“We’ve got to hurry!” she heard the woman shout through the loudspeakers on the other side of the glass panes. “Lasse will be here in ten minutes, so we need to get everything ready. Pull yourself together, boy!” She sounded frantic.
Merete heard a clattering sound behind the mirrored panes, and she looked over at the airlock. But no buckets appeared, and her inner clock told her it was too early.
“But we need to have another storage battery in here, Mother!” the gaunt man shouted back in reply. “There’s not enough charge in this one. We can’t set off the explosion if we don’t change it. That’s what Lasse told me a couple of days ago.”
The explosion? An icy wave rushed through Merete’s body. Was it going to happen now?
She threw herself on to her knees and tried to think about Uffe as she used all her strength to rub the knife-shaped plastic stiffener against the smooth concrete floor. She might have only ten minutes. If she made the cut deep enough, she could lose consciousness in five. That was the important thing.
She was breathing hard, whimpering as the stiffener slowly changed shape. It was still too dull. She glanced over at the tongs, but the tips had been blunted from digging her message into the concrete floor.
“Ohhh,” she whispered. “Just one more day and I would have been ready.” Then she wiped the sweat from her brow and held her wrist up to her lips. Maybe she could bite through the artery, if she got a good grip. She nibbled a little at her flesh, but her teeth couldn’t hold fast. Then she turned her wrist around and tried to use her incisors, but her arm had grown too thin and fleshless. Her wrist bone was in the way, and her teeth weren’t sharp enough.
“What’s she doing in there?” the witch yelled in a shrill voice, pressing her face against the pane. Her eyes were wide open, the only thing visible while the rest of her was in shadow, with the blinding floodlights as a backdrop.
“Open the airlock all the way. Do it
now
!” she commanded her son.
Merete looked over at the flashlight that lay ready next to the hole she’d dug under the bolt of the airlock door. She dropped the stiffener and crawled on all fours to the airlock while the woman jeered at her. Everything inside Merete wept and pleaded for life.
Through the loudspeaker system she could hear the man rattling the airlock door as she grabbed the flashlight and shoved it down into the hole in the floor.
There was a clicking sound and then the turning mechanism started moving as she stared at the airlock door, her heart pounding. If the flashlight and the bolt didn’t hold, she was lost. The pressure inside of her body would be released like a grenade; that was how she pictured it.
“Oh, dear God, dear God, don’t let that happen,” she sobbed and crawled back to get the stiffener as the bolt began banging against the flashlight. She turned to watch and saw the flashlight rock slightly back and forth. Then she heard a sound she’d never heard before. Like a camera’s telephoto lens being activated, the hum of a mechanism being precisely released, followed by a quick thump against the airlock door. So now the outer door was open. All the pressure was on the inner door, and the flashlight was the only thing between her and the most horrifying death she could imagine. But the flashlight wasn’t moving anymore. The door perhaps had opened a hundredth of a millimeter, because the hissing sound of air forcing its way out of the chamber grew louder until it was like a shrieking whistle.
She felt it in her body after a few seconds. Suddenly her pulse was beating in her ears and she noticed a slight pressure in her sinuses as if a cold were settling in her head.
“She blocked the door, Mother!” shouted the man.
“So turn it off and try again, you idiot,” the woman snarled.
For a moment the wailing tone fell in pitch. Then she heard the mechanism start up, and again the sound grew louder.
They tried several times in vain to make the inner airlock door function properly as Merete kept filing the nylon stiffener.
“We need to kill her now and get her out of here. Do you understand?” shouted the she-devil outside. “Run and get the sledgehammer. It’s behind the house.”
Merete stared up at the glass panes. For the last couple of years they had served both as her prison bars and as protection against the monsters outside. If they smashed the glass, she would die instantly. The pressure would equalize in a second. Maybe she wouldn’t even have time to feel it before her life was extinguished.
She put her hands in her lap and guided the nylon knife toward her left wrist. She’d studied the artery a thousand times. That was where she needed to make the cut. Now there it lay, so fine and dark and open, in her thin, delicate skin.
