The mere thought of Senta made Anneli feel nauseous, and therefore she had been happy when she was reassigned to another office and could leave the harpy to be judged by others. But even if she was rid of the sight of this odd Barbie imitation in her professional life, she constantly saw her in town.
Senta was always carrying shopping bags from various clothing stores and lived for nothing else but this urge to waste public money, which, even hours after these chance meetings, accentuated Anneli’s natural indignation and anger. So it was no coincidence that Anneli picked Senta’s profile from her list of parasitic girls, which would now ultimately end in Senta Berger’s death.
Anneli took her time. The day after Saturday night’s parties that kind of girl rarely ventured out before late afternoon, so Anneli leaned back in the car seat with her thermos, concentrating on the door from which she expected the girl to appear.
If she was with someone, Anneli would wait until another day, and the same applied if there was any other sort of obstacle.
On a Sunday afternoon, it was as dead out here in Valby as in a restaurant in Lyngby on New Year’s Eve. Once in a while someone ventured out to buy Danish pastries for their coffee or a cyclist took a shortcut down toward Vigerslevvej, but otherwise absolutely nothing was happening. It was just as it should be.
Approaching five o’clock she saw movement in Senta Berger’s apartment. The curtains were opened and she could see the outline of a figure behind the window.
Anneli screwed the lid back on her thermos and pulled on her gloves. Less than fifteen minutes later, the main door opened and Senta pranced out with a fake designer bag, miniskirt, leather boots up to her thighs, and a scarlet faux-fur cape.
She was killed a hundred meters farther down the street on the sidewalk. The stupid bitch had apparently turned up the volume on her headphones, because she didn’t manage to react before her body was crushed against the wall of the building.
This time the victim was definitely dead, but it was still with a sense of frustration that Anneli reversed the car onto the road and left the neighborhood. Damn it, the girl was supposed to have noticed her executioner just before her mind went blank and her brain was splattered on the wall. Then she would have acknowledged a lifetime of mistakes and misuse at the moment of death—that was supposed to be the beauty of it.
That was what excited Anneli. So no, she wasn’t satisfied. It hadn’t gone exactly to plan this time either.
—
She drove the car to the car wash and remained in the car as the brushes attempted to rip off the plastic from the side window. When the wash was finished, she mopped up the soapy water that had seeped into the car and wiped down all the areas she might have touched.
She had decided to use the car only one last time. Not only did she have to be careful in choosing her victims to make sure that there was no recognizable pattern; she also had to be careful about her choice of murder weapon.
Just like last time, she would park the car on Griffenfeldsgade. Whether the car was wanted for being stolen or for being used as a getaway vehicle was one and the same; the only question was whether the police were keeping an eye on it. All she had to do now was put enough coins in the parking meter and come back every day to renew the parking ticket. If the police had not noticed it in the meantime, she could use it again.
She put the thermos, a few hairs, some cracker crumbs, and a couple of used tissues in a plastic bag and slammed the door. It wouldn’t be long before her next mission, and this time she would make sure her victim turned around.
Even if she had to use the horn.
—
The radiotherapy building outside the main entrance to Copenhagen University Hospital was almost hidden by the chaos of portable buildings and hectic activity. Anneli followed the signs to entrance 39 and then walked down several flights of stairs while thinking about radiation danger and the sixties bunkers built to protect from nuclear attacks. Calm down, Anneli. They want what’s best for you, she said to herself, entering a waiting room of unexpected proportions with information desks, an aquarium, sofas, flat-screen TVs, and sunbeams falling softly down through the skylight and hitting the myriad green plants. Down here on this early Monday morning, all the patients waiting to receive radiation treatment were gathered, and despite the unfortunate reasons for them being here, the atmosphere felt secure and comforting. Everyone was here for the same reason, bound together by fate, each of them with small dots tattooed on their bodies so the nurses and radiographers could locate precisely where they should have their treatment. They were down here to give life a chance, just like Anneli would be here five times a week for the next four to five weeks.
If it turned out that contrary to expectation neither radiation nor chemo could get rid of the cancer, she would speed up her murder rate. From a rational point of view, she could manage to kill dozens of these women if she put in the effort. And if the police closed in on her, the solution could be to kill several girls a day, because the consequences were clear. Whether she killed one or forty women was all the same in a country where the ultimate sentence was life imprisonment. She had seen how comfortably those murderers who society didn’t dare release lived in psychiatric wards. And if that was the worst that could happen, she could handle it.
Anneli smiled to herself when they called her in for her radiotherapy, and she was still smiling an hour later when she was sitting on her office chair advising clients.
After a couple of rare satisfactory meetings, it was finally Jazmine J?rgensen’s turn.
You’re in for it, thought Anneli with some delight when the wench sat down and turned her head toward the window, probably completely uninterested in the fact that Anneli was the one setting the agenda.
If only she knew how Anneli felt about that attitude.
Over the past few years, Jazmine J?rgensen had gotten off the hook with pregnancies, related afflictions, and maternity leave, without fulfilling any of her obligations. Now she had been referred to a psychologist, and if she didn’t accept the offer of more radical prevention, she would be called in to a meeting about what they should do with her.
However, Anneli didn’t imagine it would come to that. In a few months, Jazmine J?rgensen would be in her grave anyway—pregnant or not.
Over the next few minutes, Anneli explained the framework for their future collaboration, including job search courses, prevention, and budgeting, and, as expected, Jazmine didn’t look away from the window or the street outside for a moment. Provocative, yes, but it increased Anneli’s feeling of fighting for justice.