Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbøl

question would be a mistake.
    “I assume Savchuk is your English-speaking colleague?”
    “That is correct. Colonel Jurij Savchuk.”
    Finally Søren understood. With his slight emphasis, Babko was making it clear that Savchuk had a higher rank than he did and that he therefore was in a pinch right now. He couldn’t officially criticize a superior, though Savchuk had apparently left without being politeenough to tell his hosts where he was going or why.
    “Where is Colonel Savchuk?” asked Søren.
    “He is presumably investigating Natasha Doroshenko’s disappearance,” said Babko carefully.
    “On Danish soil?”
    “I assume he is doing so by agreement with the proper authorities.” It was clear that if this was not the case, Babko wasn’t at fault.
    As far as Søren knew, there was no such agreement, and he strongly doubted that the “proper authorities” would take kindly to an unauthorized freelance effort from the Ukrainian police. But he let it pass. “The killing of Pavel Doroshenko,” he said instead.
    “Yes. On September twenty-third, two thousand and seven, Doroshenko was found in his car near Lake Didorovka. At that point he had been dead for a few days. It was at first assumed that he had been murdered, since he had some obvious lesions, mostly on the hands, but it later turned out that the cause of death was heart failure, presumably caused by pain and shock.”
    “He was beaten to death?”
    “Yes and no. Four of the fingers on his left hand had been crushed—extremely painful, but under normal circumstances not lethal.”
    “Crushed how?”
    “In the car door.”
    “And I assume it couldn’t have been an accident?”
    “Unlikely. The door was slammed shut across his fingers several times. Normally you put a cable or thin rope around the victim’s wrist, and the hand is pulled toward the door while the victim sits bound in the car and already trapped by the seat belt. It’s said that the best tactic is to stick your hand as far out of the car as possible, so that the door slams closed on the wrist instead of the fingers, but it is very difficult not to attempt to pull your hand toward you. That’s themost natural reaction.”
    Søren listened to the cool and almost routine description of the torture. “In other words, that happens regularly? This type of violence?”
    “Yes. It’s a fairly common way of punishing people who, in one way or another, have had their fingers in the wrong pies.”
    Søren’s eyes fell on the teenage-slim Natasha Doroshenko. “It doesn’t seem likely that this is a … punishment … that his wife could administer.”
    “Not on her own, no. A petty criminal called Bohdan Pahlaniuk later took credit for providing the muscle. But he claimed to have been paid by the wife because she was upset that Doroshenko couldn’t keep his hands off other ladies. Pahlaniuk said that the intention wasn’t to kill him.” Babko tapped the case file with a square index finger. “Page two.”
    Søren turned the page. Yes—page two was a confession signed by Bohdan Pahlaniuk and dated November 16, 2007.
    “How was he caught?” he asked.
    “Pahlaniuk was arrested and held for another assault a month or so after Pavel Doroshenko’s death. The Doroshenko confession surfaced in connection with that. But a warrant was out for her just a few days after the killing.”
    “Why?”
    “The most obvious reason, of course, was that she took off and left the country with her daughter a few hours after she had been questioned. But there were some other suspicious circumstances as well. Even though her husband had disappeared four days before he was found, she hadn’t reported him missing.”
    “How long had they been married? How was their relationship?”
    “They were married in two thousand. She was only seventeen. He was quite a bit older, in his mid-thirties.”
    “Twice her age?”
    “Yes, it’s not that uncommon. She’s from a small town near Kurakhovo in