Death of a Nightingale

“Magnus, damn it,” snapped Nina, but Magnus was driving twenty-five meters in front of her and couldn’t hear her clenched exclamation. The winding forest road to the Coal-House Camp was not at the top of the municipality’s list of priorities as far as plowing went, and with every snowfall the road got narrower and the snowbanks on both sides got higher. Magnus was driving close to the speed limit, with Volvo steadiness on authorized winter tires, while her middle-aged Nissan Micra skated around the turns as if it had never heard the word “traction.”

The Micra was an emergency solution. It was almost fifteen years old, the door handle on the passenger side had broken off and the gearshift suffered from a reluctance to return to the middle position unless you gave it a sharp whack. Someone had painted green racing stripes on its curry-green door, most likely in a desperate attempt to give it a bit of personality. It was not the dream car; it was the “what I can afford?” car. She couldn’t do without it. The public transportation’s tenuous connection to the Coal-House Camp, more officially known as Red Cross Center Furesø, ceased completely at 9 P.M., and night shifts were an unavoidable part of the job of nurse.

The Micra’s front wheels spun without effect on the black ice, and Nina had to fight a deep-seated urge to step on the brakes. The car sailed sideways into the curve and only fell into the track again seconds before it would have collided with the snow. She shifted down and waited for it to slow. Ahead of her, the back of Magnus’s Volvo disappeared around the next turn. Perhaps she should have come in the Volvo with him. But then there was the problem of getting home again, and they hadn’t exactly announced their … affair sounded completely wrong, relationship even worse—their mutual loneliness relief to the world. Maybe not arriving at the same time was a good move. But the adrenaline made her stomach burn, and the slow driving necessary on the slippery roads felt completely counterintuitive.

Natasha had escaped custody. As unbelievable as it sounded, it was true. The authorities had concluded that she might try to get hold of Rina and had therefore sent police out to the Coal-House Camp, which was, Nina thought, not something she could really object to, except that they had apparently managed to provoke one of the worst anxiety and asthma attacks Rina had experienced in all the time she’d been in the camp. Nina understood why Magnus was rushing and cursed the Micra’s insufficiencies both mentally and out loud. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

When she finally rolled into the parking lot in front of the camp’s main entrance, she instantly spotted two almost identical dark blue Mondeo station cars. Two cars. Presumably at least four people. Apparently there was no lack of resources when the object was to catch single mothers with a foreign background found guilty of attempted murder, Nina thought dryly. It didn’t say POLICE on the side, but it might as well have. Did they really think Natasha was stupid enough to wander into the camp as long as they were parked there? The police had errands at the camp fairly regularly, and Natasha knew just as well as the rest of the camp’s current and former residents which car makes she should be on the lookout for.

On the other hand, it wasn’t particularly intelligent to attack two policemen with a cobble. Nina had a hard time recognizing Natasha in the hurried description of events that Magnus had given her on their way to the cars. Of course, Natasha could be pushed to act violently; probably almost everyone could. But when she stabbed her fiancé with a hunting knife, it hadn’t been because he had physically abused her for months; it wasn’t until she caught him with his fingers in Rina’s panties that she had counterattacked. During all the time she had spent in Vestre Prison, she had been almost alarmingly silent and passive.

Until now.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Nina muttered to herself as she made her way up the barely shoveled walkway in the direction of the camp’s little clinic. Something or other had clearly brought this on, but what?

She stomped the snow off her boots on the grate by the clinic’s main entrance. Weeks’ worth of frosty slush was packed in the metal grid so that it had had become like trying to dry your feet on an enormous ice cube tray. As she opened the door, though, the heat hit her like a hammer. Magnus consistently ignored all energy-saving suggestions on that point. “The people who come here are sick, depressed and hurt,” he had said when the chair of the camp’s conservation committee had protested. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them freeze as well!”

Rina was half sitting, half lying on a cot in one of the two examination rooms. In the corner between the closet and the wall sat an aggressively clean-shaven young man in a hoodie that on him looked more like workout clothes than weekend wear. He had placed himself in such a way that he couldn’t be seen from the window, and Nina concluded that he had to be a member of the Mondeo brigade. There had been a moment of heightened alertness as she came in, but now he relaxed back into a waiting position, apparently convinced solely by her age and appearance that she posed no danger.

