by David Hewson
She waited. Disappointment on her lined and serious face.
‘Shall we talk about controlling the damage?’
‘What damage? I’m innocent.’
‘Let’s not get diverted by innocence, shall we? The police face a heavy burden of proof but . . .’
He shook his head, astonished.
‘Burden of proof?’
‘They’ve got the makings of a case. It’s important they know your side of the story.’
‘My side?’ Hartmann laughed. ‘Don’t you see what’s going on here? Every time one trumped-up effort fails they invent another. This is Bremer’s doing.’
‘Poul Bremer didn’t invent the Stjernfeldt woman.’
He was silent.
‘It sounds as if he didn’t invent your messages either.’
‘I never talked or met or communicated in any way with Nanna Birk Larsen. As they know.’
She scrawled something on her pad.
‘I’ll talk to Rie Skovgaard to see if we can take some civil action against them. I agree. The way they’ve acted is outrageous.’
‘Quite.’
‘Which is all the more reason to talk to them. You have to—’
‘No.’
She folded her arms.
‘You have to, Troels. If you don’t what will they think? What would anyone think?’
Meyer stood outside in the corridor, yawning. Lund leaned against the wall.
‘What’s the big idea, Lund? Are we supposed to wait around all night?’
She looked at her watch.
‘They’ve had enough time.’
A tall lean figure appeared. Lennart Brix striding down the corridor, on the phone, to the media by the sound of it.
Lund waited. Brix came and stood in front of her.
‘It was the right thing to do,’ she said. ‘We had good cause.’
‘Picking up a party leader? Without asking me?’
‘Do we normally make appointments with murder suspects?’ Meyer asked.
‘It could have waited.’
‘Hartmann’s Faust,’ Meyer said. ‘He drove the car. He was in the flat. It has to be him.’
‘Except,’ Brix said, ‘he has an alibi.’
‘We’re working on that,’ Lund told him.
The door opened. The lawyer came out.
‘He’ll talk to you now,’ she said.
Six of them in the room. Hartmann’s lawyer and a clerk to take notes. Lund, Meyer and Brix.
And Troels Hartmann, pale, weary, angry and determined.
‘My wife died two years ago. It was very sudden.’ He sipped at a coffee. ‘For a while I kept it to myself. I worked. I pretended there was nothing else.’
He stopped there.
‘Go on, Troels,’ the lawyer said.
‘One day I got some leaflets through the door. A nightclub. I don’t go to clubs but it advertised a dating chat room. You could talk to people. That’s all it was. Talking.’
Meyer coughed into his fist.
‘I created a profile. Under the name of Faust.’
‘How many women did you meet?’
‘That’s got nothing to do with this.’
Meyer cocked his head to one side.
‘More than ten, less than twenty,’ Hartmann snapped. ‘Something like that.’
No one spoke.
‘I’m not proud of it.’
‘You’re in the public eye,’ Lund said. ‘Where could you go?’
‘Just once in public. The first time. After that . . . if we got on . . . I had a cab pick them up.’
‘And go where?’
‘Mostly to the party flat on Store Kongensgade.’
‘Then what happened?’ Meyer asked.
Hartmann scowled at him.
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘But it is,’ Meyer insisted. ‘Nanna Birk Larsen was there. Two days later she was found raped and murdered. I don’t know whether you believe in coincidence in politics, Hartmann, but round here—’
‘I never met her! I never even knew she existed.’
Meyer’s head was still cocked.
‘Let me refresh your memory.’
He went through the stack of papers on the table.
‘We’ve got printouts of your emails. And Nanna’s. Take a look.’
He passed over a stack of sheets. Hartmann started to read them.
‘In April,’ Lund said, ‘you contacted her for the first time. She got back to you through the dating site. The messages continued until a few weeks before her murder.’
‘No,’ Hartmann said. ‘I didn’t write any of this. Look at the emails I do write. This isn’t my style.’
