Lene Kaaberbol - Invisible Murder

Christian looked harassed. “Let me at least plug in the damn thing first, would you?” he said.

Søren raised his hands in a gesture of apology. “Just run her ID through the system,” he told Jankowski. “I’ll try and see if I can pry anything useful out of her.” They had had to send Jesper Due back to the evening shift, which was screaming under the pressure.

“Beatrice is a difficult name,” he said to the girl. “What do your friends call you?”

She stared at him with dark, deer-in-the-headlights eyes.

“Mini,” she whispered. “Because I’m so small.” And then she started crying, unnaturally quietly, as if she’d learned that making a noise just made things worse.

In my next life, Søren thought. In my next life, I want to do something else.

S URVIVE.

That was the single conscious plan in Nina’s head. Survive, so she could tell someone where Ida was. Nothing else mattered.

And yet a twinge of … of horror ran through her when Sándor, on the Finn’s orders, opened the door to the garage so, for the first time, she could see the source of Sándor’s brother’s death and her own illness. It was a completely normal paint can, the kind you keep wood preserver in—dented sheet metal, with a handle made out of strong steel wire. She wouldn’t have given it a second glance if it had been sitting next to the jumble of rusty gardening tools leaning against the wall. But now that she knew what it was, her skin crawled, and it was hard not to think about the radiation penetrating her, invisible and unnoticed, seeking out her vulnerable internal organs and destroying them, cell by cell.

The stolen green van that the insane Finn had used when he abducted her was parked in the driveway. He had placed a section of cement pipe inside the van on top of a couple of thick, cement paving slabs, and once they had eased the paint can with the cesium source into the concrete pipe section, two more pavers would go on top. In mechanical terms, the task was simple. Once the paint can was shielded on all sides by seventeen to eighteen centimeters of concrete, their forced proximity to it might actually be only minimally damaging.

At least it won’t kill me before I can tell someone about Ida, she thought.

“You don’t need to touch it,” Sándor said. “If we take one of those and run the shaft through the handle on the can, we can carry it between us.” He pointed to the gardening tools with his healthy hand.

Tommi and Mr. Suburbia were standing behind them, at a suitable distance, now clothed in protective masks, gloves, and white hooded outfits that said ENVIRO-CLEAN in big, black capital letters across the chest on the front and back. Nina and Sándor were not afforded the same luxury.

“Let’s use the rake,” Nina said. “It looks like it has the newest handle.”

Sándor reached for it, but Nina beat him to it.

“It’s better if I do it,” she said. “I have two good hands.”

He hesitated, but then nodded. If he messed up the maneuver and the paint can tipped, they would have radioactive sand everywhere, and that would just make a bad situation worse.

She coaxed the shaft of the rake under the wire handle and carefully dragged the paint can closer. Sándor grabbed the free end of the rake. They looked at each other. Nina nodded. Then they lifted, slowly and in unison. It was a matter of holding the handle perfectly level so the can didn’t slide to one end or the other. Survive, Nina thought. Just survive.

ÁNDOR WAS STARINGso hard at the can dangling between them that his eyes were starting to water. He kept his breathing slow and deliberate, focusing on holding the handle horizontal, completely horizontal, with no wobbling. Afterward he realized that the whole time it took to raise the can into the van and lower it down into the concrete pipe, he hadn’t heard a single sound other than that of his own heartbeat. All his concentration, all his senses, were focused on that one, simple task.

“Nice,” Tommi said waving the pistol. “Now the pavers.”

They were perfectly standard garden pavers, sixty by sixty centimeters. Sándor couldn’t grip the thick, rough edge of the square, concrete slabs with his injured hand, but he was forced to use it for support and balance. There was no way Nina would be able to lift the pavers alone. She looked like she was holding herself upright through sheer will power.

They moved the two slabs into place on top of the pipe section. Tommi inspected their work and apparently found it satisfactory. At any rate, he gave Sándor a pat of comaraderie on the shoulder with his gloved hand.

“Cool,” he said. “Now you two hop in there, and keep it company. How do you say ‘car’ in Hungarian?”

The Finn’s strange interest in Hungarian vocabulary no longer surprised Sándor. “ Autó ,” he said in a monotone.

Tommi lit up behind the see-through plastic of his mask. “Hey,” he said. “That’s the same in Finnish. So it’s true after all.”

“What is?” Frederik said irritated. “What’s true?”

“That Finnish and Hungarian are related. The Finno-Ugric language family and all that stuff.”

Frederik glanced at the cement pipe in the back of the van. “You don’t think you could concentrate just a little on what’s important here?”

“There’s nothing wrong with expanding your horizons.”

“For fuck’s sake, Tommi. The word ‘auto’ doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with Finnish or Hungarian. It’s from Latin. Get those two into the van so we can get going.”

Tommi squinted. “You heard what the man said. Get in!”

The gun was pointed vaguely in their direction, but there was nothing vague about the look on the Finn’s face. It radiated a clear-as-glass intensity even through the cheap plastic of the face mask. Nina clambered in without protest and shot Sándor a look that clearly said: No drama. Don’t risk my daughter’s life.

He wasn’t so sure anymore that obedience and a low profile were their best survival strategy, but he didn’t see any other options. The rear doors slammed shut with a hollow claaaang , and a moment later the van started moving.

“Where are we going?” Sándor asked Nina. “Do you know?”

She shook her head. He could only just see her. Not much light made it in through the small window between the back of the van and the driver’s cabin.

“I heard the address,” she said. “I just don’t know where it is. Somewhere in Copenhagen, I think.”

“To meet with some filthy rich sicko who wants to buy radioactive material,” he said, not quite able to take his eyes off the makeshift cement container hiding the poisonous shit that had killed Tamás. “Nina, can we let them do it? How many people are going to end up dying the way Tamás did?”

She lowered her head so he could only see her dark hair. “Ida” was all she said. “I can’t think about anything else or anybody else.”

The van rattled its way up over some small obstacle, turned sharply to the right, and continued more smoothly. They were heading toward the city.

KOU-LARSEN’S HANDS WEREshaking. There was a stabbing sensation in his chest, and he decided that he probably ought to take one of his nitroglycerin pills. The sooner, the better, the doctor had said. It was better to ward off an attack than to try to treat one.

He still didn’t understand. Didn’t understand why a friendly, young police lady and a not-quite-as-friendly young policeman had spent more than an hour questioning him and checking out the car and the house with a Geiger counter. Or a Geiger-Müller counter, as they were now apparently called.