Copenhagen Noir

They had watched High Noon, Henry’s favorite western. He said he’d seen it a thousand times and he hummed along with the title song, Do not forsake me, oh my darling, on this our wedding day… Adina had cried during the film. It was so beautiful and sad. Why didn’t he leave with Grace Kelly, why did he have to be so proud? They drank beer afterward, and Henry made sandwiches, piled high with lettuce and tartar sauce on the roast beef, onion and jellied stock on the liver paté. She lay on the sofa, she’d had enough. Vesterbro was a thousand miles away. She walked over and peeked down at the street. Kofi was still standing there, dealing. He looked purple in the yellow light.

“Do you know what I dream about?”

“No,” she mumbled.

“Moving to Australia. I’ve saved up twenty-seven thousand, and when I have forty I’m leaving. What about you?”

“I just want to get as far away as I can.”

“Australia! That’s as far away as you can get.”

“It is?”

“You don’t know where it’s at?”

“No,” she lied.

The globe stood on a low table in the bedroom. He flicked a switch on the wall, and the inside of the globe lit up. Henry got down on his knees. She knew where Australia was, why was she playing dumb?

“See, here we are.” He put a finger on the small, blurry speck that was Denmark. “And here,” he said, turning the globe without letting go of Denmark, “we have Australia. And here we have Perth.” He put a finger on the city. “You simply can’t get farther away. It’s on the other side of the earth.”

“And here,” she said, and reached between his arms and put her finger on a spot between Warsaw and Vienna, “is where my family lives.”

“What’s the name of the city?”

“Krosno.”

“Are your parents alive?”

“No.”

They sat for a while without speaking, squatting in front of the glowing world.

Friday 12:32 p.m. Skelbækgade, Driveway into Den Hvide Kødby, 1717 Copenhagen V

It was sprinkling, and Marek was sick and tired of it all. He had asked around at massage clinics, questioned Thai masseurs, tattooists, pushers, stood on street corners, in back rooms, gambling joints, checked with Pakistani taxi drivers, no one has seen anything, he had bounced around among the street whores, he had found a Polish girl with her head between her legs and a rubber hose tight around her arm in a basement stairway on Colbjørnsensgade, it’s not her, he’d put his nose to the ground, bribed a med student who opened the drawers for him at the morgue under the National Hospital, it isn’t her either, to hell with it all, he thought, why shouldn’t she be allowed to disappear, crawl in a hole, die someplace warm, he was freezing and Ludmilla was hungry and hysterical, he gave her a shawarma and some candy, no, he didn’t want her brown envelope. No, he didn’t know what would happen to her. Shut up. He grabbed her by the chin, hard, shut your goddamn mouth, and then it didn’t matter anymore, he had a bad taste in his mouth and he himself had caused it, he bought a pack of mints. Finally, the wind whipping his coat, a Nigerian whore on Skelbækgade reacted when he showed her Adina’s picture, seen this girl? She wore a T-shirt, Ivory Love with sweeping gold letters, long nails with screaming pink polish. He had to dish out a hundred euros.

“I saw her yesterday. She was standing at this bridge by the station. What’s its name… Dybbølsbro. Looked like she was going to jump. Didn’t do it, but she looked desperate. Stood there with a big bag and no coat on. And it was raining!”

“What time?”

“In the afternoon. Around two-thirty. Maybe three. Then she was picked up by this guy. Don’t know his name, but he is real wicked. A bastard. Uses his hand. Always takes his wedding ring and Rolex off. Don’t wanna pay.”

She scrounged around in her bag, found her cell phone, pecked on it, her nails clicking on the case. She held the display out to him and he saw the rear end of a car: XZ 98754. It looked like an Audi 4.

Friday 12:51 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V