“Hello, sweetie,” Nina said, squeezed Rina’s hand, which was limp and a little too cool. “What are we going to do with you?”

There was something about the slight, eight-year-old body and the narrow face that reminded Nina of the eastern European little girl gymnasts of the 1970s—Olga Korbut, Nadia Comaneci and whatever they were called. Not the smiling medal photos, but the serious, too-old-for-their-age concentration before the routine, the shadows under their eyes, the contrast between the cheerful ponytails and the hollow-cheeked, pain-etched faces. Rina’s hair was blond like her mother’s, thick, straight dark blonde hair without even the suggestion of curl or wave. Right now that hair was pulled back with a light blue Alice band, but even though you could occasionally sense that Rina felt she had fallen through a rabbit hole to an alternate universe, there clearly wasn’t much Wonderland about it. Her breathing was still terribly labored. Tiny pinpoint blood effusions around her half-closed eyes revealed how hard she had had to fight to get enough oxygen into her tormented bronchial tubes. Yet it wasn’t Rina’s physical condition that made Nina’s own heart contract as if it were something more than a pumping muscle.

“Sweetie,” she said, sitting down next to the child and pulling her close. Even on good days, anxiety lay like permafrost just beneath Rina’s thin crust of childish trust. Now the trust was gone. There was no wish for contact in the slight body; she just let herself be moved with an arbitrary shift in her weight that had nothing to do with intimacy.

Having changed quickly, Magnus entered, stethoscope in hand. Pernille, who had had the night shift, followed on his heels.

“I had to give her oxygen a few times,” said Pernille. “And her peak flow is still nothing to shout about. But … well, you can see for yourself.”

Magnus nodded briefly. “Hello, Rina,” he said. “I just need to listen to your lungs a little bit.”

Rina didn’t react except with a quick sideways glance. Nina had to turn her partway so that Magnus could examine her.

“Come on, Rina. You know the drill. Deeeep breath.”

Rina continued to breathe in exactly the same tormented rhythm, but Magnus didn’t try to correct her. He just praised her as if she had done what he had asked. “Very good. And now the other side.”

There was still no reaction, no sign that Rina was participating in the examination with anything but limp passivity. Nina gently pulled her close so that Magnus could place the stethoscope against Rina’s chest. Over Rina’s blonde hair she caught Magnus’s gaze.

“Well, I can hear that it’s getting better,” he said, just as much to Nina as to the child. “Do you want Pernille to get you some ice cream?”

Rina loved ice cream and could eat it year-round, and it had gradually become the ritual reward for various examinations, especially those that involved blood tests or other needle pricks. Rina lifted her head and considered the offer. But then she collapsed again with a single shake of her head.

“Did you eat breakfast, Rina?”

Again a tiny shake.

“She didn’t want anything,” said Pernille. “Not even ice cream.”

Magnus sat down on a stool so he was more or less at eye level with Rina. “Listen, Rina. It’s super hard for the body when you have trouble breathing. It’s as hard as playing ten soccer games in row. Do you see? And then you have to be a little kind to your body and feed it properly, even if you might not feel like eating.”

That didn’t make any visible impression.

“Rina, if you don’t eat anything, we’ll have to keep you here in the clinic,” said Nina. “Wouldn’t you rather go back to your room?”

The policeman by the closet cleared his throat. “It’s best for her to be where she usually is,” he said.

Nina stared at him with anger smoldering in the pit of her stomach. “Best?” she said. “For whom?”

“So that the mother can find her more easily.”

The anger burst into flame. Only concern for Rina made her control herself. Couldn’t he see that this was a child, a sick and tormented child, not just convenient bait for their trap?

“That’s a medical decision,” said Magnus very, very sharply. “And I’m the doctor.”

But Rina had lifted her head again and suddenly looked more present and alive than she had at any point since Nina got there. “I’d like an ice cream,” she said.

Oh, Lord, thought Nina. So that the mother can find her more easily. That was the only thing Rina had heard and understood. What if Natasha really did show up? And the police arrested her in front of the child? Nina didn’t want to think about what that would mean for Rina’s delicate balance and her grasp of reality here in non-Wonderland. She could see that Magnus was thinking more or less the same thing. But they couldn’t do anything—couldn’t even discuss it here and now while Rina was listening.

