Without a doubt that was why the little piece of paper with the registration number had been handed over.
“Can you give me what you have on the Doroshenko case?” asked Søren to see if the cooperation stretched even further.
“You have the case folder.”
“Yes. I mean everything you have.”
The quieter version of the laughter. “Okay, honest cop. But I need it back.” Babko pulled a USB drive out of the inner pocket of his suede jacket and handed it to Søren.
AFTER GIVING THE dogs a final airing in the garden, they drove back to headquarters. Babko disappeared in the direction of the apparently entirely satisfactory bed in the basement, while Søren headed toward the Communication Center under the roof of what had once been the women’s prison. The noise was muted but ongoing. Only one of the operators looked up when Søren entered, and her gaze immediately slid back to the screen in front of her.
At the back of the high-ceilinged room sat a nearly bald man with round, well-padded shoulders that filled his light blue uniform shirt to the bursting point. Søren raised a hand. “Hello, Carlo,” he said.
Duty officer Peter Carlsen smiled broadly and stuck two fingers in the air, continuing to speak on the telephone without missing a beat. When he was done, he got up and patted Søren on the shoulder with a smack that could be heard even through the stream of reports.
“Sonny boy. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Playing interpreter, for the most part. You’ve got a Ukrainian in the house.”
“Oh, him. Is he of interest to the PET?”
“We’re just helping each other out,” said Søren vaguely.
Back at the police academy, the girls had given Carlsen the nickname Don Carlo because of a certain relaxed Latin lover charm. The name had stuck long after the pitch-black hair had disappeared and a middle-aged spread had asserted itself.
“What can I do for you?”
“The Ukrainian has a colleague, a Colonel Savchuk, who is … well, somewhat Absent Without Leave. He drove off Friday afternoon and hasn’t been in contact with anyone since. We’d like to find him, of course.” Søren handed Carlo the paper with the registration number. “So if anyone sees this … it’s a BMW with Ukrainian plates.”
“Okay. Is it the PET or headquarters who wants to know?”
“Both. And I’d very much like a personal tip-off right away.”
“That’ll cost you a beer.” Carlo gave him an exaggerated conspiratorial wink.
“You are aware that you look like a fawning headwaiter when you do that, right?”
“Deal or no deal?”
“Deal.”
“Good. And really … don’t be such a stranger, huh?”
Søren agreed and headed home to Hvidovre to dig into Babko’s files. It wasn’t the same as having live witnesses to work with, but right now it was his best chance to get to know Pavel Doroshenko.
It was strange the way a change in your perspective could change a place.
The Coal-House Camp had been Natasha’s home for many months, but from the edge of the woods, it looked foreign to her again. She was staring narrow-eyed down at the children’s barrack from the little hiding place she had arranged under some low-hanging pine branches. It was dark now and had been for a long time. The evening had drifted into night while she’d sat hunched in her hiding place, but she felt no tiredness—just a background throb in her fingers and toes.
The camp’s low barracks seemed stooped against the cold. The snow veiled the walkways, lawns and benches and made Natasha think of the cotton-ball snow landscape Katerina and she had been allowed to construct together in the prison’s creative workshop last year. Katerina had arranged a cave for elves under a substantial piece of bark and placed other elves made of pipe cleaners outside the cave and on the little mirror that was supposed to look like a snow-covered pond.
“Should we add a troll too?” she had asked and had hesitantly run a hand through the box filled with wooden beads and pinecones.
“There are no trolls in elf-land,” said Natasha.
“And not in real life either?”
Katerina’s tone was different, and Natasha’s trained ears instantly picked up a change in the rhythm of her breathing.
“Definitely not in real life,” Natasha had said, as solidly and calmly as possible.
“But the camp isn’t elf land.” Natasha could hear Anna as clearly as if she had been standing next to her in the glittering snow. “The camp is a trap. You are the fox, and Katerina is the juicy piece of meat in the trap.”
