Lene Kaaberbol - Death of a Nightingale

Darkness had long since fallen outside among the pear trees. Babko yawned again, and even in the soft light from the Tiffany lamp his face looked worn.

“Do you want me to drive you to a hotel?” asked Søren. “Or do you want to go back to headquarters?”

“Headquarters.” Babko yawned again. “There’s nothing wrong with the bed there. And if Savchuk checks in, it’s best if I’m there.”

“You don’t like it—that he doesn’t check in.”

“No. It’s not good. For him or for me.”

Without a doubt that was why the little piece of paper with the registration number had been handed over.

“Can you give me what you have on the Doroshenko case?” asked Søren to see if the cooperation stretched even further.

“You have the case folder.”

“Yes. I mean everything you have.”

The quieter version of the laughter. “Okay, honest cop. But I need it back.” Babko pulled a USB drive out of the inner pocket of his suede jacket and handed it to Søren.

AFTER GIVING THEdogs a final airing in the garden, they drove back to headquarters. Babko disappeared in the direction of the apparently entirely satisfactory bed in the basement, while Søren headed toward the Communication Center under the roof of what had once been the women’s prison. The noise was muted but ongoing. Only one of the operators looked up when Søren entered, and her gaze immediately slid back to the screen in front of her.

At the back of the high-ceilinged room sat a nearly bald man with round, well-padded shoulders that filled his light blue uniform shirt to the bursting point. Søren raised a hand. “Hello, Carlo,” he said.

Duty officer Peter Carlsen smiled broadly and stuck two fingers in the air, continuing to speak on the telephone without missing a beat. When he was done, he got up and patted Søren on the shoulder with a smack that could be heard even through the stream of reports.

“Sonny boy. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Playing interpreter, for the most part. You’ve got a Ukrainian in the house.”

“Oh, him. Is he of interest to the PET?”

“We’re just helping each other out,” said Søren vaguely.

Back at the police academy, the girls had given Carlsen the nickname Don Carlo because of a certain relaxed Latin lover charm. The name had stuck long after the pitch-black hair had disappeared and a middle-aged spread had asserted itself.

“What can I do for you?”

“The Ukrainian has a colleague, a Colonel Savchuk, who is … well, somewhat Absent Without Leave. He drove off Friday afternoon and hasn’t been in contact with anyone since. We’d like to find him, of course.” Søren handed Carlo the paper with the registration number. “So if anyone sees this … it’s a BMW with Ukrainian plates.”

“Okay. Is it the PET or headquarters who wants to know?”

“Both. And I’d very much like a personal tip-off right away.”

“That’ll cost you a beer.” Carlo gave him an exaggerated conspiratorial wink.

“You are aware that you look like a fawning headwaiter when you do that, right?”

“Deal or no deal?”

“Deal.”

“Good. And really … don’t be such a stranger, huh?”

Søren agreed and headed home to Hvidovre to dig into Babko’s files. It wasn’t the same as having live witnesses to work with, but right now it was his best chance to get to know Pavel Doroshenko.

It was strange the way a change in your perspective could change a place.

The Coal-House Camp had been Natasha’s home for many months, but from the edge of the woods, it looked foreign to her again. She was staring narrow-eyed down at the children’s barrack from the little hiding place she had arranged under some low-hanging pine branches. It was dark now and had been for a long time. The evening had drifted into night while she’d sat hunched in her hiding place, but she felt no tiredness—just a background throb in her fingers and toes.

The camp’s low barracks seemed stooped against the cold. The snow veiled the walkways, lawns and benches and made Natasha think of the cotton-ball snow landscape Katerina and she had been allowed to construct together in the prison’s creative workshop last year. Katerina had arranged a cave for elves under a substantial piece of bark and placed other elves made of pipe cleaners outside the cave and on the little mirror that was supposed to look like a snow-covered pond.

“Should we add a troll too?” she had asked and had hesitantly run a hand through the box filled with wooden beads and pinecones.

“There are no trolls in elf-land,” said Natasha.

“And not in real life either?”

Katerina’s tone was different, and Natasha’s trained ears instantly picked up a change in the rhythm of her breathing.

“Definitely not in real life,” Natasha had said, as solidly and calmly as possible.

“But the camp isn’t elf land.” Natasha could hear Anna as clearly as if she had been standing next to her in the glittering snow. “The camp is a trap. You are the fox, and Katerina is the juicy piece of meat in the trap.”

“I know,” whispered Natasha. “I’ll be careful.”

The sense that Anna was with her evaporated as soon as she spoke out loud. No one was looking out for her now. The dark was dark, the cold was cold, and she was alone.

A thin but feminine shape moved behind the third window from the left. She assumed it was Nina. It was good that there was a woman with Katerina, but at the same time, it made things more complicated. Natasha opened and closed her hand around the knife handle in her pocket and attempted to hold back the racing panic that made her heart beat much too hard and fast. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on the weight of her body pressing against the earth, the cold air, the tree trunk’s gnarly contours when she leaned back a little.

They had to get away, she and Katerina. Evil had come to Denmark now, and it was no longer safe here. But as long as Nina was awake and sat in Katerina’s room with the lights on, Natasha had to wait. Anything else would be too risky. She would be seen. Nina would raise the alarm and call the police.

She tried to think about something else. About the very first days in the camp when Denmark had still looked like a safe haven. In the little leaflet she was given, it said that Denmark was a democracy, and that there were more pigs than people living here, as if the two were somehow connected. On the way here, she had seen the great refrigerated trucks with pictures of grinning porkers on the side, and for some reason it made all the horrors fade a little then. As if nothing wicked could reach her here in this ridiculous little, flat Bacon Land, where even the pigs smiled on their way to the slaughterhouse. Back then the fence had seemed a protection against the dangers she had run from. Even the most ordinary things—for example, the sight of the plastic chairs that were stacked every evening on the tables in the cafeteria with their legs up—brought tears to her eyes because it all seemed so ordered and calm. Even the fact that everything was so worn and nothing was clean for very long, even that was somehow reassuring—they weren’t in Kiev anymore, in the apartment’s traitorous luxury; it was more like Kurakhovo and the smell of her childhood. Katerina’s sheets were patterned with nice little Scandinavian trolls, and Natasha had an odd feeling of being at summer camp with a lot of friendly people who were not out to kill her.

Later the despair set in. The grey fear of rejection cast a pall over the contours of the camp. As inhabitants disappeared, she knew she risked the same thing—knew the only thing she had won with her flight was a delay. She saw the fence for what it really was: a barrier to control the people inside, not a protection against the rest of the world. The greatest danger of all was let in through the main gate in the form of the apparently good-natured policemen who came to collect those who were being sent home. Even the Moomintrolls on Katerina’s comforter began to look cruel, with devilish, taunting, superior smiles.