Bastard was standing right in front of her, kneading Natasha’s buttocks with his greedy hands, while his eyes, gazing across Natasha’s shoulder, never left Nina’s. She had to look away. I could kill him, she thought to herself. Kill, castrate, and dismember. If I thought it would do any good.
But there were thousands like him. Not exactly like him, but thousands of others who circled like sharks, waiting to exploit the desperation of the refugees and take their chunk of the vulnerable flesh.
Eventually, he pulled his hands out of Natasha’s jeans.
“Have a nice day,” he said, and left. Natasha followed him as if he had her on a leash.
Nina jerked the receiver off the phone and dialed an internal number.
“Teacher’s room, this is Ulla speaking.”
“Is it true that the bastard who is to marry Natasha has picked up Rina?” asked Nina.
There was a silence at the other end. “I’ll look,” said the English teacher. Nina waited for six minutes. Then Ulla Svenningsen came back on the line. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He turned up just as the bell went for the recess. He had brought her a popsicle, the children say, and she ran right up to him.”
“Bloody hell, Ulla!”
“Sorry. But this is not a prison, is it? Openness is part of the concept.”
Nina hung up without saying goodbye. She was shaking with fury. Right now she was in no mood to listen to excuses or politically correct sermons on the importance of opening up to the community.
Magnus appeared in the doorway, out of breath and glasses askew, and big beads of sweat everywhere in his large, kind dog-face.
“Natasha,” he gasped out. “I just saw her getting into a car.”
“Yes,” said Nina. “She went back to the Bastard.”
“For helvete da!”
“He took Rina first. And then Natasha just followed.”
Magnus sank into his office chair.
“And of course she won’t report him.”
“No. Can’t we do it?”
Magnus took off his glasses and polished them absentmindedly on the lapel of his white coat.
“All he has to say is that it’s nobody’s business if he and his fiancée like rough sex,” he said dejectedly. “If she won’t contradict him . . . there’s nothing we can do. He doesn’t hit her. There are no X-rays of broken arms or ribs that we can beat him over the head with.”
“And he doesn’t abuse the child,” sighed Nina.
Magnus shook his head.
“No. We could report him for that, at least. But he is too smart for that.” He looked at the clock on the wall. It was 12:05. “Aren’t you going to lunch?”
“I seem to have lost my appetite,” said Nina.
At that moment, her private phone vibrated in the pocket of her uniform. She took it.
“Nina.”
The voice at the other end did not introduce herself, and at first she wasn’t sure who it was.
“You have to help me.”
“Err … with what?”
“You have to pick it up. You know about such things.”
It was Karin, she realized. Last seen at a somewhat inebriated Old Students Christmas Lunch, which had ended in a furious shouting match.
“Karin, what’s wrong? You sound weird.”
“I’m in the cafeteria at Magasin,” said Karin, naming the oldest department store in Copenhagen. “It was the only place I could think of to go. Will you come?”
“I’m working.”
“Yes. But will you come?”
Nina hesitated. Suddenly, all kinds of things were in the air. Old favors. Unsettled accounts. And Nina knew full well she owed Karin at least this much.
“Okay. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Magnus raised his eyebrows.
“I’m having lunch after all,” said Nina. “And, err … I’ll probably be at least an hour.”
He nodded distractedly. “Oh, all right. I suppose we can hold the fort without you.”
MRS. RAMOŠKIENĖ!”
A piercing light struck one of Sigita’s eyes. She tried to twist away but found she couldn’t, someone was holding her, someone held her head in a firm grip.
“Mrs. Ramoškienė, can you hear me?”
She was unable to answer. She couldn’t even open her eyes on her own.
“It’s no use,” said a different voice. “She’s out of it.”
“Whew. That’s a bit ripe.”
Yes, thought Sigita dizzily. There really was a foul odor, of raw spirits and vomit. Someone ought to clean this place up.
“MRS. RAMOŠKIENĖ. It will be a lot easier if you can do some of it yourself.”
Do what? She didn’t understand. Where was she? Where was Mikas?
“We have to insert a tube in your throat. If you can swallow as we push, it will be less uncomfortable.”
Tube? Why would she want to swallow a tube? Her confused brain took her back to the