by David Hewson
The smell of petrol was getting stronger. Lund looked back along the length of the car park. A Renault van was parked near the end, doors open, lights on.
She walked towards it. Strange followed.
‘Call Brix,’ she said.
‘For what?’
She swore, got to the Renault, looked inside.
A dog tag, shiny new silver, severed in half, was hanging from the driver’s mirror.
‘For that.’
He still didn’t call. Strange was looking at the seat. There was a phone there.
She went to the back of the van, threw open the doors. It was full of empty plastic carboys. No need to pick them up. The smell told her what they must have contained.
‘Did you call Brix yet?’
He was still by the car door.
‘You need to see this,’ Strange said.
‘See what? Where the hell is this man?’
Lund walked back anyway. The phone on the seat had lit up. There was a clock on the screen. Seconds. Ticking down.
Only five left. She watched them feeling stupid and powerless.
‘What is this?’ Lund asked as the numbers hit zero.
Strange looked round.
‘I don’t know . . .’
It was the softest of explosions, like the first yawn of a waking giant.
Lund turned, looked at the air vents. Stayed rooted to the spot till Strange’s powerful arm took her and his urgent shrieks burst into her head.
‘Run,’ Strange yelled as the fiery cloud broke free of the metal grates and burst into the concrete tomb around them.
So run she did.
Five
Wednesday 16th November
6.34 p.m. Brix came with a fleet of vehicles from headquarters. By then Lund and Strange had pieced together some of what had happened. David Grüner was due to come on duty at four that afternoon. The van with the phone was his. It looked as if someone had attacked him as he was getting out with his wheelchair, forced him into a small room in the basement and locked him in there.
Brix listened to them as they walked through the car park. The alarms were still ringing. Fire officers were cleaning up everywhere. Foam and water ran around them. The place stank of bitter, chemical smoke.
‘Do we have any witnesses?’ he asked.
‘The CCTV was turned off just before Grüner arrived,’ Strange said. ‘It registered as a fault with the security company. They were due to come and look at it this evening.’
‘We should have known,’ Lund murmured.
‘How?’ Strange asked. He turned to Brix. ‘We found the van. He’d set up some kind of timer to do with the phone. We couldn’t do anything before the thing went off.’
Brix looked at the ceiling.
‘The sprinklers never came on?’
‘They got turned off too,’ Lund said. ‘This is really good. If you think a fanatic walked straight out of a mosque and . . .’
She stopped when she saw Brix’s face. Took a deep breath. Wished she could get the stench of that small room in the basement out of her nostrils, the image of it out of her head.
‘Do you want a look?’ Strange asked. ‘It’s not . . .’
He glanced at Lund.
‘I never saw anything like it,’ he added.
The chief went first in his grey wool coat.
‘He’d poured petrol round Grüner. Probably over him too from what forensic seem to think,’ Strange continued as they went down the narrow steps.
The smell of smoke and something worse was growing all the time. Lund’s stomach turned. She knew what that other reek was: burned meat.
More officers, some in white suits, others in face masks wandering the length of the corridor, checking with torches.
‘The phone in the van was linked to a detonator on the firebomb underneath the wheelchair,’ Strange went on. ‘So he could call from outside and start the sequence.’
Lund shook her head.
‘Why couldn’t he detonate it direct?’
Strange shrugged.
‘I asked forensic that. They said he needed the second phone to be close.’ He pointed to the low ceiling. ‘We’re underground, remember. Grüner was tied up, gagged. The wheelchair was chained to a radiator. Poor guy couldn’t move, couldn’t shout. Just sat there waiting.’
Strange pulled two white cotton masks out of his pocket, passed them to Brix and Lund. It didn’t make much difference to the smell.
‘What do we know about him?’ Brix asked.
‘David Grüner,’ Lund chipped in. ‘Twenty-eight years old. Army veteran. Served with Raben in Ægir. Worked here for a year after being invalided out of the army. Wounded in action.’
