The Considerate Killer

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  They sat silently and stared at the growing tumult outside. More ambulances, more cars sardine packed with families, children and adults stumbling into the hospital or settling down in resignation in the shade of the trees in front of it. Vadim had once again turned on the radio and hunched forward, listening intensely when there was news of his collapsed building. Under the sunburn, his skin was pale.

  Eventually, he got out his cell phone and punched a number.

  “Abiog?”

  He waited for a moment.

  “I should have told you this before, but I wasn’t sure how much to make of it. It’s just that we have in fact received a number of bomb threats at the office lately. Against the project and against me. I thought it was just a bit of harassment from a disgruntled ex-employee, and I didn’t really take it very seriously. But it popped back into my mind a minute ago . . .”

  Vadim’s voice was calm and modulated, but Vincent noticed the fine beads of sweat trickling from his hairline. When he finally ended the conversation, he leaned forward and sat for a long time with his head resting on the steering wheel. The cold air from the air conditioning took hold of his T-shirt and sweaty hair.

  “The engineer?” asked Vincent.

  “I didn’t think it meant anything. I thought you had him under control,” said Vadim. “You and Martinez. I had forgotten all about it.”

  Vincent emptied his water bottle and crushed it with a practiced movement of his hand.

  They sat in the car for a few hours, interrupted only by a pee break behind the acacia tree that Vincent had already soiled, and a trip for a burger at the local Jollibee. Vincent didn’t know what they were waiting for. Vadim just sat there, chain-smoking and staring at the people who came and went in the parking lot. As if he were searching for someone or something.

  The stream of ambulances and stretchers was petering out. Altogether they hadn’t seen more than about forty living survivors. Vincent hoped it was because they were also sending the wounded to other hospitals, but the sheer number of desperate relatives was heartbreaking.

  Then Diana finally came out. She walked with Victor, holding a fresh cigarette between her fingers. She looked exhausted, thought Vincent. She tipped her head back and rolled her shoulders in limbering circles while she said something to Victor.

  They weren’t even touching, but there was something about the way they were standing. Relaxed and intimate, bodies that were familiar with each other. Victor answered her. Smiled faintly. The peasant boy and the rich man’s daughter. Why hadn’t Vincent noticed it before?

  He glanced over at Vadim and could tell that Vadim saw the same thing he did. Neither of them said anything.

  Then Vadim opened the car door, a little too abruptly, and walked across the parking lot with a large, welcoming smile. It was probably only Vincent who noticed the tension in his normally relaxed gait, but he followed hesitantly and saw how Diana and Victor stiffened at the sight of them.

  “Finished for today?” Vadim smiled and smiled and placed his arm around Victor. “We thought you might be in need of some food. My treat.”

  Diana shook her head.

  “You go on,” she said. “I’m done for the day.”

  Vadim nodded.

  “But you’ll come, right, Victor?”

  A sigh expanded through Victor’s massive chest; then he smiled, almost as broadly as Vadim, and nodded.

  “Yes. I just have to get my things.”

  “The guy with the arm,” said Vadim. “The one we saw on the stretcher. Is he okay?”

  Victor, already moving away, stopped without turning around.

  “No,” he said. “He was one of the first to die.”

  Søren was gone. It took a while before Nina missed him, since she had been one hundred percent focused on Anton and Ida. At first she was just annoyed that he wasn’t there to drive them to the emergency room. She took a taxi instead, and after a fairly reasonable wait she managed to confirm that Anton had been let off with a scare and a sore, bruised shoulder, with no broken collarbone or other fractures and no damage to the spine, neck, or throat. She considered calling Morten but didn’t have the energy. No doubt it would somehow be her fault that Anton had had an accident in the swimming pool. You would think nothing like that ever happened when Morten was with the kids, she thought darkly. Every bike crash, every scraped knee or sunburn, every wasp sting—these days all such mishaps, too, could be attributed to Nina’s irresponsibility.

  And her head hurt. At the emergency room, they had been kind enough to change her chlorine-stinking, soaked bandage, but once the first hideous fears for Anton’s safety had been put to rest, her body let her know in no uncertain terms that her lifeguard stunt was not what the doctors had in mind when they told her to “take it easy for the next two weeks.”

  It wasn’t until she and the children were waiting outside Viborg Hospital’s emergency room for yet another taxi that Nina started to seriously wonder what had become of Søren. It wasn’t like him to just disappear. Especially not in the middle of a potential emergency.

  She told the driver to take them back to Cherry Lane. Her mother came out and stood waiting for them on the front path, surrounded by wet shrubs, wet paving, and wet grass, and Anton ran over and threw himself into her arms while Nina paid the taxi.

  “I’ve been to the emergency room,” he told her with poorly hidden pride. “I got X-rayed.”

  “So I hear,” said Hanne Borg. “It was a good thing that nothing was broken.” Ida got a half hug in passing. “Were you afraid, Ida?”

  “A little,” admitted tough-as-nails, only-losers-cry Ida, carefully rubbing the mascara by one eye. “The maggot is, after all, my little brother.”

  Nina noticed that Søren’s Hyundai wasn’t parked at the curb.