“Strawberry or chocolate?” asked Nina.

TEN MINUTES LATER, as she escorted Rina across the icy asphalt lot that had once been the barracks’ drill grounds, it was with two of the Mondeo brigade on her heels, though they maintained a certain discreet distance that presumably was supposed to make them look like civilian passersby. Rina held Nina’s hand, something she had otherwise stopped doing, and in her other hand she clutched the strawberry ice cream, which she dutifully sucked on every fourth or fifth step. At least it didn’t look as if her breathing was significantly more labored now that she was moving and even though the air was cold enough to sting Nina’s more resistant lungs. Pernille had done all the right things, had administered Bricanyl and later prednisone, had measured the oxygen and attempted to calm the panic. Physically, the girl was improving. But right now Nina was much more concerned with what was happening in Rina’s mind.

In the middle of the grounds, Rina suddenly stopped. She gave a little tug on Nina’s hand.

“What is it, sweetie?”

“He’s dead,” said Rina.

It took Nina a moment before she managed to reply, quietly and calmly. “Who?”

“Poppa Mike.”

Poppa Mike? Did she mean Michael Vestergaard?

“Why do you think that?”

“That’s what they said. The police.”

The wind raced across the open square. Pin-sharp flakes that were more ice than snow bit Nina’s cheeks and forehead, and she suddenly felt as if she were standing in an arctic desert, icy and isolated, infinitely far from warmth, shelter and human contact. Rina stood next to her and stared with great concentration at the strawberry ice cream, as if conquering it were a task she had set herself. She wasn’t crying—in fact, her face was devoid of expression—but Nina was not fooled. She quickly checked the time—12:31—and looked up at the slate-grey sky with the apparently irrelevant thought that the weather would make it difficult to fly. Only a few seconds later did she understand why flying conditions suddenly seemed to matter. Whenever the situation had escalated from desperate to hopeless in one of the hellholes and disaster areas of her misspent youth, the skies had been her only hope. It was from above that help might arrive.

Unless Rina had misunderstood something, Natasha’s former fiancé was dead—the man Natasha had once tried to murder with a hunting knife. And it had happened while she was on the loose after having brained a policeman with a cobble.

“Rina …”

“They are both dead,” said Rina and took a determined bite of the strawberry ice cream. “Poppa Mike and Daddy.”

Jesus. Poppa Mike and Daddy?

Nina realized that she knew absolutely nothing about Rina’s biological father. She had placed a single-mother-from-Ukraine label on Natasha without giving it a lot of thought. “Are you sure, sweetie?” she asked carefully.

“That’s what they said.” Rina’s voice shrank, got smaller and thinner, not because of Nina’s doubt, it turned out, but because the next thing was what had made her world shake. “They said Mama did it.”

“Mama?”

“Yes, that Mama killed them. Both of them.”

Suddenly the Mondeo brigade’s size made more sense. They weren’t hunting a woman found guilty of a single—relatively ineffective—homicide attempt. They thought that Natasha was a double murderer.

Nina was all at once extremely conscious of Rina’s hand resting in her own. The girl’s delicate fingers were trembling, not just from cold and fear, but because the asthma medicine was affecting her. Anton’s hand was different, more solid and square and usually more dirty.

Anton was with Morten now, in the apartment in Fejøgade. Maybe they had made pancakes; Morten sometimes did that when he had the time and energy and was in a good mood. Maybe they were all three still sitting at the kitchen table while Morten lingered over an extra cup of coffee and talked about music with Ida, and the checkered oilcloth got more and more spotted by Anton’s marmalade fingers. Only Nina was missing.

I’m not sure I can do this, she thought, without completely knowing what “this” was, just sensing that the war had started again, and she was too tired, too old and not suited to fight it. I wouldn’t mind if someone came to rescue us right now.

Rina gave her hand a little tug, this time because she wanted to continue. “I’m cold,” she said.

“No wonder,” said Nina. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s get you inside.”

Somewhere behind them, the two Mondeo men had halted. Now they started moving again. Was it one of them who had said that “Poppa Mike” was dead? And that Natasha had killed him? How could they say such things while Rina was listening? No hope of rescue from that quarter, that much was certain. But who else was there to turn to?