The Considerate Killer Read online

  Vincent opened his door and was instantly hit by the oppressively hot air. He knew the buildings already. Had been here several times with Vadim during their construction to keep an eye on the work force and the suppliers. Vadim had gradually become a kind of job to him. They were together almost twenty-four hours a day. Lived in the penthouse apartment Vadim’s father had bought—cool and spacious, with white tiles on the floors and a room for each of them, including Victor, a huge living room, and a state-of-the-art kitchen. Not to mention the roof deck that had its own swimming pool. Everything was neatly cleaned by a housekeeper who came every afternoon and removed the empty, greasy glasses, the ashtrays, and the pizza cartons. That was the kind of service you got used to when you were with Vadim.

  Vincent had dragged himself through the third and fourth semesters, but by the fifth it was over. He had failed spectacularly. Both subjects. Finished and done for.

  It hadn’t come as a surprise. It felt inevitable, as if the numbers posted outside the director’s office were predetermined.

  Father Abuel used to speak of the inexorable will of God. Death was unavoidable, and man’s fate lay in the hands of God. You could try to fight against it, but it would be like attempting to stop an earthquake with your bare hands. Impossible. God’s will was, after all, stronger than that of Vincent’s parents and infinitely stronger than his own.

  It must have been the episode at the hospital that had been the final straw. Officially they weren’t graded on it; it was just a study visit to give them a chance to observe some orthopedic surgical procedures. A knee operation came first. Vincent had had a nervous sensation in his body, a kind of tremor in his chest—it felt as if some alien creature in there was throwing itself against his ribs to get out. He could barely think of anything else, but had managed to put on the green operation gown with slow, stiff movements and to pull the mask over his mouth. The chemical smell of the plastic made his abdomen contract, and he tried to think about something good. About Bea and the boy. Carlito. This tiny, perfectly formed person who had clung to his hand with chubby fingers when he visited them two weeks earlier. But all that kept coming back to him was the two hundred thousand pesos he had gradually received from Vadim, and all the money his parents had paid for his dorm room the first year, for the food he had eaten and the beer he had drunk. Money that had been set aside with great effort over twenty years, paycheck by paycheck, bill by bill. His mother drawing the heavy, black niquabs out of the steaming laundry tub. His father smoothing boiling asphalt in some distant land. Vincent pictured the money torn fluttering from their hands, as if they were caught in a hurricane.

  The patient was already lying on the operating table with strips of sticky tape on his closed eyelids. An elderly man, somewhat obese. No doubt rich. Cruciate ligament ruptured on the tennis court, the surgeon said. The room stank of rubbing alcohol and metal, and the instruments for the operation were being laid out. Victor was already bending eagerly forward to take it all in. Something that looked like a compass saw, a hammer, and a chisel. Tools to break bones and sinews. A panicked sweat broke out under Vincent’s T-shirt, and he suddenly felt certain that he was going to die. Right now and right here on the tiled hospital floor. It was only with the utmost effort that he managed to obey the lecturer’s order to come closer.

  At the first cut the skin parted willingly, like it did when his father cut up a pig in the kitchen at home. The fat, the sinews, and the patella itself gleamed whitely through the brilliant red flow of the blood. Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn’t eaten, but he had. Rice cooked with garlic and daing, dried fish.

  When the nausea finally overpowered him, the lumpy breakfast shot out of both nose and mouth with great power and hit the tiles with a splash. He was escorted out by nurses with tight smiles, and the surgeon’s gaze above the edge of his mask said it all.

  He would never become a doctor. All his parents’ plans, all the carefully stacked bills . . . in vain.

  Now he did the things Vadim asked him to do, and in return Vadim handed him the occasional handful of cash. Or paid for his drinks. Once in a while Vincent sent Bea a picture of himself standing outside the director’s office at the university, making a victory sign in front of the grade board.

