Death of a Nightingale

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  Which wouldn’t be long—less than half an hour, most likely. That knowledge hit her once again, like a fist under her ribs.

  “Look,” he said. He took a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket, smoothed it out and held it so the interior car light illuminated it clearly. It was a printed copy of a black-and-white photograph of two girls. It was old, and the girls were wearing traditional Ukrainian dresses, like the ones folk dancers still used. “Where did this come from?” asked Jurij. “Where did your husband get this picture?”

  “I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I know nothing.”

  She could feel the icy edge and the mechanism of the lock with the back of her fingers. She tried instinctively to pull her hand back, but the wire didn’t permit it. Jurij straightened up and reached for the car door.

  If all my fingers break, I can’t drive, thought Natasha. If my fingers break, I can’t turn the key and shift gears, and I can’t … It felt as if her heart stopped in her chest for a moment. I can’t kill the Witch.

  Then he slammed the door. Natasha screamed, but she no longer attempted to pull back. Instead, she pushed her hand as far out of the car as it would go, so the door hit the her wrist and the heel of her hand rather than the fingers. The pain was excruciating, but she could feel that the bone was intact. She wasn’t incapacitated. Not yet.

  Suddenly she thought of aspirins.

  Why? Why aspirins?

  Jurij had opened the door again and was looking at her.

  “Yes, it hurts,” he said, as if he were a doctor who was sorry that a necessary vaccination involved a needle prick. “What about the little man? Has he found anything in the archives?”

  Little man? There were no small men in her brain. Her brain was a mouse at the bottom of a tin pail, a mouse that raced around, jumped for its life and scrabbled at the smooth surface to find a way out.

  He stepped back behind the door, ready to slam it again.

  “No,” she said. “No …”

  And then it came. An image of Anna’s home. She and Pavel and Katerina are at the dining room table eating cake. It is summer. The first visit to Denmark, and Katerina’s second year in the world. Pavel would have preferred to go alone, he said, because he had many meetings to take care of, and he thought Katerina was still too little to fly. But Natasha pleaded and begged, and at last he’d given in. So now she is here in Denmark with Pavel’s mother’s old nanny. Anna is stern and distant, thinks Natasha, except when it comes to Katerina. With her she chatters cozily in a steady stream of Danish and a few Ukrainian words Pavel must have taught her. “Dog.” “Cake.” “Thirsty.” “Sleepy.” Short children’s words that Katerina understands. Anna stuffs her with chocolate cake and brightly colored chocolate drops. Natasha is tired and has a headache.

  “You can take a couple of my pills from the drawer in the bedroom,” says Anna, now in English, which is the language they speak when Natasha is there. Otherwise, Anna and Pavel mostly speak German. It is all a big mess, and it’s so hard to talk to anybody, and maybe that is why Natasha’s head hurts so much. She has the sense that Pavel and Anna share something, that they are keeping her in the dark by speaking a language she doesn’t understand.

  “Panodil, aspirin or codeine,” says Anna. “I think I have all three.”

  Natasha gets up and goes up into the bedroom and pulls out the top drawer of the dresser. She finds a plastic bottle marked aspirin, unscrews the lid and tips two pills into her hand. A few other pill containers rattle around in there, and at the back, some yellowed photographs lie loosely piled on the flowered paper lining the drawer. One of them shows two girls. It is very old and faded. The girls are dressed in the finest and most festive of traditional styles, and they are both looking seriously into the camera. It isn’t Danish, she can see that, both because of the clothes and because of the lettering that reads, “Mykolayevka. Two nightingales.” It’s a little odd that it’s here, she thinks, but maybe Pavel gave it to Anna. He has his own drawers at home, always kept locked, and in them are many old photographs that he doesn’t want her to tidy or “mess up,” as he calls it. This was before the first break-in. Before he got the scanner.

