by David Hewson
Lund checked the door, went in and out again.
‘You took a call minutes before Nanna arrived.’
The man’s dark eyes flickered between the two of them.
‘It was a wrong number. That was when I was at the petrol station.’
Meyer said, ‘What? You talk for ninety seconds on a wrong number?’
‘Yes…’ The two of them watched him struggling. ‘He wanted to talk to the person who had the number before me.’
‘The call came from a launderette just round the corner. Quite a coincidence, huh?’
‘I don’t know.’
Lund said, ‘You threw out some rubbish.’
‘On Saturday,’ he agreed.
‘On Saturday at one thirty in the morning. What was in the black bag?’
‘An old rug.’
‘A rug?’
‘I took it to the bins on my way back to the allotment.’
Silence.
‘If that’s all…’
Silence.
‘My wife’s coming here soon. I’d like you gone by then.’
‘Don’t run away,’ Meyer told him.
Back at headquarters Buchard listened to their briefing.
‘So you don’t have a bloody thing?’
‘Kemal’s lying,’ Lund said.
‘You found nothing at the flat.’
‘He cleaned up. He took her somewhere else.’
The chief was stomping round the office like an angry dog.
‘Where? You’ve checked everything. Flat, car, basement, allotment, youth club—’
‘If you feel pressured by Troels Hartmann’s campaign, chief,’ Lund cut in. ‘Do let us know. Only polite.’
Buchard looked ready to explode.
‘I don’t give a shit about politics. There’s nothing here that makes the man a rapist and a murderer.’
‘Kemal’s lying,’ Lund said again. ‘He’s got to have a place—’
‘Then find it,’ Buchard ordered.
Kemal’s wife was walking round their apartment, looking at the walls covered in crimson fingerprint dust. There were markers everywhere.
He stood in the hall, not following her as she went round turning on the lights in each room, clutching at her big belly, face angry and confused.
‘What were they looking for?’
No answer.
‘What do they think you did to her?’
‘They’ll soon see they’re wrong.’
‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell them before.’
He leaned against the wall, didn’t meet her eyes.
‘I didn’t want you to worry.’
He wrapped his arms around her, persisted even when she tried to fight him off.
‘I told you I’m sorry. I can’t undo what’s been done. We—’
She pulled away. Still furious. His phone rang.
‘Rama speaking.’
He strode off, out into freshly sanded living room with its bare floorboards and the marks of the police forensic team everywhere.
She hated it when he spoke Arabic. A language she couldn’t begin to understand.
Hated it when he got angry too. This was so rare. He was a placid, decent man. Yet as she listened to him, voice rising to a fury in that foreign tongue, she wondered how much she really knew him. How much there was still hidden in his life.
The tap on Kemal’s phone caught the loud and angry exchange. Forty minutes later a woman in a cream chador was sitting in front of a computer listening to the phone tap.
Duty translator. She scribbled down the original, looked at it.
‘What did he say?’ Meyer asked.
‘ “Keep quiet. Don’t go to the police or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” ’
‘Have you traced it?’ Lund asked.
‘Landline. Somewhere in the north-west.’
They listened to the tape again. There was a sound in the background. A long cry. He replayed it, slowed down but at the same fidelity. Full volume.
The translator listened, nodding.
‘It’s Isha,’ she said. ‘It’s the evening prayer.’
Meyer was working on the computer.
‘The phone belongs to Mustafa Akkad. No criminal records. Runs a small business renting lock-up garages near Nørreport Station.’
‘Tell Svendsen to get Akkad in here,’ Lund said as she went for her jacket.
The lock-ups were underneath a flyover. It was a grubby, desolate place. Metal doors covered in graffiti. Rubbish strewn in the lane. Bad drains.
Jansen was outside, blue plastic shoes on his big feet, ginger hair wet in the rain. A team of three technicians were working on the door.
‘Only one of the garages isn’t rented,’ Jansen said. ‘We thought we’d start there.’
