The Considerate Killer (24 page)

It wasn't a boat; that much he could see. It was a person. A person floating in the water, unmoving and silent.

Ten strokes. Ten strokes.

It was her.

She was floating on her back, face up. Dead people don't do that, he tried to tell himself. But if she was alive, why wasn't she swimming? Why was she just lying there?

Five strokes, six strokes . . . and then he could finally touch her.

“Nina.” He barely had enough voice to get her name out. Did she react? He pulled her close, grabbed hold of her face with one hand. She looked up at him, eyes alive.

But her pupils were enormous, wide and unfocused. She didn't try to answer him, and when his fumbling fingers found her pulse, it was so slow that he thought at first he had lost it again.

“Nina . . . Nina, wake up. Help me a little.”

Her lips moved, but there was no sound.

He had to face the fact that she was incapable of holding on to the plastic bottle. He managed to get one of her arms across it, but he had to tie her on, and then he had to hook himself to the rope to make sure the bottle didn't just tip under her weight.

Now he was grateful for the Land Cruiser's headlights. Their beams gave him a direction, a marker to swim toward. He forced his stiff and exhausted legs to scissor, but he didn't have the strength for the faster, more exhausting crawl.

He didn't think much. Not even about how she had survived—only about getting them both safely to shore.

There were lights
around her. Lights and voices. A mask was pushed down over her face, and she tried to push it away.

“It's oxygen,” she heard Søren say. “You need it.”

Oxygen. That made sense. She lay still and let them do it.

The light stung her eyes, but it also reminded her that she was alive. Even the pounding, hammering headache that felt as if it was squeezing her brain out through her eye sockets, even that was better than nothing. Not to feel was to die. And she wanted to live.

She closed her eyes, raised one hand slightly and fumbled blindly. He grabbed it. His hand was cold as ice, but that was another thing it was possible to live with.

Better than nothing.
Much
better than nothing.

Later she found
out that he had dragged her all the way to shore, up the slope and back to the Land Cruiser. He had driven her directly to the hospital because he didn't have a cell phone and it was faster than trying to get help any other way.

They had given her pressurized oxygen. She remembered it floatingly, unclearly, as if it was something that had happened to someone else. Almost twenty-four hours had passed before she stopped hallucinating. None of the ghosts were her father's, however. She wondered whether she had left him there in the cold, dark waters of the lake. She wasn't sure.

She floated in and out of sleep, dozing among flickering illusions on the border between dreams and wakefulness.

During one of the lucid moments, she found Caroline Westmann standing by her bed.

“I know you're tired,” she said. “But I just need you to confirm the following: Was it Vincent Bernardo and Ubaldo Martinez who exposed you to carbon monoxide poisoning?” Westmann placed two photographs on her covers. One was an oddly smiling portrait of Vincent, the other a more neutral identification photo of the other Filipino. Her pulse gave an involuntary skip and jump at the sight.

“Is that Martinez?” she asked.

“Yes. Was he one of them?” Caroline Westmann's gaze hung on hers like a dog waiting for a treat.

“Yes,” she said.

“Thank you!” The detective sergeant beamed with satisfaction. “That's about all we need for now. Get better!”

The next time
she opened her eyes her mother was sitting there looking at her.

“Are you awake?” asked Hanne Borg. “Really awake?”

“Yes,” she said. “Can't you tell?”

“You opened your eyes earlier, but I couldn't get you to answer.”

Unresponsive. Not a very promising sign.

“I'm okay now,” she said, even though she wasn't sure. Carbon monoxide poisoning could do ugly long-term damage, even if you survived the acute phase. Heart problems. Brain damage, other organ damage. Some issues only surfaced over time.

Oh, damn. She didn't want to be a disability case.

While she had been struggling to get the Land Cruiser's window open, to get air, to get oxygen, she had thought only of surviving. She knew now that two things had kept her alive—the thin stream of fresh oxygen-rich air that had come in through the not-quite-closed window, and the fact that modern cars were equipped with a catalytic converter that cut down on the carbon monoxide in the exhaust. When the two Filipinos had opened the door and dragged her out, she had been partly pretending to be unconscious. It was the roll and tumble down the slope and the final loose-limbed fall that had turned off the last of the lights.

It could so easily have been permanent.

