E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten
Reihe: A Kaldan and Schäfer Mystery
Hancock Ruthless
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80075-435-5
Verlag: Swift Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
'Gripping, endearing, dark, and funny' Harlan Coben
E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten
Reihe: A Kaldan and Schäfer Mystery
ISBN: 978-1-80075-435-5
Verlag: Swift Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Anne Mette Hancock lives in Copenhagen with her two children. Her debut The Corpse Flower introduced readers to journalist Heloise Kaldan and police officer Erik Schäfer, and was longlisted for a CWA Award and shortlisted for the Petrona Award. The sequel, The Collector, led to her being named Author of the Year in Denmark; Ruthless is the third in the series.
Weitere Infos & Material
CHAPTER
1
HELOISE UNLOCKED THE door with the key she had been given by the Red Cross and stepped into the dim hallway. Since the first meeting three months ago, the time between her visits to the small half-timbered house in Dragør had become shorter, and today she stopped by for the third time in a single week.
She hung her shoulder bag on the hook in the hallway and went into the kitchen to announce her arrival to one of the night nurses she heard moving around.
“Hi Ruth,” she said to the back of the small, compact lady who was wiping off the kitchen table. The woman’s movements were pointed; she did not raise her gaze, but continued her work with her head hunched over. Her hair was short like a man’s, and Heloise could see white streaks in the folds of her neck where the sun had found no way to reach in.
Heloise peered down the hall toward the bedroom, where the door was ajar.
“Is he asleep?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Ruth said. “I brought him out into the garden so he could get some fresh air.” She gave the dishcloth a hard twist and laid it over the faucet. “It’s so dark and sad in here, and he’s been hanging his head all day, so I thought he needed to get out a little bit. But of course he’s not too thrilled about it, the old grumbler. He acted like he’d been told his leg would be amputated.”
Heloise smiled. She could just hear Jan Fischhof puffing himself up over something as harmless as a bit of sunshine.
She spotted the plate on the kitchen table, where a slice of meatloaf and a few potatoes from Meals on Wheels looked untouched.
“Didn’t he want to eat anything today either?”
“Not a bite.” Ruth wiped her hands on her apron. “I told him he couldn’t have a beer unless he ate a little, but he couldn’t be pushed or persuaded.”
“But I guess he’s got his beer now, hasn’t he?”
“Has he eaten his food?” Ruth’s face was expressionless as she pulled a piece of plastic wrap over the lunch plate.
“Aw, come on, Ruth,” Heloise said, tilting her head. “If the man’s dying wish is to have his last meal served in a bottle, shouldn’t we grant it?”
Ruth pursed her lips tightly.
“Maybe that’s the headline you’re going for in your article? ‘Death By Drink’?”
The words fell hard, and Heloise got the feeling that they had been lining up to get out. She raised her eyebrows and smiled in surprise.
“Do you have a problem with me being here, Ruth?”
“Yes, I do.” Ruth turned and met Heloise’s gaze with her forehead raised and her arms crossed. A deep blush spread up her thick neck. “An old man dying isn’t supposed to be entertainment in a newspaper. This is serious, what’s going on here.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that.”
“It is the Vigil’s job to show care and presence during the last, difficult time. We listen and comfort and do what we can to ease the great sadness of saying goodbye to life here on Earth.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m here for.” Heloise shook her head uncomprehendingly. “Don’t you think Jan seems to enjoy my visits?”
Ruth hesitated for a moment before answering. “I think your presence is stretching out the agony.”
Heloise wrinkled her brows.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
But Ruth didn’t need to say more. Heloise already knew the answer. When she had first visited Jan Fischhof, the Hospice Vigil had said that he would die before the week’s end. That was almost three months ago. Now they thought it was Heloise’s visits that had made the difference; that Fischhof had been given something to live for, and it obligated Heloise in a way she had not experienced before. She felt like she had the man’s life in her hands, though she knew that was a lot of nonsense. He would die no matter what. But she still couldn’t bring herself to walk away from him.
“He’s in a lot of pain, Heloise, and half the time he has no idea who he is or what planet he’s on,” Ruth said, referring to Fischhof’s incipient dementia. “His brain is turning to mush, and his body . . . well, you know what he looks like!” She threw out her arms. “Why do you keep coming here? For the sake She practically spat out the words. “Let him have peace now, Heloise. Do you understand? Let him have peace!”