They pulled on gloves and blue plastic shoe covers. Then the technicians got the padlocks off the door and slid it open.
Meyer was in first, Lund second, torches high in their hands.
In the wandering, searching beams the place looked like nothing but a junk store. Tables, half-dismantled engines, office storage racks, tents, fishing rods, furniture…
Lund walked through to the back. Lines of paintings in frames stood along both sides with some model ships and plaster statues.
At the rear of the garage, against the wall that ran parallel with the street, stood several large canvases. Cheap paintings, the kind a restaurant might use for decoration. They were stored oddly. Propped against each other, two frames high. Set at an angle of thirty degrees or so against the brickwork.
Lund looked and thought.
She went up close, removed all four frames. There was a door behind.
Her gloved hands fell on the handle. Unlocked, it opened easily. Lund stayed on the threshold for a moment, checking the interior carefully, looking for a figure trying to hide in the dark.
This place was smaller. More organized too. A couple of metal chairs stood together, nothing on the seats as if they’d been used recently. A lamp stand was next to them, the cable running to a socket in the corner.
Lund’s torch checked the walls once more then she stepped inside, ran the beam down to the floor.
A worn, stained double mattress lay there, with a crumpled blue and orange sleeping bag on it next to an ashtray.
Closer. There was a child’s teddy bear next to the makeshift bed. She got down, started looking more closely.
‘Lund?’
Meyer had walked in and she’d barely noticed.
‘Lund?’
She looked. He’d found a girl’s yellow zipped top. There was a bloodstain on the front.
It was old and dark and big.
Yellow, she thought. The kind of thing a schoolgirl might wear. Childish even.
One o’clock. Hartmann watched the committee members assembling in the meeting room.
‘The vultures are circling, Troels,’ Weber said. ‘Watch your back.’
‘Anything from the police?’ Hartmann asked.
‘Not a thing.’
‘Let’s get this done with.’
When he entered they were scattered round the room, talking in fragmented groups.
Cabals and cliques. Every party had them.
Two women, the rest men, mainly middle-aged, in business suits. Long-term party workers.
‘This meeting was called with insufficient notice,’ Hartmann said, taking a chair at the head of the table. ‘So let’s keep it short.’
Knud Padde ruffled his curly hair nervously, glanced across the table, said, ‘It’s short notice, Troels. On the other hand. The situation with the press. The publicity…’
‘Fine, Knud. Could we get to the point, please?’
‘You’re the point.’
Morten Weber’s prediction was accurate as usual. It was Henrik Bigum who spoke. A lean, unsmiling economics lecturer at the university, bald with the severe, ascetic face of a judgemental priest. Bigum had put himself forward for election
to the city council and the Parliament on several occasions. Never got past the short list. An intelligent, committed man, but caustic in private and addicted to scheming.
‘Henrik. How nice to hear from you.’
The room was silent, tense.
Hartmann put down his pen, sat back in his chair.
‘OK. Let’s hear it.’
‘We’re all very fond of you,’ Bigum went on, as if pronouncing a death sentence. ‘Appreciative of the work you’ve done.’
‘I hear a but, Henrik.’
‘But lately your judgement and your honesty have been called into question.’
‘Bullshit. By whom? You?’
‘By events. The evidence suggests the teacher’s guilty. By not suspending him you give the impression you’re protecting the innocent when in fact you’re protecting yourself.’
Morten Weber asked, ‘Where’s this on the agenda?’
‘We’re beyond agendas. Secondly, Kemal’s file wasn’t handed over to the police at the outset.’
Bigum looked round the table, addressing the meeting now, not Troels Hartmann.
‘Why not? Does Troels have something to hide? Thirdly, confidential information has been leaked from this office. Very private information. Handed to people who can do us harm. We’re losing votes. We’re losing credibility. Our support in Parliament is fragmented and waning. Does it look as if you have the situation in hand, Troels? Not to me. Not to anyone.’
