Lene Kaaberbol - Invisible Murder

She caught sight of him a little farther down the road. He appeared calmer now. Once again looking more and more like a homeowner out for a neighborhood stroll. He didn’t even glance over his shoulder when he turned down yet another side street and briefly disappeared from her view. Turning the corner herself, she was suddenly right on his tail, and this time he couldn’t help but hear her. He turned around on the sidewalk and saw her. Looked into her eyes for the first time.

His hands came up out of his pockets. One was wrapped in blood-soaked toilet paper. The other was holding a gun. She didn’t have time to see any more than that before he aimed the gun at her. He held it in his left hand with his arm out straight in front of him, in a way that wasn’t totally convincing. Nina turned the wheel, slowed the patrol car down, and ducked to the right as the shot hit, causing white chunks of glass to rain down on her like a shower of ice. The right front tire bumped onto the curb, and the engine cut out.

She shook the glass fragments out of her hair. He was still there. He was standing right in front of the car’s white hood, clumsily cocking the gun with his injured hand.

He was crying. Tears of pain, presumably, which was fair enough. And yet she couldn’t shake the thought that it was the cry of a spoiled child. A child who had never before been in real pain.

She turned the key in the ignition and brought the engine back to life just as he raised his gun again. She let out the clutch a little too abruptly, and the car jumped forward in a kangaroo hop before stalling again. But that was enough. The thud on the bumper was firm and satisfying, and Mr. Suburbia disappeared under the front of the car with an indignant howl.

JUNE

PLEASANT, GOLDEN LIGHTfell through the Venetian blinds, and the background noise of clattering trays and serving carts, voices and footsteps, and the distinctive suction-cup shwoop of the automated doors closing were pleasantly muffled. The month of June was in full bloom outside, and the chestnut trees were dropping their sticky yellow-white flowers left and right. Søren had cycled over to Bispebjerg Hospital in drizzle and rain showers, but now it had cleared up. They had let him hang his dripping rain pants and anorak in Ward K’s staff locker room while he questioned Helle Skou-Larsen.

She lay with her face turned toward the light and her bed raised so that it was easier for her to look out. She didn’t turn her head when he entered her room. If he wanted to see her facial expression, he would have to sit between her and the window, so he nodded quickly to the lawyer and pulled one of the mismatched visitor’s chairs around to the other side of the bed.

“Hello, Mrs. Skou-Larsen,” he said pleasantly. “How are you doing?”

She focused on him slowly. Her eyes were porcelain blue against her bloodless skin, and the subtle makeup couldn’t completely cover her pallor and the dark, heavy bags under her eyes. There was a certain absurdity to the oxygen tube as an accessory to her pink lipstick, but her lung capacity was still far from optimal.

“Fine, thank you.” Her voice sounded astonishingly normal. Stronger than he would have expected, given her general frailty.

He showed her his identification.

“Søren Kirkegård, PET.”

“Yes” was all she said.

“I’m sorry about your husband.”

She showed no reaction.

Her lawyer got up off the only upholstered chair in the room.

“Mads Ahlegaard,” he said, holding out his hand. “Let me just remind you that the doctors say this conversation will have to be limited to fifteen minutes.”

“I’m aware of that,” Søren said, sitting down on the flimsy, wooden chair. “Mrs. Skou-Larsen, I’m here to talk to you about your attempt to buy an illegal radioactive substance.”

The words felt so inappropriate, as if they didn’t really belong in the same universe as this middle-aged suburban housewife who went to choir practice once a week and played bridge every other Friday. And yet, that was exactly what she had done. They were now aware of most of her activities; they had found the Acer laptop she had used for the online searches that had ultimately put her in touch with Tamás Rézmüves, ten different pay-as-you-go phones she had bought at various locations around town, the remnants of her husband’s supply of Imovane pills that she had used to sedate the guard dogs at the mosque—and possibly also her husband.… They had found her fingerprints on the Opel Rekord’s steering wheel and gear shift, despite the fact that she apparently hadn’t driven a car since the ’70s. They were pretty clear on what she’d done. What remained a mystery was why . The first theory was that she must have been subjected to some form of extortion or coercion, maybe from a radical right-wing extremist group, but there just weren’t any indications that that was the case. It appeared the whole thing had been her own bright idea.

Now the doctors had finally given the green light for her to be questioned. And this was not a task Søren planned to assign to anyone else.

“Mrs. Skou-Larsen, what was the cesium chloride for?”

She looked past him, at the window. It was irritating that she wouldn’t allow him to establish eye contact, but he wasn’t going to let that show.

“Someone had to do something,” she said. “You can’t just let things slide.”

“Yes, but what were you going to do?”

“It was getting so that you saw them everywhere,” she said. “You couldn’t go anywhere without … without them being there. Without them looking at you.”

“Who?” he asked, even though he thought he knew the answer.

“Them. Those foreigners. It wouldn’t bother me so much if it were just a few here and there, but there are just more and more of them.” She looked right at him for the first time, a chilly glimpse of blue and white. “Did you know that they have almost twice as many children as do Danes?”

Where do people hear this nonsense? The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he restrained himself, smiling pleasantly instead.

“Yes, I can certainly understand how that might seem alarming.”

“And then that new mosque. So close! At first I was so angry I almost couldn’t sleep at night. But then.…” She cut herself short, her eyes left him again and drifted sideways, toward the sunlight and the blinds. He had to prompt her to get her talking again.

“Then what, Mrs. Skou-Larsen?”

“Then I started thinking that maybe there was a reason for it. That it was supposed to be right here, so close that I could walk there. Because, of course, that made it easier.”

“Yes, I can certainly see that.”

“I’m not at all fond of driving,” she said suddenly flashing him an apologetic, feminine smile. “My husband is always the one who drives. Or … well, he was.”

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, thought Søren, picturing this seemingly helpless woman, slightly out of touch with reality, throwing herself into Copenhagen traffic in a twenty-five-year-old Opel Rekord, probably with her hands clutching the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles gleamed. They probably ought to be glad the Opel was an automatic, at least from a purely traffic-safety-related point of view. Had she intentionally chosen to access the Internet from a school where more than 70 percent of the students were not ethnically Danish? It was quite possible that Khalid’s difficulties were due to an intentional if impersonal act of revenge on the part of this woman. No, helpless wasn’t the right word for her.