The Purity of Vengeance (23 page)

She closed her eyes and could almost taste it.

Just one glass, it didn’t matter what, and waiting for her benefit to come would be that much easier. Why did there have to be so long between payments?

She’d tried to get them to pay out once a week instead, but the social workers had cottoned on. Once a week and she’d be there again after a couple of days, pockets empty and cap in hand, whereas a monthly payout meant they only saw her at the end of the month.

It was the most practical solution for them, she realized that. She wasn’t stupid.

She gazed out over the fields and caught a glimpse of the postman’s van on its way along Maarup Kirkevej from the church in Nordby. At this time of year the island was dead. The tourists had all gone home, the brothers who owned just about the whole island had gone into semi-hibernation in their tractor sheds, and everyone else sat around waiting for the evening news and spring to come.

For almost two years she had lived in this outbuilding belonging to a farm whose owner never gave her the time of day. It was lonely, but she was used to it. In many respects she was the quintessence of an islander. Her years in the Faroe Islands, on Sprogø, and now Samsø, had been far better than those she had spent in the big towns where everyone busied about and yet had no time for one another. No, islands were made for people like her. A person was in charge. Life was manageable.

The van pulled into the yard and the postman got out with a letter in his hand. It wasn’t often the farm owner received letters. Flyers from the cooperative store in neighboring Maarup were more than enough for him to get on with, and the rest of the island seemed to have acknowledged the fact.

But then she was taken aback. Didn’t he just drop the letter into her box? A mistake, surely?

As the van drove off she put on her dressing gown, then scurried out in her slippers and opened the postbox. The address on the envelope was handwritten. She hadn’t received that kind of letter in years. She took a deep breath in anticipation, turned the envelope over in her hand, and felt a surge of surprise and astonishment run through her body, her stomach knotting immediately. It was from Nete Hermansen.

She read the name and address of the sender once more, and then again to make sure, sitting down at the little table in the kitchen, fumbling for her cigarettes. For some time she simply stared at the envelope, wondering what it might contain.

Nete Hermansen! It was all such a long time ago.

 • • • 

In the late summer of 1956, six months to the day after Gitte’s twenty-second birthday, she boarded the mail boat from Korsør to Sprogø, full of expectation, but with little knowledge of the place that would be her home for several years to come.

She had personally sought the advice of the senior doctor at Brejning in order to ascertain whether the place might be suited to her, and he had peered at her over his horn-rimmed glasses with eyes that were warm and wise as ever. It was all the answer she needed. A young, natural, healthy girl like her could only do good in such a place, he told her. And that settled it.

She was familiar with the feeble-minded. Some could be rather a handful, but most were no trouble. The girls out on the island were not quite as simple as those who’d been in her section at Brejning, so she was told, and she was happy at the thought.

They stood waiting for her in a huddle on the jetty in their long tartan dresses, with big smiles and eager waves, and Gitte thought only that their hair was ugly and their smiles too broad by half. Later she learned that the woman she was replacing had been despised more than any other and that the girls had been counting the days until the mail boat came and took the dreaded woman away.

Perhaps that was why they received her with such warm embraces and hearty pats on the back.

“I like you!” exclaimed one of the girls, who was three times the size of the others, hugging Gitte almost until she was black and blue. Viola was her name, and her overwhelming presence would soon become rather tiresome.

But Gitte was welcomed and appreciated.

“I gather from your dossier that you’ve grown fond of referring to yourself as a nurse over there in Brejning. I won’t support your using that designation, but, I won’t protest either if you continue to do so. We’ve no fully trained staff here on the island, so it may be quite beneficial to us if the other wardens believe they’ve something to live up to.”

There were no smiles in the matron’s rooms, but out in the courtyard a group of giggling girls stole glances at her through the window. Scarecrows with pudding-basin haircuts, standing in a huddle and pulling faces.

“Your records are satisfactory, but I should like you to note that your long hair may trigger unwanted desires in the girls, so I must ask you to put it up under a hairnet whenever you are among them.