The team in white suits brought out a blackened wheelchair, a body in it so badly burned it looked barely human.
Brix got closer, looked at the sad, charred figure. It seemed melted to the metal frame of the chair. Something black, like a misshapen necklace, sat round his neck.
‘His legs were shot to bits in Afghanistan,’ Strange added.
‘Is that a car tyre?’ Brix asked.
Strange bent down and took a closer look.
‘They used to do that in South Africa to traitors,’ he said. ‘We found the severed dog tag in his van. It looks like the same set-up.’
‘If we’d been briefed when PET knew this was on the cards . . .’ Brix complained.
Lund just looked at him.
‘What?’ the chief asked.
‘He turned off the alarms. The CCTV. Wired up a phone to set off a firebomb. Besides . . . we’ve picked them all up, haven’t we?’
‘Only takes one,’ Strange suggested.
‘I need to make a call,’ Lund said and walked back along the corridor.
She found a utility room on the floor above, threw up in the basin. Was swilling out her mouth when Brix came in looking for her.
He waited as she spat a couple of times into the sink and wiped her mouth with a tissue.
‘I should have known,’ she said again when she got her breath back. ‘As soon as I saw Raben I should have done something.’
‘You did all you could.’
‘If we’d been half an hour earlier. Fifteen minutes—’
‘Lund—’
‘I screwed up. Again.’
She got another tissue, wiped her mouth once more, threw it into the bin.
‘You can’t blame yourself . . .’
She turned and stared at him.
‘That’s three dead. And we still don’t have a clue . . .’
Lund went for the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back for another look.’
Twenty minutes later Erik König arrived. Brix briefed him at the end of the corridor leading to the room where Grüner died. The PET man didn’t seem keen to go any further.
‘They used tyres like that in South Africa,’ Brix said. ‘Strange said it was for traitors.’
‘From what I recall it’s more specific than that. They used it on informers. But how could a crippled ex-soldier inform on anyone. Over what?’
Lund was back near the site of the explosion, patiently going through items on a trolley.
‘I hear there were witnesses,’ König said, watching her.
‘Raben was here.’
‘Is he a suspect?’
Brix frowned.
‘If he is it’s just for this. We’ve got the severed dog tag, just as we had for the first two killings. We know Raben wasn’t responsible for those. He was in Herstedvester.’
König couldn’t take his eyes off Lund.
‘So she uncovered all this?’
‘Pretty much. She asked Strange to track down someone from Raben’s team two years ago. It would have been useful if she’d told me first.’
‘None of this means Kodmani’s innocent.’
‘Maybe not,’ Brix said, watching him. ‘Soldiers stick together. Perhaps Raben was looking for help. Or offering it. I th
ink . . .’
Lund was sifting busily through the pieces in front of her.
‘It’s probably best if I take her off the case.’
König shook his head.
‘Why would you want to do that? I know what I said yesterday. But—’
‘I dragged her back here. It wasn’t her idea. There’s an obsessive side to her. I—’
‘You don’t like the idea you can benefit from using it?’ König smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Lennart. We all have a twinge of conscience from time to time. Here are two good reasons for keeping her where she is. I’d like to know what she thinks of this Faith Fellow Kodmani mentioned. Let’s keep an open mind there, shall we?’
‘And the second?’
‘Kodmani’s asked to be questioned again. He says he’s something of substance to tell us. On one condition.’
He nodded at the woman along the passageway.
‘He’ll talk to her and no one else.’
König looked at his watch.
‘I have an appointment at the Ministry,’ he said.
‘I gather they’re not happy.’
No answer.
Brix watched him go. Then he walked over to Lund. She was with Strange, looking at an evidence bag and juggling a call at the same time.
He waited.
‘My mother’s getting married on Saturday,’ she said when she came off the line. ‘She wants me to go round to Bjørn’s.’
‘Who’s Bjørn?’ Brix asked.