‘Your style?’ Meyer said, laughing.
Hartmann pointed to the dates on the messages.
‘These are months after I stopped using the site. I met someone. Rie. I didn’t want to go on like that any more.’
He stacked the pages, passed them back.
‘I put it behind me. I didn’t write those messages.’
The lawyer said, ‘Someone hacked into his email account.’
‘In City Hall?’ Lund asked.
‘I told you before,’ Hartmann said. ‘I had concerns.’
‘Anyone could have had access to the flat,’ the lawyer added. ‘The keys were kept in a desk. A visitor, someone else in City Hall could have copied them.’
‘Oh please—’ Meyer started.
‘Listen to me! I admit I created that profile. I don’t know who wrote those messages or how they got into the flat. They must have got my password. They pretended to be me.’
‘My client has an alibi,’ the lawyer added. ‘He was with Rie Skovgaard later that evening. They spent the weekend at a conference.’
Brix was staring at Lund, and letting Hartmann and the lawyer see it.
‘Well?’ the woman persisted. ‘How is it possible in these circumstances that Troels Hartmann can be a suspect?’
‘If I read one word of this crap in the press,’ Hartmann threw at them, ‘I will sue everyone in sight. This department. You all personally. I will not be libelled by Poul Bremer’s puppets—’
‘Enough,’ Brix said. ‘We need to talk about this.’
‘What’s the likelihood he’s telling the truth?’ Brix asked when they went outside. ‘That someone could have been using his dating profile?’
‘It’s balls,’ Meyer said. ‘You’d need to have the password. And the computer that was used was in the party’s flat.’
Lund was at the blinds, peering through them at Hartmann.
‘What do you think?’ Brix asked.
‘We won’t get any more out of him now. We need a court order to get his phone records. Why does he think Bremer’s involved in this?’
‘Because he’s paranoid,’ Brix said. ‘Let him go. I don’t want this in the media—’
‘We don’t do that,’ Lund cut in. ‘How many times—?’
‘I don’t want it leaked. Keep me posted. Don’t do anything without clearing it with me first. I’m going to tell Hartmann he can go.’
When Brix had left Lund said, ‘We need to talk to Rie Skovgaard. And the conference centre. Who confirmed the two of them were there?’
Meyer went to the desk and picked up the reports.
‘Svendsen. According to reception they checked in at nine on Saturday. They rented a room and a large conference space. Then they checked out on Sunday afternoon.’
‘Svendsen’s a lazy bastard. How did they pay?’
A flick through the pages.
‘Skovgaard’s credit card.’
Meyer watched Hartmann walking down the corridor towards the spiral staircase. So did Lund.
‘So Poster Boy’s a serial philanderer,’ he said. ‘And I thought he was supposed to be a perfect gentleman.’
‘Apart from Skovgaard who saw Hartmann? Let’s find out.’
‘I’ll get someone to look. It will leak, you know. Someone’s talking to the press. It’s
not you. It’s not me.’ He jerked a thumb towards Brix’s office. ‘But someone is.’
Her phone rang. Vibeke.
‘Hi, Mum. I’ll ring you back. And I’ll be late. Don’t talk to Mark about Bengt and Sweden. I’ll do that myself.’
‘Mark’s father’s here,’ Vibeke said.
Lund struggled to separate her thoughts.
Hartmann.
Mark.
Theis Birk Larsen.
Carsten.
‘If you want to see him,’ her mother said, ‘you’d better hurry.’
Theis Birk Larsen and Pernille sat next to each other around the table, beneath the Murano chandelier. The social worker they’d been sent was around forty, well-dressed, professional. She might have been a lawyer if they hadn’t known.
‘You’ve no previous experience of this?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Birk Larsen said.
Pernille stared out of the window, barely listening.
‘Neither of you has seen a therapist or been in counselling?’
He shook his head.
‘Having a child together establishes a very strong connection. Losing that child has consequences for the relationship.’
