The Killing 2

by David Hewson

  It was a short walk back to Nørreport Station. From there the trains ran in all directions. She could be in Vibeke’s apartment in a few minutes, calling her mother, trying to make amends for walking out of the wedding. Or she could head out to Vesterbro and try to find the priest, Gunnar Torpe.

  Normally it would have been an easy choice. But Strange’s closing words bothered her. It wasn’t stupid to chase things she didn’t understand. This was what she did. Who she was. And besides . . . what was it to him? A decent, half-competent cop who seemed to have stumbled into the police because he was sick of being a soldier. Ulrik Strange didn’t look much like a man with a career. He’d fallen into what he did and that was never the case with her.

  Lund walked into a cafe opposite the station, bought herself a cappuccino and a sandwich.

  Strange was so unlike Jan Meyer, a man she’d found amusing and infuriating at the same time. There was a seriousness to him. A sense of solitary devotion and duty, one that seemed strengthened by his self-awareness. He knew he was struggling with this case. That was why he clung to her, listened to her, did as she asked, even though they were both, nominally, equals in rank until Brix kicked her out once more.

  She sipped her coffee slowly, took time over the sandwich. Looked at her watch. Quarter to eight. If Strange had done what she asked he’d have been back in the Politigården by now chasing the leads she’d suggested. She could call. But that would be checking. It might annoy him and she didn’t want to do that.

  So she finished her drink, walked to the metro, went down the stairs, looked at the two platforms, one leading to home, the other to Vesterbro and Gunnar Torpe.

  It wasn’t much of a choice at all.

  Thirty minutes later she was in the church. The place seemed deserted. The only lights were on the altar. Three gold candelabra on a white cloth in front of a painting of Mary weeping over the dead Jesus.

  Lund walked down the aisle, looked around. There was a noise from an open door to the right. A dim light beyond there.

  ‘Hello?’ she shouted, and found herself hearing Jan Meyer’s voice out of nowhere. That rough, familiar cigarette-stained croak. It said, You’re not going to go in alone again, Lund? And without a gun?

  These were the tricks your head played sometimes. She went to the door and cried, ‘Anybody there?’

  No answer. She pushed it open.

  ‘Hello?’

  Her voice sounded musical in the echoing interior. It was dark in the room. She found a switch, turned on the single bulb. Jumped back with shock when the first thing it threw at her was a tiled sink stained with splashed blood.

  Hand to the pocket. Nothing there but a phone.

  ‘Shit,’ Lund whispered and did what came naturally. Walked on.

  A second room. In semi-darkness this time, since there was a window to the outside, and a street lamp leaking its wan light through the glass.

  A familiar shape, both obscene and holy, in the centre. A figure, arms outstretched like a crucified man, tethered to an iron bar strapped between two tall wooden candle holders.

  Gunnar Torpe, face bloodied, in a combat jacket, black tape over his mouth.

  Lund walked to him, snatched the tape away. Blood poured from the priest’s mouth. His head went down. His eyes were closed.

  She got to his arms, removed the fastening there with one hand, supporting him with the other. Right arm first, then the left. A heavy man. She struggled as she let his body fall slowly to the hard concrete floor.

  He was breathing. Just.

  Phone.

  Lund called control.

  ‘Sarah Lund. Send an ambulance to St Simon’s Church, Vesterbro. Tell Brix. I just found the priest. He’s still breathing but . . .’

  Something glittered near Torpe’s body. She looked. A dog tag cut in half, blood on the sharp severed side.

  ‘You need to be quick. Tell . . .’

  A sound nearby. Footsteps at the back of the room.

  Lund looked at Torpe. At the blood. Fresh. At the wounds. So many, so livid.

  A shape. A hooded man, head down, crossed briefly in the light from the window, ran out towards the rear.

  ‘Tell Brix I’m in pursuit,’ she said then left the bleeding priest and raced for the door.

  An hour they’d been looking. An hour wasted. The hospital administrator, a bad-tempered woman, was with them.

  ‘How can you lose a patient?’ Buch demanded.