‘Her boyfriend,’ she said as if it were obvious. ‘I need to go home and change. The smell . . .’
‘Sure.’
‘Any news about Raben?’ she asked.
Brix shook his head. Her phone rang again.
‘Cake?’ Lund said. ‘OK. I’ll buy cake. Come again?’
She put the phone in her pocket and sighed.
‘What is it?’ Strange asked.
‘Bjørn has a nut allergy. Where do I buy a cake that doesn’t have nuts?’
‘Lagkagehuset,’ Strange said. ‘You just have to ask. “Cake without nuts, please.” ’
‘I know how to buy cake,’ Lund said very slowly.
‘Get it later,’ Brix ordered. ‘Kodmani’s got something to say. And he wants to say it to you.’
Lund’s large, all-seeing eyes stared at him.
‘Cake shops don’t stay open all night, Brix.’
Strange got her jacket, held it for her, arms open.
‘We’ll stop along the way.’
Raben lurked among the curious bystanders gathered in a huddle in the rain to watch the emergency services go in and out of the office block in Islands Brygge. His hood was well down. His jacket was grimy. He could have been one more drunk or homeless hobo living on the edge of the city. Someone people noticed but never went near.
And so he could watch as they carried out a stretcher, on it a bent shape wrapped in a shroud of black plastic.
Raben hung around, thinking, wondering. Then she was out again. The woman cop. Striking more than pretty, her hair looked a little lank and her bright eyes shone with a relentless curiosity.
She was peering at the crowd. Smart enough to know he might hang around. Raben pulled his hood down further then slunk off towards the bridge and Vesterbro.
Twenty minutes striding through the drizzle and he was back in Torpe’s church telling him what had happened.
The priest looked scared.
‘You don’t know who was on that trolley,’ Torpe said. He was in jeans and a sweatshirt. Civilian clothes. ‘Maybe David wasn’t the victim.’
Raben sat on the hard pew, cold, hungry, miserable. Lonely too. He wanted to talk to Louise. He wanted to have Jonas sit on his knee.
‘It was him.’
‘Maybe it was an accident—’
‘Grüner’s dead. Why can’t you face the truth? There’s something going on here. Something bad . . .’
Torpe, a strong man, looked ready to weep. He half-fell onto the pew ahead and put his hands to his face.
‘Pull yourself together, man,’ Raben ordered.
‘David had a wife and child!’ Torpe barked at him, bleary-eyed. ‘So do you. Think about them . . .’
‘Did you find the others?’
‘What others? Don’t you remember? Myg’s gone. David now. Apart from you there’s only one left. Lisbeth Thomsen.’
That wasn’t right.
‘No. What about HC? He got back OK. I heard he was a bit crazy—’
‘HC died in a car crash last year. It’s just you and Thomsen.’
Raben swore, lifted his eyes to the altar. Looked at the figure on the cross, understood nothing.
‘Where’s Thomsen?’
‘I heard she left Copenhagen a while back. You know what she’s like. Never happy unless she’s on her own . . .’
There was a sound at the door. Someone rattling the handle. Raben was on his feet in an instant, fists ready.
‘No, no,’ Torpe assured him. ‘It’s Louise. She called when you were out. She said you gave her a sign. I told her I didn’t know where you were. It didn’t matter. She wanted to come anyway.’
‘They’ll be following her.’
Torpe scowled at him.
‘Do you think she doesn’t know that?’ He beckoned to the side room. ‘Go in there. Let me check.’
Raben didn’t move.
‘I won’t let you down,’ Torpe said. ‘I never did that in Helmand, did I? Why would I start here?’
When Raben had gone Torpe went to the front door.
‘Jonas?’ She was on the phone, talking in a motherly voice bordering on the cross. The priest nodded towards the back of the church. ‘Do as the babysitter says. Go to bed. I’ll be home soon.’
Torpe checked outside, saw no one, let her in then went into the rooms out the back.
