The Killing tk-1

by David Hewson

  ‘We agreed it was best, Therese. I’m sorry. I couldn’t…’

  He stopped.

  ‘Couldn’t what, Troels? Take the risk?’

  ‘What did he know?’

  ‘About us? Nothing. He was guessing.’ The caustic smile again. ‘Perhaps he thinks if he asks enough women he’s bound to strike gold. I think he’s got something else though. I don’t know how.’

  Hartmann glanced at the door, made sure they were alone.

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘He seems to have seen your diary. He was checking dates. He knew where you’d been and when.’

  Hartmann looked at the name again, wondered if he’d heard it somewhere.

  ‘No one sees my diary outside this office.’

  She shrugged. Got up. The door opened. Rie Skovgaard looked at the pair of them.

  With that stiff suspicious smile she said, ‘Troels. I didn’t know you had company. There are people in reception you need to meet.’

  The two women stared at each other. Thinking. Judging. No need for words.

  ‘I’m coming,’ Troels Hartmann said.

  Oliver Schandorff was a skinny kid of nineteen with a head of curly ginger hair and a sour unsmiling face. He was puffing on his third smoke of the day when Theis Birk Larsen burst through the front door.

  Schandorff leapt out of his chair and retreated as the big and angry man marched towards him.

  ‘Call her now,’ Birk Larsen bellowed. ‘She’s leaving.’

  ‘Hello!’ Schandorff cried, skipping into the hall. ‘There’s a bell here. Private house.’

  ‘Don’t mess with me, sonny. I want Nanna.’

  ‘Nanna isn’t here.’

  Birk Larsen began marching round the ground floor, opening doors, yelling her name.

  Schandorff followed, at a safe distance.

  ‘Mr Birk Larsen. I’m telling you. She isn’t here.’

  Birk Larsen went back to the hall. There were clothes on a chair by the sofa. A pink T-shirt. A bra. Jeans.

  He swore at Schandorff and made for the stairs.

  The kid lost it, raced in front, punched Birk Larsen’s chest, yelled, ‘Do you mind? Do you—’

  The big man picked him up by his T-shirt, carried the kid back down to the hall, launched him against the front door, balled a massive fist in his face.

  Oliver Schandorff went quiet.

  Birk Larsen thought better of it. Strode up the open-plan stairs two at a time. The place was vast, the kind of mansion he could never dream of owning, however hard he worked, however many scarlet trucks he ran.

  There was deafening rock music coming from a bedroom on the left. The place stank of stale dope and sex.

  A double bed with crumpled sheets, crumpled duvet. Curly blonde hair poked out from beneath the pillows. Face down, naked feet out of the bottom. Stoned. Drunk. Both, or worse.

  He glowered back at Schandorff who was following him, hands in pockets, smirking in a way that made Theis Birk Larsen want to punch him out on the spot.

  Instead he walked to the bed, wondering how to play this, pulled back the duvet and said gently, ‘Nanna. You need to come home. It doesn’t matter what happened. We’re going now…’

  The naked woman stared up at him, her hard face a mix of fright and fury. Blonde too. Same shade. Twenty-five if she was a day.

  ‘I did tell you,’ Schandorff said. ‘Nanna was never here. If I could help…’

  Theis Birk Larsen walked outside wondering what to do. What to tell Pernille. Where to go next? He didn’t like the police but maybe it was time to talk to them. He wanted to know something, find something. Or make it happen.

  There was a sound overhead. A helicopter, the word POLITI underneath.

  He hadn’t thought much about the location when he came here. Nanna was in Oliver Schandorff ’s house. There was nothing more to know. Now he realized he wasn’t far from the marshland east of the airport.

  Pernille said that was the place where it all began.

  Lund was back on the flat ground of the Kalvebod Fælled where they found the bloodstained top, looking at the map.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Meyer said, lighting one more cigarette.

  Her phone rang.

  ‘Are you coming to Sweden or what?’ Bengt Rosling asked.

  She had to think for a moment before saying, ‘Shortly.’