Then she clenched her fist and pressed hard as she closed her eyes. The pressure on her artery didn’t feel right. It hurt but the skin refused to give way. She looked at the cut she had made. It was wide and long and seemed deep, but it wasn’t. There wasn’t even any blood. The nylon knife simply wasn’t sharp enough.
She tossed it aside and grabbed the pointed stiffener that was lying on the floor. She opened her eyes wide and estimated the exact spot where the skin around the artery seemed thinnest. Then she pressed hard. It didn’t hurt as much as she’d expected. The blood instantly colored the point red, giving her a warm, all-embracing sensation. She watched the blood come trickling out with a sense of peace in her soul.
“You’ve stabbed yourself, you bitch!” shrieked the woman as she slammed her hand against one of the portholes; the pounding of her fist echoed in the room. But Merete shut her out and felt nothing. Quietly she lay down on the floor, pushed her long hair back from her face, and stared up at the last fluorescent light that still functioned.
“I’m sorry, Uffe,” she whispered. “I couldn’t wait.” She smiled up at the image of him hovering in the room and he smiled back.
The thud of the first blow from the sledgehammer pulverized her dream vision. She looked over at the mirrored pane, which vibrated with every blow. The pounding turned the glass opaque, but otherwise nothing happened. Each blow that the man delivered to the pane was followed by an exhausted groan. Then he tried smashing the other pane, but that one also refused to break. It was clear that his thin arms weren’t used to wielding so much weight. The intervals between blows lasted longer and longer.
She smiled and looked down at her body that was lying on the floor in such a relaxed position. So this was how she, Merete Lynggaard, would look when she died. Not long from now her body would be pulverized to dog food, but it didn’t bother her to think about. By then her soul would be set free. New times would await her. She had experienced hell on earth, and she had spent most of her life in mourning. People had suffered because of her. It couldn’t be any worse in the next life, if there was one. And if there wasn’t, then what was there to fear, anyway?
She looked down the side of her body and discovered that the stain on the floor was reddish black, but not much bigger than the palm of her hand. Then she turned her wrist over to look at the puncture wound. The bleeding had practically stopped. A few last drops trickled out, then merged like the hands of twins searching for each other, and slowly congealed.
In the meantime, the pounding on the glass had stopped, so the only thing she heard was the hissing air in the crack of the airlock door and her pulse hammering in her ears. It sounded louder than before, and she noticed that she was getting a headache. At the same time, her body began to ache as if she were coming down with the flu.
Again she picked up the stiffener and pressed it deep into the wound that had just closed up. She filed the flexible stick back and forth and down, to make the hole big enough.
“I’m here now, Mum!” shouted a voice. It was Lasse.
His brother’s voice sounded frightened in the loudspeaker. “I wanted to change the battery, Lasse, but Mother told me to go and get the sledgehammer. I tried to smash the glass, but I couldn’t. I did the best I could.”
“You can’t break it like that,” Lasse replied. “It takes more than a sledgehammer. But you haven’t damaged the detonators, have you?”
“No, I was careful where I hit the glass,” said his brother. “I really was careful, Lasse.”
Merete pulled out the stiffener and looked up at the panes now pounded opaque with cracks radiating in all directions. The wound on her wrist was bleeding again, but not very much. Oh God, why wasn’t it? Had she punctured a vein instead of an artery?
Then she jabbed at her other wrist. Hard and deep. It bled faster. Thank God.
“We couldn’t stop the police from coming onto the property,” the witch said, suddenly.
Merete held her breath. She saw how the blood had found its way to the wound and started pouring out faster. The police? Had they been here?
She bit her lip and felt the headache getting worse, and her heartbeat was slowing down.
“They know that Hale used to own this place,” the woman went on. “One of them said that he didn’t know Daniel Hale had been killed near here, but he was lying, Lasse. I could tell.”
