The Killing tk-1

by David Hewson

  Lund didn’t answer Meyer’s call. She’d tracked down Jens Holck to a half-finished block of flats in Valby and was listening to him talk about the Latvia trip.

  ‘You saw Phillip Bressau?’

  ‘Only on the plane over and then back again. He doesn’t say much. Bremer and Bressau went to some meetings in Riga. The rest of us stayed in Saldus.’

  Holck looked tired, unshaven. He might have been drinking.

  ‘Did Bressau make many calls?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Do you still have the itinerary for the trip? Hotels. That kind of thing. It would be a big help.’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘I’ll have a look,’ Holck said. ‘Wait here.’

  She watched him go back into the building. A light went on upstairs. Lund walked over to the garage, wandered down the ramp.

  The place was a converted warehouse. The basement seemed big, probably had some industrial use once.

  She pulled out a torch. Shone it into the black maw ahead.

  Nothing.

  Walked further.

  At the very end stood a shape draped in a black tarpaulin.

  Lund looked at her phone. No signal.

  She walked up to the tarpaulin, dragged it off from the front.

  Stood back and looked.

  A white estate car. Windscreen smashed and smeared with blood. Front a wreck. Blood there too. Driver-side mirror hanging against the door.

  Enough.

  She cut the torch, marched back into the cold, gloomy night, went back to the unmarked police car.

  No keys.

  Lund checked the dashboard, the floor. Kept looking.

  Went into the glovebox. Snatched the Glock from beneath the packs of Nicotinell and tissues.

  Held it low. Looked around.

  ‘Holck?’ Lund called. ‘Holck?’

  Meyer was driving like a lunatic, blue light flashing, alone. Fielding a stupid call from Brix in his ear.

  ‘Did Lund call?’ Meyer asked.

  ‘Don’t ever walk out on me,’ Brix bellowed. ‘Get back here.’

  ‘I’m going to Holck’s house. He had an affair with Nanna. He got the key to the flat from Olav.’

  ‘The accounts show Hartmann approved the money.’

  ‘Oh wake up, man! Holck doctored them. He’s been fitting up Hartmann all along. Holck’s got a white estate. No one’s seen it since Olav got killed.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘I gave Lund Holck’s address! She’s there on her own. Send some patrol cars now.’

  ‘What about Hartmann?’

  ‘Hartmann’s nothing to do with it! We need to get to Lund now! You know what she’s like. She’ll walk in blind on her own.’

  A long pause. Meyer threw the car round the side of a sluggish delivery van, slammed on the horn, forced a couple of vehicles coming the other way onto the kerb.

  ‘I’ll send one car,’ Brix said. ‘Keep me posted.’

  Lennart Brix called Hartmann back to the interview room and ordered him to take a seat.

  ‘Have you heard from my lawyer?’

  ‘I want to ask you about Jens Holck.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake. I’ve told you everything I know. There’s an important vote at—’

  ‘Could Holck have doctored your books?’

  ‘What are you talking about? What books?’

  ‘The accounts that show you authorized the money for Olav.’

  ‘So now you think Jens did it?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘Maybe. I run the department. I don’t do book-keeping.’

  A glance at his notes then Brix asked, ‘Has Holck been acting strangely?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that?’

  Brix’s phone rang.

  ‘She’s not at the address I gave you,’ Meyer said. ‘The house was for sale.’

  ‘Is she at City Hall?’

  ‘No. I called. You’ve got to put out a call for her.’

  ‘It’s not the first time Lund’s gone off on her own.’

  ‘Listen to me, Brix! There’s something really wrong here. She’s on her own and I’m damned sure Holck’s our man.’

  ‘You’ve been sure in the past too.’

  ‘Are you going to help me or not?’

  Brix took the phone away from his ear, looked at Hartmann.

  ‘Where’s Jen Holck living at the moment?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Holck isn’t at his house. Do you have another address for him?’

  ‘I don’t know. He got divorced a few months ago. I think he’s been living with relatives.’

