I take a deep breath. In. And out. Have to remind myself to do even that. To remember to breathe. Slowly I approach, my hand grips the hammer, my teeth are cemented together. If it’s not a corpse, it would be nice if the person stood up now. A homeless person who fell asleep out here. Someone who went to a wild party, or a bachelor’s party. Sit down, boys, listen to this. Something or other. Give me something. Just so he sits up.
I reach the bundle. It looks like a girl. The foot sticking out is way too small and delicate and white to be a man’s. And the face … I still can’t see it from the hair, but it must be a girl.
Kris clears his throat behind me, and I wait, but nothing more comes. He doesn’t say anything. Just clears his throat.
She’s lying totally still, no sign of life from her. I hear myself say, “Hello?”
No answer. Of course.
I lean down and lift a corner of the brown felt blanket and glance underneath. It is a girl. A naked young girl. Small white breasts, chalk-white stomach, light pubic hair below. Hard to tell how old she is. Or was. With one finger I pull the hair off her face as best I can.
Fuck!
“What’s the matter?” Kris yells behind me. He hops down in the ditch and walks toward me.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s just that her eyes are still open.”
Not just her eyes, but her mouth too, frozen in an expression her murderer left her with. Because she must have been murdered. Why else would she have been abandoned here?
I try to warm my hands by blowing into the little cave they form in front of my mouth, but it’s no good. Kris is still standing by the body. Leaning over it. It looks as if he’s investigating it. What does he think he’s doing? He must think he’s a detective or something. It can’t be someone he knows. We’ve grown up together here in Vigerslev, gone to the same schools, been around the same people. I’d know if he knew her.
The sound of a train rumbles in the distance. It will be here in a minute, for sure. Kris walks over to me. “It’s a woman. I packed her in again,” he says.
We jump back around the noise barrier. It’s pure reflex. We always hide up here when the trains come by. If the engineer sees two boys on the tracks, the police show up shortly after.
We stand on the slope behind the barrier and look down at the community gardens, while the train roars past behind us. It’s dead down there. Just like everything else in the winter. Like the girl behind us. I realize that I’ve lost my hammer somewhere back there. I have to remember to grab it before we leave.
“Do you think it was him?” Kris says all of a sudden.
“Who?”
“The guy down at the booster station?”
I stare at a cottage in the community gardens, a small green house with red shutters and wide flagstones set in herringbone, all the way through the garden to the door, which has a row of potted plants on each side, and hidden underneath one of them is a key, but I can’t remember which one. I think that the owner must switch them around to confuse potential burglars, to confuse me, and yeah, fuck yeah, it makes sense. The guy we saw down at the booster station.
“Of course it was him!” I say. “If he was an electrician or a guard or had something he was supposed to be doing down there, he would have been in something his company owns. He’d be driving some lousy van and not that shitty little car.”
“He had these big dark sunglasses on,” Kris says. “I figured it was because of the sun in his eyes, but there wasn’t any sun down there.”
I don’t think Kris is right. It was sunny, but I don’t say anything.
“The license plate! Did you get his number?” I ask, even though it’s a dumb question.
He shakes his head. I do the same. The idea was good enough: call the police and tell them about the body and hand them the murderer at the same time. Just like that! Heroes of the day. TV and newspapers. Local boys find dead body. How much pussy could a guy score from that at school? Or in town?
“Have you seen anything in the news? Anything about reports of missing girls?”
I shake my head. I don’t watch much TV and don’t read any papers, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any girls missing. Not right now, anyway.
We’re back with the body. I lift the blanket up again. It’s soaked, heavy. It hasn’t rained for several days. Must be the night frost or something. She is so white, there’s nothing on her that isn’t white. She looks like a doll. Almost so much that it’s hard to believe she’s a corpse.
She doesn’t look very old, maybe a few years older than us, but no more.
Kris reads my mind. “She’s not a day over twenty.”
“How do you think she died?”
There is no visible sign of violence. Her body, her arms and legs, are the way they should be, there aren’t any broken bones, no bruises. She looks so perfect that it’s strange she isn’t.
“There,” Kris says, and points. There are marks on her throat. I lift her chin up a little, exposing a hand-sized dark spot that stretches around her throat. Kris shakes his head. “Twenty minutes. If we’d just been here twenty minutes earlier.” He has brought the screwdriver out again without me noticing it. “Just twenty minutes. It’s typical, why do bastards like this always get away with it? It would have been cool to catch him up here when he threw her off. Caught in the act. Fuckhead!”
I’m about to pull the blanket around her again when Kris grabs my wrist. He points the screwdriver at her stomach. “What the hell is that?”
“What? Her stomach?”
“No, on her stomach.”
I lean down a bit. Small white spots dot her stomach and breasts. It’s hard to see them because her skin is almost the same color, but they’re there. Sperm.
“Fucking sperm! So that fucker stood up here in broad daylight and came all over a girl he just killed?” Kris’s grip on the screwdriver turns his fist white, and he starts talking through clenched teeth. “Twenty minutes, man. Just twenty minutes earlier.”
I cover her with the blanket as best I can, and I try to throw up. But nothing comes.
