Lene Kaaberbol - Invisible Murder

Frederik let go of Sándor and stood up. He stepped over the crumpled asbestos-suit-clad figure and leaned over Tommi.

Why is he holding Tommi’s hand? Sándor wondered.

But that wasn’t what Frederik was doing. He tore the gloves off Tommi’s hands. Then he picked up Tommi’s pistol and positioned it in Tommi’s dead, floppy hand, wrapping the Finn’s fingers around the grip, pretty much the way he had done with Sándor’s uncooperative fingers.

He’s going to shoot me, Sándor thought. And then he’ll shoot Nina. And make sure the asbestos man is dead, too. And then he’ll walk out of here, safe in the knowledge that no one can point their finger at Mr. Clean and say: He did it.

The flat, little pistol was still in his hand. He only had to lift it. Lift it and aim.

He couldn’t.

Come on , phrala.

He heard the voice so clearly that for a crazy instant he was sure Tamás wasn’t dead after all. It sent a jolt through him, and his finger curled around the trigger. And he fired.

Bang. Howl.

Frederik was standing in front of him with his hands folded as if he were in church, blood gushing out between his fingers. His little finger was missing.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he moaned, the pitch of his voice growing higher and higher with each repetition. He staggered out the door and disappeared.

Sándor contemplated whether he had the energy to drag himself out of the building. He wasn’t sure. The asbestos-suited figure was lying still, a red stain on his chest, and Sándor couldn’t tell if there was any life behind the mask. The paint can was a few meters from him, on its side, and the sand was slowly trickling out around the edges of the lid where it wasn’t completely sealed. And the envelope with the money was also lying on the floor, so close that he could reach it if he stuck out his arm.

He stuck out his arm.

IRST NINA KNOCKEDon the door, which had a little knocker with a black cast-iron lion’s head. But nothing happened. She was fairly sure she heard footsteps behind the solid front door, but it didn’t open, and she regretted choosing the closest house. She should have moved farther away from the building behind her. If Tommi or Frederik came after her now, she would be totally exposed, standing there in front of this closed door. A wide-open target, a barely moving target. The pain in her side rose and fell with her much-too-rapid breathing, and each time she inhaled, new black dots danced in front of her eyes. They could shoot her right here, and no one would ever find out where Ida was.

She stepped over to the tall, narrow window next to the door and knocked on the glass, alternating between her knuckles and her palm.

“Hello!”

Her voice made almost no sound. The shout was there, in her throat, but her tongue and dry lips refused to cooperate. Anyway, now she could see a face on the other side of the glass. An older man dismissively waving a hand lightly covered with liver spots. Nina looked down at herself. She looked terrible. The dark-blue tracksuit was covered with construction dust, and her right arm jutted out awkwardly to the side to keep her from touching her rib. She tried to smile, but the face inside the window had already started backing away. Farther and farther away. She knocked again, but this time without much conviction.

“Hello? I need help!”

There was no response.

Nina turned around and stared back at the mosque behind her. Its front door was still open, but she didn’t see any sign of Tommi or Frederik. The reflection of a light in the window of one of the portable office trailers at the construction site across the street made her jump, but it was just the streetlights swaying in the heavy wind.

Did she have the strength to try the neighbor’s? Nina looked over at the house next door. Yet another red-brick fort with a single lit window and an impervious front door. She had the utterly stupid desire to cry. Like when she was little, standing alone on the playground with a scraped knee and hundreds of happy, laughing children around her. But it hadn’t done any good then, and it wouldn’t do any good now. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and looked around. There was a birdbath on the little lawn in front of the house, attractively surrounded by fist-sized red, granite rocks.

Nina hobbled down the steps with a firm grasp on the wrought iron railing. One step, two steps … she tried to ignore the pain when she bent down, but as she straightened up with a rock in her hand, she emitted a wheezing groan anyway.

She went back up the stairs and peered in the window. The man had withdrawn so far that she could see only his feet, nervously padding away. She raised the rock and slammed it into the window with all her might. The old man’s double-glazing didn’t surrender until she hit it for the third time, making a hole big enough to pass a fist through. Her reluctant helper had by this time retreated so far back into his hallway that all she could see was his feet, but that didn’t matter.

“Call the police,” she bellowed. “Now!”

S HE SAW THEpatrol car long before the pensioner could have even picked up the phone. It drove past her without flashing lights or a siren, pulled up outside the construction site, and turned off its headlights.

Nina grabbed the stair railing and took the three steps down to the front walkway so fast that she crashed to her knees on the flagstones. She got up again and staggered, shuffling and shouting, as fast and as loud as her rib would permit.

“Help.”

She didn’t know how long it had been since Ida had crawled into that oil tank. One hour? Two hours? At any rate it had gotten dark out, and it had been way too long.

“Help.” Nina picked up her pace. “Help. I need help.”

This time she screamed for real.

LOOD OR MONEY. This wasn’t some vague hypothetical choice; it was a practical problem. The blood was flowing out of him with every single heartbeat, and his ability to move, think, and act was flowing away with it. Sándor didn’t know if he was dying or not. Maybe there was no point in speculating about the future.

And the money. The money that Tamás had given his life for. It was all here in his hand, in a gray, blood-smeared envelope that was almost as thick as Blackstone’s International Law .

He didn’t have much time or many options. He clumsily got up onto all fours and couldn’t get any farther than that. Walking and standing were not in his current repertoire. A stab of pain shot through his hole-riddled palm when he put his left hand on the floor, but if he was going to take that envelope, he would have to ignore the pain. It turned out you could reach a point when the pain became irrelevant. What mattered were the mechanics. What you could and what you couldn’t do. He couldn’t stand up without falling down. And if he fell, he would stay down. He could probably crawl on all fours if he used his left hand, too, so that’s what he did.

He crawled past the person in the white suit. At the moment he didn’t care who was lying there inside the suit, nor did he care if the man were alive or dead. He didn’t have any spare energy to waste on anger or curiosity. Hand-knee, hand-knee, that was all that mattered. Past the Finn with only half a head. Out of the door. Out.

Halfway across the threshold he was hit by a wave of weakness. His arm buckled, he rolled halfway onto his side, but the doorframe stopped him and keep him from collapsing completely.

“You’re not going to make it, phrala .”