Hartmann stared at him across the gleaming table, laughed and asked, ‘Is that it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t expect you to possess the assassin’s skills of Poul Bremer, Henrik. But really… You abandoned your students for this?’
‘Isn’t it true? Everything, about the file, the police, the leaks from this place?’
‘No. Everything you say has been taken out of context. These problems are dealt with. You don’t need to worry—’
‘If Troels doesn’t withdraw his candidacy of his own accord,’ Bigum interrupted, ‘I propose a meeting be called for a vote of confidence.’
‘Are you serious?’ Hartmann.
‘I am.’
‘And who would stand in my place?’ Hartmann gazed at him, waiting for an answer. ‘Do you have any suggestions? I wonder—’
‘That we deal with when the need arises. You’re destroying what we’ve worked for—’
‘This is not your decision, Henrik!’ a lone female voice cried. ‘It’s not up to you.’
Elisabet Hedegaard, a nursery school teacher from Østebro.
Bigum took a moment to answer. This was an opportunistic stab in the back. Based on hope and the moment.
‘It’s in the constitution,’ he said. ‘Knud?’
‘According to the regulations,’ Padde said, pulling a copy out of his pocket, ‘a majority of votes allows it.’
‘What about the constituency?’ Hedegaard asked. ‘They chose Troels in the first place. They have a say.’
An old man Hartmann barely recognized snarled at her, ‘We’re looking for a solution to the problem, here. Some of us have been working for the party for decades. Not since yesterday…’
Hartmann sat back, stayed silent.
‘The constituency has a voice,’ the woman went on. ‘What you suggest will only make matters worse.’
‘They can be worse?’ Bigum asked. ‘We’ve got a candidate for Lord Mayor who’s embroiled in a murder investigation. With leaks from his office. Numerous highly questionable decisions—’
‘The constituency—’ Hedegaard went on.
‘The constituency decides whether Troels is fit to stand as a councillor,’ Padde broke in. ‘It’s up to us to say who leads the campaign.’
‘I propose…’ Henrik Bigum began.
Theis and Pernille Birk Larsen turned up at headquarters just after two. Lund pulled out photos of some of the items from the lock-up. Meyer stood behind her, watching closely.
‘I need you to tell me if you recognize any of these things,’ she said.
A khaki rucksack.
Nothing.
A red notebook with a distinctive leaf pattern on the cover and a felt-tip pen.
‘No,’ the mother said.
The mattress with the teddy bear and the blue sleeping bag.
Theis Birk Larsen stared at the items.
Lund looked at him, looked at the photograph. Next to the mattress was a cup half full with orange juice. An uneaten biscuit on a plate. A bowl with the remains of what looked like curry. An ashtray with several stubbed-out cigarettes.
‘Nanna didn’t smoke,’ he said. ‘She always nagged me about it.’
Lund passed over a close-up of the teddy bear and a key ring. Two keys, and a plastic design of clover leaves and flowers.
‘You’ve already got her keys, haven’t you?’ Pernille said.
‘We thought there might be a second set.’
‘I’ve never seen any of this.’
Then the yellow top with the bloodstain and a brand logo.
Pernille Birk Larsen’s eyes opened wide, never left the photo.
‘I think she’s got one like that,’ she said, still staring at the yellow fabric and the bloodstain on the left side, close to the zip at the waist.
‘You’re sure?’ Lund asked quickly. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’
‘Like it,’ Pernille said, nodding.
‘Thanks.’
Lund took the photos away.
‘Where’s he now?’ Birk Larsen asked. ‘The teacher?’
‘He’s in custody,’ Lund said. ‘He’s under arrest until we’ve finished our investigation.’
He got up. Black jacket, red boiler suit.
‘What do you know?’ Pernille persisted.
‘We can’t go into details—’ Meyer began.