  He still hadn’t figured out what would happen next year when he was supposed to be a resident earning a little money. He tried not to think too much about it, just as he tried to avoid thinking about little Mimi, who had finished high school and gotten a temporary job as a clerk at the pharmacy back home. The plan was for him to start saving money toward a software-

  programming course for Mimi as soon as he was being paid, because unfortunately she had not distinguished herself with good grades or especially moral behavior. At least, Father Abuel had not recommended her for the church’s scholarship. She was a good girl, said their mother, but the boys liked her and it seemed to be mutual. Father Abuel did not look kindly on that kind of behavior.

  Vincent kicked one of the empty concrete sacks so the cement dust rose around him in a white cloud. They were covered with Chinese characters, and Vincent was taken aback. The engineer who had originally been responsible for the construction had insisted they stay away from the Chinese supplier. He and Vadim had had a long and heated discussion about it back when the enormous pits for the foundations were being dug.

  “Eden Towers,” Vadim announced with a “Ta-da!” voice worthy of a circus ringmaster. “Well, what do you think?”

  He jumped familiarly over a couple of abandoned plastic basins and strode to the front of the massive grey building.

  “The rent is cheap, and there’s running water, electricity and gas. A public school in that direction . . .” He pointed out across the fields toward something in the distance that looked town-like. Tin and tile roofs that glittered in the sun.

  Even Diana couldn’t help smiling at his enthusiasm.

  “Very nice,” she said in the same exaggerated tone that she might use to praise a child and its sand castle. “Did you build it yourself?”

  “Yes, damn it, I did.” Vadim leaned his head back and looked up toward the top floors. Skinny, half-naked children played on the covered walkways, and a couple of teenagers perched on the railing with no apparent qualms about the drop.

  “But you know, of course, that there’s nowhere for them to earn money for the rent,” said Diana. “The men are probably already back in Manila, in the process of building a shack along the railroad tracks or in one of the cemeteries. And as soon as they’ve knocked together a few pieces of tin, the whole family will be back where they started.”

  Vadim took out a cigarette, lit it, and followed the smoke with narrow eyes.

  “That’s all politics, Diana. Can’t you just be pleased that things are going well for me, and I’ve built some pretty decent buildings? Those kids have never tried sitting on a proper toilet before.”

  Diana nodded and flashed a rare, sweet smile.

  “Okay,” she said. “The buildings are nice, but the politics are rotten. Can we agree on that?”

  Vadim turned his palms upward as a sign of his total capitulation, climbed into one of the old trucks, and hammered the horn in as deep as it would go.

  “She smiled!” he shouted. “Vincent and Victor, break out the champagne.”

  They drank chilled champagne and ate longan fruit in the sizzling heat of the truck’s battered cab. Flocks of kids had already scavenged just about everything that could be scavenged, but there was still a bit of cushion foam left to sit on.

  Afterward Victor and Diana took their bags and started on the first stairwell, looking for infected wounds, undernourished children, and pregnant women. Their favorite Sunday pastime.

  Vadim’s narrowed gaze followed them.

  “How are Bea and the boy doing?”

  “Fine.” Vincent didn’t feel like talking about it. “Did you get the cement
from the Chinese after all?”

  Vadim took a few longans, peeled them and threw the juicy, grape-like fruits into his mouth.

  “It was too expensive with the other supplier. I wouldn’t have been able to stay on budget. I think that engineer had been bought by the others, so I fired him. I’m actually a good businessman, Vincent. It’s in my genes. And . . . speaking of business . . .”

  Vincent’s muscles clenched automatically. There was something about Vadim’s look that made him think of free diving. Of being under nine meters of water with no air in his lungs.

  “You owe me a favor, my man.”

  “Yes,” whispered Vincent. “I do.” He hadn’t intended to whisper; it kind of happened on its own.

  “That engineer. The one I fired.”

  “Yes.”

  “He is blackmailing me. Or trying to.”

  “How?”

  “It’s the thing about the cement. It’s completely legal and up to standard, but he’s pissed off about the firing. Said he would report me for swindling the World Bank. It’s a lie, but he knows that a report could harm both me and my father. He’s just an envious little asshole. And this is where you come in, Vincent my man.”