She sounded as if she were reading from a textbook.
Pernille got up, leaned against the tiled kitchen wall, folded her arms.
‘It’s not our relationship I’m worried about right now,’ she said.
‘What worries you then?’
The woman had piercing blue eyes and hair that was too young for her.
‘Do you have children?’ Pernille asked.
‘That’s irrelevant. There’s nothing you can do to solve the case. You have each other. You have your family.’
‘I don’t need your advice about my boys!’ Pernille snapped.
The social worker reached into her bag and took out some leaflets.
‘These pamphlets will give you an idea of what counselling can offer.’
She placed them on the table. Got up, pulled on her coat.
‘I recommend our bereavement counselling groups. It can be helpful to talk to others.’
‘We’ve got better things to do,’ Pernille answered.
The blue eyes stared at her.
‘It’s not an offer. It’s a condition of your husband’s bail. If you don’t attend he’ll go back to jail. After the episode with the teacher he’s lucky to be walking the streets at all.’
He saw her out, said thanks.
Back upstairs. Pernille leaning on the sink, staring out of the window.
‘She said the bereavement counselling group have a meeting tomorrow.’
The call from the newspaper had come just before the woman from the council arrived. He’d taken it, kept it quiet. Knew he couldn’t for much longer.
‘The papers are going to write about the politician again,’ he said.
‘What are they going to say?’
‘I don’t know.’
She reached for the phone.
‘The police won’t tell you anything, Pernille. Don’t you understand? It’s not our business. Not for them.’
Lund was on voicemail.
She turned on the TV, hunted for the news. It was there. The murder team had taken in Hartmann for questioning. He’d been released after an interview.
Pernille turned up the volume, listened, rapt, eyes glistening.
A sleepy, high voice said, ‘Mum? I can’t sleep.’
Small shape at the door in pyjamas.
Theis Birk Larsen rose in an instant, scooped up Emil in his arms. Kissed him, whispered nonsense in his warm ear.
‘Nanna was found dead in one of Hartmann’s campaign cars,’ the newsreader said. ‘She’d been raped repeatedly, and reports say . . .’
He rushed the boy back into the bedroom, clutched him tightly, held the child’s shaking frame to his.
Weber was watching the news when they got back to the Rådhus.
‘Dare I ask how it went?’
Hartmann sat down.
‘This is serious. We need to know who used the flat.’
Weber looked relaxed. No tie. Cup of coffee. Ready to sleep in the office again.
‘I checked the records. It was mainly people we knew. People we trusted. The police have got all that.’
‘No, no, no. That civil servant. Olav. He’s been all over this office somehow. It has to be him.’
‘Lund had him in along with the rest of us.’
Skovgaard listened looking gloomy. Hair swept back in a band now. Severe. Businesslike. Distant.
‘What am I supposed to say to the press?’ she asked.
‘How the hell did they find out? The minute I was out of that room? Lund—’
‘It’s what the press do, Troels,’ she said. ‘Someone on the door could have tipped them off. Here or at the Politigården. There’s no way you can bury a story like this—’
‘Someone got my password. Someone used my profile to email that girl. And Nethe Stjernfeldt told the police about me. Jesus . . .’
In a sudden fit of anger he swept the papers off his desk, stood at the window in the light of the blue neon sign.
‘What dating profile?’ she asked in a cold and curious voice. ‘Who’s Nethe Stjernfeldt?’
Weber got up, mumbled something about taking a second look at the files, then left the office, closing the door behind him.
‘Fine,’ she said when Hartmann didn’t speak. ‘No answer. We’ll start a civil action. Get a gagging order. We don’t want more headlines. They get the papers tomorrow.’
‘We’re not bringing a civil action. Forget it. How can I hope to be Lord Mayor of Copenhagen if I’m in the middle of a legal battle with the police?’
‘Is that the only reason?’
