Redemption aka A Conspiracy of Faith

32

The smell of burned rubber gradually grew stronger, forcing him to pull into a rest area just outside Roskilde. Once he had heaved the battered right wing away from the tire, he walked all the way around the car to inspect the extent of the damage. Obviously it had taken a beating, but he was still surprised at how little the results of the impacts showed.

As soon as things died down, he would have to get the car fixed. All traces would have to be removed. He would find a workshop in Kiel or Ystad, wherever happened to be convenient at the time.

He lit a cigarette and read the note he had found in the bag.

This was usually that special moment he’d been looking forward to. Standing somewhere in the dark with traffic zooming past, knowing that once again he had done what he needed to do. The money in the bag, and then back to the boathouse to finish the job.

But this time was different. He was still fazed by the experience of standing there on that little back road by the railway tracks, peering into the bag at the note and his own clothes.

They had cheated him. The money wasn’t there. It was a bad situation.

He pictured the wreck of the Ford Mondeo and felt satisfaction at the thought of that God-bothering bumpkin having got what she deserved. But Isabel’s involvement nagged at him.

He was to blame for the way things had turned out, right from the start. If only he had followed his instinct, Isabel would have been dead after confronting him like that in Viborg.

Who could have known there was a connection between Isabel and Rachel? From Frederiks to Isabel’s little row house in Viborg was a long way. What had he overlooked?

He inhaled sharply through the cigarette and held the smoke inside his lungs for as long as he could. No ransom, and all because of stupid mistakes. Stupid mistakes, and coincidence that pointed in one direction: to Isabel. Right now, he had no idea if she was dead or alive. If he’d only had ten seconds more at that fucking car, he would have buried the jack in her skull.

He would have been safe then.

Now all he could do was hope nature took its course. The crash had been bad. The Mondeo had hit a tree and rolled over maybe a dozen times. The searing, scraping sound of mangling metal against the tarmac had hardly ceased before he got out of his Mercedes. How could she possibly survive that?

He rubbed his aching neck. Bastard women. Why hadn’t they just done as they were told?

He flicked his cigarette end into the thicket, opened the door of the passenger side, and sat down on the seat, pulling the bag onto his lap to examine the contents once more.

The padlock and the clasp from the barn at Ferslev. Some of his clothes from the wardrobe, and this note. That was all.

He read it over and over again. He was in no doubt that he would have to react promptly. Whoever had written it knew too much.

But they had thought themselves safe, and that was their mistake. They had been certain the roles had been switched and that they had gained the upper hand. Now the women were most likely dead, but he would have to check and make sure.

Then only the husband, Joshua, and perhaps Isabel’s brother in the police would be a threat.

Perhaps. A fateful word.

For a moment, he sat taking stock of the situation as the ribbon of lights from the motorway illuminated the rest area’s toilet block in waves.

He had no fear that the police were after him. He was already several hundred meters from the scene by the time the patrol cars had arrived, and though he had encountered a couple more with sirens blaring before he reached the motorway, none would be especially interested in a lone Mercedes keeping to the speed limit.

Of course, the police would find traces of a collision when they examined Isabel’s car, but the more exact circumstances of the crash could only remain a mystery. How would they ever find him?

No, Rachel’s husband was his priority now. Joshua, and the money. And then he would have to be sure to erase any trace that might put anyone on to his tail. He would have to reboot his entire business from scratch.

He gave a sigh. It had been a miserable year.

His target had always been ten, and then he would pack it in. He was good at his work. The millions he had made in the first years had been invested wisely and provided a decent yield. But then came the financial crisis, and the bottom had fallen out of his portfolio.

Even a kidnapper and murderer was subject to the vagaries of the market, and now to all intents and purposes he had been forced to start again.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, as a new angle suddenly occurred to him.

If his sister didn’t get her money as usual, he would have another problem on his hands. She could bring up matters from his childhood. Names that weren’t to be divulged.

That, too.

When he returned from the boys’ home, his mother had a new husband, selected for her from among the eligible widowers by the elders of the congregation. The man owned a chimney-sweeping firm and was father to two girls of Eva’s age. A pillar, as the new pastor had referred to him, with scant regard for truth.

