“What happened?” Søren asked with more or less the same neutrality he had used with Khalid.
“The boy ran out the front door without looking right or left. I slammed on the brakes. But I didn’t hit him!”
“And then what happened?”
“Then the kid plunked down on his rear end on the asphalt and started bawling his eyes out. I think he was pretty shocked.”
“And then?”
“Then the suspect and his cousin jumped out of their car and came running. I got out to try to comfort the child, but they pushed me up against the hood and were acting menacing, and then all the neighbors came running, and … then I was struck by an object.”
The officer was struggling to report this using professional terminology, but Søren noted the switch to passive voice—it started out I got out, they came running, they pushed, but then “I was struck.”
“Do you know who struck you?” Søren asked.
The officer hesitated. Then he said, “No. I can’t say with certainty. At first I thought it was the suspect, but … I think actually someone threw something. And Khalid was standing right next to me.”
“And then?”
“Then … I managed to get into the car and secure the doors. And call for backup.”
Søren could just picture it. The crying child, the irate men, the neighbors and family members crowding round. And in the middle of the whole god-awful mess, a young police officer ready to shit his pants and not without reason.
“How close were you to the front door?” Søren asked.
“I was parked almost right in front of it. Ten or twelve meters away max. I had just started the car to follow the suspect when the accident happened. Or … nearly happened. I slammed on the brakes right away, and there’s no way I was going more than ten kilometers per hour.”
“Why were you parked so close?”
“We had been told.…” The officer hesitated again; it seemed like he felt he was being tested in some way and was afraid he would give the wrong answer. “Well, it was a close-tail surveillance assignment, right? They said it didn’t matter much if we were seen. That it was more important that we didn’t lose him.”
“How long have you been working in surveillance?”
“A little over a month.”
Søren painstakingly avoided sighing. The assignment had been to put pressure on Khalid with surveillance that was fairly obvious at times. That was probably why the surveillance unit had decided to use it as a sort of training exercise for newbies. And that was why an insecure, young policeman had ended up in a situation that could have been dangerous to all involved. He could have hit the child. And he could have been seriously hurt himself.
“But the child wasn’t injured?”
“No. He was just crying because he was scared.”
“And Khalid Hosseini didn’t hit you?”
“No. It … I can’t say that he did.”
“Good. Then I think we should let this whole incident die as quiet a death as possible. Agreed?”
Markus Eberhart nodded. The gesture made him wince, and he carefully touched his head.
SØREN CALLED BELLAHØJ from the parking lot in front of emergency room entrance.
“Release him,” he told the desk officer, repeating Eberhart’s explanation. “We don’t have any actual grounds to hold him on.”
“The father and the uncle are here already” was the response. “Looking appropriately aghast and appalled. They say he’s a good boy, and that we’re hounding him for no reason.”
“Yes, I’m sure they do.” But somewhere or other north of Potsdam, Sándor Horváth was on his way to Denmark. And Søren was eager to find out what was going to happen when he met with Khalid Hosseini.
So when Khalid left Bellahøj police station a half hour later with his father and uncle, there were not any surveillance newbies tagging along. But that didn’t mean he was unobserved.
This time it actually seemed she was welcome. The door opened before she had a chance to knock. They had been waiting for her, she could tell. The young mother with the missing front teeth was perched just inside the doorway and eagerly grabbed hold of her arm as soon as Nina crossed the threshold. The other women and a small group of men were behind her, and they followed Nina and the young mother with their eyes. Nina thought she could sense a new tension that didn’t have to do with her presence. Illnesses that didn’t go away on their own were poor people’s worst nightmare.
“Ápolónö. Jöljön be, jöljön be!”
Nina didn’t understand the words, but their meaning was clear enough. The woman pulled her into the garage so quickly that she almost tripped on the mattresses, stuffed plastic bags, and duffle bags.
The boy was lying totally motionless on a filthy foam mattress pushed up against the wall, and when she cautiously squatted down next to him, his whole body jerked. A stream of yellowish vomit welled out from under his head; he opened his eyes, looking vaguely about, and then disappeared back into a fog. The young woman emitted something between a sob and a sigh and ran to get a new cloth. She must have had to do that quite a few times, and Nina could see the fatigue and worry in her eyes when she came back and started wiping sweat and vomit off the boy’s face. She gave up on doing anything about the mattress, just pushed a clean towel in under his head.
“A fiam rosszul. A fiam rosszul van.”
She looked up at Nina with a question in her eyes, and Nina cautiously began her examination. The boy was considerably worse than a couple days ago. He still didn’t have a fever, but he was exhausted from all the vomiting, and though Nina managed to get him to sit up for a couple minutes, he kept falling asleep leaning against his mother’s shoulder. His belly wasn’t distended; his biggest problem was probably dehydration. His skin was bone dry, and he was either going to need IV fluids here—or, better still, a hospital.
Nina pulled out her phone, found Allan’s number in her address book and wedged the phone between her shoulder and cheek as she scanned the garage. The boy’s English-speaking father had taken refuge in the group of men over by the door, away from his son’s illness and his wife’s worried looks. Now she waved him over, Allan’s ring tone still chiming away in her ear.
“The other children,” she said, pointing around the garage. “Where are they?”
He pulled her further back toward the rear of the garage, where to her relief she saw the other children sitting with sleeping bags wrapped around their shoulders. Weak and pale, but clearly healthier than the boy on the mattress.
Allan finally answered his phone. “Hi, Nina.”
He sounded like he was in a relatively good mood, which was a plus. She hadn’t spoken with him since the previous August. Allan was a doctor with a practice north of Copenhagen, in fashionable Vedbær. He had also been moonlighting as part of Peter’s standing team when their “clients” had problems that required prescription medication or an emergency house call. But that was over now. He was no longer part of the Network, and the last time she had seen him he hadn’t been mincing his words when he told her to shove off and never come back.