It had been almost six months now. Six happy months for the most part. She was good at her job, quick and sharp and imaginative. But the work pushed them together too closely. He needed distance. So did she.
‘The police are looking for a man who contacted the Birk Larsen girl through a dating site,’ he said, trying to keep the words as simple, as plain and boring as possible. ‘It turns out it was through a profile I created. A long time ago. Before we ever . . .’
There was no expression on her face, no warmth or shock in her dark eyes.
‘I don’t know how this happened. After I stopped using it someone else got hold of the profile. Wrote to the girl. Sent her messages. Met her in the flat in Store Kongensgade.’
He came and stood in front of her.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Rie. You knew what I was like when you met me.’
He closed his eyes. The blue lights outside were so bright he could still see them.
‘When did you stop?’
‘When I met you.’
He came close, held out his arms. She walked to the desk for no reason.
‘So now there are two things,’ Skovgaard said. ‘The flat and the dating profile. Make a list of the people who might know your password. Think about what you’re going to say to the alliance tomorrow.’
She picked up the desk diary.
‘I’ll get Morten to update your appointments. I’ll deal with the press. Go home, Troels. Keep out of the way. I don’t want people to see you now, like this.’
‘Like this?’
‘Pathetic and sorry for yourself.’
He nodded, taking the blame. Put his arms down. Stuffed his hands in his pockets.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘Is that all you’ve got to tell me? Is there more to come? More I don’t know?’
‘No,’ he promised.
‘I hope so.’
When Lund got back to her mother’s flat she could hear Carsten, Mark’s father, talking ice hockey. She took off her coat, went into the bedroom, got a new sweater, not black and white but white and black, put it on.
Then she went into the living room.
Carsten.
An athletic, engaging man. T
oo cerebral, too ambitious, too offended by the everyday to remain a police officer. He was talking Mark through some hockey rules, waving around a brand-new stick he’d bought.
Lund’s son was watching. Caught. Engaged. As was Vibeke. Carsten still had that talent.
‘Then it’s easier to score?’ Mark asked.
‘Exactly. You can do it. We’ll go and practise sometime.’
Lund stood in the shadows watching this exchange. Envying it. Fearing it.
Carsten turned. His hair was blonder than she remembered. Longer too. He had new fashionable plastic-framed glasses and a slick brown suit. No one would have dared to walk around headquarters like that.
‘Hi!’ she said brightly, coming out of the dark to smile at him.
‘Sarah!’ Carsten cried, too loudly.
No embrace.
Mark was smiling too. For a moment she felt the brief and fragile bond of family between them.
Lund walked over, stroked Mark’s hair, took no notice when he frowned and shrank away.
‘So, Carsten. When did you get here?’
He held the hockey stick easily, like a pro. For Mark.
‘This afternoon. It happened so suddenly.’
‘They’ve rented a house in Klampenborg,’ Vibeke said. ‘Do you want some dinner?’
Lund nodded. Vibeke moved happily to the pans.
‘The job came up last week,’ Carsten carried on. ‘The chance to come home . . . It was too good to say no. Brussels and two little girls . . . all we did was work.’
Mark got up, took the stick from him, practised a few strokes.
‘And I missed this guy as well,’ Carsten added, putting a hand round Mark’s shoulder.
The two of them stood side by side, as if posing for a photograph.
Again Lund made herself smile.
‘What about you and Sweden?’ he asked.
‘It’s been postponed for a while,’ she said immediately.
‘I heard Bengt had an accident.’
Lund looked at her mother.
‘It wasn’t so bad.’
‘He broke his arm!’ Vibeke cried.
She handed Lund a plate of stew.
‘The house-warming party was cancelled,’ her mother went on. ‘So was my trip to Løgumkloster.’
‘I’ve been working on a case,’ Lund said. ‘It’s not like Brussels. Nine to five.’
Carsten still had his arm round Mark. It looked possessive now, not an embrace.
‘These things happen,’ he said. ‘But I suppose there’s no rush.’
