The Elephant Keepers' Children (38 page)

“Do you know what Abakosh is?”

“It's a brothel,” I say.

“But topflight. Andrik and I run five others. Abakosh is the flagship, though. It's themed on the Greek Mysteries. We give the clients brief instruction in meditation and inner peace as part of the package. And we receive all religions. We have a costume collection as big as a theater wardrobe department. Monks, nuns, houris, angels, dakinis. The Virgin Mary, Kwannon Bosato, bishops' miters, lamas' hats. There's something for everyone. It's all a roaring success, and the location couldn't be better. We've got Parliament, the Church of Holmen, the major bank headquarters, Slotsholmen and the government ministries, all the solicitors' offices, and the newspapers. We're raking it in. What's more, we're making people happy at the same time. Andrik looks after the ladies. A third of our clients are women.”

She stubs out her cigarette deliberately, and in her movements I suddenly detect anger.

“The drawback is it gets you so cranky sometimes. I love Andrik. But three months in the year I send him away to our holiday cottage at Tisvilde—just so I won't need to see a man outside working hours. He comes into town and sees the kids every other weekend.”

She meets my gaze, fixes her eyes on me, unbuttons her blouse, and lifts her breasts from her bra.

“Do you have any idea how many hours of surgery there are here? Eighteen. Three operations, three implants in each.
They'll last ten years, fifteen at most. And they're as sore as hell. No one's allowed to touch, not even Andrik. I cried my eyes out every time I fed the twins. That's how much they hurt. Have you been to a brothel before?”

I shake my head.

She's now on her feet. Something's going on inside her. I can't work it out, but we're touching on something, approaching it. I just don't know what it is.

“Listen to me. The deal is this: you can have everything. You can stick it in wherever you want. Blow job, hand job. You can bathe in ethereal oils, or have your backside spanked. But all of it's with a condom on. No kissing. And our hearts are outside in the cloakroom. No feelings involved. I have this ritual every time I get myself ready. I've a box in the dressing room with a photo of the twins in it. I pretend to take my heart out and put it inside the box. Do you understand me? It works. But three months a year I hate men.”

“I've got a sister,” I tell her.

“I don't do girls.”

“Neither does she. But she's got some interesting viewpoints on anger. Building on in-depth studies of the spiritual classics. She can help you.”

“No one can do a thing. The world's the way it is.”

On that point I believe she's wrong. The thought alone of what a person like Tilte could do with a place like Abakosh and a woman such as Pallas Athene is enough to make me dizzy. But I say nothing. There's a time for everything, as the Old Testament says, and product development of such nature will have to wait.

She pulls up a wicker chair and sits down close to me. Now we're getting there.

“I'll do up to four men at once. Men often come together. Especially before something important. It may be four actors before a premiere. Politicians in the middle of some major negotiation. Businessmen about to sign some big contract. That password you've got. Yesterday, four people came in with that password. Three men and a woman. It's personal. Assigned to one person only. The Dane. All I know is his name's Henrik. The other three are foreigners, though they speak the language. Henrik's a regular. Always on his own. But yesterday he had three others with him.”

She lights up another cigarette.

“I had a funny feeling. Something wasn't quite right. So afterward I sat and thought about it, trying to figure out what it was. And do you know what? It was fear. They scared me. I've been in the business fifteen years. But this was the first time. Do you know why I'm telling you this?”

“Anger, partly,” I say.

“True.”

Her sense of unease makes her rise from her chair again.

“I'm thirty years old. I've three years left at the most. We've got our savings, of course, and the holiday cottage, and the apartment here, and a studio outside Barcelona. But I've given this all I've got. Yesterday was no exception. The one called Henrik rang me up, wanting me to go to them. I said no. I had this feeling about it. I did myself up, got into the part. Henrik always wants me to play his mother. Scold him,
feed him, change his nappy. And the two others wanted the same. All three wanted to sit in high chairs and be fed. And they each had their own religion. Never done that before. I had to change clothes eight times in two hours. And read from the holy scriptures while they played with their food. It was like the chimps' tea party at the zoo. And then they wanted a pillow fight. With bare backsides and baby food all over the place. The woman wanted Andrik to be her father and give her a ride. But when Henrik wanted to take a dump on the floor, I put my foot down. We've all got our limits, wouldn't you say? Would you have allowed it?”

“Probably not,” I say.

“So then they have this last wish. They want me to tell them, one at a time, that
Mummy's proud of you, Mummy's very proud of what you're doing
. I ask them for more details, so it'll be easier for me to play the role. But they close up on me. All they want is for me to pat them on the head and tell them Mummy's proud as punch and wishes them good luck. And then it's all over, and when they leave they're quiet and won't even say goodbye, and that's when I begin to sense something. I sense they're up to no good, and whatever it is it's big time and sinister. And in some way they've used me and Andrik so as to pluck up the courage. So I owe it to you to help. This is the first time in fifteen years I've told someone else about a client. You never do that, it's the most important rule there is in this business. But now I've done it. For the first time. Will you accept my help?”

“If it's all right with you, I'll jump at the offer.”

She gives me an expectant look.

“Can we leave the twins with Andrik for an hour or so?” I ask.

She straightens up. “He's a wonderful father!”

“There's someone we need to meet,” I say. “Someone who needs to hear all this.”

One might perhaps have wished
for a more inconspicuous mode of transport than the red Jaguar. Nevertheless, this is what takes us, Pallas Athene and me, from Toldbodgade to Kongens Nytorv.

