Lene Kaaberbol - Death of a Nightingale

He tumbled out of bed, still with a heavy sensation of sleep and unreality weighing down his body, and lifted the shade a bit so he could see who it was ringing his bell at whatever hour it was in the night.

An adult and a child. They were both bundled up in down jackets and scarves, and it was probably more a sense of inevitability than actual recognition that made him conclude that it had to be Nina Borg and the girl. What was her name? Katerina?

He looked down at himself. Bare, middle-aged legs and boxer shorts. Where was that robe Susse had given him for Christmas? He grabbed a pair of sweatpants instead and pulled them on over his hairy legs.

He turned on the light in the hall and the entranceway. Through the flecked glass of his front door the figures were just vague silhouettes, but he had been right. It was Nina holding the hand of a skinny blonde girl. The girl was clutching a pink backpack.

“You were in the phone book,” said Nina. “Your address and everything. I didn’t think that was allowed when you were in the PET.”

“It doesn’t say than I am in the PET,” he said, feeling stupid with sleep and thoroughly unprepared. But despite the untimely invasion, he was glad to see her. “Come in.”

“They don’t know I’m here,” she said.

“Who?”

“The police.” She looked at him and corrected herself. “That is, the other police.”

“What happened?”

“He tried to kidnap Rina.”

“He?”

She gestured impatiently with her hand. “Someone. Not Natasha. Someone who uses gas grenades and infrared goggles.”

He took a deep breath. “What happened to the guards?” he asked.

“They … one was taken away in an ambulance. Because of the gas. A very young man. They say it’s critical, that he might die. He stopped breathing. He is under observation for brain damage. I took Rina and locked us into the walk-in refrigerator. Otherwise they would have taken her. Or rather, he would have. I didn’t see more than one person.”

Her eyes were huge. She was speaking calmly even though her sentences weren’t quite coherent. She looked peculiarly happy, like someone who has said all along that it would end badly and finally has been proven right.

“They still think it’s just Natasha,” she said; this time she apparently meant the police. “They don’t understand that Rina is in danger. But … you do. Am I right?”

“Maybe,” he said. He wouldn’t give her too much.

“You have to help me protect her,” she said. “Will you?”

The words came out all edgy and awkward. He sensed that she didn’t often ask for help.

“At least come in and have some breakfast,” he said. “I have to call my boss. You understand that, right?”

A cop killing. If the young policeman died, it would be a cop killing. No one would condone Nina’s disappearing act then. But when he looked at the little Ukrainian girl, about to collapse and breathing like a leaky balloon, he couldn’t quite blame her.

“Is he … not an idiot either?” she asked.

He wasn’t quite sure if Torben, with his adherence to rules and career focus, would be able to live up to her definition of non-idiocy. “He usually knows what’s what,” he said. “And he’s super smart.”

“Okay,” she said, as if he needed her permission.

To BE WOKENup in the middle of the night—or in this case, at a quarter to five on Sunday morning—was of course a part of the job for a man like Torben, but that didn’t necessarily mean he liked it.

“What is it now?” he said shortly.

“Everything has gone pear-shaped,” said Søren quickly. “Someone tried to kidnap the daughter from the Coal-House Camp, and one of the men from the guard detail is in intensive care. They say his life is in danger.”

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Could it be the girl’s mother?” asked Torben.

“It was a man. Of course you can’t exclude the possibility that it was at the mother’s request. But I’m calling because the girl is sitting in my kitchen right now with Nina Borg. And no one else knows.”

“For fuck’s sake, Søren. Why?”

“Because Nina is convinced that the girl would be in imminent danger if she stayed in the camp.”

“That woman is hostile to authority and borderline paranoid,” said Torben. “How on earth did she manage to walk off with the kid without anyone noticing?”

“I haven’t asked yet. But I would like you to contact our colleagues and explain to them that we are planning to provide Katerina Doroshenko with the necessary personal protection.”

“Søren, I can’t do that. Especially not if they have a dead colleague on their hands!”

“Maybe precisely for that reason. The girl’s safety is not their priority. They just want to get hold of the perpetrator and Natasha Doroshenko—and that’s not necessarily the same thing.”

“Do you know something? Or are you just guessing?”

“The original Ukrainian case against Natasha Doroshenko, that is, the killing of her husband, is based primarily on two circumstantials: the fact that she fled the country, and a confession from a violent criminal who claims that she paid him to attack Doroshenko.”

“That latter is perhaps more than circumstantial.”

“Torben. It’s Ukraine. You can extract confessions like that in so many ways.”

“Okay. I hear what you are saying. But who is ‘you’ in this case, and why would ‘you’ do so?”

Søren tried to structure his argument before answering. “The Ukrainian policemen who originally came up here to interrogate Natasha are from two different services—as you know, Lieutenant Babko is from GUBOZ. His colleague, a Colonel Savchuk, is from SBU.”

“Hold on,” said Torben. There was a creaking, followed by footsteps and the sound of a door being closed carefully. Torben had left the bedroom, Søren guessed, in order not to wake Annelise and to be able to speak freely.

“GUBOZ and SBU,” said his boss thoughtfully. “You have to ask yourself why they are interested in Natasha Doroshenko.”

“Precisely. Especially when one of them disappears without a word to anyone, apparently blindsiding his GUBOZ colleague completely. A colleague who was sent up here specifically to keep an eye on him.”

“What do you mean?”

As briefly as possible, Søren told Torben about Babko’s admissions and about the connection between Savchuk and Nikolaij Filipenko, Babko’s “clean man.” “Unfortunately, I think Nina Borg’s concern for the girl’s safety is well justified.”

“Because of Savchuk?”

“I have no grounds for claiming that. Not at the moment. One might equally well argue that Savchuk is missing because during his search for Natasha Doroshenko, he got in the way of the person or persons who attacked the Coal-House Camp.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“Right now I don’t believe anything. The closest I can come to a theory is that everything is connected to the killing of Pavel Doroshenko.”

“Mmm.” Torben had the habit of humming inarticulately when he was thinking something he wasn’t saying. “Go on.”

“It’s speculation.”

“Go on anyway.”

“Doroshenko was a journalist.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve looked through his articles. He published a good deal of controversial material with sensitive personal content.”

“Okay.”

“Presumably you remember the Gongadze case?”

“The journalist. The headless corpse, which they at first tried to avoid identifying. When they couldn’t get away with that any longer, it came out that the murder was committed on the orders of the interior minister, what was his name …”