The Considerate Killer (22 page)

B
ait. They had
used him as fucking bait, a fat, stupid grub writhing on the point of the hook. And now they had Nina.

The thought ate away at Søren's insides like pure acid.

He had heard the sound of the Taser, felt her body fall across his. He thought of the searing, paralyzing pain he knew she had experienced. Of the throaty half-choked sound that had emerged from her when she fell over.

Useless, dangerous old man. Dangerous because he had thought he could still be useful. Dangerous because he had thought he could protect her.

Why hadn't he just noted down the number on the Land Cruiser's license plate and left the rest to the local police? To young, intelligent Caroline Westmann and her young and intelligent colleagues? But no. He'd just had to be clever. Had to expose himself like a rank amateur, making it even worse by claiming that he was Nina's husband.

He had wanted to make himself valuable so the parka-man wouldn't just kill him. He had wanted to play the game . . . like the idiot he was. Blind to his own weaknesses. Blind
and
mute, with duct tape across his eyes and mouth. Helplessly bound, with feet trussed together. A fat, stupid grub on a hook. And he had thought
they
were the amateurs here.

Hard hands hauled him out of the camper and dragged him through some form of shrubbery. His heels bumped across the earth, and one shoe was wrenched off. Then he was thrown in the bushes. He heard the two men speak quietly to each other. It sounded as if they disagreed, but it wasn't exactly a fight. A car door slammed, and the Land Cruiser's deep bass engine revved up and accelerated.

Steps approached again. He heard the
riiiiits
of duct tape being torn from the roll. The undergrowth rustled, and he sensed someone kneeling next to him.

“Goodbye, Danish police,” said the little stocky Filipino with the soundless laughter, and stretched a strip of tape across Søren's nose.

After the panicked struggle of the first few seconds and several brief blackouts, he realized that he was actually
getting
a tiny bit of air. Not much, but enough to survive if he didn't throw himself wildly around, driving up his body's need for oxygen. The duct tape did not seal off his airways completely.

Calm. Lie still. Don't fight. Lie still and
think
, goddamn it.

Was he alone? No, he could hear something rustle—a foot stirring some dead leaves. The Filipino was still there.

If he discovered that the tape didn't fit tightly, he would make sure it did. A surge of black panic raced through Søren, but he forced himself not to move, not to struggle. He became conscious of the fact that there was a low snuffling every time he took a breath. That had to be stopped. He had to repress his breathing so much that it became invisible and inaudible.

His body screamed for air, but he could not allow it to have its way.

He lay still. Got his abdomen under control. Allowed himself only the thinnest thread of oxygen, the faintest possible connection to life.

A foot nudged him. He came close to releasing a hissing inhalation, but controlled himself. Yet another nudge. Another pause. And finally the sound he had been waiting for: steps on the forest floor, steps becoming fainter as the Filipino moved away.

He gave himself a little more air, but not the large heaving gulps his oxygen-starved organism demanded. Not until a car door slammed—several hundred meters away, it sounded like—and he heard the little Triumph's waspy scream rev up and roar away.

His nose had always been unusually prominent and beak-like. Had it been smaller, he would probably already be dead. As it was, he would survive for a bit longer. The question was whether that was cause for celebration. If he didn't die from oxygen deprivation, there were so many other exciting possibilities. Cold and thirst, for example. Or animals. Birds of prey would gouge at a body if it lay still for long enough. Even if it wasn't dead yet. Foxes? Yes, he decided, also foxes. He wished that he hadn't started thinking about animals.

Stop it, damn it,
he cursed himself.
Drop the drama. You can still move. You're breathing. And they have Nina. You're not
allowed
to die.

He turned his head into his shoulder and rubbed his nose against his windbreaker in the hope of loosening the duct tape strips. It didn't have much effect except to make him dizzy again.

His hands. His hands had to be his first priority.

His wrists were thoroughly taped together behind his back, and purposeless tugging wouldn't improve matters. But if he could loosen the tape enough to get his hands in front . . .

He tried to visualize it. Saw the bound arms as a kind of ring he had to attempt to thread himself through. First force them down round his hips and butt . . . and then what? What about his legs? If he just ended up with his hands behind his knees he hadn't accomplished anything but getting himself so scrunched up that it would be even harder to breathe. Maybe if he had been a super flexible, long-limbed and skinny teenager—but he wasn't.

