Invisible Murder (Nina Borg #2) (27 page)

Was it here? FEJøGADE the sign said, a collection of letters that refused to make any kind of sense in his head whatsoever. And people said Hungarian was hard.…

The little, red Fiat was parked next to the curb, with a spider web shaped pattern in the rear window where the rock had hit it. He put his hands on the roof and peered in the side windows. Yes. There it was, tossed on the back seat with the first aid kit she had used when she patched him up. He grabbed the door handle, but of course the car was locked. The locking reflex was apparently so ingrained in city dwellers that it would take more than a stomach bug to defeat it.

He tried to figure out which building was hers. Surely she had parked as close as she could, but there weren’t very many free spots to choose from. He stared doubtfully at the big entry door closest to the Fiat. Was that it? He couldn’t be sure. And which floor? He stared at the row of lit buzzer buttons with neatly typed names behind Plexiglas. HANSEN, KRONBORG, H. SKOVGAARD, MALENE HVIDT & RASMUS BJERG POULSEN.… She hadn’t said what her name was. He tentatively pressed the button next to HANSEN, but there was no answer. KRONBORG turned out to be a man’s voice, speaking Danish, of course. Or so Sándor assumed anyway. He couldn’t make out a single word.

It’s just a jacket, he told himself. But he felt still further reduced. Going from a room full of possessions to a duffel bag of just the most essential things. Then the bag was gone—he hadn’t brought it from Valby. And now his Studio Coletti jacket, which with a little generosity could be mistaken for something more classic. What would it be next? For a brief nightmarish moment, he pictured himself roaming the streets of this foreign city stark naked. But he still had his wallet in his trouser pocket, his mobile phone, and the keys to the dorm room that was no longer his.

The phone. He had received a text message, hadn’t he? While he’d been pushed up against the wall with the sharp edge of the broken bottle at his throat.

The message was empty. But it had come from Tamás’s number.

He feverishly pressed “call.” How long had it been since the message had arrived? A half hour? More? Less? He had no idea. He just had to desperately hope his brother was still by the phone.

“Yes?”

“Tamás. Where are you?”

“Who is this?”

Only when the voice began speaking English did he realize it wasn’t Tamás.

“Could I please speak to Tamás?” he tried.

“Who may I say is calling?” said the man on the phone, very correctly, but in some accent that Sándor couldn’t identify. Maybe that was what it sounded like when Danes spoke English.

“I’m his brother.”

“Oh, good. He’s been asking for you. He can’t come to the phone right now, but he really wants to talk to you. Where are you?”

The alarm bells started going off in the back of Sándor’s mind.
I don’t trust them. I only trust you
.

“In Copenhagen,” he said vaguely. “Where’s Tamás now?”

“He’s here with us. He’s sleeping right now. He’s been very sick, and he’s not doing so well. But I know he’ll be really happy to see you when he wakes up. Where are you? We’ll just come pick you up. It’s no problem.”

I don’t trust you either, Sándor thought. But I don’t have any choice.

“It says FEJøGADE on the sign,” he said and spelled it out for them.

T TOOK A
while for her to make it up the stairs. Nina’s legs were sluggish and sore, and she was forced to stop on the landing halfway up to gather her strength for the last flight. Then she let herself into the apartment and stood for a moment, on wobbly legs, contemplating her next move.

Leaving the boy and the other children at the garage was no longer an option. She wanted to get them all over to Bispebjerg Hospital and have them checked out, but her powers of persuasion had been woefully insufficient, and she had a serious bruise on the back of her hand to remind her of that fact. It would take both the social welfare authorities and the police to get the children out of there. What this would mean for their parents was no longer a concern she could afford to be influenced by.

She called Magnus’s mobile, her fingers feeling like oversized gummy bears. He sounded like his usual calm, overworked self when he answered. It was 10:10 P.M., but he was still at the Coal-House Camp waiting for the medical transport he had just ordered for one of the camp’s elderly residents. Of course Valby wouldn’t shock him either.

“You could call one of the pediatricians at Rigshospitalet,” he said. “They have details of all the agencies you’ll need. They are the ones who pick up the pieces when little kids get beaten by mom and dad. They know what they’re doing.”

Nina sighed. Damnit, this wasn’t the same thing at all. Magnus was quiet on the other end of the line.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Nina had no idea how he did it, but Magnus had something like a sixth sense when it came to illness. As if he could hear it, even over the phone, even when the call was routed via satellites.

“I’m not one hundred percent,” she admitted, sitting down on the edge of the sofa.

Someone said something to Magnus in the background. The medical transport team must have finally arrived, and Nina waited, supporting herself with her hand on the coffee table, while Magnus directed them down the hallway. Then he was back on the line.

“Right,” Magnus said. “Here’s what we’ll do. You come out here now. Take a taxi. We’ve got to have a look at you, too.”

Nina smiled weakly at the phone.

“I’ve got to get the boy to a hospital first.”

Magnus snorted. “Now you listen to me. I’ll take care of the Valby kids, but only if you come out here. Now. Besides …” Magnus exhaled heavily into the phone, and Nina guessed he was on his way over to the clinic. “… the faster we run some tests on you, the faster we’ll figure out what’s going on with those children. It can be difficult to get the social welfare authorities off their backsides, so it could easily take a few hours before anything happens in that department. You’re sick. Let’s start with you. I’m sure you’re suffering from the same thing.”

