by David Hewson
There was a rattle. The door opened just a couple of inches on the chain. An elderly woman’s face, not clear in the darkness.
‘I’m Vicekriminalkommissær Sarah Lund from the police,’ Lund said, showing her ID. ‘We need to speak to your neighbour, Geertsen.’
‘She’s away.’
Old people and strangers. Fear and suspicion.
‘Do you know where?’
‘Abroad.’
The woman moved as if to close the door. Lund put a hand out to stop her.
‘Did you see anything unusual around the block today?’
‘No.’
There was a sound from behind her in the apartment. The woman’s eyes wouldn’t leave Lund’s.
‘Do you have a visitor?’ Meyer asked.
‘It’s just my cat,’ she said then quickly slammed the door.
One minute later, back in her squad car, Lund on the radio, Meyer by her side. He was getting twitchy.
‘I need back-up. The suspect may be at this location.’
‘We’ll send a car,’ control replied.
They could see the apartment window from the street.
Meyer said, ‘The lights are out. He knows we’re here.’
‘They’re on their way.’
He took out the Glock and checked it.
‘We can’t wait. A man like that. An old woman. We’re going in.’
Lund shook her head.
‘To do what?’
‘Whatever we can. You heard the sister. He’s a lunatic. I’m not waiting till the old bird’s dead.’
Lund leaned over the seat, looked him in the eye, said, ‘We’re staying here.’
‘No.’
‘Meyer! There’s two of us. We can’t cover the exits…’
‘Where’s your gun?’
She was getting sick of this.
‘I don’t have one.’
It was the look she saw the day before when they talked about Sweden. Utter amazement.
‘What?’ Meyer asked.
‘We’re going nowhere. We’ll wait.’
A long moment. Meyer nodding.
‘You can wait if you want,’ he said then leapt out of the car.
Across the city, in a campaign car speeding through the night, Troels Hartmann took the last call he wanted. A news agency. Official this time. A journalist with a name he recalled.
The reporter said, ‘We know about the car, Hartmann. Nanna Birk Larsen was found in one of yours. You kept it quiet. Why is that exactly?’
In the apartment above the depot, while Pernille quietly wept, Theis Birk Larsen sat with Anton and Emil, one on each huge knee, telling more stories about angels and forests, watching their faces, hating his lies.
Sarah Lund bit on another piece of Nicotinell, thought about Jan Meyer, thought about the dead girl who came out of the water.
Then she pulled open the glove compartment by the wheel, sorted through the packs of gum, the dead lighter, the tissues, the tampons and took out her gun.
Halfway up the dark dank staircase she heard the sound of breaking glass.
Lund ran the rest of the way, took hold of Meyer’s arm as he smashed at the panel in the door with the grip of his gun.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘What does it look like?’
‘I told you to wait.’
He broke more glass, opened up the hole with his elbow, put a hand through, looked at her and winked.
‘You go left,’ Meyer said. ‘I go right.’
Hand through, searching. There was the sound of an old key turning an old lock. Then the door moved. Inside was as black as the night they’d just left. Meyer scuttled through and was gone in a stride. She went to the wall, edged forward, the Glock an unfamiliar shape in her right hand.
The place stank of mothballs and liniment, cat and washing.
Three steps and she bumped into a sideboard, nudged something with her arm, just managed to catch it before the thing fell to the floor. Lund could just see what she’d touched: a porcelain figurine, a country milkmaid grinning beneath her burden of buckets. Placed it back without a sound. Moved forward, stepped on something, heard a tinny mechanical voice break the silence.
‘Your weight is fifty-seven point two kilograms.’
She got off the scales wondering what Meyer was saying to himself.
‘Fifty-seven point two kilograms,’ the thing said again.
There was a pained sigh from somewhere ahead. Then footsteps. A silhouette. Meyer, trudging in front of her, gun out.
