Copenhagen Noir

We’re back with the body. I lift the blanket up again. It’s soaked, heavy. It hasn’t rained for several days. Must be the night frost or something. She is so white, there’s nothing on her that isn’t white. She looks like a doll. Almost so much that it’s hard to believe she’s a corpse.

She doesn’t look very old, maybe a few years older than us, but no more.

Kris reads my mind. “She’s not a day over twenty.”

“How do you think she died?”

There is no visible sign of violence. Her body, her arms and legs, are the way they should be, there aren’t any broken bones, no bruises. She looks so perfect that it’s strange she isn’t.

“There,” Kris says, and points. There are marks on her throat. I lift her chin up a little, exposing a hand-sized dark spot that stretches around her throat. Kris shakes his head. “Twenty minutes. If we’d just been here twenty minutes earlier.” He has brought the screwdriver out again without me noticing it. “Just twenty minutes. It’s typical, why do bastards like this always get away with it? It would have been cool to catch him up here when he threw her off. Caught in the act. Fuckhead!”

I’m about to pull the blanket around her again when Kris grabs my wrist. He points the screwdriver at her stomach. “What the hell is that?”

“What? Her stomach?”

“No, on her stomach.”

I lean down a bit. Small white spots dot her stomach and breasts. It’s hard to see them because her skin is almost the same color, but they’re there. Sperm.

“Fucking sperm! So that fucker stood up here in broad daylight and came all over a girl he just killed?” Kris’s grip on the screwdriver turns his fist white, and he starts talking through clenched teeth. “Twenty minutes, man. Just twenty minutes earlier.”

I cover her with the blanket as best I can, and I try to throw up. But nothing comes.

It’s getting darker. We lean against the noise barrier. Even though I’m wearing three layers of clothes, I can feel the cold metal on my back. Kris is cooling off, but he’s still gripping the screwdriver. I can’t see the hammer anywhere. It won’t be easy to find now. But our little trip out into this residential area isn’t going to happen.

I try to pack her in better. The blanket really isn’t big enough, surely that’s why her head and foot were sticking out. I try to fold it around her anyway. It’s wet and heavy, and the tips of my fingers start to ache. It comes to me that she’s been out here longer than we thought.

“What if he comes back?” I say.

Kris looks at me. “What? Who?”

“Him. The killer. What if he comes back tomorrow to get off again? Isn’t that what they do, these sex killers?”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it,” I say. “That blanket is soaking wet, and it hasn’t rained a fucking drop for several days at least. So it’s the frost at night that made it wet.”

“Wouldn’t the blanket be frozen stiff?”

“Not for sure. It’s warmer in the daytime. So she’s been laying here since at least yesterday, and he came up here again today to get off.”

We stand there for a second, looking at each other under the railroad lights. Our breath forms small clouds of steam. Kris comes closer. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head.

“So you think he’ll come back?”

“Don’t they always? They have to admire their work, or whatever. That’s how they get caught. Kris, we saw him down on the street. If we wait till tomorrow and catch him there, we’ll be fucking heroes.”

We look down at the girl. “So we just let her lay here till tomorrow?” he asks.

I shrug my shoulders. “She won’t be any less dead from laying there. And nobody’s coming up here, so she won’t be found.”

“So your plan is,” says Kris, and looks around, “we pretend we haven’t even been here today, and we just happen by tomorrow and catch a sex-crazed psycho?”

“Yeah, we won’t even have to overpower him or anything, if he has a gun on him. We just get his license plate.”

“But don’t you think he saw us down on the street? I mean, since we saw him, he must have seen us.”

I think that over a second. “We’re just a couple of boys out drinking some beer to him. It doesn’t mean we found the body. Especially since he hid her so far in from the rails.”

On the way back we agree that he’ll return to the body at the same time of day. He’s been afraid of drawing attention to himself in the daylight, so he’ll want to come late in the afternoon when it’s nearly dark. Nighttime is no good because it’s too dark for him to enjoy his work. He needs enough light to get off on it. He might also come at sunrise, but people are more alert at that time of day, before going to work. We don’t dare take any chances, though, and we decide to meet here early tomorrow morning in case he shows up.

“He’ll for sure be coming from the same direction,” Kris says. “It’s the only place he can park in private. He’ll definitely be coming from the booster station.”

Kris is already there when I return at eight the next morning. He’s waiting at the end of the barrier, but I see him sticking his head out once in a while.