Søren felt betrayed. By his friend, by his boss, by life in general, but first and foremost by his own body. How could it trick him in this way?
He knew, of course, that it was only in the world of fiction that the hero groaned, “It’s only a scratch,” got up with a bullet in his body, and went on as if nothing much had happened. He also knew that a body with nearly fifty years on the clock healed more slowly than one with twenty-five. He had been prepared for a certain convalescence. But that he might not get better, that this might not be just a question of time—that he would have to sit here and twiddle his thumbs to avoid “physical and psychological stress”—this, he would never have believed. He was one of the tough guys. That had always been taken completely for granted as part of his identity, not something he needed to announce or pay attention to, it was just there—the knowledge that he could take more than most people.
That was probably why he hadn’t told Nina. Because he was ashamed.
He hauled his focus back to the present and to the matter of Nina’s Filipino Facebook friend and possible stalker.
“He’s just trying to manipulate you,” he said. “Classic technique. If he can get you to suspend your normal judgment, he is on a roll. It’s pretty much the same principal as Nigerian prince scams.”
“Nigerian prince scams?” said Nina, raising a sarcastic eyebrow. “You think he’s just out to get my banking details? Aren’t we short a dramatic story about an unclaimed inheritance, or something?”
“There’s plenty of drama,” he said dryly. “The lure here is just fear and compassion instead of greed.”
“Mommy! Look!”
It was once again Anton’s turn on the diving board.
“Yes, sweetie.”
Anton began to bounce up and down on the board to build maximum power for the jump. Then he launched himself into the air, curling up into his usual bombing style. But Søren saw in a chilling second, and Nina apparently also, that the jump was too vertical. He hit the board on the way down, gave a cry of pain and rotated so he hit the water’s surface sideways instead of with his bottom first. The impact was so loud that Søren cringed in pure reflex. Nina had kicked her shoes off even before Anton hit the water. She dived in fully dressed—head first, Søren noted—and had hold of her son before the professional lifeguard at the end of the pool had a chance to react. Søren could hear her speaking quietly and soothingly to him.
“Lie still for a moment. I’ve got you. Just relax.”
She lay on her back and held him close to her chest with one arm while she kept them both afloat with powerful kicks and paddling strokes of her free arm. The other bathers made room so she could cross to the ladder, but when one of them moved to take hold of his legs, she sharply told him not to.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I have him.”
The lifeguard had reached the edge of the pool.
“Is he okay?” he asked.
“We need a board or a stretcher,” said Nina. “I want to have his back and neck supported before we try to get him out.”
The lifeguard nodded briefly and professionally and sent a short signal on his walkie-talkie. Then he let himself slip into the water next to Nina. He didn’t try to take Anton from her.
“I’m just here if you get tired,” he said.
Nina nodded.
“Mom, I . . . it’s not that bad,” said Anton, but you could see in his pale face and trembling shoulders that he was both battered and scared.
“Good,” said Nina.
More lifeguards appeared, and Anton was carefully lifted out of the water on a stretcher. Nina climbed out, soaked and with water streaming from her T-shirt and jeans, and knelt down next to Anton.
More and more of an audience gathered around them, and the swimming pool’s personnel were having a hard time keeping them at a distance.
“What happened?”
“Did he drown?”
“Did someone die?”
Søren slid routinely in front of some of the pushiest onlookers and forced them back with a mixture of brawn and authority. Most moved willingly; a pair of loud young teenagers were the only ones with whom he had to seriously use his “police” glare.
“Please give the staff room to work.” The words were polite, but the words didn’t mean anything. It was the hard, completely unsmiling look and a certain steeliness in his posture that made the incipient teenage rebellion fold.
“Okay, okay. We’re going . . .”
“Søren!” A hand hooked on to his sleeve. “Where’s Anton? Where’s Mom?” Ida’s eyes were pitch-black with fearful foreboding.
“Nothing serious happened,” he said. “Ida, it’s okay.”
She didn’t listen. She slid under his arm and snaked her way past a couple of broad lifeguard backs.
“Anton!”
Søren could hear Nina speak calmingly to both her children, but he could no longer see them properly. What exactly it was that made him look up then, he didn’t know. Maybe just the hyperawareness that his fear for Nina’s safety had equipped him with.
Up on the balcony, a figure stood leaning on the railing. Or rather, several people, following the drama. But there was only one who was eagerly photographing the scene.
It could be an overzealous local journalist or some random person with enough carrion instincts to figure that there might be money to be made, especially if a death was involved. Søren had caught the glint of a lens, recognized the stance, but other details were difficult to determine. Was the coat greenish brown, as Nina had described it? He couldn’t tell. It was too high up, the balcony group was backlit, and his glasses had a tendency to mist up in the steamy atmosphere.
He had to try to get closer. He looked back. The Center staff looked as if they had the situation well in hand. Anton had not been allowed to get up, but he was moving. Two lifeguards hoisted the stretcher and carried it in the direction of the changing rooms, and Nina and Ida followed them, Nina with her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. Søren glanced again in the direction of the balcony. The photographer had stopped shooting and was on his way out. It was now or never if Søren was to get a better look at him.
