Redemption aka A Conspiracy of Faith

16

He called his wife as usual just before eight, still holding back on the contentious issue but relating experiences unlived and feelings for her which at present he did not possess. Leaving Viborg, he stopped at a Løvbjerg supermarket and freshened himself up as best he could in the customer toilets before heading toward Hald Ege and on to Stanghede, where Samuel and Magdalena were waiting for him.

Nothing was going to stop him now. The weather was OK. Looking ahead, he would be there just before dark.

The family received him with the smell of fresh-baked bread and lofty expectations. Samuel had been training all morning despite his injured knee, and Magdalena stood with eyes sparkling and her thick hair in long waves glossy from eager brushing.

They were so ready.

“Do you think we should stop by the hospital first and let them have a quick look at Samuel’s knee, just to be on the safe side? I think we’ve time.” He swallowed the last bit of his bread roll as he glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to ten, and he knew they would decline.

Disciples of the Mother Church did not frequent hospitals if it could be avoided.

“No, it’s just a sprain, but thanks all the same.” Rachel handed him a coffee cup and indicated the milk on the table. He could feel free to help himself.

“So where is this karate tournament?” said Joshua. “Maybe I can come along later in the day, if I’ve got time?”

“Oh, leave off, Joshua.” Rachel swatted at him. “You know full well when you’ve got time and when you haven’t.”

Never, as far as he could make out.

“It’s in the sports hall at Vinderup,” he told the father. “The Bujutsu Club are organizing it. Perhaps there’s some more information on the Internet.”

There wasn’t, but then there was almost certainly no Internet in the house. Another one of those ungodly inventions the Mother Church shunned.

He put his hand to his mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. How stupid of me. I forgot, you won’t have an Internet connection. It’s nothing but a nuisance, anyway.” He did his best to look repentant, noting that the coffee was decaf. It was all PC here. “But, yeah, it’s all going on in the sports hall at Vinderup.”

They waved. The whole family lined up in front of the farmhouse at the bend in the road, never again to rest in the peace and comfort of what once was. Smiling faces soon to contort in the pain of learning that the evils of this world cannot be kept at bay with weekly devotions and renunciation of the good things of modern life.

He did not feel sorry for them. They had chosen the pathway on which they would tread, and now it had crossed his own.

He looked at the two youngsters sitting on the seat next to him, waving back at their family.

“Have you got enough room, you two?” he asked as they drove through bare fields dashed with the dark stubble of maize. He stuck his hand into the side pocket of the door. His weapon lay at the ready. Not many would recognize it for what it was. It looked like the handle of an attaché case.

He beamed a smile when they nodded. They were sitting comfortably, and their minds were astray, unused to any departure from their quiet, restrictive lives. For them, this was a highlight.

There would be no difficulties here.

“I thought we might go by way of Finderup, just for the drive,” he said, offering them miniature chocolate bars. Against the rules it may have been, but nonetheless a way of establishing community. Community was security. And security made his work that much easier.

“Oh, I’m forgetting, aren’t I?” he said, noting their hesitation. “I’ve brought some fruit with us, too. Would you rather have a tangerine?”

“I think we’d like the chocolate best.” Magdalena smiled irresistibly, revealing the braces on her teeth. It wasn’t hard to imagine that this was a girl with secrets concealed in the garden.

He waxed lyrical on the beauty of the Jutland heath and told them how excited he was about moving to the area permanently. And by the time they reached the crossroads at Finderup, the mood was quite as he had hoped-relaxed, trustful, and chummy. That was where he turned off the road.

“Hey, not yet,” said Samuel, leaning forward in his seat. “The Holstebro road’s the next one.”

“I know, but when I was driving around looking at houses the other day, I found this shortcut that leads up to Route 16.”

He turned again, a few hundred meters from the memorial stone for the medieval king Erik Klipping.

Hesselborgvej.

“It’s along here. A bit bumpy, I know, but a good little shortcut,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Samuel read the sign as they passed: Military vehicles strictly prohibited on bypaths. “I thought this road just petered out,” he said, and sat back in his seat.

“You’ll see, it carries on beyond that yellow farmhouse there on the left, then on past another farm on the right that’s all broken down, and then we turn left.”

He nodded to himself a couple of hundred meters farther on. The unmade road turned into wheel tracks. Here was a landscape of stubble, undulating and dotted with woodland. One more bend and they were there.

“Hey, what did I tell you,” Samuel exclaimed, pointing up ahead. “You can’t get through here at all.”

He was wrong, but there was no need for explanation now.

“Do you know what, I think you’re right, Samuel,” he said. “We’ll just have to turn around again and go back. Sorry about that, kids. I was certain…”

He turned the wheel and brought the van to a halt at an angle across the track, then reversed in between the trees.

