by David Hewson
The line went dead. Hartmann found the remote control. Turned on the TV. Listened to the news.
‘Poul Bremer had another stroke late last night. He’s withdrawn from the election for the next city council. Bremer has been Lord Mayor of Copenhagen for twelve years. Our political editor says his decision to pull out of the race makes the election of Troels Hartmann a certainty…’
A knock on the door. A smiling blonde woman in a green dress came through. She had newspapers in her hand and said, cheerily, ‘Good morning.’
Looked at the mess, the state of him, still smiling. The broken window.
‘We’ll clear this up,’ she said. ‘There’ll be photos later. I’m sending in a man to fix the glass.’
Came to the desk, held out her hand. He took it. Warm and soft.
‘Maja Randrup. I’m Rie Skovgaard’s replacement. Morten asked me to step in.’
She placed some printouts in front of him.
‘He gave me your speech to type up. I read it. Very good.’
With dainty steps she started picking up things from the floor. His jacket. The empty glass. The decanter and the folders. Still smiling.
‘I suggested a few changes after I heard about Bremer,’ she said, setting an overturned chair upright.
‘Morten and I think they set the right tone. Sympathetic but determined to do right by the city. To take the good parts of Bremer’s legacy, build on them, and add to them your own.’
A turn of the room, checking everything. A wave of her hand.
‘There’s a shower here, right? You’ve got shaving things. I’ll bring in fresh clothes.’
Didn’t wait for an answer.
‘We need you fit for purpose in forty-five minutes.’
Grabbed the brandy decanter. Kept it.
‘It’s too bad you had to win this way. But let’s face it, winning’s winning. There’ll be some free time in your calendar after the press conference. Morten says you should take it. Go home. Stay out of public view as much as you can for the next couple of days. The campaign’s over. Now we just wait.’
She opened the windows. The cold November gale grew bolder, making him shiver, teeth chattering, mind locked in blunt, dumb pain.
Sounds of traffic. Still dark. The blue neon of the hotel.
He sat at the desk, head still swimming, looked at her. An attractive woman. Thirty or so. Tight green shiny shirt. Good figure. No ring on her finger. She knew he was checking.
Maja Randrup picked up the picture of him with Nanna.
‘I’ll take this now,’ she said and left the room.
The lawyer met Pernille Birk Larsen in the circling corridor opposite the jail block.
‘He’ll be in court first thing. Afterwards they’ll probably send him to Vestre prison. I won’t waste your money trying to get bail.’
Lis Gamborg. The same woman who’d argued for Theis, for Vagn too when he demanded it. Pernille didn’t know many lawyers. Didn’t want to.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll call when I have a time for the court appearance.’
Then she left.
Pernille stood in the narrow corridor, looked outside. Day was breaking. Bright and clear. In the yard below a group of prison officers marched a big man in a blue prison suit, handcuffed, a bandage on his temple, out towards a van.
She started to run.
Down the winding spiral stairs, feet flying. Pushing cops and guards, lawyers and stumbling drunks out of her way.
Two flights and she found herself in the grey concrete car park. Heads were turning, people starting to shout.
He was halfway across the yard, a uniformed officer on each arm, walking the way he always did. Head upright, eyes ahead. Mouth locked shut. Mute and waiting for whatever the day brought.
‘Theis!’
They’d caught sight of her now.
‘Theis!’
And so had he.
A policewoman raced to her, grabbed her arm.
Pernille fought free, arms flailing. Fought the next one.
Ran and ran.
Two guards holding him, reaching for their truncheons, looking round.
In the light of a rosy winter dawn Pernille Birk Larsen kicked and punched and screamed her away across the narrow yard, flung herself on him, arms round his neck, legs on the massive tree trunk of his frame.
Face against face. Smooth cheek against rough. Words she’d never remember, not that it mattered.
Her strength with his. His with hers.
Briefly locked together. A love unspoken. A commitment reaffirmed.
When they dragged her from him he stood there, too big to move easily.
