Copenhagen Noir

I shrug, I don’t know. He gives me a shove, wants me to go down and look. I shove him back, but Kris is bigger, that means I’ve got to do it.

Dickhead!

“If it’s a body, what are you afraid of?” I ask, and hop down in the ditch. I pull the hammer from my belt just in case it isn’t a body, but some psychopath luring teenage boys down there so he can eat their eyes out.

The brown bundle must be easy to overlook if you ride by on a train. How did Kris even spot it? It’s the same color as the brown stones it lies on. Almost the same color. It must be a body. You can’t lie there like that in this cold without being dead.

I look back at Kris, still on the tracks. He nods toward the bundle, moves his lips, like he’s egging me on to investigate, but not a sound comes out of him. It looks a little bit ridiculous. A boy Kris’s size. Afraid of a corpse.

I take a deep breath. In. And out. Have to remind myself to do even that. To remember to breathe. Slowly I approach, my hand grips the hammer, my teeth are cemented together. If it’s not a corpse, it would be nice if the person stood up now. A homeless person who fell asleep out here. Someone who went to a wild party, or a bachelor’s party. Sit down, boys, listen to this. Something or other. Give me something. Just so he sits up.

I reach the bundle. It looks like a girl. The foot sticking out is way too small and delicate and white to be a man’s. And the face… I still can’t see it from the hair, but it must be a girl.

Kris clears his throat behind me, and I wait, but nothing more comes. He doesn’t say anything. Just clears his throat.

She’s lying totally still, no sign of life from her. I hear myself say, “Hello?”

No answer. Of course.

I lean down and lift a corner of the brown felt blanket and glance underneath. It is a girl. A naked young girl. Small white breasts, chalk-white stomach, light pubic hair below. Hard to tell how old she is. Or was. With one finger I pull the hair off her face as best I can.

Fuck!

“What’s the matter?” Kris yells behind me. He hops down in the ditch and walks toward me.

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s just that her eyes are still open.”

Not just her eyes, but her mouth too, frozen in an expression her murderer left her with. Because she must have been murdered. Why else would she have been abandoned here?

I try to warm my hands by blowing into the little cave they form in front of my mouth, but it’s no good. Kris is still standing by the body. Leaning over it. It looks as if he’s investigating it. What does he think he’s doing? He must think he’s a detective or something. It can’t be someone he knows. We’ve grown up together here in Vigerslev, gone to the same schools, been around the same people. I’d know if he knew her.

The sound of a train rumbles in the distance. It will be here in a minute, for sure. Kris walks over to me. “It’s a woman. I packed her in again,” he says.

We jump back around the noise barrier. It’s pure reflex. We always hide up here when the trains come by. If the engineer sees two boys on the tracks, the police show up shortly after.

We stand on the slope behind the barrier and look down at the community gardens, while the train roars past behind us. It’s dead down there. Just like everything else in the winter. Like the girl behind us. I realize that I’ve lost my hammer somewhere back there. I have to remember to grab it before we leave.

“Do you think it was him?” Kris says all of a sudden.

“Who?”

“The guy down at the booster station?”

I stare at a cottage in the community gardens, a small green house with red shutters and wide flagstones set in herringbone, all the way through the garden to the door, which has a row of potted plants on each side, and hidden underneath one of them is a key, but I can’t remember which one. I think that the owner must switch them around to confuse potential burglars, to confuse me, and yeah, fuck yeah, it makes sense. The guy we saw down at the booster station.

“Of course it was him!” I say. “If he was an electrician or a guard or had something he was supposed to be doing down there, he would have been in something his company owns. He’d be driving some lousy van and not that shitty little car.”

“He had these big dark sunglasses on,” Kris says. “I figured it was because of the sun in his eyes, but there wasn’t any sun down there.”

I don’t think Kris is right. It was sunny, but I don’t say anything.

“The license plate! Did you get his number?” I ask, even though it’s a dumb question.

He shakes his head. I do the same. The idea was good enough: call the police and tell them about the body and hand them the murderer at the same time. Just like that! Heroes of the day. TV and newspapers. Local boys find dead body. How much pussy could a guy score from that at school? Or in town?

“Have you seen anything in the news? Anything about reports of missing girls?”

I shake my head. I don’t watch much TV and don’t read any papers, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any girls missing. Not right now, anyway.