Ane Riel - Resin

In the midst of all the junk and his terror and confusion over the boy, who was a girl, he hadn’t processed that Jens Horder had referred to her as Liv. Liv Horder. She was the daughter they had reported dead.

And now her father knew that he had been found out.

At that moment Jens Horder appeared in the doorway. Roald’s pulse rocketed again. Need him for what? And what would happen to him afterwards?

‘I’m going to untie you now,’ Horder said, squatting down by one of the bedposts.

The pain shot through Roald when the rope briefly tightened even more around his ankle, which was already hurting after the encounter with the silage harvester. Then the rope slackened and he felt the blood return to his foot. He moved it carefully to avoid cramping. Soon his other foot was free.

Before Horder started untying his hands he pulled out his knife and showed it to Roald. ‘Don’t try anything stupid,’ he said, placing the knife on the bed, well out of Roald’s reach.

Roald decided not to try anything stupid.

Horder’s voice was cold, but Roald could feel the heat radiating from him and see the beads of sweat on his forehead. His gaze also seemed cold and distant, and yet his eyes were swollen and red… as if he had just been crying.

The girl appeared in the doorway. Roald could see the top of her quiver of arrows behind one of her shoulders and the bow in her hand. Jens Horder looked behind and glanced at her before turning his attention back to Roald.

‘My daughter is a formidable archer. Make no mistake. I’ve ordered her to shoot you if you try anything. And believe me: she won’t miss.’

Roald believed him. All his limbs were finally free, but he stayed on his back where he was. He still couldn’t speak because of the gag. Should he try to remove it now that he could use his hands again?

Horder picked up the knife and positioned himself in front of Roald.

Roald pointed cautiously at his mouth and the scarf or whatever it was he had been made to bite on for so long. It tasted and smelled like a mixture of wool and cowshed. Horder looked as if he didn’t know whether or not to give him permission to remove it.

Roald faked a cough.

‘Please take it out, Dad,’ the girl pleaded anxiously over by the door, and Roald immediately coughed a little harder. Only this time he genuinely started to choke. His hands reached instinctively for the fabric, trying to pull it down. It was too tight for him to take it off. Tears welled up in his eyes.

Horder appeared to realize from the expression in Roald’s eyes that this was serious because he quickly grabbed the knot behind Roald’s head and untied it. Then he threw the scarf on to a pile next to the bed.

Roald coughed and gasped for air until he was able to breathe again with relative ease.

‘Thank you,’ he said after a while.

‘You’ll do exactly as I say, understand?’ Jens Horder said, holding the knife perilously close to one of Roald’s wrists.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I need your help. The two of us will carry a bathtub up to the first floor of the main house.’

‘A bathtub?’ It was pretty much the last thing Roald had expected to hear.

‘Yes, my wife needs a bath. Come on, get up.’

Roald was herded along a specific route across the farmyard to the bathtub, the one that Liv had tried to hide behind. It was the free-standing sort. With feet.

Only it wasn’t the kind of bathtub you would want to take a bath in. Yellow blotches and tidemarks of dark grime had settled on the enamel sides and on the bottom. A woodland snail was floating around a dried lake of spruce needles and hose clamps. Jens Horder used his shabby cap to empty the tub with a couple of sweeping movements. Afterwards, he put the cap back on.

The bathtub was as heavy as sin. Roald was ordered to walk in front, and even before he reached the steps leading up to the front door he was dripping with sweat. He understood why Jens Horder had taken off his coat and chucked it over a barrel somewhere.

The archer followed them like a shadow. There was no doubt that she understood her role. She never once took her eyes off him. Roald felt conflicted at being threatened by a scruffy little kid, but the threat seemed real enough. Besides, he had already seen what her arrows could do. They were not toys.

Liv opened the door for them and was told to wait outside in the farmyard. With her bow at the ready.

Roald had already concluded that they couldn’t possibly get the bathtub through the hall and up to the first floor. Although it might be the most direct route through the house, it was piled high with stuff. However, when he entered the darkness and the stench he realized what it was that had caused Horder to sweat earlier. Things had been pushed aside and rearranged to create a slightly wider passageway. It might actually be possible to get the bathtub up to the first floor now.

It was completely absurd. She was dying up there. The woman didn’t need a bath. She needed help.

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy in any sense of the word. Roald had never carried anything so heavy, but his body had apparently accepted that there was no escape and found strength in his fear.

The trickiest part was to angle the bathtub correctly so that they could get it into the bedroom, but Jens Horder had worked out exactly how it should be done. Then again, with all the things he had dragged into the house, he had by now accumulated a lot of experience in negotiating doorways.

He had made room along the bed, or at least there wasn’t as much junk as before. The bucket had gone, thank God, but the smell was still intolerable.

Roald glanced at the huge woman still lying buried by her own body and the stuff on the bed. The candle flickered on the bedside table, and he didn’t have time to catch her eye. However, he did notice that the duvet had been rearranged. It looked almost as if she had been lovingly tucked in, like when you tuck in a child.

An unemotional Jens Horder instructed him how to navigate the bathtub in. It had to be closely aligned with the bed. Why? So they could roll her into it? Roald feared that the poor woman was so big she might easily get stuck in the tub. How on earth would they ever get her out of there? He was, however, quite certain that now was not the time to voice his concerns.

Especially when he sneaked a peek at Maria’s face and saw that she was dead.

She had to be dead. You didn’t lie like that with staring eyes and your mouth half open unless you were dead.

She seemed to be smiling faintly.

He quickly looked away and caught a glimpse of a large glass of pills which looked far too empty. Had she swallowed them by choice? Or…?

‘One of the feet is caught by something in your corner. You need to move it,’ came the order from the other end of the bathtub.

Roald obediently squatted down next to the headboard to free the bathtub foot. He moved a book that was lying on the floor, along with a small, empty notebook with frayed bits of paper in the spiral binding, and then tried to pick up a woollen blanket which had half fallen off the bed and was also in the way. He had to tug hard to get the blanket out from underneath the swaddled human being, and the movement caused Maria’s left hand to suddenly appear from under the duvet. Roald froze at the sight of her open palm. A ballpoint pen was trapped in a deep fold of skin.

He glanced furtively at Jens Horder, who was standing with his back to him over by the door, then placed two fingers on Maria’s wrist. No, there was no pulse. Roald gently pushed her hand back under the duvet.

And that was when he noticed it. Something was tucked in between the mattress and the bedframe, right where the woollen blanket had been. It was a slim green file. He glanced towards the door again. Jens Horder was busy moving a big cardboard box that perched precariously on top of some other boxes and which Roald had accidentally bumped into with the bathtub.