  “Have you heard anything from Søren?” she asked.

  Hanne looked up with an arm around each grandchild.

  “Søren?” she said. “Wasn’t he with you?”

  “Yes, until he . . . disappeared or whatever he did. I couldn’t find him when we were going to the emergency room, and he had the car keys. That’s why we had to take a taxi.”

  “It must have been crowded at the pool. It’s easy to lose track of each other. Call him.”

  Nina called Søren’s number but he didn’t answer. After several rings, it went to voice mail. Søren’s message was cool, unsexy, and devoid of frills. “I can’t answer the phone right now. Call back later or leave a message.”

  Nina let herself dwell for a second on the things she felt like telling him, but limited herself to an “It’s Nina. Call me.” She hadn’t yet adjusted to the fact that identifying yourself nowadays was a superfluous gesture. It seemed impolite not to.

  Darkness was falling. She called a few more times, with the same depressing lack of response. She and her mother helped each other make dinner—spaghetti with meatballs for Anton’s benefit, and Ida didn’t say anything about being a vegetarian. It came and went a bit, the vegetarian thing, and Nina sensed that Ida was annoyed at herself for not being more persistent and uncompromising. Nina didn’t interfere. She just made sure there was always hummus or tofu or some other form of non-animal protein available.

  Finally the phone rang, but it wasn’t Søren.

  “Caroline Westmann from the Mid-West Jutland’s Police. I wonder if you could come in tomorrow morning?”

  “Where?”

  “At the station. I’ve got permission to arrange a witness lineup.”

  “Involving whom?”

  “Um. I’d just like you to have a look at our detainees in real life, so to speak. They won’t be able to see you.”

  “I didn’t see anyone or anything.”

  “There’s a pretty big difference between seeing someone in a picture and in person. Who knows? Maybe you might have noticed one of them sometime b
efore the assault. While you were shopping, for example? Or when you parked?”

  Nina sighed.

  “Just a minute. Let me just check if my mother can take care of the kids . . .”

  Hanne Borg merely nodded, depriving Nina of her best excuse for not showing up at the station.

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Can you give me the address?

  She wrote it down on the note pad attached to the refrigerator door. It was a pink-and-green affair framed by jolly pigs. The entire door was decorated with postcards and photographs and school calendars—Nina dryly noted that her mother basically had more mastery of the kids’ daily life than she did. Hanne Borg had lived alone for more than twenty years now, and still the house remained a family home full of litle details that revealed relationships, feelings, friendships, and warmth. Despite the rooms carefully set aside for Ida and Anton, Nina’s new post-divorce apartment could not muster a fraction of such signs of belonging.

  “So, see you tomorrow,” said Caroline Westmann.

  “Yes,” said Nina hesitantly. “Oh . . . I . . . You’ve met Søren Kirkegaard.”

  “Yes?”

  “He . . . It seems as if he’s disappeared.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were at the Swim Center with the kids, and there was a small accident—fortunately nothing serious. And then he was suddenly gone. Without a word. It’s not like him.”

  “Did you try calling him?”

  “Yes. He isn’t answering. Hasn’t even sent a text.”

  “Could he have been called back to Copenhagen?”

  “Do you mean by the PET?”

  “Maybe there was some kind of emergency. They mave have urgently needed his expert knowledge.”

  So urgently he couldn’t even text? thought Nina with a pang of irritation. But at the same time she wanted to believe Westmann’s explanation, because it eased the raw anxiety that had been creeping up on her. He’s driving, she told herself. That’s why he can’t answer the phone.

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “That’s probably it. No doubt he’ll call me when he can. Sorry. Perhaps I’m still not as clearheaded as I’d like to be.”

  “That’s completely understandable. See you.”

  But after she had tucked in Anton with a Children’s Tylenol to dull the worst of the pain in his shoulder, there was still no answer when she called Søren’s cell.

  THE PHILIPPINES, TWO MONTHS EARLIER

  Bea called.”

  Victor was sitting on the couch with the phone in his hand when Vincent let himself into the apartment.

  “Thanks. What did she want?”

  Vincent reached for his cell with a resentful gesture. He knew he should have had it with him, or at least only turned it off while he was actually on the pier. There was an amusement park there, with colored lamps and lots of students who hung out on the edge of Manila Bay. The atmosphere was light. Like candy floss and Bacardi Breezers.

  He had needed it. The mountain of rubble still lurked right behind his eyelids when he tried to sleep. Almost three months had passed, and in that time he hadn’t seen much of Vadim, who had been working like a madman in his office and only called to check if Vincent was awake and, of course, to get him to pick up things. Idiotic things. Lunch, which had to be brought to the office, bread that absolutely had to be bought at the Manila Hotel on the other side of town. Porn videos that could be inserted directly into the big screen in the living room to run all night with the sound off.

  There had been close to a thousand people in the collapsed building. Little more than half had still been alive when they were dug free of the rubble. It was a hopeless disaster.

  “Carlito has a sore throat, but that’s probably not why she called,” said Victor seriously. “What are you doing with your life?”

