Invisible Murder Read Free Page B

the hearing wore on.
    Vestergaard sat a little further back in the room, his Hugo Boss shirt open so everyone who felt like looking in his direction had an unimpeded view of the bright red scars on his neck and shoulder. His arm was around a young, dark-skinned woman—Nina guessed she was from South America. While the prosecutor spoke, Michael Vestergaard leaned against the young woman and tenderly held her chin. The woman pulled back slightly, but then looked at him and smiled as he ran his thumb over her lower lip, smearing a little of her lipstick over her chin.
    He had stopped taking an interest in the proceedings long ago.
    Magnus followed Nina’s gaze.
    “
God
, I wish she’d finished him off,” he hissed.
    R AGE WAS STILL running through her like a faint, pulsating current under her skin as Nina turned into the parking lot in front of the gates of the Coal-House Camp. Her shift was long since over, but this task just couldn’t be left to anyone else.
    She sat in her car for a second, listening to her own forced breathing. The April sun made the air shimmer above the black shingles on the roof of the children’s unit. A couple of teenage girls lay on the lawn in front of the entrance, stretching their gangly legs in the sunlight as they casually flipped through a glossy magazine. Nina knew one of the girls was from Ethiopia. She hadn’t seen the other one before, but judging by her almost bluish-white legs, she was probably yet another Eastern European dreaming of richer pastures in the West. They were unaccompanied minors. At the moment the Coal-House Camp had about fifty of them housed here in the former barracks. This was where Rina had been staying while Natasha was in custody. There had been talk of putting her into care elsewhere, but Magnus had kicked up such a fuss that he ended up getting his way.
    “I mean, honestly,” he had fumed. “The girl has been dragged halfway across Europe, then spends several months with that sick bastard. We’re the only people she knows in Denmark. She’s damn well staying here.”
    Nina found Rina in her room. The seven-year-old girl was sitting on a brand-new, red IKEA sofa surrounded by a handful of half-dressed Barbie dolls with hopelessly tangled hair. She was holding an old, broken mobile phone, punching its buttons with intense concentration.
    I just have to get this over with, Nina thought, trying to catch Rina’s attention.
    “Hey, Rina. I saw your mom today.”
    Rina’s nails were bitten down to the pink, fleshy tips, and her fingers kept rhythmically pressing the phone buttons as if she were working on an especially long text message. Nina cautiously laid her hand over Rina’s.
    “It worked out the way we thought it would, Rina. Your mother’s going to be in jail in Denmark for a while. After that you’ll both be going back to Ukraine.”
    Nina had been thinking she would make the Ukraine part of it into something good and hopeful—freedom and the future waiting on the other side of Natasha’s prison sentence. But at the moment she couldn’t think of a single word that would make the Ukraine sound like anything other than what she imagined it would be for Natasha and Rina: a bleak, poverty-stricken no-man’s-land.
    Natasha had never told Nina why she came to Denmark with her daughter, and Nina hadn’t asked. She could have been fleeing anything frompoverty or political harassment to the mafia or prostitution. Natasha had her reasons, and it would take more than an upbeat voice to convince Rina that Ukraine was the upside to this story. The girl sat motionless, her head lowered. Only her hands, still clutching the phone, quivered slightly.
    “I know it’s tough, Rina.”
    Nina scooted a little closer. She wanted to pick the girl up and carry her out to the car, bring her home to her apartment in Østerbro, and take care of her until.… Well, yes, until when? Even if she mustered all her energy, Nina would be able to solve only a fraction of the