The Considerate Killer (7 page)

“It can't have been easy,” he said, as a form of compromise.

Hanne Borg smiled bitterly.

“No,” she said. “It wasn't. Nina found him. But you probably know that.”

“Oh . . . no, she . . . didn't tell me that.”

“The old house had a bathroom in the basement. That's where he was, in the bathtub . . . For a child to see something like that . . . it's not something you get over in a hurry.”

It seemed to him that there was a kind of warning in her tone—perhaps an attempt to ensure that he knew what he was getting into?

“No, I understand,” he just said. “It's pretty remarkable that she . . . functions so well in a crisis now.”
Terrifyingly effective
was the description that occurred to him. He would never forget the expression on her face when she rammed the knife in between his fourth and fifth rib.

“Oh, yes,” said Hanne Borg. “She's excellent in a crisis.”

That was all she said, but Søren didn't need glasses to read the subtext: it was life between the crises that was a challenge for Hanne's daughter.

That was probably his own Achilles heel as well. He certainly had not excelled when it came to creating a life beyond the stresses of his job. He felt he was at his best at work—his sharpest and most alive. Or . . . that was the way it had been.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

He pushed aside the thought of Torben and his damned sick leave and checked his watch.

“Yes, thank you, a quick cup,” he said. “I have a meeting at the police station in an hour or so.”

“About Nina?”

“Yes. I'd like to see if I can help the investigation along a bit. It would be nice if we could find the assailant.”

Caroline Westmann was
perhaps not exactly happy to see Søren, but she took it well.

“How is your friend?” she asked.

“Making progress,” he said. “She'll probably be able to go home in a few days.”

“She still doesn't remember anything about the attack?”

“No, unfortunately not.”

“Ah, well. Can't be helped, I suppose.”

“In some cases memory returns with time,” he said. “I'm just not sure we have that time.”

She waved in the direction of her colleague's empty chair, and he sat down. The office was so newly renovated that you could still smell the paint, and the bulletin boards had not yet taken on the usual patina of old agendas, memos, newspaper clippings and family photos.

“Any particular reason for this urgency?” she asked.

“I took the liberty of calling a coroner I know.” Søren fished a folder out of the weekend bag that still contained everything he had managed to bring from Copenhagen. “Viborg Hospital was kind enough to forward her records, X-rays, scans, and so on.”

Caroline Westmann raised one eyebrow.

“And?” she said.

“I wanted to determine the intention of the blow —was it just to pacify, or was this, in fact, an attempt to kill. The doctors in Viborg were somewhat cautious about offering an opinion.”

“But your friend the coroner wasn't?” There was a clear irony in Westmann's tone.

“Oh, yes, the usual reservations. But . . .”

“But what?”

He pushed the folder across the table to her. Written conclusions, he had learned in the course of a long career, simply carried more weight than oral summations.

“The first blow would have been more than sufficient to make the victim unable to fight back. And the second blow
could
have killed her. If there had been just slightly more power behind it, if the angle had been a bit different . . .”

“I can guess where you're going with this,” said Caroline Westmann. “But for now we're calling it aggravated assault, not attempted murder.”

“Why?”

“Because the victim's life—according to the doctors—was not in immediate danger.”

“She has a fractured skull!”

“I can only repeat what Viborg Hospital said. Neither of the blows were struck with what they would describe as ‘deadly force.'”

She hadn't opened the folder. Søren fought an urge to do it for her, to force her to read the words—even though most of them were his.

“If the angle had been different . . .” he began.

“Children who grab playmates by the neck while fooling around in the school yard can put their lives at risk,” she said. “That doesn't mean that they intend to kill each other.”

“He hit her in the head with an iron bar. Twice! Are you suggesting he was just being playful?”

His tone had become as corrosive as it did on the occasions when had reason to call one of his people out for carelessness of the kind that
could
put lives in danger. He couldn't quite help himself, and he saw her react—because he was older, because he was of higher rank.

