Copenhagen Noir

Isabel was no beauty queen, but she had a warmth that was special. Something open, generous, overwhelmingly loving. That’s what I fell for. And that’s what later on I punished her for. She was so easily hurt, she was innocent, she didn’t understand my moodiness. Which in a way came about because I felt I was a worse, less giving person than she was. Which also happens to be true. I confused her, I played funny games, as Joe would say. When I met Isabel, Lucille had just turned three. She was trusting and her speech wasn’t yet fully developed-she could say idiot in Danish, and Salut and Je suis une très très grande fille. In the beginning I left her to Isabel. But that changed. I was the one who took her to school on her first day. Who biked with her across the commons on weekends, who taught her how to drink soda without getting it up her nose. And who told her stories at night when she lay in her bed. About small creatures with horns and fangs. I was also the one who in the end failed her and disappeared. The sense of Isabel’s sleeping body close to mine is sometimes so strong and real that I wake up in the night thinking she is there, though I still don’t believe she was the love of my life. Which has yet to happen for me. But her presence. Her being there and her ability to create-life, a kind of safeness, safe and sound. I wonder if Lucille looks like her. If her laughter is as bright as her mother’s. Not that there is much to laugh about just now, when I’m not even sure that she can laugh. I walk along the lakes toward Vesterbro. Past Hovedbanegården, the main station, where the pushers hang out, and down Istedgade, the porn street. An addict has just shot up in a basement stairwell. He falls forward. The last drunks stagger noisily down the street. In the gray dawn I see a group of young black women. They are huddled together on a corner, they laugh and talk loudly to each other in their native language. They look young and healthy, they don’t look like whores. But they are at the bottom of the pecking order and come out only after the other prostitutes have gone home. They get the worst customers. All the scum. The violent, the drunk, the sick. A car pulls up to the group and stops. Negotiations take place through the front windshield. A fat hand points at the girl it wants. She gets in the backseat. For a moment the group is silent. Then I recognize one of the four men from the fight last night on Turesensgade, he shows up all of a sudden. His jaw is swollen and cut. He speaks harshly to the girls and apparently orders them to spread out, and so they do, immediately. It looks sad: now each one of them is alone on this miserable November morning in a foreign country. I walk on up toward Halmtorvet and shuffle past Tivoli and Rådhuspladsen, the town hall square, cut through Ørstedsparken where there is still some action, then up Gothersgade and Bartholinsgade. I stop at the front lawn of the Kommunehospital, the old district hospital. I’ve bought coffee and warm croissants, I find a bench and rest. Moisture drips from the trees. Windows gradually begin to light up, people awaken; I notice that the rosebuds have been ruined by frost, that a fox sneaks through the bushes, I hear birds chirping and the wind rustling shriveled leaves. I came here often with Lucille, we played ball. I taught her how to catch and she was furious at me every time she missed. She stomped the ground and hid under the snowberry bushes. They’re still here, the bushes, with their perfectly succulent white and pink berries. It’s nine o’clock. I try to take stock of the situation. The body in the sack, the wounded Russian. A possible war over prostitution. And the hash traffic that might be much more than just that. But nothing leads me to Lucille. Nothing. I consider whether I should go to the police with my information. But they weren’t exactly helpful before. Besides, they have enough to keep busy elsewhere in the city; there are gang wars and shootings in Nørrebro again. I don’t know what to do. I fumble around in my pocket for my phone and call Kirsten.

The white wine is rich and golden in the glasses. She nibbles at her shrimp. Outside, people rush around-here inside we’re nestled in the restaurant’s plush chairs. A waiter arrives with the main courses; at my urging Kirsten has ordered lobster, I’m having baked turbot. The music is agreeably muted, business people and tourists are sitting all around us, dining. This is one of the city’s most expensive seafood restaurants, we have a view of the canals and Folketinget, the Parliament.