by David Hewson
‘Play,’ Lund said.
Meyer set it running slowly. The picture panned from Nanna to Oliver Schandorff, wild hair, wild eyes. Schandorff staring hungrily at Nanna as he swigged at a can of beer.
‘We didn’t have parties like that at my school,’ Meyer said. ‘Yours?’
‘They wouldn’t have invited me.’
‘I bet. Here we go.’ Meyer let out a long sad sigh and sat down next to her. ‘Show time.’
The picture changed. Somewhere else. Somewhere darker. A few lights. Drinks on the table. The place in the basement. Had to be.
Something moving in the background, getting bigger as the lens approached.
Lund leaned forward, looked at this carefully, felt her heart begin to race.
There was a sound. Panting, gasping. Oliver Schandorff naked, ginger head swaying as he writhed over the figure beneath him, naked too, legs splayed and not moving.
The contrast between him and the girl was striking. Schandorff all manic energy and desperation. She . . .
Drunk? Unconscious?
Couldn’t tell. But not right.
Closer.
Schandorff ’s hands came and grabbed her legs, made her grip him. Her fingers rose as if to beat him off. He was like a madman, pushed them down, grunted, screaming.
Lund watched.
The lens shifted behind them, to Schandorff ’s back. Her legs had locked round him. Sex the teenage way. As if a clock somewhere was running, saying, ‘Do it now and do it quickly, or you’ll never get the chance again.’
More grunts, more savage thrusts.
Closer. The black witch’s hat they saw earlier, down over the eyes, over the face. Blonde hair. The hat moves . . .
‘Shit,’ Lund said.
Something had happened. The camera was off the couple. They heard him, sneaking up on them. Curses and swift movements. The girl just visible, scuttling to cover herself. Blonde hair, witch’s hat, bare breasts. Not much more.
‘I think I’ll bring them in again,’ Meyer said.
On the steps of the City Hall Troels Hartmann and Kirsten Eller stood next to one another, blinking in the bright lights of the cameras, smiling, shaking hands.
Waiting for Meyer, Lund watched it all on the news channel on her computer. Then went back to the video. The school.
One segment she’d skipped through earlier.
Nanna in her party dress. Hat on. Beaming into Jeppe Hald’s phone. Raising a glass of what looked like Coke. Smiling. Sober. So elegant and natural. Not a kid at all. Not like the others.
And a few minutes later . . .
Naked in the basement, Oliver Schandorff thrusting at her like an animal.
‘Be right, Meyer,’ she whispered.
The caretaker was letting Lund into the school when Meyer called.
‘I’ve got them both.’
‘Don’t question them yet.’
A pause.
‘The last time I checked we had the same stripes.’
‘I need to see something first.’
A long sigh.
‘Don’t worry, Lund. You’ll get the credit.’
Her footsteps echoed down dark and empty corridors.
‘Wait twenty minutes,’ she said and cut the call.
The flowers on Nanna’s shrine beside the lockers looked dead, the candles burned to stumps. Lund walked down the cold stairs to the basement, shining her torch, fumbling for light switches she couldn’t find.
Past the Don’t Cross tape. Into the hidden room. Lines and markers everywhere. Empty bottles circled, dusty with print powder.
She looked at the bloodstained mattress. There was one single large stain at the foot, then a line of red on the piping at the edge. Not so much blood. And it wasn’t smeared.
Meyer didn’t wait, didn’t see why he should. He had Oliver Schandorff in Lund’s office, seated in front of the computer, forced to watch the video. The pumpkin head. The drunken kids. The dope. The booze.
On his own now, free to act as he pleased, Meyer was more relaxed. He sat next to the kid, watched him as he stared at the PC, ginger hair everywhere, face screwed up with fear and pain.
‘You’ve got two choices, Oliver,’ he said in a flat, calm voice. ‘Either you confess now . . .’
Nanna. In her witch’s hat. Smiling. Happy. Beautiful.
‘Or we watch the rest. And wait for your lawyer to come in the morning. If he can be bothered to get out of bed.’
