The Killing 2

by David Hewson

  ‘Why would Bilal take Louise Raben with him? You don’t think . . . ? The two of them?’

  Strange laughed.

  ‘Søgaard had his beady eyes on that one. Didn’t you see?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she murmured. ‘I’m not sure I’ve seen anything much since you dragged me out of Gedser.’

  ‘Well then,’ he said grandly. ‘We must get you home. And there . . .’ His arm swept the moonlit horizon ahead of them. ‘Vice-politikommissær Lund will ensure all is revealed. The bad guys get their comeuppance. The world will be one again . . .’

  ‘Sarcastic bastard,’ she said but she was laughing.

  He smiled.

  ‘No I’m not. I mean it. You pick up things that aren’t there. You know where people come from when they don’t know themselves. What makes them. What hurts them. On top of which you’re the most stubborn, awkward, infuriating—’

  It was automatic. She reached out, squeezed his hand. Looked into his eyes. Then let go.

  ‘There’s something wrong at that house,’ Lund said. ‘I’m telling you—’

  ‘Shit!’ the driver cried as he stomped on the brakes so hard they were thrown against one another in the back. ‘Now we’re screwed.’

  Lund leaned round his shoulder and stared.

  A white pickup blocking the narrow dusty road between two rocks. Five men, long, heavy Afghan robes, rifles in their arms, walking towards them.

  One yanked open the Land Rover door, the other two kept their rifles on them. A torchlight flashing over the interior. Words she couldn’t understand.

  Orders. They had that sound.

  ‘They want you two.’ The driver had his hands up. He looked terrified. ‘Best do as they say.’

  Fifteen minutes down a track so rough she wondered how the truck stayed upright. Then somewhere ahead there were lights. Another pickup. Lund’s night vision was adjusting.

  They were back in the wrecked enclosure, in front of the house.

  ‘Go,’ one of the Afghans ordered, picking up an ancient oil lantern, putting a match to it.

  The fat police chief sat on the one good chair, beaming.

  ‘So?’ he said in broken English. ‘Did you get a surprise, angry woman?’

  Lund stayed quiet.

  ‘Lots of surprises here.’ He grinned then said something in Pashto to the others, made them laugh. ‘Some not so nice.’

  He got up, stood so close to her she could smell something sweet on the man’s breath.

  ‘I didn’t want you to leave empty-handed. So I got a little present for you. Come! Come!’

  Someone pushed her in the back. Lund walked out to the courtyard behind the house. Strange followed.

  Two more men there. They’d been removing the bricks and rubble from a filled-in hole at the back. To reveal a large, blackened space.

  Two lanterns on the floor cast their waxy beams into the hole. The cop walked forward. The men got out of his way without a word. He bent down, looked inside, came out with something in his hands.

  Lund felt cold and scared and a very long way from home as he gave it to her with all the slow ceremony that might come with a treasured gift. It was a child’s skull. Blackened with smoke and flame. A ragged tear in the temple from a bullet wound.

  ‘This make you happy?’ the cop asked in his lilting, half-tuneful English.

  Lund took the lantern from him, walked to the oven. Peered inside.

  More bones. Ribs. A hand. And something metal in the dust.

  She picked it up with a pencil. Old habits died hard.

  It was a dog tag, stained with smoke. A name: Per K. Møller and a number, 369045-9611.

  The cop had a bag in his hands. Made of raffia. A little battered, but with a pretty pattern on the side.

  ‘Take home what you want,’ he said. ‘It’s yours now.’

  Ten minutes to the Rigshospitalet from the Politigården. Raben stayed in the back, eyes flickering, moaning, breath ragged.

  Just the cops with him now. Worried men.

  They got out when the police car pulled into the ambulance area, blue light flashing, ran into the emergency area shrieking for help. Doctors. A stretcher. Something to save them.

  He waited till they were out of sight then let himself out of the passenger side away from the hospital. Half walked, half hobbled out into the damp night, keeping in the shadows all the way.

  From the trees he heard them screaming, looked back briefly. Saw nurses with a gurney, doctors in green coats, the puzzled cops yelling curses.

