Invisible Murder

DA’S ALIVE. IDA’S alive.

Nina hadn’t noticed she was shaking until the officer had put his jacket across her shoulders. And then he had told her that someone had found Ida. And that she wasn’t dead. She didn’t hear much else of what he said, but it was as if she became aware of herself again in a different way. The pain in her ribs became real. The nausea and the throbbing in her head and her shaking hands, clutching the water bottle the policeman had handed her. They all felt like her, like parts of her. It hurt, but that meant she was alive again. And Ida was alive.

Nina sank back in the seat, watching the scene outside as pain throbbed rhythmically in her right side. There were three police cars parked along the curb now, but none of the officers were in sight. The door they had entered through gaped blackly at the parking lot, and the door to the office trailer was also open now and swinging in the wind. She hoped Sándor was alive. She hoped those shots that had been fired hadn’t been meant for him, but she was consumed by relief over the news about Ida. It was as if there wasn’t room for anything else right now.

A man was walking down the sidewalk. She wouldn’t even have noticed him if he hadn’t sped up as he went past the police cars. It was just a man in a pale raincoat, a man who was out taking a walk in the suburban neighborhood where he surely belonged. It was the low, white silhouettes of the police cruisers that were out of place. But instead of stopping out of curiosity to look at them, he hurried on. And that was why she recognized him.

It was Frederik. And it wasn’t until she looked more closely that she saw there were quite a few things wrong with the picture Mr. Suburbia presented. The raincoat was too big to be his. And the one pocket, the one he was hiding his right hand in, sported a growing bloodstain.

The open door of the office trailer, swinging in the wind … the light she thought she had seen in the window of the hut. Had that been something more than a reflection from the spotlights bobbing on the swaying posts? Had Frederik been hiding there while he got his camouflage worked out?

Nina flung herself across the steering wheel in the front seat and hit the horn. The prolonged honk made the man cower like a gun-shy dog, but then he sped up to a run. And nothing else happened. The officers in the hall either hadn’t heard her, or they were busy, preoccupied with something they thought was more important. Nina pushed the horn down again and held it. This time with the result that the curtains moved very slightly in the anxious old man’s house. Well, that’s not much help, Nina thought dryly.

I parked the Touareg a few blocks away. She suddenly remembered what Frederik had said as he came jogging back, skipping between the puddles in the parking lot, before they went into the mosque. If he made it to the car, he might actually escape. Frederik slowed back down to a just-out-for-an-evening stroll again as he rounded the corner. He was getting away.

Mr. Suburbia. Who had sat there drinking instant soup out of his ugly red ceramic mug while Ida was strapped to that radiator.

Nina had ridden in the ambulance a few times while she was in training, and she had quickly picked up some of the more experienced EMTs’ tricks. One of them was to leave a set of extra keys under one of the sun visors so any driver would be able to start the ambulance when the call came in. She leaned over the driver’s seat in the police car and tilted the visor down. A key landed on the seat with a soft thump, and Nina gingerly shimmied her way into the driver’s seat, pushed the clutch pedal down, and stuck the key in the ignition. She steered the car out onto Lundedalsvej and accelerated toward the corner, without being completely sure what her plan was. She just couldn’t let him get away like that. Not after what he’d done to Ida. And Sándor. And his brother.

She caught sight of him a little farther down the road. He appeared calmer now. Once again looking more and more like a homeowner out for a neighborhood stroll. He didn’t even glance over his shoulder when he turned down yet another side street and briefly disappeared from her view. Turning the corner herself, she was suddenly right on his tail, and this time he couldn’t help but hear her. He turned around on the sidewalk and saw her. Looked into her eyes for the first time.

His hands came up out of his pockets. One was wrapped in blood-soaked toilet paper. The other was holding a gun. She didn’t have time to see any more than that before he aimed the gun at her. He held it in his left hand with his arm out straight in front of him, in a way that wasn’t totally convincing. Nina turned the wheel, slowed the patrol car down, and ducked to the right as the shot hit, causing white chunks of glass to rain down on her like a shower of ice. The right front tire bumped onto the curb, and the engine cut out.

She shook the glass fragments out of her hair. He was still there. He was standing right in front of the car’s white hood, clumsily cocking the gun with his injured hand.

He was crying. Tears of pain, presumably, which was fair enough. And yet she couldn’t shake the thought that it was the cry of a spoiled child. A child who had never before been in real pain.

She turned the key in the ignition and brought the engine back to life just as he raised his gun again. She let out the clutch a little too abruptly, and the car jumped forward in a kangaroo hop before stalling again. But that was enough. The thud on the bumper was firm and satisfying, and Mr. Suburbia disappeared under the front of the car with an indignant howl.