When Raben came into the nave she didn’t rush towards him.
‘Who knows you’re here?’ he asked.
‘Nobody. I told the babysitter I was visiting a friend. They had a car follow me.’ She paused. ‘I went into a bar in Vesterbrogade. Got out the back.’
He came close. Wondered whether to try to hold her. Louise didn’t move, wasn’t smiling in the wan street light from the high church windows.
‘I’ve been phoning everyone trying to find you. The priest couldn’t lie to me.’ She seemed as stiff and cold as a stranger. ‘Why did you escape? Why couldn’t you wait?’
‘Myg and Grüner have been murdered.’
She shook her head, retreated from him as he tried to touch her.
‘Grüner too?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Why—?’
‘I don’t know why! They were scared. They remembered something from Helmand. I can’t—’
‘What are you talking about, Jens?’
There was a note of anger in her voice he hadn’t heard before. Louise had always sided with him. That mattered.
‘Something happened out there—’
‘They went through all that when you came back. There was an inquiry. I know you were sick—’
‘Something happened. I never told you the truth. None of us talked about it.’
‘What?’
He shook his head, wished, more than anything, he could answer that question.
‘I don’t remember. It’s just a mess . . . We went into a local house. There was an officer there. We got hit. A bomb. Next thing I’m in an army hospital back home. But it happened. It’s in . . .’ He tapped his skull. ‘It’s in here somewhere. Myg knew. I think Grüner did too. I could see it when I talked to him—’
‘You spoke to Grüner?’
‘I thought it was just something rotten in my mind. It was me somehow.’
He looked at her. Wondered about the expression on her face, where he’d seen it before. Remembered. She was a nurse. It was the way she looked at sick people.
‘I wasn’t dreaming,’ Raben said, trying to take her hands. ‘It was real. I wasn’t crazy. T
hey knew that when they locked me up . . .’
She retreated from him.
‘Jens! You kidnapped a stranger in Vesterbro. You said he was an officer from the army. You threatened to kill him.’
Raben couldn’t think of a thing to say.
‘He was no one,’ Louise said, coming a little closer, but still not touching him. ‘Someone you saw on the street. You were ill. Maybe still—’
‘I’m not sick now,’ he insisted. ‘They’re not taking me. If I don’t find out what’s going on they’ll let me rot in Herstedvester for ever.’
‘No . . .’ She took out her phone, held it out for him. ‘This has gone too far. I want you to call the police. Give yourself up. You do this.’ She waved the mobile. ‘Don’t make me.’
He closed his eyes, felt a bitter note of laughter rise in his throat.
‘We can explain it somehow,’ she went on. ‘All you need is time. Do what Toft says. Take your medication.’
He didn’t get mad. He wouldn’t allow that.
‘Louise,’ he said, and before she knew it, took her arms. ‘Don’t you see?’
Her eyes were glistening. He hated it when she cried.
‘I did all that. I did everything they wanted. They still didn’t let me out. They’ve got a reason.’
She snatched her hands from his, swore bitterly.
‘Two years I’ve waited for you. On my own. Talking to doctors and lawyers. I feel like a widow . . .’
‘I did what they asked,’ he said again very slowly.
‘You broke out of jail. You robbed a petrol station. What chance are we supposed to have?’
‘Someone killed Myg. Then Grüner.’
‘I want you home . . .’
The heat, the fury came anyway, unbidden.
‘Do I wait ten years in that cell then?’ Raben roared. ‘Let my son forget me? Wait until you run off with that slippery bastard Søgaard?’
Another curse, she turned away and walked towards the door.
They always talked, too much sometimes. Friends before they were lovers. She was the best companion he’d ever known. More than a wife. Always would be, or so he’d thought.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, catching up with her. ‘I’ll sort it out. I promise. I know what I’m doing.’
She didn’t walk off.
‘Help me, Louise,’ Raben pleaded. ‘There’s something wrong here. Really wrong.’