The Killing tk-1

by David Hewson

  ‘The evidence is circumstantial, Troels. On this I wouldn’t expect the judge to extend your custody. But if they find something in your cottage…’

  He sat in his blue prison suit, silent and miserable.

  ‘The more you tell me, the more I can help you.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  Nothing.

  She tidied her papers, uttered a small dyspeptic sigh of disapproval.

  ‘Well then. I’ll come back tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll be of a mind to talk to me then.’

  He watched her sort the documents into a pile and place them in her briefcase.

  ‘What’s going on at City Hall?’

  She stopped and gazed at him.

  ‘What do you think? The Electoral Commission has gone along with Bremer’s wishes. They’ve made their final decision.’

  ‘Final? You’re sure about that?’

  She had a hard-set face.

  ‘I’m a criminal lawyer. Not a political one. As I understand it the decision is made. It simply needs to be approved by the council tonight.’

  The lawyer stared at him.

  ‘Then you’re gone, Troels. Shame. I put money into your campaign. What on earth was I thinking?’

  He was barely listening.

  ‘What time’s the meeting?’

  The woman folded her arms.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve decided to talk to me. Perhaps we could discuss your defence?’

  ‘Can you get me a copy of the council constitution?’

  A pause, then, ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to know something about the Electoral Commission. I need the detail—’

  ‘Troels! You’re facing a murder charge! Have you lost your mind?’

  A grim smile, a second long, no more.

  ‘No. I haven’t. Get me Brix. Tell him I’m ready to talk. I’ll let him know what I did that weekend.’

  She reached into her bag and retrieved her notepad.

  ‘Finally. Let’s hear it.’

  The smile again. Longer this time, and more confident.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have time.’

  He snatched the pad from her and started writing.

  ‘I want you to contact the prosecutor. Ensure we have a meeting as soon as possible. It’s important the police drop the charges before the end of the afternoon.’

  ‘You can’t get out of here for another day at least.’

  He finished the note.

  ‘Give this to Morten.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘All it says is that he should tell the truth. That’s what they want, isn’t it? That’s what you want.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘I have to get out of here by tonight. Please help me.’ He held the note across the table. ‘And thanks for the contribution.’

  Phillip Bressau was on the phone when Meyer and Lund walked into his office.

  He put his hand over the receiver.

  ‘The mayor’s not here.’

  ‘No problem,’ Meyer said. ‘We came for you.’

  ‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’

  ‘Five minutes. Then you’re done.’

  They sat around a coffee table, Lund taking notes, meek and obedient like a secretary.

  ‘Before the poster party that Friday,’ Meyer said. ‘There was a gathering in Hartmann’s office. You went along?’

  Bressau was neatly dressed for a Saturday. Well-pressed suit, blue shirt, tie.

  ‘Yes. For a while.’

  ‘Did you see Hartmann there?’

  ‘No. I didn’t stay. Work to do. What is this?’

  ‘Just routine,’ Lund said. ‘When you met with Hartmann on the third of August…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hartmann says you met that weekend.’

  ‘I didn’t meet Hartmann.’

  Meyer looked at Lund.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lund asked.

  ‘Absolutely. Is that what he said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It can’t be right.’

  Bressau pulled a diary out of his jacket.

  ‘No. August the third I was in Latvia on an official visit with the mayor. We left on Saturday morning. Hartmann wasn’t a member of the delegation.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ Lund said and scribbled something.

  ‘Is that it?’

  Bressau got up from the table.

  ‘Not quite,’ Meyer said. ‘Can I have your car keys?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll sort out a loan.’

  ‘It’s not here.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Why do you need my car?’

  ‘I’m nosy like that,’ Meyer told him.

  Footsteps at the door. Poul Bremer marched in, glared at them, said, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  Bressau shrugged.

  ‘They’re questioning me now.’

  Jan Meyer laughed.

  ‘You people. You’re so sensitive. We just have some problems with Hartmann’s movements. That’s all. Really—’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been questioning the security staff about Bressau’s car?’

