Invisible Murder (Nina Borg #2) (16 page)

“Do they have the Emdrup business under control?” Søren asked, thinking without envy of the five-man team that had been assigned to babysit the cultural center until the opening.

“Um,” Torben grunted with a shrug. “We’ve had to cover ourselves on multiple fronts—the Muslims who think he’s too moderate, Danish
right-wing extremists, plus anyone else who might want to celebrate his arrival in an undesirable fashion. And now the minister has decided he wants to attend the opening ceremony. It’s a bit of a nuthouse. But what about you? How are your own nutters coming along?”

Torben looked at him inquisitively, and again Søren had the uncomfortable sense he was meeting with his boss rather than out kayaking with a friend.

“We’re having some trouble getting things through tech. That’s the bottleneck for us at the moment. And then there’s this little Hungarian affair.…” Søren let the kayak nudge the jetty gently and held himself still for a moment, regaining his balance. Then he swung himself up onto the rough, wet boards. “The NBH picked up this student who has been searching in places he shouldn’t and has also been in touch with someone here. They think it might be some kind of arms trade, but they didn’t get anything definite out of him.”

Torben was already carrying his kayak toward the cars, but Søren could tell from his back that he was still listening. Torben was in charge of the eighty people who worked in the counterterrorism center and investigation details that literally multiplied by the hour, but he could still remember every individual case and was able to pick out the main points whenever necessary. That was what had made him such an incredibly talented intelligence officer.

Brilliant career, loving wife, three strapping sons … wasn’t that what Søren had once imagined his own life would contain, once he reached fifty? And Torben was actually a year or two younger than he was. He picked up his own kayak, feeling a heaviness weighing on his whole body as he followed Torben, barefoot on the rough wood of the jetty.

“What do we have on the Danish end?” Torben asked.

“A guy named Khalid. He wasn’t all that cooperative, so I had a chat with him, and we’ve been keeping an eye on him and anyone he talks to.”

“Aha?” A glint of interest in the deputy director’s eye. “And?”

“And not much. He chats with a classmate from secondary school who’s a sort of half-assed militant now, but not one of the ones on our black list. He has a broad assortment of acquaintances, including both Danes and immigrants, but mostly the latter. And an uncle who’s well respected in the moderate Muslim community, one of the supporters behind the Emdrup project, as it happens. We confiscated his computer and are still
waiting for the IT team to find the time to take a look at it. They’re totally overworked. And so far there’s nothing about this that would justify giving it top priority.…”

“But?”

“There isn’t one.” They worked together to lift first one and then the second kayak up onto the roof rack of Torben’s Audi. Since he lived significantly closer to Lake Furesø than Søren, they usually stored the kayaks at his place.

“Come on,” Torben urged him. “What does your gut tell you?”

“Khalid is up to something. I just don’t know what it is.”

“So find out.”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Pressure him. Stress him. I mean, he already knows we’re keeping an eye on him, so there’s not much point in keeping a low profile, right?”

Søren couldn’t tell if there might be a hint of reproach in that last part.

“You think it was a mistake to confront him so early?” Søren asked as he peeled off his Dri-Fit tights. Torben used to be an advocate of the so-called “pre-emptive interviews” that were supposed to stop young people from becoming radicalized before they got in too deep. But maybe there was a new political wind blowing. After all, pre-emptive interviews didn’t lead to trials, convictions, and deportations.

“Well, it’s moot now, isn’t it?” Torben said. “You did what you thought was right. We have to take it from there. And even if it is an arms trade, that doesn’t necessarily make it grand-scale terrorism. Or terrorism at all, for that matter.”

Torben had already changed into a pair of loose jeans and a red T-shirt with a cheesy design on the front. “Sugar Daddy.” Probably from his wife, Annelise. Søren had always found Torben’s wife to be slightly vulgar.

“True. But if all he wants is a can of pepper spray, he chose a pretty suspicious place to buy it,” Søren said with a shrug. “Well, I’d better.…” He carefully avoided finishing the sentence completely. He turned his back to Torben and sat down in the car, giving a half-hearted wave out the window.

He had been on the verge of suggesting that quiet, Saturday beer. The evening skies were still full of light, and his house in Hvidovre would be just as he had left it that morning at seven o’clock, complete with dirty coffee cup, cereal bowl, toast crusts, and the utensils he had not bothered
to load into the dishwasher. But Torben would probably just turn the beer into coffee at his and Annelise’s place, and Søren wasn’t in the mood for Torben’s idyllic coupledom or his three blond and almost ridiculously muscular teenage boys. Although, come to think of it, the oldest had moved out and was hardly a teenager anymore—he had just started medical school. But even so.

Torben grunted at him amicably. He was still resting his hands on the roof of his Audi, doing his stretches, as Søren pulled out of the parking lot and headed for Hvidovre.

Ah, well. There was more than one way to approach the big Five-Oh. Søren suppressed something that wasn’t quite envy and called the night shift at HQ to have them step up the surveillance on Khalid Hosseini.

HE SHINY, POLISHED
, black BMW was parked outside Galbeno’s small church when Sándor and Valeria emerged from mass Sunday morning. It had already drawn a crowd of Galbeno residents, who had gathered around it, but kept a respectful distance.

Two men climbed out of the car. They were both Roma, but it was immediately evident that there was a world of difference between them and the Galbeno men. It wasn’t just the expensive car or the black suits that Sándor instinctively thought of as “old-fashioned,” even though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

“Who’s that?” he asked Valeria.

