Invisible Murder

ATELY, SKOU-LARSEN HAD been thinking quite a lot about his imminent death.

When he got out of bed in the mornings, he felt a certain amount of resistance as he inhaled, as if breathing was no longer something that could be taken for granted. He had to exert himself. The pains in his joints had long ago turned into a constant background noise that he barely noticed, even though it wore him out.

It was no wonder, he supposed. After all, his originally serviceable body had been in use since 1925, and some degree of decay was only to be expected. What bothered him wasn’t so much the aches and the shortness of breath in itself; it was what they signified.

He looked across the shiny, white conference table at the lawyer sitting opposite him, duly armed with professional-looking case files and what was presumably the latest in fashionable eyewear.

“I just want to be sure my wife has the support she needs once I’ve passed on,” Skou-Larsen said. That was what he had decided to call it, passing on. There was something graceful about the expression, he thought. It implied a smooth and civilized progress toward a destination, and for a moment he imagined himself aboard a tall ship, sails billowing in the breeze, flags flying, and the sunlight rippling on blue waves as the land of the living fell away behind him. He liked the image. It obscured the clinical reality of death, so he didn’t need to think about fluid in his lungs, morphine drips and failing organs, lividity, and the moribund blood slowly congealing in his shriveled veins.

The lawyer nodded. Mads Ahlegaard, his name was. Skou-Larsen had picked him because he was the son of the Ahlegaard who had always been his lawyer. But now Ahlegaard the Elder was strolling around a golf course just outside Marbella in southern Spain, and Skou-Larsen was having to make do with this younger and somewhat less confidence-inspiring version.

“I can certainly understand that, Jørgen,” Ahlegaard the Younger said, nodding again to add emphasis to his words. “But exactly what type of support do you believe your wife needs?”

Skou-Larsen felt a growing sense of frustration. He had already explained this.

“I’ve always been the one who looked after things,” he said. “All the administrative and financial transactions, and … well, a lot of other things, too. I want Claus … that is, our son … to play that role in the future.” The future. There. That was also a tidy, optimistic way of referring to it. The future—after the worms had had their way with him and moved on to their next feast.

“Yes, I’m sure he’ll be a great support for her.”

Skou-Larsen felt the muscles in his jaw and around his eyes tighten. The young man on the other side of the table simply refused to understand, sitting there in his shirtsleeves, with his jacket draped over the back of his chair like some high-school student. How old could he be? Not more than thirty-five, surely. Otherwise he would have learned by now that not everyone appreciates being addressed by their first name, in that overly familiar manner.

“But what if she doesn’t ask him? What if she just … does something? She has no business experience, and I don’t think she’s a very good judge of character. She’s a lot more fragile than people imagine. Couldn’t we … take precautions?” Skou-Larsen asked.

“Such as?”

“If my son had power-of-attorney, for example. Then he would be in charge of her finances and everything to do with the house.”

“Jørgen, your wife is an adult, with the right to make her own decisions. Besides, the house is in her name.”

“I know! That’s the problem!”

Ahlegaard the Younger pushed his thin, square titanium glasses higher up his nose with a tanned index finger. “On the contrary,” he said. “This will make things so much easier for her tax-wise. Estate duties are no joke.”

“That’s as may be. But it also made it all too easy for her to borrow six hundred thousand kroner from the bank, and then blow it all on some Costa del Con-Artist project that I’m sure never existed outside the brochure’s glossy pictures. Can’t you understand I’m worried about her?”

“Jørgen, I think you should discuss it with her. Maybe you and Claus should do it together. Formally, the house is hers, and she can do whatever she wants with it. Legally and ethically, there is no document I can set up for you that will change that. Unless she’s in favor of the power-of-attorney idea?”

“She is not,” Skou-Larsen said. He had tried, but he just couldn’t get through to her.

“No? Well, then.…”

The meeting was over. That was clear from the way Ahlegaard gathered up his papers. Skou-Larsen remained seated for another few seconds, but all that did was draw Junior around to his side of the table to shake hands.

“Shall I ask Lotte to call you a cab?” he asked.

“No thank you. I have my own car.”

“Really? Such a pain finding a parking spot around here, isn’t it?”

Skou-Larsen slowly stood up. “So, you’re saying that you won’t help me?” he asked glumly.

“We’re always here to help. Just call me if there’s anything we can do, and we’ll set up a meeting.”

AN APRIL SHOWER had just been and gone when Skou-Larsen left the downtown offices of his unhelpful lawyer. In the park across the street, sodden forsythia branches were drooping over the gravel footpaths, and the narrow tires on passing bicycles hissed wetly on the bike path.

As his lawyer had predicted, he had indeed had a hard time finding a parking spot close to the firm’s offices, and Skou-Larsen was quite out of breath by the time he made it back to the parking garage on Adelgade where he had eventually managed to park his beloved Opel Rekord. Perhaps that was why he didn’t notice the black Citroën.

“Hey, watch out!”

He felt someone grab his shoulder, causing him to teeter backward and fall. Lying on the asphalt, he saw a car tire, shiny from the rain, pass within centimeters of his face. Grit from the wet road struck his cheek like hail.

“Are you okay?”

The car was gone. Skou-Larsen found himself staring up at a sweaty young man in a tight-fitting neon-green racing jersey and bike shorts, unable to answer his rescuer’s question.

“Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

He shook his head mutely. No, no ambulance. “I’ll just go home,” he finally managed to say. Helle was waiting for him, and he didn’t want her to worry.

He got up, thanked the neon-colored bike messenger, found his car keys, safely reached his Opel, and sat down in the driver’s seat. Nothing had happened, he told himself, and then he repeated it to be on the safe side. Nothing whatsoever had happened.

But as he drove, he couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened. Not bit by bit, dragging out over months and maybe years, but now, in a single, raw instant, splat against the asphalt like a blood-filled mosquito on a windshield.

One could pass away like that, too.