Søren hurried toward the exit to the parking lot. It was a gamble, because there were other routes that were just as likely—the Swim Center was right next to the train station and therefore central to just about every kind of public transportation, or a taxi for that matter. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to get up the stairs fast enough to maintain visual contact, so this was the only option. He was lucky. Shortly after he reached one of the tall glass doors, a man came racing down the stairs still with a camera in his left hand. Søren automatically noted certain basic details—Southeast Asian–looking, young and fairly fit, sunglasses, baseball cap and the overly large military green parka that to a certain degree blurred the outline of his shoulders and upper body and made the rest look thin and twiggy, like the legs on a stick figure. Søren fished his own car keys out of his pocket and followed him, calm and relaxed, just a man who happened to be getting his car.
The parking lot was full, and there was even some unauthorized parking where drivers had pulled their cars halfway onto the sidewalk outside the delineated spaces. The photographer headed for a white Toyota Land Cruiser that was clearly equipped as a camping van, with heightened ceiling, a mini satellite dish, a rolled-up sun shield along one side, curtains in the windows, even a rubber raft on the roof—it looked like something that should be driven around the Australian outback rather than Viborg’s smooth asphalt streets. Søren was still too far away to see the license plate and much too far to plant a tracer. If he had had one, that was . . . damn. He was as civilian as you could be. He riffled through his pockets, but knew that a microtransmitter wouldn’t miraculously appear no matter how many times he turned them out.
On the other hand . . . one of the Land
Cruiser’s back windows was open a crack. Another possibility popped into Søren’s head and he felt a wide, self-satisfied grin pull at the corners of his mouth. He sped up. The photographer had already gotten in and was starting the engine. Søren had to run a few steps to make the timing work, but just as the Toyota backed out of the row, he slapped his hands hard against the side of the car and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Hey! Watch out. Look where you’re going, asshole!”
He didn’t think the man would be able to understand the words, but road rage was an international phenomenon, and the anger ought to shock and frighten him sufficiently that the driver wouldn’t notice Søren’s real mission. His iPhone slid in through the open window and landed someplace in the camper’s interior with a barely audible thump.
The man behind the wheel looked suitably shocked. His mouth was a dark distorted hole, his shades gleamed in startled blindness, and he hit the brakes so hard the ABS came on with an uneven shudder.
But what happened next took Søren entirely by surprise. As the door flew open, a fist shot out, and something else, something hard, hit him in the chest. His entire nervous system sizzled and shut down. He collapsed like an ox in an abattoir, and his head hit the asphalt with an ominous crunch.
A Taser, he thought before the lights faded completely. The guy has a fucking Taser.
THE PHILIPPINES, SIX MONTHS EARLIER
Come on. Get it over with.”
Vincent had to say it out loud to himself before he could do it.
He had to be strong now. Had to nerve himself up like he had done when he was little and what he had been told to do scared him. Do it. Be a good, obedient boy. Darkness had just fallen, and the car, still parked in front of the engineer’s office, would not be there much longer.
The man who owned the silver Toyota would appear and drive it home, and then it would be too late for today. And it was important, Vadim had said. It was urgent.
Vincent took one of Victor’s chef’s knives from his backpack and squatted down next to the car. There were still people in the street, men in suits, and street vendors, and teenage girls in brief shorts who reminded him of Mimi. It stressed him out, but he doubted that anyone would notice or make any move to stop him as long as he was quick and effective. He jabbed the knife into the first tire. It was surprisingly hard and tough to cut through—he had to push with all his weight against the knife handle and wriggle it back and forth to create even a crack in the rubber. He made as long and deep a cut as he was able to. The result was not impressive, and the tire didn’t even seem punctured.
“What are you doing?”
A man, dressed in jeans and a shirt and wearing a pair of off-center spectacles, had stopped and was staring angrily down at Vincent’s kneeling figure. Three large warts jutted from his chin. He looked like a toad, thought Vincent. It helped to think ugly thoughts about other people, he had discovered. It produced an anger he needed. Still, he had to pull himself together in order not to get up and walk away.
“I work for the guy with the car,” said Vincent in as hard a tone as he could muster. “Mind you own business.”
The guy shrugged his shoulders and walked on, while Vincent prodded the tire. The sweat was already pouring off him, and he hadn’t done any significant damage yet. He had to give up on the tires and think of something else. He let the knife’s point slide along the silver-grey side of the car. A deep scratch appeared, and in a few places the paintwork cracked and fell off in small flakes. Much better.
He repeated the procedure on the other side of the car. The man needed to be able to tell that the damage was deliberate. A punishment. People like him weren’t afraid of the police, said Vadim. They could buy their way out of anything.