“I’ve made sure your room has been cleaned and made ready. From now on that will be your own responsibility. Here on Sprogø we set greater store by order and neatness than I’m sure you’re used to from Brejning. Clean clothes at all times. The same applies to the girls, and morning hygiene is obligatory.”

She nodded to Gitte, clearly expecting a similar sign of agreement in return. Gitte obliged.

 • • • 

The first time she saw Nete was a couple of hours later when she was led through the girls’ dining room into the one used by the staff.

The girl was seated at the window, gazing out over the water as though it were the only thing that existed. It was a state of calm wholly undisturbed by the chatter of the other girls in her proximity, the hulking Viola who screeched a greeting to Gitte, or even the food on the table. The light fell on her face and made shadows that seemed almost to wrench her innermost thoughts from her mind. In that most fleeting of moments Gitte fell for her completely.

When the matron presented Gitte to the girls, they clapped their hands and waved, calling out their names and trying to draw attention to themselves. Only Nete and the girl who sat opposite her reacted differently. Nete, by turning her head and looking Gitte straight in the eye as though some invisible armor had to be penetrated first, and the girl opposite, with fluttering eyes that seemed almost to caress Gitte’s body.

“What’s the name of that quiet girl, the one who was sitting over by the window?” she asked later, as she sat down at the dinner table with the rest of the staff.

“I’m not sure I know who you mean,” said the matron.

“The one who was sitting opposite that other girl, the provocative one.”

“Opposite Rita? That’d be Nete,” said the woman next to her. “She always sits over there in the corner, just staring out at the sea and the gulls. She likes to watch them break open the mussels. But if you think she’s the quiet type, I’m afraid you’re much mistaken.”

 • • • 

Gitte opened Nete Hermansen’s letter and began to read, her hands trembling increasingly as she did so. When she got to the place where Nete said she was intending to make Gitte a gift of ten million kroner, she gasped for breath and was forced to put the letter down. She paced the floor in the kitchen area for several minutes, not daring to look at it. She rearranged her tins of tea, ran a cloth across the tabletop, and wiped her hands dry against her hips before turning her attention once more to the matter at hand. Ten million kroner. And then she read that a check was enclosed. She snatched up the envelope and looked inside. It was true. She hadn’t seen it until now.

She sat down heavily and gazed around the shabby room, her lips quivering.

“It’s from Nete,” she said to herself repeatedly, before taking off her dressing gown.

The check was in the amount of two thousand kroner. Much more than the ferry and the train to Copenhagen and back would cost. She wouldn’t be able to cash it at the bank in Tranebjerg, because she owed them more than the check was worth, but the farm owner could give her fifteen hundred for it. And then she would cycle to the little co-op in Maarup as fast as she could.

This was a situation that required assistance. And the co-op’s selection of spirits would be more than sufficient.

19

September 1987

Nete gathered the brochures
that had been laid out neatly on the coffee table and put them on the windowsill. Alluring brochures presenting comfortable apartments in Santa Ponsa, Andratx, and Porto Cristo, a couple of terraced houses in Son Vida and Pollenca, and a penthouse in San Telmo. The prices were reasonable and there were plenty to choose from. Her dreams were queuing up, and now they would be fulfilled.

She wanted to be away from Denmark when winter set in, and Mallorca seemed like the ideal place. There, in that delightful countryside, she would enjoy the fruits of her husband’s hard work and grow old with grace.

The day after tomorrow, when everything was over, she would book her ticket to Palma de Mallorca and decide on the right property. And a week from now she would be gone.

Again she took out the list of names and ran her eyes down the page, going through the entire procedure in her mind. Nothing could be left to chance.