He pulled on the hand brake, swiftly drawing the stun gun from the side pocket. In one seamless movement, he released the safety catch, thrust the weapon against Magdalena’s throat, and fired. It was a fiendish device that delivered 1.2 million volts into the body of the victim, resulting in momentary paralysis. Her scream, and not least the sudden, violent way her body jerked, at first threw Samuel completely. Like his sister, he was utterly unprepared. The look in his eyes was of terror, and yet of readiness to fight. In the brief second that elapsed from the moment his sister slumped toward him till he grasped the fact that the object about to be pressed against him was lethal, the full gamut of the youngster’s adrenaline-driven mechanisms was activated at once.

And so, quick though he was, his sister’s assailant was not quick enough to prevent the boy from shoving his sister aside, tearing at the door handle, and tumbling out before he could discharge his weapon again.

He gave the girl another shot and leaped out of the vehicle in pursuit of the boy, who had by now managed to limp some way along the lichen-green track, his bad knee buckling beneath him. It was only a matter of seconds before his turn came.

Reaching the fir trees, the boy turned suddenly. “What is it you want?” he yelled, invoking the assistance of his God, as though from out of the organized rows of fir some heavenly host would appear to defend him. He limped to one side and picked up a heavy stick spiked viciously with the sharp remnants of branches.

Shit. He should have dealt with the boy first. Why the fuck hadn’t he listened to his instincts?

“Don’t you come any closer,” the boy screamed, waving his stick in the air. There was no doubt he would use it. The boy knew combat, and would fight as well as he could.

The thought flashed through his mind that he should have a Taser C2 instead. Armed with one of those, he would be able to incapacitate his victims from a distance of several meters. He knew there was not a second to be lost. They were only a few hundred meters from the farms and, although he had selected the location with care, there was no guarantee that some farmer or woodsman wouldn’t suddenly materialize. And in a few moments, the boy’s sister would recover sufficiently to be able to escape.

“That won’t help you, Samuel,” he said, and thrust forward to counter the boy’s frantic blows. He felt the crack of the stick as it came down heavily against his shoulder at the same moment as the stun gun made contact with the boy’s arm. The cries they emitted were simultaneous.

But this was not a battle between equals, and the boy fell to the ground.

He glanced at his shoulder where Samuel had struck him so cleanly. Shit, he thought again, as his blood spread like the points of a star in the fabric of his windbreaker.

Wishing again that he had a Taser, he dragged the boy into the back of the van, found the chloroform rag, and covered his face with it. For a moment the boy’s eyes stared emptily, and then he was under.

He repeated the procedure with the sister.

Then he blindfolded them, bound their hands and feet with gaffer tape, gagged them in the same way, and put them in the recovery position on the thickly carpeted floor.

He changed his shirt and put on another jacket, standing for a few minutes, watching them to make sure they didn’t react badly, throw up and choke on their own vomit.

When finally he was satisfied, he closed the doors and drove away.

His sister and brother-in-law had settled in a small cottage just outside Årup, with whitewashed walls and close to the road. It was only a few kilometers from the parish church where his father had spent his final incumbency.

It was the last place on earth he would think of settling.

“So where have you been this time?” his brother-in-law asked without interest, gesturing toward a pair of timeworn slippers that were always left in the hallway and which all visitors were obliged to shuffle about in. As if their floors had ever been worth shit.

He followed a sound into the front room and found his sister humming in a corner, a moth-eaten shawl draped across her shoulders.

Eva knew him by his step but said nothing. She had put on a considerable amount of weight since the last time he’d been here. Twenty kilos minimum. Her body had spread, and soon the image he retained of the sister with whom he had so gleefully frolicked in the garden of the pastor’s residence would be gone forever.

There was no exchange of greetings between them. There never was. But then politeness had never been much cherished in their childhood home.

“I can’t stay long,” he said, squatting down beside her. “How are you doing?”

“Villy looks after me,” she answered. “We’ll be eating shortly. Perhaps you’d like something?”

“Just a spot of lunch. And then I’ll be making tracks.”

She nodded. Truth was she didn’t care. Since the light had gone out in her eyes, the desire to be with other people and listen to what they had to say about themselves and the world around them had likewise waned. Perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps the faded images of childhood had suddenly taken up too much room inside her.

“I’ve got some money for you.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “There’s thirty thousand there. That should tide you both over until next time.”

“Thanks. When will you be back?”

“In a couple of months.”

She nodded and got to her feet. He offered his arm, but she declined.

The oilcloth that draped the table had seen happier days in decades long gone and was now adorned with supermarket liver pâté and indeterminate pieces of roast meat in foil trays. Villy knew all sorts of folk who shot more game than they could eat, so they were never short on calories.

His brother-in-law wheezed asthmatically as he bowed his head to his chest and said grace. Both he and his sister squeezed their eyes tight shut, though all their senses were directed toward the end of the table where he sat.

“Haven’t you found God yet?” his sister asked after the prayer, her dead gaze fixed upon him.

“No, I’m afraid Father must have beaten Him out of me.”

