The Considerate Killer

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “Okay,” he said and was rewarded with an immediate and happy grin from his new friend.

  “Vadim,” the guy said and held out his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Vincent.”

  Their eyes met, and Vincent later thought that it had been a kind of love at first sight. Not the romantic kind, not the way he felt about Bea. Of course not. There wasn’t the pull of sexual excitement or dark longings—just an overpowering curiosity and an intense wish to get to know him better. Vadim. The sense of having met a person who was going to take up space in your life. That kind of love.

  Of course this wasn’t something he articulated to himself on the spot, more a sort of retroactive rationalization when he thought back on the first meeting of the V-Team.

  It was love.

  Vincent, Victor, and Vadim.

  There was no real transition. One moment she was nowhere, for all intents and purposes did not even exist. In the next . . . she was there. Here. Wherever “here” might be. From somewhere nearby came a quiet voice, somewhat hoarse, which for some reason found it necessary to give her a detailed description of the room.

  “. . . it’s still pretty warm here. I’ve taken off my sweater, and I’m still sweating. But it’s probably for your sake that they turn the heat up so high, so that you won’t get cold. It’s actually quite calm and nice, considering. The walls are dark blue, and the curtains are . . . you would probably call them violet, a kind of . . . dark purple. Then there’s some . . . linoleum. I think that’s what it is. On the floor. Sort of . . . charcoal grey. It’s probably practical and easy to clean.”

  It was Søren. But why on earth was he sitting there telling her about the flooring?

  Where was she?

  A nauseating tug of uncertainty went through her. Something had happened, but she didn’t know what. The sounds underlying Søren’s quiet voice shouted “HOSPITAL,” in very large letters, and her headache weighed in at about an eight on the NRS scale—so bad that it was hard to think of anything else—but she had to think. Why couldn’t she remember what had happened?

  Head trauma is often accompanied by retrograde amnesia, a textbook voice informed her helpfully from somewhere in her brain’s back catalog. But what head trauma?

  She tried to open her eyes, but it was as if there wasn’t room in her eye sockets.

  “By the way, Morten and the kids said to give you their love,” said Søren in the middle of his absurd description of the room. “They’ll visit when you’re feeling a bit better. Or . . . you can call them. Soon, right?”

  The children. Ida. Anton. She was supposed to pick up Anton after school. Morten would be furious because—

  No. Morten didn’t get furious anymore. The divorce had been finalized, and Morten was usually just grumpy, cold and resigned. And besides, he could hardly expect her to pick up Anton when she was in the hospital.

  In Viborg. She wasn’t in Copenhagen at all, she was in Viborg, with her mother. She had taken a three-month temp job as a nurse with a local GP: lots of blood work and so-called lifestyle consultations—usually boiling down to “eat less, exercise more, and stop smoking”—and absolutely no drama. Deadly dull, not to put too fine a point to it, and all in order to “be there,” that vague form of caring which consisted mostly of being nearby if something went wrong.

  But what had gone wrong now was apparently not her mother’s treatment for the breast cancer her oncologist called, with careful optimism, “one of the less aggressive types.”

  A traffic accident? Screeching breaks and shattered glass?

  There was a nervous twitch in some inner alarm center, but no clear memory appeared.

  “It would be great if you could wake up,” said Søren. “It would be extremely nice to see you. Or feel you. Maybe you could squeeze my hand? Just a little?”

  Oh, God. He was sitting there talking like a lonely waterfall because they had told him to. That’s how they always instructed the next of kin—“Talk to her, she might be able to hear you.” This wasn’t exactly wrong; she could in fact hear him, even though establishing control over her eyelids and finer motor functions seemed to be beyond her still. But it was also a tactic that was supposed to give the next of kin a sense of purpose and a job to do, so that they stayed with the patient instead of taking all their desperate worries to the overburdened staff.

  Head trauma. How bad was it? No respirator, and while her thoughts did not line up in neat straight lines, she was able to think, speculate, articulate, remember . . . mostly. So . . . probably not life threatening in spite of the vague sensation of . . . of dread. Of having come much too close to death.

  It was worrisome that she couldn’t work out how to move. What if she was paralyzed? What if this sensation of the body as a heavy, unresponsive prison of flesh was . . . permanent?

  No, damn it. She ignored her headache and focused all her concentration, all her power on an attempt to use her left hand to grip Søren’s fingers. She never discovered whether she succeeded, because the pain would not be forced back; it rose up like a violent dark flood and tore her back with it into nothingness.

  • • •

  The second time was better. There were voices around her. Activity.

  “Her eyes,” said Søren. “It doesn’t look . . . very nice. Did someone hit her in the face, or . . . ?”

  “Not directly. It’s what we call a raccoon-eye hematoma. It’s an effect of the fractured skull.”

  She still felt heavier than usual. Her eyelids were fat and sticky, but she managed to establish a form of control over the lower part of her face.

  “I’m thirsty,” she said.

  “Nina!” Søren exclaimed. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t hear . . . What did you say?”

  “Thirsty!”

  “Yes. Um . . . Could she have something to drink?”

