Are they going to stab me to death? she wondered, but rejected the thought straightaway. Why would the other one be holding duct tape if that was the case?
Rose let her eyes wander and recognized the room now. They were in Rigmor’s bathroom, and she was taped tightly to the toilet. That explained the sharp pain in her thighs.
Try as she might, Rose couldn’t look down at herself because of the restraint around her neck. But if she glanced to the left toward the sink and mirror, she could just catch a glimpse of what they had done to her.
Her pants and underwear were pulled down around her knees, and there was duct tape tied tightly around her thighs and the toilet, and around her waist and the cistern behind her. Her hands were elevated, tied with a couple of Rigmor’s belts to the grab rail screwed into the wall. She recognized one of the belts as a present she had given Rigmor for Christmas. It was a slim yellow belt that Rigmor had used more out of politeness than pleasure over the Christmas period and then never used again.
There was duct tape around Rose’s mouth, and a rope made from silk scarves around her neck, tied at either end to the two grab rails on the wall.
Now she remembered that she had tried to strangle herself but had to concede that it was impossible, however hard she might try. Every time she managed to lose consciousness, she would just fall back again, loosening the grip around her neck and allowing the blood to flow back to her brain.
If she had been capable, she would have told the two girls that they could let her go. That she was totally uninterested in them, and that she couldn’t understand why it was necessary to do this to her. So she tried to signal with her eyes that she was willing to cooperate, but they ignored her.
What could they have done that she was such a threat to them?
“Should we just leave her sitting there until we make our getaway, Denise?” said the one with the duct tape.
Denise? Rose tried to concentrate. Wasn’t her name Dorrit? Or had Rigmor once mentioned that her granddaughter had changed her name? Rose seemed to recall that she had.
“Do you have a better suggestion?” asked Denise.
“We’ll call someone and say where she is when this is all over, right?”
Denise nodded.
“But if she’s staying there, where are we supposed to pee?” asked the other one.
“You’ll have to use the sink, Jazmine.”
“While she’s looking at me?”
“Just pretend that she’s not there. That’s the general idea anyway. I’m in charge of her, okay?”
“But I can’t do a number two in the sink.”
“Then you’ll just have to go next door. The door isn’t locked.”
Denise looked directly at Rose. “We’ll give you something to drink once in a while, and you’ll stay calm; otherwise, I’ll knock you out again. Got it?”
Rose blinked a couple of times.
“I mean it. And it’ll be harder this time, okay?”
Rose blinked again.
Then she held the pointy object toward the tape around Rose’s mouth. “I’m going to poke this through to make a small hole. Part your lips if you can.”
Rose tried her best, but as soon as the awl was poked through the tape, she could taste blood.
“Sorryyyyy!” said Denise as the blood seeped out of the hole. “But it’s for this, so you can drink,” she said, holding up a straw of the type used in hospitals.
She stuck the straw through the hole. Rose winced in pain as the injured skin from her upper lip was pushed into her mouth. She swallowed blood a couple of times before she could suck up the water from a toothpaste-stained glass.
As long as they gave her water, they would let her live, she reasoned.
Even though the weather had been so hot lately that it was regarded as a heat wave in Denmark, it was cool in the bathroom. After a few hours, Rose began to feel cold. Perhaps mainly due to the restraints on her blood flow.
If I can’t move I’ll develop blood clots, she thought, tensing her calves so that her calf muscle pumps wouldn’t stop completely. All in all, her situation was terrible. She knew that much. In this position, she would probably survive for a few days, but maybe the girls didn’t need longer than that before they disappeared. And they had said that they would call someone and let them know where she was. What would happen then?
Would she be committed again? The person they called was likely to find her mother or sisters, and then her sisters would come rushing, and who could then prevent them from finding the suicide note and the razor blade? That wasn’t good. If she had reached the point where she was going to commit suicide, the psychiatrists wouldn’t let her go willingly this time. So wasn’t it better to die in here?
I’ll keep perfectly still. Then I’m bound to get a blood clot sooner or later. Those girls don’t know anything about that sort of thing.
She waited with her breath wheezing out from the straw, wondering why the otherwise persnickety Rigmor had left her dirty laundry in the washing machine, and why despite her age she still kept sanitary pads on the shelf above the tumble dryer, and why she had some old panty hose on a hook even though they were ripped down one side. Did she repair her ripped panty hose? Was that even possible?
She closed her eyes to imagine skilled hands threading the thin fabric, but the image was interrupted by one of her father’s face frothing at the mouth and with hate emanating from his eyes.
“You come with me when I tell you to, girl,” he hissed. “You will come with me and if I tell you to leave, you’ll do that too. Understood?”
The face grew larger and larger, and the words hung in the air in eternal repetition. The image made Rose’s heart pound violently in panic. Her cheeks filled with air, and the wheezing in the straw hit a note like the scream Rose wanted to let out but couldn’t.
And right there on the toilet she relieved her bladder. Exactly like on that terrible day when she had felt the vibrations from the pager in her pocket.
—
The next time Denise brought her water, Rose was dripping with sweat. “Are you too hot?” she asked, turning the thermostat on the radiator all the way down before leaving the bathroom with the door ajar.
There was still some daylight in the hallway, although it was dim. At this time of year it was hard to determine what time it was because it didn’t really get dark until around eleven. And it couldn’t be that late yet.
“They keep going on and on, Denise,” said Jazmine a bit later from the sitting room. “They’ve shown that clip with Michelle all day now,” she continued.
“Then turn off the TV, Jazmine!”
“They know that she was at the nightclub when we committed the robbery and Birna was shot, and they know that she was there with two other women. They seem to suspect that Patrick guy, and he knows our names, Denise. He heard them at the hospital.”
“Did he? But it isn’t certain that he can remember them, is it?”
“He can describe us—I’m dead certain about that. The police are looking for us. I just know it, Denise.”