The Killing 2

by David Hewson

  ‘I’m pleased we see eye-to-eye finally. You’re a good man and you’ll make a fine minister. We should talk more often. Frankly, as we have.’

  Plough was waving at him from the door.

  ‘Dinner,’ Rossing went on. ‘That’s the thing. There’s a French restaurant I know. Why not tonight?’

  ‘I’ve plans, thank you,’ Buch lied.

  ‘Not another bloody hot dog I hope.’

  ‘Another night. I promise.’

  Plough was waving desperately. Buch said goodbye to Rossing then went into his office. Karina was in a chair, her daughter by the window waving to the entwined dragons.

  ‘Monberg is connected to the military case, Thomas.’ She looked apologetic at saying this. ‘Dragsholm contacted him to complain about errors in procedure.’

  Plough stood by the door, listening. She took some documents out of her bag.

  ‘The investigation ignored the statements made by the soldiers. Monberg knew this was the case—’

  ‘Karina,’ Plough interjected. ‘We know all this. If you’ve come back to try to reclaim your job—’

  ‘Give her a chance,’ Buch ordered.

  ‘At first I found nothing,’ she said, pointing to the documents. ‘Then I looked in the system and cross-checked the soldiers’ names with the files we keep here.’

  ‘You no longer have access to the computers!’ Plough complained.

  Buch stared him into silence.

  ‘The case went through the Ministry of Defence,’ she carried on. ‘But Monberg attended a meeting about an individual soldier.’ She found the sheet. ‘Jens Peter Raben, after he was committed to Herstedvester.’

  ‘The one who’s on the run?’ Plough looked shocked.

  ‘Him,’ she said. ‘There are no minutes of the meeting. If it wasn’t for the line in Monberg’s diary I wouldn’t even know Raben was involved.’

  ‘Karina,’ Buch began. ‘This is all very well . . .’

  ‘Defence Minister Rossing instigated that meeting. I remember taking the call. He was very insistent.’ She shrugged. ‘Monberg wasn’t looking forward to it.’

  Buch rubbed his chin.

  ‘Rossing assured me it was nothing more than an affair. He assured me.’

  ‘Then he lied to you.’

  Plough was tut-tutting.

  ‘He lied!’ she repeated. ‘What else explains it?’

  The two men looked at her in silence.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘You’ve told Rossing you won’t pursue this,’ Plough said. ‘It would be unseemly if you went back on your word.’

  ‘Unseemly?’ Thomas Buch roared. ‘I was buying time, you fool!’

  The quiet civil servant cowered at the volume of his voice.

  Karina’s little girl wasn’t giggling at the dragons any more. She was staring at him and she looked scared.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Buch said, more quietly. ‘I’m really very sorry indeed.’

  The police drove Louise Raben home after they finished the interview. It wasn’t generosity. The two detectives then set about searching her rooms in Jarnvig’s barracks house, taking what they wanted. She sat at the kitchen table. It was the last room they looked at. One man went through the drawers. The other had her diary and her bag.

  He was a cheery, bald man of forty or so. Persistent. Not in a hurry.

  ‘Is this your address book?’ he said, taking it out from the bag.

  ‘Yes. You won’t find anything in there.’

  He put it in his case anyway.

  ‘You’ll get it back.’

  Jonas walked through the door and stood by the table, staring at them balefully.

  A forced smile broke on Louise Raben’s face. This was what mothers were meant to do. Stay bright and cheerful.

  ‘Hi, darling.’ She stroked his brown hair. He didn’t smile. ‘Did you have fun?’

  The tall cop with the address book winked. Jonas stared at him, then the other one.

  ‘They’re helping Mummy clear up,’ Louise said. ‘Nearly done. They’re leaving now.’

  ‘Sign here,’ the man said and gave her a form.

  While she was doing that he bent down and looked at Jonas’s rucksack.

  ‘Nice bag. Did your daddy give you that?’

  ‘No he didn’t,’ Louise snapped, close to breaking.

  The second cop had got hold of the laptop and was putting it in a plastic bag.