  Natasha leaves this picture alone too. What does she need the past for? The present is bright and happy, at least most of the time—Natasha has discovered that it is entirely possible to be jealous of old ladies, even ones who decidedly do not want to sleep with her husband. Why do they have to chat so intimately in German all the time? Then she scolds herself as he would have, stupid Natasha, silly Natasha, takes the aspirin and joins the others again. They revert to English when they hear her on the steps, and Anna asks if she is feeling better now.

  “ANNA!”

  Jurij had opened the car door wide, ready to slam it again when Natasha suddenly said the name. Now he hesitated.

  “I know where it is,” said Natasha. “The picture. I know who has it!”

  Jurij let go of the door. She felt the relief flood her like soft, warm water. Could it really be that simple? Was that really all they wanted? A picture from Anna? Her wrist pounded, sore and painful, but she could still move her fingers and hands, and in a miraculous way she now had a new chance to save Katerina.

  “Where?” asked Jurij, and Natasha felt the wire loosen around her aching wrist.

  “It’s here,” she said. “In Denmark. I’ll show you where it is.”

  “We sent a man over there,” explained Heide with somewhat exaggerated patience. “They are packing up out there so they can get home before the roads close, but Veng fought his way through the snowdrifts, and there was no one home. No sign of the girl, and Anna Olesen only showed up while he was actually knocking on the door. She had apparently been out searching for that dog again. He went through everything, including the stables, and the girl wasn’t there.”

  “That’s the number Katerina phoned.”

  “Yes, I understand that. But she isn’t there.”

  “Okay. Thank you for trying.”

  “We’d like to find her as well,” said Heide, refraining—pretty generously, Søren thought—from commenting on the fact that he—and the PET—was the one who had managed to lose the child in the first place. “Has her description been circulated?”

  “Yes.” Søren stared out across Polititorvet without really seeing his surroundings. “Will you keep me posted if something happens at your end?”

  Heide promised. He knew she had her hands full, not just with the investigation of the Vestergaard killing, but also with the coordination of the hunt for Rina’s mother. Natasha had been observed close to the Coal-House Camp earlier in the day when, according to the first brief report he had received, she had hit another car and fled from the scene of the accident. In spite of the apparently fairly definite identification, they were having trouble locating the fugitive. The weather was so bad that there was no point in using helicopters. On the smaller roads, especially north of Copenhagen, the snow had started to make its own roadblocks—and snow made no exception for patrol cars.

  He had so far declined to put out an appeal in the media for information regarding Rina’s disappearance. There was no reason to let the bad guys know she was out there, vulnerable and alone, if they didn’t know already.

  His stomach rumbled sourly. Too much coffee and not enough proper food. He hadn’t eaten anything except two dry breakfast rolls and a cheese sandwich from the cafeteria since Susse’s chicken stew the previous evening.

  Susse. Ben. He had totally lost track: Herlev, the heart attack, even Susse’s tears on the phone. Damn it. He quickly dialed. She was still in the hospital, he could tell from the background noise, but she sounded less distraught.

  “It’s better now,” she said. “He slept well last night, and we’re out of intensive care now. He says to say hello. And thanks for taking care of the dogs …”

  “Anytime. You know that.”

  Babko, who was by now starting to find his way around the police headquarters’s labyrinth
ine corridors like a native, came in and placed a cup of coffee in front of him, this time accompanied by a pastry.

  “You look like you need this.”

  “Thanks,” Søren said, though his stomach didn’t quite agree.

  “And one of the Danes gave me this.”

  It was a yellow Post-it note with a scrawled message from Don Carlo in the Radio service.

  Call me. Car spotted.

  Søren looked at his cell again and noted that Carlo had tried to reach him several times. Before he’d called Susse and Heide, there had been a number of conversations about mobilizing the search for Rina as well as a lengthy telephone report to Torben. He dialed.

  “Hi, Carlo.”

  “Sonny boy. You asked us to let you know if anyone saw a Beemer with Ukrainian plates.”

  “Yes.”

  “We haven’t. But a colleague who was on duty at a road accident on Englandsvej saw a black BMW 5 with Danish plates. He noticed it because one side window was smashed. He didn’t get the whole number, but the Register can’t find any BMWs with the partial he noted.”

