Death of a Nightingale (15 page)

The room was small and claustrophobic, and the curtain-less
windows gave her an uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
Take good care of the girl
, PET-Søren had said, as if some other danger greater than Natasha lurked out there in the dark. It didn’t exactly relieve her paranoia to see the personal attack alarm lying on the desk and staring at her with a glowing red eye in the gloom.

Nina took another look at Rina before she picked up her empty coffee mug and walked down to the coffee machine at the end of the hall. The machine hummed and sputtered and reluctantly sprayed the tepid coffee into the mug, and in the middle of a gurgling spray, she suddenly thought she heard something else. A low, flat bang, not a noise she recognized from the camp’s usual nighttime soundtrack.

0:06. She stood for a few seconds with the plastic mug in her hand and listened while she gazed down the deserted grey corridor.

Silence. Then a soft bump and a faint scraping against the floor behind one of the doors. Silence again.

She realized that she had been dumb enough to leave the alarm in Rina’s room. She swore softly, set the cup down and ran with silent steps toward the door to the room where the two policemen were sitting. She didn’t waste time knocking. If anyone was in Rina’s room, they needed to react instantly. Still, she was careful enough to let the door swing open without too much noise. A faint, sweet smell hit her.

The window was shattered. That was the first thing she saw. One officer was slumped across the table with his arms hanging heavily along his sides. She couldn’t see his face but knew at once that he was either dead or unconscious. The same went for his colleague, who lay in a sprawling heap on the floor behind the table.

The shock propelled her back into the corridor, and she registered almost instantly that she was so dizzy, she had to support herself against the wall with one hand.

Gas. It was gas she could smell.

Without waiting to regain her balance, she tumbled the few meters to Rina’s room. She didn’t turn on the light but found the attack alarm on the table and pressed the button. Then she half-pulled, half-lifted Rina out of bed.

Rina hung dazedly in her arms but woke quickly enough that she could stumble along on her own two feet after Nina hauled her out into the corridor. They headed toward the coffee machine and the barrack’s kitchen and dining hall. The dizziness was dissipating, but the walls were still trying to topple onto Nina, and the corridor stretched out ahead of her, elastic and unending, until she suddenly reached the door.

Behind them there was yet another hollow bang, and glass rained down over the linoleum floor. The big wall of windows in the lounge area had been shattered, and heavy feet stepped across the shards with a crunching sound. Nina jerked Rina along down the rows of tables and chairs and into the kitchen. She had seen the walk-in refrigerator clearly in her mind’s eye even as she yanked Rina from her bed. It was the size of a broom closet, but it was airtight.

The heavy steel door was locked. Naturally. There were things that could be stolen in there, and this
was
a refugee center. Even the canned tomatoes were heavily guarded here. Nina fumbled with her passkey in the pallid light. The heavy lock clicked just as the door to the cafeteria was slammed open, and a broad, dark figure stepped into the dining hall behind them.

Nina pulled Rina into the narrow room with such force that the child whimpered as she hit the shelves of milk and cheese and juice. Nina had no time for consolations right now. She slammed the heavy steel door and heard the lock click once more.

She didn’t know if he had had time to see them or to hear the slam and click from the lock. Her nausea closed in again; it was as if the gas’s sweetish smell had coated her mouth and throat so that
it was impossible to spit it out or cough it up. Next to her she could hear Rina’s rapid, wheezing breaths in the dark. They stood so close together that they couldn’t avoid touching. She put both arms around Rina’s head, both to muffle the sound of that awful wheeze and also to remind Rina that she was still there.

Had he seen them? Did he know where they were? She strained her hearing to its utmost but couldn’t hear anything but Rina. At least not until something hit the door to the walk-in with such force that the glasses on the shelf behind her clinked against one another.

She spontaneously tightened her grip on the girl’s head, much too suddenly and tightly. But Rina didn’t react. Said nothing, didn’t gasp, didn’t even alter the rhythm in her breathing. Not even when the second blow fell.

Natasha didn’t even make it to the fence. A broad, dark figure came running toward her, and the camp behind him was no longer a sleepy and deserted landscape—there were shouts, lights, people standing in the snow in various stages of undress, from overcoats to pajamas to vests and jockey shorts.

