Death of a Nightingale (Nina Borg #3)

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “My friend,” he said, with laughter still in his voice, “when you have sat in a chair for almost twenty-four hours without being able to say anything but ‘Hello,’ ‘Thank you,’ and ‘Where is the toilet?’ there suddenly is not as much difference between Ukrainian and Russian as there usually is. We will no doubt understand each other.”

  THEY BORROWED AN office on the second floor with a view of the parking lot.

  “It was down there,” Symon Babko said, pointing. “Down there she got away.”

  “Natasha Dmytrenko?”

  “Who is really called Natasha Doroshenko,” said Babko. He pushed a worn file folder toward Søren. “She was questioned in two thousand and seven in connection with the killing of her husband, Pavel Doroshenko. Immediately afterward, she disappeared. There is, therefore, a request for detention.”

  Søren opened the folder. Natasha Doroshenko looked like a frightened teenager in the photo that was glued to the first page of the detention order, but that was the way she looked, he remembered, in most of the photos that accompanied the Danish case files he had had the chance to skim. He attempted to speed-read to get an overview but had to accept that his linguistic proficiency wasn’t quite sufficient. The Ukrainian differences from the Russian he was used to teased his eyes, similar to the way Norwegian or Swedish forced him to read more slowly. It would take a while to digest the material, and right now it was more important to engage with the man who sat across from him.

  “Tell me,” he said instead.

  “In Ukraine, she is still wanted in that connection. She hasn’t been found guilty. Not yet. But she’s wanted. So when we learned that she had been recognized in Denmark, we were naturally interested.”

  Søren nodded. “Are murder cases normally handled by GUBOZ?” he asked neutrally.

  “At first it was a simple murder case under the jurisdiction of the criminal police. I wasn’t attached until a week ago when the extradition case started.” Babko looked closely at Søren. There was a subtext here, Søren sensed, but he wasn’t sure that he could read it.

  “So you have formally requested her extradition?” he asked.

  “Yes. But even before the extradition got properly underway, Colonel Savchuk had successfully requested an interview. The Danish officials were apparently very forthcoming.”

  That searching gaze again. Søren was annoyed that he was clearly missing something, but he sensed that a direct question would be a mistake.

  “I assume Savchuk is your English-speaking colleague?”

  “That is correct. Colonel Jurij Savchuk.”

  Finally Søren understood. With his slight emphasis, Babko was making it clear that Savchuk had a higher rank than he did and that he therefore was in a pinch right now. He couldn’t officially criticize a superior, though Savchuk had apparently left without being polite enough to tell his hosts where he was going or why.

  “Where is Colonel Savchuk?” asked Søren.

  “He is presumably investigating Natasha Doroshenko’s disappearance,” said Babko carefully.

  “On Danish soil?”

  “I assume he is doing so by agreement with the proper authorities.” It was clear that if this was not the case, Babko wasn’t at fault.

  As far as Søren knew, there was no such agreement, and he strongly doubted that the “proper authorities” would take kindly to an unauthorized freelance effort from the Ukrainian police. But he let it pass. “The killing of Pavel Doroshenko,” he said instead.

  “Yes. On September twenty-third, two thousand and seven, Doroshenko was found in his car near Lake Didorovka. At that point he had been dead for a few days. It was at first assumed that he had been murdered, since he had some obvious lesions, mostly on the hands, but it later turned out that the cause of death was heart failure, presumably caused by pain and shock.”

  “He was beaten to death?”

  “Yes and no. Four of the fingers on his left hand had been crushed—extremely painful, but under normal circumstances not lethal.”

  “Crushed how?”

  “In the car door.”

  “And I assume it couldn’t have been an accident?”

  “Unlikely. The door was slammed shut across his fingers several times. Normally you put a cable or thin rope around the victim’s wrist, and the hand is pulled toward the door while the victim sits bound in the car and already trapped by the seat belt. It’s said that the best tactic is to stick your hand as far out of the car as possible, so that the door slams closed on the wrist instead of the fingers, but it is very difficult not to attempt to pull your hand toward you. That’s the most natural reaction.”