She never knew what was in his eyes. Never would. Never wanted to. What mattered was in the heart, and there they were one.
Eight thirty. Fresh suit, fresh shirt. Fresh air in the office. An aerosol to mask the overnight stink of brandy. No papers on the floor.
Maja Randrup stood in front of him. Adjusted his tie. Checked his hair. His face.
‘Don’t sound victorious,’ she said. ‘The media may be calling the election. There’s no one else to win it. But a little humility doesn’t go amiss.’
She stood back to consider him, the way a window dresser might judge a mannequin.
Gave him the speech.
Troels Hartmann didn’t look at it. Didn’t need it. He knew every word.
Her smile dropped for a moment. He wondered if he’d disappointed her somehow.
Disappointing people was bad. They remembered. They held it against you.
This was politics. Satisfaction. Delivery. Image. Appearance. These were paramount.
The caustic glance was aimed at his desk, not him. She spoke of the coming photo shoot. Of the need for a visible, consistent personality.
‘We don’t need this,’ Maja Randrup said and tucked the photo of Jack and Jackie beneath her arm. ‘It’s too…’
She screwed up her snub nose. A gesture he liked.
‘Too old.’
In his clean shirt and fresh cologne, feeling light-hearted but not so bad, Troels Hartmann stood and waited. To be told.
A knock on the door. Morten Weber nodding. To her not to him.
‘Is he ready?’ Weber asked.
She speaks. Troels Hartmann doesn’t listen. On Weber’s cue, behind the little man with the wayward curly hair and cheap gold glasses, he walks out of the office, out through the Liberals’ quarters, along the shining walkways, past doors opening, past curious faces.
Close to the great room Morten Weber starts to clap. Maja Randrup does the same. The applause catches like fire on a dry heath.
He walks on to the polished grandeur of the council chamber, a place so bright it dazzles his eyes.
Sees the doors. Halts. Steps through them.
Sees the cameras, the faces, the hands clapping, the hands clapping.
Stands on the podium by the great throne of Copenhagen.
Walks to the polished seat, places a firm hand on the old wood.
Turns to the crowd, the cameras, the expectant faces.
And smiles.
And smiles.
And smiles.
Fourteen
A bright day, painted in sparse colours. Winter was falling on Copenhagen, the salt air sharp and cold, the sun harsh and dazzling. Lund sat outside the hospital shivering in the thin blue cagoule. Her belongings were still in Vibeke’s basement. Just a few clothes and a washbag had followed her to the hostel room she’d taken by Central Station, wondering what to do, where next to go.
She’d been about to go inside an hour earlier only to see Hanne Meyer and her children turn up in a cab as she approached the entrance. So Lund waited, hugging herself in the too-flimsy jacket, sitting on a wall, smoking, clutching the folder Jansen had smuggled to her that morning, running through the options in her overactive mind.
At a quarter to eleven they left, hunched against the cold.
Lund tucked the folder beneath her jac
ket, pulled the hood over her face, stayed where she was till they were out of sight.
Then she went to the hospital reception, pleaded for entry.
It took ten minutes. Finally she was led down a long white corridor to a private room at the end. The police would be paying. They had to in the circumstances.
She walked in, was briefly dazzled by the light from the long windows.
A shape by the glass. White hospital gown, blue pyjamas underneath, gleaming silver wheelchair.
Pale face, stubbly skin. Big ears. Pop eyes that seemed sadder than ever. A saline bag on a silver IV stand, a line running into the back of his left hand.
The television was on. Troels Hartmann’s coronation as Lord Mayor of Copenhagen. He was taking his seat in the council chamber, majestic as he waved to an audience on its feet, applauding enthusiastically, heralding the new master of the Rådhus.
Young and vigorous. Full of energy and hope.
Hope.
Meyer sat at a round table. He had a short knife in his hand and was peeling an apple very slowly, the line of the drip shifting up and down with each sluggish movement.
