The Considerate Killer

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “But what is it supposed to do?”

  “The chicken is there to wake the conscience of the murderer,” said Vincent.

  Vadim carefully touched Diana’s hair.

  “Murderers like the kind who shot Victor don’t have a conscience,” he whispered, still staring at the yellow chicken. Its black eyes blinked at them, and it peeped very faintly. Scraped its feet against the barred bottom of the cage. “People from the slums are animals,” said Vadim. “And animals have no conscience.”

  He rose to his feet with abrupt violence.

  “I’m going outside to piss,” he hissed. “That chicken is freaking me out. All of this . . .” He gestured with his arms. “I can’t stand it. I need air.”

  Vadim returned half an hour later and sank down into the chair next to Diana’s. Pulled her close.

  None of them slept. They just sat there, Vadim with a hand curled loosely on Diana’s thigh. And suddenly there was something about that picture that made Vincent uncomfortable. Something that wasn’t right.

  He tilted his neck back and stared up at the rusty tin roof above his head. Details from the clinic in Las Pinas City came back to him, but it wasn’t Victor’s torn body he thought about. It was Commissioner Abiog as he had stood there in the doorway and smoked greedily and impatiently while he waited for them to pull themselves together. A little later he had said something about a red Mazda. Vincent was sure of that. There were many red Mazdas in Manila, but he still couldn’t help thinking of Martinez and his greasy grin when he had offered Vincent a lift and a night on the town in his ridiculous red rattletrap.

  His thoughts swam away from him. Some men in a corner of the room had begun playing cards, and shouts of triumph took turns with regretful grunts while the cards were slapped on the floor.

  At some point Vadim got up and collected three beers for them from an ice bucket outside. They drank in silence, and finally the grey morning light began to seep in through the cracks between the boards of the walls. Victor’s mother got up, looking ready to keel over from the many hours in her chair, and began to boil water for coffee.

  Vadim and Diana left the gathering that morning.

  Diana was not feeling well. After just one night the pallor on her face was leaden, and sweat formed a shiny film on her skin. She moaned faintly when Vadim half carried, half supported her down the path between the steaming paddies.

  Vincent had decided to stay.

  He wanted to escort Victor from the house and see him buried. He had done so few things right in his life until now, but this one task damn well ought to be within his capabilities. Three additional nights and a four-kilometer-long procession behind the hearse. It didn’t require thought. It was easy—like it had been for him when he went to school and just needed to do his homework to make everyone around him happy. He knew exactly what was expected of him.

  He walked back into the house with a cup of coffee in his hand and sat down. His eyes stung with exhaustion, and it took a while before he noticed that Vadim’s cell phone was lying on the floor. He picked it up, wiped it carefully on his shorts and let it slide into his pocket. Then he took it out again and looked at it for a long time before he went outside and began to scroll through Vadim’s contacts.

  Commissioner Abiog popped up as one of the first on the list. Both his cell and private landline. Vincent breathed in, the kind of inhalation you take before you dive, and called him.

  “Abiog.”

  The voice came without unnecessary polite trappings. Dry and professional.

  “Vadim Augustin Lorenzo.”

  Vincent’s voice broke a little. Vadim’s voice was deeper than his, but he hoped that the phone’s distortion would minimize the difference.

  “Yes?”

  Abiog sounded impatient, as if he was speaking to a difficult and nagging child.

  “I was just curious,” said Vincent. “You mentioned that there were witnesses to the murder of Victor Galang?”

  “Not to the actual killing. Someone saw a couple of guys run out of the area and drive away.”

  “And the car . . . ? Do you have any information?”

  “A red Mazda . . .” Abiog hesitated. Vincent pictured him picking his feet off his desk and leaning forward in his chair, maybe giving his secretary a sharp silencing look.

  Vincent had to continue with a certain caution.

  “Yes, you said that on the day. But has anything further come to light? A license plate or the like?”