  “It’s best to wait until you’ve got things a bit more under control, Nina,” said the nursing staff voice. “You don’t actually have a need for liquids; we put in a drip. Your mouth is just dry, so you feel thirsty. We can moisten your lips a little. How are you feeling otherwise?”

  “Headache,” she said irritably. She was perfectly able to determine whether she could drink. Or . . . was she? She didn’t want to choke—just the thought of coughing started a pounding in her battered skull.

  “That’s understandable. Now that you are conscious, we can look into treating the pain. You were hit twice in the back of the head, and one of the blows created a small fracture. You need to relax for a while, but the prognosis is good.”

  Relief slid through her in the form of a heavy dullness. The battle had been canceled; she could relax. She wouldn’t need the adrenaline reserves after all. She yawned carefully and felt a secondary soreness in her jaw.

  “Just give me a little water,” she said, somewhat more clearly. “I promise not to cough.”

  “A little bit, then,” said the voice. “You can have more later.”

  A fat plastic straw was pushed in between her lips, and she sucked carefully. Even the sucking sent waves through her entire cranium and made it hurt even more. But at least her mouth immediately felt less mummified—it was easier to move her tongue, easier to swallow. Small victories, very small victories, but right now she’d take what she could get.

  “The local police would like to speak with you,” said Søren. “When you feel ready.”

  “Why?” she asked stupidly.

  “Because you were the victim of an assault. Did you see who did it?”

  Assault. A couple of blows to the head. It didn’t make any sense.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t see anything.”

  The instant she said it, fear returned. It wasn’t even a fight-or-flight reaction. It was worse. It was the hopeless passive terror of the prey when there’s nothing more to be done except wait for death.

  St
op, she whispered silently to herself. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re safe here.

  She could hear her own pulse crackle in her ears. Her body did not believe her reassurances; it knew better.

  • • •

  The young detective sergeant reminded Søren of one of his own officers, Gitte. Who wasn’t his at all, of course, even though he couldn’t help feeling a certain possessive pride because he was the one who had originally hired her.

  It wasn’t that they looked so very similar—the DS from Mid-West Jutland Police was somewhat smaller and darker and did not have quite Gitte’s impressive swimmer’s physique. But she had trimmed her hair just as short; she was just as young, and just as determinedly intelligent.

  “In the last few months we’ve seen a rise in the numbers of robberies and assaults,” she explained. “Both break-ins and street crimes like the one your friend experienced. We’d like to establish whether or not there is a connection to any of the other cases.”

  He sensed that she was a little unsure about how to treat him. Was he a colleague or merely a relation of the victim? He had introduced himself at once and had stressed that his interest in “the case” was exclusively civilian in nature. The rest of the police force commonly had a strained relationship to the PET, and Søren didn’t feel like contributing to the general paranoia.

  “Nina’s memory of the assault is pretty foggy,” he said. “At least at this point. But you’ll see that for yourself when she wakes up.”

  They both glanced through the glass door into the room—no longer in the intensive care unit, but an ordinary ward—where Nina now lay fast asleep. Mid-West Jutland Police had not rushed over as soon as they heard that the “victim” was conscious, but some hours later Detective Sergeant Caroline Westmann had arrived, armed with smartphone, case files, and ambition.

  “I can come back later,” she said.

  “She’ll probably wake up in a little while,” said Søren. “She generally doesn’t sleep for hours at a stretch. If you have the time . . .”

  He didn’t want her to leave. Not until he had extracted a little more information from her.

  “Are there any witnesses?” he asked.

  She hesitated—again this uncertainty: colleague or outsider?—but apparently decided to allow professional courtesy to win the day.

  “A couple whose car was hit when the perpetrator made his escape,” she said. “And a few shoppers who saw him drive away. None of them have been able to give us a proper description, though they’re pretty much in agreement that there was only one. Right now the car is our best lead.”

  “Does this fit into your pattern?” he asked. “A singe perp?”

  “No,” she admitted. “In the other attacks two or three attackers were involved. They appear to be foreigners.”

  “Their nationality?”

  “We don’t know. The victim of one of the break-ins thought that his attackers spoke an eastern European language, but he wasn’t completely sure. They pulled a plastic bag over his head at the very beginning. He could have suffocated.”

  “Was that the intention?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe just random brutality. Maybe they just didn’t care whether the victim survived or not.”

  “Was a bag put over Nina’s head?”

  “No. But he placed a jacket over her face. A leather jacket, which he left behind, probably because he was interrupted.”

  “A jacket? That must have given you something?”

  “It wasn’t originally made in Denmark, but . . . it’s hard to say how much that means these days.”

  “DNA?”

  She nodded with some reluctance.

  “Yes. A few hairs, and some sweat stains. So if it is actually his jacket . . .”

  “Any matches?”

  “We haven’t received the results yet.”

  “Do you have any DNA from the other cases?”

  “Saliva from a few cigarette stubs, but we’re not even sure that they belong to anyone from the gang. Otherwise, they’ve been pretty careful.”

  He had the urge to take notes, but knew that it would most likely cause the stream of information to dry up. It was one thing to keep him informed in order to be polite, but something else entirely to let him take part in the investigation.