  ‘How can you walk in here and berate him without his permission or ours?’ the administrator demanded. ‘This is outrageous. I don’t care who you are. It doesn’t matter—’

  Her phone rang.

  They were on the third floor. Intensive Care. No sign of Monberg. No one had seen him anywhere.

  Buch watched the way her face changed. He knew what bad news looked like now. There’d been so much of it of late.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked when she put the mobile in her jacket pocket.

  ‘I think we need to call the police.’

  ‘I’m the Minister of Justice!’ Buch bellowed. ‘The police answer to me.’

  ‘Fine,’ she grumbled, and led them to the end of the corridor, through what looked like a storage area. No rooms. No wards. Just equipment and boxes.

  ‘Patients aren’t allowed here,’ she said. ‘Under no circumstances . . .’

  There was a service lift. With his bulk and the two women it was just about full. The administrator pressed the button for the ground floor. Said nothing more.

  After a while the door opened. Three men in green overalls, bent round something.

  Buch pushed through.

  Monberg lay on the floor face down. A pool of scarlet blood ran out from his haggard features. His smashed spectacles lay by his side. The red stained his white pyjamas. His eyes were open and looked puzzled. In some cruel way more alert than they ever had been in life.

  ‘Jumped from the third floor just now,’ one of the men said.

  ‘Patients are not allowed . . .’ the administrator began.

  Karina had turned to the wall and was sobbing.

  ‘There’ll be an inquiry,’ the woman added.

  ‘You’re sure he jumped?’ Buch asked.

  No one answered.

  He got up, took hold of one of the men by the shoulders. Got a filthy look in return.

  ‘You’re sure he jumped?’ Buch repeated.

  ‘I was down here sweeping up,’ the man snapped back at him. ‘I saw him standing there. Smoking a cigarette. Then he saw me. Got on the railing.’ His hand pointed up the winding staircase. ‘I heard him screaming all the way down.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Buch asked again but quietly.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll forget that in a while. Would you?’

  Ten past seven. The meat-packing district was coming to life. Trapped between the railway lines and Vesterbro, it was the place that fed much of Copenhagen: butchery wholesalers, fish companies, bakers, grocery firms crammed into low metal buildings ranged across a sprawling industrial estate. Then, in the evening, another side emerged. The spare space, on the first floor, sometimes the ground, opened up to the night crowd, with bars and tiny restaurants where the glittering party types flocked to dine and drink near the rows of cattle carcasses and trays of freshly gutted salmon.

  Lund chased the distant hooded figure out from Gunnar Torpe’s church, saw him dash left at the Bosch sign above a fashionable organic hangout.

  Still she ran and ran, arms pumping, breath coming in short, rhythmic gasps. Brix could deal with the priest. Lund had the man in her sights and nothing else mattered.

  She rounded the Bosch sign, scanned the square ahead. Warehouses and commercial outlets. Vans loading. Taxis turning up with women in garish dresses out for the night.

  A hooded figure disappeared into the building in the far right corner. Lund set off, ran through the half-open doors behind him.

  An empty loading area. Forklift trucks parked for the morning. Steam rising
from grates in the grey concrete floor. An iron staircase winding up to the timber ceiling.

  A sudden noise. Lund jumped. It was the thump of a sound system from the floor above. Loud, rhythmic disco music. The sound of laughter, squeals of delight.

  One door open ahead. She walked on. Found herself back in the chill night. A yard full of black rubbish bags, pigeons pecking at the waste.

  The place was empty.

  She called Brix, heard the sigh in his voice as he answered.

  ‘Lund. I’m busy. I’ll call you back.’

  ‘The priest—’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You didn’t get the message?’

  ‘I told you. I’m busy.’

  ‘I found him half-dead in his church. I called control. Told them to get an ambulance there. To tell you—’

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘You’re supposed to be at a wedding.’

  ‘Someone ran from the church when I got there. I’m trying to track him. He’s in the meat-packing district.’

  She glanced around. So many buildings. But there was broad open space between them. If she got lucky . . .

