The Considerate Killer by Agnete Friis, Lene Kaaberbøl Page B

students into using a hammer and a plane with self-confidence and the joy of creation.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you, little one?” he asked. “You look so sad.”
    â€œWhere have you been?” she asked instead of answering. “I’ve missed you.”
    â€œYes, but I’m here now. Didn’t you think I’d come back?”
    She clutched at his shirt, clenching her hands around fistfuls of soft material.
    â€œI was afraid you wouldn’t,” she whispered. “Don’t scare me like that again.”
    â€œSweetheart. You know you can trust me. You won’t get rid of me that easily.” He laughed quietly and ruffled her hair with one hand without loosening his embrace.
    Oh, to be so loved. To be held like this. To be safe like this.
    â€œOur Father,” he whispered into her hair. “Who art in heaven . . .”
    A rush of sheer terror raced through her. She tore herself loose and stared up into his face. He smiled so the wrinkles around his eyes appeared. She wanted to ask him why he did it, why he was praying for her, he who had never so much as said grace before dinner through her entire childhood, but another voice broke in and made her sense of reality totter.
    â€œNina Borg?”
    She opened her eyes with difficulty and felt a nauseating physical dislocation. Dream, it was a dream. There was no smell of fresh wood here, only disinfectant and bedpan pee. For a terrible, teetering moment she tried to hold on, but he was gone. The naked, raw loss hit her as if she had only just been told that he was dead. The loss and the fear, the terror she had felt . . . Our Father. Why? Her feelings were sloshing around chaotically, and she fumbled for some slight grip on reality.
    â€œYes,” she said hoarsely. “What is it?”
    â€œMy name is Caroline Westmann. I’m a detective sergeant with the Mid-West Jutland Police. I wondered if I might speak with you?”
    Nina lay motionless for a moment while she waited for her focus to improve. Detective sergeant? Head trauma. She had been hit on the head, they said. Assaulted.
    â€œOkay,” she said. “What do you want to know?”
    She was young, the detective sergeant. Short, chestnut-brown hair, freckles and the charming hint of an overbite that had defied all attempts of overzealous orthodontists to correct it. An eager, alert gaze. Jeans and a vaguely nautical red-and-white-striped sweater.
    â€œFirst and foremost, I’d like to know what happened.”
    Nina closed her eyes again. It was too hard to keep them open.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “I remember absolutely nothing.”
    â€œYou had been grocery shopping,” persisted the detective sergeant. “In the Saint Mathias Mall. Do you remember that?”
    Viborg. She was in Viborg again. Home again. Was that why her father appeared in her dream?
    â€œMore or less,” she admitted. “I . . . we were out of milk. I was cooking. My mother is unfortunately seriously ill.” The last part sounded stiff and wrong, as if it was an excuse she had fabricated herself for some teacher’s note.
    Stop it. She wasn’t in school any longer. Teacher’s note? Damn it, Nina. No one even wrote notes any longer; these days you used the school’s intranet.
    She tried to capture her floundering thoughts. Honestly, it was as if all rationality and capacity for concentration had leaked out of her along with the brain fluid they said she had lost.
    â€œNina’s mother is being treated for breast cancer,” Søren prompted from someplace in the room. “Nina is here to support her through the chemotherapy. Normally we live near Copenhagen.”
    We? Since when had she become a part of such an inclusive and intimate plural? Anyone would think they cohabited . . . But she didn’t protest. She was glad he was here.
    â€œYou had shopped at SuperBest, we could see from your groceries. And