Death of a Nightingale

A police car found her. Nina had made it into sitting position but no farther, her back propped against one of the Micra’s front wheels. She wondered if the patrol car would be able to stop in time or would just continue into the Micra.

Luckily, the police had begun to equip their vehicles with winter tires. The patrol car came to a controlled stop ten or twelve meters from her. One of the cops got out; the other remained seated behind the wheel.

“Do you need any help?” asked the one who had gotten out.

Help. Yes, she did. All kinds of help.

“What time is it?” she asked instead.

The police woman squatted next to Nina. “Could you look at me for a moment?” she said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“She drove into me,” said Nina. “She must have been parked between the trees. She was waiting for me to come, and then she drove right into me.”

The policewoman smiled in a calming way, but there was a bit of skepticism in her very young, very pretty face. “I think we need an ambulance for you,” she said.

Nina decided she had been sitting there long enough. “No,” she said. “I’m okay. Pretty much.”

She thought she could feel a fracture in her lower left arm, but that wasn’t exactly life threatening. She got to her feet on the first attempt but then had to lean discreetly on the Micra to remain upright until the dizziness wore off.

The hood was cold, she noticed. Fuck. That meant time had passed, and she had no idea how much. Her usual loss-of-time panic set in, but it was a familiar panic; she could control it. As long as someone told her the time soon.

“My name is Nina Borg,” she said. “I’m a nurse at the Coal-House Camp. I was on my way home when another car suddenly appeared. I don’t have a concussion; I’m completely oriented in time and place”—well, place at least—“and my own data. All I need right now is a taxi. And maybe a mechanic for the car.”

The other officer, also a woman but somewhat older, had left the car and approached. “As long as you’re not actually bleeding to death, we’d better set up a few warning reflectors. We prefer to deal with one accident at a time. What about the other driver? Did she just take off?”

“Yes.”

The accident had been no accident. Natasha had been parked and waiting for her on one of the tracks the forestry workers used when they were transporting lumber. That much Nina had pieced together in her head while she was sitting in the snow, trying to muster the energy to get up. Belatedly she realized how they were likely to react when—or if—she told them who the woman was. It felt wrong, even now, to give Natasha up like that, to make it easier for them to find her.

“The other …” she said.

“Yes?”

“It was Natasha Dmytrenko.”

“The one who …”

“Yes.”

The treachery was complete.

One of the policewomen was already speaking very quickly into her radio. “Which way did she go?” the other asked. “And what kind of car was she driving?”

“I didn’t see it very well,” Nina said. “I think it was black or dark blue. Big. A heavy car. Maybe a Mercedes or an Audi? She drove that way, back toward Værløse.”

The other officer cursed into her radio. “No, damn it. We can’t even give pursuit while that stupid little car is blocking the way. Can we get some help out here in a hurry?” She shot a quick question at Nina. “When did she take off?”

“I don’t know exactly,” said Nina. “Five or six minutes after three, I think.”

The policewoman lifted her well-functioning arm and looked at her well-functioning watch. Nina was jealous.

“So you’ve been sitting there in the snow for almost forty minutes?”

Forty minutes. Fuck.

“I guess I must have been,” Nina said.

THE TAXI LET her off on Kløverprisvej at what she considered a suitable distance from Søren’s house. She was gradually managing to bend and stretch her arm better. She still couldn’t rotate it, so something was wrong, presumably a minor fracture. It might have been the airbag explosion itself that caused the damage, but it was still a lot better than banging her head into the steering wheel.

It was the cud-chewing Mr. Nielsen who let her in.

“It’s after four,” he said. “The boss has called twice to ask where you were. Fifteen minutes more, and we’d have had to upgrade our coverage.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nina. “Something unforeseen happened.”

He looked at her as if nothing unforeseen ever happened in his world. And maybe it didn’t. He looked like a man who not only had a Plan B but also Plans C, D, E, F and all the way to the end of the alphabet.

Magnus stood in the kitchen door. “I was starting to worry too. How did it go? Did Anton get to be Cat King?”

“No, but he was Super Mario and super stylish. How is Rina doing?”

“She’s sleeping.”

She knew she should tell them about Natasha and the accident, but she didn’t have the energy right now. She had already been grilled twice by two different sets of police. The Coal-House Camp and Michael Vestergaard’s house in Hørsholm were under the jurisdiction of North Zealand Police, while it was Copenhagen’s Prison and Probation Service that was officially responsible for following up on Natasha’s escape and her physical assault on an officer on duty. Nina felt as if she had repeated her story endlessly. All she had received in return was the information that the young policeman from the gas attack was conscious and out of danger. It was a huge relief—at least the officers hunting Natasha no longer thought they might be tracking down a cop killer.

Nina no longer knew how she felt about Natasha; she no longer fitted into any of the usual boxes. Some of the time Nina still saw her as Rina’s mother and therefore a persecuted victim to be helped and protected; then Natasha would suddenly shape-shift into something wild and unpredictable to be kept at bay, a threat to Anton, a car waiting among the trees, a knife against the throat. Nina collected a little spit in her dry mouth and swallowed. She tried to concentrate on the present.

“What did Søren want?”

Nielsen Cud-Chewer paused for a second, possibly to indicate that he didn’t completely approve her casual use of Inspector Kirkegard’s first name.

“He had some questions. You can call him from my phone.”

“In a little while,” she said. “I just want to check on Rina. Here …” She awkwardly reached across her body to take the Bricanyl from her left pocket. “I went to get the last of her medicine.”

The Cud-Chewer—who had stopped chewing cud, she noticed—looked like he was considering forcing her to call right this minute, but instead just activated the phone himself.

“She’s back,” she heard him say as she headed for the living room.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” asked Magnus.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing important.”

In the living room, the television was still on, playing an eternal loop of noisy cartoons. Rina’s socks stuck out from under the comforter at one end, but her head had completely disappeared. Perhaps the noise from the television was disturbing her sleep. Nina turned it off and switched on one of the two lamps on the windowsill. Rina didn’t like waking up in the dark.

Then she noticed two things simultaneously.

The terrace door was slightly ajar. And in the silence that set in when she turned off the cartoon inferno, she couldn’t hear Rina’s breathing.