  Poul Bremer looked furious. The two cops fell silent.

  ‘Nothing happens here without me knowing,’ the old man said. ‘Looks like I’m going to be talking to your boss again.’

  Bremer nodded at the door.

  ‘Close it behind you, please.’

  On the way back to headquarters Lund put out a call for Bressau’s car. A white estate, registration number YJ 23 585.

  ‘I want the car taken in for forensic investigation.’

  Meyer was driving. Not so fast any more. No cigarettes. No banana.

  ‘If he called Nanna twenty-one times from Latvia someone must have noticed,’ Lund said.

  Meyer nodded.

  ‘There were ten people on that little jamboree,’ he said. ‘Seven were businessmen.’

  ‘Anyone who wasn’t in Bremer’s camp?’

  ‘Just the one. Jens Holck from the Moderates.’

  She remembered the figure in black, scuttling out of Hartmann’s poster party in the TV reporter’s video.

  ‘Let’s get his address,’ Lund said.

  When Theis Birk Larsen came to he was in a hard single bunk bed in a small whitewashed room that stank of stale booze, men and sweat. Bedrolls and backpacks littered the floor. There were others around him. Half-naked men under thin sheets, snoring and groaning.

  His limbs ached. He was covered in cuts and bruises.

  The door opened. Someone walked through and said, ‘I see you’re awake.’

  A light came on. The man crouched by the side of the bunk. He had an ancient brown cardigan and long white hair. The lined and whiskery face of a fallen saint.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Where are my things?’

  ‘You got beaten up. They took most of your stuff.’

  He half-sat up in the bed. The bunk above was so low he could go no further.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘The Holy Cross hostel. I’m the duty warden. You were lying in a doorway in Skydebanegade. You didn’t want to go to the hospital. You didn’t want to call home. So we brought you here. Nothing broken. We checked.’

  He tried to struggle out of the bed but couldn’t.

  ‘You talked about your daughter.’

  Back on the hard mattress, staring at the iron frame, thinking, hurting.

  ‘You’re Theis Birk Larsen,’ the warden said. ‘Some of the Vesterbro men know you. You had a reputation I gather.’

  Birk Larsen wiped his hand across his face, looked at the blood.

  ‘It’s OK. Stay where you are. I’ll get you some soup.’

  One last effort. He took hold of the iron frame.

  ‘No. I can’t stay.’

  On the edge of the bed. No boots. No coat. Nothing of his he could see. Just a damaged man of middle age, once king of the quarter, now an
old and bloody fool.

  ‘A night here would be for the best,’ the man said.

  Birk Larsen tried to move and couldn’t. With a long, pained groan he fell back on the sheets.

  ‘Maybe we can help, Theis.’

  ‘No you can’t,’ he said straight off.

  ‘Maybe…’

  ‘I said you can’t.’

  Birk Larsen’s powerful hand, cuts on the knuckles, bruises on the wrist, rose, pointed to a crucifix in the corner.

  ‘You can’t help and he can’t either.’

  A fleeting expression on the man’s grey and bloodless face. It wasn’t pleasant.

  ‘I’ll get you some soup then,’ he said.

  The arguments at the cemetery went on and on, and were never resolved. It was dark by the time they left. Lotte drove. The boys sat silent and scared in the back.

  Pernille watched the city lights as they threaded through the Saturday traffic. She hadn’t spoken since the blazing row in the cemetery office. Vagn had returned to the depot to work on some orders. Lotte felt left in charge.

  ‘What do two hungry boys want for dinner?’ she asked as brightly as she could.

  They’d pass Tivoli on the way. The fairground would be lit. If she’d had the money she’d have taken them there out of desperation.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Emil said in a slow, bored, lilting voice.

  ‘Dad’s big pancakes and jam!’ Anton cried.

  Emil hit him for that. Lotte heard it.

  Pernille sat in the passenger seat still crazy from the argument.

