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 Cafe Bankerat 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.
“Shut off the ventilation system? What good would that do?” Lasse was clearly annoyed. “The air was changed yesterday. It will take at least eight days for her to use up the oxygen. No, I’m going to set the timer.”
“Having problems?” Merete shouted. “Doesn’t your shitty system work after all, Lasse?”
He tried to make it seem like he was laughing at her, but she wasn’t fooled. It was obvious that her scorn made him furious.
“Don’t worry,” he said, controlling himself. “My father built this system. It was the most sophisticated pressure-testing system in the world. This is where you got the finest and most thoroughly tested containment linings on earth. Most other places pump water into the containment and pressure-test it from the inside, but my father’s company also applied pressure from outside. Everything was done with the utmost precision. The timer controlled the temperature and humidity in the room and set all the parameters, so the pressure couldn’t be equalized too fast. Otherwise the containers would crack during quality control. That’s why it all takes time, Merete! That’s why!”
They were crazy, all of them. “You really do have problems,” she yelled. “You’re all insane. You’re finished, just like me.”
“Problems? I’ll give you problems!” he raged. She heard some clattering outside and quick steps in the hall. Then a shadow appeared at the edge of the glass, and two deafening bangs came through the loudspeaker system before she saw one of the windowpanes change color again. Now it was almost totally white and opaque.
“You’d better pulverize this building completely, Lasse, because I’ve left so many calling cards in here that you won’t be able to remove them all. You won’t get away.” She laughed. “You won’t get away with it. I’ve made that impossible for all of you.”
The next minute she heard six more bangs. They were evidently from shots fired in pairs. But both windowpanes held.
A short time later she began feeling pressure in her shoulder. Not too much, but it was still uncomfortable. She also had pressure in her forehead, sinuses, and jaw. Her skin felt tight. If this was the effect of the slight equalization caused by the minuscule crack in the door, then what awaited her when they released all the pressure would be absolutely intolerable.
“The police are coming!” she yelled. “I can feel it.” She looked down at her bleeding arm. The police wouldn’t arrive in time; she knew that. Soon she’d be forced to lift her thumb away from the wound. In twenty minutes the nozzles would open.
She felt something warm sliding down her other arm, and saw that the first wound had opened itself menacingly. Lasse’s prophecies were going to come true. When the pressure inside her body increased, the blood would come gushing out.
She twisted her body slightly so she could press her other trickling wrist against her knee. For a second she laughed. It felt like some sort of child’s game from the distant past.
“I’m activating the timer now, Merete,” he said. “In twenty minutes the nozzles will open and release the pressure in the room. It will take about another half hour before the room is back down to one atmosphere. It’s true that you have time to kill yourself now, before that happens. I don’t doubt that. But I won’t be able to watch anymore, Merete, understand? I can’t see you because the glass is totally opaque. And if I can’t see you, nobody else can either. We’re going to seal up the pressure chamber, Merete. We have lots of plasterboard out here. So you’re going to die in the meantime, one way or the other.”
She heard the woman laugh.
“Come on, brother, help me with this,” she heard Lasse say. His voice sounded different now. In control.
There was a scraping sound, and slowly the room got darker and darker. Then they turned off the floodlights and more plasterboard was piled against the panes until at last it was pitch dark.
“Good night, Merete,” he said softly out there. “May you burn in hell for all eternity.” Then he switched off the loudspeaker, and everything went quiet.
38
The same day
The traffic jam on the E20 was much worse than usual. Even though the police siren was about to drive Carl crazy, the people sitting in their cars didn’t seem to hear a thing. They were immersed in their own thoughts, with the radio turned up full blast, wishing they were far away.
Assad sat in the passenger seat, pounding the dashboard with impatience. They drove along the verge for the last few kilometers before they reached the exit, while the vehicles ahead of them were forced to squeeze close together to let them pass.
When they finally stopped outside the farm, Assad pointed across the road. “Was that car there before?” he asked.
Carl caught sight of it only after scanning the landscape from the gravel road into no-man’s-land. The vehicle was hidden behind some shrubbery about a hundred yards away. What they saw was presumably the hood of a steel-gray four-wheel-drive.
“I’m not sure,” he said, trying to ignore the ringing of his cell phone in his jacket pocket. He pulled the phone out and looked at the number displayed. It was police headquarters.
“Yeah. This is Morck,” he said as he looked at the farm buildings. Everything seemed the same. No sign of panic or flight.
It was Lis on the line, and she sounded smug. “It’s working again, Carl. All the databases are functioning. It was the interior minister’s wife. She finally coughed up the antidote to all the trouble she’d set in motion. And Mrs. Sorensen has already entered all the possible CR combinations for Lars Henrik Jensen, as Assad asked her to do. I think it was a lot of work, so you owe her a big bouquet. But she found the man. Two of the digits had been changed, just as Assad assumed. He’s registered on Strohusvej in Greve.” Then she gave him the house number.
Carl looked at some wrought-iron numbers affixed to one of the buildings. Yes, it was the same number. “Thanks, Lis,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “And give Mrs. Sorensen my thanks too. She did a really great job.”
“Wait, Carl, there’s more.”
Carl took a deep breath as he saw Assad’s dark eyes scanning the property in front of them. Carl felt it too. There was something really strange about the way these people had set up home here. It was not normal. Not at all.
“Lars Henrik Jensen has no criminal record, and he’s a ship’s steward by trade,” he heard Lis continue. “He works for the Merconi shipping company and mostly sails on ships in the Baltic. I just talked to his employer, and
