The children looked up at him in bewilderment when he turned on the light and crawled inside. The boy in the corner struggled in his chains, but it was no use. He kicked out and protested vociferously behind the tape that covered his mouth as the new chain was placed around his waist and attached to the one that was already affixed to the wall. But he no longer had the strength to resist. Days of hunger and the awkward sitting position had taken their toll. He looked rather pathetic with his legs drawn up at an angle beneath him.
Like all the others before him.
The girl had stopped humming immediately. His presence drained what little energy she possessed. Perhaps she had believed her brother’s efforts would be of use. Now she knew that nothing could be more futile.
He filled the cup with water and tore the tape from her mouth.
She gasped, then stretched her neck out and opened her mouth. The survival instinct, ever intact.
“Don’t gulp like that, Magdalena,” he said softly.
She lifted her head and looked fleetingly into his eyes. Confused and afraid.
“When are we going home?” she asked, her lips quivering. No violent outburst. Just this simple question, and then she stretched again for more water.
“A day or two yet,” he said.
There were tears in her eyes. “I want to go home to my mum and dad,” she wept.
He smiled at her and raised the cup to her lips.
Perhaps she sensed what he was thinking now. In any case, she paused and looked at him for a moment, her eyes moist, then turned her face toward her brother.
“He’s going to kill us, Samuel,” she said in a trembling voice. “I know he is.”
He turned his head and looked straight at the boy.
“Your sister’s confused, Samuel,” he said in a low voice. “Of course I’m not going to kill you. Everything will be fine. Your parents are wealthy, and I am not a monster.”
He turned again to Magdalena, whose head hung low now, as though she had given up. “I know so much about you, Magdalena.” He passed the back of his hand over her hair. “I know how much you wish you could wear your hair short. How dearly you’d like to be able to decide things for yourself.”
He put his hand in his pocket. “There’s something I want to show you,” he said, producing the sheet of glossy paper he had taken from her hiding place in the garden.
“Do you recognize it?” he asked.
He sensed her surprise, though she concealed it well.
“No,” she replied.
“Oh, but I think you do, Magdalena. I’ve been watching you with your little secrets there in the garden.”
She turned her face away. Her innocence had been violated. She was ashamed.
He held the paper up in front of her. It was a page torn from a magazine.
“Five female celebrities, all with short hair,” he said, then read out their names: “Sharon Stone, Natalie Portman, Halle Berry, Winona Ryder, and Keira Knightley. I’m afraid not all of them are familiar to me, but I’m pretty sure they’re all film stars, is that right?”
He took hold of her chin and turned her face toward him. “What could be so wrong about finding that interesting? It’s their hair you like, isn’t it? Because it’s not allowed in the Mother Church?” He nodded. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’d like to wear your hair like that, wouldn’t you? You’re shaking your head, but I think you would. But listen to me, Magdalena. Did I tell your parents about your little secret? I didn’t, did I? So perhaps I’m not such a bad person, after all.”
He withdrew slightly, taking a knife from his pocket and unfolding the blade. Always so clean and sharp.
“With this knife, I can cut your hair easily.”
He grasped a tuft and sliced it from her scalp, startling the girl and prompting her brother to thrash at his tether, though to no avail.
“There we are!” he said.
She reacted almost as if he had cut into her flesh. What he had just done was obviously a deeply ingrained taboo for a girl who had lived all her life with this dogma of the sanctity of women’s hair.
She sobbed as he taped her mouth. And then she wet herself.
He turned to her brother and repeated the procedure with the gaffer tape and water from the cup.
“And you, Samuel, have your own secrets, don’t you? You look at girls from outside the congregation. I’ve watched you on your way home from school with your older brother. Is that allowed, Samuel?” he asked.
“I’ll kill you as soon as I get the chance, so help me God,” the boy replied, before he too was silenced by tape. It was the only reasonable thing to do.
His decision was right. The girl would be the one to go.
For all her daydreaming, her reverence was the greater, her faith the more entrenched. She would grow up to be a Rachel, or an Eva.
What more did he need to know?
Having reassured them that he would be back to set them free once their father paid the ransom, he returned to the outbuilding and saw that the tank was now quite full. He stopped the pump and rolled up the hose, then plugged in the heating element, which he immersed into the water before flicking the switch. He knew from experience that lye was much more effective once the water temperature rose above twenty Celsius, and at this time of year, the nights could still plunge below zero.
He picked up the container of lye from the pallet in the corner, noting that he would soon be needing more. And then he turned it upside down and poured the contents into the water.
Once the girl had been killed and her body dumped in the tank, the corpse would be dissolved within a couple of weeks.
Then all he had to do was to wade out some twenty meters or so with the hose in his hand and empty the whole lot into the fjord.
With a bit of wind it would wash away from the shore in no time.
He would rinse the tank twice, and all trace would be gone.
Chemistry.
24
They made an odd couple as they stood there in Carl’s office, Yrsa with her bloodred lips and Assad, his face so belligerently stubbled that a hug from the man would be tantamount to attempted murder.
Assad was looking highly dissatisfied. Carl couldn’t recall him ever radiating as much disapproval as now.
“It cannot be right what Yrsa is saying! Can we not bring this Tryggve to Copenhagen, Carl? What about the report?”
Carl blinked. He still had in his mind’s eye the image of Mona opening the door into her bedroom, making him rather distracted to say the least. He hadn’t been able to think of anything else all morning. Tryggve and the world’s insanity would have to wait until he was ready.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Carl stretched in his chair. It had been ages since his body had felt this drained. “Tryggve? No, he’s still in Blekinge. I asked him to come to Copenhagen, even offered him a lift, but he wasn’t up to it, he said, and I couldn’t force him. He lives in Sweden, Assad, remember? If he won’t come of his own accord, we’re not going to drag him here without the help of the Swedish police, and it’s early days for that, wouldn’t you say?”
He anticipated a nod from Assad, but it was not forthcoming. “I’ll write a report to send up to Marcus, OK? Then we’ll have to see. Apart from that, I don’t really know how to proceed just at the moment. We’re talking about a thirteen-year-old case that’s never been investigated. It’s up to Marcus whose desk he drops it on.”
Assad frowned, Yrsa likewise. Was Department A going to run off with the honors, after all the work they’d put in? Was that really what he was saying?
Assad glanced at his watch. “We should go upstairs right away and get it sorted. Jacobsen comes in early on Mondays.”
“OK, Assad.” Carl straightened up. “But I want a word first.”