by David Hewson
‘What do you mean?’
‘The club has a dating chat room on its website. People meet up online. Maybe that’s it.’
The stew didn’t look as if it would improve with cooking. Lund got it to tepid then picked up a spoon and took a taste from the pan.
‘I’ll have a specialist take a look,’ Meyer said.
There was a Carlsberg in the fridge. She cracked the crown top and took a swig from the neck.
‘OK,’ she said, starting on her second spoonful. ‘Let me know if something turns up.’
‘Oh, lucky you,’ Meyer moaned. ‘Getting something to eat. I haven’t had a bite since lunch.’
Lund looked at the pan.
‘Yes. Lucky me.’
She went to the sofa with the stew, realized she was still in her coat, shrugged it off, threw it on the floor.
Then she turned on her laptop, sat there going from the pan to the beer to the computer.
Meyer was right. The Heartbreak had a dating section. Open to anyone, not just members of the nightclub.
She clicked for a new profile. Filled in the form as Janne Meyer. Female. Heterosexual. Password: bananas.
Her mother came back as she was waiting for the confirmation email.
‘Where’s Mark?’ Lund asked.
‘We went to see a film with Magnus. I bought them pizza afterwards. He wanted to spend the night at Magnus’s. I said it was all right.’
Vibeke smiled sourly at her.
‘You weren’t around to ask.’
The confirmation message came through. Lund clicked on the acceptance link and found herself in the Heartbreak’s dating forum.
‘It’s fine for him to stay there,’ she said.
Her mother busied round the room doing nothing.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘I’ve just eaten. It’s been busy.’
‘Are you getting anywhere?’
‘Yes. I’m still doing things. Sorry.’
There was a search box at the bottom of the page. She typed in ‘Faust’.
‘Mark talked to his father today.’
The site was slow to load. Lund took another swig of beer.
‘About what?’
‘He’s coming to Copenhagen. He’d like to see Mark. Mark didn’t know if you’d be in Sweden or not.’
‘This is dragging on. He can see Mark.’
‘Yes. We noticed that.’
Vibeke came and stood at the door, staring at her with that mix of anger, sympathy and bafflement she’d made her own.
‘The storage company called about the things Bengt sent back from Sweden. They wouldn’t take your boxes into storage without an account. So I said they could leave them here. They’re in the basement.’
Then she went to the bathroom without another word.
Lund was glad. She didn’t know what to say.
Bengt.
That odd farewell on the station seemed an age away.
She looked at the laptop. There was one result called ‘Faust’.
Lund clicked on it.
No photo. Just a silhouette. Next to it a quotation.
It read: ‘Ruling the heart is the most difficult thing.’
Seven
Wednesday, 12th November
Weber had everyone associated with the office assembled by eight in the morning. Hartmann stood to address them.
‘This is unusual but the police need our help. They’ll be here interviewing everyone today. You’ll be summoned to headquarters one by one. I want you to talk to them frankly. Answer all their questions. We’ve nothing to hide.’
Olav Christensen was there.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked.
‘That’s for the police to say. I can’t go into details. I must stress that everything you hear is confidential. I’m counting on your full discretion.’
Hartmann looked round the office.
‘Especially outside these walls. We’re drowning in gossip as it is. We don’t need any more.’
Then Weber ushered them out.
‘Why was that creep Christensen here?’ Hartmann asked when the door was closed.
‘You said everyone with access to the office. He’s here all the time.’
‘He hangs around like a bad smell. Did you get Lund the material she wanted?’
‘All the bookings for the flat. When it was used. Who by.’
‘Troels?’
Skovgaard’s voice had that silky, wheedling tone to it that grated sometimes.
‘What?’
‘The group leaders are on their way. You don’t have to do this.’
‘Send them in.’
‘Troels!’
He walked into his office and waited.
Holck was first.
They got the best computer technician forensics could find, a young woman who looked no more than nineteen.
‘Can you hack the site?’ Meyer asked.
‘Hacking’s illegal. We’re police. I can’t believe you said that.’
‘So how do we get in?’
‘I ask nicely. If that doesn’t work I say I’m coming round to check all the pictures on his PC.’
She was blonde with an amiable face and smile.
There was a piece of paper in her hand, a line of letters and numbers written on it.
‘Voilà,’ she said. ‘See. Nicely didn’t work, mind.’
Then she went into a part of the site Lund never saw on her laptop at home.
‘These places have different levels. There’s one for casual outsiders like you. There’s something else for the privileged few. Something exclusive if you’re prepared to pay for it.’
She typed more quickly and fluently than anyone Lund had ever seen. The light of the screen shone on her plain, confident face.
A list of names came up. Lund ran through them.
‘Can you see any connections with Hartmann?’ Meyer asked.
‘Give me a chance.’
The forensics girl frowned.
‘They’re all fake names. This is a sleazy place, people. If it was just about, um . . .’ She waved her hands in the air. ‘. . . matrimonial services they wouldn’t need to hide like this.’
Another flourish at the keyboard.
‘ “Faust” is one of the more conventional names we have. Some are a bit more descriptive, shall we say?’
