The Killing - 01 - The Killing

by David Hewson

  Meyer grew more sullen and morose as he realized where they were headed.

  Down the narrow lanes, along the ditches and the canals. Past the dark wood where the dead trees gave no shelter.

  Their headlights caught the low metal bridge. A shape midway along.

  Meyer checked his gun, realized Brix still had it. Lund scowled at him, got out, walked straight towards the figure by the canal.

  There was a bouquet of flowers at his back. Amir sat on the edge, looking at the black water, arms through the railings, dangling his legs in the air.

  Like a kid.

  A second squad car pulled up on the other side, blue lights flashing. Two men raced out. Lund waved them back.

  She walked up.

  ‘Amir El’ Namen?’

  She gestured for Meyer to take out his ID then bent down to talk to him.

  ‘We’re police, Amir. It’s OK. You’re not a suspect.’

  He kept looking at the water.

  ‘Witnesses saw you at the airport in Malmö.’

  She went to the edge, leaned on the ironwork, wanting to see the eyes behind his thick black-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘There’s something I need to know,’ Lund said. ‘Who knew? Who did Nanna tell?’

  Finally he looked at her.

  ‘Who knew, Amir?’

  ‘No one knew. We weren’t stupid.’

  ‘Someone must have known. Someone who kept an eye on Nanna . . . Or saw you together. An ex-boyfriend, maybe. Think.’

  He did.

  ‘Someone saw us. But he couldn’t have known. It’s not possible.’

  Lund got closer.

  ‘Who saw you?’

  ‘It was when I picked her up to take her luggage to the station. He got out of a car. I didn’t really see him. I don’t know who he was.’

  Meyer sighed.

  ‘So what did you see then?’ he asked wearily.

  Amir glared at him.

  ‘A red uniform. But he couldn’t have known.’

  Meyer shook his head.

  ‘What do you mean a red uniform?’

  ‘I mean a red uniform. Like they wear.’

  ‘Who?’ Meyer asked.

  ‘His people. Their people. The overalls. Birk Larsen’s.’

  Thirty minutes later Brix arrived, gave Lund her ID card without a word.

  ‘The river search team you wanted is on their way. I expect you to find something.’

  ‘What about the water supply?’ Meyer asked.

  ‘They’ll close it for twenty-four hours. No more. What did the Indian boy say?’

  ‘We’re looking for one of the removals men. Someone who works for Birk Larsen. That’s the link.’

  Brix was scanning the arriving cars.

  ‘The link to what?’

  ‘To Mette Hauge. She’d moved from her dad’s place to the city not long before she disappeared.’

  She waited, wanting to get this clear in her own head.

  ‘When you move home,’ Lund said, ‘you let strangers into your life. Mette did. Nanna . . .’

  Vagn Skærbæk looked at the orders, the schedules, the money owed. They were doing some night work off the books to make ends meet.

  It wasn’t easy.

  Theis Birk Larsen was back from a cash run out to the docks, looking beat but happier than he had of late.

  ‘You know I’m calling in extra people,’ Skærbæk said. ‘What with the work, the calls. We don’t have enough.’

  ‘So long as the jobs cover it.’

  Skærbæk nodded.

  ‘They will. Don’t worry. I can add up.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was a ring at the door.

  ‘Go upstairs, Theis. You look beat.’

  Skærbæk watched him leave.

  The man was lean, around their age. Bloodless face. Sick-looking.

  ‘You could have come earlier.’

  ‘I couldn’t. I was busy. The guy who owns the taxis is giving me a hard time. He wants me to do more shifts.’

  ‘Yeah well. Theis needs you more. And you owe him. So don’t screw us around again. Get your overall on. We’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘Yeah. Cash.’

  ‘Nothing . . . you know—’

  ‘Nothing what?’

  ‘I don’t want trouble, Vagn.’

  Skærbæk shooed him into the room with the lockers.

  ‘Just do the job. There’s still a uniform with your name on it. Even if you do mess us around. This is a family firm, remember?’

  ‘Family. I know.’