The phone was moving, from the hall down the stairs. Into the basement. Towards the hidden room.
Two figures naked in the distance, beneath a single bulb, wrestling.
Schandorff couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.
‘I’ve got all night,’ Meyer told him. ‘But I know you two did it and so do you. So let’s get this over with, shall we?’
Silence.
Meyer felt the faint stirrings of anger, tried to quell it.
‘Oliver? Oliver?’
Lund took out the photos she’d brought. Close-ups of Nanna’s body. Details of the sores, the lesions on her back.
The power was off for some reason so she checked them in the light of her torch. Held them up as she looked at the mattress, the spots of blood on the floor.
Took out a photo of Nanna’s hands. Clipped fingernails.
Ran her torch around the room.
Checked the inventory.
No sign of scissors.
Took out her phone, looked at the screen. No signal in this underground tomb.
Oliver Schandorff sat rigid in front of the screen. Two bodies coupling. His own ginger hair bobbing up and down. He grabs her legs, makes her grip him. He pushes away her hands as they reach to claw at him.
The lens is up close behind. His back, his body pumping at her in a crazy, frenetic rhythm. Then confusion. Picture moving everywhere as he pulls himself away, confronts the intruder sneaking up on them.
Lips downturned like a naughty child, face full of shame and anger, Schandorff sat in the homicide office refusing to speak.
‘Maybe Jeppe will talk first,’ Meyer said.
There was Hald on the screen. Drunk. Out of control.
‘You know he might be next door.’ Meyer tapped Schandorff on the arm. ‘Could be saying it was all you. Just you. Wouldn’t be nice, would it?’
Meyer’s hand went to his shoulder.
‘He’s not your friend, Oliver. Think about it. I know I yelled at you, son. I’m sorry. It’s just . . .’
Schandorff sat there like a rock.
‘Those pictures of Nanna after we got her out of the water.’ Meyer watched him. ‘I can’t get them out of my head. Don’t make me show them to you. Best for both of us if I don’t do that.’
Lund wasn’t ready to go outside and find a signal. More to do here. She pulled out a pair of forensic gloves and picked up a broken beer glass sitting in a ring of chalk.
Shone the torch on it.
Lipstick along the edge. Bright orange. Gaudy.
Got the photo of Nanna from the school set, shot at the party.
Nanna in her witch’s hat, the only thing about her that seemed young.
Reached into the ashtray. Sifted through the cigarette ends and joint butts. Pulled out a rolled-up wad of tin foil. Pulled it open with her gloved fingers. Not dope. An earring.
In the light she saw three fake diamonds on a silver setting.
Back to the photos. Nanna and the other kids. Lisa Rasmussen.
It was four days now since they pulled Nanna Birk Larsen’s body out of the chill canal by the airport. In all that time they’d scarcely worked without a lead. Chasing shadows running from them. A puzzle promising answers. Yet . . .
This case was like none she’d ever worked. It had layers and texture. Mysteries. Riddles. Investigations were never black and white. But never had she met one quite so grey and insubstantial.
Lund stared at the photo, Nanna and Lisa, smiling, happy.
Then there was a sound above
her. Footsteps in the dark.
‘Maybe it wasn’t your idea,’ Meyer said. ‘Jeppe thought of it and you came along for the ride.’
He leaned over, tried to get Schandorff ’s attention.
‘Oliver?’
Nothing. Just a miserable face locked on the computer.
‘That would make a difference. If you told us. So what’s it to be?’
Meyer leaned back in his chair, put his arms behind his head.
‘Do we sit here all night and go through some more pictures? Or get it over with?’
Nothing.
‘Fine.’ There was an edge in Meyer’s voice and he regretted that. ‘I’m feeling hungry. Don’t have money for two—’
‘It’s not her, you moron,’ Schandorff snarled.
Meyer blinked.
That petulant, tortured teenage voice again. But finally Oliver Schandorff looked at him.
‘The girl in the boiler room. It’s not Nanna.’