It’s getting darker. We lean against the noise barrier. Even though I’m wearing three layers of clothes, I can feel the cold metal on my back. Kris is cooling off, but he’s still gripping the screwdriver. I can’t see the hammer anywhere. It won’t be easy to find now. But our little trip out into this residential area isn’t going to happen.
I try to pack her in better. The blanket really isn’t big enough, surely that’s why her head and foot were sticking out. I try to fold it around her anyway. It’s wet and heavy, and the tips of my fingers start to ache. It comes to me that she’s been out here longer than we thought.
“What if he comes back?” I say.
Kris looks at me. “What? Who?”
“Him. The killer. What if he comes back tomorrow to get off again? Isn’t that what they do, these sex killers?”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it,” I say. “That blanket is soaking wet, and it hasn’t rained a fucking drop for several days at least. So it’s the frost at night that made it wet.”
“Wouldn’t the blanket be frozen stiff?”
“Not for sure. It’s warmer in the daytime. So she’s been laying here since at least yesterday, and he came up here again today to get off.”
We stand there for a second, looking at each other under the railroad lights. Our breath forms small clouds of steam. Kris comes closer. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head.
“So you think he’ll come back?”
“Don’t they always? They have to admire their work, or whatever. That’s how they get caught. Kris, we saw him down on the street. If we wait till tomorrow and catch him there, we’ll be fucking heroes.”
We look down at the girl. “So we just let her lay here till tomorrow?” he asks.
I shrug my shoulders. “She won’t be any less dead from laying there. And nobody’s coming up here, so she won’t be found.”
“Yeah, we won’t even have to overpower him or anything, if he has a gun on him. We just get his license plate.”
“But don’t you think he saw us down on the street? I mean, since we saw him, he must have seen us.”
I think that over a second. “We’re just a couple of boys out drinking some beer to him. It doesn’t mean we found the body. Especially since he hid her so far in from the rails.”
On the way back we agree that he’ll return to the body at the same time of day. He’s been afraid of drawing attention to himself in the daylight, so he’ll want to come late in the afternoon when it’s nearly dark. Nighttime is no good because it’s too dark for him to enjoy his work. He needs enough light to get off on it. He might also come at sunrise, but people are more alert at that time of day, before going to work. We don’t dare take any chances, though, and we decide to meet here early tomorrow morning in case he shows up.
“He’ll for sure be coming from the same direction,” Kris says. “It’s the only place he can park in private. He’ll definitely be coming from the booster station.”
Kris is already there when I return at eight the next morning. He’s waiting at the end of the barrier, but I see him sticking his head out once in a while.
“You’re early,” he says, then bursts out: “What? What is it? What are you laughing at?”
“I’m early? How long have you been here?”
He doesn’t answer, he just looks at me as if he needs a few seconds to think. “So okay, I’ve been here ten minutes, fifteen at the most. I couldn’t sleep last night, how about you?”
I shake my head, even though it’s not true. I have slept, not much, but long enough to dream something weird, where I was chasing someone who was constantly just out of reach. Just when I was about to grab him, he disappeared around the curve of the railroad tracks.
The bundle is exactly the way we left it yesterday. And yet something is different. Not with the blanket. With her. Her head. And her foot sticking out. Is it just me, or has she turned gray?
“Kris, is she starting to stink? Does she stink?”
Kris shakes his head. “My nose is stopped up, I can’t smell for shit.”
I take a deep breath in through my nose, and even though we’re several meters from her I can smell it. A weak odor of rot. Apparently that’s how death smells.
It’s completely light now, and we hide behind the noise barrier. We settle in to wait. We stand on the slope, shivering from the cold, but we don’t leave. We both thought the only times he might show up were morning and evening, but we stay anyway. Neither one of us suggests we go home and come back later. We stay.
The trains pass by. Those from Sydhavn roll toward Roskilde, the ones from Roskilde toward Sydhavn. We stay hidden, counting them. Two pass by toward Sydhavn. Then nothing happens. A third toward Sydhavn, then one toward Roskilde. When it’s totally quiet on the tracks we can hear traffic down on Vigerslev Allé. The cars and buses driving by. We can hear people down there. Kids yelling at each other.
“I’ve had enough of this,” I say. “Let’s get something to eat somewhere.”
“What the hell are you talking about? We can’t leave now, what if he shows up?”
“Kris. I’m freezing my ass off. He’s not coming now, it’s too light. Come on, let’s go down and get something to eat. We can be back in an hour.”
He shakes his head. “I’m staying right here.”
I turn and walk down the slope. “I’ll pick something up for you.”
“Let’s call the police.”
Kris stuffs the last of the burger in his mouth and washes it down with soda. “Why?”
He’s pissed at me because it took longer to bring the burgers back than he’d expected. Incredible, how paranoid you can get when you’re on surveillance. All the way to the pizzeria and back I tried to find a route where I wouldn’t be seen. In case the killer was on his way. I crawled along the slope by the community gardens, looking for the hole in the fence, and when I couldn’t find it I had to climb over. It was harder on the way back because I had a big bag of food with me.