None of it mattered if he had killed Katerina.

The thought alone made her black and dead inside. She stood still because it was all she could do. Just breathing seemed a near-impossible task.

He ran past her, maybe forty of fifty meters away. Much, much too slowly she turned around, got her arms and legs to function, moved forward, a stumbling step and then another, until she was finally running, running as fast as she could, after the man who had perhaps murdered her daughter.

It was as if he could see in the dark. He didn’t crash into the trees and branches as she did. And when an especially large branch hit her right in the throat, she collapsed and lay on her back gasping for a few seconds.

He stopped. Maybe he had heard her. He turned, and instead of a human face, she saw an insect-like creature with three protruding eyes that glinted faintly in the dark.

He can see me, she thought. Now he’ll kill me. And if Katerina is dead, we’ll meet in heaven. The thought did not offer any consolation.

From the camp there were more shouts and dogs barking, and just then a light blinked on right behind him. The Witch had opened the car door, and the interior light shone out onto the snow.

“Jurij?” she said. “Where is the child?”

“It didn’t work,” he said. “Some woman dragged her into a walk-in refrigerator.”

“A walk-in …”

“Mm-hmm. I couldn’t get the door open before the other guards showed up.”

There was more barking. Natasha wasn’t sure if it was from the handful of pets that lived in the camp or because the police had brought dog patrols. Possibly the man had similar doubts or else he hadn’t spotted her, after all. At any rate, he quickly slid into the driver’s seat and started the motor. The heavy car slid forward, headlights off, and within minutes the winter forest had swallowed car, man and evil Witch.

Natasha sat up. Katerina was alive. With those words everything existed again. An entire universe could be turned on or destroyed that quickly; that was how frail the world was.

T
HEY HAD BEEN
living in Kiev for a few years when Natasha first discovered how easily everything could come apart. It began with a knocking on the door—loud, impatient raps, as if whoever was out there was irritated that the door hadn’t opened at the first knock. Katerina was in her high chair eating pierogi, which Natasha had cut into bite-sized pieces for her. She dropped one of them on the floor in fright. “Whooo?” she asked.

“I don’t know, sweetie. But now Mama will go look.”

On the landing stood an older man in a suit, a brown case under his arm. He smelled of licorice and had a yellow-black licorice stain at one corner of his mouth.

“What is this?” he asked, waving a piece of paper in her face aggressively.

“I don’t know,” said Natasha, confused.

“The rent,” he said. “You haven’t paid the new rent.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “My husband takes care of all that.”

“Then you can tell your husband that he has to pay the same rent as everyone else in this house. It’s been in effect since March. But he hasn’t paid!”

“That must … be a mistake,” she answered uncertainly. “I’ll tell him when he gets home. He’ll take care of it.”

“I certainly hope so, little lady. If I have to come back, I won’t be coming alone.”

As soon as he had left, she called Pavel, but even though she tried for several hours, she didn’t get hold of him. She felt as if the house had turned to glass. If anyone knocked on the door, it would all shatter and break. Natasha’s magical castle, her beautiful rooms and all the beautiful things in them, the view of the National Museum, the trees outside, everything could disappear because of an old man who smelled of licorice.

Katerina sensed her anxiety and whimpered and fretted. Natasha attempted to calm them both.

Pavel will take care of it. Pavel will fix it, she told herself.

Finally Pavel did come home, exuberant and happy as usual. He kissed her on the mouth, deeply and hungrily, and lifted her up off the floor. This was when Natasha usually put her arms and legs around him, as if she were a child who needed to be carried. But not today.

“I tried to call,” she said, and then the tears came rushing along with the rest of the story, even though she knew he hated crying. “A man came …”

“Stop. Dry your eyes, my love. You’re scaring Katerina.”

She sensed he was angry. She didn’t know if it was at her, and she definitely didn’t feel like making it worse, but she asked anyway.

“Pavel, is it true? Are we behind on the rent?”

“No,” he said. “We pay exactly what we are supposed to.”

“But why isn’t it the same as what the others pay?”

