Invisible Murder

PLEASANT, GOLDEN LIGHT fell through the Venetian blinds, and the background noise of clattering trays and serving carts, voices and footsteps, and the distinctive suction-cup shwoop of the automated doors closing were pleasantly muffled. The month of June was in full bloom outside, and the chestnut trees were dropping their sticky yellow-white flowers left and right. Søren had cycled over to Bispebjerg Hospital in drizzle and rain showers, but now it had cleared up. They had let him hang his dripping rain pants and anorak in Ward K’s staff locker room while he questioned Helle Skou-Larsen.

She lay with her face turned toward the light and her bed raised so that it was easier for her to look out. She didn’t turn her head when he entered her room. If he wanted to see her facial expression, he would have to sit between her and the window, so he nodded quickly to the lawyer and pulled one of the mismatched visitor’s chairs around to the other side of the bed.

“Hello, Mrs. Skou-Larsen,” he said pleasantly. “How are you doing?”

She focused on him slowly. Her eyes were porcelain blue against her bloodless skin, and the subtle makeup couldn’t completely cover her pallor and the dark, heavy bags under her eyes. There was a certain absurdity to the oxygen tube as an accessory to her pink lipstick, but her lung capacity was still far from optimal.

“Fine, thank you.” Her voice sounded astonishingly normal. Stronger than he would have expected, given her general frailty.

He showed her his identification.

“Søren Kirkegård, PET.”

“Yes” was all she said.

“I’m sorry about your husband.”

She showed no reaction.

Her lawyer got up off the only upholstered chair in the room.

“Mads Ahlegaard,” he said, holding out his hand. “Let me just remind you that the doctors say this conversation will have to be limited to fifteen minutes.”

“I’m aware of that,” Søren said, sitting down on the flimsy, wooden chair. “Mrs. Skou-Larsen, I’m here to talk to you about your attempt to buy an illegal radioactive substance.”

The words felt so inappropriate, as if they didn’t really belong in the same universe as this middle-aged suburban housewife who went to choir practice once a week and played bridge every other Friday. And yet, that was exactly what she had done. They were now aware of most of her activities; they had found the Acer laptop she had used for the online searches that had ultimately put her in touch with Tamás Rézmüves, ten different pay-as-you-go phones she had bought at various locations around town, the remnants of her husband’s supply of Imovane pills that she had used to sedate the guard dogs at the mosque—and possibly also her husband.… They had found her fingerprints on the Opel Rekord’s steering wheel and gear shift, despite the fact that she apparently hadn’t driven a car since the ’70s. They were pretty clear on what she’d done. What remained a mystery was why. The first theory was that she must have been subjected to some form of extortion or coercion, maybe from a radical right-wing extremist group, but there just weren’t any indications that that was the case. It appeared the whole thing had been her own bright idea.

Now the doctors had finally given the green light for her to be questioned. And this was not a task Søren planned to assign to anyone else.

“Mrs. Skou-Larsen, what was the cesium chloride for?”

She looked past him, at the window. It was irritating that she wouldn’t allow him to establish eye contact, but he wasn’t going to let that show.

“Someone had to do something,” she said. “You can’t just let things slide.”

“Yes, but what were you going to do?”

“It was getting so that you saw them everywhere,” she said. “You couldn’t go anywhere without … without them being there. Without them looking at you.”

“Who?” he asked, even though he thought he knew the answer.

“Them. Those foreigners. It wouldn’t bother me so much if it were just a few here and there, but there are just more and more of them.” She looked right at him for the first time, a chilly glimpse of blue and white. “Did you know that they have almost twice as many children as do Danes?”

Where do people hear this nonsense? The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he restrained himself, smiling pleasantly instead.

“Yes, I can certainly understand how that might seem alarming.”

“And then that new mosque. So close! At first I was so angry I almost couldn’t sleep at night. But then.…” She cut herself short, her eyes left him again and drifted sideways, toward the sunlight and the blinds. He had to prompt her to get her talking again.

“Then what, Mrs. Skou-Larsen?”

“Then I started thinking that maybe there was a reason for it. That it was supposed to be right here, so close that I could walk there. Because, of course, that made it easier.”

“Yes, I can certainly see that.”

“I’m not at all fond of driving,” she said suddenly flashing him an apologetic, feminine smile. “My husband is always the one who drives. Or … well, he was.”

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, thought Søren, picturing this seemingly helpless woman, slightly out of touch with reality, throwing herself into Copenhagen traffic in a twenty-five-year-old Opel Rekord, probably with her hands clutching the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles gleamed. They probably ought to be glad the Opel was an automatic, at least from a purely traffic-safety-related point of view. Had she intentionally chosen to access the Internet from a school where more than 70 percent of the students were not ethnically Danish? It was quite possible that Khalid’s difficulties were due to an intentional if impersonal act of revenge on the part of this woman. No, helpless wasn’t the right word for her.

“So you would prefer it if this mosque were … removed?” Important not to use words like “destroyed,” “blown to pieces,” or “contaminated.” Language mattered. He had to try to describe the act in such a way that she wouldn’t distance herself from it.

She shook her head all the same.