  The scarlet overalls were where the new man left them two weeks before, the last time he’d worked. He picked up the red cotton, checked the name on the tag anyway.

  It said: Leon Frevert.

  Lund looked up and down the canals, wondered what secrets they hid. Scuba divers had been working for two hours, dropping into the water from inflatable boats. Other officers were scouring the weed banks and bulrushes at the edge. Floodlights everywhere.

  Even Jansen, the ginger-haired forensic officer who never seemed to question Lund’s orders, was starting to have doubts.

  Around eight, during a break to move the scuba team to a different patch he came up, said, ‘We’ve searched two of the smaller canals. God knows how many there are left.’

  ‘Try the old drain line. Twenty years ago most of this area was off limits. He’d know that, he’d have made use of it.’

  ‘All of this was off limits twenty years ago. The army used it as a firing range. No one came here. To dump a car . . .’

  She was barely listening. Lund was trying to imagine what might have happened.

  ‘Don’t assume she’s in a car.’ She thought of Bengt, going behind her back, tracking down Mette Hauge, convinced he was right. ‘Don’t assume anything.’

  Meyer had spoken to Mette’s father again. She’d used a removals firm to take her from her home into a new apartment in the city. He’d no idea which one. But the police report said her belongings went to a warehouse registered to a company called Merkur. It had long since gone out of business.

  ‘The last person it was registered to was someone called Edel Lonstrup,’ Meyer added. ‘I’ve got an address. Maybe tomorrow . . .’

  It was almost ten.

  ‘Let’s go now,’ Lund said.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit late?’ Meyer asked.

  ‘Yes. Twenty years.’

  Lonstrup was in Søborg, on the edge of an industrial zone. It looked more like an abandoned warehouse than a home. The metal gates were unlocked. So were the doors to the run-down metal shack that greeted them at the end of the drive. Meyer pushed in. Boxes everywhere and dusty junk. The name Merkur was stencilled on a few. At the back was a long window with a light on. They could see a kitchen. A few pot plants.

  Someone lived here as well.

  A bloodless face came to the glass, put a leathery hand to her cheeks, peered out.

  In her grey dressing grown, with her lank unwashed hair, she didn’t look as if she got many visitors.

  They sat in the kitchen, watching her eat. The place seemed to be made out of the junk she’d collected: unmatched crockery, a rickety stove, an ancient radio. Merkur closed down ten years ago after her husband died. She said she didn’t have a list of staff, any paperwork at all.

  ‘What happened to it?’ Meyer asked.

  ‘I threw it all out. Why keep it? If this is about taxes or something go down to the cemetery and talk to him.’

  ‘Did one of your employees switch to Birk Larsen’s company?’

  ‘Employees? It’s the moving business. They’re all gypsies. They worked for us one minute. The competition the next. God knows what else they got up to on the side.’

  Her face hardened. A memory.

  ‘That’s why he hung around with them, not his family. For the drink and the women and whatever else was going on.’

  ‘Birk Larsen?’

  ‘Who’s Birk Larsen?’


  The woman had no TV as far as she could see. No papers on the table. Nothing that linked this place to the world outside.

  ‘Does the name Mette Hauge mean anything?’ Lund asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mette Hauge. She had some things in storage.’

  ‘Aage sold everything he could before he went bust. Other people’s belongings too. If he hadn’t died he’d be in prison. All to get drunk and hang around with scum.’

  ‘So you didn’t keep anything?’

  ‘Take a look. What you see is ours. No one else’s.’

  A voice emerged from the dark behind them, younger, more frail. It said, ‘We’ve still got some things in the garage.’

  The woman behind them looked forty but was dressed like a teenager from another time. Long woollen cardigan, a colourful, tatty T-shirt beneath. Jeans. Her hair was in pigtails, turning from brown to grey. She had the face of a child, scared and mutinous at the same moment.

  ‘Go to your room,’ Edel Lonstrup ordered.

  ‘What things?’ Lund asked.

  ‘Dad’s things. Lots of them.’

