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

degrees lighter than Nina’s, but had a little of the same intensity.
    â€œWelcome,” she said. “I’m actually very pleased that you’ll be staying here while you are in Viborg.”
    In spite of her clearly sincere invitation, Søren had at first thought that he would prefer a hotel room. It felt fairly transgressive—of his own limits and Nina’s—to move in with his “mother-in-law” without having met her before. But then he had remembered that there was a reason that Nina had gone home to Viborg. It was tough to go through chemotherapy like Hanne Borg’s alone, and there was the added complication that Nina’s mother didn’t like to drive. If nothing else he could act as chauffeur and help with shopping and the like while they waited for Nina to be discharged.
    â€œWhat a cozy place,” he said, and meant it.
    The house on Cherry Lane was part of a terraced estate from the fifties. Functional and well designed, red brick walls and tile roofs, with small, attractive, almost identical front yards, white doors and windows and a general air of being from before things went wrong. Inside, there were blond wood floors and kilim rugs, Danish Modern furniture and cheap bookshelves rubbing shoulders in eclectic harmony, piles of books and a multitude of pictures, ceramic vases and green plants.
    â€œIs this where Nina grew up?”
    â€œPartly,” said Hanne Borg. “We moved here after Finn—Nina’s father . . . after he died. It was cheaper, and I thought it would help to get away from . . . from the actual scene.” She observed him as she said it, as if to measure how much he might know.
    Søren knew perfectly well that Finn Christian Borg had committed suicide one September day in the eighties when Nina was twelve. But that was because it said so in one of the background files he had read and saved after their first meeting in the middle of an anti-terror case, and not because Nina had told him. Should he pretend he didn’t know anything? To pretend ignorance was patently false but the opposite would make it appear that Nina had taken him further into her confidence than he had so far ventured.
    â€œIt can’t have been easy,” he said, as a form of compromise.
    Hanne Borg smiled bitterly.
    â€œNo,” she said. “It wasn’t. Nina found him. But you probably know that.”
    â€œOh . . . no, she . . . didn’t tell me that.”
    â€œThe old house had a bathroom in the basement. That’s where he was, in the bathtub . . . For a child to see something like that . . . it’s not something you get over in a hurry.”
    It seemed to him that there was a kind of warning in her tone—perhaps an attempt to ensure that he knew what he was getting into?
    â€œNo, I understand,” he just said. “It’s pretty remarkable that she . . . functions so well in a crisis now.” Terrifyingly effective was the description that occurred to him. He would never forget the expression on her face when she rammed the knife in between his fourth and fifth rib.
    â€œOh, yes,” said Hanne Borg. “She’s excellent in a crisis.”
    That was all she said, but Søren didn’t need glasses to read the subtext: it was life between the crises that was a challenge for Hanne’s daughter.
    That was probably his own Achilles heel as well. He certainly had not excelled when it came to creating a life beyond the stresses of his job. He felt he was at his best at work—his sharpest and most alive. Or . . . that was the way it had been.
    â€œWould you like a cup of coffee?”
    He pushed aside the thought of Torben and his damned sick leave and checked his watch.
    â€œYes, thank you, a quick cup,” he said. “I have a meeting at the police station in an hour or so.”
    â€œAbout Nina?”
    â€œYes. I’d like to see if I can help the investigation along a bit. It