Death of a Nightingale (Nina Borg #3)

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “And Michael Vestergaard hadn’t suffered any injuries other than the cut in his throat?”

  “No. What kind of injuries do you mean?”

  “To his hands, for example.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Sometimes people get defensive cuts,” Søren said. “If they have time to try to fight off their assailant.”

  “I think it came as a complete surprise to him that she could turn on him like that,” Nina said, with a sense that he knew very well there were no defensive cuts. That must be in the report, along with everything else. What was he getting at?

  “But you knew Natasha well enough that you were the one she called,” he said. “Why do you think she did that?”

  “Because of Rina. She wanted me to take care of Rina.”

  “Did Natasha ever say anything about why she had fled from Ukraine?”

  “No, we almost never talked about her past. She clammed up if you tried.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s not very unusual,” said Nina defensively. “I think that’s true for at least seventy-five percent of the people here.”

  Her gaze wandered automatically around the half-empty passage in which she stood. Sometime back in the ’90s, most of one wall in the barrack’s passageways had been replaced with huge windows in a well-intentioned effort to transform the dim, nicotine-stinking smoking zone into lounge areas with green plants, lights, a view and a certain modernity. That just meant that many of the camp’s inhabitants stopped using the rooms completely or huddled in the darkest corners where there was most cover. This was especially true of the people who had lived with the constant threat of snipers, in Kosova and elsewhere. The windows were still there, of course. They had been expensive.

  “I’m aware of that,” said the PET-man. “But did you get any sense of it?”

  “Only that she was afraid. That she would do almost anything not to be sent back. I didn’t even know that Rina’s father was dead.”

  “No, I can imagine she didn’t talk a lot about that.”

  “Did she really do it?” asked Nina. “And why? Was he a sick bastard like Vestergaard?”

  “There’s nothing to suggest that,” said Søren. “I’ll call again when I know more. Take good care of the girl. There must still be police on the premises?”

  “And how,” said Nina.

  “Good. We’ll talk soon.”

  Nina stood for a few seconds with the silent cell phone in one hand and the coffee stirrer in the other. An update, he had called it. But the only one who had been updated was him. She had answered his questions without learning anything in return. Nonetheless, she felt a peculiar relief again, as she had when he had said he would “see what he could do.” She threw the stirrer in the garbage next to the coffee machine, nodded briefly at Magnus and set off down the hall toward Rina’s room.

  She checked her watch. 18:27.

  That must be it. For almost seven minutes, she had had the sensation of not being alone.

  “The neighbor who found him,” said Søren. “Do you mind if I have a chat with her? She apparently knows Natasha Doroshenko pretty well.”

  Heide deliberated. “If you bring Veng with you,” she said. “And a tape recorder. We’ve questioned her once, but of course we need to speak with her again. It’s the yellow farmhouse, just on the other side of the hill.”

  Someone had cleared the road with a tractor, as evidenced by the broad, ribbed tire tracks. When you lived out here, you probably couldn’t sit around and wait for the municipal snowplow to stop by. Babko slid into the passenger seat in the front and Veng into the backseat, and the Hyundai bravely struggled up the hill and down to “the yellow farmhouse.”

  It had probably once been quite a sizable farm, thought Søren. Four wings and various outbuildings washed in a traditional yellow ocher with shiny black wooden trim. The main house and one side wing had newly thatched roofs, golden and unweathered; the two remaining wings still needed a loving hand. Red tarp covered the most serious holes, and one gable looked as if it was mostly supported by chicken wire and rusty iron struts. A dog barked loudly from inside the house, and Søren saw one of the shades move.

  Veng rang the doorbell. “It’s us, Mrs. Olesen,” he said. “DI Veng, remember me? And this is Inspector Kirkegard and a Ukrainian colleague, Police Lieutenant Babko.”

  The woman in the door considered them with a face devoid of expression. The dog, a classic Danish hunting breed, tried to work its way out of her grip on its collar, but apparently she was holding on tight. Her eyes moved from one to the other, a bit on her guard, thought Søren, but then, they did outnumber her—an invasive force.