Did he have anything that might cut the tape?

In his mind he went over the contents of the windbreaker—it was best not to move until he had a plan. Unfortunately, there wasn't a practical little pocket knife. But his car keys. He still had his car keys . . . with their jagged metal edge, almost like a little saw.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, rolled over and got to his knees. The effort made him start to black out and for some minutes he just sat there trying to keep the dark at a distance. Then he began work the windbreaker around so he could reach one of the pockets. He tugged at the zipper with thick, numb fingers and managed to get one hand on the keys.

Again a pause, just to stabilize the oxygen levels in his blood. Then he turned one key around in his hand, so that he could insert the tip in between his wrists.

He could wriggle his hands only a fraction—so little that he might have despaired, had despair been an option. But all that counted right now was to get the key to rub against the tape, a tiny grating,
hrrr-hrrr, hrrr-hrrr,
five millimeters one way, five millimeters the other.

Did it do any good at all? Did it have any effect?

It didn't really matter. He had no better plan.

Hrrr-hrrr. Hrrr-hrrr.
Five millimeters one way . . .

And then perhaps a little more. A flickering sensation of hope invaded his chest and abdomen. Yes, there
was
more give. He
had
shredded the tape enough that more movement, a more regular sawing had become possible. He increased his tempo—and then decreased it in order to avoid a threatening blackout. Fuck. He hated the expression “to make haste slowly,” but it was the only thing that would work.

Perhaps half an hour had passed. Perhaps an hour. He didn't know. At regular intervals he tried to tear the rest of the tape. It was during one of these impatient, oxygen-intensive attempts that he dropped the keys.

He remained sitting for several long powerless moments. His legs were without sensation because he had been on his knees for so long, his fingers thick and clumsy.

As carefully as possible, he lay down on his side on the forest floor. Groped among roots and prickly twigs for the dropped keys. He couldn't find them. Rolled over on his other side, groped some more. Still no keys.

In pure frustration, he tightened his shoulder muscles as much as he was able in yet another attempt to tear the tape in half. Fought. Tore. Jerked. Until he lost consciousness.

Y
ou aren't Victor.”

It might not have been the most intelligent thing she could have said. And definitely not the most important. But it was what came out of her mouth when he removed the tape that until then had prevented her from screaming.

He was
nothing
like Victor. Not even that stupid parka could hide the fact that he was small—no, perhaps not actually small, not by Filipino standards, but in comparison with Victor's height and heft . . .

“No,” he said. “My name is Vincent. Victor was my friend.”

He reached up his hand and turned on the lamp above the camper's miniature galley. The better to see her? The better to eat her? He didn't look like her idea of the Big Bad Wolf.

“Was?” she said.

He nodded. “He . . . he was killed.”

My life is in danger—and so is yours.

“When?” she asked.

“Two months ago.”

“So he wasn't the one who . . . on Facebook . . .”

“No. That . . . was me.”

“Why?” she asked even though she had pretty much guessed. To get information about her, to be able to trace her. Just as Søren had said.

He shrugged and didn't answer.

It was pitch dark outside. Big, heavy raindrops thudded one by one against the metal roof of the camper, a slow rhythm with built-in accelerando—the hesitant start of a downpour at the point where things can still go either way.

“Where is Søren?” she asked instead.

“He's okay. Someone will find him, and . . . he's okay.”

She could see the doubt in him. His reassurance was more hope than certainty, and the cold spread in her chest. They had just tossed him someplace in the woods, she thought. No doubt still trussed up and blinded. Fury rose up inside her, and she welcomed it.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said. “Do you want to kill him?”

A spasm flitted across his soft young features. He shook his head.

“No. Of course not.”

“And you? Were you the one who attacked me?”

Again that . . . shrinking. Like a dog being scolded.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“What was the point of that? Were you looking for my wallet?”

“No, of course not.” Now he sounded almost insulted, as if a simple robbery was far beneath his dignity.

“Why then?”

He didn't answer.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked instead.

It was . . . macabre. She sat across from the man who had been very close to splitting her skull, and he was offering her coffee.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He pressed a couple of the buttons on the absurdly large espresso machine that took up most of the kitchen's meager counter space. The pale yellow light made the shadows on his face faded and diffuse.

