by David Hewson
‘I parked the car here at half past seven that Friday.’
Third floor. Not a vehicle there any more.
‘You’re sure of the time?’ Meyer wanted to know.
‘Yes! Then I hung up the keys on the board behind our desk. Then I went home.’
Lund was looking at the ceilings, the walls, the layout of the place.
‘Who’s got access to your room?’ Meyer said.
‘Not many people. We’re security, aren’t we? But there was a party that night.’
‘In City Hall?’
‘Yes.’ He scowled. ‘One of their parties. Not what you’d call a party.’
He tried to smile at Meyer.
‘Me neither. All piss and wind and cheap champagne. They always launch an election campaign with a party. A poster party they call it. Once the posters are ready they come and stand around and kid themselves they’ve won.’
‘So what if there’s a party?’ Lund asked.
‘You’ve got people coming and going. You can’t keep track of everything. They leave their keys, they want their keys. You’ve got to show people where to find the room, take them for a piss.’
She waited.
‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘If I was I’d try to keep control of things. But it’s not easy. We don’t man the place all the time. We can’t.’
‘So anyone could walk in and get the keys?’
‘And the tape,’ he added.
Meyer slapped his forehead and grunted, ‘Wonderful.’
‘Let’s get hold of what’s still there,’ she said.
She turned to the security man.
‘Whose party was it?’
He looked as if she ought to know.
‘Hartmann. The one who keeps strutting round thinking he can boot old man Bremer out into the street. The ladies love him, I know. He makes a pretty picture. But honestly…’
A brief, grim laugh.
‘Boys against men.’
Half past eight. Back at headquarters. Lund and Meyer in front of the PC, watching the security tapes. Buchard next to them, hands in pockets.
‘We can’t know who picked up the keys,’ Lund said. ‘Someone took that tape. But…’
She sat happy and comfortable in front of the screen, working the forward and back buttons, edging the video to the right place.
‘At seven fifty-five this happened.’
Two cars left on the third floor of the garage. The black Ford on the far side of the image, a silver Volvo close to the camera.
At the right of the screen, two spaces along from the car in which Nanna died, a door opened from the staircase.
People started coming through. A family. Fresh from the party.
‘Balloons,’ Buchard said. ‘You brought me here to see balloons?’
‘Forget the balloons,’ Lund said. ‘Watch the background.’
A man. Two little kids with balloons. The Volvo was theirs. As they walked towards it a figure was just visible going through the shadows to the other vehicle. Little more than a shadow. A blur on the screen.
‘How the hell do you see these things?’ Meyer asked.
‘I look. He’s a man, about six foot two I’d say. At this point Nanna is still at the school party.’
The black Ford reversed just as Volvo man and his kids were getting into the car. Blocking the view.
‘Later she stops by her teacher’s. And then…’
The Ford headed for the exit, left of the screen, behind the car in front.
‘Then I think she meets this man.’ Lund watched the screen, caught by it, unaware she was smiling. ‘Somewhere.’
She switched to another camera. The black Ford cruising along the garage. Then another on a corner. Turning towards the down ramp. The registration number was clear on the monochrome screen.
‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘XU 24 919. That’s the car Nanna was found in.’
Cigarette in mouth, eyes shiny and tired, Meyer gave her a little salute.
‘Thank you,’ Lund said with a note of dry sarcasm.
‘No, Lund. I mean it. Jesus…’
‘We were wasting our time with the school. Nothing happened there. The car was back at the Rådhus garage all the time.’
‘Someone’s been taking the piss…’ Meyer grumbled.
‘We can rule out Hartmann and his staff,’ she went on. ‘We looked into them. The thing is…’
The two men waited.
‘Nanna was going somewhere. The way she was acting at the party. Kemal said she picked up a school photo at his place for some reason. It’s as if…’
‘She was saying goodbye?’ Meyer said.