To begin with, his stepfather refrained from beating him, but once his mother reduced the dose of her sleeping pills and began to indulge him in the marital bed, the man’s conceit prevailed and his temper gradually found an outlet.

“May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.” These were the words he used to conclude the thrashings he dealt out to his daughters. They were uttered frequently. If one of them had been deemed in any way to transgress the word of God, to whose interpretation their father believed himself to possess sole and exclusive rights, he would not hesitate to punish the fruits of his own loins. Generally, however, the girls did very little wrong, so his wrath was directed mainly at their stepbrother. He might forget the occasional amen, or perhaps smirk during grace. It was seldom more than that. Fortunately, awareness of his own physical limitations meant his mother’s husband never dared lay a finger on her strapping young son.

Afterward came the pangs of guilty conscience, and this was almost invariably the worst of it. His own father had never bothered with anything like remorse, and so no one was ever in any doubt where they stood with him. But his stepfather would stroke the cheeks of his daughters and beg their forgiveness for his rage and for their evil stepbrother. And then he would retire to the study and put on the Robe of God, as his father had always referred to the vestment, and he would pray to the Lord that He might protect these vulnerable, innocent girls as if they were His own angels.

As for Eva, he never deigned to say a word to her. Her glazed, blind eyes repulsed him, and she sensed this.

None of the children understood him. Why should his own two girls be punished when it was the stepson he hated and the stepdaughter he held in contempt? And none of them could fathom why their mother did not intervene, or how God could manifest Himself in the hateful and conspicuously unjust deeds of this beastly man.

For a time, Eva would speak up in her stepfather’s defense, but even her protests waned when the beatings meted out to her stepsisters became so violent that she almost believed she could feel the pain herself.

Her brother bided his time, saving himself for the final encounter. It would come when they were least expecting it.

Once, they had been four children, a husband, and a wife. Now only he and Eva were left.

He pulled the plastic pocket containing all the information about the family out of the glove compartment and quickly found Joshua’s mobile number.

Now he would ring him up and confront him with the realities. That his wife and their accomplice no longer posed a danger, and that his children would be next unless the ransom was delivered to a new location within twenty-four hours. He would inform Joshua that he was a dead man if he had revealed anything about the kidnapping to anyone other than Isabel.

It was easy for him to picture the ruddy face of this good-natured man, who would almost certainly break down and do exactly as he was instructed.

He had seen it all before.

He dialed the number and waited for what seemed like an eternity before it was answered.

“Hello?” said a voice he immediately realized was unfamiliar.

“Hello, is Joshua there?” he asked as a pair of headlights swept past him.

“Who’s this?” the voice replied.

“Is this Joshua’s mobile?” he asked.

“No, you must have got a wrong number.”

He glanced at the display. No, the number was right. What was going on?

Then it struck him. The name!

“Oh, I’m sorry. Joshua’s what we all call him, but his proper name’s Jens Krogh. I forget sometimes. May I speak to him?”

He stared through the silence into space. The man at the other end said nothing. This wasn’t a good sign. Who the hell was he?

“I see,” said the voice eventually. “And who am I speaking to?”

“His brother-in-law,” he blurted out. “Is he there?”

“No, I’m afraid he isn’t. You’re speaking to Sergeant Leif Sindal of the Roskilde Police. You’re his brother-in-law, you say. May I take your name?”

The police? Had the idiot gone to the police? Was he completely insane?

“Police? Has something happened to Joshua?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything until you give me a name.”

Something was definitely wrong. What now?

“It’s Søren Gormsen,” he said. That was his rule. Always give up an unusual name when dealing with the police. They’d believe it, because they knew they could check.

“I see,” came the reply. “Can you describe your brother-in-law to us, Mr. Gormsen?”

“Yes, I can. He’s a big man. Balding, in his late fifties, always wears an olive-green sleeveless jacket and-”

“Mr. Gormsen,” the policeman interrupted. “We’ve been called because Jens Krogh was found apparently lifeless on board a train. The police doctor is with us as we speak, and I very much regret to inform you that your brother-in-law has been declared dead.”