Upstairs in the corridor, in front of Nanna’s shrine. A stump of candle flickered in the dark.
Lund checked her phone. There was a signal.
Heard something, footsteps close to the door. Didn’t think of hiding. Turned her torch towards the source.
‘Lisa?’
The girl stood frozen in the bright white light, a glass vase with some roses in her hand.
‘How did you get in?’ Lund asked.
Lisa placed the flowers on the shrine.
‘They were getting old. People forget.’
‘How did you get in?’
‘The gym door’s open. The lock doesn’t work. Everyone knows that.’
She brushed back her long blonde hair, looked at the photos and the flowers.
‘When did you get to know Nanna?’
‘At primary school. In our last year. Nanna picked Frederiksholm so I did too.’ She moved the roses around. ‘I didn’t think I’d get in. Nanna’s clever. Her dad had to find the money. My dad’s got the money. But me . . . I’m stupid.’
‘When did you fall out?’
Lisa didn’t look at her.
‘We didn’t fall out.’
‘We’ve got Nanna’s phone. You never called her, texted her lately.’
Nothing.
‘Nanna called you.’
‘It wasn’t an argument. Not really.’
‘About Oliver?’
Straight away, ‘I don’t remember.’
‘I think it was about Oliver. Nanna didn’t care for him. You’re in love with him, right?’
Lisa laughed.
‘You ask some weird questions.’
‘So you went to the boiler room.’
‘Can I go now?’
Lund pulled out the earring.
‘You forgot something.’
The girl stared at the evidence bag, swore, turned to go.
‘We could waste a lot of time looking for the dress,’ Lund said to her back. ‘Or you could just tell me.’
Lisa Rasmussen stopped, hugged herself in her skimpy red coat.
‘This is important,’ Lund said. ‘Was Nanna in the room? Or were you and the boys alone?’
Caught between being a kid and an adult.
‘I was angry with her! OK?’
Lund folded her arms, waited.
‘Nanna made all the decisions. She treated me like I was a child. I was drunk. Then that creep Jeppe came in and started filming us. Oliver got mad. I tried to stop Jeppe. I tripped over some bottles.’
She rolled up her sleeve. Plasters and scratch marks. Long wounds, maybe stitches.
‘Cut myself.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oliver took me to the hospital. We were there all night.’
She sat on a windowsill, plain young face lit by the street lamps.
‘He was still mad about Nanna. I thought maybe I could . . .’
She rolled down her sleeve, hugged herself again.
‘Stupid. Nanna was right.’
‘Where was Nanna?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Lisa . . .’
‘I don’t know!’ she yelled. ‘Maybe half past nine . . . she came to the hall, put her hat on me. Gave me a hug. And said goodbye.’
She looked Lund in the face.
‘That was it. She left.’
Lund nodded.
‘Does my dad have to know? He’ll kill me.’
Hartmann and Rie Skovgaard listened to the radio on the way to the reception. The news was calling the election already. The alliance had altered the game. A change to the long-established political system wasn’t far off.
The Birk Larsen case seemed behind them. Ahead lay the hard work of the campaign. Meetings and press conferences. Shaking hands, winning votes.
And private conclaves of the inner circle of Danish politics, in the glittering rooms where right and left and centre gathered to spar gently with smiles and deft promises, trade polite insults, deliver discreet warnings disguised as advice.
Late that evening, exhausted, wishing for nothing more than to take Rie Skovgaard home to bed, Hartmann found himself faced with her father. A long-standing parliamentarian for the Liberal Party. Kim Skovgaard was a burly, genial man with clout. Not unlike Poul Bremer, who chatted amiably with his foes across the room.
The Lord Mayor’s raucous laughter boomed over the gathering.
‘I didn’t realize Bremer was on your party list,’ Hartmann said.
‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,’ Kim Skovgaard answered with a knowing grin. ‘In the end we’re all fighting for the same thing. A better life. We just disagree about the means.’
Hartmann smiled.
‘Are you still implicated in the case?’ Skovgaard asked.