  Søren listened to the cool and almost routine description of the torture. “In other words, that happens regularly? This type of violence?”

  “Yes. It’s a fairly common way of punishing people who, in one way or another, have had their fingers in the wrong pies.”

  Søren’s eyes fell on the teenage-slim Natasha Doroshenko. “It doesn’t seem likely that this is a … punishment … that his wife could administer.”

  “Not on her own, no. A petty criminal called Bohdan Pahlaniuk later took credit for providing the muscle. But he claimed to have been paid by the wife because she was upset that Doroshenko couldn’t keep his hands off other ladies. Pahlaniuk said that the intention wasn’t to kill him.” Babko tapped the case file with a square index finger. “Page two.”

  Søren turned the page. Yes—page two was a confession signed by Bohdan Pahlaniuk and dated November 16, 2007.

  “How was he caught?” he asked.

  “Pahlaniuk was arrested and held for another assault a month or so after Pavel Doroshenko’s death. The Doroshenko confession surfaced in connection with that. But a warrant was out for her just a few days after the killing.”

  “Why?”

  “The most obvious reason, of course, was that she took off and left the country with her daughter a few hours after she had been questioned. But there were some other suspicious circumstances as well. Even though her husband had disappeared four days before he was found, she hadn’t reported him missing.”

  “How long had they been married? How was their relationship?”

  “They were married in two thousand. She was only seventeen. He was quite a bit older, in his mid-thirties.”

  “Twice her age?”

  “Yes, it’s not that uncommon. She’s from a small town near Kurakhovo in Donetsk Oblast. It’s not the greatest place in the world to live when you are a young girl wanting a bit of fun in life. Since the coal mine began shutting down production, everything has ground to a halt. There are whole neighborhoods that are practically ghost towns. He was a journalist, lived in Kiev in a fancy apartment—her ticket to the city and a completely different lifestyle.”

  “Do you know whether there were, in fact, ‘other ladies’?”

  “He had the reputation at least for being a bit of a babolyub before he married. Maybe the leopard hadn’t changed his spots just because he signed a wedding license.”

  Søren considered the possibilities. There was apparently a certain amount of substance to the case against Nina’s young widow, and yet … certain peculiarities jumped out.

  “Am I correct in assuming that Colonel Savchuk is a man of a certain position?” he asked.

  For the first time in the course of the conversation, Babko sat totally still. The bouncing heel stopped bouncing; the fingers ceased drumming against the coffee mug.

  “That’s correct,” he said. “In SBU.”

  SBU was the Ukrainian secret police. Not exactly an organization with a spotless reputation.

  “Not GUBOZ, then.”

  “No.”

  “What is his interest in this case?” asked Søren. “Wouldn’t it normally be handled by someone at a lower level?”

  Babko looked at him for a few seconds with a poker face. “Correct again,” he said finally.

  His replies became more and more minimal, Søren observed, the closer
you got to Savchuk.

  “Is he carrying his cell phone?”

  “Presumably.”

  Now we’re down to one word, thought Søren dryly. What would be next? Syllables?

  “Do you have a number?” He deliberately shifted from the formal to the informal address to reduce the distance between them. We are colleagues, he tried to say. Help me out here.

  Babko shook his head—a single abrupt gesture.

  Silence filled the office. You could hear the traffic outside in Hambrosgade accompanied by the hissing of radial tires through slush.

  “So you have no way of contacting him?”

  “No.”

  Not only was Babko a man playing away from home, but his only teammate was apparently more of an opponent than a fellow player. Søren could almost pity him, but only almost. Because one thing was clear: Babko was by no means telling Søren everything that he knew.

  The Ukrainian militia was no knitting circle. Every year Amnesty International registered countless instances of torture, misuse of power and corruption, and the country’s own ombudsman in this area had had to note that up to three-quarters of those arrested were subjected to some form of abuse. In many instances the interrogation methods appeared not to have changed significantly since Soviet times when quick confessions were necessary if you were to solve the required 80 percent of your cases. Whether you had the correct guilty party was less important. It was all about closing the case in a hurry.

