The Purity of Vengeance (58 page)

He carried on to the second door, here to be confronted with a veritable trove of remains from a previous life: robes, handbags, coats. Everything a lady of society could once have desired, put away on shelves and hangers and hooks.

Nothing here, he decided, closing the door behind him, then sensing once more the same sickly sweet smell that had been there when he first entered the apartment, only now it was stronger. Much stronger.

He paused, sniffing the air. His senses led him toward the bookcase at the far end of the hallway. Strangly it was almost empty. A few ancient copies of
Reader’s Digest
and some old weeklies, otherwise nothing. Hardly the source of such an odor.

Curt stepped closer and breathed in deeply. It was difficult to pinpoint, a thin veil in the air, like the lingering smell of fish or curry from yesterday’s dinner.

It was probably a dead mouse behind the baseboard somewhere. What else could it be?

As he turned back to further investigate the living room, he stumbled and nearly fell.

Looking down to find the cause, he discovered a fold in the mat. The angle of it puzzled him. As if a door had been opened and had dragged the floor-covering up with it. And there in the middle was blood. Not old, coagulated blood but dark red and fresh.

He turned to the bookcase and looked again at the mat.

Then he took hold of one side of the bookcase and pulled it away from the wall.

It wasn’t heavy. He found himself staring at the door it had concealed. A paneled door with a bolt.

His heart began to pound. He felt strangely excited. As though this door represented the sum of all the illicit, clandestine activities that had shaped his entire adult life. His secrets of children never born and lives made to fail. Deeds of which he was proud. Some would be offended by such gratification, but it was what he felt. In front of this hidden door he somehow felt at ease, though his mouth remained dry and his head spun.

He dismissed it all as fatigue and drew back the bolt. It slid easily, the door releasing from the frame with the sound of suction. A rank smell began to fill his nostrils. His eyes passed along the frame, finding it lined with weather strips of strong rubber. He pushed against the door. It felt heavy, quite unlike the others in the apartment, and did not seem to have remained unused for any great length of time.

Curt’s senses were suddenly on alert. He pulled out the hypodermic.

“Mørck?” he ventured quietly, without expecting an answer.

Then he opened the door wide, and the sight that met him almost caused his legs to buckle.

Here was the source of the smell, its cause so immediately apparent.

His eyes swept over the bizarre scene before him. Carl Mørck’s motionless body on the floor, the grotesquely mummified heads with their dusty, brittle hair, retracted lips, and blackened teeth. Shrunken, fusty corpses clad in fine clothes, faces frozen, awaiting the last supper. He had never seen anything like it. Gaping sockets stared emptily upon crystal and silver. Transparent skin encased protruding bones and thick tendons. Crooked fingers with yellow nails on the table’s edge. Hands that would never reach out again.

He swallowed hard and stepped into the room. The smell was pungent, though in no way foul as rotting flesh, and now he recognized it, recalling how he had once opened a glass cabinet containing stuffed birds. Death and eternity all at once.

Five mummies and two empty chairs. Curt looked down at the first unoccupied place and saw the name
NETE HERMANSEN
printed neatly on the place card. It wasn’t hard to imagine who the second place was reserved for. The name on the card was almost certainly his own.

How fiendish she was.

He bent down to examine Mørck’s motionless frame. The hair at his temple and the back of his skull was matted with blood that still trickled from the wound. Probably he was still alive. He put two fingers to the policeman’s carotid artery and nodded with satisfaction, partly because Nete had secured his arms and legs so effectively with duct tape, and partly because the pulse was normal. He hadn’t lost that much blood either. It was a nasty blow, certainly, but hardly more than would give a slight concussion.

Curt looked again at the empty place intended to be his own. How fortunate that he had ignored her invitation all those years ago. He tried to work out exactly how long it had been but found himself floundering in time. It must have been twenty years at least. No wonder the guests looked tired.

He chuckled at his own black humor as he returned down the hallway and into the kitchen, where he took his unconscious hostess firmly under the armpits.

“Come on, Nete, up you get. Time for your party at long last.”