  ‘They’re just old boxes!’ the mother bawled. ‘Go back to your room!’

  ‘We need to take a look,’ Meyer said. ‘Show us.’

  Boxes of papers, no order, no logic in the dusty garage full of junk and cobwebs. A few crates had the company logo. The word Merkur in blocked blue type with a wing flying out from the left.

  Lund sorted through ancient computer printouts. Meyer emptied box upon box onto the floor.

  ‘What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?’

  ‘A man.’

  He kicked a crate. More papers flew around the room, more dust.

  ‘Nope,’ Meyer said. ‘Not there.’

  The daughter stayed and watched from the shadows.

  ‘How old were you twenty-one years ago?’ Lund asked her.

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘What were they like? The men your father employed.’

  ‘Rough. Frightening. Big. Strong.’

  She clutched her grubby cardigan as she spoke.

  ‘My mother said to stay away. They weren’t like us. They were . . .’

  The daughter stopped.

  ‘They were what?’ Meyer asked.

  ‘They were moving men. All like that.’

  ‘All?’

  Lund left the boxes and walked up to her.

  ‘The man we’re looking for might have been different. Not much older than you. Twenty, twenty-five. Perhaps he worked here part-time.’

  ‘They came and went . . .’

  Lund was trying to imagine. If Bengt was right this man was organized, clever, persistent. He didn’t snatch women in the night. He hunted them, wound them in. Charmed them even.

  ‘He was probably different to the others. Better maybe. Smarter.’

  She didn’t speak.

  ‘He’d like talking to girls. I think he’d talk with more respect than the others. More sympathy.’

  A picture was starting to form in Lund’s head.

  ‘He’d be nice. Not rough. Not nasty. Next to them he’d seem charming, maybe. Was there anyone like that?’

  Silence.

  Lund took out a photo of the necklace with the black heart.

  ‘Have you seen this before?’

  The woman came out of the darkness, into the light for the first time. She was, Lund thought, extraordinarily pretty, but damaged by something. The isolation. The loneliness.

  Nothing.

  ‘Let’s go, Lund,’ Meyer said. ‘Is there somewhere I can wash this shit off my hands?’

  The daughter pointed to the door. Waited till he was gone. Watched Lund.

  When he was out of earshot she said, ‘There might be someone.’ Nervous, she turned her head, made sure Meyer wasn’t listening. ‘It won’t come from me, will it? My mother won’t—’

  ‘No one needs to know.’

  ‘They only want one thing. Men.’

  ‘Was he like that?’

  She was remembering.

  ‘No. The others didn’t like him that much. They’d be messing round. Drinking. Smoking. Not doing a damned thing. He worked. He made sure they kept to the schedule if he could. They didn’t like that.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ Lund asked.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Just ordinary. There was a picture of him with my father. But Mum threw it out. He was supposed to become the manager but I don’t know . . . something happened.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said. I don’t know. One day he was here. Then he never came back.’

  Lund watched her face.

  ‘Did you miss him?’

  Almost forty, dressed like a teenager, long hair turning grey. A life gone to waste.

  Nothing.

  ‘If that was me,’ Lund added, ‘I wouldn’t have let anyone throw out that picture. I’d have gone back and got it. Kept it somewhere my mother didn’t know. That’s what pictures are for, aren’t they? Memories.’

  Lund came closer. The daughter had the same fusty smell as the garage and the living quarters stuck onto the side. Damp and dust and cobwebs.

  ‘We need that picture . . .’

  The long thin arms in the threadbare cardigan came out and gripped her tightly.

  ‘You mustn’t tell . . .’

  The daughter glanced at the windows into the kitchen. There was no one there. Then she went to the back of the garage, carefully began to move sets of old shelves to one side.

  Found something at the bottom. Began to sort through it.

  Meyer had returned. He started towards the woman. Lund’s arm went out to stop him. Her thumb jerked at the door and she mouthed, ‘Out.’

  She found the photo so quickly Lund wondered whether she looked at it every day. It was spotless, no dust. A good clear picture.