“Where is Søren?” she suddenly asked. He had been there at the beginning, but . . . that was a long time ago. Several awakenings ago. That she had seen him . . .

“He's been admitted too,” said her mother. “Relax . . . It's pneumonia. He's being treated. He'll be fine.”

“Mom, he . . .” She couldn't figure out how to continue. Didn't know what it actually was she needed to say. Something about holding on, something about there being someone . . . that there was someone now who made sure she didn't go down. Literally. Someone who could hold her, hold on to her, someone who knew what it was like in the war zone and still wasn't . . . wasn't desperate.

“What do you want with him?” asked her mother. Not unfriendly, just as a clarifying question. “To love and obey? Cohabit? Or is he just a temporary solution? What are you thinking?”

“Mom! That's none of your business.”

Hanne Borg smiled faintly.

“Do you remember what I said about being impatient? That is, when you're not quite sure how long you're going to remain on the planet?”

“Yes.”

“I also like clear answers. It's faster.”

“But . . . I don't know. We . . . have to figure it out ourselves.”

“Okay. Thanks for the update.”

“The kids. Are they still with you?” She had no idea what day it was, how much time had passed. Was it still half term?

“Yes. I can bring them with me—if you promise not to stare at them with open eyes without saying anything.”

Nina considered it.

“No,” she said then. “Let's wait until I'm released. It can't be much longer.” She hoped.

Ida and Anton. The longing to see them, to touch them, to inhale their smell was intense and almost animal-like. A mother primate and her young. She knew that she still had two children who were afraid of losing her. It would take a long time to convince them that she wasn't going to leave them, not today and not tomorrow. That she was planning to sink her hooks into them and into life—and, yes, probably into Søren too—and hang on until she was old and decrepit and had reached what was so poetically called “the end of her days.” It had to be possible, even for her, if she tried hard enough. And something
was
different.

The life she had saved—her own—had not come without a cost. Another human being had gone down. She had sent him into the deep in order to be able to rise again herself. Her will to survive had been stronger than his.

A therapist would probably enquire whether she was feeling guilty. But she'd lived with that survivor's guilt since she was twelve years old. Practically her entire life. It was what had driven her into the war zone, led her to embrace danger and disaster. Paradoxically, she was feeling calmer and lighter than usual. As if she had left something down there in the lake's icy darkness, with her hallucinations and her ghosts, and the dead man.

“I'm not doing it again.”

It wasn't until she saw her mother react that she realized she had spoken out loud.

“What aren't you doing?”

She couldn't say it with one word. Not even with many. She lifted one hand in an unclear gesture.

“It.”
Damn it
, she thought.
Now she'll probably think I'm losing it completely.

But her mother understood. She could read such awkward, incomplete Nina code with no difficulty at all. Beneath the chemo-induced fatigue, a clear relief was spreading.

“Good,” she said simply.

When her mother
had left, Nina carefully got out of bed. The sun was shining outside the window, so it was day, anyway. Some day or other. She should have asked while she'd had the chance.

The floor behaved normally this time—she remembered how it had heaved and swayed when they had helped her to the toilet the last time—and she poked her arms through the sleeves of the hospital robe on the hook by the door. Tied the belt. Considered slippers. Couldn't find any and decided not to care.

Pneumonia. That would be T Ward, probably. Good, it wasn't far then.

S
hitty weather,” Torben
growled, rubbing a towel across his smooth shaven skull. “Snow in November. What's up with that?”

“It's December tomorrow,” Søren reminded him, as if he was hired to apologize on behalf of the meteorologists.

“Yes, okay. It's still too early.”

It was, you had to admit, unusually awful weather. Large grey-white globs of wet snow—even with the best of intentions, no one could call them flakes—fell heavily and unremittingly on Søborg and the rest of Copenhagen. The bicyclists slithered along on the bike paths, half blinded by the slush, and el-train wires were falling by the dozen all over the regional network. The rage level of the morning traffic was almost tangible.

Torben threw the towel on top of his ubiquitous gym bag and pointed at the guest chair.

“Sit down, damn it. Do you want some coffee?” He let himself drop into his own deep, well-upholstered executive-style chair.

“No, thanks,” said Søren.

“Okay.”

Torben frowned, moved his pad a few inches to the left, looked at the telephone.

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Yes. I just had some.”

“Good. But I need something to keep my strength up. Just a second.”