“I know,” whispered Natasha. “I’ll be careful.”
The sense that Anna was with her evaporated as soon as she spoke out loud. No one was looking out for her now. The dark was dark, the cold was cold, and she was alone.
A thin but feminine shape moved behind the third window from the left. She assumed it was Nina. It was good that there was a woman with Katerina, but at the same time, it made things more complicated. Natasha opened and closed her hand around the knife handle in her pocket and attempted to hold back the racing panic that made her heart beat much too hard and fast. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on the weight of her body pressing against the earth, the cold air, the tree trunk’s gnarly contours when she leaned back a little.
They had to get away, she and Katerina. Evil had come to Denmark now, and it was no longer safe here. But as long as Nina was awake and sat in Katerina’s room with the lights on, Natasha had to wait. Anything else would be too risky. She would be seen. Nina would raise the alarm and call the police.
She tried to think about something else. About the very first days in the camp when Denmark had still looked like a safe haven. In the little leaflet she was given, it said that Denmark was a democracy, and that there were more pigs than people living here, as if the two were somehow connected. On the way here, she had seen the great refrigerated trucks with pictures of grinning porkers on the side, and for some reason it made all the horrors fade a little then. As if nothing wicked could reach her here in this ridiculous little, flat Bacon Land, where even the pigs smiled on their way to the slaughterhouse. Back then the fence had seemed a protection against the dangers she had run from. Even the most ordinary things—for example, the sight of the plastic chairs that were stacked every evening on the tables in the cafeteria with their legs up—brought tears to her eyes because it all seemed so ordered and calm. Even the fact that everything was so worn and nothing was clean for very long, even that was somehow reassuring—they weren’t in Kiev anymore, in the apartment’s traitorous luxury; it was more like Kurakhovo and the smell of her childhood. Katerina’s sheets were patterned with nice little Scandinavian trolls, and Natasha had an odd feeling of being at summer camp with a lot of friendly people who were not out to kill her.
Later the despair set in. The grey fear of rejection cast a pall over the contours of the camp. As inhabitants disappeared, she knew she risked the same thing—knew the only thing she had won with her flight was a delay. She saw the fence for what it really was: a barrier to control the people inside, not a protection against the rest of the world. The greatest danger of all was let in through the main gate in the form of the apparently good-natured policemen who came to collect those who were being sent home. Even the Moomintrolls on Katerina’s comforter began to look cruel, with devilish, taunting, superior smiles.
Then she had met Michael. It wasn’t the way it had been with Pavel, not a dizzy falling in love, more a form of physical gratitude. Mixed with her desire for him and inseparable from it was the desire for permanent safety. She had loved him because he was a way out. So she had believed back then, and that belief made the camp fade away even while Katerina and she were still living there. It had become insignificant, a temporary refuge, no more. The sheets were weighted with neither hope or despair; they were just sheets.
The light went out in the third window from the left
. A kind of electric shock raced through Natasha’s body, as if the switch in Katerina’s room were directly connected with her own nervous system. Now! Nina had either left the room or gone to sleep. Natasha believed she could overpower the nurse if necessary. Physically she was stronger than ever. It was easy if you had enough time. You stepped onto the edge of your bed and down again—first on your left leg, then on your right—a thousand times in the course of a day, every day. Then you lay down on the cell floor with your arms behind your neck and pulled your head up to your knees just as many times. Then came the push-ups. When she lay in her bed at night, she could feel her stomach muscles under the skin like steely ropes between her pubic bone and her lower ribs. The Barbie doll was no longer soft and smooth and obedient.
How long would it take the nurse to fall fast asleep? Natasha checked her watch. Ten minutes had passed since the light had gone out in Katerina’s room, but a faint light still seeped out through the curtains in the room next door. It could be a night-light to calm a child who was afraid of the dark, but Natasha didn’t believe it. That’s where they were, the policemen.