A line of entries came up in what looked like a spreadsheet.
‘Not that our Faustian friend hasn’t been busy.’
The entries kept flashing down the screen.
‘He created this profile a year ago. He’s been talking to a lot of women.’
She opened up some of the messages.
‘Oh, what a charmer. He knows fancy hotels.’ She winked at Meyer. ‘Care for a suite in the Hilton?’
‘Not right now. Where’s the personal information?’
‘Where do you think? In his wallet.’
The screen kept filling.
‘Oh this is good. In April Faust contacts someone called NBL. Kids. I mean why not spell out your real name, Nanna?’
A few keystrokes and the messages narrowed down to that one identity.
‘They meet. They’re in contact regularly throughout the spring. They stop in the summer.’ She scrolled to the end of the screen. ‘He keeps trying to reach her but she doesn’t reply.’
She scratched her cheek.
‘Normally the other way round with me.’
‘Can we see who Faust is?’ Lund asked.
‘Not directly. Places like this are too smart to store credit card details. I could try leaning on the site administrator.’
‘Do it,’ Meyer ordered.
‘If you want my honest opinion it won’t work. These people aren’t fools. They don’t want a service with trackbacks to their users. That just causes problems. They genuinely won’t know who they are.’
‘So we’ve no idea who he might be?’ Lund asked.
‘I didn’t say that, di
d I?’
Another screen. Dates, times, long strings of numbers.
‘These are the access log files. They show you the IP address of the networks he used when he went onto the site.’
Lund noticed her fingers fall still on the keys.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘All these hits. He only ever uses two networks. Funny. Most people move around these days. Just two specific places is weird . . .’
She typed some numbers into a form.
‘Most of the time he was using the internal Rådhus wifi network. The rest . . . Bear with me.’
More screens, more rapid typing. A page from a telecoms company. A baffling line of text and figures.
‘The rest are from the router in the flat in Store Kongensgade.’
Meyer watched her.
‘But you don’t know who?’
She licked her finger, stuck it in the air, waited a moment, then said, ‘Sorry. No.’
Lund’s mind was turning.
‘What about any other women he dated? Can you trace them?’
She took a swig from a can of Coke, thinking.
‘I can try.’
Svendsen came through the door.
‘Hartmann’s alibi checks out. Rock solid. He was at the conference centre the whole weekend. Oh, and Lennart Brix is in your office.’
‘Buchard can deal with him.’
Svendsen shook his head and leered.
‘Buchard isn’t here any more.’
Brix was playing with the toy police car on Meyer’s desk. Spinning the wheels, laughing at the way they sparked up the red light on the top.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘The people upstairs wanted me to have a word with you.’
‘About what?’ Lund asked.
She stayed on her feet. Meyer parked himself next to the window.
‘About dereliction of duty in the Birk Larsen case.’
‘Being lied to and messed about isn’t dereliction of duty!’ Meyer snapped.
‘Some phone records slipped out of the system,’ Brix said. ‘You don’t need to read too much into it.’
He pulled an envelope out of his black jacket.
‘Here’s a court order to requisition new records.’
Lund didn’t take the paper.
‘Buchard said he was going to do that.’
Brix thrust his hands into his trouser pockets.
‘Buchard’s gone. For now let’s say he’s on holiday.’ He squinted at the rain beyond the glass. ‘Bad time for it.’
He looked at them.
‘Don’t expect him back.’ He put up a hand, beamed. It wasn’t pretty. ‘You’ve got me now. No worries. We’ll manage.’
Then he headed for the door.
‘I don’t think Buchard was acting alone,’ Lund said.
Brix stopped, looked at her, said, ‘Come with me for a moment, will you?’
The two of them walked down the corridor.
‘You’ve got a job with the Swedish police, Lund,’ Brix said. ‘I want you to finish your work here without any more fuss. And then . . .’
He made a shooing gesture with his long hands.
‘Depart. Until then you report to me. No one else.’
When she got back to the office Meyer was staring miserably at the papers on the desk.
‘I never thought I’d say this, Lund,’ he grumbled. ‘But I think I preferred the other one.’
Theis Birk Larsen sat opposite her at the table, beneath the chandelier. Pernille and the boys had spent the night at her parents. Anton and Emil were now at school. Just the two of them in the empty flat, Vagn Skærbæk barking orders in the garage below.
He stared at his hands. Struggled for the right words.
‘I talked to Lotte,’ he said, and she turned away from him, got up, paced the room. ‘I should have said something. I know.’
Pernille stopped and looked at him from the bedroom door.
‘Something was wrong and you never told me. You knew where she was working. You knew she was in trouble. You didn’t say a thing.’
He kept wrestling with his hands, as if an answer lay there.
‘Why?’
‘Because she begged me not to. She didn’t want to upset you.’
Pernille shook her head, eyes blazing.
‘She didn’t want to upset me?’
‘That’s right.’
‘She could tell me anything.’ Her hands flew out. Her voice cracked. ‘Anything!’
Birk Larsen screwed his eyes shut.