We arrive without Pallas Athene having smashed in the faces of innocent male motorists, a fact for which I am grateful. Now I ask her to park as close behind the red double-decker bus as possible, and this she does in her own inimitable fashion, there being a free space reserved for the handicapped, and this is where she parks, producing from the glove compartment a blue badge bearing the wheelchair symbol, which she places on the dashboard with a comment about many of her customers being in the medical profession.

I borrow her mobile and instruct her to press the horn once when I give the sign. Then I dial Albert Winehappy's number.

The mood is devout and solemn. For the first time, I am about to establish contact with one of the individuals who is most likely behind the scheme that has turned me and Tilte and Basker gray haired and added ten years to our age in just a couple of days.

“Yes?”

If like me you have a mother who's in love with Schubert, or an aunt or a female cousin, then you might have heard some of the
Goethe-Lieder
performed by Fischer-Dieskau. And if you've heard these recordings, then you'll have a good idea of what the voice at the other end of the phone sounds like.

It's a voice that knows things it has no intention of revealing. Perhaps the man to whom it belongs killed twelve people in a clan dispute one moonlit night. Perhaps he plundered the grave of a pharaoh. Or perhaps he was the lover of three government ministers all at once without any of them ever finding out about the others, and now it's over.

Whatever his secret, one thing is certain: this is the voice of an elephant keeper. And beneath the polished tone, one hears the elephant snort.

“Does the name Finø mean anything to you?” I ask.

At first is silence.

“Go on,” he says.

“I do hope it does. Because the island of that name is home to three neglected children who have lost a great deal indeed. And who believe that you ought to help them get some of it back.”

“Who the bleeding hell …?” he begins.

I give Pallas Athene a sign and she sounds the horn. The Jaguar roars. Faintly, yet distinctly, I hear it in the receiver, too.

Then I hang up.

“See that bench over there?” I say to Pallas Athene. “By the front end of the bus? Sit down there, light up a cigarette, lean back, and watch what happens.”

I run across the square
, slowing down to a trot as I reach the entrance of the Hotel d'Angleterre, slow enough as not to attract attention. I pass through reception and peer into the restaurant.

Inside the door, gateaux and cakes are housed in their own glass tower, one per story. I glance around. The waiters have their backs turned. I swipe a whole layer cake.

Layer cake may be a poor description, because in actual fact it consists of one layer only, albeit fifteen centimeters thick, topped with whipped cream and crumbled nougat and raspberries, and with a crisp base that almost certainly would provide anyone with an unforgettable confectionery experience.

At home in the rectory we were taught to whip cream by hand with a whisk. Should you come from a more unfortunate home in which cream was whipped by mechanical means, perhaps even with the aid of an electric appliance, all may not yet be lost.

An electric mixer infuses air all too quickly into the cream, whereby the bubbles take up too much space and the skimmed milk separates prematurely from the fat. Cream whipped by hand with a whisk takes on a completely different texture altogether.

This is a fact known to all in the kitchens of the Hotel d'Angleterre. The cake is firm and unperturbed by my ascent of the stairs, even though I take four steps at a time. So when I get to the bridal suite and knock on the door and step inside,
it's only me who's out of breath and whose cheeks are flushed; the cake looks exactly like the confectioner just sent it off with a kiss.

Thorkild Thorlacius, Anaflabia, Thorlacius's wife, Vera the Secretary, and Alexander Flounderblood have been taking their time. They've cut the chains of their handcuffs, and the pieces are on the floor together with the bolt cutter, the hacksaw, and the metal files. What they haven't been able to remove are the actual cuffs around their wrists. So they have partaken of brunch with these still on, and they're only just finishing up now.

I approach the table and deliver the cake in a gentle arc into the face of Alexander Flounderblood.

“In time,” I say, “you will all understand that this is for your own good.”

When you see people in films having custard pies pressed into their faces, the pies, I'm sorry to say, are invariably dummies or cheap tarts of dubious quality. But a high-class layer cake such as the present one produces a completely different visual effect altogether. In films, the victims will often be able to remove most of the custard pie with just a couple of swipes of the hand. But the eyes of Alexander Flounderblood have only just become visible after perhaps twenty seconds or more of vigorous and wholehearted swiping.

And with that, his line of vision is now once more unhindered, whereby all his attention and his plans for the immediate future shift from the cake to me.

Thorkild Thorlacius and Anaflabia, too, rise from their chairs. But Alexander Flounderblood's movements are in a
class of their own. He projects himself upward onto his feet as fast as a pinball machine.

I've a clear, albeit tiny, head start. So when I unexpectedly pass Max on my way down the stairs, I've no time to stop. All I register is him gaping at me, and then he's far behind in my wake.

I'm out of the building and Alexander's after me. I've seen him out jogging with Baroness, but am nonetheless surprised to receive his company at such close quarters, so close I would venture that the base of the layer cake must have involved some kind of walnut meringue.

We cross the street in heavy traffic. Brakes are applied, horns blare. I'm nearly at the red bus now and cast a glance over my shoulder. Alexander's only a few strides behind. Fifty meters behind him, Thorkild Thorlacius and Anaflabia, too, have negotiated the traffic and are picking up speed.

I glance through the windscreen of the bus. Lars is still in the driver's seat. And so, for that matter, is Katinka, who appears now to have straddled him.

Some might consider this not to be the done thing in public. But then, isn't it exactly the kind of sight most tourists would come flocking to see? And is it not love's very nature, if I remember correctly from when love was still a part of my own life? Sometimes it builds a room around the lovers, inside which they are no longer aware of anyone else existing in the world but themselves.