Death of a Nightingale (11 page)

“Punishment or interrogation?” asked Søren, first in Russian and then in Danish.

Heide tilted her head a bit as she thought about it. “That hurt,” she said. “If it was to make him talk, he was either very tough—or he couldn’t give them what they wanted because he didn’t know.”

“Poor devil,” said the technician.

Søren didn’t say anything. Instead, he studied the shattered hands one last time. He had read the reports from the trial against Natasha, including the doctor’s testimony that described in detail what Vestergaard had done to his then-fiancé. Maybe someone, somewhere, considered this fair retribution.

“Are you okay?”

Magnus leaned against the doorframe with a coffee cup in one hand and a well-worn copy of
Car Magazine
in the other. The lines in his good-natured, dog-like face had begun to take on a permanent nature lately, thought Nina. Concern lines—was that a word? Like worry wrinkles, only more altruistic.

“Yes,” she said, attempting to convince the machine to deliver a cup of instant coffee with powdered milk. “Rina has eaten a banana, and we are working on a cheese sandwich.”

“What was that about her father?”

“She hasn’t really said anything else, and I don’t want to press her. But apparently it’s true. I asked one of the guys from the Mondeo gang. He actually blushed and admitted that they had discussed it while Rina was listening. They didn’t think she spoke Danish. What did they imagine? She has damn well lived here for more than two years.”

“She doesn’t say much,” said Magnus. “It’s easy to read her incorrectly. Those guys are actually pretty nice.”

“That’s what you think about everyone,” Nina said.

“No,” he said with a crooked smile. “Only about the ones who deserve it.” He swatted at her with the magazine, looking almost frisky—like an overgrown foal with giant, knobby knees and a stubby tail. Where did all this awkward enthusiasm come from?

Sex, of course. What exactly was it that happened to men when
they got a bit of not particularly fantastic sex? Now that it appeared Rina’s physical crisis was over, Magnus exuded well-being. Why didn’t Nina feel that way at all? Why the hell couldn’t it be like that for her—as easy as taking a hot bath and feeling recharged afterward?

The phone vibrated in the pocket of her jeans. She answered it with a small, apologetic grimace in Magnus’s direction.

It was Søren Kirkegard, the PET-man who wasn’t an idiot. She felt a tug in the pit of her stomach. Why on earth had she called him? He was PET, damn it, not a lifeline in a quiz show. And not at all a friend.

“I wanted to update you,” he said. “And ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind?”

She couldn’t really say no. After all, she had called him. “Yes. Okay.”

“Good. How long have you known Natasha?”

“Since she came to the camp for the first time. It must have been … oh, I don’t remember exactly. October or November, two thousand and seven.”

“And how would you describe your relationship?”

Nina had to think about that. “It mostly centered on Rina,” she said, stirring the liquid in her white plastic mug with her white plastic stirrer. For some reason the water in the coffee machine never got as hot as it was supposed to, and the powdered milk had a tendency to just float on top in small, yellowish lumps. “She had asthma even back then and … certain psychological problems. Nightmares. Anxiety attacks. It’s of course not that unusual among the children here, but … well, anyway, we did our best for her.”

“I understand that you were the one Natasha called after her attempt to kill Vestergaard?”

“How do you know that?” The words flew out of Nina, hostile, distrustful, before she had time to consider. He didn’t answer her directly, but he didn’t need to. He probably already had a whole pile
of reports lying on his table. Why had she called him?

Because you needed help, she told herself.

She glanced at the clock above the serving hatch. Morten and the children were presumably eating dinner now. It wouldn’t be pizza or some other kind of junk food—Morten was good at all that healthy stuff, always making sure they got enough vegetables and slow carbohydrates. She closed her eyes a moment so she couldn’t see the clock’s digits. She knew that her time-checking was more than a bad habit. “OCD Lite,” so to speak. Not quite on par with the poor people who scrubbed their hands bloody for fear of germs, but … she had to get it under control.