  ‘OK,’ Lotte said. ‘Pancakes it is.’

  Traffic lights. Groups of men and women heading off to the bars. Saturday night in the city.

  ‘In that case,’ Lotte added, smiling at them in the mirror, ‘we’re going to need some milk and eggs.’

  She turned to her sister.

  ‘Pernille?’

  That wild-eyed look Lotte hated.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she added quickly. ‘I can make them.’

  ‘Lotte.’

  Pernille’s hand was on the door. It looked as if she was ready to step out into the moving traffic.

  ‘Can you watch the boys tonight?’

  ‘Sure. If you want. Why?’

  Pernille didn’t answer. She turned and said, ‘You go to Auntie Lotte’s house tonight and eat pancakes. OK?’

  Not a word, then Anton asked, ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  She was back looking through the traffic again, at the lights and the people on the street.

  ‘No.’

  A junction. Bars. Neon. People. Anonymity in the night.

  ‘Let me out here.’

  Lotte kept driving.

  ‘Let’s go home. I’m sure Vagn’s found Theis by now.’

  Pernille picked up her bag.

  ‘Let me out here,’ she said again.

  The car kept on.

  She was screaming now.

  ‘I said let me out here! Let me, let me, let me…’

  Eyes clouding over, heart beating, Lotte pulled in to the side of the road.

  Her sister was gone in an instant without another word.

  Hartmann was back in the interview room with his lawyer and a prison guard, facing Brix across the table.

  Calm now. Something of his old self. Talking about that Friday, the party, the round of meetings, of get-togethers in the winding, labyrinthine corridors of the Rådhus.

  ‘Do you believe in God?’ he asked Brix.

  ‘I came here for this?’ the lean policeman grumbled.

  ‘No. You came for your own enjoyment. To see me squirm.’

  ‘Troels…’ The woman lawyer was looking worried. ‘Brix is doing you a favour.’

  ‘A favour,’ Hartmann murmured.

  Brix sighed and looked at his watch.

  ‘I don’t believe in God,’ Hartmann said. ‘Never did. But sometimes I wonder if that’s just a kind of… cowardice. Because the worst thing of all would be believing, putting everything you have in that simple faith. Then waking up one morning and discovering it was all one big, cruel joke.’

  ‘Troels…’ the woman said again.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’

  The question was aimed at Brix, not her.

  ‘That night in the Rådhus. It was our anniversary. I was surrounded by all these smiling, glittering people. I had my face on the posters. Everyone loved Troels Hartmann.’

  A cold and incisive glance across the table.

  ‘The man who would bring the Bremer years to an end.’

  Hartmann laughed, at himself, at his own stupidity.

  ‘And it didn’t mean a damned thing. I knew it right then. All the champagne, all the food and congratulations. I just thought of her. Of how much I missed her. Of what I’d lost. For good…’

  Eyes closed, remembering.

  ‘They didn’t see a thing. Just Troels Hartmann, going about his business. Laughing, joking, smiling. And all the while I was asking… why?’

  Hartmann’s fingers tapped at his chest.

  ‘What did I do to deserve all this? All this… meaningless… shit.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I was the priest who got a letter from God and it read… well more fool you. So I did what a good brave man does. I slunk off and got stinking drunk. There…’ He nodded at Brix. ‘A confession.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I couldn’t face Rie. So I got a cab and went to the cottage.’

  His eyes drifted to the window and the dark night outside.

  ‘My wife always loved that place. It was hers.’

  ‘The window?’ Brix asked.

  ‘When I got there I realized I didn’t have a key. So I smashed it. Cut myself a little. Drunks do.’

  ‘And you were alone?’

  ‘With a lot of memories.’

  ‘Hartmann…’

  ‘Don’t ask me how it happened. I can’t explain. I’ve tried. Believe me. Maybe because I was drunk and stupid and pitiful. And weak.’

  He tapped the table and said more loudly, ‘Weak. The weak man said that if I was to put an end to this shit it was best it happened in our cottage.’

