The Considerate Killer

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “There’s no gas here,” she had attempted to calm him, but that had only made him more agitated, and a long choppy cascade of Tagalog had emerged from him which Victor had attempted to decipher.

  “I can’t tell what he’s trying to say.” he said to her. “Not all of it.”

  “Just pretend that you understand,” she said quietly. “Give him as much peace as you can.” Because she had noted how hands and feet had grown pale and cold, and she knew the man could not be saved, not even if they had had the world’s most state-of-the-art hospital at their disposal.

  She blinked a few times. The coffee cup she held was no longer burning hot. She drank it as quickly as she could so she would have an excuse for asking for another one.

  “Gas?” said the Filipino. “Was that what he said? The engineer?”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . . It was a bomb.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” said Nina. She had, of course, heard some of the first wild rumors about Muslim terror and so on, but after three days, Morten had dragged her to the airport, and they had flown home. The international media quickly lost interest in a very local disaster in one of the world’s most disaster-prone areas. After all, no Danes had been hurt . . .

  “Explosives leave . . . traces,” she said. “They would have found residue.”

  “Only if they looked,” he said absently. “And you don’t, if it’s more convenient and lucrative not to.”

  Was that why? Was it because of the dead man and the collapsed apartment house in Manila that she was sitting here?

  He was staring straight ahead as if he were in a place very far from the cramped camper’s little bubble of light. The rain had become a steady drumming now, noisy and close.

  “Could I have another coffee?” she asked and proffered her cup. He filled it without really looking at her.

  She wouldn’t get a better chance. His attention was miles away.

  “Gas,” he whispered. “Not a bomb. Oh, Vadim . . .”

  She threw the hot coffee straight into his face. He screamed with pain and startlement and leaped from his seat. She grabbed hold of the parka with her free hand and pulled him forward, and headbutted him as hard as she could, the first time in her life she had ever butted anybody. Her forehead rammed into his nose cartilage, and she heard it crunch. Her own abused skull protested, but he came off the worse. To be safe she thumped his head into the table several times before she pushed him onto the floor and planted a foot on his neck.

  The kitchen drawer? Could she reach it?

  Yes. But there were no knives, just a lot of rubber bands and a corkscrew. Damn it. Could you cut through cable strips with a corkscrew? Unlikely. She grabbed a wineglass, smashed it against the table and sawed frantically at the strip with the sharp, jagged edge. There was no way to avoid cutting her wrist as well. The blood welled up and made it harder to see what she was doing. The Filipino was moaning and stirring.

  “Lie still,” she hissed. “Or I’ll kill you.” She had seldom been more sincere.

  The camper’s back door opened. There stood the other Filipino, the little compact one with the odd grin. His eyebrows shot into the air while he decoded what he was seeing. Then he began to laugh silently and still in some way uproariously.

  “Naughty girl,” he said and hit her with a flat right hand before she realized she could use the wine glass as a weapon. He twisted it out of her numb fingers and slapped her five or six times in a row. Something popped in one ear, and she was pretty sure it was her eardrum. “Now let’s play nicely. Leave my friend alone.”

  He pulled his still-moaning partner out of the camper. Blood gushed steadily down the man’s lower face, and he looked as if he was about to faint. His partner observed him for a few seconds.

  “Can I shoot her now?” he asked. “With the Taser? I’m sure it works if you do it for long enough.”

  “No!” The answer was half choked and bubbling, but definitive. “I’ll do it. In just . . . a minute.” He looked up at her. “It won’t hurt,” he promised hoarsely. “It’s the best way . . . the most painless . . . I’m really sorry, but . . .”

  The rain was pouring down on him, making his black hair stick to his skull. He snuffled wetly with each breath, and his eyes looked glassy and panicked, like those of a hunted animal just before it gives up.

  She didn’t feel sorry for him. Not even the tiniest little bit.

  He shut the back door on her, and came round to the front to pull out something that had been lying under the driver’s seat: it looked like a plastic hose much like the ones used for washing machine drains, only longer. Certain premonitions made her spine creep, and they were confirmed when he started the Land Cruiser’s engine, rolled down the driver’s side window a little, stuck one end of the hose through the gap, and attached it with duct tape. More tape sealed the window shut. She could hear him moving around outside, and thought she knew what he was doing—attaching the other end of the hose to the exhaust.

  A few moments later she could smell the first fumes.

  She had struggled. You could see it from the way she was lying. She had kicked off one shoe and had tried to reach the button that controlled the windows with her foot. It had worked to some degree—she had actually managed to roll down one side window a fraction. The cost was also obvious; the cable strip had cut so deeply into her wrist that you couldn’t see anything but blood.

  Vincent had to turn away.

  “Cut her free,” he said to Martinez. “And wrap something around that wrist.”

  “Why?” asked Martinez

  “Because we don’t want her blood on us, idiot. What if we’re stopped?”

  The plan was that they would fly out of Frankfurt—Vadim had arranged for business-class tickets so they could just show up whenever it suited them and board the next flight. But they were still a long way from Frankfurt. And even further from San Marcelino.

