Michelle sat back on the sofa. God, what if they had taken Patrick in for questioning?
She pursed her lips. She just had to get out of here. Home to Patrick.
While she was gathering her things together, she wondered how much money she could take with her, because nothing had been decided on that front. Maybe the other two would become impossible if she took any at all.
In the end, she decided to take the twenty-thousand-kroner bundle lying on the coffee table. It was insignificant compared to the total of one hundred and sixty-five thousand. But if she kept the money well hidden and gave Patrick only a little, it couldn’t do any harm.
She knocked on Denise’s door and went in even though there was no sign of life.
Denise was lying on the bed half-unconscious, fully dressed, with her mouth wide-open and her makeup smeared all over the pillow. She looked like a cheap hooker. There was a second pillow tucked between her legs and money scattered around her and on the floor. The sight genuinely shocked Michelle.
“I’m going now, Denise,” she said. “And I won’t be back, okay?”
“Y’okay,” mumbled Denise. She didn’t even bother to open her eyes.
Down on the street, Michelle tried to think about things that were at least slightly positive in the middle of this damn mess.
The first and best thing was that Patrick could testify that she had not taken part in the robbery and that no one knew that she and the two other girls had moved in together. It was also a plus that Denise had made sure the taxi couldn’t be traced back to here. They had taken a taxi from Sydhavnen to City Hall Square, and from there they had walked to ?rsteds Park, where they had ditched the scarves and their jackets in front of a homeless woman sleeping on a bench. From there they had taken a bus to ?sterport Station, and then on to Stenl?se with a different taxi company.
On the way to Stenl?se, Jazmine and Denise had acted as if nothing was wrong, chatting away about the great food they had eaten at a local restaurant. They were finally dropped off at the other side of Stenl?se Station and walked home from there.
Anyway, Michelle doubted that anyone would suspect a girl who had just been the victim of a hit-and-run driver to be behind a robbery.
And then there was Jazmine and Denise. If Birna woke up, or if the police made a connection to them, would they be able to keep quiet, or would they squeal? And if they did, would they take her down with them even though they had promised not to?
Michelle felt nervous. She had almost reached the station. Should she turn around and go back to them to agree what the plan was? She stopped, considering her options. They had said themselves that she should go back to Patrick and settle things. So wasn’t that what she should do?
But what if the police really had taken him in for questioning? Then he wouldn’t be at home. She had to find out before she did anything else.
She took her cell from her bag. If he answered his phone, that was a good thing. Then she could tell him she was coming with the money so he wouldn’t be surprised when she turned up. Michelle smiled. Perhaps he would even be happy. He might even be waiting for her and try to convince her to stay. Hadn’t there been a glimmer of hope between them yesterday? She was sure there had been.
Then she heard a thud that made her turn around to face a black car hurtling directly toward her.
The last thing she saw was the same familiar face behind the wheel.
28
Thursday, May 26th, 2016
Rose stared at the wall.
When she fixed her gaze on the pale yellow surface and sat completely still, a vacuum appeared around her that drained all consciousness from her. In this state, she was neither awake nor sleeping. Her breathing was imperceptible and her senses in hibernation. She was just one of the living dead.
But then when she was awoken by sounds in the hallway, a domino effect of thoughts tumbled through her mind, and as insignificant as they might be, they left her defenseless. The sound of a door opening or closing, the whimpering from another patient, or footsteps was all it took before Rose had to gasp for breath and started crying.
She had been prescribed medication to sedate her and medication that sent her into a deep, dreamless sleep. And yet these reactions returned at the slightest disturbance.
Before Rose had been admitted, she had been through weeks of sleepless nights. An almost inhuman accumulation of dark hours that she could suppress only by tormenting herself in multiple ways.
Rose knew full well why it had to be like that. Because if she let her guard down for even one second, she was thrown into a torrent of images of her father’s screaming mouth and his blinking, almost astonished eyes in the moment he was killed. And in those moments she had inevitably yelled at the ceiling that he should leave her alone and scratched her skin to numb the pain of these eternally grinding thoughts for a few seconds.
“You do not belong here,” she had begun mumbling after some time. And when her voice had given out after many hours, she had thought instead while writing.
After four days of having hardly slept or eaten, she had begged to be admitted.
Like usual, Rose knew where she was but had trouble keeping track of time. She had been told that she had been there for nine days, but it might as well have been five weeks. And the doctors, whom she knew so well from the last time she had been committed, stubbornly kept assuring her that her perception of time was of no importance. As long as she made progress in her treatment, however insignificant it might seem, there was nothing to worry about.
But Rose knew that they were lying. That this time they would do everything to ignore her integrity, forcing and intensifying the treatment so they would eventually have full control over her.
Rose sensed their distance from her in their expressions when she sought refuge in her tears, but the nurses seemed to find it especially difficult to maintain their poker faces. They didn’t exude pity or sympathy like last time, but rather the kind of irritation experienced by a professional when things don’t go as planned.
During her therapy sessions, they had emphasized that Rose was there voluntarily and that she should say only as much as she felt comfortable with about her sense of loneliness, being bullied, having been betrayed by her mother, and the loss of her childhood.
Obviously she didn’t allow them access to her darkest place, because that was hers and hers alone. In that place the truth about her father’s death lay buried, and the shame and shock caused by her part in the tragedy was not something that should be stirred.
No, Rose kept her distance. That was her specialty. If only they could find a medication that would make her hatred, guilty conscience, and sorrow disappear, she would be satisfied.