  ‘What relatives?’

  ‘I don’t know. What’s going on?’

  Brix picked up the phone.

  ‘Hartmann says he’s staying with relatives. He doesn’t know where.’

  He cut the call. Hartmann was staring at the clock on the wall. Twenty past eight.

  ‘If you think Holck did it why am I here?’

  Brix waved to one of the guards.

  ‘Take him back to his cell.’

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Hartmann whined. ‘The meeting starts soon.’

  He struggled as the guard grabbed his arm, fought a little, not much.

  ‘You know I didn’t do it. Do you think you can bury all this when I get free? Do you think that’s going to happen, Brix?’

  The tall cop stopped by the door.

  ‘Here’s the deal,’ Hartmann said, leaning across the table. ‘I walk from here. I do nothing about the persecution. The false arrest. The illegal search and entry. The trouble I could cause you… I forget everything.’

  Brix was listening.

  ‘In return you keep what I told you private. Truly private. No leaks to the press. No hints about a suicide attempt. Nothing. You say Hartmann was interviewed because of a misunderstanding. Found innocent, released. End of story.’

  Brix took a deep breath, put a long finger to his cheek.

  ‘I could be Lord Mayor within a week. It’s best we have good relations. We should start that now.’ He held out his hand. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Stay there,’ Brix ordered.

  Then he walked out into the corridor and called control.

  ‘Put out a search for Lund.’

  No sign of Holck anywhere. Lund walked down into the basement for a second look.

  Torch in left hand, gun in her right, she moved ahead, searching, sweeping.

  The place smelled of damp and dust and spilled oil. There were sets of tools in racks on the walls. A stack of wooden pallets. An engine in pieces. A half-built piece of furniture, a wardrobe maybe, bare wood with hammers, screwdrivers, nails and a saw by the side.

  No sign of Holck.

  She moved on, past bags of cement, past tiles and bricks.

  The Glock trembled in her hand. She’d never fired it, not outside the practice range. The white beam of the torch shook with her movement. Caught nothing.

  Stupid, she thought. Going in on her own. Not calling Meyer. Bringing in back-up, some help.

  Why did she do this?

  Lund had no idea. It was how she was. Who she was.

  The woman who clawed her way to the rank of Vicekriminalkommissær in homicide. Kept her job through results, not politics or some concept of equality she privately despised.

  She was a good cop. A good mother. Someone who cared.

  But she was on her own, still. Maybe always would be. An outsider. An awkward fit, with her plain clothes, simple ponytail, her shining eyes that never ceased looking.

  Lund went in alone because she felt like it. She wanted to be first. To see their faces when they came later, following.

  Usually it worked.

  One last flash of the beam into the corner. A row of ceramic shapes, baths and washbasins, toilets and bidets.

  Lund swore, turned, was walking to the exit, determined
to call Meyer, furious with herself for being so stupid, so impetuous.

  A shape flitted through the dark, left to right.

  The gun stayed where it was. Down. A weapon wasn’t her first natural response and never would be.

  She wanted to talk first. She wanted to know.

  ‘Holck…’

  The shape again. Something his hand. A wheel brace, four steel iron legs, like a weapon from the Middle Ages.

  Closer.

  Too close.

  She could hear him. The sweep of his arm.

  The gun moved but not much and not quickly.

  He dodged to one side, was replaced by something flashing through the torch beam towards her.

  The hard iron fell on Sarah Lund’s skull, sent her crashing to the hard floor.

  It was a business hotel in Bredgade just off the shopping street of Strøget. A hundred kroner for a Scotch. Not much less for a beer.

  Pernille sat at the bar, bag by her side. Third stop of the night. Hard spirits in every one.

  The way it used to be when she was young and nothing really mattered. When she could sneak out past her parents, go down to the rough areas, the forbidden places, see where the night took her.

  By her side was a man she’d have laughed at back then. Portly, self-satisfied, tanned, in a suit that was a touch too small for him. But he was buying.

