Invisible Murder

OU WANT A drink?”

Søren gave the young man waiting for him at the café table a surprised look. Khalid had suggested the their meeting place, Café Offside, himself—a little sports bar awash with nicotine, crammed in next to Nørrebro Station, and clearly one of Copenhagen’s few remaining smokers’ sanctuaries. Also sufficiently Khalid Hosseini’s home turf that he was the one to order the drinks. Søren decided to ignore this slightly provocative act and nodded briefly.

“Yes, please. A club soda.”

Khalid, who had occupied the innermost corner of the booth, deftly got up and zigzagged his way through the busy café’s crowd of standing patrons, laid a bill on the bar counter, and returned shortly afterward with a club soda in one hand. He slipped back into his seat and smiled at Søren with his eyebrows raised. A perfect saint, Søren thought sarcastically, wondering for a moment whether he should have turned up unannounced at Khalid’s home address instead, just to catch him off balance. These young men were never quite so cocky when they had their gloomy father sitting next to them on the sofa. On the other hand, the family could also have been an extremely disruptive element, and Khalid had three younger siblings and a mother, who would presumably either lament reproachfully or dart back and forth with tea and sticky cakes that were far too sweet. Søren leaned back in the flimsy café chair and tried to maintain eye contact with his young host.

He was nineteen. Long-limbed, skinny, and smooth-shaven if you ignored a pair of neatly trimmed sideburns. He was wearing a tight, orange shirt that appeared to be fairly expensive. The same was true of the dark, high-end jeans and white sneakers.

It took a while, but finally he met Søren’s eyes.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

Søren didn’t answer. He waited, slowly pouring his club soda into the glass and watched out of the corner of his eye as the young man’s façade began to crumble. Young people weren’t used to lulls in a conversation, and certainly not to long periods of silence. Khalid’s eyes darted away from Søren’s club soda before moving back to the cola he had sitting in front of himself on the table. He took a swig and was then inspired to fish his cigarettes from his black backpack under the table. His fingers trembled slightly as he pulled the cigarette out of the packet, then he half-heartedly held out the pack to Søren, but stopped midway through the gesture and let it drop down onto the table between them instead, in a sort of clumsy invitation.

“Feel free to.…”

Søren impassively watched Khalid.

“I mean, if you want to smoke.…”

Khalid tried his host’s smile one last time, but it stiffened before it made it all the way up to his eyes, and instead he lit his cigarette with an uneasy glance toward the door. As if he were considering his escape options.

This was all good.

Søren took a deep breath and calmly leaned in further over the table.

“We need your computer, Khalid. And our tech people are having a little trouble understanding your explanation as to why we can’t see it. So I’d just like to hear it one more time.”

“I didn’t give them any explanation. It’s my computer. That’s why.”

Khalid stuck his chin out in defiance and stared at Søren. A bright lad, Søren guessed. It wasn’t so much what he had said so far, but Søren thought he could see it in his eyes, in the effortless way he had moved, and the reasonably civilized behavior he was exhibiting in the circumstances. That kind of thing required self-control and a certain mental capacity.

“Are you a Muslim, Khalid?”

“What business is that of yours?”

Søren gave a smile of acquiescence.

“I just want to know a little more about you. It’s a straightforward question.”

Khalid blew a narrow column of smoke out of his nose and for the first time turned to look directly into Søren’s eyes with every indication of contempt.

“Look at me, man. What do you think?” Khalid challenged.

“Practicing?”

Khalid shrugged, fell back in the booth, and inhaled another batch of smoke into his lungs.

“Is that what this is about? Religion? Do you think I’m a fucking terrorist or something?” His shoulders sank a bit, and he smiled sardonically as he held his hands out to Søren. “Hey, I love all Danes, man. I love Denmark. I’m totally harmless. Me tame Muslim.”

He said that last line coldly, with a sneer and an exaggerated accent. He was more indignant than insecure right now, and Søren wasn’t sure how to interpret that. If Khalid was up to something dangerous, shouldn’t he be feeling scared?

Khalid turned restlessly in his seat, eyeing him expectantly with a mix of contempt and physical discomfort.

“You can’t look at my computer, because you guys are fucking racists. I don’t give a damn what you’re looking for. You’re coming after me because you think I’m a towelhead. Don’t you think I know how it works? There were other people at school that night. But you pick on me because I’m Arab.” Khalid’s voice cracked several times from anger. “I’ve heard about all the crap you people get up to with the CIA. Sending innocent people to torture prisons in Egypt and wherever.”

Søren shook his head slowly.

“We just want to talk to you about what you were doing on those arms sites you visited. Maybe you were just window shopping for a nice piece to put under your pillow. We’re the PET. We don’t care about trifles like that. If you have a good explanation, I just want to hear it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Khalid got up, stumbled a little over his black backpack before he pulled it out from under the table, and started edging his way out from behind the table. Søren could feel his control of the conversation slipping through his fingers.

“Khalid!” Søren calmly placed a firm hand on the young man’s shoulder. “A little more cooperation would be a smart move right now. For your own sake as well as ours.”

Khalid stopped and directed a furious, icy look at Søren.

“Leave me alone. You can’t have it.”

Søren slowly removed his phone from his pocket and browsed through the menus. There it was. A text message from Christian, sent just ten minutes ago.

“We picked up your computer as soon as you left the apartment. Your mother even invited my colleagues in for tea while they took a look at your room.”

Khalid stood there, swaying in the wind like a tree in a storm.

“What do you mean? It’s my computer. You can’t just take it. It’s mine. I’m studying for an exam.…”

Søren stepped past him and started to leave.

“You’ll be hearing from us as soon as we’ve looked at it. It may take a little while.”

He glanced back over his shoulder. Khalid stood frozen with one hand on the flimsy café table, as if he needed support. His black backpack hung heavy and motionless from his other hand.

OUTSIDE IN THE twilit street, Søren dialed a familiar number as an elevated train thundered by overhead. His first impression of Khalid was mixed. The boy could scream and shout all he wanted about racism and rights violations, but that didn’t change the fact that he was hiding something. Søren had no doubt about that.

“Yes?”

Christian sounded grumpy and rushed on the other end of the line. From the background noise, Søren guessed he was still stuck in traffic somewhere on his way back to base.

“Did you get what you needed?”

“Yes, frightened mother, angry father, cute kids, and one laptop that at least looks like the one on the security footage. Everything went as expected.”

“Check it out as soon as possible,” Søren said. He glanced around before unlocking his car and slipping into the driver’s seat, an old paranoid habit from his own days of working in the surveillance service.

“Yeah, get in line.” Christian’s grumpiness was uncharacteristic, but it was after all almost 9:30 at night, and he had two young children at home. Søren recalled seeing the family photos in Christian’s ground-floor office.

“Just one more thing, Christian, then I’ll let you go for the day. Khalid. You put a trace on that mobile of his, right? I want to see who he talks to tonight.”