She saw the minute hand move down to 18:21. Tomorrow it was Fastelavn Sunday. Not content with merely importing American Halloween customs, Denmark still stuck stubbornly to her own homegrown equivalent as well, so now there were twice as many costumes to be produced by long-suffering parents. Except this year, Nina wasn’t long-suffering, she reminded herself; Morten would have seen to Anton’s outfit for the school carnival. But she would still get to see Anton, and maybe even Ida too, if it wasn’t beneath the dignity of a fourteen-year-old to participate.

“I’m just trying to get a clear picture,” said Søren the PET-man on the phone. “You called emergency services, but you also went out there yourself?”

“Yes. I wasn’t sure … sometimes people get flashbacks. Or hallucinations. Natasha was pretty incoherent on the phone; I didn’t know how serious the situation was.”

“So you were, in fact, present just after the EMS got there?”

“Yes.”

It came rushing back: the heat that felt more like August than September, the dark hedges, the house with the front door wide open and all the lights on. The police hadn’t come yet—just the ambulance. It
was parked in the driveway, its back doors open. The EMS people were already rolling in the gurney, and she could hear the bastard shouting hoarsely.

“She stabbed me! She goddamned stabbed me!”

Natasha just sat in the middle of the lawn with her skinny bare legs pulled up toward her chest, gazing up at the moon as if the activity around her had nothing to do with her. She barely looked at Nina, even when Nina touched her shoulder and asked if she was okay.

“Take care of her,” was all she said, and she didn’t need to explain who she meant. “You take care of her.”

“Where is she?”

“Neighbor. Neighbor Anna. Nice lady. She is safe there.”

That was part of what had later been used against her at the trial—that she had carefully arranged for Rina not to be in the house that night. A premeditated, well-planned act, the prosecutor had said.

“Did you get any sense that there might have been other people present at the house? Besides Natasha and Michael Vestergaard?”

Nina had never been asked that question during the entire unbearably long police and court procedure afterward. “No. I’m pretty sure they were alone.”

“And Michael Vestergaard hadn’t suffered any injuries other than the cut in his throat?”

“No. What kind of injuries do you mean?”

“To his hands, for example.”

“No. Why?”

“Sometimes people get defensive cuts,” Søren said. “If they have time to try to fight off their assailant.”

“I think it came as a complete surprise to him that she could turn on him like that,” Nina said, with a sense that he knew very well there were no defensive cuts. That must be in the report, along with
everything else. What was he getting at?

“But you knew Natasha well enough that you were the one she called,” he said. “Why do you think she did that?”

“Because of Rina. She wanted me to take care of Rina.”

“Did Natasha ever say anything about why she had fled from Ukraine?”

“No, we almost never talked about her past. She clammed up if you tried.”

“I see.”

“That’s not very unusual,” said Nina defensively. “I think that’s true for at least seventy-five percent of the people here.”

Her gaze wandered automatically around the half-empty passage in which she stood. Sometime back in the ’90s, most of one wall in the barrack’s passageways had been replaced with huge windows in a well-intentioned effort to transform the dim, nicotine-stinking smoking zone into lounge areas with green plants, lights, a view and a certain modernity. That just meant that many of the camp’s inhabitants stopped using the rooms completely or huddled in the darkest corners where there was most cover. This was especially true of the people who had lived with the constant threat of snipers, in Kosova and elsewhere. The windows were still there, of course. They had been expensive.

“I’m aware of that,” said the PET-man. “But did you get any sense of it?”

“Only that she was afraid. That she would do almost anything not to be sent back. I didn’t even know that Rina’s father was dead.”

“No, I can imagine she didn’t talk a lot about that.”

“Did she really do it?” asked Nina. “And why? Was he a sick bastard like Vestergaard?”

“There’s nothing to suggest that,” said Søren. “I’ll call again when I know more. Take good care of the girl. There must still be police on
the premises?”

“And how,” said Nina.

“Good. We’ll talk soon.”

Nina stood for a few seconds with the silent cell phone in one hand and the coffee stirrer in the other. An update, he had called it. But the only one who had been updated was him. She had answered his questions without learning anything in return. Nonetheless, she felt a peculiar relief again, as she had when he had said he would “see what he could do.” She threw the stirrer in the garbage next to the coffee machine, nodded briefly at Magnus and set off down the hall toward Rina’s room.

She checked her watch. 18:27.

That must be it. For almost seven minutes, she had had the sensation of not being alone.

