sweat, even in the cold. He smelt as if he had just been doing some sort of exercise.

‘Water …'

She wanted to say so many other things, but this was the first that sprang to mind.

‘Here.'

He held something to her lips. A cup or a mug. She drank. The water was ice cold.

‘I'm freezing.'

‘What did you expect? Fur coat and champagne? This isn't a fucking five-star hotel.'

She made no reply. A large hand grabbed her hair, forcing her head back.

‘You know what we want, don't you?'

‘No,' she lied.

He tightened his grip on her hair and banged her head against the brick wall. It was like being run over by a tractor and for a moment she blacked out in a sea of pain.

‘Bitch.'

She had bitten her tongue and tasted even more blood than before. She clung to consciousness by her fingertips, her entire body trembling in sheer terror.

‘Now give me that location,' he ordered.

She moistened her lips. They had cracked from the cold. Hot blood trickled from her tongue into the cracks and she could taste her own flesh. Peter would find her. She just had to stay strong.

‘I haven't got it.'

‘Liar.'

He hit her head against the wall again, and once again massive waves of pain surged through her body. She longed for unconsciousness, yet resisted it.

‘Well, if you won't listen, then you'll have to feel, as my mother always says. I've got a little present for you. Something that will warm you up. But first …'

He freed her ankles from the chains, but she knew she wasn't free. He took off her boots one by one; then she felt his hands rummaging under her jumper and in rough jerks he unbuttoned her trousers and pulled them down.

‘Nooo!'

The cold bit into her bare skin as he pulled off her trousers; she didn't know whether he had also removed her panties.

It was going to happen now, she thought. Rape. In a moment something would be forced inside her. His dick, cold steel, a broken bottle.

The thought of it filled her with rage. She flung herself around trying to kick him, but she couldn't see anything and kicked out in vain. He grabbed her legs firmly and got first one, then the other, back in the shackles. She wanted to spit and scratch and claw; she wanted to plunge an ice pick straight through his megalomaniac heart. But there was nothing she could do. She was helpless.

‘Oh, so that's what you think, is it?' he said. ‘Do you really think I fancy a skeleton like you? You'd only enjoy it, so it would be no fun for me.'

‘So what
do
you want?' she wanted to ask, but she didn't want to let him see her vulnerability, and the words remained inside her.

‘I've got other plans for you,' he said, almost whispering, his mouth close to her ear. ‘It's a little ritual. So we know whose property you are.'

He disappeared for a while, and she thought she would die from the cold. She tried to shout, but her voice refused to work and the pain pinned her body to the wall as if someone had nailed her spine in place. Only a tiny whimper escaped her lips. A pathetic, miserable, wretched moan, which she hated and which shamed her. She thought about Peter. She could hear his voice, his laughter and imagine him that morning after they had made love for the second time. His smile and his laughter lines; his intense eyes.

He had taken care of her. He had carried her to and from the bathroom, fed her, changed her clothes and her bed linen; he had been there for her. He didn't want to be a hero, she knew that. He just wanted to be a decent person and do what needed doing without any fuss. No fine manners, no expensive habits, no dreams of luxury. Just one man doing his best. He existed, and that was the closest she came to any kind of solace.

But evil also existed.

‘Here we are.'

Her prison guard had returned. He held something close to her. It smelt of burning and radiated a fierce, shimmering heat.

‘This'll warm you up.'

He sat on one of her legs and held the other in position, even though she couldn't move anyway. Fear washed through her. A scream lodged in her throat.

‘You'll be part of the herd now,' he said. ‘Another flower in the bouquet, if I may put it like that.'

And then it came. She registered the hiss of burning flesh and smelt the smoke from the meeting of hot and cold as he pressed the searing hot object into her thigh. A conflagration of pain exploded in her body as he held it there for long, long seconds. She screamed, but no sound materialised. She didn't have the strength.

‘Now tell me,' he said afterwards. ‘Or do you want another dose of the branding iron?'

She gave him the coordinates and passed out.

T
HERE WERE SEVERAL
correctional institutions for minors on Djursland, but only one secure institution for young offenders. It was also the only place which had been there long enough to have housed a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old Grimme, whose real name Peter remembered as Kenneth Krøll.

Peter estimated that Grimme would now be in his mid-thirties. He had spent most of his adult life behind bars in Horsens Prison, where Peter himself had had the pleasure of being subjected to his bullying. His first adult sentence had been for the double murder of two members of a rival biker gang. He was currently doing time for drug dealing. If he had offended as a minor at the start of the 1990s, he wouldn't have been sent to an adult prison, but he might have been sent to a secure institution for rehabilitation, with social workers and psychologists. It was possible that, during his time there, he had met the person who now held Felix's life in his hands.

Peter knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain information about inmates in such institutions, current as well as former. All the staff took an oath of confidentiality. And yet he chanced it and drove there. He had no other options, and the clock was ticking.

The name of the secure institution was Svalen, near Lange Lake, set in rural surroundings outside Ebeltoft.