  ‘How about a house-warming party on Saturday? We could invite Lasse, Missan, Bosse and Janne.’

  Lund was scanning the fading horizon, wishing she could slow time a little and hold back dusk.

  ‘And my parents,’ Bengt added. ‘And your mother.’

  Lund took one more look at the map, one more sweep of the marsh and the woods.

  ‘Your mother’s going to fix up the guest room,’ Bengt said.

  Three young kids walked past pushing bikes. They were carrying fishing rods.

  Mark never went fishing. No one to take him.

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said, gesturing at Meyer to get his attention.

  ‘I don’t want her sleeping on the sofa,’ Bengt said.

  Lund wasn’t listening by then. The phone hung in her fingers by the side of her blue cagoule.

  ‘What’s over there?’ she asked Meyer.

  ‘More woods,’ he said. ‘And a canal.’

  ‘You did look in the water?’

  He grimaced. Meyer was the kind of man who could look angry in his sleep.

  ‘The girl ran the other way!’

  Lund went back to the phone.

  ‘We’re going to miss the flight.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You catch it. I’ll come tomorrow with Mark.’

  Meyer stood there, arms crossed, pushing crisps into his mouth between puffs on his cigarette.

  ‘Do we have trained divers among the forensic teams? And gear?’ Lund asked.

  ‘We’ve got enough men here to start a small war. How about Sweden? Let’s face it. That’s the only way you’ll get there.’

  The two of them drove over to the canal. Walked up and down. There were tyre marks by a low metal bridge. Going off the edge of the muddy bank towards nothing but black water.

  The bleak terrain mirrored Theis Birk Larsen’s state of mind: a maze of baffling dead ends and pointless turnings. A labyrinth without an exit.

  He drove and drove, into the dying grey sunset, away from it, finding nothing. Even the drone of the helicopter had disappeared. Pernille was with him every aching second, her shrill scared voice chanting through the phone clamped to his left ear.

  ‘Where is she?’

  How many times had she asked that? How many times had he?

  ‘I’m looking.’

  ‘Where?’

  The Kalvebod Fælled he wanted to say. The place Anton came on a school nature trip once, and talked about bugs and eels for the best part of a day before forgetting the whole damned thing.

  There were lights ahead. One of them was blue.

  ‘Everywhere.’

  The narrow lane stood above the slender canal, built from the earth that created it. Lund stared at the tracks, the lifting truck, the chain. The car emerging from the sullen water.

  Look, think, imagine.

  Someone parked on the lane, front wheels turned towards the water at the top of the slope. Then got out, pushed it. Gravity did the rest.

  Meyer was next to her, watching as the car rose against the sky. Water poured from all four doors. The paint was black, the colour of the canal, but very shiny as if it was cleaned yesterday.

  Ford hatchback. Brand new.

  ‘Look up the registration,’ Lund said the moment the number plate was clear.

  The truck was parked on the bank, long crane arm extending over the canal. It turned the vehicle away from the water, dangled it over the grassy lane. Then three officers guided the Ford slowly down to the ground until it sat there, unremarkable except for the torrents of foul-smelling liquid gushing from beneath each door.

&nbs
p; Meyer was off the phone. The two of them walked over and looked through the windows. Empty.

  The divider was down on the boot hiding anything inside.

  He walked to the back and tried the rear door. Locked.

  ‘I’ll get a crowbar,’ Meyer said.

  There were lights behind. Lund turned and looked. Not car lights. A van, she thought. It looked red in the beams of the police vehicles.

  Birk Larsen was still on the phone when he reached the line of Don’t Cross tape. So close he couldn’t count the blue lights beyond it. They’d set up high portable floodlights, the kind they used at sports events.

  His head didn’t feel right. His heart was beating so hard it banged against his ribs.

  ‘Hang on a second,’ he said and didn’t hear her reply.

  Got out. Walked on.

  ‘Where are you?’ Pernille asked.

  ‘On the marshes in Vestamager.’

  A pause then she asked, ‘Are the police still out there?’