  But didn’t wait.

  He had things to do.

  Eleven

  Wednesday 23rd November

  11.04 a.m. The flight from Istanbul took them straight back to a busy Kastrup and a world Lund knew. Strange picked up a newspaper the moment they stepped onto Danish soil. The headline said the government was in crisis. Rossing, the Defence Minister, had been fired for covering up an atrocity in Afghanistan. Buch was in custody accused of a breach of the Official Secrets Act.

  Lund glanced at the stories, said nothing. The battered raffia holdall hung from her right hand, a collection of blackened bones, a child’s skull and a dead soldier’s charred dog tag inside.

  Strange was busy on the phone all the way into Arrivals. She was glad of that.

  ‘Bilal’s taken an army Land Rover,’ he said when he’d talked to headquarters. ‘We’ve got an alert out for him. With the border guards too.’

  ‘He thinks he’s more Danish than we are. Bilal’s not going abroad. What about Louise?’

  A frown. He didn’t look tired. Didn’t look upset or surprised by what they’d found either.

  ‘Seems he snatched her from the barracks. Raben’s gone missing again.’

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake . . .’

  She wasn’t feeling well after the long, difficult journey. Too many thoughts running round her head.

  That shrug again.

  ‘He gave our guys the slip when they took him to hospital,’ Strange said. ‘It’s no big deal. In his condition . . .’

  ‘He trained with Jægerkorpset. Special forces and God knows what else. He thinks he’s immortal.’

  She couldn’t stop herself looking at him when she said that.

  ‘I never did,’ Strange replied with that same, self-deprecating innocence. ‘But I guess I wasn’t in Raben’s class. I put a bullet in his shoulder. We’ll have him before long.’

  Out into the Arrivals lounge. The bag felt heavier than it was.

  ‘They found a key in Søgaard’s locker,’ Strange went on. ‘Bilal had rented an industrial unit where he planned all five murders. There’s a machine for making fake dog tags there. Other stuff—’

  ‘Where’s Brix?’

  ‘I’m not his keeper.’

  He was starting to sound angry and that was unusual.

  ‘I need the bathroom,’ Lund announced.

  She didn’t. Just some space. But she walked off towards the toilets anyway, and Strange followed her.

  ‘Sarah?’ he said, catching up. ‘What’s up? You’ve hardly said a word to me all the way back.’

  She stopped, looked at him, tried to think of something to say.

  ‘I’m tired. It’s a long journey . . .’

  ‘That ’s it?’

  A familiar, unexpected voice close by shrieked, ‘Yoo hoo! Hello there!’

  Lund felt the earth was falling beneath her feet. Her mother and Bjørn were beaming joyously as they walked arm in arm from another gate.

  ‘How sweet of you to come and meet us,’ Vibeke said and kissed her.

  Her mother smelled of perfume. Lund guessed she didn’t.

  ‘Where did you go exactly?’ she asked, shaking her head.

  ‘Prague! I told you.’

  ‘Living it up!’ Bjørn added, making a drinking gesture with his right hand.

  Vibeke put her arms round Lund, held her closely, whispered in her ear, ‘What have you been up to, Sarah? I had a terrible nightmare in
the hotel. I dreamt you were all alone somewhere, lying lifeless. Nothing I could do would bring you back to life.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘I was crying! Mark was crying! It felt so real.’

  Strange said he’d get the car. Her mother pinched her arm.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re not mixed up in that horrible job any more. You should leave that to the men. Bjørn and I have decided we’re going to visit you in Gedser. There must be lots to see there.’

  She told Strange she’d take a cab with her mother and Bjørn.

  He didn’t move.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Why not? You take the car.’

  ‘Oh!’ Vibeke cried. ‘What a lovely bag! So pretty. Where did you get it?’

  Her fingers were on the top, reaching inside already.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Lund said and snatched it away. ‘Honest. Shall we go?’

  Lund let them sit in the back of the taxi, tried to talk as quietly as possible from the front. Brix was busy. Satisfied for once by the sound of it.

  ‘Why did your friend leave?’ Vibeke asked from the back.

  Lund turned and pointed at the phone.

