The way he was bound, he wouldn’t have been able to help Assad in a fight. He could only help by escaping.

He heard them shouting to one another that he wouldn’t get very far. That their work crew would catch him and bring him back. To share the same fate as Assad. Inside the hyena cage.

‘Look forward to the hyena!’ they yelled.

They’re insane, Carl thought dizzily, as he tried to orient himself through the narrow slit of light.

Then he heard the cars up at the main gate. There were a lot of them.

If the people in the cars were just like the ones in the hall, he was done for.

40

As soon as the train lumbered out of the station and the sound from the railway sleepers settled into a regular rhythm, the voices in Kimmie’s head started up. Not noisy and insistent, but persevering and self-assured. By now she was used to it.

The train was streamlined. Not at all like the old, red Gribskov ‘rail bus’ that had brought her and Bjarne up here last time, many years ago. Much had changed.

Those had been wild times. They had drunk, snorted and partied all day, from the moment the landscape changed as Torsten had proudly showed them around his new acquisition – forest, marshland, lakes and fields. The perfect spot for a hunter. So long as one made sure wounded game didn’t cross into state land, it simply couldn’t get any better.

They had laughed at him, her and Bjarne. To them, nothing was more comical than the thought of a man trudging about in green, laced, rubber boots. But Torsten didn’t notice. The forest was his, and here he ruled over every kind of wild creature in the Danish countryside worth shooting.

For a couple of hours they had hunted and killed roe deer and pheasants and finally a raccoon she herself had procured for him at Nautilus. A gesture he’d appreciated. And afterwards they had followed the ritual and watched A Clockwork Orange in Torsten’s home theatre. An average, mind-numbing day where too much coke and even more alcohol made them sluggish and sapped them of the energy needed to go out and find new victims.

That turned out to be the first and only time she ever went to Torsten’s. She remembered it as if it were yesterday; the voices made sure of that.

They’re all there today, Kimmie, you realize that? This is your chance. The opportunity has arrived, they chanted incessantly.

For a moment she studied her fellow passengers. Then she slipped her hand into her duffel bag and touched the hand grenade, the pistol and the silencer, the shoulder bag and her beloved bundle. Everything she needed was in that canvas bag.

At the Duemose whistle-stop she waited until the other early-morning passengers had been picked up or had ridden away on their bicycles that were parked by the red shelter.

One motorist asked her if she wanted a lift, but she simply smiled. A smile could also be used that way.

When the platform was clear and the road was as deserted as before they’d arrived, she walked to the end of the platform, hopped down on to the gravel and continued along the tracks by the edge of the forest until she found a place where she could leave her duffel bag.

Then she packed her shoulder bag, slung the strap over her head, tucked her jeans into her socks, and stowed the larger bag behind a bush.

‘Mummy will be back, my love, don’t be afraid,’ she said, as the voices implored her to pick up her pace.

The public forest was easy to navigate. Just a few yards up the road, past a small business establishment, and she was already on one of the paths that would lead her to the rear of Torsten’s property.

She had plenty of time, in spite of the voices telling her otherwise. She raised her eyes to catch a glimpse of the last splatters of colour hanging in the branches, and sucked in the autumn air, taking in all the season’s strength and beauty.

It had been years since she’d been able to do that. So many years.

When she reached the firebreak, she could tell it had been widened since she’d been there. She lay down at the edge of the forest and looked across the cleared area towards the fence that separated Torsten’s forest from the public one. Having lived on Copenhagen’s streets for so long she was well aware of how inconspicuous surveillance cameras could be. She scanned the trees and the fence and took her time finding out where they were. From where she was she could see four cameras. Two that were stationary and two that rotated back and forth continuously on a 180-degree axis. One of the stationary cameras was aimed directly at her.

She retreated into the thicket and considered her situation.

The firebreak itself was nine or ten yards wide. The grass was freshly mown, so the space was quite open and level. She looked in both directions. It was the same everywhere. There was only one way to get over the firebreak undetected, and that wasn’t by crossing the grass.

It was from tree to tree. Branch to branch.

She thought hard. The oak tree on her side of the clearing was taller than the beech on the other side. Sturdy, gnarled branches that stretched five or six yards across the clearing, compared to the beech’s smaller, skinnier branches. If she leaped from the tall tree to the low one, the drop was a couple of yards, but at the same time she would have to throw her body forward to land closer to the trunk of the beech tree. Otherwise the branches wouldn’t support her.

Kimmie had never been good at trees. Her mother had forbidden her to play wherever she risked getting her clothes dirty, and when her mother had gone, so too had her desire to climb trees.

It was a fine specimen, this huge oak. Crooked branches that jutted out a good distance, and the bark was rough. Actually quite easy to climb.

It was a good feeling. ‘You’ll have to try it, too, sometime, Mille,’ she said softly, and began pulling herself up.

Not until she was sitting in the tree did she begin to have second thoughts. The distance to the ground was suddenly so real, the leap over to the beech’s smooth branches seemed daunting. Could she really do it? From the ground it had looked easy, but not from here. If she fell, she was done for. She would break bones. They would see her on the surveillance cameras. They would capture her, and then everything would be out of her hands. She knew them. Revenge would then be theirs, not hers.

So she sat for a while, trying to calculate how to make her jump. Then she rose carefully, her arms behind her, clinging to the oak’s branches.

When she sprang, she knew she had made too strong a take-off. Knew it as she flew through the air and watched the tree trunk beneath her come far too close. She felt one of her fingers breaking in her attempt to avoid the collision, but her reflexes took over. Even if one finger didn’t work, she had nine others that did. She would have to deal with the pain later. As she clung to the tree, she noted that beeches have fewer branches on the lower portion of their trunk than oaks.

She climbed down the first bit, then clutched at the lowest branch, estimating that she still had three or four yards before she reached the ground. Then she slung herself out across the branch and hung there a moment as the broken finger did its own thing. She gripped the branch closest to the trunk, wrapped an arm around it as well as she could, and then let go. Scars and knots in the tree bloodied her forearms and neck as she slid to the ground.

Examining her twisted finger, she yanked it back in place, sending waves of pain through her entire body. But Kimmie remained silent. She would have shot it off, if necessary.