  ‘I’ve got my own company,’ he said, ordering some more drinks. ‘I started it from scratch.’

  It was a hotel bar. They were the only people there. The locals never came. Only visitors stranded in the city, lonely for the night.

  ‘It took me five years.’ He was Norwegian. ‘I’ve got thirty employees, a branch in Denmark, and production in Vietnam.’

  The television was on. It was talking about a fresh turn in the City Hall elections.

  He moved his seat closer, saw she was watching the TV.

  ‘A nasty case. It made the papers in Oslo.’

  ‘The council will vote on excluding Hartmann,’ the newsreader said. ‘He’s due to be charged, though we’re now hearing from sources this may not…’

  He touched her arm.

  ‘Do you travel a lot?’ The man laughed. ‘They say life’s nothing without travel. They don’t do it for business. Twenty nights a month…’

  He toasted her.

  ‘But sometimes you get to talk to a nice lady, in a nice bar. It’s not so bad.’

  He was smiling and it was close to a leer.

  She took a long swig of the drink. She didn’t much like it.

  Didn’t much like anything any more. The boys. Lotte. Theis. Locked in this endless search, the hunt for an explanation, a reason, her life had entered a strange limbo. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t feel, couldn’t laugh, think straight.

  Pernille thought of her old self, the pretty young girl, the one who flitted from bar to bar in dark and dirty Vesterbro, tempting the young blades till she found the right one.

  Nothing mattered.

  Then and now.

  She looked at the man next to her. Wondered what he was like at that age. Cocky. Good-looking. Weak and obedient.

  ‘Let’s go to your room,’ she said.

  The Norwegian stared at her, dumbstruck.

  Pernille got up, picked her bag off the floor.

  With anxious fingers he grabbed his key.

  ‘Put it on the tab,’ he said to the barman then followed her to the door.

  The room wasn’t big. Double bed. Shiny table. Laptop on a desk. The kind of bad-taste furnishing no one bought but a hotel.

  He was flustered, nervous, fumbling with the key, slapping the wall for the light switch.

  There were clothes on the bed. A shirt. Underpants.

  He grabbed them off the sheets, threw them into a cupboard.

  ‘I didn’t know I’d have company. Do you want a drink?’

  It was the size of Nanna’s room. Nothing personal here. Nothing she would remember.

  ‘When I was a student I worked as a barman at the Grand Hotel in Oslo.’

  He said this as if it was one of his great achievements. Like starting his own company and having a factory in Vietnam.

  Two gins from the minibar. A single bottle of tonic. He bounced the bottles on the tiny tabletop, splashed the spirit into the glasses.

  ‘Ha! See! I still have it.’

  No, smaller than Nanna’s she thought. A box for a faceless man. A place outside the life she knew.

  ‘Gin and tonic. No ice. No lemon.’

  He shrugged. He was drunker than she had realized. So, perhaps, was she, though there was a sense of clarity here. Of purpose even.

  The drink was in her hand. She didn’t touch it, didn’t want it.

  She thought of Theis. Rough, coarse Theis. No manners, no fine words.

  No delicate thoughtful touches, only a direct and physical embrace.

  Yet there was something sensitive, even tender in him. Had to be. Why else did she love him, marry him, bear him three children?

  The Norwegian was different.

  Drink in hand, drink on breath, he stood next to her, brushed aside her long chestnut hair, damp from the rain. Stroked her cheek with his pale fingers.

  Tried to kiss her.

  The glass fell from her fingers. Bounced booze on the plush hotel carpet.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded concerned more than disappointed. ‘I’m not much good at this.’

  It was a lie, she thought.

  ‘I thought…’He shrugged. ‘No matter.’

  He picked up the glass, put it on the minibar. When he turned she was on the bed.

  Puzzlement and hope in his face. A nice-looking man. No name.

  Not at all like Theis, who could only dream of going to a place like Vietnam. Who struggled to pay ten workers let alone fifty.

  ‘Another drink?’ he asked.

