by David Hewson
Case closed.
Madsen walked up.
‘We need to take the files. Brix says best we get them in store before midnight.’
‘Sure,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Why not?’
He nodded at a uniform man to come and start taking the boxes.
‘Did anyone get through to Frederik Holst like I asked?’
Madsen looked guilty. A nice, quiet, decent unambitious man, she thought. The kind who always did as he was told.
‘Someone gave him your number and asked him to call. Got a bit busy to chase. Sorry. Do you want me to . . . ?’
‘No.’
There was one other thing she’d asked for and that had turned up. Two sheets of paper from intelligence, records so old she didn’t even recognize the design of the Politigården stamp. Lund read them as Madsen and the uniform man went to and fro with the boxes.
When they came back for the last one she stopped him.
‘You were there when we searched the barracks a few days ago, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Madsen laughed. ‘What a place. Didn’t they love us?’
‘Why didn’t you see anything in Søgaard’s locker then?’
‘Nothing to find. We looked. Bilal must have put that stuff there later, when he was getting desperate.’
The oldest intelligence file dated back to 1945. She couldn’t imagine Copenhagen then. Or the Politigården making the difficult transition from being a part of the Nazi machine, struggling to be Danish, to be free once more.
‘So we searched everything?’
‘Dead right! Are you coming drinking with us or what?’
‘I am, I am.’ She watched him fill one of the few remaining boxes. Time running out. ‘Did we ever work out how Dragsholm tracked down that officer? You know.’ She tried not to sound sarcastic. ‘The one the army are going after.’
‘No.’ Madsen frowned. ‘I went through her case files. That was one angry woman. You could tell the way she wrote. We were all bastards. She had meetings with her soldiers. With other lawyers. With us supposedly.’
Lund stared at him.
‘With us? Here?’
‘No. Just one meeting,’ he corrected himself. ‘There was a diary note about talking to an officer in court.’
‘That’s how she contacted us?’ she asked very carefully. ‘Before she was killed? By going up to someone she met in court?’
He was getting bored with this.
‘It’s one line in her diary, Lund. I checked it out this end. There was nothing to confirm it. She never called here, that’s for sure.’
‘But she must have done. When she was looking into the case—’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘She hired her own private investigators. Besides . . .’ He shrugged, looked enviously at the crowd beyond the door. ‘What could we have told her? We didn’t even know something happened in Afghanistan until you came along.’
There was one last box file. She realized she had her hand on it.
‘Can I take that one too? Then get you another beer?’
She held out the black box.
‘Who was in charge of the first search at Ryvangen? Looking at the lockers and the rest?’
‘Hell, I don’t remember! We’ve all been working twenty-hour days. You’ve been to Afghanistan and back. Let’s go . . .’ He made a gesture. ‘Glug, glug.’
‘Was it Ulrik Strange?’
He had his free hand on the box.
‘Right,’ Madsen agreed. ‘Strange. Why?’
Lund was thinking. He tugged at the box.
‘Can I?’
‘Take it,’ she said and watched him go.
Holst’s number in the hospital was still on her pad. Alone at the desk she dialled it, got through first time, said, ‘This is Lund. When I ask you to call me I expect you to do it.’
‘Sorry,’ said the bitter drawl on the other end of the line. ‘Things got in the way. Bombs. Bullets. Bodies. You know the kind of thing.’
‘What happened to Møller’s dog tag?’
Silence.
‘This is important, Holst. What happened to his dog tag?’
‘What do you think? I did what I always do. I cut it in half and put both pieces in the body bag. Is this important?’
‘His parents never got a tag.’
‘I put it in there, Lund!’ he yelled from three thousand miles away. ‘If it didn’t turn up in Copenhagen someone took it.’
And made a new one, which was now in an evidence bag, stained with smoke from a baker’s oven once full of human bones.
‘Could they have taken it in Afghanistan?’
‘What is this?’
‘It’s a question. Could they have taken it before the body bag went on the plane?’
‘Not likely, Lund. We treat our dead with respect. More than they get alive sometimes. If someone got caught stealing a dead man’s dog tag . . . I can’t imagine.’
‘Thanks,’ she said.
The beer was empty. It was time to mingle.
It had to be Brix. No one else really listened to her. Not that he did all the time.
She wandered through the sea of bodies. Uniform men sweaty from the long day. Women from forensic. A few call handlers. It was turning into quite a party. Someone shoved another bottle of beer in her hand and she didn’t even see who.
One side of the room finished. She was about to start on the other when a hand came out and stopped her.
Lund looked. Polished nails. Manicured fingers.
Ruth Hedeby was smiling for the first time Lund could recall in a while. It was a worrying sight.
‘The people upstairs wanted me to tell you, Lund. Well done.’
She tried to walk on. Hedeby was having none of it.
‘We got there in the end,’ she said, keeping her hand on Lund’s arm. ‘No small thanks to—’
‘You think?’
‘I do!’ The woman was loyal. Reliable. A drone. ‘I must admit . . .’ A flash of naughty regret as she fluttered her eyelashes. ‘I had my doubts. When Lennart . . . when Brix sent for you. It seemed rash.’