  He felt strangely empty inside. It had been done now. What he had promised Vadim. He hadn’t believed he could do it. He had killed another human being. The rest . . . the rest was just tidying up.

  “Take a picture,” he said to Martinez and handed him the little compact digital camera. He couldn’t make himself do it, but he knew Vadim would expect it.

  Martinez expressionlessly snapped a couple of pictures of the dead nurse. Then he suddenly turned the camera on Vincent.

  “Say cheese,” he laughed.

  Click. Vincent held one hand up in front of his face in pure reflex, which only made the grin broader.

  “What about the policeman?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Martinez with another glittering grin. “I took care of him.” He stuck the camera in his pocket and instead pulled out a roll of duct tape and waved it in the air.

  Vincent stared at the tape. And at the naked hand holding it.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  Martinez mimed pulling off a strip of tape.

  “You blocked his nose?”

  “Yup.”

  “So he’s dead?”

  “Of course he’s dead. Were you planning to let him live? He had seen your stupid mug, and he was a policeman.”

  “Former.”

  “That comes to the same fucking thing.”

  “And then you just let him lie there—with his entire head covered in tape?”

  “He’s lying in a thicket right in the middle of the forest. It might take days before they find him.”

  “Maybe. But when they do—they’ll also find your fingerprints plastered all over that piece of tape. Unless you used gloves?”

  He could see on Martinez’s round face that that wasn’t the case.

  “Fuck . . .” said the moron.

  “Go back,” said Vincent. “No, wait. Help me get her down to the boat fir
st. And then go back and remove that tape.”

  He had parked the Land Cruiser as close to the lake shore as possible, but there was a slope that you had to navigate on foot. They had already carried the rubber dinghy down. It had been helpful to have something to do, instead of just standing outside the car, waiting for the carbon monoxide to take effect. It might be painless, as Diana had once said, but maybe that was only if it happened while you slept. The struggles of the nurse had made the entire van rock, and he felt like it was taking forever. He had decided to wait fifteen minutes after it grew quiet in there, but ended up turning off the engine after ten. He just wanted to have it over with.

  He made Martinez take her arms while he grabbed hold of her feet. He didn’t feel like touching the blood-spattered kitchen towel Martinez had wound around her wrist. The light from his headlamp flickered over bushes and tree trunks and Martinez’s green raincoat. Then one foot slipped in the mud, and he lost his balance. He had to let go and cling to a tree in order not to fall over completely.

  Martinez dropped his end too, pushed the body with his foot and let it roll the rest of the way.

  “Martinez, damn it . . .”

  Martinez looked up—a bit crookedly in order not to be blinded by the light from Vincent’s head lamp.

  “She’s already dead,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

  Vincent was seized by an abrupt rage.

  “Go,” he hissed. “Now. What kind of person are you? Do you have no respect at all for the dead?”

  Martinez looked at him with an uncertain frown, as if he was really and truly trying to understand what Vincent meant.

  “But they’re dead,” he said at last, as if that was sufficient explanation.

  Vincent clenched his fists so tightly that his nails cut into his palms.

  “Go,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

  “Okay, boss,” said Martinez, for once without laughing as if it was all a big joke. He began to climb up the slope. Halfway up Vincent saw him tuck a set of earbuds into his ears, and the tinny pop beat from a Kitty Girls song could be heard for a few moments until he reached the top and the rain and the trees swallowed the sound.

  But with Martinez gone there was no longer anyone he could off-load the shame and guilt on. He suddenly thought of that damn fluffy little chicken they had placed by Victor’s coffin, of its constant pathetic peeping, and of Vadim’s face when he heard the explanation for its presence.

  To wake the conscience of the murderer.

  Did they do that kind of thing in Denmark? Probably not, when it wasn’t even widespread among Manila’s upper crust. And in any case . . . when he was done, there wouldn’t be anybody to bury.

  Damn. They should have done the same thing with the policeman. It was the only thing that made sense. Why hadn’t he understood that at once?

  Because he had pretended that the policeman wasn’t going to be killed. Because he had turned his back and let things run their course. Left the decision to Martinez. So it wasn’t on him, but it was anyway. He thought about how once he had not even been able to confess his nightly erections to Father Abuel. Such a distant and innocent time with problems so tiny and banal that he couldn’t really understand why they had seemed significant. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have killed another human being . . . No, Father Abuel was never going to hear about that either.

  He slithered down the last few feet of the slope and bent over the body. It didn’t look as if it had taken any damage from the rough treatment, but the kitchen towel had come loose, and the wrist was bleeding again.

  He closed his eyes for a second. Stop it, he said to himself. You can usually manage as long as you’re dealing with dead people.

  But dead people don’t bleed. At least not as much as the nurse did.

  He opened his eyes again. Placed two fingers against her neck and tried to control his own spasmodic shaking long enough to feel it properly.