  Dry, hollow laughter.

  ‘Can you imagine how idiotic that is? She loved that place.’ His eyes closed in pain. ‘What she would have thought…’

  Brix and the lawyer waited.

  ‘So I stuffed mattresses over the windows, towels under the doors. Then I turned on the gas, got on the bed and waited.’

  There was a knock at the door. Meyer walked in, looked at Brix, said, ‘Got a minute?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Not now!’

  Meyer grunted and left.

  When he was gone, Hartmann continued.

  ‘When I woke up the next morning the door had blown open. I never closed it properly I guess. Or maybe I was a clumsy drunk. Or perhaps… she’d come along and said, no more of this, Troels. No more. I can’t explain it so don’t ask. Then Morten came and found me and drove me home.’

  ‘Morten Weber will corroborate this story,’ the woman added quickly.

  Brix was silent.

  ‘That’s it,’ Hartmann concluded.

  ‘And you didn’t tell us any of this because of the election? You were worried about your reputation?’

  Troels Hartmann met his gaze.

  ‘There’s nothing I’ve said to you in confidence that didn’t make it into the papers the next day. That worried me, I admit. I was concerned for Rie as well. I wanted to keep her out of it.’

  A long breath, a long look.

  ‘But mostly I was ashamed. Afraid. I thought that by admitting it I might let that black thing back into my life. Which makes me a bigger fool than even I appreciated. Because really…’

  Hartmann laughed.

  ‘I just set it free.’ He watched Brix’s eyes. ‘Can you understand that?’

  ‘Yes,’ the policeman said. ‘I can.’


  ‘Well, that’s it.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Are you going to plaster that all over the papers now?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Brix said.

  He nodded to the guard.

  ‘Take him back to the cell.’

  The man in uniform moved. Hartmann evaded his arms.

  ‘I told you the truth! What is this?’

  The lawyer was agitated.

  ‘This is the truth,’ she said. ‘Morten Weber confirms his story.’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ Brix said. ‘Perhaps I’ll charge him as an accomplice.’

  He gestured to the guard.

  Hartmann was on his feet, arms up, still resisting.

  ‘I need to be in the Rådhus. Now!’

  The guard grabbed him. Hartmann held up his hands.

  ‘Call Morten! Is this Bremer again?’

  ‘Out!’ Brix ordered, and watched him dragged from the room.

  Next door Meyer was going through more reports from forensics. Brix walked in, saw the stamp on the cover, said, ‘I hope to God they’ve found some hard evidence Nanna Birk Larsen was in that cottage.’

  Meyer shook his head.

  ‘Not a thing. Not a single head of hair. No evidence of sexual activity. No sign of violence. Lund said—’

  Brix snatched the report from him, tore through the pages.

  ‘Forget Lund. There were traces of blood in the utility room.’

  ‘Yes. Fish blood. Very old.’ Meyer leaned back in his chair. ‘Is fishicide a crime? I don’t recall—’

  Brix’s phone rang. He listened. Barked, ‘No, I damned well didn’t. Let me deal with it.’

  He glared at Meyer.

  ‘Has Lund put out a call for Phillip Bressau’s car?’

  ‘You mean the white car he can’t account for? The white car he’s hiding from us? Yes. She has. Bressau’s probably the hit-and-run driver.’

  ‘Bressau’s wife and children are at Soro police station. They were stopped by a patrol. The car doesn’t have a scratch.’

  ‘It’s a white car from City Hall. I don’t believe it, Brix. The car that killed Olav Christensen came from there.’ Meyer was close to losing it. ‘Every time we step inside the Rådhus those bastards go out of their way to lie to us. Why doesn’t this bother you? Who did you just speak to?’

  ‘You’re a big disappointment to me sometimes. Where’s Lund?’

  Meyer ran his finger down the address list and the tally of white cars. Life had been too busy to get far with them. He hadn’t even checked two thirds down the list. Until then.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he muttered then grabbed for the phone.