Torben grabbed the phone.

“Pernille? Have you fired up the coffee works? Good. Would you mind bringing me a cup? Black, please. Nasty morning. Thank you.”

Søren waited quietly and calmly. He had rarely seen Torben in this uncomfortable, bush-beating state. His friend and boss was not normally a man who avoided hard decisions or found it difficult to express his views.

“Well,” said Torben. “How are you feeling? Lungs more or less back to normal?”

“More or less,” said Søren.

“What was all that about, anyway? Something to do with the Philippines?”

“Yes. Some months ago there was a violent explosion in an apartment building right outside Manila. More than four hundred people were killed. Terrible story.”

“Terror?”

“No. It was as simple as shoddy construction work. When the authorities finally started an independent investigation, the whole operation turned out to be rotten to the core. Safety requirements had not been followed, the materials were substandard and had been used incorrectly . . . it appears that a gas line had been leaking for a while, so that a gas pocket had developed in the foundations. The damage from the explosion was all the more devastating because of the flaws in the construction, and because the cement that had been used was of inferior quality. An entirely avoidable disaster, not a terrorist bomb, as the first official version had it. The three remaining towers have now been leveled.”

“Tragic,” said Torben tersely. “But how the hell could an apartment building explosion in Manila get my group leader abducted and half-killed?”

Søren smiled dryly.

“Well. That was mostly Nina's fault. And mine.”

“How so?”

“Nina was there. In Manila, that is. She joined the rescue effort—they were in dire need of people with the right qualifications.”

“And she just can't keep her nose out of things that don't concern her . . .”

Søren acknowledged that evaluation with a small nod.

“There was an engineer who had apparently been trying to persuade the owner and builder to fix the mistakes. He was seriously wounded during the collapse and died shortly afterward. Nina was among those who tried to save him. She and another volunteer heard his last incoherent words, and that was apparently enough to make them a threat. Vadim Lorenzo, the owner, is the son of one of Manila's movers and shakers and was obsessed with keeping his good name untarnished. Or at least, only somewhat tarnished. A bit of a playboy, they say. So he sent a couple of cowboys to eliminate her. Luckily they weren't very professional, but . . .” He had to suppress a flashback of Nina's face, Nina's eyes, as she had floated in the water with him not knowing whether she would live or die. “It was bad enough. A little too close.”

“And the two . . . cowboys?”

“One drowned. Vincent Bernardo. The divers managed to find the body, and he was sent home to Manila in a coffin about a week ago. He has a wife and child, I've heard. A pregnant wife and a child, in fact.”

“He should have thought of that before,” said Torben mercilessly.

“Yes. I don't feel sorry for him either. Maybe for her. He wasn't your typical hired killer. The other one, Ubaldo Martinez, I was able to arrest, and we have most of our information from him. Frankly he is not all that bright. He ended up boasting of all his connections, clearly thinking he could scare us into letting him go. He is in custody in Viborg now, and there's very little doubt that we can get him for attempted murder.”

Caroline Westmann was whistling as she worked, tying up the last loose ends of the case. He was happy to let her have every last bit of gratification it might afford her, and any points it might give her in the promotion lottery.

“And the young building tycoon from Manila? Can we get him?”

“Too late for that . . .”

“Meaning?”

“They found him yesterday at the bottom of his penthouse swimming pool with three diving belts around his neck. Twenty-one kilos. More than enough.”

“Suicide?”

“It looks like it. There's no note, but there was no one else in the apartment, and it didn't look as if anyone had been there. Except . . .”

“What?”

“The housekeeper said she had opened the door to a young woman who had a present for Vadim Lorenzo. A young pregnant woman.”

“Are you suggesting it was . . . What was his name . . .”

“Vincent Bernardo. Vincent Bernardo's wife? We can't say, and in any case, she left again right away. She was merely allowed to place her present on a table in the kitchen.”

“And what was the present?” asked Torben impatiently.

“A cage. A cage with a small yellow chicken in it.”

“Bizarre. It's not their Easter or anything like that, is it?”

“No. They pretty much celebrate the same holidays we do.”

“I don't see the relevance.”

“I don't either. But in any case, nothing suggests foul play. He might just have taken the easy way out, what with a trial and the scandal and so on hanging over his head. Not so very strange.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Torben. “Rich man's son in Manila? That kind usually manages to come up smelling of roses.”

