Bo Michaëlis - Copenhagen Noir

Down between the woman’s legs, the doctor lady reached out with both hands and made a quick turning motion, and Taghi heard the wet sound from the baby slipping out onto the white towels.

It was a boy, and he was already screaming.

“Blessed Virgin, Mary full of grace, free me from this pain, Gaeta, Gaeta, Lord have mercy upon me, may all your saints protect me, and I will honor you… honor you…” Chaltu had to pause for a moment because God’s fist squeezed the air out of her, but she continued the litany in her head and time disappeared for her; it was the priests’ mass she heard, she thought she could smell the incense and feel the pressure, not from labor but from the crowd, all trying to catch a glimpse of the procession, the long parade of holy men clad in white costumes trimmed in red and gold. “ Hoye, hoye ,” the children sang, swaying and clapping their hands, and farther forward she could see the Demera, the holy bonfire waiting to be lit. The Meskel festival had arrived in Addis Ababa, and she was a part of it, swaying in rhythm to it, and she felt uplifted, she felt like she could float above the crowds and see over them instead of standing there among backs and thighs and shoulders and legs.

“Chaltu, push. Go on now, push!”

Hoye, hoye … be joyful, for today the true cross is found, praise God Almighty for today all sins are forgiven… and Jacob’s eyes gleamed at her, his hands supported her so she didn’t stumble despite all the people around her pushing and shoving. In that moment it made no difference that she hardly knew him, that he was only home for a visit, that he wasn’t the one she was supposed to marry. She loved him, loved the open look in his eye, his rounded upper lip, the way his earlobe attached to his neck. Loved him, and wanted to make love to him. It was as if the holy Eleni herself smiled upon them and promised them that their love would be clean and unsinful. Hoye, hoye . Today life will conquer death.

But why did it hurt so badly? She no longer understood this pain, no longer remembered the baby, instead she called for Jacob, again and again, but he faded away from her, as did the priests, the singing and clapping children, and the bonfire, the flames of which were supposed to show her the way to salvation.

God’s hand crushed her, she could neither think nor scream. She could just barely sense that she was surrounded by strangers, and that the arm she was clinging to wasn’t Jacob’s.

“Look, Chaltu. It’s a boy. You have a son.”

They laid a tiny, wet creature, a baby bird, on her stomach. Could it really be hers? She knew she should hold it, but her arms felt cold and heavy as stone.

It took several minutes before she realized that the baby had been born, and that she was still alive. A miracle, it was, and she only slowly began to believe it. For the first time in many days she felt something other than pain and fear. She raised her heavy arm and curled it around the baby-bird child. Breathed in its odor. Began to understand. Hoye, hoye, little one. We are here, both of us. We are alive.

Nina regarded Taghi’s tensed-up face. She sensed that the truce was over. The umbilical cord had been cut and tied off. The placenta lay intact and secure in the plastic basin she’d brought along from the clinic. The little boy whimpered in Chaltu’s arms, pale against her dark skin. And Nina’s reign had ended with the birth. Now they were back to the corpse and everything death brought with it.

Farshad said something or other, his voice catching nervously. Taghi answered him, negatively Nina thought, but she wasn’t sure. How terrifying it was that they could discuss what to do with her without her understanding a word. Taghi had said that they didn’t kill Brahge, and she couldn’t really believe he was a cold-blooded murderer. They aren’t evil, she told herself, and tried not to think how absolutely normal, unevil people could do horrible things if they were pushed far enough.

“Why don’t you just leave?” she said. “You can take Chaltu and the baby with you, and I’ll wait until you’re long gone before I call the police.”

“Yeah, right,” Djo Djo said, and scratched himself quickly and a bit too roughly on the cheek.

Taghi said something sharply, obviously an order. Djo Djo protested, and Farshad started to titter nervously, maybe at what Djo Djo had said. But finally the brothers left the apartment. Nina saw them through the window, lifting the tarpwrapped body and carrying it over to the van.

All of a sudden they were rushing frantically. They pitched the body in the van, threw themselves into the front seats, and roared off. Seconds later Nina could see why. On the other side of the canal, on Ørestads Boulevard, a police car was approaching slowly, its blue lights flashing.

Eggers stopped the patrol car.

“There’s a building with balconies,” he said. “And that van didn’t waste any time driving off.”

Janus shrugged his shoulders. “We’d better check it out,” he said. He had his regular black shoes on, not his winter boots. The radio hadn’t mentioned anything about snow when he left Allerød that morning at a quarter past seven.

Eggers called in the address. “We’re going in,” he told the shift supervisor. “But it looks peaceful enough.”

Janus sighed, opened the car door, and lowered his nice, black, totally inadequate shoes into the muddy slush. “Does anyone even live here?” he asked. The place was all mud, with construction-site trash everywhere, for sale signs in most of the windows.

“At least there’s light,” Eggers growled. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

The street door was open, a bit unusual nowadays. Eggers knocked on the door of one of the ground-floor apartments. After quite a while, a thin dark-haired woman opened the door. She stared at them with an intensity that made Janus uneasy.

“Yes?”

Eggers told her who they were and showed his ID. “We had a report from a passenger on the metro who saw someone fall from a balcony in this area. Have you noticed anything unusual?”

A whimpering came from within the apartment. It sounded like a baby.

“Just a moment,” she said, and closed the door in their faces. Eggers and Janus glanced at each other.

“She looks a little tense,“ Eggers muttered.

Then the door opened again, and this time she held a very small baby in her arms. “Sorry,” she said. “We just got home from the hospital and it’s all a bit new to him.”

The baby made a low murmuring sound, and Janus instinctively smiled. Lord. Such a tiny little human. No wonder his mother wasn’t too pleased about the disturbance. She was looking at the baby, not at them, and even Eggers was thawing out a bit, Janus noticed. There was something to this mother-and-child thing.

“Like I said, we just want to know, have you noticed anything?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It couldn’t have been here.”

“There was a van over here a little bit ago,” Eggers said.

“Yes,” she replied. “It was the plumber. There’s something wrong with the heat, and now we have the baby… we have to get it fixed.”

“Sure, of course. Well. Have a nice evening.”

The woman nodded and closed the door.

“I bet that plumber was after a little undeclared income,” Eggers said.

“Yeah. But it’s not our business right now.”

They walked back to the car. The snow felt even wetter and heavier now. Janus wished he’d at least brought along an extra pair of socks.

Taghi was elated when the police left. It was as if he’d forgotten all about threatening her with a knife a minute ago.

“ It was the plumber …” he said, in a strange falsetto mimicing her voice. “Fuck, you were good! They totally swallowed it.”