“No, okay, poor example,” she said. “But it is really hard to say precisely when something stops being simple violence and becomes deadly force—particularly when the victim does in fact survive. You know the fine points of the law at least as well as I do.”

“And it's a question of resources,” he said.

“Yes, frankly, it is—a challenge with which you are also familiar!”

She looked at him with a hint of defiance, and he reminded himself that he still wanted to keep what access he had to her information. If he made her lose all sympathy for him and for Nina's case, it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to simply refuse to speak with him. He had no professional role whatsoever in her investigation, folder or no folder.

“Any news about the car?” he asked mildly.

Her shoulders relaxed a bit—she didn't like being in conflict with him, he noted. Good. He might be able to use that later.

“It was found in the parking lot behind a shopping center this morning. He had set fire to it, but the night watchman saw the flames and was able to put out the fire with a foam extinguisher before it burned altogether.” She sighed. “We probably shouldn't count on finding too many DNA traces there, though.”

“Any witnesses?”

She shook her head.

“It's on the outskirts of town and quite deserted after closing hours. Not a soul except the watchman and his German shepherd. But he thought he heard a car drive off—he described the sound of the engine as ‘sports car–like.'”

“That doesn't give you much to work with,” Søren growled.

“No. I really hope your girlfriend recovers enough to give us a lead.”

Søren nodded slowly.

“So do I,” he said.

Nina considered the
lunch tray with an acute lack of enthusiasm. According to the menu that had been circulated, it was “oriental veal casserole with mashed potatoes and a symphony of seasonal vegetables,” but she didn't think there was anything remotely orchestral about the spoonful of defrosted supermarket greens.

“Would you like some?” she asked her mother.

“No, thank you.” Hanne Borg rummaged around in her bag and handed a cell phone to her. It was Nina's own Nokia. “Here. Daniela dropped by with it yesterday.”

Daniela was one of the secretaries at the clinic. She lived not far from the house on Cherry Lane.

“Thank you.” Nina put it in the night table drawer. Then she set aside to barely sampled lunch tray.

“Are you allowed to get out of bed?” her mother asked.

“Yes. As of today. They'd like me to move around a little now, in fact. The risk of thrombosis and all that.”

“Why don't we go into the lounge and have a cup of coffee instead? I brought you one of my old robes.”

There wasn't a soul in the lounge—most people were in their rooms, having their lunch. On the corner table stood that damned vulgar bouquet, spreading its cloying soap-like scent. Nina decisively turned her back on it, liberated a thermos from the rolling cart, and sat down by the large window facing the park. It was a grey, blustery day, but the Japanese maples flamed bright yellow and scarlet against the darker backdrop of the evergreen hedges, giving Nina a violent attack of indoor claustrophobia. She looked with envy at the lucky visitor seated on one of the lime-green benches across from the main entrance. A greenish-brown parka with a fur-lined hood made it impossible to determine whether it was a man or a woman, at least from up here. Was it already so cold that you needed polar equipment?

Nina poured coffee into two white institutional cups.

“It says ‘patients only,'” her mother pointed out and with a flip of her finger indicated the Dymo strip that adorned both the thermos and its lid.

“You're a patient too,” said Nina.

Her mother gave a small snort.

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

“What did they say?” Her mother had come straight from a checkup in oncology.

“That I'm well enough to receive the next dose of poison.”

“Good.”

“Yes, I suppose so. All things considered.”

Silence descended between them, heavy and brooding. Nina freely admitted that she was no expert in small talk, but her mother was usually better at it.

“What's wrong?” she finally asked.

Her mother raised her head. The wig looked so much like her own hair that it was only the unnaturally well-coiffed look that gave the game away. That and the fact that Hanne Borg had applied a bit more makeup than usual. Camouflage. Don't show weakness!

“You've got children, Nina,” said her mother at last.

Nina just barely stopped the sarcastic
I know that
that was on her lips.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I think you know.”