“Removed? No, where did you get that idea from? That would ruin everything.”

Søren was too professional to let her see how astonished he was. But it took an act of iron will.

“How would it ruin the whole thing?” he asked neutrally.

“Well, it just wouldn’t have worked then.”

“So you didn’t intend to.…” Oh, now there was no avoiding it. “It was not your intention to blow up the mosque?” That would explain why they hadn’t found any trace of explosives, either at the house on Elmehøjvej or around the cultural center.

She looked indignant.

“Blow it up? Of course not. Why in God’s name would I want to do that? What do you take me for? A criminal?”

And then she told him what she had actually planned to do.

AS SØREN CYCLED back from Bispebjerg Hospital, he had an almost irresistible desire to lie in a woman’s arms. Not necessarily to have sex, although that might be nice, too. But to lie next to a warm, receptive body, to talk to a person who was lying so close to him that he could smell her breath, her sweat, her hair and skin. To rest his face in the hollow between her shoulder and her breast and feel her softness and warmth.

There just wasn’t anyone.

Susse was the closest he came, right now. But she was with Ben at some concert in Randers, and besides he couldn’t tell her anything of significance about the case, though much would surely come out later during the trial.

He cycled back to his office in Søborg, even though the Skou-Larsen interview was supposed to have been his last stop for the day. Going home to Hvidovre, to an empty house, a beer, and a microwave dinner from the freezer … no. Not now. Not today.

Torben was heading out to his Audi when Søren turned into the parking lot. He kicked his feet out of the toe clips and dismounted, hot and sweaty because he had ridden as fast as traffic had permitted, but not winded. Maybe he ought to just head down to the fitness room and run his brains out on the treadmill so he could quit thinking about women and emptiness and sources of radioactivity at least for as long as he could keep his pulse up around 190 BPM.

“Well?” Torben asked, turning his back on the Audi for a bit. “How did it go?”

“She was willing to cooperate up to a point. And it looks like she was acting completely on her own. Obviously we should run her through it a few more times once she is up to slightly longer sessions, but I didn’t get the impression that she was hiding anything.”

“No ties to extremists, no accomplices, no conspiracies?”

“Doesn’t look that way. And I think we should be letting young Mr. Horváth go home soon. Her story supports his. She was actually dealing only with Tamás Rézmüves, his half-brother. Sándor was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Well, we can certainly release him,” Torben said. “The question is whether the NBH will.”

“Gábor seemed like a pretty reasonable man. Couldn’t you put in a good word?”

Torben raised his eyebrows. “How did Sándor Horváth manage to win you over into his corner?”

“I just don’t think there’s any reason to ruin his life further.”

Torben studied him for a moment. Then he said, “Okay. I’ll talk to Gábor. That is if you’re sure Mrs. Skou-Larsen’s explanation is credible.”

“As I said, I’d really like to talk to her again. But I’m fairly certain it’ll bear up. She decided to procure some radioactive material over the Internet and install it in the hot water tank in the men’s lavatory in that mosque.”

“Did she say anything about why?”

“Yes.” Søren opened the neck of his anorak, to alleviate some of the sweating. “It wasn’t because she wanted to blow up anyone or anything. She was actually quite indignant when I suggested that. No, she just wanted to ensure that there wouldn’t be so many of ‘them.’ And the reproductive organs are among the first to be affected when someone is exposed to radiation.”

“Damn,” said Torben, his hand moving halfway down to his testicles in a protective gesture before he caught himself.

“Yup. She just wanted to quietly and calmly sterilize the entire population of Muslim men in the area.”

Torben shook his head. “People are crazy,” he said helplessly. “How on earth are we supposed to predict what all the nutcases of this world are going to come up with? Sometimes I wish my job were just solving crimes after they’ve been committed. Nice, clean, and simple. Weren’t you headed home?”

“Yes. I’m just going to go work out for a bit first.”

Torben gave him a quick, manly slap on the back. “You want to see if you can outrow me one of these days when the weather’s nice? Bring it on.”

Søren forced a smile. He definitely had a competitive streak, but sometimes he found it tiring that everything had to be an incessant pissing contest.

AFTER HIS SIXTH interval running on the treadmill’s 12 percent incline, he gave up. No matter how high he drove his pulse, he couldn’t stop thinking. Frustrated, he took off his sweaty clothes and stood under the faintly chlorine-scented jet of water in the shower room. He lathered up his armpits and crotch. Curled his fingers around his cock and scrotum, wondering at everything this one organ signified. It defined him as a man; it made him a lover; it could have made him a father if he had wanted that and hadn’t just backed away, forcing Susse to have her kids with another man.

It was completely unnecessary to sterilize him, he thought. He had managed that all on his own, with the choices he had made in his life.

In his mind’s eye, he once again saw Helle Skou-Larsen’s indignation when he had asked whether she were planning on blowing up the mosque. She did not believe in violence, she had said. She hadn’t been planning on killing anyone. What did she look like, a murderer?

Søren didn’t know what a murderer looked like anymore. And he supposed what she had wanted to commit wasn’t homicide, not in the standard sense. Just a quiet, invisible murder of the future.