  Vincent cursed inside at his attempt at jargon. It sounded as if he was in a really bad action movie.

  “What can I say,” said Abiog coolly. “The witnesses who saw it were idiots, and they didn’t remember the number. All they noticed was that the license plate was crooked, and that won’t get us very far in this town.”

  Vincent felt something cold move under his skin, his teeth began to chatter and he almost dropped the telephone on the floor. He fixed his gaze on Victor’s coffin. Tried to concentrate.

  “Mr. Lorenzo?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not telling you anything new here, and you don’t sound as if you are quite yourself. Should I be worried?”

  Abiog didn’t sound worried. He sounded glacial.

  Vadim tore open the door the same moment Vincent stuck his key in the lock.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  His hand closed around Vincent’s throat. It wasn’t a tight hold, but still enough to push him back against the warm concrete wall in the stairwell. His head rattled like an empty seed pod after the long nights without sleep and the stuffy, endless trip back to Manila. He didn’t think he could worm his way out of Vadim’s grip, and even if he could have, he probably wouldn’t have done so. This had to be done. He had nowhere to run to.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My cell phone? Give it to me.”

  Vadim was going through Vincent’s pockets with his free hand, but that was not where he kept it. The phone was buried in the bottom of Vincent’s backpack, and for a short moment he considered denying everything and saying that he hadn’t found it. That he had no idea what Vadim was talking about. But he gave up. He could lie to most people, but for some reason not to Vadim. Vadim had always been able to look straight through him. Since the first time they met. That had been a part of the attraction.

  Vincent grunted and tried to ease the pressure on his neck with both hands. They were both sweating profusely. Vadim breathed through bared teeth. Vincent pointed down at the backpack and Vadim finally loosened his hold so Vincent could bend down and rummage through the contents. Sweaty laundry from the trip to Angeles. Sour underpants and a bag of dried bananas. Vadim’s flat Samsung had slipped down to the bottom and had run out of power.

  Vadim took it out of his hand and sent him a murderous look.

  “Abiog called,” he said. “Some guy had used my cell to call to call and ask questions about Victor. I assume it was you?”

  Vincent remained standing against the wall. He was having a hard time getting his breathing under control after Vadim’s attack.

  “It’s just that there were a couple of things I wanted to know,” he said. “If they had discovered anything, and so on.”

  “And had they, Vincent? Or are you in the process of solving it all by yourself?”

  He gathered his courage. Collected whatever remnants he had hidden somewhere in the hollow place in his chest. He wished he was Diana; he wished he was Victor, or Bea, or even little, intractable Mimi at home in San Marcelino. Why was it that only he, Vincent, had been created so damnably lacking and without a core? He was nothing but a thin and cracking hollow shell.

  “Does Martinez still work at your construction sites?”

  “Who?” Vadim narrowed his eyes. Retreated half a step.

  There was no chance in hell t
hat Vadim could have forgotten the watchman and the job he had sent him to do together with Vincent. He was lying.

  “Martinez has a car like the one that was seen out in the road the night Victor was shot. A red Mazda.”

  “And?” Vadim looked almost relieved. “Is that all? Do you know how many red Mazdas there are in the world? Vincent, my man, regardless of what you think, you’re seeing ghosts. Victor was shot by a couple of crackheads. It was just as random as being hit by a bus. Leave it alone. For your own sake. You’re killing yourself with this shit.”

  Vincent could feel that he had begun to shake. It came from inside, just like the time he had thrown up in the operating room, or the time he had been told to squat, naked and with his legs apart, in front of the man who circumcised the boys in their neighborhood. He had been allowed to hold an ice cube against his foreskin until the man waved his hand away with an impatient gesture, grabbed hold of Vincent’s member and probingly inserted a rounded bamboo stick between the foreskin and the head of the penis. He had pulled the foreskin down a bit, conferring with himself under his breath, while he drew a imaginary line across the skin with one finger, determining where the cut should be. Vincent was then allowed to press the ice cube over the stretched foreskin once more.