She closed her hand around the knife in her jacket pocket again. Her fingers felt stiff and strange, as if they were no longer a part of her. But she could move them, and that was enough. Natasha measured the distance with her eyes. First five meters to the fence, and then about seventy meters across the snow-covered lawn. She had found pliers in the car’s trunk, and she hoped they would be sufficient to cut a hole in the heavy mesh. Otherwise she’d have to climb across, but that would make it harder when she brought Katerina back with her.
Katerina. Now only minutes separated them, minutes and seventy-five meters. Natasha got up.
Then she heard it. The sound of a motor someplace in the forest behind her where there weren’t supposed to be any cars. First a faint growl, then a shift to a lower gear and finally silence. There was no light to be seen through the trees. Only darkness and snow-laden branches. Natasha rubbed her nose with a numb red hand. Waited and listened. Then came the sound of car doors being opened and closed with careful, almost imperceptible clicks. A faint mumbling and the sound of heavy steps in the snow.
Silence again.
The desire to rush across the fence, shatter the window and drag Katerina with her out into the night was about to overpower her again. She was so close. Still, Natasha turned in the direction of the sound, got down on her knees and crept forward among the dark pines. Snow fell in cold showers from the branches onto her head and neck. Her unprotected hands hurt when they sank into the drifts, but she felt it only as a minor distraction. All her attention was focused on the sounds of the night, the whistling of the wind in the trees and the faint growl of trucks on the highway to Hillerød. How could the world make so much noise and at the same time be so still?
She crawled forward and through the next ruler-straight row of pines. The two narrow wheel tracks she herself had followed to the camp were only a few meters away now, and she could glimpse a faint light among the rippling black shadows of the trees.
A car was parked there, obscured by a storm of soft, whirling snowflakes. The headlights were off, but an interior light filled the car and created a faint orange-yellow aura against the black trees.
Natasha stopped in the shelter of a low, prickling pine and stuck her ice-cold hands inside her down jacket, confused. Someone had left the car and plowed a deep track among the trees to her right, but she couldn’t see the person who had done it or hear anything but the freezing wind, which blew through the forest. She turned toward the car again.
The driver’s seat was empty. But on the passenger seat sat a small, unmoving figure, staring straight ahead. The profile was sharply drawn, the nose aristocratically curved, and around the head was the silhouette of a huge, soft fur hat.
All at once the cold felt as if it came from inside as well as outside. It flowed from her chest through her abdomen and pooled in her arms and legs, making everything stiffen and hurt. Still she managed to move a little farther forward, close enough that she was afraid she would be seen if the woman in the car turned her head. Natasha knew the fear would kill her if it happened, but she had to be certain.
And then the woman did exactly that.
She turned her head slowly on a thin, wiry neck. Later Natasha remembered the movement as in slow motion: The huge gold earrings rocking slightly with the movement of the head, the bright red lips and the carefully powdered pale face. And finally the clear, pale blue eyes that stared into the dark without revealing any kind of emotion.
The Witch had found them again.
Natasha felt everything loosen in her body. She set off in the snow with a start like a hunted hare, stumbling through the trees without sensing the pine branches that whipped her in the face as she raced heedlessly back toward the camp and Katerina.
Seconds later a hollow bang sounded, and she knew she was too late.
Despite the hour and the winter darkness, there was a pallid sheen on the walls of Rina’s room.
It never got truly dark in the Coal-House Camp. There were lights along the walkways between the barracks, lamps above all the entrances and floodlights along the symbolic wire mesh fence that separated the camp’s inhabitants from the rest of the world.
Nina gently stroked Rina’s forehead, which was damp and cold with sweat. It was noticeably more quiet than usual in the barrack. Most of the children in the wing had a difficult relationship to men in uniforms and had for that reason been moved to empty rooms in the family wing while the watch over Rina continued. A faint scraping of chair legs and a low mumbling from the room next door was all that Nina could hear.
