“Not from the way he was screaming, no. But it didn’t take long. His entire lower body was squashed.”
“I see. That sounds unpleasant. And what was Rose doing in that section that she’s never told us about? Her sister once told me that she was a summer temp.”
He laughed. “Summer temp? No, she certainly wasn’t. She was on an apprenticeship as a feeder operator.”
Carl and Assad both shook their heads. A feeder operator?
“That’s the person who decides which slabs go in the furnace before they are transported to the rolling mill.”
“Slabs are the big pieces of metal that are rolled into steel plates,” explained Carl to Assad, recalling Leo Andresen’s words. “And what was your role in this process, Benny?”
“When the slab came out red-hot from the furnace on the other side, I was sometimes the one who took over and did the rolling.”
“And was that your job on this particular day?”
He nodded.
“And yet you didn’t witness the accident?”
“Well, I couldn’t have, could I? I was on the other side of the furnace.”
Carl sighed as he tried in vain to picture the scenario.
There was no way to avoid it: Leo Andresen would just have to give them a guided tour.
30
Thursday, May 26th, 2016
Rose hadn’t wasted any time. Cups smashed in confusion, souvenirs thrown off the shelves in frustration, furniture tossed around the room in anger. It took only a few minutes to vandalize most of the sitting room. It should have felt good, but it didn’t. All she saw was Rigmor Zimmermann’s face.
How often had Rigmor been there for Rose when her loneliness had become too much? How often had she bought groceries for Rose when she had gone a whole weekend without the energy to do so much as open her blinds? And now that Rose needed her most, she wasn’t here anymore. And why?
Murdered, they said. But how? And by whom?
She picked up her laptop from the floor, switched it on, and realized with a certain irrational sense of relief that she could still log on to the Internet even though the screen was smashed. She sat down and entered the password to access the internal police home page.
There was little information to find about her neighbor, but she managed to find enough to discover not only that she was dead but also where she had died and how.
“Severe trauma to the neck bones and the back of the head,” the report read coldly. Where had she been when all this happened? Had she just been absorbed in her own problems in her apartment for two weeks without realizing that everything was quiet next door?
“What sort of person have you become, Rose?” she asked herself without crying. She couldn’t even produce tears.
When her phone rang in her back pocket, she was back where she had been half an hour ago. Finished with existence. Out of sync with life.
The phone rang five times within the next few minutes before she finally took it out and looked at the display.
It was her mother calling from Spain. There was no one in the world she felt less inclined to talk with about her present situation. The hospital must have contacted her, so it wouldn’t be long before she called Rose’s sisters.
Rose looked at her watch. How much time did she have? Twenty to twenty-five minutes before her sisters turned up demanding an explanation as to why she had left the hospital.
“I can’t let that happen!” she shouted while she considered smashing the phone so hard against the wall that it would break into pieces.
She took a deep breath while she wondered what she should write. Then she pressed MESSAGES and began texting:
Dear Mom, I’m on the train just now to Malm?. The connection is bad so I’m texting instead of calling. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I discharged myself today because a good friend in Blekinge has offered to let me stay in their lovely house for a while. It will do me good. Will be in touch when back. Rose
One tap and the message was sent. She put down the phone in front of her, and safe in the knowledge that her mother wouldn’t take it any further, she pulled open a drawer and took out a couple of sheets of paper and a pen. Then she went to the bathroom, opened the cabinet, and looked at the contents. Antidepressants, acetaminophen, half a bottle of sleeping pills, aspirin, codeine tablets, the scissors she used to cut the hair on her head and under her arms, disposable razors, the old Gillette razor, a couple of suppository tablets from her mother, and licorice-flavored cough mixture that she had had for almost twenty years. If she used this arsenal with care and in the right dose, it would make a deadly cocktail. She emptied out her cotton balls and tampons from a small plastic basket into the trash can, sorted out her personal pharmacy, threw out the harmless tablets and potions, and then proceeded to fill the plastic basket with the rest.
She stood there by the sink for five minutes with her thoughts wandering between various deaths and the unpredictability of life. Everything she couldn’t deal with was compressed to nothingness and turned on its head. Everything became pointless.
Finally, she grabbed the Gillette razor, which she had taken from her father’s belongings after his death with the intention of using it to shave her pubes in disrespect. Something else she had never gotten around to doing.
She unscrewed the dirty blade and looked at it for a moment. Some of her father’s stubble was caught in the soap residue, bringing on a feeling of loathing so strong that it almost knocked her out.
Was she really going to end up with the remains of her damned father in her mortal wound? Was her blood going to cleanse that bastard’s razor?
Rose was about to throw up but forced herself to clean the blade in the kitchen sink, cutting herself on the blade and leaving her fingers smothered in blood and bristles from the dish brush.
“The time has come!” she said feebly, with tears in her eyes at the sight of the shining blade. Now all she had to do was write a few sentences on the paper she had found so her sisters could be in no doubt that she had done this voluntarily and that they were to have her belongings.
How will I get through this? she thought.
Tears had previously been a comfort to Rose when she grieved over the life she had been allotted, but now that the end was in sight, they only emphasized her feelings of powerlessness, regret, and shame. Now her tears were just rivers of despair flowing throughout her entire system.
She carefully placed the razor blade on the dining table next to the sheets of paper, the pen, and the basket with all the different medications, opened the TV cabinet, and unscrewed the lids of all the bottles of alcohol. The vase on the shelf had never been used for the simple reason that no one had ever given her flowers, but it came in handy now as she emptied all the dregs into it and mixed them together to create an indeterminable and pungent brown cocktail.