Lene Kaaberbol - Invisible Murder

The stench from the sloshing plastic bucket revealed its contents even before Nina looked into it. Vomit. The woman pointed into the bucket and looked at Nina with bare, black fear in her eyes.

“ Vér ,” she said. “Much sick.”

Nina held her breath and cautiously leaned over the bucket. The contents were grainy and dark, like coffee grounds.

Hematemesis. The person whose vomit this was had a seriously bleeding ulcer. It couldn’t be the boy, Nina told herself. It couldn’t. Not when he was sitting in the garage eating cookies, looking sick, but not deathly ill. It must be someone else, maybe the young man who had disappeared. Either he had consumed something that had eaten away the mucous membrane in his stomach or his stomach was totally ravaged by the effects of the disease. Hematemesis didn’t just stop on its own. It was a potentially lethal condition.

“Where did it come from? Where is he?”

The woman hesitated.

“ Mulo , much sick. Gone. Now, my son same sick.” Fear pulled at the woman’s mouth.

Nina moved, as quickly as her wobbly state permitted. If the vomit had come from Peter’s “sick young man,” he was in serious trouble. But she had no idea who he was or where in the world he was, and the children had to be her first priority now.

She yanked open the door of the garage and went across to the boy on the mattress. She was still far from certain that this was the same thing the young man had been suffering from. But she couldn’t let herself run that risk any longer. The boy had to go to the hospital.

“Hospital. Now.”

Nina gave a friendly smile and went to great lengths to act calm. There was no reason to scare the wits out of the boy’s mother. On the other hand, it was important that she understood what had to be done. Nina could leave no room for doubt.

The woman glanced anxiously over at the men on the rickety lawn chairs. Then she took out a crumpled white plastic bag and started gathering up a few of the boy’s clothes. It said “Ticket to Heaven” on the bag in big, attractive, swoopy letters. Below that was a drawing of happy stick-figure boys and girls in colored shorts and dresses. The woman’s hands had started shaking.

One of the men got up. Nina could hear his footsteps approaching on the bare concrete floor but didn’t turn around. She kneeled down next to the boy and smiled at him.

“Do you want to go for a little trip?” Nina asked, picking him up. Then she nodded quickly at the woman. “Let’s go.”

She started walking toward the door, and the boy’s mother followed. He was heavier than she remembered him being, or maybe she was weaker. It felt like she was walking on pillows.

“ Abbahagy . Stop.”

The man hadn’t even raised his voice, but Nina sensed the woman behind her stiffen. Now all of the men stood up and came over to block their way, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. The boy’s father took a step forward and grabbed his wife’s arm.

“ Örült éu vagy? ”

A shower of Hungarian words hailed down on them. The man gestured in Nina’s direction, and the woman responded quietly and fervently. Then she pulled herself free, walked over to Nina, and tried to clear a path for them through the little group of men.

“ Né !”

The man jumped forward and grabbed her again, this time so hard that it was obvious it hurt. Then he looked over at Nina. “My son stay here.”

The woman protested, clearly trying to explain something to him, but still without luck. The men had begun to close in around Nina, who stood motionless with the boy locked in her arms.

“The boy is very sick. We must take him to the hospital,” she said calmly. “Please let me through.”

She expressed her desire to proceed with her face, and a very young man with a ponytail and youthful peach fuzz on his chin moved just enough to allow her to proceed toward the door. If she made it out with the boy, presumably his mother would be allowed to follow. Otherwise Nina might have to come back for her later.

With a quick yank someone spun her around, and she was now face to face with the boy’s father, who looked like a man ready to fight to the death. He was furious, and behind the fury lurked something that resembled panic. As if he were afraid of her.

The man made a grab for the boy and tried to lift him out of Nina’s arms with harsh, vigorous yanks, which caused the boy to emit an ear-splitting shriek. Nina let go of him. They couldn’t stand there each tugging on either end of the child like two dogs with a piece of meat. But it was too late. The boy’s shriek made the man yell something, first at Nina and then at the boy’s mother, who had begun to cry. Nina looked at the men’s faces, backed over to the door, grabbed the handle, and left. They let her do that.

She stood in the parking lot and took a deep breath, mouthful after mouthful of cool evening air. Her headache, which had receded slightly during the scuffle, returned as if her head were being bludgeoned.

She wasn’t physically up to taking the boy away herself and would now have to notify the authorities. There was no way around it. Nina decided to start with Magnus, who had a detailed list of contact numbers for the police and the various welfare agencies. No matter who came out here now, they were going to need police assistance if they were to have any chance of taking the boy.

Magnus’s number was in her fingers, but she didn’t manage to finish dialing it. A hard blow struck her hand. The pain in the back of her hand made her lose her grip on her phone. The phone hit the asphalt with an ominous crack, and when she spun around, she saw the young man with the ponytail standing there holding a broomstick. That was what he had hit her with. He put his heel on her phone, and there was a crunching sound as he crushed it. He raised the broomstick yet again and yelled something or other, either at her or to the men who had stayed behind in the garage.

Nina turned around and sprinted the few remaining meters to her Fiat, flung herself into the driver’s seat, and jabbed her key into the ignition. Someone tried to open the door on the passenger’s side. She couldn’t see who it was and didn’t care, either. She leaned across the passenger’s seat as best she could with the steering wheel in her way and tried to force the door closed again. Without success. Whoever was holding the handle was stronger than she was, and in the rearview mirror, she could see a bunch of angry men closing in. A rock hit her rear windshield with a dull crash. The door handle slid out of her desperate grasp, and a man slipped into the front seat next to her.

“Drive,” he said. “Please.…”

It wasn’t until then that she realized that he wasn’t one of the pursuers but appeared to be pursued like herself. His face was red and swollen. He had a busted eyebrow, dark with clotted blood. As if he had just come out of a bar fight. Yet another shower of rocks hailed down over the car.

Nina turned the key in the ignition, and the Fiat started miraculously and immediately. She backed up so fast that the men behind them had to jump to the side, then sped ahead and threw the car onto the deserted industrial road, still with one door wide open and the stowaway clinging to the seat and the handle of the glove compartment. He managed to get the door closed again before they merged into the steady evening rush hour traffic on Gammel Køge Landevej.

T HE CAR’S FRONTwheels hit the curb by the sidewalk in Fejøgade with a soft bump, and Nina heard the scraping sound of the undercarriage against the concrete. She was starting to feel dizzy again, and small black spots were dancing in front of her eyes as she turned her head to look at her uninvited passenger. He was pressing a handkerchief against the gash in his eyebrow. It was already soaked with blood, and a couple of big, dark drops had seeped through the fabric, dripping onto his arm. He noticed and folded the handkerchief carefully, trying to avoid further mess on himself or the car seat. It was almost touching, Nina thought, with a glance at the Fiat’s shop-soiled upholstery. She opened the glove compartment, pulled out a roll of paper towels, and handed it to him.