  “Come in,” she said after a few seconds. “Is it okay if we sit in the kitchen? It’s warmest there.”

  “Of course,” said Søren.

  “I just have to … Maxi, go to your basket!” She shooed the dog into the utility room, where it reluctantly lay down in a basket by the boiler. “It’s this way.”

  Given the rural surroundings, Søren had unconsciously expected a kitchen like his parents’ in Djursland—vinyl squares on the floor, scratched white-laminated cabinets from the mid-90s, mail-order pine furniture that had never quite been in fashion even when it was brand new. But this was, after all, Hørsholm, home of golf enthusiasts and would-be country squires.

  The room was large and well lit—clearly several old rooms combined—with double glass doors leading out into the snow-covered garden, new floors of broad, rustic oak planks, white walls and a high-end, designer kitchen. A comfortable heat radiated from a massive brick wall oven that divided the kitchen area from the dining room.

  “Ahhh,” sighed DI Veng spontaneously and unbuttoned his down jacket. “Nice to come inside and thaw a bit.”

  Babko smiled as well. “We have this kind of oven in Ukraine,” he said. “Out in the country. That’s the only thing that works when it’s really cold.”

  Anna Olesen looked at Babko. Her gaze remained cautious. “What is he saying?” she asked.

  “That it’s a good oven,” Søren translated. “They have them in Ukraine too.”

  “This one is Finnish,” she said. “The old oil-burning boiler is on its last legs, so it’s not just for decoration.”

  Heide had said Anna was over eighty, but she moved like a much younger woman. Her hair had to be dyed, but it was done so skillfully, in a variety of golden-blonde shades, that the result looked completely natural. A pair of red reading glasses sat in her hair as if they were an intentional part of her styling, and the comfortable-looking oatmeal-colored mohair sweater hung loosely over a pair of neat grey wool pants. Søren also noted the high-heeled black shoes, the pink lipstick and the discreetly penciled eyebrows. In no way did she look like a shaken elderly citizen who had just found the body of her neighbor.

  “I know you’ve already spoken with the police,” said Søren. “But unfortunately, we’ll probably need to inconvenience you several times.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I understand that.”

  “Do you live here alone?”

  “Since my husband died four years ago. The plan is for my daughter Kirsten and her family to move into one of the wings when we finish restoring it.”

  “But you were alone last night?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t here last night. I was having dinner at the house of some friends of mine and didn’t get home until after midnight.”

  Søren didn’t ask about the dinner—Heide’s people would definitely check on that if they hadn’t already. “Did you go past Michael Vestergaard’s house on that occasion?” he asked instead.

  “No. I came the other way, from Kokkedal.”

  “Did you meet anyone on the way?”

  “No. As I told you, it was midnight, more or less. And this isn’t exactly downtown during rush hour. But someone had been here. I could see car tracks in the new snow.”

  Søren looked quickly at Veng, but the detective inspector shook his hea
d. “It had been cleared again before we got here,” he said.

  “Henrik does that,” said Anna Olesen. “Henrik Rasmussen. He also takes care of the golf course. Groundskeeper. Or whatever it is they call it in golf-speak.” A glint of humor lightened the guarded blue gaze.

  “When was the last time you saw Michael Vestergaard?”

  “Saw? I’ve seen his car a few times over the last couple days, but we didn’t say hello.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “No. We used to be a bit more in touch, actually. He could be quite helpful on occasion.”

  “Did you see Natasha Doroshenko often when she was living in the house?”

  Anna picked at a thread on her mohair sweater. “We met now and again. Her little girl liked to help feed the cats. We talked about her getting a kitten, but … Well, that never happened.”

  “What was your impression of her?”

  “My impression? She was a nice young girl. Much too young for him, of course, but in her situation, security is probably not an insignificant attraction. I thought they were fine together until … well.” She interrupted herself in the same way as before. “I had no idea things were that bad.”

  “I understand that you were out walking the dog when you found Vestergaard?”

