by David Hewson
The bereavement group met in a cold grey hall near the church. Ten people round a plastic table in a bare and cheerless room.
The Birk Larsens sat next to one another as the leader listened to their stories.
Cancer and traffic accidents. Heart attacks and suicide.
Tears from the living. Silence from the dead.
Pernille didn’t listen. He nodded, said nothing.
Outside, on the bare branches of a tree, a ragged white scarf writhed and twisted in the wind like a lost prayer.
When it was their turn they barely spoke. No one pressed them. Only one, a skinny man whose head was erect and proud, even when he talked of his lost son, paid them any attention.
Perhaps it was embarrassment, Birk Larsen thought. He didn’t care. The social worker said come or go back to jail. So he came and hoped it would help. Though looking at Pernille’s frozen, emotionless face he doubted it.
Nothing helped except release. Knowledge. A waypoint passed. And that seemed further away than ever.
Outside he offered to put her bike in the back of the van and drive her home.
‘I need some fresh air,’ Pernille said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ll see you later.’
She pushed her cycle through the car park, out to the street and Vesterbro.
The thin man stopped her in the car park. His name was Peter Lassen.
‘I didn’t get the chance to say hello in there.’
She shook his hand.
‘I hope it was some use to you.’
‘It was fine,’ she said.
He looked at her.
‘I don’t think you mean that.’
She wanted to walk on but didn’t.
‘I remember how awkward it felt the first time,’ Lassen said. ‘You can’t relate to anyone. You think their pain’s not like yours. And it isn’t.’
‘If I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,’ Pernille said with a sudden savagery.
Then pushed her bike away, eyes beginning to water.
By the road she stopped, ashamed. He’d been polite and pleasant. She’d been rude and caustic.
She went back, said sorry.
Lassen smiled a slow, soft smile.
‘No need. Let me buy you a coffee.’
A moment’s hesitation and then she said yes.
The cafe was tiny and empty. They sat in front of cappuccinos and biscotti.
‘It’ll be five years in January. I’d made lasagne. We sat at the table waiting for him to come home.’
There were kids outside the window, a long crocodile line of them heading off on a visit somewhere. Lassen smiled as they passed.
‘We’d put new batteries on his bike lights. He knew the way. We used to cycle it together sometimes.’
He stirred the coffee he’d never touched.
‘But he never came.’
One more round of the cup. She watched the froth subsiding.
‘They said it was a red car. The police found paint on one of the pedals.’
He shook his head and, to her astonishment, laughed.
‘I used to sit there by the turning in the road, looking for a scratched red car. Every evening around the time it happened.’
His delicate, pale hand waved at her.
‘The car never came. So then I started sitting there during the day. It didn’t come then.’
The brief amusement had left his face.
‘In the end the only thing I could do was sit and wait. Day and night. Watching the cars. Thinking it will come. And when it does I’ll drag that bastard out and…’
Lassen’s eyes shut briefly and she saw on his face the mask of pain he still sought to hide.
‘My wife tried to get me to stop. How could I? How? I lost my job. I lost my friends.’
He pushed away the coffee and the biscotto.
‘Then one day I came home from the street and she was gone too.’
Outside a mother by the road, holding the hand of a child, waiting to cross. The everyday was special. For people like her, like Lassen, there was nothing else, nor need of it. The everyday was holy, as precious as anything could be.
‘There isn’t a moment passes when I don’t regret letting go of my loved ones. The red car didn’t just take my son. It took everything I had. And still I never found him. Pernille?’
She turned away from the window, met his eyes.
‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘But you still keep looking, don’t you? How can you forget? What if you hadn’t given up?’
Lassen shook his head. He seemed disappointed.
‘You can’t think of it like that.’
‘But you do. You think… where is he? Where’s the car? You don’t stop thinking. You can fool yourself if you like. You can try to hide.’
‘You have to let it go.’
He was starting to annoy her.
‘Tell me you’ve forgotten then. Tell me you’re OK with the fact that the bastard who killed your boy is still walking around out there.’
A glance outside the window.
‘Maybe ready to do it all over again to someone else’s son.’
Lassen said, ‘What if they don’t find him? What if you’re locked in this hell for ever?’
‘They’ll find him. If they don’t I will.’
He blinked. That hint of disappointment again.
‘And then?’ Lassen asked.
‘You have to excuse me now. I’ve got to pick up my boys from school.’
She rose from the table.
‘Thanks for the coffee.’
Hartmann’s office. Weber had more sandwiches and coffee. There was a woman in the doorway and he fought for a moment to remember her name.
Nethe Stjernfeldt.
He got up quickly, walked to the door, saw Skovgaard’s head go up.
She was as pretty as he remembered, slim and elegant. With that same anxious, needy look in her sparkling eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Troels,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to come barging in.’
‘It’s not a good time.’
‘I’m sorry if I said something wrong.’
‘It’s not your fault. I know what the police are like.’
‘They came and threw all these questions at me. They had emails and… they seemed to know everything.’