‘I brought you something,’ Lund said and pulled out two bananas from her pocket.
He looked at the yellow fruit, no expression on his face.
‘I knew you’d beat it. I couldn’t see your name on a wall in the Politigården.’
Pale blue pyjamas. White smock.
Hartmann was starting to make a speech on the TV.
‘Bastard,’ Meyer muttered.
Fine words. Noble aspirations. Poul Bremer’s natural heir.
‘He thinks…’ Meyer struggled to find the right words. ‘He thinks being not guilty’s the same as being innocent. They all do. Just wash their hands…’
‘I need—’
‘They lied to us. The kids. The teacher. Those sons of bitches in the Rådhus.’
‘You’ve got to—’
‘Every last one of them. They didn’t give a fuck about Nanna. It was all about them.’
He reached for the remote. Hartmann was getting into his stride. Talking about responsibility and social cohesion. Integration and sustainable development.
The Birk Larsen case was dead, gone for good. It hadn’t been mentioned in the press at all that morning.
Meyer turned off the TV. The room became heavy with their silence.
Lund pulled Jansen’s folder out of her jacket.
He stared as she emptied the contents onto the table next to the bananas.
Photos. New ones.
‘What do you want?’ he asked in a high, broken voice.
‘There’s something you need to know. Something…’
It was racing around her head, hadn’t stopped since soon after Vagn Skærbæk died. Jansen’s photos only made it run more quickly, like a movie looping through her imagination. There was evidence there. Dots screaming to be joined. If only someone would help. Someone who trusted her.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can see it. So can you.’
Through the dark wood where the dead trees give no shelter Mette Hauge runs.
Breathless, shivering in her torn shirt and ragged jeans, bare feet stumbling in the clinging mud.
Cruel roots snag her ankles, snarling branches tear her strong and flailing arms. She falls, she clambers, she struggles out of vile dank gullies, trying to still her chattering teeth, to think, to hope, to hide.
Two bright beams follow, like hunters after a wounded deer. Moving in a slow approaching zigzag, marching through the Pinseskoven wasteland, through the Pentecost Forest.
Bare silver trunks rise from barren soil like limbs of ancient corpses frozen in their final throes.
Another fall, the worst. The ground beneath her vanishes and with it her legs. Hands windmilling, crying out in pain and despair she crashes into the filthy, ice-cold ditch, collides with rocks and logs, paddles through sharp and cutting gravel, feels her head and hands, her elbows, her knees, graze the hard invisible terrain that lurks below.
The chill water, the fear, their presence not so far away.
And a savage storm is raging through her head.
She thinks of her parents, alone in their distant farmhouse. A small, quiet world left behind.
Thinks of the day, the tiny pink tab they gave her. The rush, the glee, the promises. The demands.
A cheap gilt chain round her neck. A black heart made of glass. A half-finished tattoo on her ankle.
And then came the fury. The acid magic from Christiania working its livid sorcery. On her. On them.
Out in the bleak lands beyond Kastrup. Hidden in the yellow grass, teeth chattering, blood racing.
An initiation she asked for. A ritual she cannot now reject.
Mette Hauge runs, knowing she is lost. Ahead of her lies nothing but the wasteland, and then the grey chill barrier that is the sea.
Still she flees, then falls.
Falls and waits, fists bunched and ready.
This Lund sees bright and clear in her restless head.
‘The photos…’
Meyer wouldn’t look at them.
‘I got Jansen to go back and check things. Everything we had. What was left in the Merkur store.’
‘I thought you were fired.’
‘Mette’s autopsy. The tape in the Rådhus garage. We never looked properly. You have to look.’
A picture passed across the table.
‘On Mette’s right ankle there are traces of a tattoo. A black heart. Half-finished. I think it happened the day she died. It was part of the… ritual.’
He stared out of the window, blinking at the brilliant winter’s day.
‘It wasn’t done in a tattoo parlour. Not with professional needles. They did this themselves. It came with the ceremony. An ordeal you had to undergo to join.’