  ‘He can’t be far away. Send me all the backup you can spare. We can isolate this place—’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Brix ordered.

  She could hear him snapping his fingers at the officers around his desk. See him doing that.

  ‘We’re coming. You’re unarmed. I don’t want you going near—’

  ‘Talk to the priest. Get us an ID. He saw him.’

  ‘Lund?’ His voice was back to a bellow. ‘How many times do I have to say this? You’re off the case. I don’t want you anywhere near.’

  ‘I’m here. You’re not.’

  A hazy shape moved across her line of vision. A hooded figure racing out of the empty loading bay towards the building opposite.

  ‘Just move, will you?’ she said and put the phone in her pocket.

  She saw him push through a plastic ribbon curtain, the kind they used in the loading areas. Lund walked towards it, got the raw, sharp smell of freshly slaughtered meat in her face and the chill of refrigeration.

  Went through. The place ahead was in darkness. Her fingers fumbled on the brick wall, found switches, flipped them. Bright fluorescent tubes burst into life, crackling, flashing, sending their blue-white light everywhere.

  Through the next ribbon door. Sides of bloody red beef hanging from hooks on the right. Naked dead pigs, as bare and pink as gigantic babies, ranged on the left, snouts up to the ceiling, eyes closed.

  Line upon line of dead flesh set against white-tile walls. Lund caught sight of herself in a shiny metal door. Black donkey jacket, purple wedding dress. Gunnar Torpe’s blood on her chest.

  Walked on.

  A cutting room now. Tables like the morgue, clean and shiny. Saws and electric knives. The stench of blood and severed tissue.

  She walked through slowly, moving the wheeled cutting slabs out of the way.

  Looking. Listening.

  Another room ahead. A handle turning. Lund got to another set of plastic ribbons then saw it coming. A trolley laden with rubbish bags and cartons, flying through the grey sheeting, straight at her.

  She caught the metal frame with her hands before it could strike, took the blow, rolled with it, fell backwards, half into a bloody gutter stinking of disinfectant, turned on the ground, trying to see, to judge if he was coming for her.

  Just the trolley.

  She got up, started running. A corridor. Long enough so she could see him. A man. Not big, not small. Not broad, not skinny.

  Unremarkable.

  They usually were.

  He scooted right at the end, scattering bins and pallets as he fled, throwing shut an iron rollaway grating behind him.

  She ran too quickly, slipped on the greasy floor, took a hard fall into a waste bin, smashed her head against the metal side. Stumbled upright, ran on.

  A staircase leading towards the light and the noise and the people.

  Night in the meat-packing district. No one came to buy dead cow or fresh fish. They were here to party, and Lund was fighting her way through them, pushing, scrabbling, staring everywhere.

  Kids and their stupid music. A relentless, idiot beat. They screamed as she spilled their hundred-kroner cocktails, fell silent when they saw her, bloodied and furious, clawing her way through their party dresses and designer denim.

  Looking.

  A shape far ahead. The one hooded figure in the place.

  Lund raced past a psychedelic purple light, got blinded for a moment, refocused, saw him escaping by a distant door.

  A bare narrow corridor. Empty and dimly lit. Offices maybe. Closed for the night.

  He had to be exhausted. She was.

  One door at the end. She opened it and found the cold wet night blowing in her face.

  The roof. One floor up. Somewhere not far away the sound of sirens.

  And nothing.

  Nothing.

  Lund started to turn. Saw the briefest shadow sweeping through the air. Felt something hard and cruel connect with her neck, send her stumbling towards the roof edge, then over, feet turning as she fell into empty space, drop like a stone onto what felt like corrugated plastic.

  Her head felt loose, her mind ranged. She hadn’t fallen a full floor. That was impossible. She was alive, conscious, could think. There was another part to this structure. He’d sent her flying onto that, not the ground which would surely have killed her.

  Face side on against the sheeting, blood trickling into her eyes. She couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.

  A sound. Footsteps on metal stairs. Slow and deliberate. Getting closer.

  ‘Not yet,’ she whispered, willing her dead limbs to move.