Heloise put her hands on Ruth’s shoulders so that they were facing each other.
“I get that you worry, but you should know that even though it started as a job for me, it’s become something else. I’m no longer here just as a reporter. I’m here because I to be here and because Jan and I, we . . . we have bonded with each other. Do you understand?”
Ruth regarded Heloise with silent skepticism.
“It’s not about my job anymore,” Heloise continued.
Ruth nodded grudgingly. “So you’re not going to write about him after all?”
Heloise bit her lower lip for a moment as she selected her words.
“Not just now, in any case, and not in the way you are imagining. I promise.”
The ripples around Ruth’s mouth signaled that she accepted the statement. She gave Heloise a few conciliatory pats on the cheek with a moist hand. Then she put the lunch plate in the fridge and pulled off her apron with a swish.
“Well then . . . if you’re going to sit with him for a bit, I think I’ll go for today.”
“Yes, you do that,” Heloise nodded. “I’ll take good care of him.”
Ruth left the kitchen, and when Heloise heard the front door shut behind her in the hallway, she walked to the open patio door in the living room and looked out into the garden. She spotted Jan Fischhof sitting in his wheelchair under a large, chartreuse parasol. The poison-green fabric reflected on his face, making his complexion look even sicker than usual. His head was bald, his teeth large in the bony face, and there were no brows or lashes around his sunken eyes. The man was no more than sixty-seven years old, but in a short time the lung cancer had made him look like someone fast approaching ninety. He sat in his wheelchair with the oxygen tank at his side. His eyes were closed, his mouth open and limp, and his rough hands rested with palms facing up in his lap.
He looked like he was already dead, Heloise thought.
“Jan?” she called.
Jan Fischhof opened his eyes slightly, and his gaze drifted over her without focusing.
“Well, you awake,” she smiled.
He closed his eyes again.
With her hand, Heloise shielded her eyes from the sun as she walked toward him. It was searing hot for the third week in a row. The beaches across the entire East Coast had begun to stink of rotten seaweed, the fields were dry as cotton wool, and the prophets of doom, in keeping with tradition, heralded the end of the world.
Jan Fischhof also struggled with the high temperatures. His blood vessels swelled under his paper-thin skin, and his shirt was blotched with sweat on his collar and chest. The closer Heloise got to him, the louder the wracked, raspy breathing sounded.
“You look like you’re hot,” she said, crouching down in front of him. She put a hand on one of his legs and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t you need something to drink?”
His eyelids slid open, and this time he looked more alert. He nodded slowly.
“Yeah, thanks,” he nodded. “A beer would be nice.”
Heloise smiled. “I’ll be right back.”
She got up and disappeared through the patio door. Inside the small house, it was cool and dim, and Heloise’s gaze slid over the furniture in the living room. The room seemed to have been decorated by a woman. The large-flowered sofa was equipped with embroidered decorative pillows, and on the dusty bookcases stood crystal vases and porcelain figurines of polar bears and little girls with their hands folded in prayer. There was a bouquet of heather in a wavy Aalto vase on the desk at the back of the room. The flowers had long since lost their color, and Heloise wondered whether it was Fischhof’s late wife, Alice, who had tied the bouquet a long time ago. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t had the heart to get rid of it?
Her gaze ran over the many framed family photos standing on the table next to the bouquet. Some of them were sepia colored and pointed far back in time; others looked more recent. Heloise lingered over one of them, a photo of Fischhof’s wife and daughter that looked like it was taken by a provincial photographer. The girl, whose name Heloise could not remember, was wearing a caramel-colored suede jacket and a pair of stone-washed jeans, and the lenses of her tortoise-shell glasses’ frames filled half her face. Alice stood at her daughter’s side in a bright, screaming-green shirt from Marc O’Polo with huge shoulder pads and was one big jumble of permed curls. The look could hardly be more dated, Heloise thought with a smile, and walked on into the kitchen.
She opened the refrigerator, where the middle shelf was filled with medicine bottles of various sizes and colors. Meds that all aimed to postpone the...