  “How?”

  “You have to make him stop. Teach him to behave.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Why not? Those biceps you’ve so carefully developed should be used for something.”

  “I don’t want to beat anyone up!”

  Vadim furrowed his brow.

  “And you won’t. You just need to . . . look threatening. I know his type of asshole; they fall apart as soon as they come up against opposition. So? Can I count on you?”

  It wasn’t a real question. Vincent could see the chill in Vadim’s eyes, the costs of saying no.

  “Fucking hell, Vadim. You want me to be your gorilla?”

  “No. I want you to be my friend. And friends help each other when things get tough. Right? I helped you.”

  Vincent sank a small sharp lump in his throat.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Of course . . . I’ll help you.”

  Vincent thumped him on the shoulder—so hard and loud that it resounded.

  “I knew it,” he said. “You and me. And Victor too, of course. The V-Team forever!”

  “The V-Team forever,” mumbled Vincent, momentarily bedazzled. Vadim’s approval washed across him like a warm Pacific wave.

  He got out his cell and put some music on. Ella Fitzgerald and “Blue Moon.”

  “You should start smoking,” said Vadim, glancing over at him with a half smile. “It would suit you now that you are a grown man with a dirty secret.”

  Vincent nodded and drank the last of his champagne. The heat and Ella made him sleepy. He was no longer a student, no longer the best in any class, and no longer a boy who behaved well in the eyes of God . . . But what was he then?

  One day before too long he would have to ask Father Abuel. You could crouch by the toilet bowl and hold back your vomit for only so long. At some point the deluge would come.

  But what if it’s true?” asked Nina. “What if his life really is in danger?”

  Søren would have preferred to have this conversation in a less exposed place—at home in the house on Cherry Lane, for example. True, Viborg’s new Swim Center and Water Park was so full of shrieking, splashing, shrilly screaming children and attendant grown-ups that an attacker would need to be unusually cold-blooded to act here, and the first assault had hardly seemed professional—but as Torben often said, “Only fools do not fear the amateur.” The lone madman, that invisible and ordinary man with his hidden insanity, was one of the worst nightmares of any intelligence service. Unpredictable and almost impossible to trace because he didn’t communicate with anyone, but cultivated his murderous fantasies alone. Until the day he attempted to carry them out in reality . . .

  It was Anton’s careful begging—oddly defeated and without expectations—that had made him give in. It was the boy’s half-term break, after all, it was a public place, and they couldn’t shut themselves in indefinitely. He had sent off a couple of emails to Gitte in the hope of getting something on Victor even before he had so assiduously offered Caroline Westmann his assistance, but as he had pointed out himself, there was absolutely no guarantee that Facebook-Victor really was Victor. And the line the man had used—“My life is in danger—and so is yours”—was apparently quite effective because Nina was, as far as he could judge, deeply disturbed.

  “Mommy!” shouted Anton from the one-meter board. “Mommy, look now. BOOOOOMB!”

  The board gave a metallic sprooooiiing, and Anton threw himself into the air, bent his legs up against his body and let himself drop toward the water’s surface like a small, boy-shaped missile. The splash was impressive, considering his skinny nine-year-old frame.

  “Nice!” shouted Nina when Anton’s head appeared again like a seal’s in a hole in the ice. He grinned proudly and exuberantly, swam with only slightly awkward breaststrokes to the ladder and raced back to rejoin the line by the diving board. Water ran down his torso and legs and collected in a small puddle at his feet. The Swim Center was buzzing with the holiday crowd—the worst bottleneck was the long water slide where several children had begun to shiver with cold while they waited for their turn. Anton had sensibly thrown his affection onto one of the less populated attractions, and Ida was drifting contentedly in the warm-water pool next door.

  Anton undertook a number of small jumps in place to stay warm.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” he shouted to Nina.

  “Not today, sweetie.”