  ‘Why are they taking our computer?’ Jonas asked.

  ‘They’re going now. Aren’t you?’

  ‘I want the computer,’ Jonas whined.

  ‘It’s all right, darling.’ She stroked his hair. Again no smile. ‘They just want to borrow it. We’ll get you a PlayStation soon. OK?’

  They went not long after. She got Jonas some food. He didn’t say much, however hard she tried. She’d always thought families fell apart in a flood of screams and shouted accusations. But they didn’t. It happened like this, in silence and unspoken fears.

  After a while he walked away from the food, went to the living room and turned on the TV.

  The buzzing noise of a phone near the cooker. She looked around, made sure no one was looking.

  The police had taken her mobile. She knew they’d do that so she’d slipped the sim into a spare handset and hid it in the stove hood. They weren’t having everything.

  ‘Louise? Hello?’

  ‘It’s me,’ her father said. ‘I think you’d better come over to my office right away.’

  The grey-faced priest, Gunnar Torpe, was in Jarnvig’s office when she got there. Louise Raben had not met him much. Never liked him when she did. She could never work out which he truly was: a man of God or a man of war. Torpe was a bachelor, almost too covetous of his role with the troops. When they went to war he was there. When they left he always seemed a touch resentful at seeing them return to their families. Jealous. That was probably unfair, but true, she thought. It was there in his restless, angry eyes.

  ‘Jens is sick,’ Torpe said, getting to his feet. ‘Terribly sick.’

  She didn’t take the seat he offered. Just stood and watched him, arms folded, under the observant gaze of her father.

  The army was run by men like these. They always knew best.

  ‘We need to get him some help,’ Torpe went on in his sing-song priest’s voice. ‘We have to get him out of harm’s way before he does something really stupid.’

  ‘Did you visit him in jail?’ she asked, not kindly.

  No answer. She knew he’d never been to Herstedvester. Jens had mentioned it.

  ‘I did,’ Louise told him. ‘Week in, week out. I saw him getting better and better. And still they wouldn’t let him go.’

  ‘He needs help now,’ her father said. ‘Call him. Say you want to see him. Let the police do the rest.’

  ‘Just hand him over?’ she cried. ‘Send him back to jail?’

  ‘He’s not right in the head,’ Torpe pleaded. ‘The things he says . . . don’t make sense.’

  ‘Myg dead,’ she said. ‘Grüner. Now Lisbeth Thomsen. This lawyer woman. What does make sense?’

  ‘He’s the last one, Louise . . .’

  Torpe had a soldier’s hands, but he used them like a priest. Now they were pressed together as if in prayer.

  ‘I did try to call him,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t answer.’

  ‘Try again,’ her father demanded.

  She left them in the office. Stood outside in the corridor, watching the activity in the yard beyond. Men in green combat gear lugging equipment, mortars, rifles. Another tour of duty on the way.

  ‘Where are you, Jens?’ she whispered. And then, so softly she barely heard herself, ‘Where am I?’

  Torpe’s church wasn’t far from the rough quarter of Vesterbro. Sex shops, half-hidden brothels. Drug dens. Hookers on the street.

  It wasn’t hard to find the kind of business Raben wanted. A couple of conversations with men near the meat-packing halls. A phone call. A no
d. An address.

  The place turned out to be an abandoned garage not far from the Dybbølsbro bridge. Scaffolding held up the interior walls. There was a stink of open drains. A rusty green VW camper van was parked by the half-arch windows at the end.

  He was big with the face of a boxer: scarred and ugly. Leather jacket. Heavy physique that spoke of body-building and pills.

  Raben looked at him and thought about it. Some men learned to fight in jail. Some got better teachers.

  The thug opened the back door and unwrapped a roll of old carpet. A tiny arsenal sat there. Small-bore pistols. Service revolvers. Semi-automatics.

  Most looked like adapted replicas, dangerous, useless to him.

  Raben’s face must have spoken. The thug brushed aside the cheap fakes and pulled out a black Neuhausen. Swiss semi-automatic. Old but good.