  It was there. The pulse. A faint flutter, from a heart that still beat.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven . . .” The words came tumbling out of him without conscious volition. He had the sense that he was already in purgatory. That he had died without noticing, and was now being forced to live through his crime again and again. How many times do I need to kill her before it’s enough? he asked silently. Should he drag her all the way up the slope and put her back in the car for a while?

  No. It made no difference. She was going into the lake anyway, and whether her last heartbeats faded in the car or down there in the dark, cold water made no real difference—except for the fact that he could no longer consider her a corpse.

  He took off his parka and swaddled her in it so he couldn’t see her face and her bloody wrist. The rain fell heavily on his exposed shoulders, but it wasn’t like the tropical rain at home, warm and yellowish—“as if the gods are pissing on us,” as his late great-grandmother Evangelina used to say with a cackling laugh. She had become slightly senile in her old age, which had loosened a few inhibitions.

  This Danish rain was hard and cold and grey and smelled of forest. He took the parka bundle into his arms and carried it down to the water’s edge where they had left the dinghy.

  The largest of the camper’s gas containers, an orange ten-kilo bottle, was already waiting, with a rope tied to the handle. He assumed it would be sufficient to drag her down to the bottom and hold her there. He had also considered using the even heavier water tank, but then he had realized that a plastic container full of water had pretty much the same buoyancy as the water that surrounds it. He placed her in the prow next to the gas bottle and began to drag the boat clear of the lakeshore. He had to splash a few steps into the lake himself. Holy Mother of God, it was cold, that water. He quickly leaned across the soft rubber gunnel and climbed on board.

  The raindrops ricocheted off the surface of the lake—even more violently when a few strokes of the oars brought him out of what shelter the trees had provided. The thin pale beam from the head lamp strapped to his forehead did not light up the lake and the landscape, only the steady, grey rain, like steel hawsers chaining the sky to the earth. Vincent’s T-shirt and fleece were soaked within minutes, and he looked over his shoulder. The woods and the lakeshore had already disappeared from view. Fuck. Would he be able to find his way back at all?

  How far out did he dare to row? How far was enough? He had seen a sign the first day he camped here, courtesy of the local tourism office. The lake was Denmark’s third deepest, it said. Thirty-one meters. That was what had given him the idea. Thirty-one meters should be sufficient . . . but how far did you need to go before it got that deep?

  He hesitated. Pulled the black-and-yellow plastic oars out of the water and drifted with the current. Luckily it wasn’t windy. The rain fell straight down in spattering cascades.

  Here, he thought. That should do it. Here, while he still had some sense of where the shore was. He pulled the oars all the way in and carefully crept over to the parka bundle, very focused on distributing his weight so the boat wouldn’t rock too much. He did not feel like capsizing now . . . he grabbed the rope and considered how to attach it. The feet? Or neck? In a glimpse he pictured how she would hang there in the lake water, like a big, macabre water plant attached to a rock. It was probably best to use her foot. The other somehow seemed to him to lack dignity, and then he’d have to see her face again.

  He grabbed one naked ankle to tie the rope around it.

  She moved. He was so unprepared that her bare feet slipped between his hands like a fish he hadn’t managed to rap hard enough on the head. While he still sat there, paralyzed by shock, she rolled over abruptly and the boat began to tip. He grabbed at her with his free hand and got a hold of a handful of T-shirt. He wanted to pull her back in, toward the boat’s center of gravity, but it was already too late. The gas bottle slid toward the railing; the boat’s bottom
rose up like a wall and threw them all overboard, Vincent, the nurse, and the gas bottle as well. He had time to suck in one single desperate gasp of air before the water closed over his head.

  He tried to scissor kick, but something was in his way. In the flickering distorted beam of the head lamp he saw what was wrong—the rope had become tangled around one of his legs, and the weight from the gas bottle was pulling him down.

  He tried to half-somersault in the water in order to loosen the rope. At that moment he felt a tug on his shoulder. A pair of pink legs hooked themselves determinedly around his waist, and an arm closed around his neck. He forced his head round and saw the face of the nurse so close to his own that he could barely focus on it. Only in a dim blur could he make out her expression—awake, alive, and insane—and yet a terror-fueled conviction took root in his soul.

  She had come to pull him down to Hell.

  When Søren regained consciousness, he was lying on his stomach on the forest floor with his arms stretched out in front of him. It took a little while before he registered how wonderful it was—with his arms stretched out. His hands were free.

  It was raining. The shower-proof windbreaker stuck wetly to his back, and the raindrops ran down one cheek and from time to time oozed past the tape so that it bubbled when he breathed.

  He rolled onto his side and scraped at the edge of the tape with weak fingers until he could get hold of a corner and pull. First the nose, then the eyes, then the mouth. He sat for a few seconds and breathed freely without sensing much more than that. To breathe in and breathe out, unhindered.

  Then he remembered the rest.

  Nina. They still had Nina.

  He tore wildly and without coordination at the tape that tied his ankles together. When it didn’t immediately produce a result, he had to force himself to stop and fumble for the end of the strip. He couldn’t see very much, it was dark as all hell, but his fingertips finally found the slight edge they were searching for. He scratched and scraped and loosened another corner.