  Søren cleared his throat carefully to prevent a cough—the swimming pool’s chlorine vapors were not exactly what his annoyingly delicate lungs needed. What a pair, he thought. Nina with her fading blue-black “raccoon eyes” and the shaved, bandaged spot at the back of her head, he with his bronchial weakness. Quite pathetic, really.

  He hadn’t yet revealed the actual reason for his enforced medical leave, and she hadn’t asked. Maybe the fractured skull had shaken her more than was first apparent.

  His physical weaknesses were only half the truth, although there were plenty of them by now. It was as if his bed rest had made everything fall apart. His dodgy knee had grown worse instead of better from the break in training, go figure; infections seemed to be lining up in order to invade his compromised chest; and the doctors had begun to talk about chronic bronchitis—bronchitis, he had never had bronchitis, damnit, not even the almost obligatory pollen allergy. Colleagues had sniffled and coughed their way through the birch while he had remained unfazed. Not so anymore. To add insult to injury, something that felt like repeated stabs in his left hip turned out to be arthritis, caused by many years of favoring the dodgy knee, and as if that wasn’t enough, he had begun to suffer from headaches and attacks of dizziness for the first time in his life. They had pulled out all the stops to make sure that he hadn’t quietly suffered “a minor stroke” or an aneurysm—“It happens occasionally at your age, Søren, when we are forced to stay in bed for a while,” explained the surgeon, not a day over thirty-five and annoyingly chipper in spite of his twelve-hour-long workday.

  Being a group leader in PET was no walk in the park. You couldn’t just go home at four in the afternoon or “take a break when you need to,” as his physical therapist had recommended. He didn’t damn well have the time to have a headache. Pinex and Tylenol became standard inventory in his briefcase and glove compartment. He wasn’t stupid; he didn’t exceed the maximum dosage; the problem was that every day was a hard day, and that the pills only took the edge off the headache and, as time passed, barely that.

  His attempt to return to work had ended in the most embarrassing form of collapse. In the middle of a meeting with the fraud squad, or the Department for Special Economic Crime as it was properly called, about the flow of mo
ney in a minor but fairly complicated anti-terror case, he had begun to have tunnel vision. He tried to sit completely still, eyes deliberately unfocused, which sometimes worked, but you can’t really direct a meeting without looking at the person who is speaking. He had had to suggest a break, even though he could see that the others thought they had barely started. He had planned to go and lie down on the floor in the bathroom, another occasionally successful trick, especially with the application of a wet paper towel to the forehead, if he could find a bathroom that had not yet had those noisy, energy-consuming air dryers installed instead.

  Instead, he collapsed the moment he got up. Bang. No further warnings, the light just went out and returned several minutes later as he lay on his side— Recovery Position, of course, he was surrounded by people who knew their first aid—on the woodblock floor of the conference room.

  He was brought to Herlev Hospital, sirens and blue lights ablaze—it seemed no humiliation was to be spared. He had, of course, also crapped in his pants—that was unavoidable when you were deeply unconscious, he knew that, but that didn’t make it any damn less embarrassing. And after almost a week of observation and tests, someone mentioned the S-word for the first time:

  “There is also the possibility, Søren, that this is your body’s reaction to stress.”

  No way. He wasn’t the kind who got stressed out. It didn’t matter how many times he had advised others on his staff that it could happen to anyone, and that you shouldn’t consider it a weakness, but rather a sign that you had been much too strong for much too long. This was not a logic he thought could in any way apply to him.

  Now he was on leave. Three months at least, “and then we’ll have to see,” Torben had said.

  But the writing on the wall blinked neon bright. The PET could not afford to have a group leader who was incapacitated by stress. Stress resistance was a part of the job description. It damn near was the job description. He knew without having seen it what Torben had written in his private notes: “Transfer to other work?” That’s probably what it would have said in his own notebook had the roles been reversed, but that didn’t make it any better. The question mark might even be optimistic; it might be an exclamation point.