The superior stare. She’d been hitting the wine.
‘Seemed even more rash when I met you,’ Hedeby added. ‘First impressions matter. You should remember that.’
‘What matters is looking until you get to the truth.’
Hedeby so wanted to be thanked. To share in the glory being distributed around this room.
‘There’s a good chance you won’t be sent back to Gedser.’
‘I like Gedser,’ Lund lied. ‘Lot of birds.’
‘Birds?’
Lund’s hands swept the ceiling. She made a tweeting noise.
‘In the sky. Excuse me . . .’
Brix was talking to a burly man from upstairs. One of the suits who ran the place and never usually deigned to dirty their fingers with the troops.
‘Can we talk?’ Lund asked, carving straight into the conversation.
The suit went quiet, glared at her and walked off. Brix looked . . . disappointed. Again.
‘What is it?’
‘The day Strange went to the refugee centre in Helsingør. When I chased the man who killed Gunnar Torpe. Did someone check his alibi?’
‘Yes,’ he said with a pained look.
‘He was with another officer?’
‘No. They’d split up earlier. What is this?’
She looked round the busy room.
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Working,’ Brix answered with a shrug. ‘I don’t know why. I could have found someone else.’
‘To do what?’
‘Escort Raben to Horserød. They’re downstairs in the garage.’
Horseød. A picture in her head. The childlike drawing from the museum. Sad figures, starving, shuffling through the snow. Lund couldn’t stop herself glancing round the room, wondering what this place was like back then.
‘Have you been to the Frihedsmuseet?’ Lund asked and watched Bri
x’s interesting face crease with puzzlement. ‘The Germans tortured people downstairs.’ She shrugged. ‘Some Danish cops did too. Then took them to Mindelunden and those stakes . . .’
‘I do know that, thanks,’ he said. ‘Not now, Lund. Have a drink. Try to . . . I don’t know. Wind down a little. If you can.’
A breezy voice over her shoulder.
‘Lennart!’ Hedeby all smiles. ‘You must come and say hello to my husband.’ She beamed at both of them. ‘He’s dying to meet you.’
‘I bet he is,’ Lund muttered then walked through the sea of bodies, out to the lockers beyond.
Downstairs. White police motorbikes, blue patrol cars. A warren of rooms and corridors leading off. She’d never thought about it much before but now it seemed obvious. This subterranean labyrinth was bigger than the sprawling Politigården itself, tunnelled underneath the street outside, the buildings beyond.
Seven decades before no one would have heard the screams. But they surely knew they were there.
Skinny, starving figures in Horserød. Ghostly voices in a dusty, stinking car park. The past didn’t die. It lingered.
Lund walked on until she heard voices. Strange was there, next to his black Ford. A uniform man was helping Raben into the back. Couldn’t help but push down his head along the way. Old habits . . .
‘You can go now,’ Strange said. ‘I can take care of it. Have a beer for me.’
She watched from the shadows. The uniform man scratched his head.
‘You’re sure? There’s supposed to be two of us.’
Strange laughed.
‘He’s got one arm in a sling and he’ll be free as a bird in a week or two. I don’t think we’ll get any more trouble from this one.’ Strange banged hard on the roof of the car, kept smiling at the cop. ‘Will we?’
No answer from inside.
‘Save a beer for me!’ Strange cried, pointing at the uniform man. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
‘No way,’ the cop laughed. ‘Every man for himself.’
Strange grinned at him. Watched him go. Looked surprised when she walked out from the darkness and said, ‘I’m coming with you.’
A long pause.
‘Why?’
‘Because I am.’ She held out her hand. ‘We need to talk. Let me drive.’
‘What is this, Lund? You’re missing the party.’
‘I’m not in the mood. Give me the keys.’
He grunted something, threw them over, climbed into the passenger seat. Lund got behind the wheel and looked in the mirror. Raben’s bearded face was watching their every move. He had his seat belt on. The doors were reinforced and locked. He wasn’t going anywhere.
‘What is this?’ Strange asked again.
‘Horserød,’ she said.
‘It’s inland not far from Helsingør.’
‘I know where I’m going, thanks.’
She took them up the ramp, out into the busy night traffic, glad to get away.
Five minutes in and Strange was getting restless.
‘That car’s following us,’ he said as they struggled to get out of the city centre.
‘What car?’
‘The one behind. That’s following us.’
Raben hadn’t said a word since they left.
‘You’re paranoid. It’s traffic. Everyone’s following somebody.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He looked at the dashboard. ‘What about some music?’
He didn’t wait for an answer. The radio was set to a classical station. Opera. Must have been his choice. It was his car. He wasn’t an ordinary cop.
She listened for twenty seconds then turned the music off.
‘So what do you want to talk about?’ he asked.
‘I’ll get to that.’
They weren’t far from Østerport Station.
‘And why are we going the long way round?’
She glanced at him.
‘I want to show you something.’
A little further down the road Lund turned off.
‘Oh come on,’ Strange cried. ‘Horserød’s straight ahead.’
‘Won’t take long.’