  ‘That came from the army,’ he said. ‘Best weapon I got. I can get four thousand euros for that in Spain.’

  Raben felt it. He knew this kind of gun. Had used it in anger.

  ‘How much are you good for?’

  ‘About six hundred,’ Raben answered.

  The man with the boxer’s face stood over him and grunted.

  ‘Six hundred? You can’t buy an air pistol for that.’

  The magazine was missing. He stuffed the gun into his belt.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  So much training it came as second nature. The bigger they were, the easier they came down.

  Raben jabbed his boot hard into the guy’s shin, pounced when he yelled, took out the leg, jerked him off balance, pushed as he went over. The weight did the rest. Down the man went, cropped skull hard on the cement floor.

  Dazed, bleeding, yelling.

  Raben checked he was stunned, kicked him in the head once for good measure, ran his hands over the leather jacket.

  The magazine was there. This was his gun. Raben slotted it in place. Kept the weapon on the grunting figure on the ground, ran over his jacket again. Took the phone. Took the wallet, checked it. A thousand, that was all.

  They never carried much. It was a risky profession.

  He’d got his head back now. Was staring at Raben from the hard ground in a way that said: I will remember you.

  ‘I need it,’ Raben said.

  The gun came up. The man looked scared. He was meant to.

  ‘Get in the van,’ Raben ordered. ‘Drive away. Don’t think about me. Don’t talk about me. Pray we don’t meet again. Because if we do . . .’

  He jerked the weapon towards the VW. The thug with the bloody boxer’s face struggled to his feet, waddled to the open door, climbed in, drove off.

  When he was outside in the street the phone Torpe had given him rang.

  ‘Louise?’

  ‘I think my dad knows about this number.’

  ‘Did Priest tell him?’

  ‘They’re worried about you, Jens.’

  ‘Do the police know you’re talking to me?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Are you OK? Priest says you’re safer if you give yourself up. He says—’

  ‘I know what I’m doing. We can’t talk now.’

  ‘Jens!’ Her voice was close to breaking. ‘For God’s sake . . . we both—’

  He cut the call and put the mobile in his pocket. Looked round at the sex shops and the sleazy corners of Vesterbro. A couple of shady men in black were talking surreptitiously by the corner. As he watched a young and pretty mother pushed a pram past them, along the line of hookers in miniskirts gathering for the day’s trade.

  Life went on regardless.

  The duty officer at Ryvangen said Søgaard was in the shower after a workout. Lund asked for directions and went straight in.

  The place stank of sweat and cheap body cologne. The air was damp and steamy. She walked past a line of red lockers, past naked men clutching towels to themselves.

  One finally plucked up the courage to challenge her.

  She pulled out her police ID, looked past him.

  ‘I want Major Søgaard.’

  No one spoke. There was laughter from the end, the sound of showers.

  Lund walked on, stopped at the very edge.

  Some of them were out and shaving, dog tags round their necks. Søgaard was still amidst the steam. He didn’t try to cover himself like the others did. Maybe he thought he had something to be proud of.

  Lund glanced, covered a yawn with her hand.

  ‘Yes?’ Søgaard asked, coming out to look at her, naked except for the silver dog tag round his neck.

  ‘We’ve been leaving messages for you all morning.’

  ‘This is my last full day with all my officers. It’s a busy schedule.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about what happened in Afghanistan.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Do we do it here?’ she asked.

  ‘I was going to go for a shit,’ he said, pointing to one side. ‘Do you want to come in there for that?’

  ‘Get your clothes. Or I’ll drag you down to the Politigården right now.’

  ‘My schedule—’

  ‘Fuck your schedule,’ Lund snapped, aware that the men around her were starting to watch, amused. ‘Outside now or you’re in my office for the rest of the day. You choose.’

  She waited by the front door of the building, watching the soldiers go to and fro in their armoured vehicles.

  Søgaard didn’t rush. Twenty minutes later he was there, immaculate in dress uniform, blond hair dried and perfect beneath a dark beret.

