Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [18]
On the screen the guy is covering Maria’s nose and mouth. She’s fighting off his hands. He lets go, and when she gasps for air he punches her in the side. It should stop now. But it doesn’t. He keeps going. It goes on and on. It gets rougher. Her eyes start to lose focus.
He slugs her a few more times, then he pulls out and gets up.
I hear a lighter somewhere off screen, a cigarette being lit. Then his naked feet on the hallway floor. He pisses long and hard, a small waterfall the camera’s mike captures. Maria is lying just like he left her. The girl on the sofa, I say to myself, just a girl on the sofa. She could be dead. Then an arm moves. The girl’s arm. Slowly she turns on her side. Stands up with great difficulty. Hobbles a half-step before she falls off screen, lying somewhere below the camera. The camera films an empty sofa and a framed poster on the wall above. Two dolphins jumping out of the water, the full moon is so big that their snouts almost seem to touch it. Then Maria comes back in the picture. Her head hangs down halfway to her chest, she’s sobbing very weakly. Falters a few steps forward on shaky legs. The sound of a toilet flushing. His naked feet on the hallway floor. Maria stops. Lifts her head just a little, eyes staring at a spot behind the camera, the doorway. It feels like minutes, not seconds. Her staring, the feet approaching. Then the sound of a cell phone. And the feet walk away again. Out into the kitchen, I’m guessing. He says hi, hey, how you doing. His voice cuts through clearly. First they talk soccer. A Brøndby match that didn’t go exactly the way it should have.
Maria tries to get into the red dress. One of her hands is useless.
“I’m working,” the guy says from out in the kitchen, and laughs loudly. “No,” he says. “It’s going to be one of the rough ones. Nobody buys the soft stuff anymore.”
Maria goes off screen. She’s gone a few moments. The sound of the man from the kitchen, he’s still laughing. Then we see the red dress close up, her arm rising, reaching toward the camera. The picture goes black. She’s taken the tape.
How she got past him and down the stairs, I don’t know. But after she reached the street he probably didn’t try to catch up with her. She looked too beat up. It would look like a rape, still in progress. And he wouldn’t have known she had the tape. So he’d let her go. All they’d been doing was making one of the rough ones.
Nabil covers his mouth. “I’ve seen him before,” he says. He makes a face, to concentrate. An escape from the images on the screen. Then he snaps his fingers.
“I’ve seen him with Ali’s little brother. Down at Nørrebro City Center.” Nabil pulls out his cell phone, makes a few calls. Speaks half Arabic, half Danish. His voice switches between sounding chummy, they laugh together, and a little bit menacing. Our time is over. That time when we were the boys on Swallow Street. The boys. The big shots. But even now, nobody fucks with Nabil.
He puts the phone back in his pocket.
“I know where he lives.”
Christian is back in the room again. His eyes scare me.
“Let’s do it,” he says.
“Let’s go over to one of my friends’ first,” Nabil says. “He’s got some things lying around.”
I know what he means.
I had actually thought I would just follow along. Do what had to be done. But no more than that. I’m the one, though, who bends over and pulls the toolbox out of the closet. Opens it on the workbench, finds a sports bag. The one thing I learned in prison was to make sure I’d never return. Three young men, stopped in the middle of the night, the trunk filled with baseball bats, they spend the night in jail. And with my record I would be back in prison.
But a hammer, a wrench, a large screwdriver, and a pair of hobby knives, they’re all tools. Even if you’ve just finished doing time for a violent crime, the police can’t do shit. They have to let you drive away. I lifted weights with a man who always kept a set of golf clubs in his car. No balls, just the clubs.
We’re out riding again. The boys from