Death of a Nightingale

Despite the hour and the winter darkness, there was a pallid sheen on the walls of Rina’s room.

It never got truly dark in the Coal-House Camp. There were lights along the walkways between the barracks, lamps above all the entrances and floodlights along the symbolic wire mesh fence that separated the camp’s inhabitants from the rest of the world.

Nina gently stroked Rina’s forehead, which was damp and cold with sweat. It was noticeably more quiet than usual in the barrack. Most of the children in the wing had a difficult relationship to men in uniforms and had for that reason been moved to empty rooms in the family wing while the watch over Rina continued. A faint scraping of chair legs and a low mumbling from the room next door was all that Nina could hear.

She found the book she had plucked from a shelf in one of the lounges earlier in the day—a paperback by some American author she had never heard of. She was forty pages into it but couldn’t remember what it was about, and it occurred to her that if she was to read it now, she would have to turn on the ceiling light, which was equipped with an aggressive eco-bulb. She abandoned that particular project. Instead, she got up and stretched her legs, feeling the restless energy that always set in when she had nothing to do.

The room was small and claustrophobic, and the curtain-less windows gave her an uncomfortable feeling of being watched. Take good care of the girl, PET-Søren had said, as if some other danger greater than Natasha lurked out there in the dark. It didn’t exactly relieve her paranoia to see the personal attack alarm lying on the desk and staring at her with a glowing red eye in the gloom.

Nina took another look at Rina before she picked up her empty coffee mug and walked down to the coffee machine at the end of the hall. The machine hummed and sputtered and reluctantly sprayed the tepid coffee into the mug, and in the middle of a gurgling spray, she suddenly thought she heard something else. A low, flat bang, not a noise she recognized from the camp’s usual nighttime soundtrack.

0:06. She stood for a few seconds with the plastic mug in her hand and listened while she gazed down the deserted grey corridor.

Silence. Then a soft bump and a faint scraping against the floor behind one of the doors. Silence again.

She realized that she had been dumb enough to leave the alarm in Rina’s room. She swore softly, set the cup down and ran with silent steps toward the door to the room where the two policemen were sitting. She didn’t waste time knocking. If anyone was in Rina’s room, they needed to react instantly. Still, she was careful enough to let the door swing open without too much noise. A faint, sweet smell hit her.

The window was shattered. That was the first thing she saw. One officer was slumped across the table with his arms hanging heavily along his sides. She couldn’t see his face but knew at once that he was either dead or unconscious. The same went for his colleague, who lay in a sprawling heap on the floor behind the table.

The shock propelled her back into the corridor, and she registered almost instantly that she was so dizzy, she had to support herself against the wall with one hand.

Gas. It was gas she could smell.

Without waiting to regain her balance, she tumbled the few meters to Rina’s room. She didn’t turn on the light but found the attack alarm on the table and pressed the button. Then she half-pulled, half-lifted Rina out of bed.

Rina hung dazedly in her arms but woke quickly enough that she could stumble along on her own two feet after Nina hauled her out into the corridor. They headed toward the coffee machine and the barrack’s kitchen and dining hall. The dizziness was dissipating, but the walls were still trying to topple onto Nina, and the corridor stretched out ahead of her, elastic and unending, until she suddenly reached the door.

Behind them there was yet another hollow bang, and glass rained down over the linoleum floor. The big wall of windows in the lounge area had been shattered, and heavy feet stepped across the shards with a crunching sound. Nina jerked Rina along down the rows of tables and chairs and into the kitchen. She had seen the walk-in refrigerator clearly in her mind’s eye even as she yanked Rina from her bed. It was the size of a broom closet, but it was airtight.

The heavy steel door was locked. Naturally. There were things that could be stolen in there, and this was a refugee center. Even the canned tomatoes were heavily guarded here. Nina fumbled with her passkey in the pallid light. The heavy lock clicked just as the door to the cafeteria was slammed open, and a broad, dark figure stepped into the dining hall behind them.

Nina pulled Rina into the narrow room with such force that the child whimpered as she hit the shelves of milk and cheese and juice. Nina had no time for consolations right now. She slammed the heavy steel door and heard the lock click once more.

She didn’t know if he had had time to see them or to hear the slam and click from the lock. Her nausea closed in again; it was as if the gas’s sweetish smell had coated her mouth and throat so that it was impossible to spit it out or cough it up. Next to her she could hear Rina’s rapid, wheezing breaths in the dark. They stood so close together that they couldn’t avoid touching. She put both arms around Rina’s head, both to muffle the sound of that awful wheeze and also to remind Rina that she was still there.

Had he seen them? Did he know where they were? She strained her hearing to its utmost but couldn’t hear anything but Rina. At least not until something hit the door to the walk-in with such force that the glasses on the shelf behind her clinked against one another.

She spontaneously tightened her grip on the girl’s head, much too suddenly and tightly. But Rina didn’t react. Said nothing, didn’t gasp, didn’t even alter the rhythm in her breathing. Not even when the second blow fell.