“Haven’t you taken a wrong turn?” asked Carl. “The toilets are down the corridor.”
“Ha-ha. No, Lars Bj?rn has spoken so highly of you that we decided together that Station 3 would shadow Department Q and watch you at work for a few days. Just a small film crew of three men. Me, a cameraman, and a sound technician. Won’t it be fun?”
Carl glared and was about to give him a piece of his mind but thought better of it. Maybe this would present him with an opportunity for sabotage and Lars Bj?rn would be sorry.
“Yes, it sounds like fun.” He nodded with his eyes fixed on the notes Marcus Jacobsen had given him and which were now scattered unread on his desk. “Actually, we’re investigating a case that might interest you. A very current murder case that could be perfect for your program, and which I happen to think is connected to one of our cold cases.”
That caught his attention.
“I’ll let you know when we get started.”
—
“We’re really worried about Rose, Carl.”
There they stood, the oddest pair you could find at HQ. The short, squat, and dark Assad, with masculinity oozing from his jet-black stubble, standing next to Gordon, looking pale and as tall as a giraffe in comparison, and who was still waiting for his first real shave. The worry in the faces, however, was identical. It was genuinely touching.
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate it, guys,” he said.
“We thought we’d drive over there now, didn’t we, Assad?” said Gordon.
He nodded. “Yes, we need to see how she’s doing, Carl. Maybe she needs to be admitted again.”
“All right, you two,” he said soothingly. “Try not to worry. It’s probably not so bad. Let Rose cool off. She said what she had to say. I’m sure she’ll be back to her old self tomorrow.”
“Yeah, maybe, Carl, and then again maybe not,” said Assad. He didn’t look convinced.
Carl knew where he was coming from.
“Time will tell,” he said.
14
Tuesday, May 17th, 2016
The perfume bottles stood close together in a neat row on the bathroom shelf. One for Vicky, one for Yrsa, and one for Lise-Marie, the way Rose had arranged them. Three very different and delicate scents that each bore witness to personal style and some measure of elegance, which wasn’t something one would accuse Rose of possessing much of.
Each bottle had a sticker with one of the sisters’ names on it. And when Rose sprayed one of these scents on the inside of her wrist, it was normally only a matter of seconds before she could mimic the personality and identity of that sister down to the smallest detail.
It had always been that way with the scents of the women Rose had grown up with. When she was a child, she had mimicked her grandmother and mother by spraying her wrists with eau de cologne or Chanel No. 5, respectively, and later in life also all her sisters with each of their perfumes. Only her own perfume had an almost anonymous scent because “it’s easier to dress when naked,” as her pale Danish teacher always used to say with a hint of irony.
Earlier today, like so many times before, she had splashed herself with Vicky’s perfume, and carried by this scent she had taken the S-train into the city to give Carl a piece of her mind. Prior to that, she had been to the hairdresser to have her hair cropped so short that even Vicky would have found it daring. She had bought a blouse from Malene Birger and a pair of jeans that were so tight around the crotch that anyone except Vicky would have found them obscene. When she arrived at police HQ dressed and acting like Vicky, she had shown her ID card to the puzzled security guard and made her way down to Carl, where she had spent five memorable minutes letting Carl have it about how hard, unfair, and insensitive he always was with Rose, her beloved sister.
In Rose’s experience a disguise often had the same effect on people as alcohol, as they both strengthened courage as well as the characteristics that didn’t normally see the light of day.
She knew full well that Carl wouldn’t be easily fooled, even though she had once managed to convince him for several days that she was her sister Yrsa, but that didn’t matter. People were still more willing to listen to a cry for help if it was expressed by someone else or by people one pretended to be.
Afterward, she had felt great for about an hour, because Carl deserved no better. But then things took a turn for the worse.
She had only just arrived back at Stenl?se Station when the all-consuming blackout hit her like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky. She couldn’t remember what happened in the following hours. She just suddenly came to in her sitting room, having wet herself, with her expensive blouse pulled halfway down her shoulders and torn up to her belly button.
This had made Rose scared. Not just confused and uneasy like she had felt so many times before when her dark side had taken over, but soaked in complete and irrational anxiety. These blackouts were rare and superficial, but this time it was different. It almost felt as if a liquid had spread in her brain, killing her cells, and that there were membranes growing on her senses.
“Either this is going to kill me or I’m really going crazy,” she whispered.
“But just think about it. You’ve hardly had any sleep or anything to drink in the last four days, and you haven’t eaten anything. What did you expect?” she argued.
She wolfed down the remains in the fridge and drank liters of water in an attempt to feel better, but every time she tried to swallow, it felt as if an internal vacuum sucked her further into herself. It made her nausea ten times worse than when she needed to be sick.
When evening came, she walked like a zombie from room to room, spitting on the bare walls. She saw faces deep within staring intensely at her from everywhere: the paneling, the walls, the tiles in the bathroom, and the cupboard doors in the kitchen.
Make the sign of the cross over us if you want to block out evil, screamed the surfaces. Protect yourself against the inescapable abysses if you can, but hurry, you don’t have much time.
Rose found all the pens and pencils she could find in her drawers and placed them in front of her. Slowly and carefully, she chose a couple of bundles of black and red permanent markers and began to cover the walls with words that for a brief moment could keep all her terrible thoughts at bay.