  Was Babko one of the bully boys who routinely beat detainees with water-filled plastic bottles or kept them handcuffed for days? He didn’t look like the type, but then, not many torturers did.

  UKRAINE, 1934

  “You’re to keep your mouth shut. Understand? What I do in my own house is none of your business or anyone else’s.”

  Grandfather pounded the table so hard that the warm tea in his mug sloshed over the rim and soaked into the rough grain of the wood. Oxana started, but she didn’t lower her eyes. On the contrary, she raised her chin in defiance, giving him a small, stubborn smile of the kind she normally offered Olga when she thought Olga had done something particularly childish.

  But Grandfather wasn’t a child. How did she dare? True, he was little and bent and moved with difficulty, but when he hit, he hit hard, fists to the face. He had gotten up, swaying and threatening, planting both his broad, lumpy hands on the table for support while he glared at Oxana. The smells of rank body and goatskin and vodka billowed in the air around him.

  “But Russian vodka is the people’s enemy,” said Oxana. “We have to fight drunkenness, crime and religious sloth.”

  “Shut up.”

  Oxana collected herself. “But Grandfather,” she said. She wasn’t completely unaffected, because her voice had gotten a little bit shrill now. “You yourself have seen what vodka does to people. When men drink, they can’t work. They fight and kill each other. It’s the capitalists’ weapon to anesthetize the masses.”

  Grandfather’s eyes were half closed and swimming now. “Kapitalistki, sotsialitski, kommunitski,” he growled. He shoved the table so hard that all the mugs teetered, and one fell down and shattered on the floor. “That crazy teacher of yours means trouble. Stay away from her. You’re smart, they say. It shouldn’t be so hard to understand.”

  He stumbled around the table and fell toward Oxana, who had positioned herself by the brick oven, Grandfather’s vodka bottle in one hand. She was furious. A bottle of vodka was not only hard to come by, it was also expensive, and the money could have served a more useful purpose. The standard bread rations from the kolkhoz were only enough for bare survival, and bread and butter were expensive in the open market. Kolja needed the extra nourishment, as did Mother.

  Grandfather raised his fist, and Olga instinctively ducked in her seat by the chimney. She expected any moment to hear the sound of Oxana’s skull being split open by Grandfather’s fists, but instead it was Mother’s icy voice that broke the silence.

  “Leave her alone.”

  Olga opened her eyes again and saw Mother standing in the doorway. The draft made her heavy skirt flutter faintly. It was cold outside now, with frost at night, and Mother’s face and hands were red from the chill. Grandfather backed away from Oxana. He had wrenched the dirty vodka bottle out of her hand and was staring meanly from Mother to Oxana before he finally ambled out of the living room. He slammed the door hard behind him. Olga caught a glimpse of him through the dirty window. He looked like an angry wounded bear, thought Olga, crossing the little courtyard with short, lurching steps before he disappeared down the road toward the village.

  Mother signed deeply and sat down with little Kolja on her lap. The clay bowl that she had brought in from the barn was almost empty again today. Zorya’s milk barely covered the bottom. The calf from the spring was long gone, and the cow was not a miracle machine that could produce milk from potato peels and straw. No matter how much you boxed her sunken udders, it was usually only possible to extract a few drops at a time. Now Mother brought the bowl up to Kolja’s mouth.

  “Drink, my boy,” she hummed. “Milk from Zorya for you.”

  Kolja squirmed, wrinkled his little face and turned his head away.

  “Drink, Kolja.” Mother’s voice was sharp now, and she pressed the bowl against Kolja’s lips until he reluctantly emptied it in one swallow. Then he placed his face against Mother’s throat and closed his eyes.

  “Why doesn’t he help us?” Oxana’s voice flicked like a whip through the living room. “I’ve heard the widow doesn’t lack for anything, and we are his children. You are his wife.”

