Read Online The Considerate Killer by Agnete Friis, Lene Kaaberbøl - Free Book Online

then you went down to the parking deck . . .”
    Sounds and images returned stickily and reluctantly. The slam of a car door echoing between concrete walls. Small, greasy pools of oil and rainwater glinting in the fluorescent tube lights. The SuperBest bags held lean ground beef, peppers, and canned tomatoes, and she wondered whether they had onions or whether she should have bought some.
    That was it. The film ended.
    â€œI remember shopping,” she said. “I remember that I went down in to the parking garage. But no more. There is no more.”
    The microsounds from Westmann’s side of the bed took on a touch of resignation—a faint creaking from the frame of the visitor chair, an intake of breath that wasn’t quite a sigh but still deeper than normal.
    â€œYou still had your wallet,” said the detective sergeant. “But we couldn’t find a cell phone. Could it have been stolen?”
    â€œMaybe. No, wait—I was charging it. At the clinic where I work. I must have forgotten it. It’s probably still there.”
    â€œDid you have anything else valuable with you?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œCould there be a motive other than robbery?”
    â€œHow would I know?” she snarled. “I wasn’t the one who did it.”
    A hand covered hers. Not the detective sergeant’s; it was Søren, who was trying to rein in her antipathy. The first time they met each other, he had warned her that he had the power to put her in jail as a hostile witness if she didn’t cooperate. How on earth had they gotten from that to the relationship they had now—whatever that might be?
    The warmth from his hand created a fixed point, something she could respond to physically in the midst of her uncertainty and powerlessness. She slowly turned her own hand so that their palms met.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said, a bit more politely. “I can’t imagine any other reasons. It has to be random. Sometimes people are just attacked randomly, for no good reason. Aren’t they?”
    â€œUnfortunately, yes.” Chair legs scraped against the floor, and Nina opened her eyes again. The detective sergeant had risen to her feet. “I’d like to come back when you are feeling a little better,” said Caroline Westmann. “I hope that will be soon.”
    She left. Nina turned her head—this time without feeling as if it was falling off—and looked at Søren. He was tired. His shoulders slumped, his skin somehow fell more heavily around the bones of his face. She felt a sharp and unexpected tenderness, a desire to make everything all better. But at the heels of the tenderness came a renewed sense of loss and sorrow because you couldn’t kiss away all the pain, no matter how long and how desperately you tried.
    He had taken off his glasses and sat polishing them distractedly in the dark blue fabric of his T-shirt.
    â€œIs it true you don’t remember anything?” he asked. “Or was it just that you didn’t feel like answering?”
    â€œI have a fractured skull,” she snapped. “I can’t remember shit.”
    â€œOkay. Just asking.”
    The tears came suddenly and intensely, without giving her the chance to control them, and the longing opened in her like a hopeless abyss, a doomsday hole in the world that everything could disappear into. Her father was dead; he wasn’t coming back. Dreams lied . A damned, corrosive lie that shook her more than the head trauma, the basal fracture and the leaking brain fluid could explain.
    Søren handed her a paper napkin. Without saying a word, thank God.
    The flowers arrived an hour after Søren had left.
    â€œShould I put them here?” asked the nursing assistant. “Or is the window ledge better?”
    â€œThis is fine,” said Nina and quickly moved a newspaper and a glass to make room. “Who are they from?”
    The NA