It’s already getting dark. We eat the last of the french fries. “A whole day’s gone by since we found her,” I say. “And there’s no sign of him showing up.”
Kris shakes his head. “No way. You said he’d come back. Maybe he couldn’t make it today. The bastard might have a wife and kids and all that. Maybe he’ll be here tomorrow. He’ll come.”
“Let’s just call the police, we’ll still be the heroes of the day ’cause it’s us who found her.”
“Maybe, but we’ll be even bigger heroes if we catch the guy too,” Kris says.
I’m not happy about this, especially since her smell has gotten stronger all day. If we let her lie until morning, how much worse will it get? I wonder. “Kris, we can’t just keep standing here, waiting for someone who might not even come back. She’s not getting any prettier to look at.”
“The man’s a psychopath, maybe it’s what turns him on.”
“Okay, but if he’s a psychopath there’s not a lot we can do …” There must be something I can say to convince him.
“Just leave it to me,” he responds, and suddenly he pulls a knife out from the inside pocket of his coat.
“Fuck! Kris, goddamn! What are you … Fuck!”
“Take it easy, I’m not about to kill anybody or anything. We just need to scare him, maybe cut him a little.”
“Kris, no, fuck it, we’re calling the police.” I pull my phone out, and I’m about to punch numbers when I get hit hard. Kris falls on me. His hands are on my shoulders, pushing them down, holding me against the cold ground. I can’t see the knife. I try to catch my breath.
“Kris, goddamn. Get off, you’re crushing me.”
He leans over and looks me right in the eye. “You’re not calling the police!”
“Get off me, goddamnit.” There’s a branch or something under me, he’s pressing my backbone into it.
“I said, you’re not calling the police. Right?” He presses my shoulders even harder. I can’t get the bastard off me.
“Okay, okay. I’m not calling the police.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“YES, GODDAMNIT! I promise.”
He lets go, and slowly I get to my feet. The tree limb has poked a hole in my coat, down at my lower ribs. My phone is halfway down the slope. Even from here I can see the number 1 on the display. That’s as far as I got. Kris offers a hand, and I shove it away. I can get up by myself. I just have to catch my breath.
“Kris, you fat bastard!” I stick a hand in under my sweater. My back is sore, but it’s not any worse than that. Fucking asshole.
“He’ll come back,” he says, and looks away.
I can smell her long before I reach her. It hasn’t left me, the smell, it followed me yesterday when Kris and I left her. I tried washing it off but it was still there. My mother didn’t seem to notice anything, maybe it was just me. When I got up this morning it was still there. It was worse on my coat. The hole in the back is bigger than I thought at first, or else it’s ripped out more, but it’s the only coat I have. I put an extra sweater on to keep warm.
I meet Kris on the lawn by the booster station. We haven’t planned to meet here. We didn’t make any plans at all after yesterday. He’s smiling strangely. Both his hands are in his pockets. I can practically see from his look that the knife is back in his inside pocket. “Morning,” he says, and smiles.
I say nothing, just walk past him, farther up toward the booster station and the railroad behind it. Why is he so happy? He follows, I hear him a few meters behind me. We keep moving along the path. He says nothing, but I can feel his smile knifing me in the back. Why is he smiling this way? He would have sai
d if the killer had been here. I could ask him, but I don’t want to. I don’t turn, I just keep walking. And he follows a few meters behind.
“Get the hell out of here!” I yell, while I run toward the crow with a rock in my hand. I don’t even come close to hitting it, but it’s enough to scare the crow. It flies over to the other side of the body for cover. I pick up another rock. The crow takes off again. This time it lands on the edge of the barrier. It looks down at us. Kris plods along over to me, his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t seem especially surprised. He’s not smiling anymore, but he’s not mad or all worked up.
“Shhh,” he says abruptly. “People can hear you when you yell that way.”
“Yeah? Fuck them. How many people you think yell ‘Get the hell out’ in one day in Valby?”
He shrugs and plods on, over to the body. The smell is much worse now. It feels warmer too. That, or else it’s because I’m wearing an extra sweater. The crow still sits there. I throw the rock, but it sees it coming. It flies up and away, disappears between the trees. If it has found her, other crows will for sure be coming along too. I look up. There are a few dark spots high up in the gray sky. But they fly away.
“Fuck! Look at this!” Kris is standing at the body. I stand beside him and look down. Her eyes, which had been staring at us before, staring at nothing, are punctured and almost gone.
My hand flies up to cover my own eyes, but I lower it immediately. It still smells like death here. The dark spots up in the sky are back. How well do crows see? Can they smell her from up there?
“Kris,” I say slowly, afraid that my voice is shaking.
“We’re not calling yet,” he says. “First he’s got to come, we’ll grab him, then we call.”
“Kris, if we let her lay here much longer, there won’t be anything left. Those crows are coming back as soon as we leave.”
“This was your idea. We find the killer and we’re heroes. It was your idea.”
“I know it. But fuck it, hey, I was wrong. If he doesn’t come back now, he’s not coming back.”
“No way. He’ll be back. It’s like you said. He’s got to get off one more time.”
Copenhagen Noir Page 18