  She said words she’d not uttered in years, and then to one man only.

  ‘Take my clothes off.’

  He laughed, looked foolish.

  ‘Are you sure? I mean… you seem a bit…’

  She closed her eyes. She let her head roll back, mouth half open.

  She smiled.

  A kiss then. He was on her. Fumbling, feeling. Boozy lips against her neck. Panting too quickly, as if trying to convince himself.

  Pernille lay back on the hard double bed, let his arms engulf her, as he writhed and tugged desperately at the dark blue dress.

  These clothes she wore when she placed Nanna’s urn in the brown earth. She didn’t want them any more, or anything to do with them.

  Theis Birk Larsen drank his soup, found what things he still had left, checked his cuts, begged plasters. Got dressed in his scarlet work suit, his black leather jacket.

  The white-haired man from the hostel watched him.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want to stay? It’s not the Radisson I know…’

  ‘Thanks for your help. I have to go.’

  Handshake. A firm, determined grip.

  ‘You’re welcome. Any time.’

  He tidied away the bedclothes.

  ‘I lost something that mattered once,’ the man said. ‘How and why doesn’t matter. But that’s what happened.’

  It was nearly nine in the evening. He pulled on his black woollen hat.

  ‘Life wasn’t worth living. And all the guilt made me do awful things. I hated myself. What I’d become.’

  He handed Birk Larsen a lighter and a pack of cigarettes.

  ‘Keep them. I hated life itself. But today I see there’s a plan behind everything.’

  He said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Birk Larsen lit a cigarette.

  ‘What seemed like the end turned out to be a beginning.’

  Smoke in the little room that smelled of booze and sweat and men.

  ‘God gives us hardship for a reason. Not that we understand that when we’re up to our necks in shit.’

  ‘A plan?
’ Birk Larsen said and couldn’t stop the sneer.

  ‘Oh yes. There’s a plan, Theis. For you. For me. For everyone. We’re walking down the road that’s given us whether we know it or not. What’s waiting at the end…’

  Birk Larsen took a deep pull on the cigarette. He didn’t want to see this man again. Didn’t like the way he looked at him, demanding answers.

  ‘Say something, Theis.’

  ‘Say what?’ Birk Larsen snapped and felt ashamed at the sudden fierceness in his voice. ‘Before I met my wife, before the kids I did a lot of bad things.’

  He glared at the man.

  ‘Not your kind. Beyond your league. I hurt people because I thought they earned it. I did…’

  His narrow eyes closed in pain.

  ‘Enough of this shit.’

  There was a crucifix on every wall, a slender broken figure staring down at each shambling body that passed through the door.

  ‘It was a long time ago.’ He pointed at the figure of Christ in his agony. ‘But I don’t think that guy’s quite forgotten. So all I got was parole. A little time with my family. And now that’s done.’

  Too many words. He was back to the cigarette, sly eyes stinging in the smoke, watching the man from the hostel.

  ‘I’m sure there’s something, Theis. Some help, some comfort that gives you and your family hope.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Birk Larsen said. ‘There could be.’

  He looked at the man.

  ‘I just don’t think you’d find it very Christian.’

  Finally the white-haired man seemed out of words.

  ‘Goodnight,’ Birk Larsen mumbled then walked outside into the damp cold street.

  A sudden start, a bright red pain at the back of her skull. Lund came to on the floor of the basement garage, tried to stand, could barely move. Her hands were tied, her ankles too. The place was lit now. She was by the white estate car. Not far from the half-made wardrobe and the tools.

  Scrabbled on the floor, breathing in the dust, the oil fumes, the smell of sawdust.

  And cigarette smoke.

  She managed to work herself round until she saw the tiny red fire flickering in the corner.

  Eyes adjusting.

  Holck sat on what looked like an oil barrel, puffing on a cigarette. A man deciding what to do.

  You talk, Lund thought. The gun was gone. Nothing left.

  ‘Untie me, Holck. You know this can’t work.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Come on.’

  Silence.