‘You mean the girl’s murder?’
‘Are there others?’
‘We were never implicated. It was a coincidence. You’ll hear no more of that.’
Skovgaard raised his glass.
‘Good. It would have been hard to back you with those kind of headlines.’
‘Dad . . .’ his daughter intervened. ‘Not now.’
He carried on.
‘The Prime Minister . . . and a few others are wondering if you’re on top of everything.’
‘The campaign’s under control. We’ll win.’ A smile. Lost amidst a sea of others. ‘Excuse me . . .’
He walked through to the next room, took Poul Bremer’s arm, asked for a word. The two of them strode to an empty space near the fireplace.
‘So you won Madam Eller in the end, Troels,’ Bremer said. ‘Congratulations. I hope the price wasn’t too high.’
‘I know what you’re up to.’
Bremer blinked behind his owlish glasses, shook his head.
‘If I catch you playing any more games . . .’ Hartmann came close, spoke in a gruff, determined whisper. ‘I will take you to court. Do you understand?’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Bremer replied. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
‘Fine,’ Hartmann said, made to go. ‘You heard.’
‘Troels! Come back here.’
Bremer strolled to his side, peering into his face.
‘I’ve always liked you. Ever since you were a novice here, struggling to make your first speech. Today . . .’
Hartmann tried to judge him, to sift sincerity from the histrionics, and failed.
‘Today you defeated me. That doesn’t happen often. When it does . . . I don’t like it. Nor do I like it when in a fit of paranoia you accuse me of things of which I’m ignorant.’
Hartmann stood there, trying not to feel like a scolded schoolboy.
Bremer’s big hand came up, thumb and forefinger rubbing together.
‘If I’d wanted to crush you, don’t you think I would have done it long ago?’
He patted Hartmann’s shoulder.
‘Think about that.’ His smile turned to a scowl. ‘You’ve ruined my mood, Troels. I’m going now. I hope you fe
el guilty. ’
Bremer looked at him.
‘Guilty. Yes. That’s the word.’
They released Schandorff and Hald. Lund got Lisa Rasmussen to sign a statement, made sure she’d be taken safely home in a car.
On the way out she asked her again, ‘You really don’t know who she was going to meet?’
The girl looked exhausted. Relieved too. This secret had weighed upon her.
‘Nanna was happy. I saw that. As if she was looking forward to something. Something special.’
When she was gone Meyer marched in brandishing papers.
‘I’m charging them with perjury. Wasting police time.’
‘Is that worth it?’
‘Why didn’t you call and tell me, Lund? Why haven’t you said a word to me? I feel like a fool.’
She held up her phone.
‘Basement. No signal. I tried.’
‘No you didn’t.’
He sounded like one of the petulant kids.
‘You’re in your own little world. Lundland. Nothing else in it.’
‘OK. I’m sorry about that.’
‘And I mustn’t smoke. Or eat or yell at suspects.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be gone soon.’
The pack of cigarettes came out. He brandished one, lit it, blew the smoke at her.
She sighed.
‘We don’t have a damned thing,’ Meyer grumbled.
‘Not true.’
‘Are you serious?’
She found her voice rising. Must have been the cigarette. She wanted one so badly.
‘We have plenty. If only you’d listen.’
He folded his arms, said, ‘I’m listening now.’
Five minutes later with Buchard, pug-faced and serious.
She went through the papers, the photos she’d assembled, patiently, one by one.
‘We know things about whoever did this. We know he drugged her with ether. He held her captive somewhere and abused her for fifteen to twenty hours. Afterwards . . .’
More shots of the body. Arms, hands, feet, thighs.
‘He bathed her. Cut her fingernails. Then drove her to the woods where he knew they wouldn’t be disturbed.’
Pictures of the track through the Pentecost Forest. Hair on the dead trees.
‘There he played a game. He toyed with her. He let her run away and then caught her. Maybe . . .’ She’d been thinking about this for a while. ‘Maybe more than once.’
‘Hide and seek,’ Meyer said, and drew on his cigarette.