  The lightness leaked out of Vincent. No more candy floss and Breezers. He got himself a beer from the refrigerator, and paused in the open door to his room. Victor certainly knew how to hit the sore spots. He never deliberately tried to cast blame or prod Vincent’s conscience, but that actually made it worse: the knowledge that his big friend only wished the best for him even when he so clearly didn’t deserve it.

  “I’m not in the mood for this,” said Vincent. “I’m tired.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Victor had gotten up. “You can’t live off Vadim for the rest of your life. He’s . . . not good for you. You aren’t good for each other.”

  Vincent blew across the neck of the beer bottle and produced a delicate, soft note. He didn’t know what to say. He did have a vague sort of plan. A job abroad. Something that paid well and made him look successful. And then he would tell Bea the truth, how it had all gone wrong, but that he was past that now and had made something of himself after all. That everything would turn out all right in the end.

  Vadim could get him that job if he wanted to. Vadim could do anything.

  “What about yourself?” said Vincent. “Isn’t there something bothering you too?”

  “Yes,” said Victor. “But I’m not going to make it worse by lying. Not anymore. Bea wants you to call her back.”

  “Okay.” The phone felt leaden in Vincent’s hand. “I’ll do it later. Do you want to watch a movie?”

  Victor shook his head but remained sitting on the couch.

  “Think about it, Vincent. It’s not too late to come clean. You’ve got to talk to the people who really matter to you. Life is long, but it’s also very, very short.”

  “Victor. Not now, all right?”

  Vincent finished his beer and blew a final deep note in the direction of his friend. Then he turned around and went into his room. He had mounted a flat-screen on the wall, and a small basketball hoop on the door of the closet. With the matching miniature basketballs, he could make ten perfect baskets in a row from his bed. He turned on the television without turning up the volume, closed his eyes and felt the faint inebriation from the evening’s Breezers charge around his body while he imagined that his bed was floating through the universe. The freedom of empty space.

  His cell beeped. Bea had sent a text. He turned the phone facedown, trying to hang on to the sense of freedom a little longer.

  Something shattered on the living room floor.

  He must have drifted off. The light and television were still on, but that’s not what had woken him up. It was the voices from the living room. Victor’s and Vadim’s.

  “We’re friends . . . We live together . . . How the hell could you do this?”

  Vadim raged with the fury of a drunkard or a child. Something else was thrown and shattered, this time against the wall.

  Victor said something, but it was impossible to hear what it was. His voice was softer and more measured. Calming.

  “Have you fucked her? Have you? I want to know if you’ve fucked her . . . I can’t . . .” Vadim’s voice slid over into an indecipherable mumbling. Then it was silent.

  Vincent slipped silently across to the door so that he could hear what they were saying. His heart was pounding wildly, as if he himself was a part of the battle on the other side.

  “There was something else I wanted to talk with you about,” said Victor. His voice was calm and controlled. Vadim remained silent. Waiting.

  “A patient was brought to the hospital after the collapse. A man who kept mentioning your name. An engineer. Lorenz Robles . . .”

  Silence.

  “I know him, and he’s a damned liar who hates me and my firm. What did he say . . . ? Did he say something about me?”

  “Vadim . . . what if he is right? There are three more buildings out there. What if they come down in the same way?”

  “It’s a lie. Nothing more than a damned, jealous lie! Did anyone else hear what he said?”

  “Why do you want to know?” asked Victor.

/>   “What about the nurse? Did she hear it? Victor, you don’t know what people are like when someone has money. They’ll say anything, do anything, to get at you. It doesn’t matter if it’s pure fiction, the mere suspicion can harm us—me and my father. Ruin everything. Do you understand?”

  “Okay . . .” Victor’s voice was flat. “I had to see your face when I told you this. You don’t need to say anything. Vadim, I hope for your own sake that you take the proper steps. Quickly. Because . . . it’s not possible to live with the alternative. Neither for you nor for me.”

  “Victor. You’re my friend, damn it!”

  Silence.

  And then steps and the sound of the front door being opened and closed.

  Vincent turned off the light in the ceiling, went back to bed and shut off the television. The red numbers on his alarm clock showed 4:23 and from the living room he could hear someone, probably Vadim, move around, picking up the shards from whatever it was that had been shattered.

  Once in a while he could hear someone moan faintly. Crying, thought Vincent. Vadim is crying.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Vincent looked over his shoulder and saw Vadim in the doorway. Then he turned his gaze to his bare feet on the diving board. Bounced slightly on his legs and jumped, and let the cold water close around his body. He drifted, feeling the slight pressure, watching the shadows from the artificial palm trees flicker across the bottom of the pool. He stayed under for as long as he could. Had in fact learned to conquer his panic. How to turn it off. He shot across the tiles to the opposite end. His fingertips looked so white they were nearly fluorescent.

  “It’s twelve o’clock,” said Vadim when Vincent, out of breath, hauled himself up onto the edge. “You’ll get fried out here.”

  Vincent shrugged. He needed to do something. Anything.

  For the third week in a row, the smog hung like a black curtain over Manila and had long since driven the city’s more affluent classes up into the mountains or out to the coast. Vincent and Vadim were practically the only ones left in the thirty-story apartment house. Or that was how it felt.