‘She promised it wouldn’t happen again. She’d work for us. She promised she’d keep up with her schoolwork. Even though she was sick of it.’
Pernille went and stood by the bathroom door, back to him, back to everything.
‘Nanna said she’d pull herself together. I had to trust her. What else could I do?’
She returned to the table, full of a calm, cold fury.
‘What else haven’t you told me?’
‘That’s it.’
He picked up his hat and keys.
‘That’s it!’ she shrieked. ‘And now you go to work? There must be more lies. More things I don’t know.’
She glared at him.
‘Come on, Theis. Spit it out.’
‘There’s nothing else,’ he said gently. The stony look on her face hurt him more than all those lonely hours in a cell. ‘Nanna knew she’d messed up. I didn’t think she had to hear it from you too.’
There were tears in her eyes and he wished he could wipe them away.
‘I wanted her to do well in school!’
‘I know you did. But it wasn’t just school. There was a reason why it was me she talked to. Don’t you know?’
‘Know what?’
‘You never wanted to let her make the mistakes you made. That we made. You wanted her to be perfect because we weren’t.’
‘Don’t talk to me about mistakes, Theis. I won’t take that from you.’
She turned her back on him again. Walked towards the bathroom. Past the washing machine and the dryer. The clothes basket. The detergent.
There something happened. She shrieked and screamed, she clawed at the things around her. Clothes flew, glass shattered, washing powder broke and ran around her in a white, embracing cloud.
Birk Larsen went to her, tried to take her in his arms. She fought him off, crying, swearing, kicking, yelling.
Then she fell against the door, breathless and sobbing.
The moment gone, the fury abated. The reason for it still alive and painful between them.
Pernille walked into the bedroom, closed the door behind her. Slowly, with clumsy big fingers, he started to pick up the things from the floor. The sheets. The children’s shirts and underwear. The small things that once made up the bond called family, a covenant that now lay shattered around them like the broken glass upon the floor.
Olav Christensen sat opposite Lund looking nervous in his grey civil servant’s suit.
‘You’ve never been in the flat?’ she asked.
‘No. Why should I? It’s the party’s. I work for City Hall.’
She was quiet.
‘What’s going on?’ Christensen asked.
‘You just had to say no.’
Lund scribbled down some notes.
‘Did others use it after the poster party?’
‘Why are you asking me this? I wouldn’t know.’
‘Why not?’
‘I work for school services.’
‘They say you’re always in Hartmann’s office.’
‘He’s the boss of education. I have to go there.’
‘Do you like him?’
Christensen hesitated.
‘It’s not easy getting on his good side.’ Then again, a little more anxiously, ‘What’s going on?’
‘Does the name Faust mean anything to you?’
‘Yes.’
She looked up from her notepad.
‘He sold his soul to the Devil.’<
br />
Christensen looked briefly pleased with himself.
‘Do you know anyone who uses that nickname?’
‘No. But if the cap fits I’m sure there’s plenty who’d wear it.’
Meyer rapped on the glass door. She went outside. The computer specialist had uncovered a message from a woman who’d written to Faust on the Heartbreak website. They had a name.
Lund took it, went back in to the interview.
‘Am I done now?’ Christensen asked.
‘No. My colleague will continue. I have to go somewhere.’
She went out. Christensen sat at the table, sweating in his office suit.
Then Meyer walked in, looked him up and down. Took out a pack of cigarettes and a banana. One bite of the banana then a cigarette.
‘I’ve got work to do,’ Christensen said.
‘You don’t say?’
Meyer took another bite of the banana then rolled up his sleeves.
‘I’ve been having a really shitty day so far,’ he said, looking at the papers Lund had left. ‘Let’s see if you can make it better, shall we . . . Olav?’
Birk Larsen was alone in his scarlet truck, parked by the side of the road south through Valby. A pack of Tuborg on the passenger seat. Two cans gone, the third disappearing quickly.
He watched the cars and trucks. He smoked. He drank. And tried to think.
In the green fields, along the path, a man was walking his kids. Three of them and a dog.
The boys never had a dog. They wanted one so badly. No good in the flat. A house . . .
He thought of Humleby and the wreck there. All that money tied up in dry rot and crumbling brick.
Dreams didn’t call to him. They were for fools. Birk Larsen thought himself a practical man, one who lived in the present, never thinking of the past, never fearing the future.
A man who worked and kept his family. A man who did his best and that was as good as goodness got.
And still it fell apart. One day bliss and hope. The next the quicksands shifting, cracks in walls that once seemed solid.
He hadn’t spoken to Pernille since the row that morning. As far as he knew she was still in the bedroom, weeping through furious eyes. Vagn had taken over, gone through the schedules, allocated the jobs.
Vagn kept them on track. Kept him on track sometimes, not that Pernille knew.
Little Vagn with his stupid silver necklace. Pathetic Vagn who hung around them so much because he’d got nowhere else to go.
Three years ago, when he was in money trouble, Birk Larsen had let him sleep in the garage for a good six months. Vagn felt grateful and embarrassed. Turned up with pizzas they didn’t want. Started spoiling the boys, buying presents for Nanna she didn’t need.