He allowed the word “dead” to resonate for a moment before responding. “Oh, no. That’s dreadful. How did it happen?”

“We don’t know yet. According to a fellow passenger, he collapsed.”

He wondered whether he might be walking headlong into a trap.

“Where will you be taking him?” he asked.

He heard the police sergeant and the doctor confer in the background. “An ambulance will be coming to collect the body. There’ll probably be an autopsy.”

“So he’ll be taken to the hospital in Roskilde?”

“We’ll be getting off the train at Roskilde, yes.”

He said his thanks and a few words of regret, then got out of the car to wipe the mobile, planning to hurl it into the windbreak of trees. They wouldn’t be able to trace him on that account if it was all a setup.

“Hey,” came a voice from behind him. He turned to see a couple of men climbing out of a car that had just pulled in to the rest area. Lithuanian plates and faded jogging suits. Gaunt, unfriendly faces.

They came straight toward him, their intentions clear. In a moment he would be sprawling on the ground with his pockets emptied. It was plainly their line of work.

He raised a hand in warning, indicating the mobile. “Here,” he shouted, then hurled the phone hard against the forehead of the man in front, swiveling to one side and planting a back kick into the groin of his accomplice, causing his bony frame to crumple amid cries of pain, the switchblade he carried dropping to the ground.

He had the knife in his hand within a second, thrusting it into the abdomen of the first man, then into the side of the second.

And then he retrieved his phone and threw it and the knife as far into the bushes as he could.

Life had taught him always to strike first.

He left the two bleeding thugs to themselves and entered Roskilde Station into the GPS.

He would be there in eight minutes.

The ambulance had been waiting for some time before they came with the stretcher. He stepped into the array of inquisitive onlookers with their eyes fixed on Joshua’s body underneath the blanket. As soon as he saw the uniformed officer with Joshua’s coat and bag in his hands, everything was confirmed.

Joshua was dead. The money was lost.

“Fuck,” he exclaimed under his breath, repeating it to himself as he pointed the Mercedes toward Ferslev and the cottage that had been his bolt-hole for years. His cover-his address, his name, his van, everything that made it safe to be him, was all tied up in the place. And now it was over. Isabel had the license plate number of the van and had passed it on to her brother, and the owner of the vehicle could be traced to the address. It was no longer safe.

By the time he reached the village and drove up the track between the trees to the cottage, peace had descended upon the landscape. The little community had long since succumbed to the torpor of the television screen. Only the main house of a farm across the fields displayed a pair of brightly lit windows. The alarm would probably be raised there.

He noted how Rachel and Isabel had broken into his garage and the house. He went through the premises, removing items that might withstand the flames. A small mirror, a tin of sewing equipment, the first-aid box.

Then he backed the van out of the barn, drove it around the side of the house, and reversed at full speed into the picture window that had afforded him such a good view over the fields.

The sound of shattering glass prompted a brief cacophony of crows, but that was all.

He walked around to the other side and went into the house, shining his torch in front of him. Perfect, he thought, seeing the van’s rear tires punctured and its back end protruding onto the laminated floor. He stepped carefully between the shards of glass and opened the back doors, took out a jerrican, and emptied its contents in an even trail from the living room to the kitchen, out into the hall, and up the stairs.

Then he unscrewed the cap of the van’s petrol tank, tore off a strip of moldering curtain, and inserted the end deep into the tank.

He stood for a moment in the yard and looked around before igniting the rag of curtain and throwing it into the petrol on the floor next to the line of gas cylinders in the hall.

He was already on the road, racing through the gears of the Mercedes, by the time the van’s petrol tank exploded with a deafening boom. A minute later, the gas canisters went up. The explosion was so violent it almost raised the roof.

Not until he had passed the village grocery store and could see across the fields again did he pull in and look back.

The cottage was ablaze behind the trees, like a bonfire on Midsummer’s Eve, spitting out sparks into the sky. Already it could be seen from miles away. And before long, the flames would lick the branches of the trees and everything would be razed to the ground.

There was no more to fear on that account.

