Invisible Murder

INA PULLED INTO the parking lot in front of the Valby garage at 1:37 P.M. Peter’s emergency call had come in the middle of the clinic’s drop-in hours. Snotty noses and infant vaccinations. Peter was his usual grouchy self as he outlined the situation. The young man had apparently disappeared, but the children were sick again. All of them. He needed a “professional on site,” as he put it, and Magnus had just thrown up his hands in exasperated acceptance when Nina asked for permission to pop out for a couple hours.

This time it actually seemed she was welcome. The door opened before she had a chance to knock. They had been waiting for her, she could tell. The young mother with the missing front teeth was perched just inside the doorway and eagerly grabbed hold of her arm as soon as Nina crossed the threshold. The other women and a small group of men were behind her, and they followed Nina and the young mother with their eyes. Nina thought she could sense a new tension that didn’t have to do with her presence. Illnesses that didn’t go away on their own were poor people’s worst nightmare.

“Ápolónö. Jöljön be, jöljön be!”

Nina didn’t understand the words, but their meaning was clear enough. The woman pulled her into the garage so quickly that she almost tripped on the mattresses, stuffed plastic bags, and duffle bags.

The boy was lying totally motionless on a filthy foam mattress pushed up against the wall, and when she cautiously squatted down next to him, his whole body jerked. A stream of yellowish vomit welled out from under his head; he opened his eyes, looking vaguely about, and then disappeared back into a fog. The young woman emitted something between a sob and a sigh and ran to get a new cloth. She must have had to do that quite a few times, and Nina could see the fatigue and worry in her eyes when she came back and started wiping sweat and vomit off the boy’s face. She gave up on doing anything about the mattress, just pushed a clean towel in under his head.

“A fiam rosszul. A fiam rosszul van.”

She looked up at Nina with a question in her eyes, and Nina cautiously began her examination. The boy was considerably worse than a couple days ago. He still didn’t have a fever, but he was exhausted from all the vomiting, and though Nina managed to get him to sit up for a couple minutes, he kept falling asleep leaning against his mother’s shoulder. His belly wasn’t distended; his biggest problem was probably dehydration. His skin was bone dry, and he was either going to need IV fluids here—or, better still, a hospital.

Nina pulled out her phone, found Allan’s number in her address book and wedged the phone between her shoulder and cheek as she scanned the garage. The boy’s English-speaking father had taken refuge in the group of men over by the door, away from his son’s illness and his wife’s worried looks. Now she waved him over, Allan’s ring tone still chiming away in her ear.

“The other children,” she said, pointing around the garage. “Where are they?”

He pulled her further back toward the rear of the garage, where to her relief she saw the other children sitting with sleeping bags wrapped around their shoulders. Weak and pale, but clearly healthier than the boy on the mattress.

Allan finally answered his phone. “Hi, Nina.”

He sounded like he was in a relatively good mood, which was a plus. She hadn’t spoken with him since the previous August. Allan was a doctor with a practice north of Copenhagen, in fashionable Vedbær. He had also been moonlighting as part of Peter’s standing team when their “clients” had problems that required prescription medication or an emergency house call. But that was over now. He was no longer part of the Network, and the last time she had seen him he hadn’t been mincing his words when he told her to shove off and never come back.

“I need your opinion,” Nina said, trying for Peter’s crisply managerial tone of voice. “I’m standing in an old auto repair shop in Valby with a lot of very sick children. One of them in particular is dehydrated, and I can’t really figure out how bad it is. I think it’s a stomach virus of some kind, but they’ve been sick for several days now and apparently it’s mostly the children who are getting sick.”

Allan sighed.

“Tell me more. Vomiting, diarrhea, fever, blood?”

Nina summed up the situation and waited patiently while Allan chewed on a pen on the other end of the line.

“Hmm. It’s a little odd that they’re having multiple bouts of it,” he said. “Maybe it’s some kind of poisoning. Industrial waste, heavy metals, or gasoline fumes could cause those kinds of symptoms if they were exposed to them for long enough. Might also explain the pattern of recurrences. Did you ask where the kids have been playing?”

“Thanks,” she said quickly. “What else?”

“Virus, bacteria, it could be anything. Make sure you wash your hands really well and get yourself some gloves and a face mask. You know the drill. Obviously the boy’s going to need fluids, and then I think it would be good for all involved if the group left the repair shop if there’s any way to make that happen. And be careful yourself.”

Click.

He was gone before she had a chance to say a proper goodbye. Allan really didn’t want to know, and he also wanted to avoid any request for impromptu house calls. And he was right. She might have asked if he hadn’t wrapped up the conversation so quickly.

Poisoning. Nina didn’t have much experience with that kind of thing, but this was an old auto mechanic’s garage, and there could still be gasoline or other organic solvents stored on the premises. The children might have drunk or inhaled some toxic substance by accident.

