“Empty your pockets,” she said. Jazmine did as she was told. A couple of hundred-kroner notes and a condom was all she had on her. Then she asked to see the contents of the canvas bag on Jazmine’s shoulder, but Jazmine held on to it tightly and suddenly looked determined, snarling that she didn’t have the goddamn key. Couldn’t Anneli just believe her?
Anneli did believe her because it all sounded logical enough. She had seen the sheets hanging down from the balcony for herself. The problem, however, was that for the first time she had no idea what her next move should be. Her entire plan of creating a scenario of murder and suicide between the girls was in jeopardy if she didn’t kill Jazmine behind that door. Nothing else would work.
Gazing down the walkway, Anneli suddenly thought how bare it looked. No plants outside the doors or along the banister. In fact, no decoration anywhere except a single doormat outside the girls’ apartment.
“Step back, Jazmine,” she said intuitively and lifted the doormat. And there was the key.
“Did you think you could fool me, Jazmine?” She smiled.
Jazmine looked utterly lost. Almost as if she was more surprised than Anneli.
Anneli unlocked the door and pushed the girl into the hallway in front of her. She immediately noticed the unmistakable smell of feces and urine, but the past few weeks had toughened her up. The cancer, the surgery, the radiation therapy, the whole business of plotting the murders, and not least committing them, had erased her old self. Now nothing could shock her or faze her.
But when she saw that the door to the bathroom was open and that the smell was coming from a woman tied to the toilet in her own shit and piss, she was shocked all the same.
“Who is that?” she gasped.
Jazmine shrugged apologetically. “I don’t know. It’s something Denise has done. I don’t know why.”
Anneli nudged the woman without getting a reaction.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” said Jazmine, clutching the canvas bag. It looked very suspicious under the circumstances.
“Give that to me, Jazmine,” she said angrily and grabbed for it. But the girl didn’t let go. Then she swung the pistol at the girl’s face at full force, and the effect was brilliant. Jazmine screamed and let go of the bag, putting her hands to her face. She knew that her pretty face was her last asset.
“You’ll do exactly what I tell you, Jazmine. Otherwise I’ll hit you again. Understood?”
Anneli picked up the canvas bag from the floor and looked inside.
“What?” she exclaimed. This day was really full of surprises.
“How much is there?” she asked. “If it’s the money from the robbery, I know it’s a lot.”
Jazmine nodded, her hands still covering her face. Was she crying?
Anneli shook her head. What brilliant luck. Everything was coming together nicely. She had managed to get the girl back here and now she had her hands on all this money.
Anneli glanced at the limp figure in the bathroom. How would it affect her plans that this woman was there? If she was dead, her presence would remain a mystery. But if she wasn’t, she could become a problem. As one of her ex-boyfriends—the most boring one—always said, “Luck is only there to be taken from us if we don’t guard it with everything we’ve got.” Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as she thought. Time was really getting on, so she had to hurry up and deal with Jazmine before she ran out of luck.
“Come into the sitting room, Jazmine,” she said, rehearsing the scene in her head. Once she had shot Jazmine with the gun, Anneli would press Denise’s pistol into her hand. The plan was for the police to conclude that there had been a showdown between the two girls and that Jazmine hadn’t had time to fire the pistol at Denise before Denise killed her with the silenced gun. The one they would later find next to Denise’s body.
“Sit down over by that shelf, Jazmine,” she said as she discreetly slid her hand in her bag and replaced the pistol with the gun.
Jazmine’s expression darkened and she raised her sharply drawn eyebrows. “What’s that for?” she asked nervously. “Weren’t we supposed to talk? That’s what you said.”
“Oh, but we will, Jazmine. And you’re going to tell me everything, got it? Why did you think that it was me who ran Michelle over?”
Anneli hid the gun under the table and took out the silencer from her bag.
“She told us that she saw you before you hit her.”
Anneli nodded. “But she was mistaken, Jazmine. It wasn’t me.”
The girl couldn’t help but frown, even if it meant she would wrinkle her otherwise perfectly smooth face. “Well, she also saw you when . . .”
“When what, Jazmine? I assure you she was mistaken. It must have been someone who looked like me.”
Jazmine’s gaze moved back and forth from the edge of the table to her side in discomfort. She clearly knew that something drastic was about to happen. And now that damn oil filter wouldn’t fit properly on the barrel of the gun.
“What are you doing under the table, Anne-Line?” she asked. In the same moment, she jumped up and grabbed a club-like thing from the teakwood shelf above the dresser.
She’ll lunge for me in a second, thought Anneli, pulling the gun out from under the table and giving up on the silencer.
“Stop that, Jazmine!” she yelled. But Jazmine had already unscrewed a cap from the shaft of the club, and before Anneli could react, Jazmine pulled on a small ball hanging from a string at one end before tossing the club across the dining table toward Anneli and throwing herself on the floor for protection.
Anneli looked at the object with horror and instinctively threw herself on the floor while Jazmine crawled out into the hallway.
It was a hand grenade, but not one of those pineapple-shaped ones.
But nothing happened. The junk didn’t work.
Anneli got up and held a hand to her shoulder, which was sore from her fall. She could hear Jazmine tugging at the front door handle.
“You can forget that, Jazmine,” she shouted toward the hallway. “I locked the door behind me.”
She picked up the gun and the silencer from the floor and walked out into the hallway while assembling them properly.
Jazmine clearly understood what was about to happen, darting in fear into the bathroom and locking the door, as if that would help.
Anneli pointed the gun at the door and pulled the trigger. The hole in the door was modest, but the scream from the other side was not.
She’s making too much noise, thought Anneli. She fired again and the screaming stopped.
What now? She had to check how badly she had injured the girl, but the door was locked. Of course, she could kick it open—it was as thin as cardboard—but then she’d have to wipe the footprint off it afterward. But then she realized that she was going to have to wipe her prints off everything anyway. Why hadn’t she remembered to bring gloves?
Then she kicked the door where the lock was and the door flew halfway open.
Anneli squeezed her way in and looked down at the floor where Jazmine lay gasping. Her eyes were big and black, and the terrazzo floor was stained red with her blood.
Handy when the floor slopes in the right direction, she thought as she watched the blood flowing toward the drain under the sink.