‘I’m her mother,’ the woman cried. ‘I have the right—’
‘We can’t go into—’
Lund interrupted.
‘Apparently she went to his flat after the party. Maybe they had a relationship. We’re not sure. She was taken somewhere. Perhaps this place. Then driven out to the woods.’
Meyer was grumbling wordlessly behind her.
‘Thanks,’ Birk Larsen said.
‘Thanks,’ the woman echoed.
There was nothing more. They left. Meyer sat in the corner of the office, smoking.
After a while he said, ‘Lund?’
She was looking at the photos again. They had a potential ID of an item of clothing. It was the hardest piece of information they possessed.
‘Lund?’
She met his gaze. Two days’ stubble, big ears, glassy round eyes.
‘That,’ Meyer said, shaking his miserable head, ‘was wrong.’
Buchard listened to Lund’s report and shook his head.
‘The mother identified the shirt,’ Lund said.
‘It’s a kid’s top,’ Buchard complained. ‘Millions like it. Forensics found nothing to suggest it was Nanna’s.’
‘The blood—’
‘We haven’t got the results yet.’
‘There’s enough evidence.’
Meyer watched in silence.
‘Like what?’ Buchard asked.
‘Like a witness who saw Kemal carry something to his car.’
‘No,’ Buchard said. ‘The only evidence you have is an inconclusive phone call.’
‘And the fact that he lied!’
‘If we charged everyone who lied to us half of Denmark would be in jail. Any judge with half a spine’s going to tear us to pieces with this shit. Find Mustafa Akkad. Clear this up one way or the other. Or I’ll get someone who can.’
Theis Birk Larsen went out to cost a job for the week ahead. Pernille hung round in the arcades outside police headquarters then, when he’d driven off, talked her way back inside.
She confronted Lund in her office.
‘Why haven’t you arrested him?’
‘We don’t have enough evid
ence.’
‘How much do you need?’ she yelled. ‘You said she was at his flat. At the party. In the garage.’
‘We’re still looking.’
‘And if you don’t find more? After everything—’
‘I told you,’ Lund said. ‘We’re still working on the case. We’re making progress. I understand—’
‘Don’t tell me you understand.’ She stood there rigid, determined, right hand raised, finger wagging, like a teacher, like a mother. ‘Don’t do that. Do not tell me you understand.’
Back home. Back at the sink, manically washing dishes that didn’t need washing, wiping surfaces that were already clean.
He’d returned, sat at the table, saying nothing. In their small quarter of Vesterbro he was a king of a kind. The man the neighbours asked for help when there were problems with tearaways. Even the immigrants would knock on the door sometimes and beg Theis Birk Larsen for advice. When Nanna was tiny, five or six or seven, she’d seized an Indian kid and made the bright-eyed little waif her first boyfriend.
Amir.
Pernille remembered the two of them together, hand in hand, giggling as she rode them down the street in the box of the Christiania trike. Remembered the way Theis dealt with a couple of local thugs who picked on Amir too. Not gently. It wasn’t his way. But it worked.
Amir he defended. The boy was still in a picture on the table, in the scarlet box of the Christiania trike.
Nanna…
‘They’ll get him,’ he said finally. ‘In the end.’
‘You know about these things?’
She glared at him as she stacked the plates.
‘They never found enough evidence for you, did they? Not for everything…’
His face fell, became fierce.
Birk Larsen got up from the table, confronted her.
‘Did I fail you? Am I a poor husband?’ His eyes were sly again, but full of pain. ‘A bad father?’
‘I didn’t say that. I said you of all people know the police don’t find everything they ought to. Don’t ask me to believe in them.’
He put his hands on her waist. She wriggled from him.
Birk Larsen cursed, got his leather jacket, put it on.
‘I’m going over to the house.’
‘Do that.’
She started washing the boys’ dishes again.
‘Go back to your stupid house and hide.’
‘What?’
‘It’s what you do when things get difficult. Isn’t it? Run away.’