  Up until that point nothing had hurt.

  Then the man brought his scalpel down in a long cut. The pain was harsh and burning and went on and on while the man carefully cut and scraped his way through all the layers of skin.

  He had been afraid to die then.

  And he was afraid to die now. He was so terribly afraid of death. He felt as if he was standing on the edge, teetering on the borderline between two worlds. In one world, everything was familiar. Vadim was his friend and Victor’s friend and would never harm either of them. In the other . . . on the other side of that line, nothing held true. No rules were unbreakable, no crime unthinkable.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Vadim’s gaze was observant, and still sharp. “You trust me, don’t you? Haven’t I taken good care of you in all the time we’ve known each other? Stay with me, Vincent. Together, there’s nothing the two of us can’t do.”

  Vincent tried to smile, but his jaw felt wooden. A bit of saliva trickled out of the corner of his mouth, and he couldn’t even wipe it away. “I want to go back to San Marcelino,” he said. “I think I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  Vadim nodded, smiling faintly.

  “Of course you have to go back to San Marcelino,” he said calmly. “That’s where your family is. I’ll help you. Really, I will. I’ll help you, but there’s just one thing that you need to do for me first. A trip to Denmark. Business. Can I count on you?”

  “Are you sure that’s how you want to do it?” asked Martinez with interest. “Why not use that?” He indicated the Taser with the slice of pizza he was devouring.

  “You can’t kill people with that,” said Vincent automatically, and cursed inwardly for even allowing himself to be dragged into the discussion.

  They were still parked at the rest stop. The Land Cruiser was only a few meters away, with the nurse and her husband securely tied to the interior. Vincent had insisted they talk outside of their hearing. He knew that it was unlikely that the two Danes spoke Tagalog, but it still seemed macabre to sit and plan . . . plan what was going to happen, while the victims were listening. Such considerations did not bother Martinez, who had complained about having to eat his food in the cold car instead of the warm one. If it had been up to him, they probably would have stopped at McDonald’s on the way, captives in tow. Vincent could never quite tell if Martinez was incredibly cold-blooded or just stupid, but in the end he had let himself be persuaded to make do with half a Hawaiian pizza reheated in the toaster oven of the camper.

  Martinez continued to look at the Taser with unfulfilled gadget lust.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “If you do it for long enough? Zing, zing, zing, zing, zing . . . maybe five or six minutes. We could try.” He stuffed the rest of the slice into his mouth and offered another one to Vincent. “Do you want some?”

  “No, thanks,” said Vincent. The smell of melted cheese was making him feel sick. Martinez made him feel sick. He wanted to go home. Not to Manila but to San Marcelino. To Bea and the children—Carlito and the little new one on the way. Vadim had promised, promised that he would be allowed, that this “favor” was the last.

  “Simon says,” he had said, with a mixture of pity and loneliness in his eyes. “Simon says go home. You’re lucky, my man. You know where ‘home’ is. Off you go, to the papaya fields and Momma’s little brown hens.”

  “What about you?” Vincent couldn’t help asking, in spite of everything, in spite of the suspicions that ripped and tore at him, in spite of what Vadim had asked him to do.

  Vadim stretched lazily.

  “I’ll manage. Diana needs someone now. Someone who’ll be there for her. My father has spoken to her father. It’ll work out. If you don’t fuck up, that is. Okay? Promise me that.”

  “I just don’t understand . . .”

  “It’s the same as with the engineer, okay? The woman is blackmailing me. Making a lot of accusations that aren’t true. She’s European. Red Cross and all of that. The newspapers will believe her, and I can’t risk . . .” For a moment the panic shone so brightly and clearly in Vadim’s eyes that Vincent felt an absurd desire to pat his hand and say that everything was going to be all right.

  “Are you sure—” he began. Because he was far from certain that Robles had been the asshole that Vadim had claimed he was. What if the same was true of the nurse?