  The pink lips tightened. “It was more like the dog walking me. I had let her out when I got up, but she didn’t come back in. That happens sometimes. She doesn’t stray, not really, but she might take a little excursion if I haven’t walked her enough. When my husband was alive, she would never have considered setting as much as a paw outside the garden without him. He used to take her hunting and had her trained to perfection, but now … Anyway, when she had been gone for an hour, I realized I would have to put on my rubber boots and go search. And then, of course, I heard her.”

  “She was barking?”

  “Yes. She was sitting next to the car—that is, Michael’s car—and barking as if he were a fox in a hole. And then I could see … Well. I called the police right away.”

  “And stayed there, I understand?”

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

  “Did you notice any traffic during that time?”

  “No. It was Saturday morning, so the few commuters we do have weren’t going anywhere.”

  There was a very faint lilt to her voice that somehow wasn’t pure Hørsholm. It could be the remains of a regional dialect she had shed, from Fyn or Bornholm, maybe. He couldn’t decide.

  “Were you born here on the farm?” he asked.

  Again the guarded glance. “No,” she said. “It was Hans Henrik’s childhood home. We didn’t move here until nineteen eighty-two, when his mother and father really couldn’t manage it anymore. Before that we lived in Lund for years.”

  “In Sweden.”

  “Yes. I taught at the university. Classic philology.”

  Not your typical housewife, in other words—and more than averagely intelligent, thought Søren. Something about her aroused his curiosity, and he felt a sudden urge to rummage through her belongings, though what, exactly, he would be looking for, he didn’t know. He had no legal grounds for such a search. If anyone was to do so, it would have to be Heide, he thought, with a grudging pang of envy.

  UKRAINE, 1934

  “No, no.”

  The protest was so faint, it could barely be called a protest. More like a kind of moan. Nonetheless, the young, beautiful GPU police officer immediately hit Marchenko across the mouth so the blood began to seep from his lips and gums. Marchenko bent forward and let it drip on the newly fallen snow. For some reason that was where Olga’s eyes focused.

  The red color against the blindingly white virgin snow was so vivid that it seemed almost supernatural in the midst of the grubby chaos. Behind Marchenko, most of his family’s former belongings were bundled together in a tall, ungainly load on what had previously been his cart. There were a butter churn and pickling troughs and blankets and clothing and sacks. At the back of the cart sat a few sheaves of straw and the bucket from the farm’s well. All of it had been tied to the cart by a couple of men from the kolkhoz. The three horses hitched to it stomped their hooves impatiently in the frozen wheel tracks and whinnied so the steam enveloped their muzzles.

  Olga stood so close, she would have been able to stroke one of the horses’ flanks if she stuck out her hand. But she didn’t. The horse didn’t look nice, she thought. The lower lip hung down so you could see the long yellow teeth, and its coat was bristly, mud caking its flank. She was closer than she wanted to be and also close to the scarlet blood spot in the snow in front of the cart.

  Olga didn’t quite know why she kept standing there instead of going home. Marchenko was the idiot Fedir’s father and a kulak, and everyone knew that he had been behind with his grain deliveries for a long time. He had said that he didn’t have any, and the village soviet had until now chosen to ignore his negligence. But today Jana had reported at school that the GPU had ransacked the Marchenkos’ property and found grain as well as potatoes stowed away in a dugout under the house’s foundation. It was the fault of him and the likes of him that everyone was starving, Olga knew that well, but somehow none of them looked quite like the fat kulaks on the poster outside the village soviet’s office—especially not Fedir’s little sister, who hung on her mother’s arm. Her face was narrow and her eyes large. She wasn’t much older than Kolja, and every so often she opened her mouth and cried out, a long, thin scream like a hare in the claws of an eagle. The family had been sitting outside in the cold all day, waiting for their judgment, and the child was blue with cold and exhaustion.

  The cries made Olga feel sick deep down in her stomach, but still she couldn’t tear herself away.

