Invisible Murder (Nina Borg #2) (30 page)

Nina tried to breathe slowly and calmly. The sun colored the darkness a flickery red whenever she shut her eyes, but it helped. She would rest now, just a little. When she woke up again, Morten could come pick her up, and she could sort out this business with Ida and the break-in.

KOU-LARSEN WOKE UP
slowly, disoriented. The TV was on, and the curtains in the living room were drawn. He was lying on the sofa with the crocheted blanket over him, but he couldn’t remember having put it there. His mouth and throat were dry, and he felt like he had been snoring.

He stared up at the wood paneling of the ceiling. Helle had had it whitewashed a few years earlier, it brightened things up so nicely, she said. He thought it looked strangely half-finished, as if someone had started painting and then hadn’t bothered to give it a second coat so it covered properly.

“Helle?” he called.

There was no response. Maybe she was out in the garden? No, probably not now, it must be dark outside. Or was it? He tried to focus on his Tissot watch with the nice, wide-linked watchband—a retirement gift from the office—and when he saw that it was a few minutes to eight, he was genuinely puzzled as to whether it was eight in the morning or eight at night.

But that was the local news on the TV, wasn’t it? So it must be evening. How long had he been lying on the sofa?

“Helle?” He slowly swung his legs out from under the blanket and sat up. How come he felt so weak and dizzy? And Helle still didn’t answer. Was she mad at him again? No. That wasn’t it. The house seemed empty; there weren’t any noises other than those of the house itself—the door upstairs that always banged if the bathroom window was open, a subtle gurgling from the water pipes every now and then, the lilac branches scraping against the windowpane in the office.

He felt abandoned. For a brief instant he had the absurd notion that maybe Helle had decided to leave him. Despite their age difference, it
wasn’t a thought that had ever occurred to him before. After all, she was the one who needed him, not the other way around.

Or did she? As he had aged, had there not been a shift in the balance of power between them, so gradual and indiscernible that he had barely noticed it? She had begun to go out on her own lately. Had left the house and the garden without having him by her side, something that had always been hard for her. She had also learned how to use the computer Claus had given them, so she could send e-mails and be in touch with other people that way. He had taken it as a good sign, but perhaps it wasn’t.

Maybe that was how she had ended up buying that idiotic condo in Spain.

This new, unwelcome realization struck him with a burst of small, cold prickles. Of course that was why. She hadn’t been planning it as a surprise, as she had claimed. She had never intended for them to travel there together in the winter months to help his arthritis. She would never have told him about it if he hadn’t found the bank statement himself. Maybe he should count himself lucky that it had turned out to be a scam. If the condo had existed, she might have been down there already, on one of those ocean-front balconies they showed in the pictures in the brochure, enjoying a sangría while her swimsuit dried on the railing. Probably with.…

Who? This was where his foggy imagination faltered. He had a really, really hard time picturing Helle with another man. Not that she wasn’t still attractive in that classic Nordic way, with high cheekbones and silvery streaks in her sun-bleached hair. She had never been an aggressive sun-bather; she usually wore a hat in the garden so her skin wasn’t scorched and ravaged like so many other women of her generation. But she had never been an enthusiastic partner when it came to sex, and in recent years.…

Or was it just him? He had always been patient, considerate, carefully awaiting her response before proceding. Had that been a mistake?

He stood up. Even though he was aware that his actions were paranoid, he went straight to the bedroom and flung open the closet. Not to see if there was a young lover hiding inside, but to see if all her clothes were still there. She hadn’t packed anything. Their suitcases were sitting in their usual spot on top of the white cabinets, and as far as he could tell, nothing was missing.

He proceeded into the bathroom, dumped his toothbrush out of its glass
and drank from it, even though the water tasted faintly of Colgate. His mouth was so dry that a cactus would feel at home. He filled the glass again and brought it back out to the living room. Some hairy-chested macho type with sideburns, someone who didn’t wait for permission. Was that the kind of man she had fallen for?

No. Not Helle. He smiled despite his general despondency. She was the last woman in the world who would do something like that.

S
HE CAME HOME
a little before 9 P.M., while he was waiting for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s evening news to start. She hung her cotton coat on in the hall and came in as if nothing had happened.

“Ah, you’re awake,” she said.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“At Holger and Lise’s, of course. True, we couldn’t play bridge without you, but we had a nice time anyway. Lise made Cordon Bleu. It’s a shame you missed it.”

Holger and Lise. Bridge. Now he remembered.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Darling, I tried. I did, but you were completely out. Do you think maybe you’ve got your pills mixed up again?”

“Pills?”

“Yes. You do know that the Imovanes are the sleeping pills and Fortzaar is for your blood pressure, right?”

“Of course I know that,” he said. “I’ve been taking them for years. The blood pressure pills, anyway.” The Imovanes were relatively new; he had started taking those after complaining about insomnia and restless legs. Just a half pill, his doctor had said, and he had stuck to that.

“Maybe you should let me fill your pill case for you,” Helle suggested.

