But it turned out that she didn’t know her well enough. She’d thought the woman’s spitefulness would mean she’d get little or no food for a couple of days. Merete had no idea it would rob her of the right to determine her own life.
“Watch out for her, Lasse,” snarled the old woman. “She’ll turn us against each other, if she can. And she’ll cheat you, believe me. You’d better watch out for her. She’s got a pair of tongs in there, and she could easily try to use them on herself if need be. Do you really want her to have the last laugh? Do you, Lasse?”
There was a pause that lasted only a couple of seconds, then the sword of Damocles was hanging over her head.
“You heard what my mother said, didn’t you, Merete?” His voice sounded cold coming through the loudspeakers.
What good would it do for her to reply?
“From now on, you’re keeping back from the windows. I want to be able to see you at all times. Get it? Move the toilet bucket over to the far wall. Now! If you in any way try to starve yourself or hide or injure yourself, I promise you that I’ll lower the pressure in the room faster than you can react. Then if you stab yourself, the blood will gush out of you like a waterfall. You’ll feel everything exploding inside before you black out, I promise you. I’m going to set up cameras so we can observe you night and day from now on. We’ll aim a couple of floodlights at the windows at full power. And I can change the air pressure by remote control, by the way. So you can go to the guillotine now, or you can wait until later. But who knows, Merete? Maybe we’ll all drop dead tomorrow. Maybe we’ll be poisoned by the lovely salmon we’re going to have for dinner. You never know. So just hold on. Maybe one day a prince will arrive on a white horse and give you a lift. Where there’s life, there’s hope-am I right? So hold out, Merete. But stick to the rules.”
She looked up at one of the panes. She could just barely make out Lasse’s silhouette. A gray angel of death- that’s what he was. Hovering out there in life, nursing a sick, sinister mind that she hoped would torture him forever.
“How did you kill your foster father? The same bestial way?” she shouted, expecting to hear him laugh. But she didn’t expect to hear the other two laughing as well. So all three were out there now.
“I waited ten years, Merete. And then I went back, with forty pounds more muscle weight, and with so much contempt for the man, I thought that, alone, might be enough to kill him.”
“And you figured that would get you some respect?” she retorted and then laughed at him.
Anything that might rain on his victory parade was worth dishing out.
“I beat him to death. That made him respect me, don’t you think? Not exactly a refined method, but so what? I took my time bashing him to pieces. I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine-nothing else would satisfy me.”
Merete felt her stomach turn over. The man was completely insane. “You’re just like him, you ridiculous sick animal,” she whispered. “It’s too bad you weren’t caught back then.”
“Caught? Did you say caught?” Again he laughed. “How would that happen? It was harvest time, and his old, piece-of-shit reaping machine was standing ready, out in the field. It wasn’t hard to tip him into the machinery once it was going. He’d always had lots of peculiar ideas, the prick-such as going out to work in the fields at night. So no one was surprised when he died that way. And he wasn’t missed, let me tell you.”
“Oh, you’re really a big man, Lasse. I’m so impressed. Who else have you killed? Do you have something more on your conscience?”
She hadn’t figured he would stop there, but she was still deeply shocked when he told her how he’d exploited Daniel Hale’s profession to get close to her, and how he’d impersonated the man and then murdered him. Daniel Hale had never done anything to Lasse; he just needed to be eliminated so that Lasse’s real identity wouldn’t be revealed by chance. And the same went for Lasse’s helper, Dennis Knudsen. He too had to die. No witnesses. Lasse was cold as ice.
“My God, Merete,” she whispered to herself. “How many people have you destroyed without even knowing it?”
“Why didn’t you just kill me, you asshole?” she shouted at the window. “You had the chance. You said yourself that you’d been watching me and Uffe. Why didn’t you just stab me with a knife when I was out in the garden? I’m sure you were there, weren’t you?”
For a moment he didn’t speak. When he did, he carefully enunciated each word, so she’d understand the depth of his cynicism. “First of all, that would have been too easy. I wanted us to watch you suffer for the same amount of time as we had. Besides, dear Merete, I wanted to get close to you. I wanted to see you vulnerable. I wanted to shake up your life. You were supposed to learn to love this Daniel Hale, and then you were supposed to learn to fear him. You would take one last trip with Uffe, convinced that something remained unresolved and waiting for you when you came home. That gave me a great sense of satisfaction, I want you to know.”
“You’re sick in the head!”
“Sick? Am I? I can tell you this is nothing compared to what I felt on the day I found out that my mother had applied to the Lynggaard Foundation for help so she could move back home after she was discharged from the hospital. Her application was denied on the grounds that the fund was intended exclusively for use by the descendants of Lotte and Alexander Lynggaard. My mother was asking your fucking filthy-rich foundation for a measly hundred thousand kroner, and the board said no, even though they knew who she was and what had happened to her. So she had to spend several more years in institutions. Now do you understand why she hates you so much, you spoiled bitch?” The psychopath had started to cry. “A fucking hundred thousand kroner. What difference would that have made to you and your brother? None whatsoever!”
She could tell him that she knew nothing about this, but it didn’t matter. She’d already paid her debt to him. Long ago.
That very evening Lasse and his brother set up cameras and turned on the floodlights. Two blindingly bright objects that turned night into day and revealed the overwhelming squalor of her prison; once again she had a full view of the room in all its filthy detail. It was so terrible to be confronted with her own degradation that she chose to keep her eyes closed for the first twenty-four hours. The place of execution may have been put on display, but the condemned chose darkness.
Later they stretched wires across both mirrored panes to a pair of detonators, which could break the glass in a so-called emergency. Finally, right outside, they rolled into position cylinders containing compressed oxygen and hydrogen, as well as “flammable liquids,” as they called it.
Lasse informed her that everything was ready. After her body had exploded, they would run her through their composter, and then they’d blow up the whole fucking place. The explosion would be audible for miles. This time the insurance company would have to pay. Unforeseen accidents such as this had to be prepared meticulously, and all evidence permanently obliterated.
“Believe me, that’s not going to happen,” she said to herself, planning her revenge.
After a couple of days she sat down with her back to the windows and began digging in the concrete with the tongs. In a few more days she’d be finished, and the tongs surely would be too. Then she’d have to use the plastic toothpicks to puncture her arteries, but that didn’t matter. It could be done, and that was enough.
The digging took her more than a few days. It was more like a week, but by then the grooves were deep enough to withstand almost anything. She’d covered them with dust and dirt from the corners of the room. One letter after another. Once the fire experts from the insurance company came to inspect the scene to find out what had caused the blaze, she was certain that at least a few of the words would be discovered, and then they’d probably be able to figure out the rest of the message. It said:
Lasse, the owner of this building, murdered his foster father and Daniel Hale and one of his friends, and after that he murdered me.
Take good care of my brother, Uffe, and tell him that his sister thought about him every single day for more than five years.
Merete Lynggaard, February 13, 2007, kidnapped and imprisoned in this godforsaken place since March 2, 2002.