‘I talked to them,’ Hartmann said. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t go any further. Everything’s fine.’
She was close. Her hand touched his lapel.
‘Thanks for coming. But really I’ve got a lot of things to do.’
Her fingers brushed his jacket.
‘I know. Ring me if there’s any way I can help.’ She smiled at him. ‘Anything.’
Her hand flattened, touched his white ironed shirt, pressed. Hartmann retreated a step. She glared at him.
‘I’ll leave then,’ she said.
‘That would be best.’
He walked back into the office, stood next to Skovgaard as she read through the papers. Weber had made himself scarce.
‘She… she wanted to apologize.’
Skovgaard’s head never came up from the documents.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ Hartmann asked.
Nothing.
He sat on the desk, made her look at him.
‘Don’t shut me out, Rie. That’s all in the past. I told you.’
She folded her arms, stared at the ceiling, her eyes damp and unfocused.
‘Rie!’
A knock on the door.
Olav Christensen walked in without waiting.
‘I heard you want to talk to me,’ he said.
‘Morten!’ Hartmann called.
They made the civil servant sit opposite them. Weber read through the material he’d assembled.
‘You’ve taken a close interest in the flat, Olav,’ he said.
‘No. Not at all. I put up some guests there a few times.’ He pointed at Hartmann. ‘With the mayor’s
permission.’
‘Hartmann just signed an approval slip. Your guests never turned up.’
His brittle show of arrogance was cracking.
‘What am I? A hotel receptionist? I do what I’m told. Do I need a lawyer or something?’
Hartmann asked, ‘Did you use the flat yourself?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Weber placed a paper in front of him.
‘Six months ago you asked Dorte if it was free at the weekend.’
Christensen took the document, read it.
‘If I remember correctly that was for the Poles who were doing a report on the welfare system.’
‘The Poles stayed in a hotel!’ Weber snapped. ‘I had dinner with them. Don’t give me this shit.’
‘Really? Then I don’t remember.’
More paperwork.
‘Several times a week you booked the flat for no-shows. Never went in the file. If it wasn’t for Dorte—’
‘Dorte isn’t here. People changed their minds. Sometimes—’
‘Do we look like idiots?’ Hartmann pointed to Weber, to Skovgaard sitting taping the conversation. ‘Do we look as if we were born yesterday?’
‘Don’t blame me if you’re in the shit. It’s not my fault.’
‘One more time. Did you book the flat for yourself?’
‘You be careful what you accuse me of—’
‘No, no, Olav! You’re the one who needs to be careful.’
Hartmann waited a moment.
‘Did you bring the girl there?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Did you make a copy of the key? Did you use my computer?’
He was laughing.
‘So it’s scapegoat time in the Liberal Party?’
Rie Skovgaard passed a document across the table.
‘We had a security scan of the network this morning. They found key loggers on all our PCs. Someone was keeping track of everything. Passwords. What we typed. They could log in and pretend they were us.’
‘What’s this to do with me?’
‘You’ve got a degree in computer engineering. You did this.’
‘Me? A civil servant? No.’ He smiled at the man across the table. ‘He’s the one who needs to do the explaining. I read it in the papers.’
‘I’m going to drive you down to police headquarters myself,’ Troels Hartmann promised.
‘He didn’t kill the girl, Troels!’ Skovgaard shrieked. ‘He was at the poster party with us. It couldn’t have been him in the flat.’
Olav Christensen smirked at them.
‘You know what?’ he said, getting up. ‘I’m going to leave this in your hands. You people…’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘It’s like Poul Bremer said. You’re falling apart, aren’t you?’
‘If it wasn’t you who was it?’ Hartmann roared.
There were Christmas decorations in a box by the door. Christensen pulled out some tinsel, waved it at them.
‘Santa Claus?’ he asked.
Meyer was running through what they had.
‘Hartmann saw plenty of women in that flat. He stopped for a few months. Then he started again.’
Blue lights from the headquarters yard flashed through the window.
‘He tried to get hold of Nanna Birk Larsen. He was jealous. He went to see her. It all went wrong.’
‘Someone must have seen something,’ Lund said. ‘A paper boy. A parking attendant.’
‘No one’s seen anything. Let’s bring in Skovgaard again.’
‘She won’t say anything.’
‘How the hell do you know? You talked to her last time.’
He felt the lapel of his wool zipper jacket.
‘I have a way with women.’
Lund glanced at him, sighed, shook her head.
‘He never called Nanna,’ she said. ‘His phone was turned off at ten twenty-nine that night.’
‘A way with women,’ he repeated very slowly.
She felt her head. A migraine was hovering.
‘OK,’ Lund said and threw the papers on the desk.
‘That’s that then,’ Meyer announced.
He went off with his jaunty punk walk. Lund felt sure she’d arrested someone very like Jan Meyer once upon a time.
