A CAR PULLED up outside. Frederik stiffened and reached into his computer bag. The gesture so much ressembled a movie cliché that Sándor wondered whether he had a weapon hidden there. Then a car door slammed, and Frederik let go of the bag and visibly relaxed. “He got her,”
he said. “He really got her.”
But it wasn’t the nurse Tommi shoved in the door a few seconds later. It was the girl from the apartment. She looked like a disfigured Pierrot, with her chalky white face and black eyes smeared from a mixture of tears and cheap mascara. The sight struck Sándor like a bludgeon.
“What the hell,” said Frederik, who obviously wasn’t pleased either. “Why did you take her?”
“Piece of cake,” Tommi said with a triumphant grin. “Just had to check the girl’s school timetable, right?”
Oh, that’s why, Sándor thought. That’s why he had snatched her school bag. Because he wanted to be able to find her again.
Frederik shook his head in disbelief. “You were supposed to get the goddamn mother, not the kid.”
“This,” said Tommi, “is even better. And more fun.…”
She heard the sounds a second before it happened.
The door that slid open almost imperceptibly, soft rubber soles padding across the gray linoleum, first by the door, then a little closer. The little click as the door closed automatically behind the intruder. Then, abruptly, something big and warm was pressed against her mouth, and Nina’s eyes flew open. Her head was being pushed so deeply into the pillow that it almost closed around her face, and the sense of being suffocated caused panic to explode through her for a second. Trying to move her head was hopeless, the man crouched over her was now putting his weight behind the outstretched arm and hand while Nina frantically batted at the air around her. She grabbed for the face, the hair, the neck, and arms of her attacker, but he moved quickly and avoided her blows. The man’s little finger had been pushed up under her nose, and she had to fight for every single scrap of air for her lungs. As if she were breathing through wet gauze. And in the middle of her frenzied panic, she could see a gaunt face with a wide grin swaying back and forth over her. The eyes gleamed, distant and exhilarated. He’s on drugs, Nina managed to conclude. An addict looking for morphine or maybe someone who was mentally ill, lost in the wrong part of the hospital. His breath was heavy and sharp and smelled of cigarettes and peppermint. The man was making an effort to catch her eyes, and for some reason or other, that made her slow down. She tried to aim her blows better. Make them harder. But the hand that was pressed so solidly over her mouth didn’t budge a millimeter, and eventually she lay perfectly still as she tried to breathe through the one, almost free nostril.
It seemed like that was what he had been waiting for.
The man eased up on the pressure on her mouth a little bit and reached for something with his free hand. Nina tried to follow his movements with her eyes, but her head was still being pushed so far down in the pillow that it obscured her view like a white mountain range. She couldn’t see much besides the ceiling, the man’s arm, and little bits of his head and upper body. All that smothering softness drowned out even the sounds. Some notion of escape occurred to her. The man still had a hand over her mouth, but he was only holding her with one arm. Maybe she could slide free and pull the alarm cord that was hanging right over her bed.
Then a black object appeared right over her face. It took a couple of seconds before she was able to focus on it, and yet another moment before she realized what it was. A mobile phone. It was on, and the screen showed a picture with a dark, almost-black background. In the foreground there was a person who had been photographed from above. The girl’s pale face glowed white in the darkness. The eyes were slightly narrowed and the facial expression frozen in that defiant face she always made, when she was trying not to cry.
Ida.
Nina didn’t scream.
She could tell he was expecting her to, because he clamped his hand down tighter over her mouth before he pushed the button. But Nina couldn’t scream. Nothing inside her was working. There was only silence and cold and the picture dancing on the black phone in front of her. Something started moving on the tiny screen. The sound of footsteps on a floor that echoed in a strangely hollow way. The man doing the filming said something or other, but Nina couldn’t hear what it was, and now she could see Ida take a step back. As if she were trying to disappear into the darkness. Where? Nina desperately tried to gauge the location of the recording. It wasn’t home in their apartment—the wall behind Ida was a hideous dark purple color—but otherwise there wasn’t anything that revealed where she was.
The angle changed. Now the photographer was standing over Ida, speaking once more.
“Say hi to Mommy.
Smile.”
Ida’s eyes flitted toward the camera, then she looked directly at the man holding the phone and angrily jutted out her chin. “Smile.”
Ida shook her head, took two steps farther back, and bumped into the purple wall. The phone was right up against her face now. A finger slid slowly over her chin, pushed its way tentatively between her lips, and made its way over to the corner of her mouth. Pulled it upward into a grotesque, crooked grin.
“Smile for Mommy.”
The picture went black, and Nina felt the man slowly ease up on the pressure on her mouth. He pulled his hand away completely. She turned her head, and it was only now that she could really see the man next to her bed. He wasn’t that much taller than her, she thought, and skinny under that loose T-shirt. He was wearing a pair of very light-blue Levis that were cinched in at the waist with a wide, studded leather belt, its oversized belt buckle featuring a shiny, pale skull. His hair was shoulder-length, dark blond, and looked freshly washed. The rest of him was worn and scruffy and cigarette-ravaged, even though he could hardly be older than thirty. His nose was swollen and bruised on one side, his eyes wide and feverish. Probably snorted a line of crystal meth a few hours ago, Nina thought hostilely, and felt a glint of satisfaction at the thought of how short and miserable this man’s life would be. How his body would be covered with oozing sores from the crank bugs, how he would scream and call for mercy, and how he would die alone and in pain. She would kill him herself right now if she had the slightest opportunity. For what he had done to Ida. She lashed out at him, but there was no strength in her blow, and it only grazed his throat before he grabbed her hand and held it securely.