  ‘This is a waste of my time,’ he said before she could speak. ‘I know no more than Colonel Jarnvig.’

  ‘Well, that can’t be right, can it?’

  He didn’t like being questioned. Especially by her.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Jarnvig was in Kabul. You were in the camp. You must have witnessed the soldiers’ statements.’

  He laughed at her.

  ‘Civilians. You really have no idea what it’s like, do you?’

  He started walking towards a Mercedes troop carrier. Lund went with him.

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.’

  ‘The soldiers mentioned an officer called Perk.’

  That stopped him. Søgaard looked her up and down.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘They did. They’d been under fire. Three of their comrades were dead. Raben and Grüner were so badly wounded we didn’t know if they’d live. They rambled on about lots of things—’

  ‘Perk?’

  ‘There was no officer out there. No squad under fire. Nobody called Perk.’

  He leaned against the vehicle and peered into her eyes.

  ‘No distress call either. Raben should have confirmed with the camp before going in. He broke procedures. It wasn’t the first time—’

  ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

  Søgaard hesitated.

  ‘He used to be a good soldier. Maybe he got promoted above his temperament.’

  ‘How do you know they didn’t kill this Afghan family?’

  ‘Because I went there. I led the operation that got Raben’s squad out of the shit.’

  He wanted to leave it at that.

  ‘You were the first to get to this village?’ she asked.

  ‘The first from our side. Correct.’

  ‘And you saw nothing significant?’

  ‘I guess it depends what you mean by significant. We picked up three dead soldiers and the rest of them wounded or shell-shocked. Does that count?’

  ‘Civilians—’

  ‘There were no civilians. Dead or alive. There were maybe six or seven houses in the place. All empty. One had taken some kind of hit. The Afghans walk away if there’s trouble. Usually they never come back.’

  Someone was shouting for him from across the road.

  ‘And a few months later they pinned some more medals on you and made you a major?’

  He didn’t like that a
t all.

  ‘Was that a reward for the mission?’

  ‘We saved them, didn’t we? The ones who were still alive.’

  An open-top G-Wagen turned up. Søgaard climbed in.

  ‘If something happened in that village it was your responsibility, wasn’t it?’

  ‘If something happened. But it didn’t. War’s a dirty business. We die. The enemy die. People who get caught in the middle die. We’re out there to get blood on our hands so you don’t see any on yours. End of story.’

  ‘This is about four murders, Søgaard.’

  ‘Good luck with it,’ he muttered then made a circular waving gesture with his hand and the vehicle lurched off.

  Lund stood in the road and watched, ignoring the procession of vehicles behind Søgaard’s, all honking at her to get out of the way.

  She took out her phone and called Strange in the Politigården.

  ‘I want Søgaard’s alibi checked. Where was he? Who did see? What did he do around the time of the killings?’

  ‘OK,’ he agreed. ‘Brix has got some records from the army. All officers stationed abroad in the last ten years. There’s no one called Perk.’

  ‘There’s got to be.’

  ‘Let me finish. Some recruits were trained by a lieutenant they used to call Perk.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘His real name’s Per Kristian Møller. He was with Ægir.’

  The line of army vehicles was getting frantic. Lund could barely hear in the cacophony of horns. Slowly she stepped out of the road and walked to her car.

  ‘Any idea where he is now?’ she asked.

  A moment’s silence.

  ‘Working on it,’ Strange said. ‘Give me an hour.’

  By late afternoon they’d traced Per Kristian Møller to a house in an expensive tree-lined street in Frederiksberg, west of the city, not far from the cemetery where Anne Dragsholm was interred two days before. His mother Hanne was home on her own. The light was gone. A log fire was blazing in the living room as she took them through her son’s army career, sifting through a few of the belongings he’d left behind.

  ‘These,’ she said, showing them a holiday photo, mother, father, strong young son, by the beach, ‘were Per Kristian’s favourite sunglasses. Won’t you sit down? My husband’s abroad but I’ll do all I can to help.’