  Two cops came up and tried to stop him. Birk Larsen brushed them aside with a sweep of his huge arm, kept walking towards a low metal bridge across the narrow canal.

  ‘I’ll sort this out. I told you.’

  ‘Theis.’

  More cops now. They swarmed on him like angry bees as he kept walking forwards, batting away their clutching hands, phone locked to his head.

  He could still hear her voice above the commotion.

  ‘What’s there, Theis? What’s there?’

  A sound ahead.

  Water rushing.

  Water rushing. It cascaded out of the rear compartment after Meyer levered it open. Gallons and gallons pouring onto the muddy ground.

  The smell was worse.

  Lund popped another Nicotinell in her mouth and waited.

  After the water a pair of naked legs fell onto the shiny rear bumper. She shone her torch there. Naked ankles bound tightly with plastic fasteners.

  Then movement. A snaking dark shape wound its way round and round the dead pale limbs, clinging to the skin, slithering down to the feet, over the bumper onto the ground.

  One of the uniform cops started to puke into the yellow grass.

  ‘What’s the noise?’ Lund asked, taking a step towards the car.

  Meyer nodded at the retching man.

  ‘Not him,’ she said.

  It was a loud coarse voice and it was furious.

  Lund watched the last of the water drain from the rear, two more eels sliding their way to freedom, then walked forward and put her head inside. The blonde hair didn’t look the way it had in the photos any more.

  But the face…

  The angry voice was bawling a name.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Meyer said. ‘The father’s here.’

  Theis Birk Larsen was a big strong man. It was a long time since he’d fought with cops. Some things you always remembered. Two swift punches, a roar and he was moving forward again, towards the black bridge.

  Beyond that point he could see a car on the road next to a recovery truck. Busy shapes swarming there.

  The phone was back to his ear.

  ‘Theis!’ Pernille cried.

  ‘I’ll talk to them.’

  The cops he’d shaken off were at his back again. More this time. Too many.

  A woman had left the car on the road and was walking steadily towards him. Beneath the harsh floodlights he saw she had a serious face, long brown hair, and shining, sad and interested eyes.

  ‘For God’s sake Theis…’ Pernille whined.

  They had him now, six cops, maybe seven. Had everything but his free arm with the phone.

  Birk Larsen stopped struggling. Said again, as calmly as he could, ‘I’m Nanna’s father. I want to know what’s going on.’

  The woman stepped over one more line of red and white police tape.

  She didn’t say a thing, kept walking steadily towards him, staring into his face, chewing gum.

  A voice, detached, not his at all, said meekly, ‘Is that my daughter?’

  ‘You can’t stay here.’

  Pernille was in his ear, his head, all in a single question, ‘Theis?’

  The woman stood in front of him.

  ‘Is it Nanna down there?’ Birk Larsen asked once more.

  She was silent.

  ‘Is it?’

  The woman just nodded.

  The roar was born deep in his belly, rose through him, burst into the damp night air. So loud and full of uncomprehending grief and fury it might have carried all the way to Copenhagen on its own.

  But the phone was there. No need. As he struggled, screamed to see her, Pernille was with him shrieking, crying too.

  Mother and father. Lost dead child.

  Then all the fury, all the power, died. Theis Birk Larsen was a weeping, fractured man, feeble and distraught, held upright by the arms that seconds before had fought his boundless strength.

  ‘I want to see my daughter,’ he begged.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  A tinny howling sound came from the man’s right hand. Lund stepped forward, opened his fingers. Those of a labourer. Strong and scarred, the skin leathery and old.

  He didn’t protest as she took the phone from him, looked at the name on the screen.

  ‘Pernille. This is Lund. Someone will be with you soon.’

  Then she pocketed the phone, nodded to the officers to take Birk Larsen away, went back to the drowned Ford, shiny and black, by the lifting truck.

  Forensics were swarming there already. All the set procedures were in place. Officers in protective clothing. She didn’t need to see any more.

  Black car. Bright and shiny. Meyer was right. It was so very new and clean.