“I wanted to . . . ask you about something.”

“And that's why you hit me in the head with an iron bar?”

“No. No, that was . . . It's complicated. You wouldn't understand anyway. But . . . there is something I have to know, and now I have the chance.”

She waited. Nothing happened—he just continued to fumble with the espresso machine. A hiss of steam, the scent of coffee. You would think they were in a café.

“Milk?” he asked. “Sugar?”

“No, thank you,” she said automatically, then corrected herself. “No, wait, a little milk if you have it.”
If you have it?
There was something about his almost pathetic politeness that was contagious.

“Are you planning to let me go?” she asked abruptly. “Am I going to survive this?”

“Of course,” he said. “I'm not . . . a murderer.”

He raised his dark gaze and attempted to look into her eyes while he said it. He wanted her to believe it, but it had exactly the opposite effect. He was lying. She was sure he was lying.

You're not going to leave us, are you?
Ida's pale face, the dread in the glittering gaze.

No
, she promised her daughter silently.
I don't want to die. Not now, not here. No way in hell.

He had bound one of her wrists to the armrest of the bench with a plastic strip, the man who said he wasn't a murderer, so if she wanted to get out of it, she would have to put him so thoroughly out of commission that she would have time to free herself and flee before he came to. She was about the same height as he was, but somewhat slighter. Even though he was clearly no body builder, there was still a solidity to his shoulders and his chest. The physique of someone who worked out dutifully, but not fanatically. It was best not to underestimate his strength.

She took the coffee cup that he handed her. Boiling hot. Excellent. Let her gaze slide carelessly across the interior. Kitchen drawers—knives? Glasses that could be shattered and used to cut . . . Something to hit him with? Not in immediate reach.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“You've been to Manila,” he said. “You were there when the new apartment building on Paradise Road blew up. Eden Towers. I saw you. You were helping the . . . the wounded.”

She nodded.

“That's where you met Victor.”

“Yes.”

“There was a man . . . an engineer. He . . . he had had his arm almost torn off.”

“There were so many,” she said.

“But him,” Vincent insisted. “You and Victor accompanied that stretcher. But the man died. Victor later said that he was one of the first of the wounded to die.”

Nina thought back. To the smells, the sounds, the stench. She hadn't had a uniform. Not at first, not before she borrowed one when they were finally able to transport some of the wounded to the hospital. The blood from the arm had splashed across her ridiculous tourist T-shirt. I <3 Manila. She remembered that.

“It wasn't the arm,” she said slowly. “That's not what killed him. He had internal bleeding and rhabdomyolysis—organ damage we typically see when people have been trapped and had a lot of tissue crushed—and suddenly the heart just stopped. There was nothing we could do.”

“Did he say anything?” asked Vincent-who-wasn't-Victor. “About why? That is, why the building exploded?”

More and more details returned. The temporary emergency station under a corrugated tin roof where they had had to place the first of the wounded they had dug out—because there
wasn't
anything but those damn apartment buildings and bare fields, and no one dared stay inside the hastily evacuated towers that were still standing. Volunteers had dragged beds out of the apartments in spite of shrill protests from several owners. The driveway was completely logjammed, it had taken forever to procure sufficient supplies and personnel, and as usual, too many had died who could have been saved.

Then the ambulances had begun to arrive, but it was still too little too late. Conditions at the small hospital nearby had been almost as chaotic as those at the site.

There had been so many children. Many women, and many, many children.

“Was it someone you knew?” she asked.

“In a way. It was . . . later they said that he was the one who had planted the bomb. But that it went off too early, more or less between his hands.”

“No,” she said categorically. “That can't have been how it was.”

“Why not?”

“If he had been that close to the explosion, he would have had completely different injuries. For one thing, his lungs and ears would have been damaged by the blast. There would have been lacerations and impact damage and embedded fragments. And so on. Also, he would most likely have been killed instantly.”

“So that wasn't why his arm . . . ?”

“No. He was trapped and crushed when the building collapsed.”

Vincent bit his lip—a childish gesture that made him look even younger.

“And he didn't say anything?”

The man had clung to Victor's broad, brown arm with bloody fingers. As if he knew that he was dying, but didn't want to let go.

“Gas. Gas . . .” His eyes, wide open with pain, had clung first to Victor and then to her.