Now the pressure in her ears was beginning. Like when a plane was about to land, only faster and stronger. She tried to yawn but couldn’t.
“What did they want with me? Does it have something to do with the one they wrote about in the newspapers? The cop from that new police department?” asked Lasse.
Because her ears were plugged, the voices sounded farther away, but she wanted to hear what they were saying. She wanted to hear everything.
The woman almost seemed to be whimpering now. “I just don’t know, Lasse,” she said over and over.
“Why do you think they’ll come back here?” he asked. “You told them I was at sea, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But, Lasse, they know which shipping line you work for. And they’ve heard about the van that comes here. The black one let it slip out, and it was obvious that the Danish cop was furious, you could see it. They probably already know that you haven’t been to sea for several months now. That you’re in the catering division instead. They’ll find out, Lasse, I know they will. Also that you send us the leftover food in a company van. All it takes is a phone call, Lasse, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Then they’ll come back. I think they just went to get a search warrant. They asked if they could take a look around.”
Merete held her breath. The police were coming back? With a search warrant? Is that what they thought? She looked at her bleeding wrist and pressed her thumb hard against the wound. The blood trickled out from underneath and pooled in the folds of her wrist, dripping slowly on to her lap. She wasn’t going to let go until she was convinced that the battle was lost. They would probably win, but right now they were feeling cornered. What a wonderful feeling it was.
“What reason did they give for looking around the property?” asked Lasse.
The pressure in Merete’s ears grew stronger. She was having trouble counterbalancing it. She tried to yawn as she concentrated on listening to what they were saying. She could also feel a pressure inside her hip now. In her hip and her teeth.
“The Danish detective claimed he had a brother who works for Novo, and he wanted to see the place where a big company like InterLab had started out.”
“What bullshit.”
“That’s why I called you.”
“When exactly were they here?”
“Not twenty minutes ago.”
“So we might not even have an hour. We’ll also need to shovel up the body and take it away, but there’s not enough time. And we’d have to clean up and wash down afterward. No, we’ll have to wait until later. Right now the important thing is to make sure they don’t find anything, and then leave us in peace.”
Merete tried to banish the words “shovel up the body.” Was it really her Lasse was talking about? How could any human being be so loathsome and cynical?
“I hope they come here and get you before you can escape!” she yelled. “I hope you all rot in prison, like the bastards you are! I hate you. Do you hear me? I hate you all!”
Slowly she stood up as the shadows merged in the smashed panes.
Lasse’s voice was ice cold. “So maybe you finally understand what hate is! Maybe now you understand, Merete!” he shouted back.
“Lasse, don’t you think we should blow up the building now?” the woman broke in.
Merete listened intently.
There was a pause. He must be thinking. It was her life that was at stake. He was figuring out how best to get away with killing her. It was no longer about her — she was done for. It was about saving their own skins.
“No, the way things are, we can’t do it. We’ll have to wait. They mustn’t suspect that anything is wrong. If we blow everything up now, it will ruin our plan. We won’t get the insurance money, Mum. We’ll be forced to disappear. For good.”
“I’ll never manage that, Lasse,” said the woman.
Then die with me, you witch, thought Merete.
Not since the day when she looked into Lasse’s eyes at their rendezvous at Café Bankeråt had she heard him speak so gently. “I know, Mum. I know,” he said. He almost sounded human for a moment, but then came the question that made Merete press even harder on her wounded wrist. “Did you say that she’s blocked the door of the airlock?”
“Yes. Can’t you hear it? The pressure is being equalized much too slowly.”
“Then I’m going to set the timer.”
“The timer, Lasse? But it takes twenty minutes before the nozzles will open. Isn’t there any other solution? She’s stabbed herself, Lasse. Can’t we shut off the ventilation system?”
The timer? Hadn’t they said that they could release the pressure whenever they liked? That she wouldn’t have time to hurt herself before they opened it up? Was that a lie?
Hysteria began rising inside her. Watch out, Merete, she told herself. Don’t overreact. Don’t retreat inside yourself.