  ‘I like him,’ her mother declared. ‘He seems a nice man.’

  Lund went back to Brix.

  ‘We found the remains of two adults and three children.’

  ‘This is definite? No mistake?’

  The raffia bag was between her legs on the floor of the taxi.

  ‘It’s definite. They’d been burned in an oven. Someone covered it up with debris afterwards.’

  ‘Well done.’ He sounded impressed. ‘I passed on your initial report.’

  ‘There’s a bullet hole in the child’s skull. It looks like an execution, not a firefight.’

  ‘Did you pick up anything on Bilal?’

  ‘No. We found Møller’s dog tag. Raben was telling the truth. Did we get a list of active special forces officers from the army?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter any more.’ The old impatience was back. ‘I told you. We’re looking for Bilal. Any killings in Helmand are for the army to investigate.’

  Her mother was listening intently from behind. There was no way of hiding this.

  ‘We can’t leave it at that. Bilal wasn’t there pretending to be Perk. He was in the base, handling the radio traffic. Maybe he was part of the cover-up but he didn’t kill this family.’

  ‘The army—’

  ‘It was like a ritual killing, for God’s sake. Like the ones here.’

  ‘Bilal—’

  ‘Bilal’s not your man. It’s someone else.’ A pause. It had to be said. ‘We need to look at Strange again. He was so . . .’ This was what had kept her awake all the way back from Helmand and she had to face it. ‘So at home. Like he belonged there.’

  She could hear the instant anger in his voice.

  ‘Arild told us categorically that Strange was never in Afghanistan when this happened.’

  ‘You think you can believe him?’

  A long pause on the line.

  ‘I’m going to forget you said that.’

  He gave her an address in Vesterbro, told her to come when she could.

  ‘Brix. Brix!’

  Then he was gone. Vibeke’s street was coming up.

  ‘We need to tell the driver where to stop,’ Bjørn said from the back.

  Her mother was pale. No longer smiling.

  ‘Mum,’ Lund said and put a hand to her cheek. ‘It was just a dream. Everything’s all right. This is just work. What I do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you do, Sarah. I don’t want to.’

  The quickest of showers, a change of clothes. Then a cab to the place they’d found. It was near the Det Ny Teater close to Vesterbrogade. Brix met her at the door.

  ‘Bilal left the key in Søgaard’s locker with the mobile phone,’ he said, leading her through the grubby entrance into a small workshop. ‘Along with the broken-off halves of the five dog tags.’

  A large room, white tiles, yellow markers everywhere, bright winter light filtering through the high windows.

  ‘This is a starter building for small businesses,’ Madsen said, padding along in blue forensic shoe covers. ‘No one else has moved in yet. He had it to himself.’

  A laptop on the table. Anne Dragsholm’s terrified bloodied face frozen there.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Strange?’ Brix asked.

  ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  She lugged the raffia bag with her as they talked.

  ‘We’ve got the camera he used,’ Madsen said, pointing at the long work table by the window. ‘The computer. Traces of explosives. Ryvangen personnel records on the hard drive.’

  Six mobile phones in a neat line. Instructions for making explosives.

  ‘They all match the evidence from the killings,’ Brix said.

  Books on the Taliban and Islamist extremism. Terrorism and secret forces.

  ‘Knives.’ Madsen held up a plastic bag. Two blades inside.

  So much evidence, so neatly laid out.

  ‘Bilal’s a Muslim,’ Brix went on. ‘But everyone says he hates Islamists.’

  Lund looked at the sharp curving blades, the bloodstains.

  ‘Why—?’ she began.

  ‘Because he saw Raben’s squad as traitors,’ Brix cut in. ‘Bilal thinks he’s a loyal Dane. Raben’s accusations would damage the reputation of the army by incriminating officers in the killing of civilians.’

  She turned on her heels, looked round. Five forensic officers in white suits going over everything.

  ‘And he did all this? On his own?’

  Brix pointed to the wall. Printouts from Kodmani’s website.

  ‘He invented the Muslim League. He was Faith Fellow. We’ve got the emails on the laptop. He was trying to frame Kodmani.’ Brix stared at her. ‘Might have done if it wasn’t for you.’

