by David Hewson
More black coffee. It stopped him wanting to scream.
Pernille moved photos around the corkboard for no good reason.
‘We need to…’ She sniffed, took two long breaths. ‘We need to think about the boys.’
She was crying again but didn’t want to show it.
Birk Larsen longed to do something. To be out of this place so badly. Knew that unspoken thought was a kind of betrayal too.
‘We’ve got to tell them,’ he said.
Lund walked into the Liberal Party office. It smelled of sweat and polished wood and old leather. Skovgaard, Hartmann’s too-elegant too-confident political adviser, was on the phone talking about the press release.
‘I want to see him,’ Lund said when Skovgaard came off the phone.
‘He’s in a meeting.’
Lund said, ‘Oh.’
Watched her go back to the computer, typing standing up, the way busy people did.
‘Your statement’s going out?’ she asked.
Still typing.
‘Can’t wait any longer.’
‘It has to.’
Skovgaard glanced at the door behind her, said very slowly, as if talking to an idiot, ‘We can’t.’
Lund walked over, pushed Skovgaard away when she flew at her, screaming, opened the door.
Troels Hartmann looked bemused. So did the woman next to him.
Kirsten Eller. The plump woman from the election posters.
She wasn’t smiling. She didn’t like to be disturbed.
‘Sorry,’ Lund said to the man in the pressed blue shirt. ‘But we have to talk.’
One minute later by the window, Kirsten Eller out of earshot on the sofa.
Hartmann said, ‘If the media think I’m lying…’
‘This is a murder case. The details are confidential. You can’t jeopardize our chances…’
‘What about my chances?’
He was an unusual man. Blessed with a politician’s charisma. An aura of blithe candour. He managed to say that without any obvious shame.
Her phone rang, she snatched it out of her bag, sighed when she saw the number, answered anyway.
‘Bengt. Can I call you back?’
The sound of hammering. Distant.
‘I’m at the house. The carpenters are here. What kind of wood do we want for the sauna?’
Lund closed her eyes. Hartmann wasn’t walking away. That was something.
‘What kind usually goes in saunas?’
‘Pine.’
‘Pine is fine. That sounds good.’
‘But it depends on…’
‘Not now. I’ll phone you later.’
End of call.
Hartmann was walking back to the woman waiting patiently on his sofa.
Lund took his arm, looked into his eyes. There was something there…
‘We’re very close to catching him. Don’t get in our way.’
‘How close? Today?’
‘I hope so.’
Hartmann hesitated.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait for that. So long as it is today.’
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Polar pine.’
Lund stopped.
‘Polar pine. It’s better for saunas than ordinary. Has less resin.’
‘Oh.’
Meyer was at the door, back from hunting round the corridors.
Time to go.
Kirsten Eller was smiling when Hartmann came back.
‘Bad news, Troels?’
‘Not at all. It’s no bother.’
She watched him.
‘Really? You looked worried.’
‘I said it’s nothing.’
‘If I’m to divorce Bremer this must be a marriage. Not a fickle affair.’
‘Of course,’ he said, nodding vigorously.
‘Requiring frankness in all things.’
Hartmann smiled at her.
‘There’s no bad news, Kirsten. Can we get down to business?’
Just after two Pernille and Theis Birk Larsen waited on the grey pavement by the fountain, watched the kids come running from the playground, wrapped in warm coats, hats and gloves, backpacks on, brightly coloured kites waving in their hands.
Tuesday. They always made something.
Emil, seven, with his short fair hair, Anton six, ginger as his father once was. The boys came stumbling, trying to make their kites catch on the chill winter breeze.
Emil’s was red, Anton’s yellow.
‘Why’s Dad with you?’ Emil asked straight out.
Into the grey street, watching the traffic. Cross the road carefully. Small hands in theirs.
Anton wanted to know if they could go and fly the kites in the park. Sulked when his mother said no.
The sky loomed dark and heavy. They packed the boys’ things in the boot.
A call. Vagn Stærbæk anxious in Birk Larsen’s ear.
‘Don’t come home yet,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘The police are searching her room. Some photographers have arrived.’
Birk Larsen blinked, watched Pernille fasten the boys into their safety seats, buckles checked, a kiss on the forehead.
Not anger, he thought. Not now.
‘How long will they be?’
‘No idea. Should I get rid of them?’
Birk Larsen couldn’t think of a thing to say.
‘The boys, Theis. You don’t want them to see this.’
‘No. Call me when they’re gone.’
So they got in the car and he said, ‘Let’s fly those kites. Let’s do that.’
Two small cheers, fists punching the air in the back. Pernille looked at him.
No words needed. She knew.
Meyer was driving the way he usually did.
‘Did Poster Boy get your vote then?’
‘Meaning?’
‘You smiled at him, Lund.’
‘I smile at lots of people.’
‘He kept looking at your jumper.’
She still wore the black and white sweater from the Faroes. It was warm and comfy. Bought it on the holiday just after the divorce, with Mark, trying to ease him through the shock. She liked them so much she got some more. Different colours. Different patterns. There was a mail order place…
‘Last time I saw my granny she was wearing one like that,’ Meyer said.
