Copenhagen Noir

I left the alleyway and returned to the grill. I walked around the back and laid the sleeping boy in the carriage, tucked him in. I returned to the street, paced up and down the sidewalk for quite a while, and at last I walked home. I took a long shower, using all the hot water. The next morning I was late getting up and had to rush out the door. I waited for the C train to Klampenborg. My pocketbook wasn’t in my net bag; it had been fat, Karen and I had secretly exchanged all the Swedish bills. Almost four thousand kroner. I might have left it on the bar, I kept on imagining that.

But I never looked into it. Two days later I quit at Bakken and returned the uniform, the only one I’d ever had. The week after that I enrolled in a writing program.

PART II. M AMMON WHEN THE TIME CAME BY LENE KAABERBØl & AGNETE FRIIS

Ørestad

“Shit.”

Taghi felt the tires on the junker Opel Flexivan sliding and losing traction in the icy mud. If he drove any closer to the entrance they might get completely stuck on their way out. The marble sinks were heavy as hell, and right now a wet, heavy snow was barreling out of the black evening sky, forming small streams in the newly dug earth in front of the building. The walkway around the building lacked flagstones. Nothing at all, in fact, had been finished. The whole place had been abandoned, left as a gigantic mud puddle, slushy and sloppy, and they were forced to park out on the street.

Taghi backed up, swearing in both Danish and Farsi. It would be backbreaking work lugging all the stuff that far, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He wasn’t going to risk getting bogged down with all that shit out here in the middle of nowhere. No goddamn way.

They hopped out on the street and stood for a moment, hugging themselves in the icy wind. The building looked like every other place out here. Glass and steel. He’d never understood who would want to live in such a place. True, there was a view of some sort of water if you were up high enough, but otherwise… Taghi sneezed and looked around. The other brandnew glass palaces were lit up as if an energy crisis had never existed, but there was no life behind the windows. Maybe nobody wanted to live this way after all, when it came right down to it, and it would for sure be a long time before anyone moved into this particular building. The workers had been sent home several weeks ago. Something to do with a bankruptcy. Taghi didn’t know much about it, but he had been by a few times in the past week to check it out. They could pick up some good stuff here.

At the corner of the enormous glass façade, pipes and cables stuck up out of the ground like strange, lifeless disfigurements. A stack of sheetrock lay to the side, the top sheets presumably ruined by now; the middle ones might be okay but they were a waste of time. They were after the marble sinks in the ten apartments. Three men, three hours work, and a short drive out to Beni’s construction site in Valby. It was exactly what he needed, Beni had said.

The front door stood open a crack.

When they had been by earlier that day it was locked, and Taghi sensed Farshad and Djo Djo exchanging glances when he carefully shouldered the door open and stepped into the bitter cold hallway.

“Let’s go, ladies.”

Taghi’s voice rattled off the unfinished cement walls, and he regretted wearing hard-heeled boots. Every single step rang upward through the stairway, fading into weak echoes that vibrated under the large, clear skylights, the steel beams, and the tiles dusty from all the construction. He fished his flashlight out of his pocket and let it play over the steps.

Had he heard something?

Djo Djo stumbled over a few half-empty paint cans, and Farshad laughed at him, a loud, ringing sound. Djo Djo grumbled and hopped around on one leg, the paint cans clattering around on the dark tiles. Those two babies. Annoyed, Taghi bit his lip and decided the ground-floor apartment to the right was a good place to start. For some reason he had gone totally paranoid. Wanted out of here, quick. He felt a prickling under his skin.

“Shut up, you two. It’s not that goddamn funny anyway.”

Farshad held back another giggle, but at least they didn’t speak until they reached the half-open apartment door, and now there was that sound again. A muffled, drawn-out moaning that rose and fell in the empty pitch-dark surrounding them.

Taghi stiffened. “What the hell is that?”

Djo Djo’s whisper broke, his voice on the edge of failing him. “It’s some kind of totally weird ghost or something.”

The muffled moaning was weaker again. They stood listening until it died out, and now the only sound was Djo Djo’s nervous feet on the dusty tiles.

“We’re out of here, right, Taghi?” Farshad had already stepped back, he was gripping Djo Djo’s arm. “We can always come back tomorrow.”