Aalbæk was the one who’d beaten Tine. The one who’d really shaken her up, made her vulnerable. Aalbæk was the one who’d made her dangerous to Kimmie. Yes, perhaps Kimmie was the weapon, but Aalbæk was the hand that guided it. That’s why he had to pay.

He and the ones who’d given the order.

‘Ditlev, Ulrik and Torsten are behind it. I know,’ she said, fully absorbed by the proximity of the bottle and its healing contents.

Don’t do it, said one of the voices, but she did it anyway. She reached out for the bottle and saw his body first as a vibration in the air, then as a flailing mass of clothes and arms, punching and grabbing hold of her.

In his wild rage he had her thrown to the floor. ‘Humiliate a man sexually and you have an enemy for life,’ she had learned. It was true. Now she was going to have to pay for the hungry looks and servile pawing he’d had to perform in order to get her back to his flat. For him having exposed himself and appeared vulnerable.

He threw her against the radiator, the coils bashing against her skull. He grabbed a large wooden figurine that was standing on the floor and slammed it against her hip. He seized her shoulders and twisted her on to her stomach. Pressed her torso down and twisted the arm with the pistol round her back, but she didn’t let go of it.

His fingers dug into her arm. She had felt pain many times before and it would take more than that to make her cry out.

‘Don’t you dare lead me on. Don’t you dare try and con me,’ he said, banging his fist into her lower back. After that he managed to unclasp her grip on the gun and fling it into a corner. Then he got a hand up under her dress, tearing her tights and pushing her underwear aside.

‘Damn you, bitch, you don’t have your period!’ he shouted. He took a hard grip on her, jerked her round and punched her in the face.

They stared directly at each other as he held her down and boxed her with randomly placed blows. Sinewy thighs in worn polyester trousers straddled her chest. Blood-filled veins protruded from his pounding and hammering forearms.

He beat her until her defences began to wane, and resistance seemed pointless.

‘Are you finished, bitch?’ he shouted, showing her a clenched fist that was ready to resume her punishment. ‘Or do you want to end up like your junkie friend?’

Was it ‘finished’ he’d said?

Not finished until I stop breathing.

She understood that better than anyone.

Kristian knew her best. He was the one who sensed when she felt that surge of excitement. This chemical feeling of being lifted off one’s base as the belly sends shivers of desire to every cell of the body. And when they sat watching A Clockwork Orange in the dark, he showed her where desire could lead.

Kristian was the experienced one. He’d tested girls before. He knew all the code words to their deepest thoughts. Knew which way to turn the key in the chastity belt. And suddenly she was sitting there in the middle of the gang as they lasciviously observed her unveiled body in the flickering light of the horrific images on the TV screen. He showed her and the others how to achieve pleasure in multiple directions at once. How violence and lust went hand in hand.

Without Kristian she never would have learned how to use her body as a lure. Exclusively for the sake of the hunt. What he hadn’t bargained for, however, was that she had also learned how to control the events around herself, for the first time in her life. Perhaps not initially, but later.

And when she came home from Switzerland, she mastered the art to perfection.

She slept with random men. Broke them and broke up with them. That’s how she spent her nights.

During the day everything was routine. Her stepmother’s icy coldness. Her work with the animals at Nautilus Trading. The contact with customers and the weekends with the gang. The occasional assault.

And then Bjarne got close and aroused new feelings in her. Told her that she was worth more than that. That she was someone of value. A person who could enrich him and others. That she was not guilty for her past actions; that her father had been a swine. That she should be wary of Kristian. That the past was dead.

Aalbæk noticed her resignation and immediately began fumbling with his trousers. She smiled briefly at him. Maybe he thought she smiled because she liked it that way. That everything was going according to her plan. That she was more complicated than he’d first assumed. That being knocked about was a part of the ritual.

But Kimmie smiled because she knew he was at her mercy. Smiled when he pulled out his member. Smiled when she felt it on her bare thigh and noticed that it wasn’t stiff enough.

‘Lie still for a second, we’ll get to it,’ she whispered, looking him in the eyes. ‘The pistol was a toy. I just wanted to frighten you. But you knew that, didn’t you?’ She parted her lips slightly so they appeared fuller. ‘I think you’ll like me,’ she said, rubbing herself against him.

‘I think so, too,’ he said, with sluggish eyes deep in her cleavage.

‘You’re strong. A wonderful man.’ She snuggled her shoulders affectionately against him and saw how he relaxed his locked legs so she could free her arm and lead his hand down between her legs. This caused him to completely loosen up so she could take hold of his cock with her other hand.

‘You won’t say anything about this to Pram and the others, will you?’ she said, working him up until he began gasping for air.

If there was anything he wouldn’t report to them, it was this.

No one challenged these men. Even he knew that.

Kimmie and Bjarne had lived together for half a year when Kristian would no longer put up with it.

She noticed it one day when he’d tempted the gang into an assault that developed very differently to their usual routine. Kristian had lost control, and in an attempt to restore it had turned the others against her.

Ditlev, Kristian, Torsten, Ulrik and Bjarne. One for all, all for one.

This she remembered all too clearly when Aalbæk, who was on top of her, could no longer wait and tried to take her by force.

She hated it and loved it at the same time. Nothing could bestow strength like hatred. Nothing could get her going like vindictiveness.

With all her might she lurched backwards, lifting herself halfway up against the wall, the hard wooden figurine he’d hit her with underneath her. Once again she took hold of his half-stiff member. It was enough to make him hesitate. Enough so she could work it and tear at it until he was about to cry.

And when he finally came on her thigh, the air got stuck in his lungs. He was a man who’d been taken by surprise many times that night. A man who’d seen better days and who somewhere along the way had forgotten the difference between solitary masturbation and a woman’s touch. He was completely lost in the moment. His skin was moist, but his eyes were dry and staring blindly at a point on the ceiling that wouldn’t provide an answer as to how she’d been able to slide away from him and suddenly lay with her legs splayed and the pistol aimed directly at his still-throbbing groin.

‘Keep that feeling in your body, because it’ll be the last time, you bastard,’ she said, and stood up with semen dribbling down her leg. Filled with contempt and the lingering feeling of having been defiled.

The exact same feeling she’d had when those whom she’d most trusted had let her down.

Like her father’s blows when she didn’t behave correctly. Like her stepmother’s surprise mood swings and boxes on the ear when she spoke enthusiastically about anyone at all. Like the clawing fingers of a wiped-out, drunken mother who didn’t know in which direction to direct her punches, or why. She used words like ‘proper’, ‘silence’ and ‘courtesy’. Words that the little girl understood the importance of long before she really understood their meaning.