  “Stolen plates.”

  “Yes. Almost certainly.”

  “Put out an APB. And alert the airport just in case that’s where he’s going.” It was, after all, right around the corner from the Englandsvej sighting.

  “Done, my friend.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No prob.”

  There could, of course, be several reasons for a BMW to drive around with false plates, but it was the first possible trace of Savchuk they had had at all.

  Søren quickly put Babko in the loop. “There wasn’t anything wrong with the window in the BMW when you saw it, was there?” he asked.

  “No. But that could have happened later.”

  Søren checked his other missed calls. Don Carlo wasn’t the only one who had called in vain. Mikael Nielsen was on the list too. Søren called him back.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Borg walked out.”

  “What?”

  “She and the Swede went out to search in the immediate vicinity. The Swede has just returned. He hasn’t found the girl, and now he can’t find the nurse either.”

  What was the matter with this case and these people? Couldn’t Søren turn his back for one second without someone else disappearing?

  “Hang on a sec.”

  He put Nielsen on hold and called Nina’s cell. A second later it rang cheerfully in his inner pocket. Damn. He had taken it from her himself. For safety reasons …

  “How long ago?” he asked Nielsen.

  “They went out to search forty-five minutes ago. They went in opposite directions and had apparently arranged to meet again after thirty minutes. The nurse didn’t show up. The Swede is worried.”

  So am I, thought Søren.

  The wind was picking up. A corner of the red tarp on the stable roof flapped wildly, and the snow blew like smoke from the ridge of the thatch, so that for one distorted second, Nina’s eyes insisted on telling her that the roof was on fire.

  The light was on in the main house and in the courtyard, but otherwise the sky was dark, the pitch black that was a winter night in the country.

  She gave the driver her credit card and blindly signed the receipt he handed her. He hadn’t been eager to come all the way out here, had cursed the weather and the driving conditions and the long trip back to town. But she had said something, she didn’t even remember what, that had made him to shut up and drive pretty abruptly. Now he was so eager to get out of the yard again that his wheels started to spin by the gable, and he had to let the car roll back a length before he could clear the little rise that led to the road.

  The light came on in the hall, and the front door opened.

  “Can I help you?” A small, slender silhouette stood in the lit square of the doorway.

  “Anna?” said Nina. “It’s Nina Borg. I don’t know if you remember me.”

  A moment passed. Then Anna Olesen took a step back so the light fell on her hair and face.

  “The nurse,” she said. “You were here the night when Natasha …”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in.”

  THE FIRE GLOWED behind the glass doors of the big white brick oven between the kitchen and the living room. Anna placed a Bodum glass mug in front of Nina.

  “It’s tea,” she said. “I can make coffee too. But that’ll take a few minutes.”

  “Tea is fine.”

  Tea, coffee … Nina didn’t care. Her gaze wandered across the neat dining room table, the stove with two bubbling pots, preparations for dinner. For one or for two?

  No Rina, anyway. Not here.

  “I came to ask if you had seen Rina.”

  Anna wrinkled her eyebrows. “Little Katerina? A man came to ask the same thing a little while ago. But why on earth would I have?”

  “She has disappeared from … the camp.” At the last minute Nina chose to simplify the explanation. “And our only clue to where she might have gone is that she called here.”

  “Here? When?”

  “This morning. Between nine and ten.” Between 9:40 and 9:42, to be exact, but Nina had learned that people usually looked at her oddly when she gave the time down to the minute.

  “I was probably still out with the dog then.”

  “Who was the man? The one who asked for her?”

  “One of the policemen searching Michael’s house. A DI somebody or other, I don’t recall his name. But why would Katerina call me? I haven’t seen her in … well, since then.”

  “She’s had a couple of hard days. Maybe she needed to talk with someone who would understand her.” But that person couldn’t have been Anna, Nina thought suddenly, because Rina had spoken in Ukrainian. “You haven’t seen Natasha, have you?” she asked casually.

