Restlessness was starting to spread through Nina’s body. It lurked like a strange bubbling tension just below her skin, forcing her to stretch, slowly and silently like a cat. The Russian interpreter sitting next to Natasha droned on, slowly, in a monotone, below the shrillness of the prosecutor’s voice.
“… and bought a Sterkh-1, which is a twenty-four-centimeter-long traditional Russian hunting knife specially designed to efficiently gut and skin an animal.…”
Nina turned and tried to look into Natasha’s eyes below the wispy bangs.
“… and it was with this knife that the defendant stabbed her fiancé, Michael Anders Vestergaard, four times in his arm, shoulder, and neck.”
Nina and everyone else at the Coal-House Camp knew that the man was a sadistic pig whose abuse had left Natasha with vaginal lacerations so extensive that Magnus had had to suture them. Even so, Natasha had gone back to him, choosing to put up with the abuse and the humiliation because he was the only thing standing between her and deportation back to Ukraine.
Nina had testified on Monday, as had Magnus, who had had the unenviable task of patching up Natasha at the clinic the previous summer after what the prosecutor chose to describe as “consensual sex with elements of dominance.” Magnus had described Natasha’s injuries in nauseating detail, while the prosecutor flipped distractedly through the medical records, doodling in the margins.
And, yes, Natasha had actually consented—or at least tolerated it. No, she hadn’t reported anything to the police. Not even her suspicions that the man was starting to take an interest in Rina. When she caught him slipping a finger into Rina’s light-blue Minnie Mouse underpants, she bought a knife instead. Natasha had called Nina, but not until afterward.
It was a foregone conclusion, and everyone knew exactly what was going to happen. Initially Natasha would be sentenced for assault with intent to kill. Premeditated, of course, since several hours had elapsed from the time she bought the knife to the moment it was actually lodged in Michael Vestergaard’s neck, millimeters away from killing him. She would be stuck in a Danish prison cell while her application for asylum would plod along the winding paper trails of Danish Immigration Control toward almost inevitable denial. As soon as this occurred, swift deportation would follow, and Natasha would serve the rest of her sentence in a Ukrainian jail. Meanwhile, Rina would while away months or years of her childhood in the well-intentioned but inadequate care of the asylum system, most likely in the children’s unit at the Coal-House Camp. Once her mother had been deported, Rina too would be returned to Ukraine, to wait for her mother’s release, in whatever orphanage would take her. The whole nauseating story was as predictable as the prosecutor’s monotonous account and the dry rustle of paper being turned, page by page, as the hearing wore on.
Vestergaard sat a little further back in the room, his Hugo Boss shirt open so everyone who felt like looking in his direction had an unimpeded view of the bright red scars on his neck and shoulder. His arm was around a young, dark-skinned woman—Nina guessed she was from South America. While the prosecutor spoke, Michael Vestergaard leaned against the young woman and tenderly held her chin. The woman pulled back slightly, but then looked at him and smiled as he ran his thumb over her lower lip, smearing a little of her lipstick over her chin.
He had stopped taking an interest in the proceedings long ago.
Magnus followed Nina’s gaze.
“God, I wish she’d finished him off,” he hissed.
RAGE WAS STILL running through her like a faint, pulsating current under her skin as Nina turned into the parking lot in front of the gates of the Coal-House Camp. Her shift was long since over, but this task just couldn’t be left to anyone else.
She sat in her car for a second, listening to her own forced breathing. The April sun made the air shimmer above the black shingles on the roof of the children’s unit. A couple of teenage girls lay on the lawn in front of the entrance, stretching their gangly legs in the sunlight as they casually flipped through a glossy magazine. Nina knew one of the girls was from Ethiopia. She hadn’t seen the other one before, but judging by her almost bluish-white legs, she was probably yet another Eastern European dreaming of richer pastures in the West. They were unaccompanied minors. At the moment the Coal-House Camp had about fifty of them housed here in the former barracks. This was where Rina had been staying while Natasha was in custody. There had been talk of putting her into care elsewhere, but Magnus had kicked up such a fuss that he ended up getting his way.
“I mean, honestly,” he had fumed. “The girl has been dragged halfway across Europe, then spends several months with that sick bastard. We’re the only people she knows in Denmark. She’s damn well staying here.”
Nina found Rina in her room. The seven-year-old girl was sitting on a brand-new, red IKEA sofa surrounded by a handful of half-dressed Barbie dolls with hopelessly tangled hair. She was holding an old, broken mobile phone, punching its buttons with intense concentration.
I just have to get this over with, Nina thought, trying to catch Rina’s attention.
“Hey, Rina. I saw your mom today.”
Rina’s nails were bitten down to the pink, fleshy tips, and her fingers kept rhythmically pressing the phone buttons as if she were working on an especially long text message. Nina cautiously laid her hand over Rina’s.
“It worked out the way we thought it would, Rina. Your mother’s going to be in jail in Denmark for a while. After that you’ll both be going back to Ukraine.”
Nina had been thinking she would make the Ukraine part of it into something good and hopeful—freedom and the future waiting on the other side of Natasha’s prison sentence. But at the moment she couldn’t think of a single word that would make the Ukraine sound like anything other than what she imagined it would be for Natasha and Rina: a bleak, poverty-stricken no-man’s-land.
Natasha had never told Nina why she came to Denmark with her daughter, and Nina hadn’t asked. She could have been fleeing anything from poverty or political harassment to the mafia or prostitution. Natasha had her reasons, and it would take more than an upbeat voice to convince Rina that Ukraine was the upside to this story. The girl sat motionless, her head lowered. Only her hands, still clutching the phone, quivered slightly.
“I know it’s tough, Rina.”
Nina scooted a little closer. She wanted to pick the girl up and carry her out to the car, bring her home to her apartment in Østerbro, and take care of her until.… Well, yes, until when? Even if she mustered all her energy, Nina would be able to solve only a fraction of the girl’s problems right now. Her mother was gone, and nothing in the world could change that. Natasha’s sentence was five years, totally incomprehensible to a seven-year-old girl. And if her mother wound up in a Ukrainian jail, the time Rina spent in the children’s unit at the Coal-House Camp might end up being the nicest part of her childhood.
Nina pushed the thought to the back of her mind. If it got to that point, they would have to think of something. Rina wasn’t going to languish in a Ukrainian orphanage as long as Nina could prevent it. She cautiously tucked a long, soft lock of Rina’s hair behind the girl’s ear. Her blue eyes were wide open but seemed strangely dull and vacant. As if the girl wasn’t seeing anything outside her own mind.
“You’re going to live here at the center, Rina. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The girl didn’t respond.
“You’ll live here and go to school here, just like you have been doing. Ingrid and the other adults here will take care of you and make sure you get to visit your Mom.” Ingrid was the tough, middle-aged ex-teacher who ran the care program for the camp’s underage residents. “But I’ll be here, too. I’ll come almost every day, I promise.”