  Mother didn’t answer, just sat with half-closed eyes and stared straight into space. Olga didn’t like it. Mother’s neck, which used to be smooth and brown and smelled of herbs from the garden, had gotten wrinkled and stringy. Dirt caked her chest and breastbone darkly, and in a few places it had cracked and fallen off, the skin beneath showing a transparent pink. Olga knew that it had something to do with Father, even though she didn’t completely understand why Mother had stopped washing from one day to the next. Just as it was clearly also Father’s fault that they were living here instead of in the house in the village next to Jana.

  It was Oxana who took care of bathing Kolja now, and Oxana who woke up Mother so that she made it to work in the morning, but the caked dirt on Mother’s neck they couldn’t do anything about, just as they couldn’t get Father to love Mother again and ask them to move back into the house.

  Oxana cursed quietly. “He’s a shit,” she hissed. “A no-good piece of shit.” She spun around and began to put on her heavy coat.

  Mother didn’t move. In fact, it didn’t even look as if she had noticed.

  “Where are you going?” asked Olga.

  “I’m meeting Comrade Semienova down at the school.”

  “But we just got home.”

  “Yes.” Oxana smiled faintly. “But we are so busy, and Comrade Semienova has said that I, Leda and Jegor may sleep in the schoolroom when we’ve finished writing our article. We’re going to have potatoes and salt pork and real tea that Comrade Semienova has had sent from Leningrad.”

  “But what if Grandfather—”

  “Grandfather is an old drunk. He doesn’t understand that these are new times.”

  Olga looked over at Mother and Kolja, who sat still as pillars of salt at the table. It was already getting dark, and when Grandfather came home, he would have emptied the rest of his vodka bottle and be tired and hungry and mean. “Can I come?”

  Oxana looked at her in surprise over her shoulder. Then she laughed. “That wouldn’t do, Olga. Remember that both Leda and Jegor are fourteen. You’re only eight.”

  “So what?” protested Olga. “You’re only ten.”

  “That’s different,” said Oxana, holding her head high. “Comrade Semienova says I have a very early understanding of the issues.”

  Olga felt an odd desperation creep up on her. A night without Oxana. She had never tried that befor
e. Never. And especially now, when Grandfather would be angry and crazy, and Mother just sat there staring into empty space. “But did Mother say you could go?”

  Oxana glanced quickly at the two unmoving shadows at the table. “Honestly, Olga,” she said, lowering her voice, “Mother can’t even take care of herself right now. I need to be the strong one. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Olga didn’t, but Oxana clearly wasn’t planning to explain any further. She just tied her scarf under her chin and looked at Olga with a steady gaze. “Make sure to keep the fire in the oven lit, but don’t light the lamp before it’s necessary. We’re almost out of petroleum, and what we have is rubbish anyway. It’s better used on the lice.”

  Her hand touched Olga’s shoulder lightly. “Trust me, Olga.”

  She opened the door and stepped out into the fall dusk. Olga looked after her as she tramped through the mud in the same direction that Grandfather had disappeared. Then Olga bent down and began picking up the shards.

  “You need to speak to Heide,” Søren was told. “And she’s still out at the scene.”

  Michael Vestergaard had been found some hundred meters from his home in Hørsholm—in this weather at least a forty-minute drive from central Copenhagen. It wasn’t that Søren minded the distance. If he was going to get involved in the investigation, he might as well do it properly. He was just a bit reluctant to drag Babko with him as long as he didn’t know to whom the GUBOZ man reported. There was still no word of or from the missing Colonel Savchuk. On the other hand, the possible connection with the killing of Pavel Doroshenko was one of the things Søren needed to discuss with Mona Heide, and Babko was the best witness they had in this respect.

  “Where are we going?” said the Ukrainian when Søren asked him to come along.

  “To talk to one of my colleagues.”

  Babko looked as if he thought the answer was somewhat lacking, but he didn’t say anything else—at least not until they reached the garage in Hambrosgade, and Søren unlocked the car door.