  “What about the car, the one he was driving? You said you have something on that?”

  “Yes . . . We have a description and some paint traces from the collision. We think it was stolen—at least we’ve got a report on a black VW Passat that fits the bill. So . . . find the car, and we may find other leads. Or even the perp.”

  The optimism in Westmann’s voice had a hard-won quality to it. Most likely, thought Søren, the attacker had dumped VW car as soon as he was able, and the young DS knew that perfectly well. That this jaundiced assessment of her own chances did not cause her to give up was admirable in his eyes.

  He had once been just as enthusiastic. About a hundred years ago.

  Damn it, he thought. They’ll never find him if that’s all they’ve got. And what if . . . what if it wasn’t a random robbery? What if it was personal and deliberate and directed at Nina?

  If that was the case, there was every reason to expect the man to try again.

  THE PHILIPPINES, THREE YEARS EARLIER

  Strange that it could be so easy to travel.

  Five hours ago Vincent and Bea had been sitting in a taxi on the way to the airport in Manila, watching the glitteringly hot tin roofs of the slums slip by outside. No stinking jeepney and sweaty T-shirts for them. Just cool air conditioning, a very short line at the check-in and then a bite to eat while they waited to board. Now they lay in matching orange striped lawn chairs, gazing out across the Pacific, even though it had really just been the plan for Bea to stay with her cousin in Manila for a week or so. Vincent had planned trips to the movies, meals at some cheap restaurants, and strolls along the marina. Nice enough, but perhaps a little lacking in home comforts. Female visitors to his six-by-nine closet of a dorm room were bawal: strictly forbidden. But then Vadim had turned up with his big smile and the promise of surfing and flame-red sunsets, waving free tickets to Samal, the family’s resort near Davcao City. Both Vincent and Victor must join him, he insisted, and Bea was, of course, welcome as well.

  The waves beat faintly and rhythmically against the beach, and when Vincent closed his eyes it seemed almost hypnotic. They were holding hands, he and Bea. They had crooked their fingers together over the gap between the chairs. Bea’s hand was still wet after her most recent dip in the water. She was wearing the new bikini that Vadim had given her when they met him and his girlfriend at the airport.

  At the sight of Diana and the super-expensive designer skirt carelessly wrapped around her slender hips, Bea’s self-

  confidence had plummeted.

  “I don’t have . . . those kinds of clothes,” she whispered to Vincent.

  Vadim wasn’t supposed to hear her, but he did.

  “All you need on Samal is a swimsuit,” he said. He measured her expertly with his eyes and bought the robin’s-egg blue Dolce & Gabbana on the spot. It meant nothing to Vadim that this was an expensive brand and that the bikini cost the equivalent of a month’s spending money for Vincent. It wasn’t arrogance, more a form of blindness developed through a lifetime in his father’s marble palace.

  Now Bea reclined in her chair, looking the very picture of upper-class elegance, just like the girls they had seen by the resort pool—only more beautiful. Her skin glowed golden in the sun, and in unguarded moments Vincent couldn’t help glancing at her slender, smooth thighs and the robin’s-egg bikini, which hid what bikinis were supposed to hide and no more. Bea had small high breasts. Her stomach was flat and smooth with discreetly drawn stomach muscles. Just above the edge of the bikini bottoms there was a delicate dark birthmark, which he des
perately longed to touch. He had never seen her like this before. Almost naked.

  Feeling yet another erection coming on, he turned over onto his stomach and raised himself up on his elbows.

  “Do you like it?”

  Bea sat up and looked across the water, fingering her narrow gold necklace—a gift he had given her on the one-year anniversary of their engagement.

  “It’s beautiful here, Vincent. And I like your friends, but . . . It’s so different. As if you suddenly moved to a different planet. It seems wrong. How do you hold on to yourself when you live in a place where no one knows who you are? Your family . . . everyone you have always known.”

  She was so serious. He smiled, leaned across the narrow gap between the two lawn chairs and kissed her carefully on the mouth. Her lips were endlessly soft and tasted of salt after the dip in the Pacific.

  “With a bit of luck,” he said, “this will also be our world one day. When I finish my degree and start to make money. You might as well get used to it.”

  “You think so?”

  She looked at the distant ocean-going ships with a serious expression.

  Even though he was only two years older than she was, he sometimes thought of Bea as a child. She was still living with her parents while she studied to become a nurse. Ate with her parents in the evening and played with the dog before going to sleep under the slow-turning ceiling fan. Her childhood room was still completely unchanged, with the little desk against one wall, the bed against the other, and her textbooks piled neatly on the bedside table next to the lamp.

  Vadim called them from the wide porch of the house, as he emerged balancing a couple of neon-colored drinks. Soft pop music drifted through the open patio doors.

  “Are you coming?”

  Bea and Vincent got up. He was already a bit groggy from the heat and the sharp light across the sea. Bea, on the other hand, walked with a dancer’s balanced steps, a thin beach shawl wrapped around the blue bikini. He could see her dark, soft silhouette through the light material, and he felt a touch of something that had to be happiness. A sense that he was finally young in the way he ought to be. With a lightness that he had observed in others. Carefree as he had never felt before.