“You’re just saying that to get me to do what you want,” she said. “So I’ll quit being a nuisance.”

His warm, rural Swedish laugh resonated into her telephone ear.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

S
HE DIDN’T TAKE
a cab. She wasn’t completely helpless, even though it was surprisingly hard to turn the key in the ignition.

Her fingers trembled, and to her intense irritation after two fruitless attempts she was forced to rest her hands on her thighs, take a deep breath, and try again. This time the motor started. Fucking hell. Nina swore softly in a mix of relief and frustration. She sat still for a moment, trying to get control of her body before she put the car in gear and backed out onto the road. So far, so good. She cast a quick glance in the rearview mirror just before she turned onto Jagtvej and caught a glimpse of a lanky, girlish figure on a clunky old lady’s bicycle. Then the cyclist disappeared from view. Ida? Nina tried to turn her head and catch sight of the cyclist again, but the movement made her head pound, so she gave up. No, of course it wasn’t. Ida was at Anna’s.

Nina suddenly felt miserably alone. Her thoughts drifted off into the
darkness around her. She pictured all of them, Anton, Ida, Morten, and herself, as small, illuminated fireflies surrounded by black nothing, each heading off in its own direction.

HE CAR THAT
had come to get Sándor was a dark-blue Volkswagen Touareg. A chocolate labrador was sitting in the back. It breathed on him the whole way, heavy and wet down the back of his neck. Mounted in the back seat next to Sándor was an infant’s car seat, which reassured him. One of the two men seemed perfectly ordinary, unthreatening and reasonably trustworthy. Probably in his mid-forties, blond, casually dressed in deck shoes, khaki chinos, and a thin, navy blue wool sweater with a little Ralph Lauren polo player embroidered on the chest.

“Frederik,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Sándor Horváth.”

“So you’re Tamás’s brother?”

Sándor nodded. The driver hadn’t greeted him. He was a skinny, not particularly tall man whose face was partly hidden in the shadow of a cowboy hat that would have made John Wayne jealous. So far he had completely ignored Sándor.

“We’re glad you came,” Frederik said. “Has Tamás filled you in on the situation?”

“Not really,” Sándor replied evasively. “He just said he was feeling terrible and needed help.”

“Yeah, unfortunately that’s true. Don’t really know what he’s got. It would probably be best to get him a doctor.”

Sándor thought about what Tamás had written:
I can’t stand. Having trouble seeing
.

“Shouldn’t he go to the hospital?”

The man turned around so far that Sándor could see his whole calm, neatly shaven face.

“Let’s just cut the crap,” he said. “Your brother can’t go to a normal
hospital. But we know a doctor who’d be happy to treat him, discreetly, you understand.”

“Well, do that then.”

“That’s what we want to do, but it’s not cheap. And his sponsor has put his wallet back in his pocket.”

Sponsor? What did they mean by that?

“Bolgár? Do you mean Bolgár?”

The man in the Ralph Lauren sweater smiled guardedly.

“We don’t need to mention too many names now, do we? But yes. He paid for your brother’s trip and room and board, but he drew the line at the expense of a private clinic. That kind of thing is expensive.”

“How much?” Sándor asked, feeling the rage smoldering just below the surface. His brother was sick, very sick, and now this man was sitting here saying, sure they wanted to help him—just as long as they were paid for it. Money Sándor didn’t have.

“A considerable sum. Several thousand Euros.”

Sándor’s heart sank.

“I don’t have that much.”

“No, we realize that. But luckily your brother has a valuable item that he can sell. As you well know.”

Sándor didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to say yes, but it also didn’t make much sense to deny it.

“So sell it,” he said hoarsely. Preferably without involving me.…

“What we’re missing,” Frederik said, “is the contact information for the buyer. Your brother entrusted you with that particular key, he said. So we thought that if we helped your brother get some medical attention now, then one favor could repay the other, if you catch my drift. It’s a very nice place, private clinic and all that, better than a big public hospital.”

“I would really like to talk to my brother first,” Sándor said insistently.

There was a little pause. The streetlights alternated in a Morse-like rhythm as the car slid through traffic, light-dark, light-dark, light-light-dark. Sándor cautiously leaned his head back against the cream-colored headrest and was suddenly dead tired of sitting in big German cars and being blackmailed.

The driver pulled something out of the chest pocket of his fringed cowboy leather jacket and handed it to Frederik. A mobile phone, it looked
like. One of those ones that was practically a small computer, with a flip out keypad and double-sized screen.

“I have a video I think you should see,” Frederik said. He held the phone’s screen up so Sándor could look at it.

It was Tamás, of course. A close-up of his face, grainy and overexposed, but still frighteningly clear. His eyes were closed; no, more than closed, glued shut by some kind of goopy, yellow infection that stuck to his eyelashes in clumps. A tear track that was reddish from blood and pus ran down along the side of his nose. Little reddish-brown splotches covered the skin around his eyes like freckles, and he could hear a wheezing, gurgling sound that must be Tamás’s breathing. His lips were cracked and bloody, and it didn’t seem like he was aware of what was going on around him.

It was at that instant that Sándor remembered what
mamioro
meant: a spirit who brings deadly disease.

Frederik turned off the phone’s video function and passed it back to the driver.