Meyer closed his big eyes, sighed.
‘There was a gang called the Black Hearts. Small. They distributed dope and acid and cocaine from Christiania into Vesterbro.’
More papers.
‘There’s some intelligence in the files. They disbanded not long after Mette vanished.’
‘What are you saying, Lund?’
‘I’m saying Mette hung out with them. Wanted to join them. That’s why they gave her the necklace. The tattoo. There was an initiation rite—’
‘You said.’
‘If she wanted to join she had to…’
It’s coming clearer as she speaks. Makes her breath short. Makes her head spin.
‘Had to what?’
‘Let them do anything they wanted. Take whatever dope they pushed on her. It was a biker gang, Meyer. You know what I’m talking about. What she had to pay…’
Pay the price.
Two men. One she liked. One she hated. Both the same now with the pink tab of acid running through their veins too. A lone beast, a single intent.
Trapped in the mud and the mire, half naked, screaming at the lowering sky, Mette Hauge sees them.
Feels them.
Hand on her, fingers ripping at her clothes.
Faces the decision.
Give in or fight.
A fist in her face. The crack of bone. The shriek of fear and pain.
A choice made. In the Pentecost Forest where none can hear.
‘Here,’ Lund said.
Another photo. Nanna in the Rådhus security office, talking to Jens Holck, asking for the keys to the flat in Store Kongensgade, telling him she’s leaving.
The picture’s blown up.
Around her throat, fuzzy from the magnification, sits what looks like the black heart necklace.
‘She put it on when she changed after the Halloween party. Nanna had the necklace already.’
Pernille and Lotte both said… she was always going through drawers, looking where she shouldn’t, borrowing things without asking.
‘Nanna found that for herself.’
More pictures. A body floating face down in the water. The autopsy after.
The shot marks of pellet wounds. A dead face. Grey moustache and scar. A fading mark on the arm.
Black heart.
‘John Lynge. Picked out of the water near Dragør on Sunday. Shotgun wounds to the chest and head. He had the tattoo. I got out his files. When he attacked girls before he made them wash. He cut their fingernails.’
‘We cleared the driver,’ Meyer said with a pained, bored groan. ‘He was in hospital.’
She hesitated. He seemed fragile. Upset by her presence.
‘They let him out at seven the next morning. We’ve got the logs. Vagn called the agency that employed him not long after. Birk Larsen used them too. So we never thought much of it. The agency gave him Lynge’s mobile. Vagn talked to him. He was trying to avoid trouble. For Nanna’s sake—’
‘But—’
‘Vagn shot you. Vagn killed Leon Frevert. Killed John Lynge.’
This much was clear.
‘You saw for yourself. He loved that family. Loved the boys. Loved…’ Thinking, imagining. ‘Loved what the Birk Larsens became. Something he could never find for himself.’
‘Lund…’
She peeled the nearest banana, took a bite, liking the way the images formed in her head as she spoke.
‘Vagn didn’t have the black heart tattoo. That part of the wood he took Theis wasn’t where Nanna was attacked. There’s no evidence she was ever there. Vagn didn’t know. Because he didn’t kill her.’
Meyer had his head in his hands, looked ready to weep.
Saturday morning, the day after Halloween, outside the house in Humleby. Bright and sunny. Paper monster masks from the night before blowing up and down the street.
Vagn Skærbæk paced around the plastic sheets and scaffolding, turning to stop and yell at an angry face in the blue glass windows of the basement.
Someone was walking towards him from the green patch of Enghaven park. One day soon Anton and Emil would play there on the new bikes Skærbæk had reserved in the toy shop in Strøget, paying for them with some smuggled alcohol he’d got on the side. Soon…
The man who was approaching was tall and muscular. He stopped at the house, checked the number, looked at the Ford then said, ‘Hi. I’m John. You called about the car.’
One more glance at the black vehicle.
‘It doesn’t look damaged.’
‘It isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with it.’
