Lene Kaaberbol - Invisible Murder

The man on the sofa didn’t answer her. He hardly seemed to see her. His pale blue eyes only rested on her for a brief instant before he looked back at Tommi.

“Okay, then. But you handle it.” The man spoke English with a heavy Danish accent. “I don’t want to have to deal with stuff like that right now.”

He opened his computer again and took a drink from a ceramic mug that was painted red and decorated with big, clumsy black letters. FOR DADDY, it said. Then she felt Tommi’s hard, thin fingers closing round her upper arm.

“T HE JACKET?”

The room he dragged her into was painted baby blue with little, white stars scattered over the walls and ceiling. A double bed covered with a worn quilt with a big floral pattern took up almost the entire room, but a rickety, white plastic lawn chair and some empty paint cans jostled for space in one corner. A flat screen TV was mounted over the bed, casting a blank blue glow over the room. The room had a faint barn-like smell, mixed with mildew and those little air fresheners people hung from their rearview mirrors. Tommi had taken up a straddling stance in front of her, and his face wore the same slightly indulgent look he had had when he pulled out his phone in the hospital.

Nina didn’t understand what he meant. “What jacket?” she asked.

“Saturday evening you gave that little Gypsy shit in there a ride. He was wearing a jacket. Where is it?”

Nina began to see the light. The young Hungarian. She had taken off his jacket to check his rib when they were sitting in her car outside her apartment. And then what had happened to it? That evening wavered in her memory, half hidden in green clouds of nausea.

“In the car,” she said. “It’s in the car.”

“You’re lying,” the Finn said, staring at her expressionlessly. “I don’t believe you.”

Nina waited a few seconds for an explanation, but none came. The Finn slowly shook his head. Then he hit her. He struck her with the palm of his hand on her left cheek, and the blow wasn’t actually that hard. Just unexpected. Nina took an involuntary step back and bumped into the light-blue wall. The Finn’s eyes had that same glassy look they had had when he pushed her head down into the pillow. She was shaking both from exhaustion and anticipation of the next blow, but instead he suddenly turned his back on her and picked up the Mac laptop connected to the TV and put it on the bed. The big screen mounted on the ceiling flickered obediently and opened a page with a list of choices. Hotel whore gets pounded. Schoolgirl and teacher . And of course more Sabrina, eighteen years old , who apparently liked it all the time and in every conceivable position. He took his time, appearing to surf aimlessly around between the numerous flashy ads but finally ended up choosing a video with two Asian girls on a beach.

Nina had moved into high alert ages ago. The door behind her was still open and every single cell in her body was tensed for flight. She wanted out of here. Now. She wanted to go to Ida, get her free, and get her away from this place. From this man. What did he want that jacket for?

“If it’s not in my car, then I don’t know where it is.”

Tommi didn’t even look up from his computer. The sound of his rapid fingers on the keys was the only thing audible in the light blue room. Then a new picture appeared on the big screen. Ida. But not like she had seen her on his mobile phone. This was from Ida’s room. The video started, and Nina stood with her eyes locked on the screen over her, watching how Ida tried to escape from the camera at first. A man was holding her so she couldn’t, and Nina recognized the Finn’s gaunt face. He was the one holding her. And touching her. It took a hard grip to hold her in the picture, with his forearms pushed against Ida’s breasts, while he whispered something to her. In the beginning she was screaming and kicking him. She continued to struggle as he pulled down her panties, but eventually she was just crying. Standing there naked, hunched over in front of the camera with her shoulders shaking. It seems as if the guy holding the camera was starting to get bored, because the camera began to drift, pointing now at a couple of pale young men near Ida’s desk. Nina had time to recognize Ulf’s shocked face and shaved head. The young Roma guy from the car was standing next to Ulf with a strangely empty expression. As if he weren’t really there. Someone mumbled something. Maybe it was Ulf. Eventually, the man with the camera gave up on aiming it at anything.

“Shut up now,” he yelled. “Just shut up, you horny little bastard.” Then the image on the screen froze.

Tommi turned around and looked calmly at Nina.

“You’d be surprised how popular this kind of shit is on the Internet.… You can make a lot of money if you have the right material. Your daughter’s cute, photogenic. We could make a new video. Just her and me.”

The Finn stuck an almost comically pink, pointy tongue out between his tobacco-pale lips and slid it in and out suggestively. That was enough. Nina stared into his slightly bloodshot eyes and for a long, happy moment pictured herself digging her fingers into his eyes. Scratching, biting, kicking. Ferociously, over and over, until she was sure he would never move again. Would never again be able to hurt her and Ida. Ever.

But in reality she didn’t do anything. Just stood there, frozen on the grease-stained gray carpet. Her whole body felt ice-cold, and it was hard to even turn her head. To breathe.

Nina thought about the radiation from Valby. About the rays that had penetrated everything, her and the children. And she knew that she ought to think it was important. But instead she closed her eyes and tried to picture the jacket. She had set it in the back seat along with the first aid kit and then.…

She tried to remember everything from that evening. The nausea, the headache. The precarious drive to the Coal-House Camp. And then it hit her. There had been two jackets. When Magnus drove her to the hospital, he had scooped her stuff out of the Fiat and moved it over into his beloved Volvo. And there had been two jackets. Her’s and that young Hungarian’s.

“Magnus Nilsson,” she said, swallowing. “My boss at the clinic. It was all in his car when we left the Coal-House Camp.” She let her head fall back, recalling the feeling of total weightlessness when Magnus had lifted her up and carried her into the hospital. Magnus, big, strong, and occasionally hot-tempered. She hoped to God he wouldn’t be there when the Finn came looking.

A FTER THAT SHEwas allowed to sit on the floor next to Ida. The Finn carefully secured her left arm to the heating pipe the same way, and after a fair amount of maneuvering they managed to get themselves into a more or less comfortable sitting position, with Nina’s arm behind the back of Ida’s head. Then the Finn disappeared out the door. Nina could hear the car on the gravel and guessed he was headed for the jacket in Magnus’s Volvo. Mr. Suburbia was still sitting on the living room sofa, staring fixedly at the computer screen in front of him while Ida dozed, her head resting on Nina’s shoulder.

Nina couldn’t sleep.

Even though the fatigue sat in every muscle of her body with a paralyzing weight. Now she was worried about Magnus. Magnus and Ida. Because there was nothing to indicate that this was the end of it. It worried her that the Finn hadn’t done anything to hide his identity or keep the location of this property a secret.

Nina looked down at Ida’s tear-stained face as it rested heavily against her shoulder and again felt the same corrosive sense of impotence that had flooded through her when Tommi showed her the clip from the apartment. She should never have given them Magnus. She shouldn’t have helped them find the fucking jacket. She may have postponed the unpleasantness for Ida by giving them Magnus, but that was all she had done. Postponed and delayed something, although she didn’t quite know what.