“No. Not really.”

“Ida and Anton are coming tomorrow.”

“Half-term break.” Oh God, she actually
had
managed to forget. She
was
a bad mother. “With a bit of luck I'll be able to go home tomorrow,” she said quickly, “or at the latest, the day after. Can you manage for that long?”

“That's not the issue.”

“What do you mean then? I'm sorry if I'm a bit slow, but that can happen when someone cracks your skull.”
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid comment, she knew it as soon as she'd said it.

“Nina. Do you want your sixteen-year-old daughter to ask herself why she never meant enough to her mother for you to
stop
all of that? And Anton. Anton is only nine. Do you really want to create an abyss in his life to match your own?”

“Mom!” The outburst was everything she had hoped it wouldn't be—hurt, accusing, shaky, and on the verge of tears.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart. But sooner or later you have to realize that it can't go on.”

“It wasn't me . . . I didn't do a damn thing to deserve—”

“No. Not directly. Not this time. But Nina, it's no more than . . . what is it, five months? . . . since the last time you ran out on them.”

“I didn't run!”

It wasn't fair. No way was that fair. She had
tried
. The entire vacation had been an attempt to see if they could make it work again, she and Morten and the kids. Morten had a conference in Manila—the Sixth Annual Offshore Oil and Gas Conference in the polished and globalized SMX Convention Center, very exciting. They'd had a week's beach vacation at a resort before the conference began, and the second week they stayed with one of Morten's business connections in a gilded, middle-class ghetto about twenty-five kilometers from the polluted congestion of the city proper, with a pool and palm trees and a housekeeper—sweet, motherly Estelle, who had fallen for Anton's blond charm within seconds.

“What would you call it then? Morten said you were gone from dawn to dusk for four days straight.”

“Three. It was only three! Mom, there was an accident. A terrible one. There were so many dead and wounded, and they had no idea . . . They needed qualified people. Did you expect me to sit and twiddle my thumbs by the pool while people were dying around me?”

“Nina-girl, you
can't
save the entire—”

“
Don't call me that!”
Nice. Now she had shot out of her chair and stood with two fists floating somewhere near chin level, like a boxer with his dukes up. Her head was pounding, and she forced herself to lower her hands and breathe more calmly.

Her mother had not twitched an eyelid. She merely sat there sipping the patients-only coffee, wearing her wig and chemo camouflage, and considered Nina with a relentless and unshakable Mom-gaze.

“Nina. You have two children who are afraid of losing you, and you need to deal with that, whether you want to or not.”

She had no defense. She couldn't deny it. But she really
had
tried. She had turned down several offers for overseas work; she had even quit her job at the refugee center. She no longer used her free time to help illegal immigrants who didn't dare approach the normal healthcare system. There was a clinic now where they could receive help anonymously, she had told herself sternly. She had started therapy. What more did they want? Yes, from a narrow Danish nuclear family point of view, it had been idiotic to volunteer that day in Manila. But it had happened less than five kilometers from that fucking swimming pool, and Estelle had been frantic because she had a little sister who lived in one of the apartment buildings that had collapsed. Nina hadn't exactly sought it out.

“Don't you dare get between me and my children,” she finally said. “Just stay out of it! Just how brilliant were
you
as a mother? On a scale of one to ten?”

She saw the sting go in. Hanne Borg froze for the briefest of seconds and appeared unable to reply.

Five minutes later
Nina regretted it, of course. She usually did. It was so easy to think good, loving thoughts about her mother from a distance; it was the hand-to-hand combat that did her in. She stood at the window and watched Hanne Borg leave the hospital and walk through the park toward the visitor's parking lot in the gathering autumn gloom. She was leaning into the wind, walking more slowly than usual. Not tottering, exactly, but without her usual stubborn energy. Damn it. Exactly how rotten a person did you have to be to take out your own frustrations on your cancer-stricken mother?