She looked at the child’s father who was standing next to her expectantly. His forehead was wet with sweat.

“What did the children do yesterday? Where were they?”

“Big children work. My son here. To rest. Get stronger.”

Nina started her exploration in the room that had probably been the foreman’s office. The walls were bare with holes in them and faded areas in the paint where there used to be shelves. There were mattresses and sleeping bags here, too, maybe a couple had managed to win themselves a little privacy. Apart from that there was nothing. The same was true for the actual garage, if she ignored a pile of worn-out tires in one corner and a couple of rusty cans of paint and a container of motor oil sitting on a rickety shelf down by the far end. Nina tried to unscrew the lid off the motor oil, but it only budged reluctantly and greasy dirt and cobwebs fluttered down to the floor in clumps and flakes. It hadn’t been opened recently, and the spray cans of paint were also a nonstarter since the valves were so rusty that they couldn’t be pushed down. Nina continued toward the door next to the foreman’s office and the little kitchenette. It was still closed, but this time no one tried to prevent her from going in. She stepped into the small, dark room and turned on the fluorescent ceiling light. The window was wide open, and a couple of tattered, red curtains fluttered in the faint breeze. A bed frame with no mattress and a scratched, old laminate table were the only furniture in the room. The linoleum floor was worn to a thread, but clean, and there was the faint odor of dishwashing soap and chlorine. There was nothing to see.

Nina returned to the boy and his mother. She wanted them out of here. She didn’t need to be an expert on poisoning to know that Allan was right—it was potentially hazardous for them to stay in this place.

“Chemicals,” she said. “Poison. Dangerous for children.” She looked at the boy’s father and waved her hand at the interior of the garage. “You must go somewhere else.”

The man shook his head.

“No poison. We stay.”

He wasn’t a tall man, Nina noticed. One of his shoulders drooped a little, and like his wife, he revealed a number of cavities in his teeth when he spoke. But there was a massive dignity in his refusal. Presumably he was well aware that the garage wasn’t the healthiest place in the world for a child. He may even already have had an inkling that it might be a contributing factor, but he had to reject her suggestion out of hand simply because he had nowhere else to go. Not without risking exposure and losing everything he had gambled when he decided to bring his family to Denmark this summer—the money for the trip, the rent they had already payed for this sorry place, and god knows what other expenses he might owe to people who did not deal kindly with debtors. He had to hope the illness would pass on its own—he had no other option.

She took a deep breath and studied the boy. She would have to treat him as best she could for now and hope he improved over the next few hours. If not, she really would have to call an ambulance, no matter how much the parents protested. But she wouldn’t fight that particular battle until it was absolutely necessary.

She pulled a saline drip out of her bag and kneeled down next to the sick boy. The light wasn’t good, but thankfully his mother helped by lifting the boy up and rotating him so she had better access. Nina found the vein in the soft crook of his elbow with her fingertips and hit it on her first try.

A car door slammed in the parking lot outside.

The boy’s mother cowered, casting a furtive, pleading glance at her husband, who was on her way over to them in long strides. Without a word he swept the boy up into his arms and carried the boy and the drip bag away in rapid, sturdy steps. The boy’s mother followed, and before Nina had a chance to react, someone shoved her adamantly in the back. The man standing behind her pointed meaningfully to the middle of the garage, where a couple of the other men had quickly and silently pulled one of the worn plywood boards to the side. The father helped his wife and child down into the inspection pit while one of the others ran over to the door and disappeared out into the parking lot. Nina could hear him talking to someone outside. She could only discern the occasional English word and had no idea what the conversation was about. The man next to her pointed into the inspection pit again and tugged at her arm impatiently. Nina pulled herself free in an irritated motion. She got it. For some reason or other, she and the children were supposed to hide, presumably just the way Peter had needed to. The voices outside had moved closer now, and Nina walked over to the edge and hopped down to the bottom of the inspection pit on her own.

She stepped on something soft that moved, looked down and discovered the sick boy’s mother, who was already sitting on the sunken floor with the boy in her arms. She cradled the hand Nina had stepped on for a brief moment, then moved deeper into the pit to make room for Nina. The rest of the children from the garage followed in quick succession, and Nina tried automatically to receive the small bodies as they were lifted down to her one by one.

The board was pushed back into place with a heavy, grating sound. The darkness was absolute. Nina could hear the children breathing softly and quickly, but no one said anything. They just sat and listened to the sound of heavy footsteps and voices from the world up above.

Nina tried to calm her breathing. The whole thing had happened so quickly that she hadn’t had a chance to feel scared, but now she could feel her heart pounding fiercely. The pit she was sitting in was easily a meter and a half deep and only just wide enough that she could sit with her legs bent and her back up against the wall. The darkness around her felt dense and suffocating, and the smell of old motor oil tore at her nostrils. A small, warm body touched hers, and she pulled away, startled. But even here in the pulsing darkness, the children were still completely quiet. She got the distinct impression that they had done this before.