There were only seven such establishments in the whole of Denmark. Once they were full, teenagers ended up in remand cells or wherever there was space. At times that meant adult prisons.

The seven residents and the various staff at Svalen lived in the wing of a whitewashed manor house, which boasted an impressive avenue of pollarded poplars, now bare and frozen in the winter cold.

Peter drove his van up the avenue without any kind of strategy at his fingertips. He couldn't do anything until he knew what he was dealing with.

The snow lay thick across the yard and around the buildings. The trees and bushes looked as though they were being gradually suffocated and only their branches protruded. Three vehicles were parked outside. Two of them were 4x4s and the third was a Toyota Hiace. A man in a thick Icelandic jumper and a fur-trapper hat was clearing the main entrance. Peter parked and got out.

‘It's locked,' said the man with the shovel before Peter had time to ring the bell. ‘And no one will come and let you in.'

‘Why not?'

‘They're in a meeting.'

The man checked his watch. ‘For another quarter of an hour.'

He carried on dutifully shovelling snow with long, determined sweeps. Peter guessed he was in his mid-fifties. There was a solidity about his lumbering body which seemed to fill his surroundings. He wore a pair of black biker boots of an older vintage and they were firmly planted in the snow.

‘I'll hang around and wait, if that's all right.'

He started walking up and down the yard, where the snow had been cleared. The cold crept under his clothes as the snow swirled around aimlessly.

The man wiped his nose on his sleeve.

‘It's not like anyone will abscond in this weather.'

‘Do they usually?'

The man shook his head. Snow fell from his hat on to his shoulders.

‘They try sometimes.'

He nodded towards the windows.

‘They're probably playing computer games at the moment. They have to pass the time somehow.'

Peter did another round and stamped his feet to keep warm. The man sniffed again.

‘The cold slows them down,' he said contentedly. ‘They're like little lambs. But as soon as spring comes, they run around making trouble again.'

He nodded around him. ‘It all happens out there, if they can get away with it. Down to the lake, nick a rowing boat and off they go.'

‘But there's nowhere for them to go.'

‘Nope. They're always found quickly.'

The man went on shovelling. ‘Just as well.'

‘What else do they get up to when they're down by the lake?'

The man laughed.

‘Enjoy a bit of freedom. Carve their names in the big oak down there. They'd carve the staff too, given half a …'

‘How long have you worked here?' Peter asked.

The man shook his head again, sending the earflaps of his hat into a frenzy.

‘Far too long.'

‘Since the early nineteen-nineties?'

The man made no reply, just carried on shovelling.

‘I'm looking for a man called Kenneth Krøll. He was here around nineteen ninety-two.'

The man stared at Peter and narrowed his eyes. His mouth became a thin line. He continued shovelling.

‘I wouldn't know,' he said. ‘I don't remember anyone.'

At last the main door opened, and a man stepped out. He nodded to them, headed for one of the 4x4s and drove off.

Peter rang the bell. A woman in her thirties appeared at the door. She regarded him with professional courtesy bordering on hostility. He had met her type so many times before behind various public service counters: people who took pride in telling you why something
couldn't
be done. He introduced himself.

‘We don't give information about residents,' she said, measuring him with her eyes. ‘Why do you want to know?'

‘He's an old school friend,' Peter lied. ‘I've lost touch with him and I'm trying to find him.'

‘Sorry.'

She puffed out her chest. It was wrapped in a synthetic fur gilet and she managed to look down on him even though he was taller than her. ‘Take my advice, ask his family.'

If he had forgotten his distrust of authorities, she had just reminded him of it. His life consisted of betrayals by people like her: social workers, teachers and others who always knew best, people who had replaced their humanity with rules and regulations, busy diaries, impossible meetings and sick leave due to stress or burnout while their cases were shelved or forgotten.

One look at her said it all. He gave up and turned on his heel.

She was left like a jilted date as he reversed the van, drove down the avenue and nodded to the handyman, who was still shovelling snow. The boys used to carve their names in a tree, he had said. He drove along the main road. Lange Lake was visible now and it was covered with a thick layer of ice.

Grimme wasn't originally from Grenå, that much he did know. His family had moved there sometime in the Eighties, but where from? Krøll wasn't a common name. Perhaps the woman was right. Perhaps he should try to find his family and ask them.

On an impulse he turned off the tarmac road to the right, where the road immediately became more challenging, not to say impossible. Finally he stopped the car in the middle of the track, got out and walked alongside the lake. There weren't many houses here, but there were a few and they looked pretty expensive. A view of your own lake, a jetty plus motorboat, or maybe just a rowing boat – a little slice of heaven. But with a detention centre just up the road. He couldn't imagine the residents were thrilled about their neighbours.

Boys. He wandered on. Where would they go? What would they do here if they managed to get outside the perimeter?

He walked into the forest. It was there that he found it: an old oak with a massive trunk and bark as thick as elephant hide. He walked around it, studying it closely, and knew he'd found what he was after. Judging from the dates in the bark, carving your name in a tree and thereby revealing a little of your history would never lose its attraction.