He dragged her back to the sealed-off room and heaved her onto the chair at the head of the table, the place she had reserved for herself.

Again he felt unwell and stood for a moment breathing deeply before collecting himself and retrieving his shoulder bag by the front door. Then he went back to the room and closed the door behind him. With the physician’s nonchalance he tossed the bag onto the table and produced from it an unused hypodermic and an ampoule of Flumazenil. A modest shot of the antidote and Nete would be returned to the here and now.

She trembled slightly as he pressed home the plunger, hesitantly opening her eyes as though even now she realized that reality would be overpowering.

Curt smiled at her and patted her cheek. In a couple of minutes she would be lucid enough to talk.

“And what are we to do about this Carl Mørck?” he mused out loud, glancing about the room. “Ah,” he noted. “An extra chair.” He nodded politely to the ghastly assembly as he drew the chair from the corner. There were dark stains on the upholstery.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m delighted to announce we’ve a new guest in our midst. Do make him feel welcome, won’t you?” he said theatrically, lifting the chair with a flourish and placing it next to Nete’s at the head of the table.

Then he bent down and took hold of the rugged investigator who had caused him so much consternation, and manhandled his dead weight into position.

“Excuse me,” he said, reaching across the table and nodding an apology to the figure of what had once been a man. “Our guest seems to be in need of refreshment.”

He raised the decanter above Carl’s head, removed the stopper, and doused his bloodied scalp with twenty-year-old water that drew colorful deltas on his pallid face.

46

November 2010

Carl came round within
seconds and yet in stages. First the water in his face, then the pain that seared through his skull, the ache in his elbow and lower arm, which he had used to parry the blow. His head lolled forward, eyes still closed. He drifted away, then became conscious again, aware of a more general discomfort of a kind he couldn’t remember ever having felt before. His throat was dry, images flashed in his mind, swirling light and waves of color. He felt dreadful, spinning with nausea, a thousand small voices warning him that if he opened his eyes things would only be worse.

And then a voice more distinct than the rest.

“Come on, Mørck, pull yourself together.”

A voice that did not belong in the place he believed himself to be.

Slowly he opened his eyes and saw the blur of a figure gradually coming together, until suddenly he found himself staring at a mummified human corpse, its jaw agape in a strangled scream.

It brought him to alertness with a gasp, his eyes still struggling to focus as they shifted from one shriveled cadaver to the next.

“Fine company, wouldn’t you say, Inspector?” said the voice above him.

Carl tried to move his head, testing the muscles of his neck, but the pain stopped him. What the hell was this? Bared teeth and dead flesh everywhere. Where was he?

“Allow me,” said the voice, and he felt a hand grab him by the hair and force his head back with a vicious jolt. It felt as though all his nerve endings screamed at once.

The old man into whose face he now peered didn’t seem that much different from the corpses at the table. His skin parched and wizened, the blush of his cheeks gone forever, eyes, once so keen, now wreathed by death. Only a day had passed and yet Curt Wad was changed.

Questions accumulated in his mind. About what he was doing there, and whether Wad and Nete were acting in collusion after all. But he was unable to muster a word.

And why should he bother? Curt Wad’s presence was answer enough.

“Welcome to the party,” the old man said, snapping Carl’s head to the side.

“As you see, Carl, you’re in the company of our hostess. She’s even still breathing, so I’m sure we’re going to have a wonderful time.”

Carl stared into Nete Hermansen’s face. She sat slumped, features limp, jaw hanging open.

His eyes passed over her figure. She was restrained like himself, torso strapped to the chair with duct tape, legs and feet likewise bound.

“You’re not sitting comfortably, Nete,” Curt Wad said, producing the roll of tape. A series of short ripping sounds ensued as he fastened her arms to the armrests. “A good thing you kept the best chair for yourself.” He laughed, seating himself on the only one that remained empty.

“Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to bid you all welcome. Dinner is served. Bon appétit!”

He raised his empty glass and acknowledged the assembled company in turn.

“Perhaps you’d care to introduce me to your guests, Nete?” he suggested, with a nod in the direction of the rawboned carcass in the dusty, moth-eaten tweed who had been placed at the opposite end of the table.