‘Maybe.’ Lund shrugged, and tugged at the sleeves of her sweater. ‘I think she was having an affair with someone. The parents suspect it too. They don’t want to tell us. Perhaps they don’t want to face it.’
‘Birk Larsen’s got history, chief. That teacher would have been dead.’
‘Forget the parents,’ Buchard ordered. ‘They’re stuck out in Vesterbro. What’s going to get people like that into City Hall?’
Lund couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.
‘It’s someone who cultivated her. Nanna was beautiful. Old for her years. Someone told her she was special. Gave her expensive gifts. Told her to keep quiet. To wait.’
She thought of the cramped bedroom above the garage in Vesterbro, full of books and souvenirs and mementoes. The clothes in the cupboard. The faint smell of a perfume that should have been beyond a teenager.
‘Nanna had another life that no one knew about.’
‘Doesn’t work like that, Lund,’ Meyer said. ‘Someone had a clue.’
‘Not Pernille. Or Theis maybe.’
‘Someone,’ Meyer insisted.
‘Who’ve you told about this?’ Buchard asked. ‘The car being back in the City Hall garage?’
The question surprised her.
‘No one except you. I’ll get things started right now. Maybe there are some cameras in the street.’
Buchard strode out of the room.
‘Maybe…’ Lund said watching him.
The chief was in the corridor, visible through the glass. On his mobile.
‘Is he calling his wife, do you think?’ Meyer asked. ‘Ordering a celebration pizza?’
Lund was back at the screen.
‘What?’
‘I was just wondering. You show him something like this. He doesn’t say a word. Walks off. Calls someone.’
She waved away his smoke.
‘I wish you’d stop that.’
‘I worked in a little town down south before all this shit. No one ever complained about the smoke there.’
‘Maybe you should go back.’
He looked a little down in the mouth.
‘Can’t,’ Meyer said, nothing more.
Buchard marched back in.
‘Check the guards’ schedules and records. Pull in this old man who had the keys—’
‘He didn’t do it,’ Meyer snapped.
‘Bring me everything you can find on the staff.’
‘It’s not someone on the staff,’ Lund said. ‘They’re not the kind of people to groom a pretty young kid like Nanna. Give her things she couldn’t dream of. Pull tapes, fix keys, find places God knows where—’
‘Look at the staff. Bring me what you find,’ Buchard repeated.
She was thinking as she spoke. Couldn’t stop even if she wanted.
‘It has to be someone higher up. Someone who thinks they can get away with all this. Because we’re beneath them. We’re—’
‘That’s already been checked,’ Buchard broke in.
‘What?’ Meyer asked.
Lund wanted to laugh.
‘Checked? Who checked it? We’re working this case. If we didn’t check it—’
Buchard exploded.
‘If I tell you it’s been done it’s been done. Now get going on the guards.’
Lund flew at him as he went f
or the door. Meyer wasn’t far behind.
‘No. This isn’t good enough, Buchard. Who did you call?’
He was scuttling towards his office, back turned to them.
‘Never mind who I call,’ Buchard said and didn’t even bother to turn.
‘Wait, wait.’ Meyer was mad too. ‘This doesn’t make sense.’
Buchard stopped, looked over his burly shoulder.
‘Then I guess you must feel at home.’
‘I want to know what’s going on,’ Lund demanded.
He turned. Big barrel chest pushed out. Face a picture of misery.
‘Come with me,’ Buchard said.
The two of them moved.
‘Lund!’ he barked at Meyer. ‘Not you.’
She looked at the man next to her. Tried to smile.
Then followed Buchard, ignoring Meyer’s bleats behind in the corridor.
The chief closed the door. She did smile then. She’d known this man all her working life. Had learned from him. Fought with him sometimes. Eaten dinner round his house. Even made up a foursome when she was married.
‘You can tell me,’ Lund said. ‘It won’t go any further. You know that.’
Buchard looked at her.