  ‘That’s my father. This is the man I was talking about.’

  Lund examined the faces.

  ‘It was twenty years ago,’ the daughter said. ‘Why are you looking for him? What’s he done?’

  Lund said nothing.

  ‘It can’t be anything bad,’ the woman with the greying pigtails added. ‘He wasn’t like that.’

  Pernille sat at the kitchen table watching the video on Amir’s camera, trying to blink back the tears.

  Theis was next to her, his hand on hers.

  ‘Was Amir involved?’ she asked after she watched Nanna blow them a farewell kiss.

  ‘No. The police said he waited for her at the airport in Malmö.’

  She brushed her eyes, her cheeks with the sleeves of her shirt.

  ‘Why didn’t she tell us? Why keep it a secret?’

  He kept staring at the last image of Amir and Nanna, frozen in time, all smiles. Couldn’t speak.

  ‘The Lund woman came and went through all her things again.’

  She shook her head. Felt bleak and defeated again, just as she had before.

  ‘Something’s not right, Theis.’

  His fingers left her hand.

  ‘Don’t start this again. They said the case was closed.’

  ‘So why did Lund come over?’

  No answer.

  ‘They haven’t found him,’ she whispered. ‘You know that. They haven’t found him.’

  A knock on the door. Leon Frevert stood at the threshold in his red overalls and black cap.

  ‘What?’ Birk Larsen asked.

  ‘Sorry but . . . Vagn wants you to come downstairs.’

  ‘Not now.’

  The tall thin man looked scared, but he wasn’t moving.

  ‘I think you need to come, Theis. Please.’

  Birk Larsen grunted and said, ‘OK.’

  The men were all there, full-timers, part-timers, some he barely recognized. In their red uniforms, lined up in the office. Talking among themselves, not smiling, not looking at him as he came through the door.

  Vagn Skærbæk stood at the front of the gro
up, arms folded, talking and nodding.

  The leader, always.

  They had rows sometimes. People walked out. Didn’t always come back.

  That, Birk Larsen thought, was the business.

  His business.

  So he walked straight in, said, ‘What the hell is this? Either work or go home, will you?’

  Skærbæk turned and faced him. Shifty-looking, glancing at the floor.

  ‘Theis—’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Now, Theis. We have a problem.’

  Skærbæk met his eyes finally. Silver necklace glittering. Face serious, resigned.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘This house of yours in Humleby. Don’t get us wrong. We’re glad it’s working out. We really do but . . .’

  He frowned.

  ‘It’s getting in the way. We come here to work for customers. Instead we keep stopping to move bricks and wood and all that shit to Humleby. This can’t go on . . .’

  Birk Larsen closed his eyes, tried to find the words.

  ‘Truth is, Theis, you won’t have that place fixed up by Christmas the way things are going. So we’ve decided. Sorry. But this is final . . .’

  That nod of his little head.

  ‘We’re going to fix it for you.’

  A warm roar of laughter, someone slapped his back. Birk Larsen looked at their beaming faces.

  ‘A couple of us are going to work each evening and a couple more at weekends.’

  ‘You bastards . . .’ Birk Larsen muttered, shaking his head, wiping his eyes.

  ‘The basement’s first. Then the kitchen and the bathroom.’

  He pulled out a list of materials.

  ‘Rudi’s cousin’s a plumber so we get that stuff at cost and a little on the side. He needs moving soon so we can do a deal. The rest will cost you beer.’

  He nudged Birk Larsen’s elbow.

  ‘Best start saving, Theis. These guys drink. And . . .’

  Skærbæk fell silent. They all followed the direction of his puzzled gaze.

  Lund and Meyer walked into the garage, were doing what they always did, looking around.

  Birk Larsen swore then marched out to meet them.

  ‘We’ve got new information,’ Meyer said. ‘It changes things.’

  Birk Larsen stood in front of his men outside the office.

  ‘Last time you told us this was done with.’

  ‘I know. I was wrong. We have to reopen the case.’

  ‘I want you to leave.’

  ‘We can’t do that.’