Nina regarded Taghi’s tensed-up face. She sensed that the truce was over. The umbilical cord had been cut and tied off. The placenta lay intact and secure in the plastic basin she’d brought along from the clinic. The little boy whimpered in Chaltu’s arms, pale against her dark skin. And Nina’s reign had ended with the birth. Now they were back to the corpse and everything death brought with it.
Farshad said something or other, his voice catching nervously. Taghi answered him, negatively Nina thought, but she wasn’t sure. How terrifying it was that they could discuss what to do with her without her understanding a word. Taghi had said that they didn’t kill Brahge, and she couldn’t really believe he was a cold-blooded murderer. They aren’t evil, she told herself, and tried not to think how absolutely normal, unevil people could do horrible things if they were pushed far enough.
“Why don’t you just leave?” she said. “You can take Chaltu and the baby with you, and I’ll wait until you’re long gone before I call the police.”
“Yeah, right,” Djo Djo said, and scratched himself quickly and a bit too roughly on the cheek.
Taghi said something sharply, obviously an order. Djo Djo protested, and Farshad started to titter nervously, maybe at what Djo Djo had said. But finally the brothers left the apartment. Nina saw them through the window, lifting the tarpwrapped body and carrying it over to the van.
All of a sudden they were rushing frantically. They pitched the body in the van, threw themselves into the front seats, and roared off. Seconds later Nina could see why. On the other side of the canal, on Ørestads Boulevard, a police car was approaching slowly, its blue lights flashing.
Eggers stopped the patrol car.
“There’s a building with balconies,” he said. “And that van didn’t waste any time driving off.”
Janus shrugged his shoulders. “We’d better check it out,” he said. He had his regular black shoes on, not his winter boots. The radio hadn’t mentioned anything about snow when he left Allerød that morning at a quarter past seven.
Eggers called in the address. “We’re going in,” he told the shift supervisor. “But it looks peaceful enough.”
Janus sighed, opened the car door, and lowered his nice, black, totally inadequate shoes into the muddy slush. “Does anyone even live here?” he asked. The place was all mud, with construction-site trash everywhere, for sale signs in most of the windows.
“At least there’s light,” Eggers growled. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”
The street door was open, a bit unusual nowadays. Eggers knocked on the door of one of the ground-floor apartments. After quite a while, a thin dark-haired woman opened the door. She stared at them with an intensity that made Janus uneasy.
“Yes?”
Eggers told her who they were and showed his ID. “We had a report from a passenger on the metro who saw someone fall from a balcony in this area. Have you noticed anything unusual?”
A whimpering came from within the apartment. It sounded like a baby.
“Just a moment,” she said, and closed the door in their faces. Eggers and Janus glanced at each other.
“She looks a little tense,“ Eggers muttered.
Then the door opened again, and this time she held a very small baby in her arms. “Sorry,” she said. “We just got home from the hospital and it’s all a bit new to him.”
The baby made a low murmuring sound, and Janus instinctively smiled. Lord. Such a tiny little human. No wonder his mother wasn’t too pleased about the disturbance. She was looking at the baby, not at them, and even Eggers was thawing out a bit, Janus noticed. There was something to this mother-and-child thing.
“Like I said, we just want to know, have you noticed anything?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It couldn’t have been here.”
“There was a van over here a little bit ago,” Eggers said.
“Yes,” she replied. “It was the plumber. There’s something wrong with the heat, and now we have the baby… we have to get it fixed.”
“Sure, of course. Well. Have a nice evening.”
The woman nodded and closed the door.
“I bet that plumber was after a little undeclared income,” Eggers said.
“Yeah. But it’s not our business right now.”
They walked back to the car. The snow felt even wetter and heavier now. Janus wished he’d at least brought along an extra pair of socks.
Taghi was elated when the police left. It was as if he’d forgotten all about threatening her with a knife a minute ago.
“It was the plumber…” he said, in a strange falsetto mimicing her voice. “Fuck, you were good! They totally swallowed it.”
It took a moment for Nina to answer. “Get out, Taghi,” she said. “Don’t think for one second that I did it for you.”
He came down like a punctured balloon. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got a little crazy, I think.”
“Just leave. And don’t call me again.” She remembered her cell phone and got him to fish it out of the toilet bowl.
“It doesn’t work anymore,” he said.
“No. But I’m not leaving it for anyone to find.”
All the way across the bridge Chaltu sat with her eyes closed, praying, as if she didn’t dare hope she could make it without divine intervention. Nina let her off at the University Medical Center in Malmø and tried to make it clear to her that she should wait until Nina had left before saying the only three Swedish words she knew. Chaltu nodded.
“Okay, secret doctor,” she said.
Nina looked at her watch. 11:03. With a little luck her mother would already be in bed when she got home.
The snow turned slowly into rain. The gray slush around the building in Ørestaden was melting into the mud. The blood of Torsten Brahge mixed with the rain seeping into the sheetrock, which eventually grew so pulpy that not even Beni in Valby would be able to find a use for it.
SLEIPNER’S ASSIGNMENT
by Georg Ursin
Frederiksberg
We are in Frederiksberg, which is a district of Copenhagen.
It is a colorful district, with old streets, quiet residential areas, large parks, a castle, a zoo with wild animals that the cautious fear, and theaters offering dramatic productions. As well as nooks and crannies where the law is trod upon and crushed.
One of these nooks is a lunchroom. It is large, low-ceilinged, and grubby, and patronized by a lively but not always amiable clientele. Sleipner sits at one of its many tables. He sits alone. That’s nothing new. For long periods of time, in fact, he sits there every day, mostly by himself. He is thirty-eight years old, stronger than most but not brutal, and has a heavy face with innocuous features. The articles of clothing he is wearing are wrinkled. The shoes are comfortable to put on and take off, but otherwise they are nothing worth mentioning. His hair is of no specific color and can look a bit greasy. He has almost always been a bachelor.
Over the years he has had a number of occupations and has left them, either because they were not independent enough or because he was asked to get out. Now he is a private detective. Because he cannot afford to rent a place of business, he uses his regular table as an office. Those in his crowd know they can find him there. Because there aren’t many in his crowd who have need of a detective, he also provides other similar services.
Most of the time his facial expression remains unchanged. A sleepy mask, seemingly unable to convey either alertness or boredom. Therefore, and perhaps for other reasons, practically no one seeks him out for the pleasure of his company. When someone approaches him and begins a conversation, it is professional in nature. Once in a while a client sits down across from him and begins to present him with a problem, but his only reaction is an acknowledgment of the greeting, should there be one, with a “Hi” and a serious glance. When the problem has been described, he might ask a few questions, then he keeps his mouth shut while thinking. When he has finished thinking, he offers his assistance and sets a price, which includes an advance. For the most part the amounts of money are small. His crowd seldom can afford more. When they have the means, a rare occurrence, usually they don’t have the desire.