  Lund found him smoking by the crane truck, shaking his head.

  ‘We’ve got an owner,’ he said. ‘You won’t believe this.’

  Lund stood beside him, waited.

  ‘The car belongs to Troels Hartmann’s campaign office,’ Jan Meyer said.

  ‘Hartmann the politician?’

  With a single finger Meyer flicked his cigarette out towards the canal.

  ‘The Mayor of Education. Poster boy. Yeah. Him.’

  Three

  Tuesday, 4th November

  Buchard arrived just after midnight. Then came the duty pathologist and his team. A huddle of forensic officers measuring tyre tracks, taking endless photographs, cordoning off the soaking muddy ground.

  They trudged through the soaking rain leaving till last the bloodied, bruised corpse of a young girl still in her ragged slip, wrists and ankles tied with black plastic fasteners, dumped in the back of a shiny black Ford.

  Lund talked to them all. She was officer in charge. No thoughts for Mark or Bengt or Sweden.

  More camera flashes around the perimeter of the car. Then finally the team moved towards the open boot, starting to record details of the small, still body and its wounds, the dead face, the staring blank light-blue eyes.

  Buchard asked, as he always did, about time of death. She told him what the pathologist said: no idea. Nothing had been reported over the weekend. It would take some time to establish.

  The old man scowled.

  ‘What a godforsaken place…’

  ‘We don’t know she died here. He didn’t want her found. A day or two more, rain like this…’ She glanced at the activity around the car. They’d move her soon. Someone needed to think about the family. ‘The tyre tracks would have gone.’

  Buchard waited.

  ‘He knew this place,’ Lund said. ‘He knew what he was doing.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘They don’t know yet. She was assaulted. Violent blows to the head. Signs of rape.’

  ‘And this car? It belongs to Hartmann’s team?’

  ‘It’s the best lead we have.’

  Bengt Rosling rang. Lund walked away to take the call.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘We found a girl. I
’ll tell you later. I’m sorry I didn’t make it.’

  Bengt was a criminal psychologist. That was how they met. Through a drug murder in Christiania. The victim was one of his patients.

  ‘What about Mark?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s with my mother.’

  ‘I mean tomorrow. He’s supposed to be starting Swedish lessons at school. In Sigtuna.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘I’ll tell them he’ll be there on Wednesday.’

  ‘We’ll book another flight. I’ll let you know the time.’

  Buchard came over and asked, ‘Is the girl connected to Hartmann?’

  ‘I’ll check.’

  ‘If a candidate’s involved report back to me.’

  ‘I can’t do this, Buchard.’

  A horn was sounding. It was Meyer, cigarette in mouth, calling her.

  ‘Use him,’ she said.

  The chief came close.

  ‘This shouldn’t be Meyer’s first case. Don’t ask. I’ll call the Stockholm police and clear it.’

  ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘It’s not possible.’

  Lund walked away, back towards Meyer and the car.

  ‘You found this kid.’ Buchard hurried behind her, talking to the back of her shiny wet blue cagoule. ‘Would Meyer have done that? All he dug up was a dead fox in the woods.’

  She stopped, turned, glared at him.

  He looked like an old grizzled pug dog, had the same importunate eyes sometimes.

  ‘Just one more day, Sarah.’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you want Meyer to talk to the parents?’

  ‘I hate you. You know that?’

  Buchard laughed and clapped his fat little hands.

  ‘I’ll work through the night,’ Lund said. ‘In the morning it’s down to you.’

  The morgue was deserted. One echoing antiseptic corridor after another.

  Still in the black leather jacket and woollen hat, the scarlet cotton overalls, Theis Birk Larsen clumped across the clean tiles towards the single door at the end.

  An anteroom.

  Pernille there in her fawn gaberdine coat, turning to look at him, wide-eyed, face full of questions. He stopped two paces from her, no idea what to say or do. Felt shapeless words rise to his mouth then stay there, unfinished and uncertain, afraid to breach the cold dry air.

  A big man, powerful, forbidding sometimes, silent, his gleaming eyes now pools of tears.