  Anna pushed her reading glasses into her hair and smiled sarcastically. “My dear, I know that Natasha is wanted by every police authority in the entire country. If I was really hiding her in my leaky hayloft, do you think I would tell you? But you’re welcome to look.”

  “No, no, it doesn’t matter.” If Natasha was here, it certainly wouldn’t be in the hayloft. But Nina couldn’t really believe that she would dare to come here. Michael Vestergaard’s house lay just on the other side of the hill; it must have been swarming with police for the past twenty-four hours. No doubt Anna had been questioned as well, by people who were somewhat more professional at that kind of thing than Nina was.

  “How long has Katerina been missing?”

  “For almost four hours.”

  “If she was really on her way here, she should have been here long ago. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “The bus doesn’t go down Tundra Lane; its nearest stop is at Isterødvej. That’s quite a walk. And in this weather …”

  “Are you saying you think she might have gotten lost?”

  “Henrik cleared the road with the tractor again just before you came. You and your taxi were lucky you didn’t try an hour earlier.”

  “We have to look for her. Or …” She glanced at Anna and noticed, really for the first time, that she was, in fact, talking to a fairly senior citizen. “I have to, anyway.”

  “Wait,” said Anna. “I’ll come. I just need to put some proper clothes on.”

  Five minutes later they were on their way out into the blizzard, armed with two powerful flashlights and, in Anna’s case, a handful of dog biscuits and a leash.

  “If that stupid dog would only come when I call her, she could help us. She’s actually a trained scent hound.”

  Nina had only the vaguest notion of what that meant. Something to do with finding animals hurt or killed in traffic. Or something.

  Killed in traffic. She stared out into the darkness and wished those words hadn’t popped into her head.

  UKRAINE, 1935

  The courtroom was small and crammed with people Olga didn’t know, and she felt as if just breathing was a difficult un
dertaking. She couldn’t help thinking that it would have been better if she had been allowed to stay at home with the lice and the cockroaches, but there was no way around it, Semienova had said. Olga was a witness, and it was important that she repeated everything she had already told the GPU. Several times. About Uncle Grachev and Fyodor and Pjotr and Vitja. That they were kulaks, that they had attacked Oxana because she was pure of heart and fought for the Soviet state and had reported Father, who had always been a kulak and an enemy of the people. Kulaks could not tolerate that there were people like Oxana. Kulaks spread hunger and destruction so that they themselves could eat until they became fat, and Oxana had been a threat to them. She was pure of heart.

  “Pure of heart, pure of heart.”

  Olga formed the words silently. She knew what she was supposed to say because she had said it many times already. The truth. Everything she now knew about her Uncle Grachev and Aunt Vira and Pjotr and Vitja and Fyodor and even Grandfather and Grandmother Trofimenko, who had been jailed three months ago along with the rest of the family. They had all been a part of planning the murder of Oxana and little Kolja. It was revenge for Father, and Oxana’s punishment because she was pure of heart and the people’s nightingale. That was what Grachev had not been able to stand, coward that he was, and the GPU police had nodded and smiled kindly at her every single time she repeated it, and now—today—she carried the truth with her like a small, well-polished pearl, waiting to be presented to the judge, who had come all the way from Leningrad. There was even a great author who insisted on attending the trial, and Olga thought she had seen him among the spectators, a little man in a dark suit with sharp, pale eyes.

  Olga straightened her back and glanced at Mother, who sat unmoving next to her. If she was pleased that Oxana’s murderers would soon be held accountable for their misdeeds, she didn’t show it. Her face expressed neither happiness nor sorrow, and her eyes had begun to look odd, as if they had been painted on her face in black. Her flat and lifeless gaze moved slowly around the room and seemed to focus too long on things that no one else took serious notice of. One of the judge’s boots, the heavy ceiling beams and the whitewashed wall behind the desks and judges, which was greyish and had cracks in it. Someone should have whitewashed it again, thought Olga, just as Mother whitewashed the walls at home with the straw whisk that she dipped in lime. Her hands would become red and cracked and sometimes started to bleed as she worked.