No other sound. Three more steps. A door on the right, ajar. Laboured, arrhythmic breathing. She pocketed the weapon, walked through, fumbled her fingers against the wall, found a light switch. Turned it on.
In the dim yellow bulb of a single wall-light the old woman struggled, trussed like a farmyard bird, wrists and ankles, a cloth rag round her mouth.
Lund got down, put a hand to her shoulder, pulled off the gag.
A long high wail of terror and pain burst from the old woman’s lips.
Meyer was close by, cursing.
‘Where is he?’ Lund asked. ‘Mrs Villadsen?’
‘What did she say?’ Meyer snapped.
The woman was panting, gasping for breath. Terrified.
‘What did she say?’
Lund looked at him. Listened. He got the message. Went back out in the dark apartment, feet tapping on the tiles.
She waited.
You take the left. I’ll take the right.
Did that still apply? Yes, she guessed. Meyer was a little like her in some ways. There was one plan and one plan only. You stuck with it until something changed. He didn’t like working with someone else either.
She undid the woman’s ankles and wrists, told her to stay there, stay still.
A pair of scrawny hands clawed at her.
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘I’ll be right back. We’re here. You’re safe.’
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘It’s fine. Don’t worry.’
Still the wrinkled fingers clutched at her.
‘I need my cane.’
‘Where is it?’
She gasped, thought, said, ‘In the hallway.’
‘OK.’ Voice calm, steady. Which was how Lund felt. ‘Stay here.’
She got to the door, bore left.
Kitchen smells. Drains, food. The cat. Another old lamp, frilly shade, faded yellow. A chair, a small desk. Striped curtains running to the floor. Gently moving as if the window behind was open.
In November.
Lund folded her arms, thought, moved forward, gently pushed the fabric aside.
The pain bit at her arm like a wasp sting, rapid and savage.
There was a figure coming from behind the stripes, silhouetted against the faint lights behind the window. His right arm was flailing, right and left, up and down.
Another flash of agony.
Lund yelled, ‘Get back! Police! Get back.’
Fumbling like a fool for her gun.
The wall stopped her. He lunged forward. And now the light caught him. In his hand she saw a box cutter, short blade, sharp. Threatening.
He swore, slashed at her, so close she could feel the air move past her cheek.
A furious, insane face, mouth opening, yellow teeth grinning. He roared. One more cutting, sweeping slash…
Her fingers tightened on the gun butt. She raised it, pointed the barrel dead in his face.
John Lynge’s eyes narrowed. He was sweating. Looked sick. Looked mad.
‘Calm down, John. I won’t hurt you.’ No sound from Meyer. She knew what he’d be doing.
Lynge retreated a step. Her eyes were getting used to this light. She saw his shoulders, his arms.
Kept the gun straight on him.
‘I didn’t do anything!’
Frightened, she thought. That was good.
‘I didn’t say you did, John.’
Keep using the name.
Keep turning down the heat.
He started rocking backwards, forwards, sobbing, hands to his face.
The blade was still there. Did he know that?
‘You don’t believe me,’ Lynge grunted.
‘I’m listening. Put down the knife.’
He flashed the box cutter at her. Didn’t flinch at the gun.
‘You’re not putting me back in jail!’
Crazy voice. A man in agony.
‘We’re just talking, John. Let’s do that. OK? The school…’
Stiff and furious, shaking, close to the edge, Lynge bellowed, ‘I felt sick. I went to the hospital. I got back. The car was gone. Maybe, maybe…’
‘Maybe what?’
‘Maybe I dropped the keys when I was throwing up. I don’t know.’
‘What keys?’
‘The car keys! You’re not listening.’
He was getting madder all the time.
‘You were sick. I hear you, John.’
He moved a step to the left. She could see him in the orange light from the street.
‘You felt ill and you left the car. Put down the knife. Let’s talk.’
‘I’m not going back to that place. They’ll know—’
‘You won’t—’
‘John!’