His brother-in-law raised his head deliberately and sent him a malicious glare. There was a time when he had been a handsome young man. Exuberant and full of ambitions about sailing the seven seas, exploring the corners of the world and the delights of all its luscious women. When then he found Eva, he fell in awe of her vulnerability and the beauty of her words. He had always known Jesus, though never as his best friend.

That was something Eva taught him.

“Speak respectfully of your father,” Villy said now. “He was a reverent man.”

He looked at his sister. Her face was without expression. If she had anything to say on the matter, now was the time. But she remained silent. Of course she did.

“You think our father’s in heaven, don’t you?”

His brother-in-law narrowed his eyes. That was his answer. One wrong word would suffice, it didn’t matter whether he was Eva’s brother or not.

He shook his head and returned his brother-in-law’s stare. Ignorant, unenlightened individuals, he thought to himself. If the vision of a paradise housing that callous, small-minded, third-rate clergyman was so dear to Villy, then he would certainly have nothing against helping him get there as quickly as he liked.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “There’s thirty thousand kroner in an envelope for you and Eva. For that amount of money, you’d do well to keep a grip on yourself for the half hour I’m here.”

He looked up at the crucifix on the wall above the disagreeable face of his brother-in-law. It was heavier than it looked.

He remembered. Its weight had been brought down against him.

He sensed them stirring in the back of the van as they crossed the great bridge that spanned the Storebælt. He pulled in for a moment at the toll area to give the two writhing bodies another whiff of chloroform.

As they settled again, he drove on, this time with the windows down and the annoying feeling that the second dose had been rather uncontrolled.

When eventually they reached the boathouse in Nordsjælland, it was still too light for him to lead the youngsters from the van. Out on the water, the last sailing boats of the day, the first of the season, were gliding back toward the marinas of Lynæs and Kignæs. One inquisitive soul with a pair of binoculars and all would be lost. The thing was, they were too quiet in the back of the van. It began now to concern him. Months of preparation would come to nothing if the chloroform had killed them.

“Come on, go down, for Chrissake,” he muttered to himself, his gaze fixed firmly on the recalcitrant bloodred sphere in the sky that had wedged itself into the horizon amid flaming cloud.

Then he took out his mobile phone. The family at Stanghede would already be worried by his failure to return with their children. He had promised them he would be back before the hour of rest, and it was a promise he had not kept. He pictured them at this moment, waiting at the table with their candles and their robes, their folded hands. This would be the last time they placed their trust in him, the mother would be saying.

In a moment, she would feel the real pain of being right.

He called. There were no introductions, just his demand of one million kroner. Used notes in a small bag they were to throw from the train. He told them which departure to take, when and where to change, and on which stretch and which side they were to look for the strobe. He would be holding it in his hand and it would flash as bright as a camera. They should not delay, for this was their only chance. On delivery of the ransom, their children would be returned.

They should not consider cheating him. They had the rest of the weekend and Monday to raise the sum. And on Monday evening they were to take the train.

If the amount delivered fell short, the children would die. If they involved the police, the children would die. If they should try to trick him during delivery, the children would die.

“Remember,” he said. “Money can be earned again, but the children will be gone forever.” At this point, he always allowed the parents a moment to gasp for breath. To take in the shock. “Remember, too, that you cannot protect your other children forever. If I suspect anything to be amiss, be prepared to live in perpetual fear. That, and the fact that this phone cannot be traced, are the only two things on which you can rely.”

And then he terminated the call. It was as simple as that. In ten seconds, he would hurl the phone into the fjord. He’d always had a good throwing arm.

The children were as pale as two corpses, but they were alive. He chained them inside the low-ceilinged boathouse, keeping them well apart. Then he removed their blindfolds and gags and made sure they did not regurgitate what he gave them to drink.

After the usual begging and pleading, the sobs and the fear, they accepted a small amount of food. His conscience was clear as he taped their mouths shut and then drove away.

He had owned the boathouse for fifteen years now, and no one besides himself had ever been near the place. The house to which it belonged was well hidden behind trees, and the stretch down to the water had always been overgrown. The only place from which this inconspicuous construction could on occasion be picked out was the water, but there were obstacles even there. Who would ever put in to that foul-smelling mush of seaweed and algae that extended across the net? The net he had drawn out between the fishing stakes after the time one of his victims had thrown something into the water.

The kids could whimper as much as they liked.

They would never be heard.

He looked at his watch again. He would not call his wife today before heading off toward Roskilde. Why should she know when to expect him home?

Now he would drive back to the cottage at Ferslev, put the van back in the barn, and then continue on in the Mercedes. In less than an hour, he would be home. And then he would see what to do with her.

The last few kilometers before he arrived, he found some kind of peace within himself. What had been the cause of this suspicion as regards his wife? Was it some failing of his own character? Did this unfounded doubt, these abominable thoughts, in fact find nourishment in the lies he thrived upon? Was it all not just a consequence of his own clandestine existence?

“The truth of the matter is we’re happy together,” he told himself out loud. It was his last thought before seeing the man’s bike leaning against the willow in the driveway of their house.

Before seeing it, and before realizing that it was not his own.