She found the book she had plucked from a shelf in one of the lounges earlier in the day—a paperback by some American author she had never heard of. She was forty pages into it but couldn’t remember what it was about, and it occurred to her that if she was to read it now, she would have to turn on the ceiling light, which was equipped with an aggressive eco-bulb. She abandoned that particular project. Instead, she got up and stretched her legs, feeling the restless energy that always set in when she had nothing to do.
The room was small and claustrophobic, and the curtain-less windows gave her an uncomfortable feeling of being watched. Take good care of the girl, PET-Søren had said, as if some other danger greater than Natasha lurked out there in the dark. It didn’t exactly relieve her paranoia to see the personal attack alarm lying on the desk and staring at her with a glowing red eye in the gloom.
Nina took another look at Rina before she picked up her empty coffee mug and walked down to the coffee machine at the end of the hall. The machine hummed and sputtered and reluctantly sprayed the tepid coffee into the mug, and in the middle of a gurgling spray, she suddenly thought she heard something else. A low, flat bang, not a noise she recognized from the camp’s usual nighttime soundtrack.
0:06. She stood for a few seconds with the plastic mug in her hand and listened while she gazed down the deserted grey corridor.
Silence. Then a soft bump and a faint scraping against the floor behind one of the doors. Silence again.
She realized that she had been dumb enough to leave the alarm in Rina’s room. She swore softly, set the cup down and ran with silent steps toward the door to the room where the two policemen were sitting. She didn’t waste time knocking. If anyone was in Rina’s room, they needed to react instantly. Still, she was careful enough to let the door swing open without too much noise. A faint, sweet smell hit her.
The window was shattered. That was the first thing she saw. One officer was slumped across the table with his arms hanging heavily along his sides. She couldn’t see his face but knew at once that he was either dead or unconscious. The same went for his colleague, who lay in a sprawling heap on the floor behind the table.
The shock propelled her back into the corridor, and she registered almost instantly that she was so dizzy, she had to support herself against the wall with one hand.
Gas. It was gas she could smell.
Without waiting to regain her balance, she tumbled the few meters to Rina’s room. She didn’t turn on the light but found the attack alarm on the table and pressed the button. Then she half-pulled, half-lifted Rina out of bed.
Rina hung dazedly in her arms but woke quickly enough that she could stumble along on her own two feet after Nina hauled her out into the corridor. They headed toward the coffee machine and the barrack’s kitchen and dining hall. The dizziness was dissipating, but the walls were still trying to topple onto Nina, and the corridor stretched out ahead of her, elastic and unending, until she suddenly reached the door.
Behind them there was yet another hollow bang, and glass rained down over the linoleum floor. The big wall of windows in the lounge area had been shattered, and heavy feet stepped across the shards with a crunching sound. Nina jerked Rina along down the rows of tables and chairs and into the kitchen. She had seen the walk-in refrigerator clearly in her mind’s eye even as she yanked Rina from her bed. It was the size of a broom closet, but it was airtight.
The heavy steel door was locked. Naturally. There were things that could be stolen in there, and this was a refugee center. Even the canned tomatoes were heavily guarded here. Nina fumbled with her passkey in the pallid light. The heavy lock clicked just as the door to the cafeteria was slammed open, and a broad, dark figure stepped into the dining hall behind them.
Nina pulled Rina into the narrow room with such force that the child whimpered as she hit the shelves of milk and cheese and juice. Nina had no time for consolations right now. She slammed the heavy steel door and heard the lock click once more.
She didn’t know if he had had time to see them or to hear the slam and click from the lock. Her nausea closed in again; it was as if the gas’s sweetish smell had coated her mouth and throat so that it was impossible to spit it out or cough it up. Next to her she could hear Rina’s rapid, wheezing breaths in the dark. They stood so close together that they couldn’t avoid touching. She put both arms around Rina’s head, both to muffle the sound of that awful wheeze and also to remind Rina that she was still there.
Death of a Nightingale Page 11