A few pedestrians were slowing down to look at him before passing by. He had a knife, he reminded himself. They were more afraid of him than he was of them. He took a step backward and considered his work with narrowed eyes. That would have to do, but the most important element was still missing. He put the knife back in his bag, walked away from the car and went to stand at the entrance to the small run-down park on the other side of the road. The man had to see him.
A little more than half an hour passed before the engineer appeared. Vincent recognized him from the construction site and many heated arguments with Vadim. He was around forty and a good-looking guy. Muscular and well built in a nonshowy way and with a youthful energy. He usually wore jeans and a T-shirt and had an attentive dark gaze.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be an asshole.
He had started blackmailing Vadim some months ago, just after he was fired as chief engineer on the rehousing project. Vincent didn’t know the details, but some men from the building crew outside the city had seen him several times out at the construction site, where he stood smoking and staring at the workers. He had also started sending letters to Vadim. Vincent had seen them lying on Vadim’s desk.
The guy produced a cigarette and went into one of the narrow shops a bit further down the sidewalk. A little later he came out with a steaming carton, which he poked at with a plastic fork. Rice and some kind of meat and sauce. Dinner already. He rested his back against the wall of the nearest house while he ate and was clearly in no hurry. Music reached the street from a window above him, house remix with a psychotic pounding rhythm. Vincent wanted it all to be over, just as he wanted Vadim not to have given him the task in the first place. There were definitely others whom Vadim could have hired and who would have been better qualified than Vincent.
But it wasn’t a question of qualifications. Vincent knew that. It was about something else. This was Vadim’s punishment because he had asked him for money and received it. It was the thumb ring and the lead belt all over again—“How far would you go for me? Friends do anything for each other. Come on, Vincent, my man. Show me that I can trust you . . .”
The engineer caught sight of him from the other side of the street and stopped mid-movement. The fork hung suspended in front of his mouth for a long second before he finally shoveled in the last bit of rice, threw the carton away and headed for his car. He let a hand run along the scratch all the way around the car before he shot Vincent another fast look, got in and drove off with shrieking tires. The car sideswiped one of the horse-drawn kalesaes and made the skinny horse jump on the pocked asphalt.
Vincent dried his forehead and headed in the same direction. He didn’t know how long he would have to keep this up. Hunting the asshole twenty-four hours a day. Until he had had enough, Vadim had said, but only Vadim knew when that was.
He caught a taxi at the corner of San Pablo and J. P. Rizal. He had enough money at the moment; Vadim had been generous when he assigned the task and the means to carry it out.
“You don’t have to hurt him, just frighten him,” Vadim had said. “I don’t care how you do it, as long as it is effective and he stops sending me those damned letters. He sent my father one last week. To his home address. Jesus Christ. It was only because I happened to be there that weekend that I had time to snatch it before my father read it. The man is crazy.”
Vincent looked at the piece of paper with the address that Vadim had given him. It wasn’t a fancy neighborhood. Apartments for the lower middle class, no swimming pools or lush gardens. The engineer’s scratched car was parked outside already. Vincent paid the taxi and looked around quickly for his backup, as Vadim had called him. Vadim had insisted he bring an extra man when he went to see the engineer.
“I don’t trust him,” Vadim had said. “Some of the things he has written are clearly threatening. You can bring Martinez. He looks the part.”
Martinez was a security guard at the company’s construction sites, employed to ensure they weren’t completely cleaned out of construction materials. He was half a head shorter than Vincent but broad in all the right places, had several gold teeth and a tattoo of a skull on his calf. Vin
cent had never spoken with him before. Now he appeared from the opposite side of the parking lot, waving with a complicit grin. He had a loose, relaxed gait and was showing off his round, beefed-up arms in a snow-white tank top.
Amateurs, thought Vincent. What the hell are we doing?
“You know what we’re here for?”
“Yes, man. I’ve spoken with the boss.” Martinez flashed all his gold teeth in an idiotic grin. Vincent didn’t like him and didn’t feel like chatting. Instead he turned around and rang the lobby bell.
The reception cubicle was manned by a uniformed doorman with a pistol, but that shouldn’t be a problem, as long as they spoke politely.
“Lorenz Robles?”
The doorman, who wasn’t much older than Vincent, sent them a haughty look through the no-doubt bulletproof glass door. Then he walked over to the intercom with his hand on his pistol.
“And who should I say is here?”
“We have a message for him from Vadim.”
“Who?”
Either the guy liked to take his time or he was unusually slow.
“You don’t need to worry about that,” said Vincent and smiled as nicely as possible. He held a one-hundred peso bill up against the window. “Just tell him what I said.”
The guy turned around and carried on a short, inaudible conversation with someone else on the other side of the glass door. Then he nodded, opened the door for Vincent, and had his reward pressed into one palm.
“You can take the elevator to the fourth floor. It’s apartment 4B.”
Vincent walked past him to the elevator. He was nervous now, and his heart was beating much too fast, as if his body was preparing for something terrible. He had never liked direct confrontation. Martinez was bouncing about next to him like a boxer on speed.
The Considerate Killer Page 13