The boy with the drip. She had to make sure the mother understood that the infusion bag needed to be held high so the flow wouldn’t be reversed. Nina crawled noiselessly on all fours past the sitting children toward the rear of the pit. It was slow going because apparently the ever-changing inhabitants of the garage had been using the inspection pit for trash disposal for a long time, and the floor was covered in rubble, paper bags, and old plastic bottles. The darkness was dense around her, but now she could make out gray cracks of light between the plywood boards overhead, and about halfway to the back, she finally found the boy’s mother, sitting in complete silence with the child in her arms.

He was asleep. His soft breaths faltered a little each time as he breathed in, and he didn’t respond when she felt her way to the drip in his right arm. The IV tube was positioned correctly despite their rough and rapid retreat into the inspection pit, and Nina felt her way to the bag of saline which was in the woman’s lap—way too low. Nina crawled around to the other side and perched the bag on the woman’s shoulder so it was at least a little higher than the boy.

It seemed as if the mother understood what Nina was trying to do. She lifted the bag in her outstretched arm and held it there, though it must be uncomfortable for her. Everything was still being done without a sound. Above them the boards groaned whenever someone walked over them, and Nina could hear voices. There was some kind of argument, but the sound was muffled and subdued, and she couldn’t understand what was being said.

“Ápolónö.”

Nina turned in the darkness toward the whispering voice. She had heard the man who had let her into the garage call her the same thing. Ápolónö, nurse. The woman’s voice was so soft and trembling that it almost disappeared in the darkness.

“Rosszul. Sick. Why?”

The woman flitted like a black shadow just a couple of hand-widths away. She moved nearer.

“I don’t know,” Nina admitted.

She tried to sound calm and soothing. She wanted the woman to shut up. She didn’t know what would happen if they were discovered, but something told her it wouldn’t be good.

“Ápolónö!”

The woman whispered again and was now so close that Nina could feel the warmth of her breath on her cheek. A thin, boney hand grabbed her arm.

“Please, ápolónö. He die. Please. He die.”

An image from one of the Coal-House Camp’s claustrophobically small family rooms popped into Nina’s mind. Paracetamol to treat mortal fear, she thought. Paracetamol and a saline drip.

“He’ll be fine. Nothing serious.”

Nina tried to sound calm and cheerful and put a reassuring hand on the boy’s stomach. There was a multitude of reasons to fear death in the half-lit world of poverty in which these Roma lived. It was human and totally understandable. Still, Nina could feel the woman’s terror, the darkness, and the cramped space starting to close in around her. The woman’s gaunt hand rested heavily on hers and held on tight. Squeezing her fingers too hard and for too long.

Nina twisted free and pulled away, away from the warm crush of human bodies. She crawled father back into the inspection pit, over heaps of trash, a broken bottle, nuts and bolts, old newspapers, and finally found a small patch of unused floor space all the way down by the wall at the far end. Beneath her sand grated against the concrete floor, and although the fine, small grains dug into the palms of her hands, it was better here.

It had grown quiet up in the garage above them. A door slammed somewhere far away, and after a few minutes, the plywood boards were pulled aside. The light from the lone fluorescent tube fell down into the inspection pit and one by one the children were pulled up. The woman with the sick boy cast a quick glance into the darkness for Nina before she passed the boy up to his father and was herself helped up and out shortly thereafter. The men waved Nina toward the opening. “Come, ápolónö. Boss men gone. Is all OK now.”

NINA STAYED AT the garage for a few hours.

The boy improved on the saline solution and was awake long enough to eat a couple of crackers and drink half a bottle of juice. He was still pale as a corpse, and the bigger children were complaining of headaches. But all things considered Nina thought the situation was under relative control. She had even managed to clean the trash out of the inspection pit, although she had had to do most of the work herself; she had more luck getting the garage’s residents to help clean up the grounds, which she also insisted on. Maybe they didn’t want her hanging around outside too much; they obviously thought it were best if no one found out she was here.

“Don’t let the children play where the garbage is,” she said, miming and pointing. “Don’t let them put things in their mouths.” She wrote her mobile number on a piece of paper for the boy’s mother. “Call me if he is still sick tomorrow, okay? I have to go now.”

She tried to get the woman to look her in the eye, but whatever connection there might have been between the two of them earlier was gone. The boy’s parents had had a big argument about something, and ever since, the mother had just sat there with the child in her lap, whispering into his soft, dark hair, a low-pitched stream of words that seemed more complaint than comfort.

Nina stood there holding out the slip of paper for several seconds. She felt her old irritation welling up again. Why was it so hard to help these people? They were treating her as a stranger once more, someone to be eyed with mistrust. But just as she was starting to think she would have to leave the note on the ground, the woman took it after all, in a quick, snatching motion, and stuffed it in the pocket of her fleece jacket.