The fire brigade would quickly see that nothing could be saved.

They would put it down to a boyish prank that had got out of hand.

It happened so often, out in the country.

He stood in front of the door of the room in which his wife lay trapped underneath the packing cases, noting once again with a strange blend of sadness and satisfaction that the place was as quiet as the grave. They had been good together, the two of them. She was kind and beautiful and a good mother to their child. It could all have been so very different. Once again, he had only himself to blame for things not having worked out. Before he lived with someone again, he would have to get rid of everything he had hidden away inside that room. The past had taken charge of his life until now, but he would not allow it to assume control of his future, too. He would do a couple more kidnappings, sell the house, and settle down somewhere far away. Perhaps he might even learn how to live a normal life.

He lay stretched out on the corner sofa for some time, thinking through the things he had to do. He could keep Vibegården and its boathouse, that much was clear. But he would need to find a replacement for the cottage at Ferslev. A little house far from the beaten track. A place where no one came, and best if the owner was some local outcast. An old soak who kept himself to himself and owed no one any favors. He might have to look farther south this time. He remembered a couple of places he’d considered at one time when driving around the Næstved area, but experience told him that making the final selection would be no easy matter.

The owner of the cottage at Ferslev had fitted the bill perfectly. No one had any interest in him, and he even less in others. He had spent most of his working life in Greenland and had apparently had some kind of old flame in Sweden, so they said in the village. Apparently. It was the very cloudiness of the word that gave him his lead. A man who kept his own company, living on money earned at a time when his life had been more successful, so the story went. The villagers called him “the odd bird,” and thereby signed his death warrant.

More than ten years had now passed since he had taken the odd bird’s life, after which he had meticulously made sure to pay the bills that on occasion dropped into the letter box of the cottage. After a couple of years he canceled the electricity and the refuse collection, and after that nobody ever came. He had a passport and driver’s license made in the man’s name, with new photos and a more plausible date of birth, by a photographer in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro district. A decent, reliable man for whom forgery had become a skill comparable to that exhibited by Rembrandt’s pupils at the behest of their master. A true artist.

The name Mads Christian Fog had accompanied him for a decade, but now it was over.

Now he was just Chaplin again.

At the age of sixteen and a half he had fallen in love with one of his stepsisters. She was vulnerable, ethereal, with a delicate, high brow and thin blue veins showing at her temples. In stark contrast to the crudity of his stepfather’s genetic material and his own mother’s stockiness.

He wanted to kiss her and hold her in his arms, vanish into her gaze, and descend into her inner being, and he knew it was forbidden. In the eyes of God, they were siblings, and in their house His eyes were everywhere.

Eventually, he found no other outlet but to enjoy what sinful pleasures he could derive alone under his duvet or from stolen glimpses in the evenings through the gaps in the ceiling boards of her bedroom.

And then he got caught in the act. He had been lying flat on his stomach, spying on her beauty below, which had been covered only by a flimsy nightdress, when all of a sudden she looked up and caught his eye. He was so flustered that he leaped to his feet and gashed his head on a nail jutting out from one of the roof beams, a deep wound just behind his right ear.

They heard his cries from the attic, and his pleasures were over.

Pious as ever, his sister Eva snitched to their mother and stepfather. What her blind eyes could not see was the hateful rage that consumed both parents at this act of debauchery.

They interrogated him under the threat of eternal damnation, but he refused to admit to anything. That he had spied upon his stepsister. That he had wanted to see the object of his desire naked. How could their curses make him admit to that? He had heard it all before and all too often.

“You’ve brought this upon yourself,” his stepfather bellowed, grabbing hold of him from behind. He may not have been the stronger, but the full nelson he applied so unexpectedly was remarkably effective, his arms encircling the boy’s torso, hands clasped and pressing down on his neck.

“Bring the crucifix!” he shouted to his wife. “Beat Satan from this infested body! Beat this boy until all his devils are banished!”

He saw the crucifix raised above his mother’s frenzied eyes and felt her moldy breath against his face as the first blow was delivered.

