Invisible Murder

HE GIRL WAS sitting on the black bed, now dressed in a T-shirt, tight Levis, and a pair of red sneakers. Christian was on the floor whistling quietly and unconsciously as he connected his own custom-built box of computer tricks to the porn central with the webcam.

“Beatrice Pollini,” Søren said, looking dubiously at the ID the girl had given him—a worn, dog-eared Italian passport. “Do we buy it?”

“No way she’s nineteen,” Jankowski said. “Seventeen at the very most.”

“And I don’t think she’s Italian, either,” Søren said. “Come ti chiami?” he asked. The girl smiled uncertainly.

“Good,” she said. “Okay.”

“That’s not what you asked, is it?” Jankowski said.

“No. I asked her what her name is.”

“Italian passports are some of the top scorers on the border police’s list of forgeries,” Jankowski said. “It’s a whole industry.”

Søren nodded. “It may well take some time. And that’s exactly what we don’t have. Christian, how’s it going with that IP address?” He saw us, Søren thought, feeling the stress sizzling along his neural pathways. He has hostages, and he saw us. They could be looking at every kind of disaster right now.

Christian looked harassed. “Let me at least plug in the damn thing first, would you?” he said.

Søren raised his hands in a gesture of apology. “Just run her ID through the system,” he told Jankowski. “I’ll try and see if I can pry anything useful out of her.” They had had to send Jesper Due back to the evening shift, which was screaming under the pressure.

“Beatrice is a difficult name,” he said to the girl. “What do your friends call you?”

She stared at him with dark, deer-in-the-headlights eyes.

“Mini,” she whispered. “Because I’m so small.” And then she started crying, unnaturally quietly, as if she’d learned that making a noise just made things worse.

In my next life, Søren thought. In my next life, I want to do something else.

SURVIVE.

That was the single conscious plan in Nina’s head. Survive, so she could tell someone where Ida was. Nothing else mattered.

And yet a twinge of … of horror ran through her when Sándor, on the Finn’s orders, opened the door to the garage so, for the first time, she could see the source of Sándor’s brother’s death and her own illness. It was a completely normal paint can, the kind you keep wood preserver in—dented sheet metal, with a handle made out of strong steel wire. She wouldn’t have given it a second glance if it had been sitting next to the jumble of rusty gardening tools leaning against the wall. But now that she knew what it was, her skin crawled, and it was hard not to think about the radiation penetrating her, invisible and unnoticed, seeking out her vulnerable internal organs and destroying them, cell by cell.

The stolen green van that the insane Finn had used when he abducted her was parked in the driveway. He had placed a section of cement pipe inside the van on top of a couple of thick, cement paving slabs, and once they had eased the paint can with the cesium source into the concrete pipe section, two more pavers would go on top. In mechanical terms, the task was simple. Once the paint can was shielded on all sides by seventeen to eighteen centimeters of concrete, their forced proximity to it might actually be only minimally damaging.

At least it won’t kill me before I can tell someone about Ida, she thought.

“You don’t need to touch it,” Sándor said. “If we take one of those and run the shaft through the handle on the can, we can carry it between us.” He pointed to the gardening tools with his healthy hand.

Tommi and Mr. Suburbia were standing behind them, at a suitable distance, now clothed in protective masks, gloves, and white hooded outfits that said ENVIRO-CLEAN in big, black capital letters across the chest on the front and back. Nina and Sándor were not afforded the same luxury.

“Let’s use the rake,” Nina said. “It looks like it has the newest handle.”

Sándor reached for it, but Nina beat him to it.

“It’s better if I do it,” she said. “I have two good hands.”

He hesitated, but then nodded. If he messed up the maneuver and the paint can tipped, they would have radioactive sand everywhere, and that would just make a bad situation worse.

She coaxed the shaft of the rake under the wire handle and carefully dragged the paint can closer. Sándor grabbed the free end of the rake. They looked at each other. Nina nodded. Then they lifted, slowly and in unison. It was a matter of holding the handle perfectly level so the can didn’t slide to one end or the other. Survive, Nina thought. Just survive.