She glanced at her watch and then looked up at him with a friendly expression. “Perhaps not the best. Who would you be looking for?”
Concern appeared in his face, exactly as he had practiced at home. “I’m a friend of Rachel Krogh,” he said.
She tipped her head inquiringly. “Rachel? We’ve no Rachel here. Do you mean Lisa Krogh?” She looked down at her screen. “Lisa Karin Krogh, it says here.”
What the hell had he been thinking? Rachel was the name she used in her congregation, not her real name. He knew that.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Lisa, of course. We belong to the same congregation, you see. We use biblical names there. Lisa’s is Rachel.”
The secretary’s expression changed, though almost imperceptibly. Didn’t she believe him, or was it merely an aversion to things religious? Was she going to ask for some ID?
“I know Isabel Jønsson too,” he added, before she got ideas. “The three of us are friends. They were brought in together, as far as I gather from your colleagues downstairs at the Trauma Center. Would that be correct?”
She nodded. A rather clenched smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“That’s correct, yes. You’ll find them both in there.” She pointed to a room and told him the number.
The same room. It couldn’t be better.
“You’ll have to wait, though, I’m afraid. Isabel Jønsson’s being transferred to another unit. A doctor and some of the nurses are getting her ready. And she’s got another visitor waiting at the moment, so could I ask you not to go in until he leaves? We prefer if there’s only one lot in at a time.” She indicated the seating area closest to the exit. “He’s sitting along there. Perhaps you know each other.”
Disconcerting information.
He turned quickly to look. True enough, a man was sitting on his own with his arms folded. A man in a police uniform. Isabel’s brother. There could be little doubt: the same high cheekbones, the same-shaped face, the same nose. This wasn’t good at all.
He looked at the secretary with a hopeful expression. “Has Isabel been making progress?”
“As far as I know, yes. We don’t normally move people on to other departments unless they’re improving.”
As far as she knew. She knew perfectly well, of course she did. What she didn’t know was when the move would happen, but apparently it was imminent.
Most inconvenient. And her brother here to boot.
“May I go in to Rachel? Is she awake? Lisa, I mean.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid Ms. Krogh is still very much unconscious.”
He bent forward slightly. “But Isabel would be conscious?” he asked quietly.
“I’m not actually sure, to be honest. Try asking the nurse over there.” She pointed toward a blond, rather weary-looking woman on her way along the corridor with some medical records under her arm. The secretary turned to a new visitor who had now appeared at the counter. His audience was over.
“Excuse me.” He stopped the nurse in her tracks, his arm aloft. Mette Frigaard-Rasmussen, her badge read. “I don’t suppose you could tell me if Isabel Jønsson is conscious? Would it be possible to see her?”
Maybe she wasn’t her patient. Maybe it wasn’t her shift. Maybe it wasn’t her day. Or maybe she was just too exhausted to do anything else but peer at him through the narrow slits of her eyes and reply through equally narrow lips.
“Isabel Jønsson? Erm…” She stared into space for a moment. “Yes, she’s conscious, but heavily sedated. Her jaw’s fractured, so she can’t actually speak. She’s not communicating at all at the moment, but it’ll come.”
She mustered all her strength to raise a smile. He thanked her and let her get on with the rest of what was obviously a demanding day.
Isabel wasn’t communicating. Good news at last. Now he had to take advantage.
He pressed his lips together resolutely, slipped away from the waiting area, and proceeded farther along the corridor. Soon he would need to get away fast. His preference was for the lifts outside, as if nothing untoward had happened. But if other alternatives existed, he needed to know what they were.
He passed several rooms in which lives hung in the balance and doctors and nurses worked calmly and diligently. In the observation center, a group of people in white coats sat staring at computer screens, talking softly among themselves. Everything under control.
An auxiliary walked past him and seemed to wonder for a moment what he might be doing there. But they exchanged smiles, and the man continued along the corridor.
There were colors on the walls. Bright, intense paintings. Stained glass. Emanating life. Death was unwelcome here.
He rounded a red-painted corner and discovered a second corridor running parallel to the one from which he had come, row upon row of what seemed to be small rooms for staff on its left side. Nameplates outside the doors indicated who occupied them. He looked to the right, expecting to end up at reception again if he continued in that direction. But the route seemed to have been blocked off. However, there was a lift. Another possible escape hatch.
He noticed a white coat hanging by the open door of a room full of linen and various boxes of equipment stacked on shelves. Probably both it and the linen had been left for the laundry.
He slipped inside, grabbed the coat, and put it over his arm, waiting a moment before heading back toward reception.
On the way, he nodded to the same auxiliary as before, then patted his jacket pocket to make sure the syringes were there.
Of course they were.
He sat down on a blue sofa in the first and smaller of the two seating areas. The policeman in the other area appeared not to notice him. Five minutes later, the officer stood up and went to the reception desk. Two doctors and a couple of auxiliaries had just left the room in which his sister lay. New faces were beginning to appear among the staff, distributing themselves into their respective places.
The shift change was in full swing.
The policeman sent an inquiring look in the direction of the secretary. She nodded back. It would be all right now. Isabel Jønsson’s brother could go in.
He followed the man with his eyes and saw him disappear into the room. Before long, a porter would come to move the man’s sister. Not the best circumstances for what he needed to do.
If Isabel was well enough to be moved, he would have to kill her first. There might not be time for the second job.
And time was of the essence. He would have to get the brother out of there as soon as possible, no matter the risk. The prospect of approaching the man didn’t appeal to him at all. Perhaps Isabel had told him everything. That’s what she had said. Perhaps the brother knew too much. He would at least have to cover his face in the man’s presence.
He waited until the secretary began to gather her things together and vacate her chair for her replacement.
He put on the coat.
Now was the time.
At first, he failed to recognize the two women. But in the corner sat the policeman, talking to his sister, holding her hand.
So the woman nearest the door in that snarl of masks and tubes and IV equipment was Rachel.
Behind her was a high-tech wall of machines and monitors emitting flashes of light and beeping sounds. Her face was almost entirely covered, her body likewise, the blanket not quite hiding the suggestion of severe injury and irreparable damage.
He looked across at Isabel and her brother. “What happened, Isabel?” the brother had just asked.
Then he squeezed between the wall and Rachel’s bed and leaned forward.
“I’m sorry, but we shall have to send you out again, Mr. Jønsson,” he said, bending over Rachel and drawing open her eyelids as though to examine the dilation of her pupils. She was certainly unconscious.