A hard male voice from the hallway. Lund took a deep breath. Looked. Meyer was there. Gun up. Pointed straight at John Lynge’s head. Ready.
‘Drop the knife,’ he said in a slow threatening tone.
‘I have this, Meyer,’ she said. ‘It’s under control…’
Lynge was running already. Meyer after him. Two dark shapes crossing the floor.
A scream and shattering glass. A tumult of bitter curses. Then a hideous crash outside. The sickening sound of flesh and bone on pavement.
‘Meyer?’ she said.
There was a figure at the window.
Lund walked to it.
‘Meyer?’ she said again.
John Lynge was unconscious, strapped to a trolley, tubes and apparatus everywhere, getting rushed down a hospital corridor. It was ten in the evening. Lund asked, for the third time, ‘When can I speak to him?’
The surgeon didn’t break his pace, just stared at her then said, ‘Are you serious?’
‘Is he going to live?’ she asked when they got to the operating theatre doors.
Lund stopped, repeated the question at twice the volume.
No answer. Then John Lynge was gone.
‘We’ve got prints,’ Meyer told her. ‘Forensics have got his boots.’
‘And nothing to match them with. He says he went to the hospital!’
‘Puh!’
‘Have you ever heard someone say that, Meyer? Not I was screwing my girlfriend. I was in a bar. But I went to hospital?’
Nothing.
‘He told me he left the keys at the school. When he came back the car was gone.’
‘He was lying!’
Meyer looked at her and shook his head.
‘He cut you, Lund. He’d have cut you again.’ He came close. ‘Cut your face to ribbons. Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘It doesn’t mean he killed Nanna Birk Larsen. Check the hospital records.’
‘Oh come on. Do you really think—’
‘If he’s got an alibi I want to know. Find out.’
She shouted that last order. Which wasn’t like her. This man had got under her skin.
Lund took off her jacket, checked the sleeve of her black and white jumper. The thing was ruined. Lynge’s blade had slashed a cut through the wool, opened up a flesh wound across the top of her arm just below the shoulder.
‘You should get that seen—’
‘Yes! I should. What about the old lady?’
‘I called while you were yelling at the doctors. She’s going to stay with some relatives.’
Lund nodded. Calm now. The cut hurt, not that she was going to show it.
‘Go and get some sleep,’ she told him. ‘Tell them to let me know if his condition changes.’
He folded his arms, didn’t move.
‘What?’ Lund asked.
‘I’m not going anywhere until I see you talk to a nurse.’
The TV debate was over. A draw at best, Hartmann thought.
Outside, in the huddle waiting for their cars, he took Rie Skovgaard to one side, asked, ‘Have you heard from Lund?’
‘No.’
‘Did you call her?’
‘I can’t get through.’
It was raining. There was no sign of their driver.
‘We can’t afford to wait any longer. Put a statement together.’
‘Finally…’
‘Give it to the reporter who phoned. He’s legit. Tell him it’s an exclusive. Win us some breathing space…’
Bremer strode up, jacket over shoulder, glanced at the rain, stepped back beneath the shelter of the roof.
‘Crisis meeting?’
The two of them went quiet.
‘I thought you were a little rusty tonight,’ Poul Bremer said. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘Really?’
No points scored on either side. No balls dropped. But the way Bremer smiled throughout gave Hartmann pause. Every issue, every question he forced round to the question of character. Hartmann’s lack of experience, of proven trust.
The old bastard knew something. He was waiting for the right moment to say it.
‘Rusty,’ Bremer repeated. ‘You’ll need to do better than that.’
‘Still three weeks to the election,’ Skovgaard said. ‘Lots of time—’
‘Pacing yourself. A wise move from what I hear. Goodnight!’
Hartmann watched him go.
‘One day I will tear that old dinosaur apart,’ he muttered.
‘You really have to work on your temper,’ Skovgaard said.
He turned his icy gaze on her.