“I know Philip there, of course.” He raised his glass. “
Skål
, my old friend. Never a worry as long as Nørvig is at the head of the conference table, isn’t that what we used to say?”

He broke into deranged laughter. Carl felt like throwing up.

Curt Wad turned to face their hostess. “Oh dear, Nete, are we feeling out of sorts? A little more Flumazenil, perhaps? You do seem rather peaky. I’ve certainly seen you in better fettle, I must say.”

She whispered something in reply that Carl didn’t quite catch. It sounded like, “That’s what you think.”

Wad didn’t seem to hear it either, but his expression changed.

“Enough mirth. I see you’ve had plans for us all, Nete, and in view of what you were intending, I’m all the more pleased to be here today on my own terms. What’s going to happen now is that the two of you will inform me briefly of how much information you have passed on to outsiders about my work. On that basis I shall be able to assess the extent of the damage and consider how my people might best restore order and renew faith in our misson.”

Carl glared at him blearily, still struggling to regain his senses. He tried to breathe as comfortably as possible, but only when he began to inhale through the corner of his mouth did he feel any kind of improvement, more control over the odd sensations coursing through his body. He became more aware of his swallowing movements, the numbness in his neck and palate dissipating. He could breathe deeper now.

“You’re full of shit,” he spat.

Wad heard him but merely smiled.

“Ah, he speaks. What a wonderful development. We’re in no hurry, but let’s begin with you, shall we, Carl?” He peered into his bag on the table. “I shall make no bones about it. This night will be your last. Needless to say, that goes for the both of you. However, I can promise you that if you cooperate with me, death will be both painless and swift. If not . . .”

He reached into the bag and produced a scalpel. “Need I say more? I’m sure you’re aware that the instrument here is far from unfamiliar to my hand.”

Again Nete tried to speak but was seemingly still too confused.

Carl focused on the scalpel and tried to gather himself. He twisted his wrists against the duct tape, but there was no strength in him. He struggled to shift his weight in the chair, but his body seemed loath to even react. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

What the fuck’s the matter with me? he asked himself. Was this how a concussion felt? Was that what it was?

He looked across at Curt Wad. Did he see perspiration running down the bridge of the old man’s nose? Was it fatigue that made his hands tremble?

“Tell me how you found each other. Did you get in touch with the police, Nete?” Wad wiped his brow and laughed. “No, I don’t suppose you did. After all, you’ve rather a lot to hide here, haven’t you?” He swept out a hand, indicating the macabre scene. “And who might the rest of these unfortunate people be, these sorry individuals with whom you intended I should end my days? That one over there, for instance. What kind of worm was he, I wonder?”

He jabbed a finger toward the corpse directly opposite. Like the others, it was taped tightly to the chair, though no longer entirely upright. A shapeless individual whose former corpulence remained readily discernible despite the passage of time.

Curt Wad smiled, only then to clutch his throat in an abrupt reflex, as though he were about to spew bile or had suddenly become unable to breathe. Carl would have done the same if he could have got his hands free.

Wad cleared his throat a couple of times and wiped his brow again. “Tell me what documents you obtained, Mørck. Did you find anything of interest in my archive?” He raised the scalpel and slashed open the tablecloth. The instrument was hideously sharp.

Carl closed his eyes. He had no intention of shuffling off the coil yet, and definitely not like that. But if his number was up, he was prepared to go out with a flourish. Wad wasn’t getting a peep out of him other than what he decided to tell him himself.

“So you choose to remain silent. Very well. When I’ve finished with you both, I shall call my people and instruct them to remove your bodies, although . . .” Wad stared blankly into the air in front of him and took a couple of deep breaths. He wasn’t feeling well at all. He undid the top button of his shirt. “Although it seems a shame to spoil such a pleasant get-together,” he concluded.

Carl wasn’t listening. He was concentrating on trying to breathe. Inhaling through the corner of his mouth, exhaling through his nose. It stopped the room from spinning so fast. He felt shit, and was painfully aware of it.