  “You’re goddamn right I’m sure!” hissed Vadim. “You don’t think I’d send you halfway around the world if I wasn’t sure? She’s a bluebottle, Vince. One of those flies that lay their eggs in dead animals and spread decay everywhere. Fat, yellow maggots pouring out . . .” His hands made odd cramped gestures in the air, as if both flies and maggots were fully visible to him. “You won’t fail me, right? Not now.”

  “Are you on something?” asked Vincent carefully. Vadim’s expensive aftershave was not entirely capable of overpowering the smell of day-old alcohol, but this seemed like more than an ordinary hangover.

  Vadim just shook his head.

  “Listen, Vincent, my man. I keep your secrets, right? Sweet little Bea doesn’t know anything. Your father and mother don’t know anything. You’ll get a job working for me as a ‘health consultant’; all you have to do is rubber-stamp the certificates in front of you so that the health insurance company coughs up the money. You can do that at home in the chicken run if that’s really what you want. We’ll find you an office. A secretary. A white coat, damn it. Just as long as you promise to come to Manila once in a while to keep the mold from growing on you. I’ll keep your secrets—if you help me keep mine. You and me. We’d do anything for each other, right?”

  His gaze was desperate, begging. And it was the desperation that made Vincent understand that this wasn’t just about a nurse who could tell destructive lies—or truths.

  The call to Abiog, the suspicion he had let Vadim catch a glimpse of . . . it had made the abyss open beneath both of them. It was as if they were standing on a glass floor that could splinter at any moment. Vincent could see into the abyss. He remembered the argument between Victor and Vadim. Vadim’s last desperate cry: “You’re my friend, damn it!” Victor hadn’t answered. He had walked out, and now he was dead. Vincent tried to imagine that it was God’s will, that there was a murky but fated connection between the broken bond of friendship and the broken lifeline. It would be easier and less painful than his tortured suspicions. But he knew that if he turned his back on Vadim now, if he didn’t pass this new, impossible test . . . the floor would surely shatter, and they would both plunge into damnation.

  For Vadim there was only one thing that could outweigh this latest betrayal. Vincent had to take a life—he had to
do precisely what he had suspected Vadim of doing. And Vadim wanted proof. Every step of the way had to be documented, photographed, and reported. Vincent knew very well that Martinez wasn’t just there as “backup” this time.

  He had agreed. Of course he had. Not because he seriously believed in the white coat and his triumphant return to San Marcelino, even though he regularly fantasized about it. It was more because he didn’t know how to do anything else when it was Vadim asking and because the consequences of a no were unimaginable.

  And so, here they were, he and Martinez, in a freezing cold Danish lay-by, with two captives in the van beside them, discussing how to dispose of one of them. How could something be so absurd and so inevitable at the same time?

  “You could run her over with the car,” said Martinez, licking cheesy grease stains from his fingers. “That one is heavy . . .” he pointed at the Land Cruiser. “If you aimed for her head, you would probably only need to do it once.”

  Vincent’s disgust took a huge leap up the nausea scale.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind, and we’ll do it my way.”

  “Okay, boss.” Martinez grinned and pried the last stray bits of burned pineapple out of the pizza box. “Let’s get started, then.”

  “No. First you have to get rid of the cell phone. The policeman’s. They can be traced.”

  “Does it really matter? In ten to twelve hours we’ll be miles up in the air, being served cool drinks by couple of sexy air hostesses.”

  “Yes, it really matters.” Vincent tried to speak calmly and carefully, like a patient teacher to a reluctant student. He had gradually discovered that this worked best. “Listen, it doesn’t have to take long. Find one of those diners where the long-range truck drivers pull in—didn’t we pass one the day before yesterday? Plant it in someone’s pocket or toss it through a side window if you can find one that’s open. Or stick it under a tarp; it doesn’t matter, as long as that phone ends up someplace very far from where we are now.”

  Martinez bowed his head and the grin disappeared.