They were close to Ryvangen. Another piece of history came back from the museum. The Danish Army had long used the barracks before the Nazis swept in and seized it as their base. The shooting range of Mindelunden was a practice area for soldiers, not a killing ground for the Germans. Only the railway track now separated the barracks from the memorial that Mindelunden had become. Soon they were on the park side, turning into a quiet dead end lane next to the long rows of graves, the statue of the mother with her fallen son, the three stakes in the ground.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Raben asked, worried from behind. ‘My wife’s waiting for me. My son—’
‘You just stay where you are,’ Lund ordered, then turned into the empty car park, killed the engine, got out and stood beneath the bare winter trees.
Clear night, half-full moon. Frost forming on the ground. The place was silent though beyond the memorial park she could see lights in the low wooden buildings of the adjoining schools.
Strange got out of the car. Lund used the remote and double locked it. He came and stood next to her.
‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘It’s Brix. He’s covering up for somebody.’
He’d got a blue polyester vest beneath his light jacket. Probably felt cold. Not happy anyway.
‘Brix?’ Strange asked, shaking his head.
A train went past like noisy metallic lightning rumbling through the night.
‘There’s something you need to see,’ she said when it was gone then walked over and forced open the wooden side door into Mindelunden.
‘Bloody hell, Lund,’ Strange complained. ‘We’re supposed to be taking a prisoner to Horserød. What is this?’
Past the long lines of names, past the graves and the frozen mother and son.
The moon was brighter than it should have been. Nothing here escaped its rays.
‘Much as I’d love to be alone with you,’ he went on, following her as she walked, ‘this isn’t very cosy. Can’t we go for pizza and a beer or something? After we’ve dumped off chummy back there?’
‘This is a memorial park for the Danish Resistance.’
The place it all began while she was chasing smuggled dope and immigrants in Gedser.
‘I know that.’
The firm, hard sound of her footsteps rang up from the footpath.
‘They were war heroes. Said Bilal saw himself as a patriot too. He would have worshipped them.’
He caught up, looked at her.
‘Sadly we can’t ask him now, can we?’
‘Bilal would never have left Anne Dragsholm in a place like this. A graveyard for martyrs? She was a stikke, wasn’t she? A turncoat. A traitor. Someone who wanted to drag the army . . . Denmark down into the gutter.’
He waved his arms in front of him.
‘At the risk of repeating myself . . . we can’t ask him now.’
She kept walking.
‘Bilal erased those radio messages. Helped cover up what happened in Helmand. He didn’t kill her. Or the others.’
He stopped, hands in pockets, a jaded look on his face.
‘Then why did he take the Raben woman hostage?’
She shook her head.
‘God you’re slow sometimes. He wanted the army to come in and save him from being fitted up for something he never did. Fat chance . . .’
Lund turned and stared at the trees and the pale memorial stones.
‘They were murdered by someone who felt differently about this place.’
‘What’s all this got to do with Brix?’
They were approaching the old shooting range, with the three sacred stakes.
Walking, walking, never looking at him.
‘Brix is protecting the real killer.’
They looked like shrunken totem poles. Or relics from a lost Stonehenge. Part of a ritual, a ceremony mo
st had forgotten, and those who remembered only dimly understood.
‘Stand there,’ she said, and got him to stop by the middle pole.
‘What is—?’
‘Dragsholm was terrified. She knew someone was going to come for her. Her house was full of alarms. She’d ordered sensors for her garden. She’d hired her own security guards.’
It was too dark down here beneath the branches of the overhanging trees. She needed the moonlight.
‘Come,’ Lund ordered and they walked up the steep bank behind the stakes, the buffer that once took the stray bullets that never hit their intended target.
Stopped at the top, a little breathless, looking around.
Then Lund stared at his plain face caught in the moonlight.
‘But she never went to the police. She thought someone was going to kill her. And she never once called us.’
Strange shrugged.
‘Maybe she wasn’t sure.’
‘She was sure.’
‘Then—’
‘She found him. She knew who the officer was. He’d been given Møller’s identity deliberately by someone in Operational Command. They even forged a new dog tag.’
Strange hugged himself in the cold, kept quiet.
‘Dragsholm knew he was working in the Politigården. She told Monberg. He did nothing. There’s no other explanation.’
‘Lund—’
‘Nothing else fits. And then suddenly we find all that incriminating evidence at Ryvangen. Even though we’d searched the same place only a few days before. Don’t you see?’
He stared at the frosty grass and shook his head. Lund came up to him, touched the front of his jacket.
‘Someone planted that during the search.’
‘I was in charge of the search. I didn’t plant a thing.’
‘Then . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It’s got to be somebody on the team.’
His hand went to her arm. He peered into her eyes. She wondered about the expression there. It looked like sympathy. Pity even.
‘This is what happened last time, isn’t it? With Meyer. You won’t let go, even when it’s over.’
‘That wasn’t over. It still isn’t.’
‘Maybe not.’ His arms gripped her firmly. ‘But this is. Please let it die. For God’s sake . . .’
Lund pulled herself away.
‘Have you talked to Brix about this?’ he asked.