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. It’s good to come across as passionate. Energetic. Commit ted. But not bad-tempered, Troels. People don’t like it.’
‘Thank you. I’ll try to remember that.’
‘Bremer’s looking for weak points. Don’t hand him one on a plate. Your temper leaves you vulnerable. He’s not the only one who’s noticed.’
She didn’t quite meet his eye.
‘I need you to work on this.’
Skovgaard held up her phone.
‘Ritzau news agency have heard about the car too. The story’s out there.’
The black saloon came and parked in front of them. The Rådhus driver got out and opened the doors.
‘I told you we needed to get this out early,’ she said. ‘Now we’re racing round trying to clean up something we should have killed at birth.’
‘Bremer’s behind this.’
‘Someone in the police more likely. How would he know?’
‘Twelve years on that burnished throne. Maybe the Politigården works for him too.’
A long limousine ran past. Bremer wound down the window, grinned at them, waved like a king hailing his subjects.
‘He’s got someone,’ Hartmann muttered. ‘We need to know who it is.’
Ten minutes later the car pulled into the Rådhus. A crowd of reporters and cameramen flocked around them.
‘Say what we agreed,’ Skovgaard said. ‘Be calm, be authoritative. Don’t get mad. Don’t go off script.’
‘Whose script?’ he said, and then they were in the middle of the mob, hands clawing at the doors to get them open.
The rain was heavy and constant. Hartmann pushed through the crowd to the steps of the building. Listening to the questions. Thinking about them.
‘Hartmann? What’s your connection to Nanna Birk Larsen?’
‘Where were you on Friday?’
‘What do you have to hide?’
A sea of hostile voices. When he got to the doors he stopped, watched the voice recorders come up ready to capture every word.
What he said would b
e on the radio in minutes. Captured for ever, repeated in newspapers, replayed on the web.
He waited till they listened then said, in as calm and statesmanlike a manner as he could manage, ‘A young woman was found dead in a car that my office rented. That’s all I can tell you. The police specifically asked us not to comment. But let me say something—’
‘When did you hear?’ a woman shouted.
‘Let me say… No one in the party or the organization is involved in this case. That’s as much as I can—’
‘Do you deny withholding information for the sake of the election?’
Hartmann looked. He was a stocky bald man of about thirty-five, cigarette in smirking mouth.
‘What?’
The hack pushed his way nearer.
‘This isn’t a tough one, Hartmann,’ the reporter bawled through the forest of voice recorders. ‘Do you deny you deliberately deceived the public to win some votes. Is this what we can expect of the Liberal Party?’
He didn’t stop to think about it. Was through the crowd so quickly Skovgaard couldn’t stop him, had the man by the collar.
The smirk never left the bald hack’s face.
‘Yes,’ Hartmann said close up. ‘I deny that.’ A pause. He let go, brushed the man’s collar as if this were a joke. ‘It’s nothing to do with politics. This girl…’
He was off script. He was drowning.
‘Troels?’ Skovgaard said.
‘The girl…’
Cameras flashed. A spiky crown of voice recorders bristled around him.
The hack he’d so nearly punched pulled out a card and thrust it into Hartmann’s fingers. Not thinking he took it.
‘Troels?’
Drowning.
She had his arm, quietly pulled him away, through the door, into the vestibule, through the inner courtyard and the gleaming silence of the Rådhus until they found safety behind its fortress walls.
Hartmann felt the paper in his hand. Looked.
It was a business card.
Just a mobile number. And a name.
Erik Salin.
All evening she’d sat in the dark front room watching TV, switching from news channel to news channel.
Now it was the main bulletin.
‘Troels Hartmann is cooperating with the police in solving the murder,’ the story said. ‘He denies any connection to the girl or the crime.’
She’d seen his posters everywhere. Striking, handsome, more like an actor than a politician. He always looked sad too, she thought.
A noise from behind. She didn’t turn.