Rita Nielsen 11:00–11:45

* Tidy up: 11:45–12:30

Tage Hermansen 12:30–13:15

* Tidy up: 13:15–13:45

Viggo Mogensen 13:45–14:30

* Tidy up: 14:30–15:00

Philip Nørvig 15:00–15:45

* Tidy up: 15:45–16:15

Curt Wad 16:15–17:00

* Tidy up: 17:00–17:30

Gitte Charles 17:30–18:15

* Tidy up: 18:15–

She nodded to herself, picturing the arrival of each of the invited names. Yes, everything seemed to be right.

As soon as one of them was inside the apartment she would press the button to shut off the entry phone downstairs. When the victim could no longer put up a struggle, she would switch it on again. If the next in line arrived early and called up, she would ask them to leave and come back at the appointed time. Should anyone arrive late, she would put them at the back of the queue and suggest they go down to the Pavilion and have something to eat at her expense. Given the situation and the prospect of such rich rewards, she was in no doubt they would follow her instructions.

And if chance should dictate that whoever it was happened to bump into the next in line outside the front door, it would hardly matter. She had been careful enough to arrange the order of arrivals so that sequential callers had never met before. Curt Wad and Gitte Charles might conceivably have run into each other at some hospital or other institution, but the risk of a man like Curt Wad not arriving on the dot was presumably minimal indeed.

“Wise to put Gitte last,” she said out loud. One could never know with Gitte. Punctuality had never been a matter of much concern to her.

Yes, the plan was good, and the timing looked like it was going to work just fine.

None of the other residents would ever let anyone into the building apart from their own visitors, she was sure of that. The thieving drug addicts down on Blågårds Plads had demonstrated on several occasions that doing so would be foolhardy indeed.

When everything was done, she would have the whole evening and night to take care of what remained.

The only thing she needed to do now was make sure the room really
was
airtight. It called for a test.

She fetched her shopping bag and a screwdriver from the toolbox, went out onto the landing, and kneeled down in front of her door. The groove on top of one of the screws was worn, but she persevered and eventually succeeded in removing the nameplate. She dropped it in her shopping bag, descended the stairs, and went out into the street.

First the heel bar and key-cutting shop on Blågårdsgade, then the paint store on Nørrebrogade, she decided.

“Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do,” said the key cutter, as he examined the nameplate. “But it won’t be ready for an hour and a quarter. I’ve got some shoes that need heeling first.”

“I’ll come back in an hour and a half. Make sure the engraving’s the same as the original. And do spell the name correctly, won’t you?”

That’s done, she said to herself, as she walked down the street. The name on the entry phone was still Nete Rosen, but she would fix that with a sticky label and a permanent marker. From now on she was Nete Hermansen; the documents were already signed and sent in. The other residents might wonder, but she didn’t care.

“I need something with a strong smell,” she told the paint dealer. “I’m a biology teacher and the children are working on the olfactory system tomorrow. I’m all right for things that smell nice, but what I need is something pungent.”

The paint dealer gave her a wry smile. “In that case I’d say turpentine, ammonia, and paraffin. That should be enough to bring tears to anyone’s eyes.”

“Right, and I’ll be needing some formalin. Four or five bottles.”

She smiled as he handed the plastic bags over the counter, and then she was done.

Two hours later the new nameplate bearing the name
NETE HERMANSEN
was fixed to the door. It would be wrong indeed for these imminent acts of vengeance to occur behind a door bearing the name of Rosen.

She went out into the kitchen and collected eight bowls, taking them with her to the room at the end of the hallway.

She spread newspapers out over the dining table just in case, and on top of them she placed the bowls, filling each with strongly scented or malodorous liquids. Eau de cologne, lavender water, turpentine, paraffin, benzine, vinegar, methylated spirits, and finally ammonia.

The latter gave off an invisible cloud that impacted suddenly, stabbing at her nostrils and throat and making her gasp with discomfort.

She left the bottles where they were and backed out of the room as quickly as she could, closing the door behind her.

Groaning, she dashed into the bathroom and rinsed her face over and over in cold water. The fumes of these combined substances were truly abominable. It felt almost as if they were corroding her flesh, seeping into her brain through the membranes of her nose.