  “There are at least one hundred twenty funt,” said Oxana, pointing at the six sacks of grain that were just then being carried out and placed on a separate cart. “Just think how many mouths that can feed.”

  Olga nodded. She couldn’t remember ever seeing so much grain at once—and not just any grain, but wheat, supposedly. She had heard that from the talk among the gathered villagers. Most of them had come to say goodbye. Marchenko’s brother was there, and several of his neighbors, noted Olga. The men were smoking and talking quietly while the women had pulled their shawls close around their shoulders and were glancing nervously at the four armed GPU officers.

  A GPU officer shouted something, and now the driver from the collective climbed, huffing, onto the load. He swung the whip over the sharp backs of the horses. The animals leaned forward heavily in their harnesses, but for a long moment seemed stuck in place until the wheels finally scrunched along in the slippery tracks and the cart began to move.

  For a moment Marchenko looked as if he was planning to follow it, but he remained standing next to the four bundles that the family had been allowed to keep. What he had now was an idiotic son, a wife and a small daughter, thought Olga. Because Fedir was definitely an idiot. Even though he was fourteen, he stood sobbing as loudly as his little sister, and it was almost unbearable to keep watching. And yet she couldn’t stop.

  One of the remaining GPUs apparently felt the same way, because now he poked Fedir in the side with his rifle and told him to start walking.

  “Where to?” Fedir stared at him with his wild, cross-eyed gaze, and the GPUs laughed almost kindly.

  “To the station in Sorokivka. You’re going on a trip, comrade.”

  Fedir smiled back in confusion, hoisted two of the family’s bundles on his back and, neck bent, began to make his way through the crowd of gathered neighbors. One woman tried to sneak him a piece of bread, but he saw it too late and dropped it awkwardly on the road. When he straightened up, he saw Olga and Oxana and froze in his tracks.

  “Oxana,” he said. A special light slid across his face. “I’ll come visit you when I get back.”

  Oxana lowered her eyes and nodded briefly, and just then Olga noticed the silence around them. As if all sound had been sucked ou
t of the world. For the longest time, people stood mutely, staring at Fedir and Oxana. Then Oxana pulled her scarf closer around her face, turned her back on Fedir and began to walk away. Olga hesitated.

  The young, smiling GPU officer poked Fedir again and drove him in the opposite direction down the main street of the village along with the rest of the family. Marchenko was silent now and walked with heavy, stooped shoulders while behind him, his wife struggled to keep the child in her arms. Only Fedir turned back one more time and raised his arm in a farewell that was impatiently swatted down by the boyish GPU officer.

  Oxana marched with quick steps toward the stream, and Olga began to run to catch up with her. At the same moment, she felt a sharp stab of pain in her shoulder blade. Something hard and pointy had hit her, but when she looked over her shoulder, she couldn’t see anything but the frozen ground and the fine dusting of new snow behind her. She increased her speed but stumbled and fell in the stupid bark shoes on the stupid cloddy ground. “Oxana, wait.”

  Oxana turned. She backtracked two steps and offered her hand to Olga, who got to her feet, swaying, just as she was hit by an even harder smack. This time it was on her forehead, and she felt a warm trickle of blood run down over her cheekbone. She didn’t understand at all, but apparently Oxana did. Oxana raised a fist toward the Marchenkos’ house just as another stone whistled toward them.

  Oxana’s eyes threw off sparks. “Act like it’s nothing,” she said breathlessly, pulling Olga along toward the stream. ‘It’s just Sergej, that idiot.”

  Olga tried to walk as fast as Oxana but stumbled and fell again. She couldn’t help looking back.

  No more stones came.

  The incident van was still pretty empty, noted Søren. Some of Heide’s people were searching the house in Tundra Lane. Others were going door to door in the adjacent housing estates in the hopes that someone had noticed a car or anything else of relevance. Michael Vestergaard had not been considerate enough to get himself murdered in a public place with frequent traffic and CCT cameras. On a pitch-black, ice-cold winter night out here in the no-man’s-land between the golf course and the so-called urban development, they would be lucky to find even one pathetic jogger.