“You don’t need to worry about that, my love. I just need to make a call, then everything will be fine again.”

And it was. Less than an hour later, there was another man at the door. He didn’t smell of licorice but of expensive aftershave, and his cuff links were shiny and black, with a leaping golden jaguar.

Pavel did not invite him in even though it was terribly rude to leave him standing there in the doorway. “Natasha, this is Vasilij Ivanovitsj, who owns this beautiful house. Vasilij, this is my even more beautiful wife.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Doroshenko. And I regret that you were subjected to that unfortunate incident this morning. It was, of course, a mistake, and it will not happen again.”

Natasha nodded silently. The man bowed gracefully, turned and left.

“You see,” said Pavel and kissed her. “There’s nothing to be worried about. Worrywart.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I don’t understand why we pay less than the others.”

“Because Vasilij is a good friend,” said Pavel. “That’s all.”

Natasha wanted so badly to believe it, and she almost succeeded. But if they were such good friends, then why hadn’t Pavel invited him in? And why had Vasilij Ivanovitsj turned when he was halfway down the stairs and stared up at Pavel with eyes that were narrow and dark with hate?

T
HE DOGS BARKED
.
Natasha got up as quickly as she could. If she stayed here, she would be found. Katerina was once again out of reach, but at least she was alive.

She felt as if she had been beaten up. Nina’s ears were buzzing, her entire body ached and there was a point at the back of her neck, at the meeting of spine and skull, where it felt as if a burning needle had been inserted.

She held Rina close despite her uneasy awareness that she was the one deriving comfort from the gesture, like a child holding a teddy bear. There was no reciprocity; Rina might as well
be
a stuffed animal. If it hadn’t been for the loud, gasping wheezes that constituted the girl’s breathing, Nina might have been tempted to check for signs of life.

Magnus and Pernille arrived with the oxygen. Magnus maneuvered Rina out of Nina’s embrace with his usual calm authority. “Okay, Rina. Now we’re going to make it easier for you to breathe.”

Nina had to fight a spasmodic tension in her arms, forcing herself to let go. “She also needs salbutamol,” she said before she could stop herself.

Magnus just nodded as if there were nothing odd in a nurse attempting to dictate a treatment he had undertaken hundreds of times.

It was 2:03. Forty-six minutes had passed since she had heard a key click unsuccessfully in the walk-in door.

“Nina, are you in there?”

It wasn’t a voice she had immediately recognized. She was paranoid
enough to hesitate for a second.

“Nina Borg? Police.”

“Yes,” she shouted. “We are here.”

It had taken another fifteen minutes to get the door open. The lock had been damaged by the attacker’s attempt to break it open, and in the end, they had to cut the hinges instead.

Outside there were people everywhere—or at least that was how it felt. There were probably only seven or eight, but the only one she knew was the camp’s technical director, Henning Grønborg, who had apparently taken charge of the blowtorch himself. The rest was a whirl of yellow police vests, black SWAT uniforms and young policemen’s faces wearing oddly nerdy protective glasses. Like well-behaved children at a New Year’s party, thought Nina.

They tried to take Rina from her at that point, but she resisted. “Get Magnus,” she had repeated, over and over again. “It has to be someone she knows.”

Now she had finally let go. Her arms hurt just as much as the rest of her, in spite of the fact that she had only suffered a handful of bruises from furniture and doorways and whatever else she had bumped into on her confused, unsteady flight from Rina’s room.

Pull yourself together. You are not exactly dying, she told herself.

A shiver went through her that had nothing to do with cold, though it felt that way. Right now she was deeply grateful for Magnus’s insistence on heating the clinic to a temperature that would do credit to a steam bath.

2:11.

The children were sleeping now, she thought, Anton under his Spider-Man comforter and Ida presumably in sheets that were as pitch black as most of her wardrobe. For a while she had had Legolas from
The Lord of the Rings
on her pillow, but lately she had been talking about “the cynical abuse of Tolkien’s work in merchandising,” and
Nina had had to quietly exchange a few Christmas presents before they reached the tree. The first post-divorce Christmas. Only Nina’s first childhood Christmas without her father had been worse.