The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Author:Jussi Adler-Olsen [Adler-Olsen, Jussi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780525954019
Amazon: 0525954015
Barnesnoble: 0525954015
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Published: 2013-12-31T06:00:00+00:00

25

September 1987

Rita looked out across Peblinge Lake, outwardly relaxed, yet tense and expectant, her body craving nicotine. Two cigarettes and she would head for the gray brick building, press the entry-phone button, push open the front door, and climb the stairway that would return her to her past. And then life would begin again.

She smiled to herself, and to the young man who was jogging by and who cast a flirtatious glance in return. Though she’d been up at the crack of dawn, she was in high spirits. She felt invincible.

With a cigarette between her lips she noted how the jogger stopped twenty meters on and began doing stretches, his gaze trained on her open coat and ample breasts.

Another day, perhaps, her eyes signaled as she lit her cigarette.

The only thing that mattered at the moment was Nete. Seeing Nete was more urgent than a kid with his brains dangling between his legs.

She had been turning the question over in her mind from the day she opened the letter until this morning, when she’d climbed into her car and headed for the capital. Why did Nete want to see her? Hadn’t they agreed years ago never to meet up again? Hadn’t Nete made that abundantly clear last time they saw each other?

“It was your fault I ended up on that bloody island. You’re the one who dragged me into it that day,” Rita mouthed, mimicking her former friend between drags on her ciggie, the young jogger still trying to gauge his chances.

Rita laughed. Those had been pretty unhealthy times, back in the solemn rigor of the asylum in 1955.

• • •

The day Nete arrived at the institution in Brejning in eastern Jutland, four of the less-retarded patients had got themselves into a fight. The high-ceilinged halls echoed with shouts and cries. It sounded like bedlam.

Rita loved days like that, when something happened. She’d always enjoyed watching a good punch-up, and the staff excelled at meting out punishment in kind.

She was standing by the entrance as the two police officers led Nete in. A brief glimpse was all she needed to realize that here was a girl much like herself. Keen eyes, shocked by the ugliness of what she was seeing. Not only that, there was a fury about her. Nete was a survivor, the same as herself.

Rita set store by anger. It was what kept her going. Stealing, relieving gullible fools of their wallets, pushing those aside who stood in her way. Of course, she knew anger would never be a solution, but somehow the emotion was enough in itself. With a rage inside her, she felt capable of anything.

The new girl was given a room two doors from her own. Rita decided to approach her that evening. They would be friends, allies, no matter what. She would cultivate her.

She took the girl to be a couple of years younger than herself. Essentially naive, poorly broken in. Most certainly intelligent, but without yet having learned enough about life and human nature to understand everything worked like a game.

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