‘You can tell that cretin too if you want. I don’t mind.’
‘Meyer’s good,’ Lund said. ‘Better than he knows.’
The chief raised his hands. Took on that arrogant, scholarly pose he used when delivering a lecture.
‘If I say they’re not involved,’ he told her, ‘they’re not involved.’
She cocked her head, looked at him in disbelief.
‘Listen, Sarah. I want this solved just as much as you do.’
‘So why are you tying my hands behind my back?’
He didn’t like that.
‘I’m your boss. I decide what you do. I’ve made myself clear.’
Then he left.
Meyer marched up, wanting to know what the chief said.
‘Nothing,’ Lund told him. ‘When we checked Nanna’s mobile how far did we go back with the calls?’
‘I don’t know. A week or so. There was no one from City Hall showing there. Just kids and home.’
‘Can you check it again? Go back further?’
The phone was ringing back in the office. She marched off to get it. Meyer followed, whining all the way.
‘What did Buchard say? Lund? Lund!’
The call was from a radio journalist asking for a comment on the case and Hartmann’s campaign.
‘We heard the focus is now back on City Hall,’ the reporter said. ‘Why is that? Is Hartmann a suspect?’
‘Who told you that?’ Lund asked.
‘Sources.’
‘Well, ask your sources what’s going on,’ she said.
She passed the phone to Meyer.
‘What did Buchard say, Lund?’
Her phone beeped. A text message. She looked at it. Got her jacket and her bag. Didn’t know what to think.
‘I have to go.’
‘Where?’
‘Keep me informed,’ Lund said and heard him bawling out the reporter as she left.
She left the car on the pavement outside the station, lights on, unlocked. Left her jacket in the driver’s seat. Raced down the stairs in her black and white sweater and jeans.
Raining again. No moon. A few people fleeing the weather and a couple of drunks spoiling for a fight.
The train to Stockholm was close to leaving. That long journey over the water by the Øresund Bridge. One she could have made herself. Any time. If only…
Five hours later Stockholm. The new life. Bengt and Mark. A quieter job. A different world.
He stood by the platform, coffee cup in hand, left arm in a sling, face still bruised and swollen.
Lund stopped for a moment. Wondered what to say. What to do.
He hadn’t seen her. Had turned towards the train. She could walk away now and she wondered whether that might be for the best.
Instead she strode up to him, said to his back, ‘Bengt.’
Saw the pain, physical and inward, in his familiar, craggy face as he turned.
The first thing you did was make excuses. Always.
‘Something came up again. I’m sorry. There was a…’
Her eyes were welling up. The words didn’t come right.
‘Things happening.’
She jerked a thumb over her shoulder.
‘Can we talk about it in the car?’
Something different in his eyes. An expression she’d never seen before. A distance. A look that almost seemed like pity.
‘Really,’ Lund said. ‘I understand why you don’t want to stay at my mother’s. I didn’t think we’d be there long.’
A hope. A plan.
‘Let’s find a hotel,’ she said. ‘We can get a family room. It won’t take long.’
He was shaking his head and she wanted to find the words that would stop him.
‘We rushed into things, Sarah,’ he said in a voice that seemed remote and impersonal. ‘Maybe it’s for the best. Moving to Sweden…’
That sharp stinging pain was back in her eyes.
‘No! We didn’t rush anything. What do you mean?’ A single tear escaped and ran down her right cheek. ‘I want to do this.’
Her sleeve went to her face, as if she were one more distraught kid at Nanna Birk Larsen’s school.
‘I want to be with you, Bengt. Please stay.’
‘I can’t watch this any more,’ he said, then coffee cup in hand, embraced her once.
A short hug. The kind a friend gave. It didn’t even feel like goodbye.
‘Take care,’ he said casually. Then climbed on the train.
Lund saw the station lights go blurry as she stood on the platform, watching the train pull out. Sobbing in a way she hadn’t for years.
Words were never easy.