‘That’s nice.’
‘Not really. She was in a box. I hate funerals. They seem so…’ He slammed the horn as a cyclist got in the way. ‘Final.’
‘You made that up,’ she said and he didn’t answer.
The Faroe Islands were green and peaceful. A quiet, sleepy world away from the grimy urban landscape of Copenhagen.
‘I’m sure he couldn’t be stealing a glance at your tits. I mean…’
She didn’t listen, let him ramble on. Get it out of his system.
In the green world of the Faroes nothing much happened. People got by. Seasons came and went. Cows farted. Just like Sigtuna.
‘Where are we going, Meyer?’
‘Lynge hasn’t been in his apartment since last night. He’s got a sister. She runs a hair salon in Christianshavn. He went to see her this morning. Turned ugly.’
Meyer grinned at her.
‘Some men are like that.’
Lynge’s sister was a good-looking woman with long straight hair and a mournful face.
‘Where is he?’ Meyer asked.
‘Haven’t a clue. He’s my brother. I didn’t pick him.’
Lynge was waiting down a side street when she opened up that morning. Forced his way in. Bad timing. All she had was five thousand kroner in the till. He took it, trashed the place a little. The sister was mopping up shampoo and conditioner from the floor as she spoke.
Lund walked round, leaving the questions to Meyer.
‘Where do you think he’s gone?’
‘I don’t know him any more. He’s sick.’
‘We know that.’
> ‘No.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘Not just there. He’s sick. Ill. He needs to be in hospital.’ She stopped mopping. ‘I’ve never seen him that bad. It was just money. Don’t put him back in jail. Not again. He’d get even crazier.’
‘Does he have anywhere to go? A girlfriend?’
‘No one wants to know him. Not after what he did.’ She hesitated. ‘There was a woman.’
‘What woman?’ Lund asked.
‘A prison visitor. A volunteer.’ The sister frowned. ‘You know the kind. Christian. Never gives up. She contacted me a few weeks back. Begged me to get back in touch with him. Said it would help.’
They waited.
‘It wouldn’t help. I know him. Besides…’She looked around the little salon. ‘I’ve got a life. A right to that. Haven’t I?’
Meyer picked up a hairbrush, played with it.
‘You’ve got a name for this woman?’
‘Sorry. She came from one of the prison charities I think.’
The sister looked at Lund.
‘He killed that girl on the TV, didn’t he? I knew it was going to happen. They shouldn’t have let him out. He was so scared.’
‘When I get hold of him he will be,’ Meyer murmured.
The woman didn’t say anything.
‘What?’ Lund asked.
‘This morning. He looked really scared. I mean… I don’t know.’
‘We need to find him. We need to talk.’
She started mopping again.
‘Good luck,’ the sister said.
Outside. Steady rain.
‘Take my car. Get someone onto the prison visitor,’ she told Meyer. ‘Then call me.’
‘Where are you going?’
Lund hailed a cab and was gone.
Mathilde Villadsen was seventy-six, half-blind, living in an old apartment block with her cat Samson and her second-best friend the radio. It was playing music from the Fifties, the decade she thought of as hers.
Then the swing band got interrupted by the news.
‘The police have imposed a news blackout…’ the reader began.
‘Samson?’
It was time to feed him. The tin was open. The food was in the dish.
‘… over the case of Nanna Birk Larsen who was found dead on Monday.’
She walked to the kitchen sink, turned off the radio. It was cold in the draughty flat. She wore what she did for most of the winter: a long blue woollen cardigan, a thick scarf round her wrinkled neck. The price of heating was terrible. She was a Fifties girl. A little hardship was a cross she could bear.
‘Samson?’
The cat was mewing outside the flap into the corridor. In her old, loose slippers she shuffled to the front door, undid the chain.
It was dark in the stairwell. The kids were always knocking out the lights. Mathilde Villadsen sighed, got down on her painful knees, wished the cat wouldn’t play these games.
In the gloom, feeling the cold stone through her stockings, she scrambled across the hall calling, ‘Samson, Samson. Naughty cat, naughty cat…’
Then she bumped into something. Struggling to see, she felt with her fingers. Dirty leather, denim trousers above it.
Glanced up. A bald head, a scarred face in the flickering flame of a cigarette lighter, close to the cat’s whiskers as it sat in the arms of a man above her.
He looked unhappy. Frightened.
‘My cat…’ she started to say.
The lighter got closer to Samson’s face. Samson mewed and tried to scramble free from his strong arms.
In a low hard voice he said, ‘Don’t squawk. Get inside.’
There was a wedding dress on the mannequin, white satin covered in embroidered cotton flowers. Lund’s mother, Vibeke, made them for a local shop. Not so much for money, more for something to do. Widowhood didn’t suit her. Not a lot did.
‘What does Bengt say about all this?’
She was a stiff-backed woman, always smart, always serious, with a brisk, sometimes caustic manner and a judgemental eye.
‘I’m going to call him.’
Vibeke stood back and considered the dress. Put a stitch in the breast, another in the arm. Lund thought she liked the idea of women getting married. It narrowed their options. Tied them down the way God meant.