“In the name of all glory!” she screamed, lifting the crucifix again. Beads of perspiration gathered on her top lip, and his stepfather tightened his hold, repeatedly grunting out his own exhortation: “In the name of the Almighty!”

After twenty blows against his shoulders and upper arms, his mother stepped back, exhausted and gasping for breath.

From that moment, there was no turning back.

His two stepsisters wept in the adjoining room. They had overheard everything and seemed genuinely shocked. Eva, on the other hand, appeared unmoved, though she, too, had most certainly been aware of all that had taken place. She went on reading her Braille, but was unable to conceal the embittered look on her face.

That same evening, he crushed sleeping pills and put them in his mother’s and stepfather’s coffee. And when night came, and they were sleeping heavily, he dissolved the rest of the bottle’s contents in water. It took a while to turn them over onto their backs, and even longer for him to pour the thick mixture down their throats. But time was no longer an issue.

He wiped the empty pill bottle and pressed it into his stepfather’s hand. Then he curled the fingers of both unconscious parents around a pair of drinking glasses, placing one on each bedside table, pouring some water into them before closing the bedroom door behind him.

“What are you doing in there?” said a voice.

He peered into the darkness. Eva’s domain, and her advantage. The dark was her friend now, and her ears were keen as a dog’s.

“Nothing, Eva. I just wanted to say sorry, but they’re asleep. I think they took sleeping pills.”

“Then I hope they sleep well,” was all she said.

The bodies were collected the next day. The double suicide was a scandal in the little community, and Eva said nothing. Perhaps she already sensed, even then, that what had happened, and the fact that her brother was also to blame for her own blindness, which he grieved over in his own silent way, was to become her insurance against a life marked by poverty and powerlessness.

Their stepsisters had chosen eternity only a couple of years later. They walked hand in hand into the lake together, and the lake accepted them. Thus they were freed from the pain of recollection. He and Eva were not.

The deaths of their parents were now more than twenty-five years in the past, and still there were new fanatics who continued to misinterpret the word “benevolence.”

To hell with them. He hated them more than anything else. To hell with all those who in the name of God believed themselves to be above all others.

They were to be removed from the earth.

He twisted the key of the van and the key to the cottage from his key ring and dumped them in his neighbor’s dustbin underneath the top rubbish bag, glancing around to make sure he was unseen.

Then he went back into his own drive and emptied his letter box.

The mailshots went straight into the bin, and the rest he threw onto the table in the front room. A couple of bills, two newspapers, and a small, handwritten note with the logo of the bowling club on it.

It was too soon for there to be anything in the papers yet, but the regional radio station had something about a couple of Lithuanians who had apparently been at each other’s throats and got themselves badly injured in the process, and then came the story about the car crash involving the two women. Details were sparse, but what they gave was enough: the scene of the accident, the women’s ages, the fact that they had both suffered severe injuries after having raced across the country and smashed through the toll station barriers on the Storebælt Bridge. No names were revealed, but the possibility of a third party being involved was mentioned.

He searched for the accident on the Internet. The online version of one of the tabloids carried the additional information that the lives of both women remained in the balance after they had undergone surgery during the night, and that police were puzzled by their hazardous passage over the bridge. A doctor from the Trauma Center of the Rigshospital in Copenhagen was mentioned by name and seemed pessimistic as to their prospects.

Even so, he was worried.

He found a video presentation of the Trauma Center on the hospital’s website, studied what they did and where, and then checked the map showing the locations of the hospital’s various departments. He would know where to find them.

For the time being, however, he would simply monitor the two women’s condition.

Next, he picked up the note with the bowling logo on it and read the handwritten message:

Stopped by today, but nobody in. Team tournament on Wed moved from 7:30 to 7 p.m. Remember winning ball afterward. Or maybe you’ve got balls enough as it is, ha ha? Maybe you’ll both come? Ha ha, again! Cheers, The Pope.

He looked up at the ceiling, toward the room where his wife lay. If he waited a couple of days before taking the body up to the boathouse, he would be able to get rid of all three of them at once. A couple more days without water and the kids would be dead anyway. Who cared? They could thank their parents.

Pure idiocy. All that trouble for nothing.