In the twenty-four hours that had elapsed since the break-in on Fejøgade, Tommi and Frederik had become increasingly frustrated. They hadn’t been able to find the nurse or her car, in spite of all the information they had frightened, threatened, and shaken out of the teenage girl and her boyfriend. Sándor still felt a deep stab of guilt when he thought of those terrified teenagers; of the boy’s pretended cockiness as he nerved himself up to defend his girlfriend, of the sound it had made when Tommi nonchalantly whacked his head into the doorframe. Of the girl who had let go of the blanket and tried to kick Tommi with her bare feet, of how she yelled and screamed and lashed out at him even though all she had on was her panties. Of Tommi who had held her, just held her from behind, while Frederik grabbed the mobile phone and took pictures of her both with and without her panties on.
“Sweet little pussy,” Tommi had whispered in the girl’s ear, but loud enough that they could all hear it. “Just let us know when you get tired of the boy wonder over there, and we’ll get you a real man.”
Then she got scared, Sándor could tell. Until that point she had been shocked, anxious, upset, and furious, but only then did terror set in. She curled up in his grasp, trying to protect her body from the violation of the camera.
Don’t give up, Sándor had wanted to tell her. Don’t let go of your defiance and your rage. But to her he would have just been one of the attackers, the only one of her assailants whose face she could describe. My God, how old had she been? Fifteen? Sixteen? Maybe even younger. She was definitely still in school; Tommi had stolen her school bag.
And you did nothing, Sándor told himself caustically. You just stood there and did nothing. His passivity was a crime, and he couldn’t think of any way he could atone for it.
Frederik stood the flat screen back up. The picture flickered a little and disappeared, along with the sound, in a storm of multicolored pixels.
“Can they trace Valby to us?” Tommi asked. Still in English, in that strangely broad, rolling accent that sounded so wrong to Sándor’s ears.
“Not right away,” Frederik said. “It depends on how long Malee keeps her trap shut.”
“She won’t say anything,” Tommi said.
“They always do at some point or other.”
“Not Malee. She was one of the strong ones. She was in the tank three times before she gave up.”
“And you think that is going to make her love you?”
“No. But she remembers me. And after that lot, she won’t cave just because the police ask her a couple of polite questions.”
Frederik grumbled. “What are we going to do?” he said. “We can’t leave that thing out there for ever. And the car. You think it’s radioactive, too?”
Tommi shrugged dubiously.
Suddenly Frederik jumped up and went outside.
“Where are you going?” Tommi yelled.
“To get Tyson. He shouldn’t be out there.”
Tommi rolled his beer can back and forth between his palms.
“He spoils that mutt,” he told Sándor. “A wife and two point five kids in Søllerød, but sometimes I think he loves the dog more.”
Quit telling me stuff like that, Sándor pleaded silently. I don’t want to know that he’s married or where he lives. I don’t want to know anything about you two at all. I just want to get my brother and go home.
But Tamás.… How could he even find out if Tamás was still alive? He had asked to see him, be allowed to speak to him, even if just by phone. But aside from that repulsive video, they hadn’t given him any sign of life.
“You’re from Hungary, aren’t you?” Tommi asked suddenly, leaning forward.
Sándor stiffened. Sat even stiller, if that were possible. “Yes,” he said, without looking Tommi in the eye. No opposition, no provocation.
“How do you say ‘house’ in Hungarian?” Tommi asked, making an expansive gesture with his hand to illustrate what he meant by drawing Sándor’s attention to the derelict farmhouse they were sitting in.
“Haz.”
Tommi looked disappointed.
“Huh,” was all he said.
Frederik came back in again, now with an enthusiastically barking Labrador dancing around his feet.
“Okay, down! No jumping,” he commanded, with a certain lack of impact. “Go lie down, Tyson.” He pointed authoritatively to the shag rug under the coffee table. Tyson jumped up onto the sofa next to Tommi instead and settled there. Tommi shot him a dirty look.
“Okay,” Tommi said. “So, we have this damn thing out there in the shed. And apparently it’s leaking like crazy. What are we going to do about it?”
“Call the authorities, and get the hell out of here,” Frederik said. “Well, in the opposite order obviously.”
“Fucking brilliant,” Tommi said. “Then they have both Valby and this place. How long do you think it’ll take before they figure out we actually own them both? And what about the money?”
“Okay, so we dump it somewhere.”
Tommi held up his hand defensively, more or less in front of his crotch. “No way I’m going to have my onions toasted. I’m not touching that shit. Not again.” Then he suddenly looked pale. “You think we’ve already been affected? Fuck. That little shit. I would strangle him if he weren’t already dead.”
Frederik sliced his hand through the air as if he wanted to cut off the torrent of words. But it was too late. Sándor had heard and understood. If he weren’t already dead.
Something churned deep down inside him. Hot, fluid, and alien. He sat there in complete silence, noting the feeling, observing how it rose and rose, pouring like lava into every part of his body. He was looking at the two men who had let his brother die. Who had watched while he got weaker and sicker. As he lost the use of his limbs and his vision and finally his ability to breathe or make his heart beat.
Sándor split into two. One part of him was still sitting in the chair, watching, passive, neutral. He had never had an out-of-body experience before, but that was what was happening now. His rage was his body, and as he hurled himself across the coffee table and jabbed his elbow horizontally into the face of that little psychopathic wannabe cowboy, it was as if he could again taste the mixture of blood, saliva, and moisturizer from the gadjo woman who had once tried to take his siblings from him.
He only heard the screams from a distance. To begin with he didn’t even feel the pummeling blows he was receiving. He bit into something that felt cartilaginous and earlobe-like, hammered the base of his palm into a throat, thrust his elbow into a soft abdomen. Something struck him on the back of the head, making the sounds even more distant, but he didn’t stop hitting and kicking. Not even when he was picked up and hurled to the floor or when it got hard to breathe because someone was sitting on his battered ribcage.
The first thing that penetrated through the fog was a searing, white-hot pain in one of his hands. He instinctively tried to pull it toward himself, but that only made the pain worse. He was stuck. And suddenly he was back in the painful shell of his body, excruciatingly aware of every single blunt protest from his ribs, kidneys, and head, but especially the screeching, unbearable pulse pounding in his left hand.
“Fuckhead,” Tommi said testily. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Blood was pouring down the lower half of the pseudo-cowboy’s face, but Sándor didn’t care about that right now. He turned and stared at his left hand, which was stuck securely to the floor with two nails from a nail gun.