“There's no gas here,” she had attempted to calm him, but that had only made him more agitated, and a long choppy cascade of Tagalog had emerged from him which Victor had attempted to decipher.

“I can't tell what he's trying to say.” he said to her. “Not all of it.”

“Just pretend that you understand,” she said quietly. “Give him as much peace as you can.” Because she had noted how hands and feet had grown pale and cold, and she knew the man could not be saved, not even if they had had the world's most state-of-the-art hospital at their disposal.

She blinked a few times. The coffee cup she held was no longer burning hot. She drank it as quickly as she could so she would have an excuse for asking for another one.

“Gas?” said the Filipino. “Was that what he said? The engineer?”

“Yes.”

“But . . . It was a bomb.”

“I don't know anything about that,” said Nina. She had, of course, heard some of the first wild rumors about Muslim terror and so on, but after three days, Morten had dragged her to the airport, and they had flown home. The international media quickly lost interest in a very local disaster in one of the world's most disaster-prone areas. After all, no Danes had been hurt . . .

“Explosives leave . . . traces,” she said. “They would have found residue.”

“Only if they looked,” he said absently. “And you don't, if it's more convenient and lucrative not to.”

Was that why? Was it because of the dead man and the collapsed apartment house in Manila that she was sitting here?

He was staring straight ahead as if he were in a place very far from the cramped camper's little bubble of light. The rain had become a steady drumming now, noisy and close.

“Could I have another coffee?” she asked and proffered her cup. He filled it without really looking at her.

She wouldn't get a better chance. His attention was miles away.

“Gas,” he whispered. “Not a bomb. Oh, Vadim . . .”

She threw the hot coffee straight into his face. He screamed with pain and startlement and leaped from his seat. She grabbed hold of the parka with her free hand and pulled him forward, and headbutted him as hard as she could, the first time in her life she had ever butted anybody. Her forehead rammed into his nose cartilage, and she heard it crunch. Her own abused skull protested, but he came off the worse. To be safe she thumped his head into the table several times before she pushed him onto the floor and planted a foot on his neck.

The kitchen drawer? Could she reach it?

Yes. But there were no knives, just a lot of rubber bands and a corkscrew. Damn it. Could you cut through cable strips with a corkscrew? Unlikely. She grabbed a wineglass, smashed it against the table and sawed frantically at the strip with the sharp, jagged edge. There was no way to avoid cutting her wrist as well. The blood welled up and made it harder to see what she was doing. The Filipino was moaning and stirring.

“Lie still,” she hissed. “Or I'll kill you.” She had seldom been more sincere.

The camper's back door opened. There stood the other Filipino, the little compact one with the odd grin. His eyebrows shot into the air while he decoded what he was seeing. Then he began to laugh silently and still in some way uproariously.

“Naughty girl,” he said and hit her with a flat right hand before she realized she could use the wine glass as a weapon. He twisted it out of her numb fingers and slapped her five or six times in a row. Something popped in one ear, and she was pretty sure it was her eardrum. “Now let's play nicely. Leave my friend alone.”

He pulled his still-moaning partner out of the camper. Blood gushed steadily down the man's lower face, and he looked as if he was about to faint. His partner observed him for a few seconds.

“Can I shoot her now?” he asked. “With the Taser? I'm sure it works if you do it for long enough.”

“No!” The answer was half choked and bubbling, but definitive. “I'll do it. In just . . . a minute.” He looked up at her. “It won't hurt,” he promised hoarsely. “It's the best way . . . the most painless . . . I'm really sorry, but . . .”

The rain was pouring down on him, making his black hair stick to his skull. He snuffled wetly with each breath, and his eyes looked glassy and panicked, like those of a hunted animal just before it gives up.

She didn't feel sorry for him. Not even the tiniest little bit.

He shut the back door on her, and came round to the front to pull out something that had been lying under the driver's seat: it looked like a plastic hose much like the ones used for washing machine drains, only longer. Certain premonitions made her spine creep, and they were confirmed when he started the Land Cruiser's engine, rolled down the driver's side window a little, stuck one end of the hose through the gap, and attached it with duct tape. More tape sealed the window shut. She could hear him moving around outside, and thought she knew what he was doing—attaching the other end of the hose to the exhaust.

A few moments later she could smell the first fumes.