Kris is already there when I return at eight the next morning. He’s waiting at the end of the barrier, but I see him sticking his head out once in a while.
“You’re early,” he says, then bursts out: “What? What is it? What are you laughing at?”
“I’m early? How long have you been here?”
He doesn’t answer, he just looks at me as if he needs a few seconds to think. “So okay, I’ve been here ten minutes, fifteen at the most. I couldn’t sleep last night, how about you?”
I shake my head, even though it’s not true. I have slept, not much, but long enough to dream something weird, where I was chasing someone who was constantly just out of reach. Just when I was about to grab him, he disappeared around the curve of the railroad tracks.
The bundle is exactly the way we left it yesterday. And yet something is different. Not with the blanket. With her. Her head. And her foot sticking out. Is it just me, or has she turned gray?
“Kris, is she starting to stink? Does she stink?”
Kris shakes his head. “My nose is stopped up, I can’t smell for shit.”
I take a deep breath in through my nose, and even though we’re several meters from her I can smell it. A weak odor of rot. Apparently that’s how death smells.
It’s completely light now, and we hide behind the noise barrier. We settle in to wait. We stand on the slope, shivering from the cold, but we don’t leave. We both thought the only times he might show up were morning and evening, but we stay anyway. Neither one of us suggests we go home and come back later. We stay.
The trains pass by. Those from Sydhavn roll toward Roskilde, the ones from Roskilde toward Sydhavn. We stay hidden, counting them. Two pass by toward Sydhavn. Then nothing happens. A third toward Sydhavn, then one toward Roskilde. When it’s totally quiet on the tracks we can hear traffic down on Vigerslev Allé. The cars and buses driving by. We can hear people down there. Kids yelling at each other.
“I’ve had enough of this,” I say. “Let’s get something to eat somewhere.”
“What the hell are you talking about? We can’t leave now, what if he shows up?”
“Kris. I’m freezing my ass off. He’s not coming now, it’s too light. Come on, let’s go down and get something to eat. We can be back in an hour.”
He shakes his head. “I’m staying right here.”
I turn and walk down the slope. “I’ll pick something up for you.”
“Let’s call the police.”
Kris stuffs the last of the burger in his mouth and washes it down with soda. “Why?”
He’s pissed at me because it took longer to bring the burgers back than he’d expected. Incredible, how paranoid you can get when you’re on surveillance. All the way to the pizzeria and back I tried to find a route where I wouldn’t be seen. In case the killer was on his way. I crawled along the slope by the community gardens, looking for the hole in the fence, and when I couldn’t find it I had to climb over. It was harder on the way back because I had a big bag of food with me.
It’s already getting dark. We eat the last of the french fries. “A whole day’s gone by since we found her,” I say. “And there’s no sign of him showing up.”
Kris shakes his head. “No way. You said he’d come back. Maybe he couldn’t make it today. The bastard might have a wife and kids and all that. Maybe he’ll be here tomorrow. He’ll come.”
“Let’s just call the police, we’ll still be the heroes of the day ’cause it’s us who found her.”
“Maybe, but we’ll be even bigger heroes if we catch the guy too,” Kris says.
I’m not happy about this, especially since her smell has gotten stronger all day. If we let her lie until morning, how much worse will it get? I wonder. “Kris, we can’t just keep standing here, waiting for someone who might not even come back. She’s not getting any prettier to look at.”
“The man’s a psychopath, maybe it’s what turns him on.”
“Okay, but if he’s a psychopath there’s not a lot we can do…” There must be something I can say to convince him.
“Just leave it to me,” he responds, and suddenly he pulls a knife out from the inside pocket of his coat.
“Fuck! Kris, goddamn! What are you… Fuck!”
“Take it easy, I’m not about to kill anybody or anything. We just need to scare him, maybe cut him a little.”
“Kris, no, fuck it, we’re calling the police.” I pull my phone out, and I’m about to punch numbers when I get hit hard. Kris falls on me. His hands are on my shoulders, pushing them down, holding me against the cold ground. I can’t see the knife. I try to catch my breath.
“Kris, goddamn. Get off, you’re crushing me.”
He leans over and looks me right in the eye. “You’re not calling the police!”
“Get off me, goddamnit.” There’s a branch or something under me, he’s pressing my backbone into it.
“I said, you’re not calling the police. Right?” He presses my shoulders even harder. I can’t get the bastard off me.
“Okay, okay. I’m not calling the police.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“YES, GODDAMNIT! I promise.”
He lets go, and slowly I get to my feet. The tree limb has poked a hole in my coat, down at my lower ribs. My phone is halfway down the slope. Even from here I can see the number 1 on the display. That’s as far as I got. Kris offers a hand, and I shove it away. I can get up by myself. I just have to catch my breath.
“Kris, you fat bastard!” I stick a hand in under my sweater. My back is sore, but it’s not any worse than that. Fucking asshole.
“He’ll come back,” he says, and looks away.
I can smell her long before I reach her. It hasn’t left me, the smell, it followed me yesterday when Kris and I left her. I tried washing it off but it was still there. My mother didn’t seem to notice anything, maybe it was just me. When I got up this morning it was still there. It was worse on my coat. The hole in the back is bigger than I thought at first, or else it’s ripped out more, but it’s the only coat I have. I put an extra sweater on to keep warm.
I meet Kris on the lawn by the booster station. We haven’t planned to meet here. We didn’t make any plans at all after yesterday. He’s smiling strangely. Both his hands are in his pockets. I can practically see from his look that the knife is back in his inside pocket. “Morning,” he says, and smiles.
I say nothing, just walk past him, farther up toward the booster station and the railroad behind it. Why is he so happy? He follows, I hear him a few meters behind me. We keep moving along the path. He says nothing, but I can feel his smile knifing me in the back. Why is he smiling this way? He would have said if the killer had been here. I could ask him, but I don’t want to. I don’t turn, I just keep walking. And he follows a few meters behind.
“Get the hell out of here!” I yell, while I run toward the crow with a rock in my hand. I don’t even come close to hitting it, but it’s enough to scare the crow. It flies over to the other side of the body for cover. I pick up another rock. The crow takes off again. This time it lands on the edge of the barrier. It looks down at us. Kris plods along over to me, his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t seem especially surprised. He’s not smiling anymore, but he’s not mad or all worked up.
“Shhh,” he says abruptly. “People can hear you when you yell that way.”
“Yeah? Fuck them. How many people you think yell ‘Get the hell out’ in one day in Valby?”
He shrugs and plods on, over to the body. The smell is much worse now. It feels warmer too. That, or else it’s because I’m wearing an extra sweater. The crow still sits there. I throw the rock, but it sees it coming. It flies up and away, disappears between the trees. If it has found her, other crows will for sure be coming along too. I look up. There are a few dark spots high up in the gray sky. But they fly away.