Copenhagen Noir

Eggers called in the address. “We’re going in,” he told the shift supervisor. “But it looks peaceful enough.”

Janus sighed, opened the car door, and lowered his nice, black, totally inadequate shoes into the muddy slush. “Does anyone even live here?” he asked. The place was all mud, with construction-site trash everywhere, for sale signs in most of the windows.

“At least there’s light,” Eggers growled. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

The street door was open, a bit unusual nowadays. Eggers knocked on the door of one of the ground-floor apartments. After quite a while, a thin dark-haired woman opened the door. She stared at them with an intensity that made Janus uneasy.

“Yes?”

Eggers told her who they were and showed his ID. “We had a report from a passenger on the metro who saw someone fall from a balcony in this area. Have you noticed anything unusual?”

A whimpering came from within the apartment. It sounded like a baby.

“Just a moment,” she said, and closed the door in their faces. Eggers and Janus glanced at each other.

“She looks a little tense,“ Eggers muttered.

Then the door opened again, and this time she held a very small baby in her arms. “Sorry,” she said. “We just got home from the hospital and it’s all a bit new to him.”

The baby made a low murmuring sound, and Janus instinctively smiled. Lord. Such a tiny little human. No wonder his mother wasn’t too pleased about the disturbance. She was looking at the baby, not at them, and even Eggers was thawing out a bit, Janus noticed. There was something to this mother-and-child thing.

“Like I said, we just want to know, have you noticed anything?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It couldn’t have been here.”

“There was a van over here a little bit ago,” Eggers said.

“Yes,” she replied. “It was the plumber. There’s something wrong with the heat, and now we have the baby… we have to get it fixed.”

“Sure, of course. Well. Have a nice evening.”

The woman nodded and closed the door.

“I bet that plumber was after a little undeclared income,” Eggers said.

“Yeah. But it’s not our business right now.”

They walked back to the car. The snow felt even wetter and heavier now. Janus wished he’d at least brought along an extra pair of socks.

Taghi was elated when the police left. It was as if he’d forgotten all about threatening her with a knife a minute ago.

“It was the plumber…” he said, in a strange falsetto mimicing her voice. “Fuck, you were good! They totally swallowed it.”

It took a moment for Nina to answer. “Get out, Taghi,” she said. “Don’t think for one second that I did it for you.”

He came down like a punctured balloon. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got a little crazy, I think.”

“Just leave. And don’t call me again.” She remembered her cell phone and got him to fish it out of the toilet bowl.

“It doesn’t work anymore,” he said.

“No. But I’m not leaving it for anyone to find.”

All the way across the bridge Chaltu sat with her eyes closed, praying, as if she didn’t dare hope she could make it without divine intervention. Nina let her off at the University Medical Center in Malmø and tried to make it clear to her that she should wait until Nina had left before saying the only three Swedish words she knew. Chaltu nodded.

“Okay, secret doctor,” she said.

Nina looked at her watch. 11:03. With a little luck her mother would already be in bed when she got home.

The snow turned slowly into rain. The gray slush around the building in Ørestaden was melting into the mud. The blood of Torsten Brahge mixed with the rain seeping into the sheetrock, which eventually grew so pulpy that not even Beni in Valby would be able to find a use for it.

SLEIPNER’S ASSIGNMENT BY GEORG URSIN

Frederiksberg

We are in Frederiksberg, which is a district of Copenhagen.

It is a colorful district, with old streets, quiet residential areas, large parks, a castle, a zoo with wild animals that the cautious fear, and theaters offering dramatic productions. As well as nooks and crannies where the law is trod upon and crushed.

One of these nooks is a lunchroom. It is large, low-ceilinged, and grubby, and patronized by a lively but not always amiable clientele. Sleipner sits at one of its many tables. He sits alone. That’s nothing new. For long periods of time, in fact, he sits there every day, mostly by himself. He is thirty-eight years old, stronger than most but not brutal, and has a heavy face with innocuous features. The articles of clothing he is wearing are wrinkled. The shoes are comfortable to put on and take off, but otherwise they are nothing worth mentioning. His hair is of no specific color and can look a bit greasy. He has almost always been a bachelor.