  It didn’t feel like consolation.

  There were photos near the printouts. Old pictures, some she recognized. Executions of traitors during the war. Hunted down by the partisans, shot in the street. The same pictures she’d seen in the Frihedsmuseet in Churchillparken when they were chasing Skåning. Bodies curled up and bloodied on grubby cobblestones. Notices giving warning of the next stikke on the list.

  ‘I guess he knew his history,’ Brix said watching the way she stared at them. ‘That’s why he took Dragsholm to Mindelunden.’

  Lund hated false logic.

  ‘They didn’t kill traitors at Mindelunden. They murdered heroes. That doesn’t add up.’

  He glared at her.

  ‘Dragsholm was his first victim. She wanted to reopen the case. They met a few months ago.’

  More photos. The three original stakes in Mindelunden. A victim in South Africa, incinerated by a tyre around the neck. A young man, a woman about the same age, both staring at nothing, looking bored, unconcerned, as a Nazi officer placed a noose round their necks beneath a makeshift gallows.

  Then army mugshots of the soldiers in Raben’s squad and a snatched photo of Dragsholm walking down the street.

  ‘Bilal rented these premises not long after.’

  ‘You know that?’ Lund demanded. ‘You can place him here? Fingerprints? DNA? Documentation?’

  ‘Give us time, for God’s sake,’ he replied wearily. ‘The man’s fled Ryvangen. He’s taken Jarnvig’s daughter hostage. We’ve enough evidence . . .’

  She was sick of looking at the walls. There was a determined, obsessive mind at work here. She just wasn’t sure whose.

  ‘Did anybody see him here?’

  ‘The building’s empty. Who’s going to see him?’

  She walked up and stood in front of the tall homicide chief.

  ‘So the only proof you have this belongs to Bilal is the key at the barracks?’

  ‘Lund!’ He was getting mad again. ‘First he gets the colonel fired because he was investigating the old radio messages. Then he
snatches Louise Raben and takes off God knows where. Do they sound like the actions of an innocent man?’

  ‘He’s scared. Did Jarnvig trace those radio messages?’

  He folded his arms.

  ‘So you’re telling me Bilal’s of no significance? And no one else can see this except you?’

  ‘He’s significant,’ she agreed. ‘He can help us find that officer. But it doesn’t make him the killer. Why would Bilal hide a key and a mobile phone at the barracks? Who got you to search there in the first place?’

  ‘You were in Afghanistan—’

  ‘Dragsholm said she’d found the officer. The one pretending to be Perk. That’s what kicked this off. Bilal was at base when Raben went into that place, fixing the radio logs. It couldn’t have been him.’

  Lund’s hand swept towards the table, the photos on the wall.

  ‘This proves nothing. Raben’s been right all along. We should have listened to him. He accused Strange—’

  ‘We double-checked Strange!’ the chief bellowed at her. ‘He was demobilized long before the incident. He wasn’t in Afghanistan. It can’t be him. What the hell is wrong with you?’

  She picked up the raffia bag, emptied it onto the table. A tiny blackened skull with a bullet hole. A skeletal hand. Dry, sooty bones.

  ‘That’s what’s wrong with me.’

  The forensics officers were torn, staring at her, staring avariciously at the bones. Then at the door.

  Lund sighed. Knew what she’d see there.

  Ulrik Strange. Hair freshly washed. Stubble newly shaved. Face perky and innocent. Clean clothes. Ready to start again.

  She still felt grubby, even after the shower. And a little guilty. But not so much.

  Brix said nothing.

  Strange said nothing, just turned his back and walked outside.

  A bright day, chilly. Not much different from Afghanistan. It was the same sun after all. He was leaning on his black Ford. She took off her blue shoe covers and plastic gloves, walked straight up to him.

  Leaned on the car too, hands in pockets.

  Strange was watching her. Hard to read his expression. Sorrow? Disgust? Anger? His face seemed so calm, so impassive that extreme emotions simply passed it by.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked in a quiet, calm voice. ‘Why do you do these things?’