“I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself,” he snapped, picturing the plastic case he loaded his pills into every Sunday, labeled MORNING, NOON, EVENING, and NIGHT along one side and all the days of the week on the other, in clear, blue capital letters. “I’m not an idiot!”

But she wasn’t listening anymore. She was staring at the TV instead. Then she grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume.

“… officials believe that up to fifty people have been exposed to radioactive contamination, and they ask that anyone who has been in the proximity of this address within the past few weeks to report to the Danish
National Institute of Radiation Hygiene for a screening. Further information can be found on our website.”

Radioactive contamination?

Skou-Larsen forgot all about the pill organizer, sideburns, and bridge games for a moment.

“There was something about that on the news at six, too,” Helle said. “But they haven’t figured out where it came from. Have you heard anything?”

“No,” he grunted, watching as an expert who looked more like a professional soccer player than a nuclear physicist explained about background radiation and radon, which was “the most common source of radioactive contamination in buildings.” A fence and a couple of gas pumps and two men in bright-yellow protective suits were visible, walking around holding devices he assumed were Geiger counters. And then of course they showed the footage from Chernobyl again, even though Skou-Larsen couldn’t see what that had to do with any of this. There was a world of difference between a nuclear reactor melting down and radon contamination, but as soon as anyone said the word “radioactivity,” the media always went into a frenzy.

“I’m sure it’s just underground seepage or emissions from construction materials,” he said, irritated that the cameraman was focusing on the protective suits instead of on the buildings, which were somewhat more relevant.

“Seepage?”

“Yes. It can be a real nuisance if the building is built on moraine clay. All the way up to six hundred becquerels per cubic meter. That could easily make you sick.”

The camera moved to a new expert, this time a less photogenic one from Risø Laboratory.

“Then why are they suddenly talking about cesium now?” Helle asked. “That’s not the same thing as radon, is it?”

“No,” Skou-Larsen mused.

“Does that seep up from underground, too?”

Skou-Larsen shook his head slightly. His mouth still felt pasty and terribly dry.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”

INA WOKE UP
to the sound of trays clattering in the corridor outside. Nurses’ heels striking the floor with a rhythmic clack. What time was it? She must have been asleep, but for how long? They had packed all her clothes and other possessions into a yellow plastic bag, her watch included, and it took her a few seconds to focus on the clock over the door. 9:10 P.M. Her head felt better. Razor sharp, actually. Nothing hurt anymore, and she could stretch out to her full height without being afraid of throwing up. They had also finally removed the tube from her nostril. The nausea was still there, lurking, she noted, but distantly. She decided to pretend it wasn’t there anymore.

Nina swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tentatively put her feet on the floor. She felt her pulse explode in a wild frenzy as she slowly transferred her weight onto her feeble legs and took a couple of steps into the room. Things worked, she thought, relieved. She was functional again. She cast an irritated glance at the IV bag and stand she was still tethered to. Then she turned off the drip and pulled out the Venflon mechanism taped to her left hand. She didn’t have any Band-Aids and had to make do with pressing a paper napkin from the nightstand drawer against the back of her hand until the bleeding stopped, but now she was free.

She walked across the floor with faltering steps to the bathroom and peed with the door open. She felt a single drop of sweat trickle from her temple down her cheek and neck. Her heart was racing, and she sat for a few minutes fighting the nausea churning in her stomach. But so far so good. She had conquered the bathroom, she thought, doing a sarcastic little fanfare for herself in her head. Now all that remained was the rest of the world.

She got up, washed her hands and face in the cold jet from the faucet
and slowly started staggering back across the floor. It felt like walking on cotton.

Then she stumbled.

One of her feet simply gave way beneath her as she went to take the last step over to her bed. She landed hard on her hipbone on the mottled gray floor, and the sudden pain made her hiss between her teeth. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and glared furiously at her right foot, cursing her own clumsiness. She had seen plenty of patients do exactly this. Flail around on their own before they were strong enough, fall, and end up in an even worse state than when they first arrived at the hospital. Luckily her hip still worked. The pain had already faded to a dull throb, and the fall would result in a bruise at most, but it still hurt. Nina took hold of the bed and hauled herself to her feet, with her heart pounding frenetically beneath her hospital gown. A sound from over by the door made her stop in mid-motion. A sort of drawn-out sigh. She turned her head and saw Morten.

He was standing in the doorway with his arms dangling weirdly, hanging too straight from his shoulders, as if they had stopped working. She hadn’t even noticed the door opening. How long had he been standing there and had he seen her fall? There was something about the look on his face that made the last of the strength in Nina’s legs give way, and she plopped down onto the edge of the bed and pulled her arms around herself and the limp hospital gown.

“Let me help you.”

Morten came over to her, carefully raised her legs onto the bed, and tucked the blanked in around her.

“I tried calling you,” she said, reproachfully. “Several times.”

She followed his movements with her eyes. He didn’t look at her, and his hands kept stroking the blanket as if he were smoothing out invisible wrinkles in the bedding. He was trying to smile, she could tell, but it wasn’t really working. Suddenly Nina felt afraid. What had happened? Was there something Magnus hadn’t told her after all?