Even though it might feel tempting and logical, there were two things that stopped Anneli from immediately turning in the girls who had killed the young woman. More than anything, she wanted to kill them, but she wouldn’t be able to if they were in prison. On top of that, she would run the risk that if the girls ended up in police custody, they might voice their suspicion about Anneli’s involvement in Michelle’s murder in order to secure a reduced sentence. So no matter what, Birna’s death could tighten the rope around Anneli’s neck. During the questioning of Michelle’s boyfriend, Patrick, the police would ultimately put two and two together and link the three girls. And once the police caught up with them, Anneli would be in potential danger.
Anneli looked at the clock. She had just finished with a nice client who had asked for a modest amount to help her through the next ten days until she was back to work and so had been granted a crisis loan. And now Anneli awaited this client’s complete opposite. It had become something of a habit for this client to just turn up roughly every five days with new requests, all of which, strangely enough, cost fifteen hundred kroner, and which Anneli had no authority to grant her. It wasn’t that she was a bad person, but at the moment Anneli had more important things to deal with. The developments in the cases concerning the robbery and Birna’s murder were unpredictable and had to be stopped. So she had to direct her focus on ridding herself of these two loose ends: Denise and Jazmine.
She didn’t think a car was a suitable murder weapon any longer. The girls were probably already on their guard, so it was unlikely that she would have the opportunity to get close enough to them. Lucky for her, there had been quite a few shootings in Copenhagen and those suburbs most ravaged by gang crime. If she could get her hands on a gun and make the executions look like a gang shooting, the police were bound to begin looking in directions other than hers. And if everything went sideways anyway, at least she would have a weapon she could use to kill herself quickly and painlessly.
Anneli went to the reception area and informed the two clients waiting for her that she would unfortunately have to ask them to reschedule their appointments. They looked dissatisfied and disappointed, especially the one who had probably come to beg for the usual fifteen hundred kroner. Anneli didn’t care.
“I have someone threatening suicide on the phone,” she just said, and turned on her heel before slamming the door to her office. She searched for a minute before finding the number of a client who had an appointment later in the week. His name was Amin, and he was one of the many Somalians living in the Vesterbro district of Copenhagen who had found a way to supplement his benefits in order to provide for his hastily growing family.
Amin had been in jail a couple of times for being in possession of an illegal weapon, theft, and dealing cannabis, but he had never displayed any violent tendencies. When he attended his appointments with Anneli, he exuded only happiness and gratitude for the little help she could offer.
He turned up just after lunch and placed two well-worn guns on her desk so she could choose. She took the one that looked newest and easiest to use, as well as receiving a whole box of bullets. He apologized that he couldn’t get ahold of a silencer but gave her some useful tips on other ways to muffle the sound. After a short introduction to releasing the safety, loading the gun, taking out the cartridges, and cleaning the barrel, they agreed that on top of the six thousand kroner in cash, she would also grant him money for clothes for his entire family, and Anneli would try to postpone the compulsory work placement that was looming over him. They swore that this meeting had only been about his family’s need for clothes and that the true purpose of the meeting would remain between them.
She had hardly managed to hide the gun before her manager waltzed into her office to offer her crisis counseling.
“I’m devastated that you’ve had to deal with this on your own, Anne-Line. Not only the terrible cancer diagnosis, but also losing two clients in such awful circumstances over the course of a few days.”
Had she said “crisis counseling”? thought Anneli. Who the hell needed crisis counseling when the reality was that what she needed the most was a silencer?
When the manager left again, having given reassurances of her support, Anneli informed the secretary that she had unfortunately discovered that quite a few of her case files needed to be updated after her absence and so she would have to dedicate the rest of the day to admin work.
Knowing that she wouldn’t be disturbed, she spent a couple of hours surfing the Internet, reading articles about gang executions. When she felt she had read enough, she decided how she would imitate them. Most important, a gang execution was about moving in and out as quickly as possible. One shot to the back of the head of each girl and then ditch the gun in the harbor. That was all there was to it.
The problem of the missing silencer would be more difficult to deal with, but the Internet even had advice about that.
—
Webersgade was noted for its small, charming association houses, which had formerly accommodated two to three working-class families. But over the past few decades they had become increasingly attractive, and their prices had soared to ridiculous heights because the middle classes found them appealing despite the fact that they were small in size and had tiny rooms and impractical staircases between the floors. The reality, however, was that the Webersgade houses were badly located due to the busy traffic that connected the center of town with Lyngbyvej and North Zealand. Anneli knew all about these houses, which were so patinated from pollution that they could easily have been mistaken for dusty houses in English mining towns. She had rented a damp attic and half the first floor of a house like this for half her life. She never saw the owner, who lived on the ground floor. He was a mechanical engineer and preferred tropical heat, which had the unfortunate result that he didn’t invest any money in the upkeep of the house.
When Anneli got home later today, she would let herself into the mechanical engineer’s apartment, where he stored all his boxes of junk and long metal shelves covered in all manner of engine and machine parts. In this treasure chamber, she would look for an oil filter whose construction made it well suited as a silencer, according to the Internet. Of course, an oil filter didn’t have an exit hole, but once she had pushed it down on the barrel and fired the gun, the bullet would find its own way out. At least that was what had happened in the video she saw online.
When she was finished there, she would drive to Stenl?se, park her Ka in the usual parking space, and keep a close eye on the girls’ apartment to see if there was any sign of life behind the curtains. If there was, she would ring the doorbell, force her way in when they answered, make them kneel, and quickly finish them off.
38
Monday, May 30th, 2016
They were sitting in front of a woman who in the space of only a few days had gone from being on the verge of going to the dogs to actually completing the transformation.
The stench of tobacco and alcohol was brutally invasive. If the alcohol didn’t get her soon, then all the cigarettes she had smoked would.