  A crazy memory. Her mother at the wedding. The stupid songs. Mark laughing, behaving like the responsible, careful adult she’d never been herself.

  Then, so quiet only she could hear, ‘Not now.’

  He was there and she knew it. Knew too that if she had the strength she’d turn and stare him in the face.

  Another sound, one too familiar. The slide of a semi-automatic pistol racking the first shell into the chamber.

  One last sentence in her head.

  Let me see you.

  But she lacked the strength and the means to say it.

  Only her eyes could move at that moment. So she kept them open and looked ahead. At the black Copenhagen night, and the bright-red neon Bosch sign of the restaurant on the corner.

  Waiting.

  The office in Slotsholmen, the evening news on TV, the little rubber ball bouncing against the wall, back and forth.

  The only story was Monberg’s death. Plough was pacing the floor, tie undone looking distraught. Karina moped around as if she took some responsibility for what had happened.

  Buch threw the ball again, misjudged the way it would come back, watched it fly off behind the sofa.

  He’d disabuse her of that notion soon enough. He’d badgered Monberg. No one else. And now the TV news knew too. They were reporting that shortly before he killed himself Monberg had been visited by his successor, and a confrontation had taken place.

  Karina, shirtsleeves rolled up, perspiration on her brow, came over and turned the TV to mute.

  ‘The Prime Minister’s called a meeting with Krabbe and Rossing. You’re not invited.’

  Buch went to his desk, pulled out another rubber ball, bounced it against the wall. Monberg’s photo was on the TV. Back when he was minister. A good-looking, confident politician. Nothing like the man who succeeded him. Frode Monberg liked to tell everyone how he dined in all the finest places, Noma across the harbour, and Søren K in the Black Diamond Library that sat by the water in Slotsholmen. Thomas Buch wanted nothing more than to sit a short distance away from Søren K, in the garden near the Jewish Museum, close to the statue of Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher who gave the Black Diamond restaurant its name. N
o fancy food. A sandwich. A hot dog. He was happy like that, would have been content to stay a foot soldier in politics until his early retirement.

  But then Grue Eriksen called, just the previous Monday. And everything changed.

  ‘Thomas!’ Karina said in that matronly, scolding voice. ‘Will you please stop behaving like this? If you hadn’t pressured Monberg he’d never have admitted anything.’

  ‘If I hadn’t pressured him he’d still be alive.’

  ‘You don’t know that. He’d already tried to kill himself once. Flemming Rossing was in there before you. How do you know he didn’t say something?’

  Buch didn’t answer.

  ‘How hard did you lean on him?’ Plough asked.

  ‘He did what was necessary,’ Karina retorted.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Plough said. ‘What happened? Exactly?’

  The ball went to the wall, came back. The fat man with the walrus beard said nothing.

  ‘This mess is Monberg’s fault,’ Karina insisted.

  Plough dragged his tie away from his neck and threw it on the desk. In a man like him it seemed an act of rebellion.

  ‘You don’t understand the politics of this. The way things connect.’

  ‘I understand we’ve got to focus on the meeting with Grue Eriksen!’

  Buch kept throwing the ball. He hated this stupid habit as much as they did now. But it was hard to stop.

  Plough’s phone rang. He answered it.

  Karina came over and stood next to Buch.

  ‘From what I gather Krabbe and the Defence Minister will take over responsibility for the anti-terror package. They’re going to sideline us completely. So we’ll never get to the bottom of this. You’ll be paralysed. Or fired. Dammit, Thomas! Will you at least say something?’

  Marie, his wife, had been phoning his mobile. He hadn’t the heart to answer.

  ‘The meeting’s started,’ Plough said, coming off the phone. ‘We should wait and hear what they have to say.’

  Karina glared at him.

  ‘We’ve got to stop this! The Prime Minister hasn’t a clue about the games Rossing’s been playing.’

  The TV was murmuring in the corner. A familiar voice. Buch abandoned the ball and turned up the volume. Rossing was there, smart suit, black tie, being interviewed outside the Defence Ministry before going to meet Grue Eriksen.