She picked up the phone records. Someone had called Hartmann at ten twenty-seven just before he turned off the phone. There was a list of names of callers somewhere. She found it. Looked. Thought of telling Meyer. Got her coat instead.
Back in Store Kongensgade she stood in the courtyard, looking at the circular iron fire-escape stairs running up the back.
Nethe Stjernfeldt came ten minutes after Lund called.
‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘I told you everything—’
‘You said you hadn’t talked to Hartmann for a long time.’
‘I haven’t. I’ve got to pick up my son from youth club.’
‘You rang him that Friday night. October the thirty-first. Ten twenty-seven p.m. I can prove it. I can prove you lied.’
The woman fiddled with her leather gloves.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ Lund said.
She looked around, saw they were alone.
‘I promised my husband I’d never see him again.’
Lund waited.
‘I missed him. I wanted to see him.’
‘What did he say when you called?’
‘He said it was over. I had to stop ringing him.’
‘Then what did you do?’
She didn’t answer. Just turned to leave.
‘You got a parking ticket that evening. Here, on Store Kongensgade. You were too close to the corner.’
Lund caught up with her.
‘Bad luck,’ she said. ‘I get that sometimes.’
‘Does my husband have to know?’
‘Just tell me what happened.’
Stjernfeldt looked up and down the long, empty street.
‘I didn’t like the way he cut me dead. I was home. On my own again. Going crazy.’
‘So you came here to see him. What time, Nethe? This is important.’
‘Doesn’t the parking ticket say?’
‘I want to hear it from you.’
‘It was almost midnight. The lights were on. So I rang the bell.’
Lund looked at the shiny brass doorplate.
‘Did he let you in?’
‘No,’ she said bitterly. ‘He didn’t even answer. I kept my finger on the buzzer until someone picked it up.’
‘Then you talked to Hartmann?’
‘I didn’t talk to anyone. Whoever it was…’ She shrugged. ‘They didn’t say a word.’
‘You didn’t hear anything?’
‘I tried to get them to let me in. But then they hung up.’
Lund looked up at the big red-brick building.
‘Did you drive home?’
‘No. I was furious with him. I went into the courtyard and screamed his name.’
They walked back beneath the arch, stood in the open interior space.
‘I saw a silhouette.’
She stopped and looked up at the fourth-floor windows.
‘It wasn’t him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It wasn’t him! It didn’t look like him.’
‘How could you tell? It was dark.’ Lund gestured at the building. ‘It’s high up. How can you be sure?’
‘You really want to nail Troels, don’t you?’
‘I want the truth. How do you know?’
‘He seemed shorter. Troels is tall. He holds himself well. The man I saw…’
She shrugged and looked at the street outside.
‘It wasn’t Troels Hartmann.’
Lund said nothing.
‘He saw me,’ Stjernfeldt said. ‘He was looking directly at me. It made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want to stay here. Troels wasn’t in that flat any more. What was the point?’
Pernille drove the boys home listening to them bi
cker in the back. It never used to get to her.
Now…
‘It’s mine,’ Anton said. ‘Give it to me. You should’ve brought your own.’
‘Mum, tell him to stop!’
The traffic was bad. The night wet. The noise of their voices filled her head but not so much it drowned out the dark thoughts.
‘You’re mean.’
‘Tell him, Mum! I haven’t played with it all day.’
‘Can’t you take turns?’
The stupid things parents said. Share what you have. Be quiet. Be good and obedient. Tell us what you think, where you go, what you do.
And who with.
‘Mum! Tell him!’
‘Shut up!’ Anton wailed.
Or Emil.
When they screeched they both sounded the same.
‘My toy! My toy! My toy!’
Like two little kettles coming to the boil.
There was a gap in the cars by the side of the road. She swung the car violently knowing it would shake them in their safety seats. Slammed her foot on the brakes. Listened to the tyres screaming.
Hit the pavement. People scattering and shouting around her.
They shut up then. They let her sit in the driver’s seat, staring at the figures milling round the car.
No damage done. Just a brief and insane turn off the steady stream of traffic that was life.
‘Mum?’ asked a quiet, frightened voice from behind.
She looked at their faces in the mirror. Felt shocked she’d done this. Put such fear into their unformed, fragile lives.
‘Emil can have the toy,’ Anton said. ‘It’s OK. We can take turns.’
She was crying again. Tears streaming down both cheeks, making the night seem blurry. The wheel felt too heavy to drive. The car stank of kids and petrol and Theis’s cigarettes.
‘Mum? Mum?’
Theis Birk Larsen was cooking supper when the boys came through the door.
‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
‘I picked up the boys. I told you.’
‘I know, but the time. I was ringing round. I called Lotte…’
‘I told you.’
He didn’t push it.
‘I made spaghetti bolognese.’
She didn’t look right.
‘I called the journalist who came this morning,’ she said.
He stopped stirring the sauce.
‘I set up a meeting. He’ll be here soon.’
‘Why the hell did you do that? Without talking to me? The police say I’m not supposed to go near the case.’
