Anneli’s cocktail of gin and tonic, mixed with negative thoughts, left her in a state where she could neither sleep nor stay awake.
If she had to leave this world, she was sure as hell not going to go alone. The thought of Michelle, Jazmine, Denise, or the violent punk Birna walking around laughing while she was rotting in her grave was just too depressing. The worst of it was that while she was trying to help them as best she could, she knew that they were sneering at her behind her back. Only today she had gone to call in one of her favorite clients, an elderly man who was unsteady on his feet and who had been unfit for work for almost six months, when she saw them sitting there comfortably and talking about her while the other clients laughed along. They said she was a miserable cow and that the only thing that could help a bitch like her was a couple of bottles of sleeping pills. Yes, they stopped when someone warned them that she had entered the waiting room, but they didn’t wipe the smirks off their faces. The episode left her seething inside.
“Those damn scroungers need to be exterminated,” she drawled listlessly.
One day she would head down to the side streets of Vesterbro and get her hands on a really heavy gun. And when bimbos like them were sitting waiting, she would walk out and shoot them one by one right in the middle of their powdered foreheads.
She laughed at the thought, staggering over to the display cabinet and grabbing the bottle of port. When the first four girls were down, writhing in their own blood, she would print out the client list and drive around to find and liquidate the rest of them until there were no more girls of that sort left in town.
Anneli smiled, taking another swig. It would certainly save little old Denmark a lot more money than it would lose keeping her on bread and water for the rest of her life. Especially if her life was to be as short as it seemed at the moment.
She burst out laughing at the thought. It would leave her yoga friends gawping when they read about it in the newspaper for sure.
The question was, how many of them would actually visit her in prison?
Probably none.
She momentarily imagined the empty chair in the prison visiting room. Not exactly an appealing scene. Maybe it would be a better idea if she concentrated on eradicating the girls in a slightly more discreet way than simply gunning them down.
Anneli fluffed up the sofa cushion, making herself comfortable, with her glass resting on her chest.
6
Friday, May 13th, 2016
“Rose!” Carl gauged her blurred expression. She had appeared tired for some time now, but was this tiredness, or was she just being contrary?
“Yeah, you probably don’t want to hear this, but my patience has finally run out asking you to complete the report for the Habersaat case. I’ve begged you for it at least twenty-five times, and I can’t be bothered reminding you about it anymore, okay? It will be exactly two years ago tomorrow that we cleared up the case of June Habersaat’s death. Two years, Rose! Get with the program!”
She shrugged her shoulders. It was one of those days again when she puttered around in her own world doing her own thing.
“If you think it’s so important, you can write it yourself, Mr. M?rck,” she said.
Carl lowered his head. “You know full well that whoever starts a report in Department Q is the one who finishes it. How often do we need to discuss this? You’ve got all the notes in there, so just get it finished, Rose.”
“Or what, Carl? You’ll fire me?”
Their eyes met. “Listen here, missy! It’s reports like this that justify the existence of Department Q. Or should I be equally ridiculous and ask if you’re out to ruin the department?”
Rose responded again with the same provocative shrugging of her shoulders. “What do we need this report for? I don’t get it. The murderer confessed and also happens to be dead. No one reads the reports, anyway.”
“Very likely, Rose, but they’re registered. And unfortunately, even though June Habersaat confessed to the murder of Alberte to Assad and myself just before she drew her last breath, it hasn’t exactly been documented, has it? It’s her word against the unmistakable fact that she didn’t make a written statement to that effect. Of course she was the murderer, but we don’t have hard evidence to back that up, so the case is still open in principle. That’s how the system works, however idiotic it might sound.”
“Right! Well then, maybe I can just report that we never solved the case.”
“Damn it, Rose. Just get that shit finished before I lose my temper with you. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Finish that report so it makes our internal statistics look better. It’s the only thing left in the case, now that we’ve cleared the basement of all the material concerning it. Then we can put it behind us and move on with some of the other awful cases we’ve been boring ourselves with over the past few weeks.”
“Put it behind us? That’s easy for you to say, but what about me?”
“Stop, Rose! I want that report on my desk first thing tomorrow, got it?” He slammed his hand on the table so hard it hurt. He certainly hadn’t needed to go that far.
She stood there fuming for a moment before rushing to her office, swearing as she went.
As expected, less than thirty seconds later Assad stood in front of him, eyes agog and resembling a question mark.
“I know, I know,” said Carl, exhausted. “It’s a complete mess with Rose, but there are always new cases waiting to be solved and archived. She’s the one who always hounds us about that. We need to be on top of things with the old cases and keep up-to-date with the new ones. It’s an important part of our work, so don’t look at me like that. Rose just needs to do what’s expected of her.”
“Yeah, but it still wasn’t very clever, Carl. I can scent that she’s not happy.”
Carl looked at him with confusion. “Scent! You mean ‘sense,’ don’t you, Assad? Scent is something else.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. But keep in mind how much the Habersaat case affected her. It was due to that case that she had a breakdown and decided to have herself admitted to the psychiatric ward—and she’s still under observation. Why else would it take her so long to write that report?”
Carl sighed. “As if I don’t know that. The similarity between Christian Habersaat and her dad triggered something in her.”
“Yeah, and then the hypnosis, Carl. Maybe she remembered everything about her dad too clearly after that. He was killed right in front of her.”
Carl nodded. The hypnosis hadn’t been good for any of them. Memories of events they’d rather forget had come to the surface. Carl had had sleepless nights and weird dreams for a long time after, and it was much the same for Assad. So it was reasonable to assume that memories of the terrible accident at the steel plant that cost Rose’s dad his life had resurfaced during the hypnosis and plagued her ever since, even if she would never admit it.