Read Death of a Nightingale for Free Online

stared at him with anger smoldering in the pit of her stomach. “Best?” she said. “For whom?”
    “So that the mother can find her more easily.”
    The anger burst into flame. Only concern for Rina made her control herself. Couldn’t he see that this was a child, a sick and tormented child, not just convenient bait for their trap?
    “That’s a medical decision,” said Magnus very, very sharply. “And I’m the doctor.”
    But Rina had lifted her head again and suddenly looked more present and alive than she had at any point since Nina got there. “I’d like an ice cream,” she said.
    Oh, Lord, thought Nina. So that the mother can find her more easily. That was the only thing Rina had heard and understood. What if Natasha really did show up? And the police arrested her in front of the child? Nina didn’t want to think about what that would mean for Rina’s delicate balance and her grasp of reality here in non-Wonderland. She could see that Magnus was thinking more or less the same thing. But they couldn’t do anything—couldn’t even discuss it here and now while Rina was listening.
    “Strawberry or chocolate?” asked Nina.
    T EN MINUTES LATER, as she escorted Rina across the icy asphalt lot that had once been the barracks’ drill grounds, it was with two of the Mondeo brigade on her heels, though they maintained a certain discreet distance that presumably was supposed to make them look like civilian passersby. Rina held Nina’s hand, something she had otherwise stopped doing, and in her other hand she clutched the strawberry ice cream, which she dutifully sucked on every fourth or fifth step. At least it didn’t look as if her breathing was significantly more labored now that she was moving and even though the air was cold enough to sting Nina’s more resistant lungs. Pernille had doneall the right things, had administered Bricanyl and later prednisone, had measured the oxygen and attempted to calm the panic. Physically, the girl was improving. But right now Nina was much more concerned with what was happening in Rina’s mind.
    In the middle of the grounds, Rina suddenly stopped. She gave a little tug on Nina’s hand.
    “What is it, sweetie?”
    “He’s dead,” said Rina.
    It took Nina a moment before she managed to reply, quietly and calmly. “Who?”
    “Poppa Mike.”
    Poppa Mike? Did she mean Michael Vestergaard?
    “Why do you think that?”
    “That’s what they said. The police.”
    The wind raced across the open square. Pin-sharp flakes that were more ice than snow bit Nina’s cheeks and forehead, and she suddenly felt as if she were standing in an arctic desert, icy and isolated, infinitely far from warmth, shelter and human contact. Rina stood next to her and stared with great concentration at the strawberry ice cream, as if conquering it were a task she had set herself. She wasn’t crying—in fact, her face was devoid of expression—but Nina was not fooled. She quickly checked the time—12:31—and looked up at the slate-grey sky with the apparently irrelevant thought that the weather would make it difficult to fly. Only a few seconds later did she understand why flying conditions suddenly seemed to matter. Whenever the situation had escalated from desperate to hopeless in one of the hellholes and disaster areas of her misspent youth, the skies had been her only hope. It was from above that help might arrive.
    Unless Rina had misunderstood something, Natasha’s former fiancé was dead—the man Natasha had once tried to murder with ahunting knife. And it had happened while she was on the loose after having brained a policeman with a cobble.
    “Rina …”
    “They are both dead,” said Rina and took a determined bite of the strawberry ice cream. “Poppa Mike and Daddy.”
    Jesus. Poppa Mike and Daddy?
    Nina realized that she knew absolutely nothing about Rina’s biological father. She had placed a single-mother-from-Ukraine label on Natasha without giving it a lot of