“Alexisz Bolgár,” she said, her eyes trained on the older and more heavy-set of the two men.

“He isn’t from Galbeno, is he?”

“No.” Valeria’s lips grew narrower. “He comes here a couple times a month. He wants to be
rom baro
.”

Those two words from his childhood were not in Sándor’s active vocabulary, but now that he heard them, he remembered what they meant: the big man, the leader. He contemplated Bolgár with a certain nervous interest and was surprised when his curiosity was instantly returned.

“Mrs. Rézmüves. I hear your eldest has come home. Sándor, isn’t it?”

Bolgár spoke with a formal politeness that seemed a natural extension of his less-than-modern suit. Sándor nodded guardedly.

“How do you do?”

They shook hands, again very formally. Bolgár’s hand felt damp and fleshy, a rather unpleasant sensation. You couldn’t call him fat, but there was a fullness to him, as if there were an excess of everything—strong hands, bulky shoulders, wide jaw, big ears. Shiny black eyebrows,
sideburns, and mustache, and a hairline that teetered somewhere between receding and balding.

“We should talk, Sándor,” Bolgár said. “Come visit me tomorrow.”

Sándor hesitated. He didn’t understand why Bolgár wanted to see him, but it seemed impolite to blurt out “Why should I?” Besides, it sounded more like an order than an invitation, and that troubled him.

“Mr. Bolgár.…” he began as his mind was still flipping feverishly through the catalog of suitable excuses: I won’t be here very long, I have to go back to Budapest, I promised my mother/my sister/an old friend.…

“Of course you needn’t take the bus, my friend,” Bolgár added jovially, sensing Sándor’s hesitation. “Stefan will pick you up, tomorrow at noon.”

Then he turned to one of the men in the circle in a the-discussion-is-now-over motion and started a new conversation. Sándor felt ambushed, but unable to protest. He glanced over at the BMW and was far from tempted by the prospect of a ride in its lush, cream-colored leather seats. Maybe he should go back to Budapest now, right away, so he wouldn’t even be here when Stefan came? He still had his dorm room for a couple more days. Maybe Ferenc would let him stay with him after that? He suddenly felt as if Galbeno was closing in on him and wasn’t going to let him go, pulling him down and nailing his feet to the ground so he could never escape.

Valeria stuck her hand in under his arm and managed to maneuver him out of the crowd.

“Bolgár,” she said in a tone that denoted more frustration than respect. “Uh, that man.”

“Is he really
rom baro
?” Sándor asked.

“I just said he
wanted
to be, not that he was.” Valeria waved her hand dismissively. Sándor couldn’t tell if she was waving away a troublesome insect or if the gesture were meant for Alexisz Bolgár. “He’s no big man. He’s the man with the money, and that’s not the same. But what are people supposed to do? When the house is falling apart or there’s no food? What choice do they have? Bolgár lends them money. And then suddenly he owns them.”

Sándor stopped. Valeria took another couple steps before turning around to see why he wasn’t with her anymore.

“Mama,” Sándor said cautiously. “Does he own you, too?”

Valeria’s lips were thin lines now, and her face was hard.

“He loaned Bobo the money for the roof,” she said. “And he’s the one who helped Tamás get to Denmark.”

“What does that mean?” Sándor asked. “How much do you owe him?”

But he already knew what that meant. It meant, for example, that tomorrow he would have to get into that BMW when Stefan came to pick him up.

INA FOUND ANTON
behind the school gym. He had taken off his sweatshirt and T-shirt, and his blond hair was sticking out in damp, sweaty spikes as he concentrated on pounding a heavy, green plastic ball against the wall. He kicked it, changed direction, kicked it again. The ball sang through the air with each well-aimed kick, and even though he had his back to her, Nina could tell right away that he was in a good mood.

She let her bag flop down on the ground and ran up to him just as he was about to whack yet another volley at the wall.

“I’ve got this one,” she yelled, and just managed to catch Anton’s grin of satisfaction before she kicked at the ball, striking it at an unfortunate angle and sending it careening past the corner of the gym out onto the playground.

“Hi, Mom.”

He was panting happily, and he cast one last wistful glance at the ball before he pulled his yellow T-shirt over his head and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. He’s getting so big, Nina thought, a warm wave of tenderness sloshing around pleasantly somewhere in her stomach. Occasionally she still had that feeling when she looked at Ida, as well, but these days it was mostly when Ida was asleep, her face resting childlike on her pillow. The rest of the time, words seemed to fall flat between them in a heavy, tangled mess, if they spoke to each other at all. The unfortunate roller hockey fiasco was just the latest example.

Things had always been more difficult with Ida, Nina thought, recalling Ida’s contorted little face in the highchair that terrible panicky day when she had dumped everything on Morten—including Ida—and had run away to foreign parts for several months. It was hard for her to explain
why she had done it, even now, except that Ida had seemed so fragile, and she had become convinced that she would damage this tiny, helpless being with her own damaged life if she stayed. They had got off to a bad start, and though they had had a couple of peaceful years of something that had felt like normality with pasta necklaces, mother-and-daughter trips to the movies, and help with homework at the kitchen table, Nina had always had the sense that it was the calm before the storm. As if Ida were only waiting for a chance to relegate Nina once and for all to where she really belonged: Mom Hell. The place reserved for bad mothers, career women, alcoholics, and mentally unstable women where they might suffer for all eternity because they had dared to reproduce despite a complete absence of maternal qualifications.