‘So you haven’t even told him you’re not coming?’
‘No time.’
Her mother uttered that short brief sigh Lund had known since childhood. Even so she remained amazed how much distaste and disapproval could be compressed into a single breath.
‘I hope you don’t chase this one away too.’
‘I just said I would call!’
‘Carsten…’
‘Carsten hit me!’
The look, long and cold.
‘Once. That’s all. He was your husband. The father of your child.’
‘He—’
‘The way you behave. This obsession with your work. A man needs to know he’s wanted. Loved. If you don’t give them that…’
‘He hit me.’
With great care Vibeke placed the needle in the shiny satin fabric at the neckline.
‘Do you ever wonder if you asked for it?’
‘I didn’t ask for it. No one ever does.’
Lund’s mobile rang. It was Meyer: ‘I talked to the prison.’
‘And?’
‘He had three visitors in all. One’s dead. One’s moved. One’s not answering her phone.’
‘Come and get me,’ Lund said and gave him the address in Østerbro. ‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Blue light taxi’s on the way. I hope you tip well.’
The police people had left their marks and trails all over the apartment. Numbers and arrows. Puffs of dust where they’d looked for prints.
Anton, always the most inquisitive, stood outside her room and asked, ‘What’s that on Nanna’s door?’
‘Get away from there!’ Theis Birk Larsen barked at him. ‘Come to the table.’
The table.
Pernille and Nanna made it one empty distant summer three years before when there was nothing else to do but watch the rain. Cheap timber from the DIY store. Photos and school reports glued then lacquered onto the top. The Birk Larsen family frozen in time. Nanna turned sixteen, growing quickly. Anton and Emil so tiny. Faces captured in the place that was the heart of their small home. Smiling mostly.
Now the boys were six and seven, bright-eyed wondering. Curious, perhaps a little afraid.
Pernille sat down, looked at them, touched their knees, their hands, their cheeks and said, ‘There’s something we have to tell you.’
Birk Larsen stood behind. Until she turned to him. Then, slowly, he came and sat by her side.
‘Something’s happened to us,’ Pernille told them.
The boys shuffled, glanced at one another.
‘What?’ Emil, the elder, though in a way the slower, asked.
Beyond the window the traffic rumbled. There were voices in the street. It was always like this. For Theis Birk Larsen it always would be.
Together. A family. Complete.
His great chest heaved. Strong, scarred fingers ran through greying ginger hair. He felt old, impotent, stupid.
‘Boys,’ he said finally. ‘Nanna’s dead.’
Pernille waited.
‘She’s not coming back,’ he added.
Six and seven, bright eyes glittering beneath the lamp where they all ate supper. Static faces staring at them from the tabletop.
Emil said, ‘Why’s that, Dad?’
Thinking.
Struggling.
‘There was a time we saw a big tree out in Deer Park. Remember?’
Anton looked at Emil. Then both nodded.
‘Lightning struck it. Tore off a big…’
Was this real, he asked himself? Or imagined? Or a lie to let children sleep when the darkness came?
‘Tore off a big branch. Well…’
It didn’t matter, Birk Larsen
thought. Lies could work too, as well as the truth. Better sometimes. Beautiful lies might let you sleep. Ugly truths never.
‘You could say lightning’s struck us now. It took Nanna away.’
They listened in silence.
‘But just like the tree in Deer Park keeps growing we do too.’
A good lie. It heartened him a little.
He squeezed Pernille’s hand beneath the table and said, ‘We have to.’
‘Where’s Nanna?’ asked Anton, younger, quicker.
‘Someone’s taking care of her,’ Pernille said. ‘In a few days everyone will go to church. Then we say goodbye.’
The boy’s smooth brow furrowed.
‘She won’t ever come back?’
Mother and father, their eyes briefly locked. These were children. Precious, still trapped in their own world, no need to escape it.
‘No,’ said Pernille. ‘An angel came and took her to heaven.’
Another good lie.
Six and seven, bright eyes glittering. Not a part of this nightmare. Not…
‘How did she die?’
Anton. Had to be.
The words fled them. Pernille walked to the corkboard, stared at photos, the timetables, the plans they’d all made.
‘How did she die, Dad?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Dad.’
‘It just… happens sometimes.’
The boys fell quiet. He held their hands. Wondered: have they ever seen me cry before? How long before they see it again?
‘It just happens.’
Lund and Meyer walked up the stairs, rang the bell, waited. The hallway was dark. Broken bulbs. It stank of cat piss.
‘So you’ve moved in with your mother instead of that Norwegian?’
‘Bengt’s Swedish.’
‘You can tell the difference?’
There was no answer from the address they had. Junk mail was piled up at the foot of the door.
Lund walked to the next apartment along. There was a light behind the frosted glass. The nameplate said Villadsen.
Meyer’s radio squawked. It was too loud. She glared at him and banged on the door.
Nothing.
Lund knocked again. Meyer stood to one side, fists on hips, silent. She almost laughed. Like most of the men in homicide he wore his 9-millimetre Glock handgun on his waistband in a holster. It made him look like a cartoon cowboy.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ She tried not to smile. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘At least I’ve got a gun. Where’s…?’