Not saying them anyway. What they signified, what the world meant in all its strange and impenetrable faces… these were matters that fascinated her in an obsessive, constant fashion.
She’d told Bengt she loved him. Not often. Not repeatedly. It seemed unnecessary. Importunate.
And it made no difference anyway. She was what she was and happy with it. The cost…
That rough wool sleeve fell across her face again, harsh against her eyes and skin.
For a moment the lights around her dimmed. She was back in the Pentecost Forest, amidst the dead trees with their shedding silver skin. Back chasing the man who chased Nanna Birk Larsen. Lost again, as Nanna must have been in those last few savage moments.
The dark wood…
Nanna fighting for her life amid the birch trunks. Her own struggle through the shadows of the girl’s violent death, Meyer fighting to keep up by her side. They had all disappeared into the woods too. Faced with a choice of forks in the road. Left or right. Up or down. The straightforward pathway hidden from view.
Alone.
In a way she had been from the very beginning.
Perhaps that was what Bengt recognized. That when he was out of sight he was out of her thoughts. That nothing mattered except what she saw ahead of her with those gleaming, searching eyes.
And even that now seemed a lie, a joke, a phantom flitting, laughing through the shadows.
For her there was no pathway. No right direction, no correct course. Only the search for it. The chase not the conclusion.
The train pulled out towards the straight and certain track that led to the Øresund Bridge.
A turning not taken. A path that soon would be lost and overgrown.
They were all in the darkness, hunting the quarry within them and without. Meyer grappling to keep his job. The Birk Larsens fighting over how to bury their grief. Even Troels Hartmann, the poster boy of politics. A striking, intelligent man haunted by a demon beneath the surface. Of that she was sure.
So perhaps, Lund thought, she wasn’t alone at all.
Meyer called when she was back
in the car.
‘Hello? Cat got your tongue?’
‘What is it?’
‘I went to forensics and made them take another look at her phone. There were fifty-three numbers on her contacts list.’ He paused. ‘We were only given fifty-two.’
She couldn’t face talking to him.
‘Can this wait till the morning?’
‘I found a list of the calls she made going back a couple of months. I compared it to the data on the phone. Someone’s screwing us around here, Lund. The list wasn’t complete. She made calls we were never told about.’
‘Where are you speaking from?’
‘Outside. You think I’m stupid, don’t you?’
‘No. I don’t. Do I have to keep saying this?’
‘Here’s the worst part. The first person to see those lists and take a look at the phone was Buchard.’
Lund kept driving.
‘That can’t be right.’
‘It’s right, Lund. I don’t like this. If Buchard is covering for someone it’s got to be Hartmann. Everything points there.’
‘Not now,’ she whispered.
‘If we can’t talk to Buchard who can we talk to? Huh? Who pulls his strings? Jesus…’
She took the phone from her ear.
‘Lund? Lund!’
The headquarters building loomed ahead in the darkness, a pale grey palace, with so many curving corridors, offices and hidden corners, she could still lose herself there if she tried.
Sarah Lund kept going. Right past. On the way to what was, for now at least, home.
There were four minority parties on the Copenhagen City Council, right and left and somewhere in between, all bickering constantly, then pandering to Bremer to win a few prize committee chairs and paid appointments.
At a quarter to ten Hartmann had their leaders in his office.
He’d got a new shirt from the wardrobe, shaved, had Rie Skovgaard check him over. Combed his hair.
These people didn’t get the smile. They were part of the game. They didn’t need it.
‘We represent five parties and five very different kinds of politics,’ he said in a calm, practised tone. ‘If we took the last election and added your votes to ours we would have had a clear majority.’
He paused.
‘A clear majority. From what we’ve seen of the polls it’s the same this time around. Maybe even better in our favour.’
Jens Holck, the leader of the Moderate Group, the biggest, the toughest nut to crack, sighed, took out a handkerchief and began to polish his glasses.