“The neighbor who found him,” said Søren. “Do you mind if I have a chat with her? She apparently knows Natasha Doroshenko pretty well.”

Heide deliberated. “If you bring Veng with you,” she said. “And a tape recorder. We’ve questioned her once, but of course we need to speak with her again. It’s the yellow farmhouse, just on the other side of the hill.”

Someone had cleared the road with a tractor, as evidenced by the broad, ribbed tire tracks. When you lived out here, you probably couldn’t sit around and wait for the municipal snowplow to stop by. Babko slid into the passenger seat in the front and Veng into the backseat, and the Hyundai bravely struggled up the hill and down to “the yellow farmhouse.”

It had probably once been quite a sizable farm, thought Søren. Four wings and various outbuildings washed in a traditional yellow ocher with shiny black wooden trim. The main house and one side wing had newly thatched roofs, golden and unweathered; the two remaining wings still needed a loving hand. Red tarp covered the most serious holes, and one gable looked as if it was mostly supported by chicken wire and rusty iron struts. A dog barked loudly from inside the house, and Søren saw one of the shades move.

Veng rang the doorbell. “It’s us, Mrs. Olesen,” he said. “DI Veng,
remember me? And this is Inspector Kirkegard and a Ukrainian colleague, Police Lieutenant Babko.”

The woman in the door considered them with a face devoid of expression. The dog, a classic Danish hunting breed, tried to work its way out of her grip on its collar, but apparently she was holding on tight. Her eyes moved from one to the other, a bit on her guard, thought Søren, but then, they did outnumber her—an invasive force.

“Come in,” she said after a few seconds. “Is it okay if we sit in the kitchen? It’s warmest there.”

“Of course,” said Søren.

“I just have to … Maxi, go to your basket!” She shooed the dog into the utility room, where it reluctantly lay down in a basket by the boiler. “It’s this way.”

Given the rural surroundings, Søren had unconsciously expected a kitchen like his parents’ in Djursland—vinyl squares on the floor, scratched white-laminated cabinets from the mid-90s, mail-order pine furniture that had never quite been in fashion even when it was brand new. But this was, after all, Hørsholm, home of golf enthusiasts and would-be country squires.

The room was large and well lit—clearly several old rooms combined—with double glass doors leading out into the snow-covered garden, new floors of broad, rustic oak planks, white walls and a high-end, designer kitchen. A comfortable heat radiated from a massive brick wall oven that divided the kitchen area from the dining room.

“Ahhh,” sighed DI Veng spontaneously and unbuttoned his down jacket. “Nice to come inside and thaw a bit.”

Babko smiled as well. “We have this kind of oven in Ukraine,” he said. “Out in the country. That’s the only thing that works when it’s really cold.”

Anna Olesen looked at Babko. Her gaze remained cautious. “What is he saying?” she asked.

“That it’s a good oven,” Søren translated. “They have them in Ukraine too.”

“This one is Finnish,” she said. “The old oil-burning boiler is on its last legs, so it’s not just for decoration.”

Heide had said Anna was over eighty, but she moved like a much younger woman. Her hair had to be dyed, but it was done so skillfully, in a variety of golden-blonde shades, that the result looked completely natural. A pair of red reading glasses sat in her hair as if they were an intentional part of her styling, and the comfortable-looking oatmeal-colored mohair sweater hung loosely over a pair of neat grey wool pants. Søren also noted the high-heeled black shoes, the pink lipstick and the discreetly penciled eyebrows. In no way did she look like a shaken elderly citizen who had just found the body of her neighbor.

“I know you’ve already spoken with the police,” said Søren. “But unfortunately, we’ll probably need to inconvenience you several times.”

“Yes,” she said. “I understand that.”

“Do you live here alone?”

“Since my husband died four years ago. The plan is for my daughter Kirsten and her family to move into one of the wings when we finish restoring it.”

“But you were alone last night?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t here last night. I was having dinner at the house of some friends of mine and didn’t get home until after midnight.”

Søren didn’t ask about the dinner—Heide’s people would definitely check on that if they hadn’t already. “Did you go past Michael Vestergaard’s house on that occasion?” he asked instead.