“Not this time, though.”

“No. Not with twenty-one kilos of lead around his neck.”

Silence descended. Torben carefully placed a pen on top of his pad.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “I might as well get it over with.”

There was a knock on the door, and Torben's assistant Pernille came in with the coffee tray. There were two cups—she had apparently been informed that he was in a meeting. This was not an informal chat, in other words.

Søren and Torben sat looking at each other while she placed cups and coffee pot on the table. Only when she had disappeared again did they continue.

“Are you firing me?” asked Søren.

“No,” said Torben. “No, damn it. You're still one of our best interrogation experts. And a damn sharp analyst and all of that. But . . .”

“But you can't use me as group leader anymore.”

“I'm sorry. But for your own sake . . .”

“And for the department's. You don't need to say any more.”

“Yes, I do! This isn't easy, and you deserve better. But the shrink says it would be best for you to be transferred, and that we risk driving you permanently into the ground if we don't do it. So when your sick leave is over, I'm transferring you to Analysis, and we'll just call on you now and then when we need you to lead an interrogation. As of tomorrow, you no longer have operative responsibilities.”

“Thank you,” said Søren and poured himself a cup of coffee after all.

“What?” Torben looked at him in total confusion.

“I know it was a difficult decision.”

“Damn it, Søren. Would you please stop that?”

“Stop what?”

“Stop pretending it doesn't matter to you. We've known each other much too long for those kind of games.”

Søren smiled.

“But it really doesn't matter.”

“That's a damn lie.”

“No.” He looked directly at Torben and hoped his friend could see the calm in him, the strange new equilibrium he had found. “Honestly. It's fine. I need to get better. We both do.”

“You . . . and Nina?”

“Yes. Me and Nina.”

Torben stared at him as if he had gone insane.

“How did it
go?”

Nina was sitting in the kitchen when he got home, wearing a big, bulky red sweater and a pair of red felt boots he had bought for her because she always complained that her feet were cold here. The house was from before the energy crisis, so the insulation wasn't first-rate. Her tolerance for cold was also not what it had been.

“As expected,” he said. “I'm now an ex–group leader. Put out to pasture with the Analysis boys, with occasional guest appearances as an interrogation expert.”

She got up, took his face between her slender, cold hands and kissed him. She tasted of peppermint tablets and faintly of cinnamon.

“Cinnamon rolls?” he asked when he could breathe again.

She smiled sheepishly.

“I can't help it,” she said. “You're the one who keeps buying them.”

“Because you keep eating them. Those aren't even real cakes; I only have them because my nieces like them.”

She kissed him again. He felt the heat of it through his entire convalescing body.

“Are you tired?” he asked carefully. She had been with her physiotherapist while he had been in Søborg. The carbon monoxide poisoning had left her with balance problems and certain other issues which had, her chronically optimistic therapist maintained, a good chance of disappearing entirely over the next six months if she didn't neglect her training. They were carful not to call it brain damage. That sounded so permanent.

There were frustrating days. Days when she dropped things because she was tired. Days where she was angry and miserable because she had forgotten something important, or because she couldn't concentrate on reading a book. Days when he had to remind her that it was early days yet, and that Rome wasn't built in a day.

“I don't give a shit about Rome,” she had screamed at him two days ago. “I just want to be able to walk without falling down!”

Today was one of the better days, he could see. She laughed at him and poked him in the chest.

“Are you looking for consolation sex?” she asked.

“Is that on offer?” he enquired hopefully.

“Only if you promise to pick up another bag of cinnamon rolls afterward.”

They lay together,
she with her shoulder tucked into his armpit and her head on his chest, he with his right arm closed around her waist. He could feel the muscles in her abdomen rise and fall under the warm, naked skin.

“Are you really okay with it?” she asked without raising her head.

“Yes. I think I actually am. I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to the group, but . . . they'll survive. And so will I.”

She let one index fingers follow the contours of the scar she had given him.

“
We're
the survivors,” she said. “You and me. The others are just amateurs.”

His right arm pulled her in and held her more tightly without any conscious decision on his part. Life and death were separated only by a single breath. But she was right. At this moment in time, they were both alive.

She slid from his grasp and propped herself up on one elbow.

“So if you aren't
actually
traumatized and depressed,” she said, “where are my cinnamon rolls?”