The Killing - 01 - The Killing

by David Hewson

  Hartmann waited.

  ‘They are,’ Christensen agreed.

  ‘There are no cabinets missing,’ Skovgaard chipped in. ‘Or reports of lost files. I asked your boss. He’s sure of it.’

  ‘Maybe there was an error made with the filing.’

  The two of them waited.

  ‘We have these trainees. Kids. I’m sorry. Mistakes happen.’

  Hartmann got up, went to the window, looked out.

  ‘Funny the one file they should lose is the one we wanted. The one that could embarrass us. The police needed that, Olav. They think I held it back. They think I’ve got something to hide.’

  Christensen listened, nodded.

  ‘I’ll find out what happened and get back to you.’

  ‘No,’ Hartmann said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’

  He came and stood very close to the man.

  ‘Here’s what happens,’ Hartmann said. ‘On Monday we order a formal inquiry. We get to the bottom of this. That’s for sure.’

  ‘An inquiry?’

  Rabbit in the headlamps. Deer in the sights.

  ‘But if the file turns up,’ Hartmann added. ‘It won’t matter, will it?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about this.’

  ‘Well. Then we’re done.’

  They watched him go.

  ‘I remember him now,’ Hartmann said. ‘He applied for the job of director last year. Cocky little bastard. I didn’t even put him on the short list. He’s getting his own back.’

  ‘You think he’s doing favours for Bremer?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s got access to our network. Make everyone change their passwords. Let’s take care.’

  Hartmann looked out into the main office.

  ‘Where the hell’s Morten? I know I bit his head off but—’

  ‘He called in sick. He’s not a well man, Troels. He shouldn’t be doing a job like this.’

  ‘He’s diabetic. It comes and goes. His moods are unpredictable sometimes. You learn to live with it.’

  She came and sat on the edge of the sofa.

  ‘I’ve been here five months. How long’s Morten worked for you?’

  He had to think.

  ‘Off and on? For ever.’

  ‘And how long have people regarded you as a serious contender to be Lord Mayor?’

  Ambition. She was never short of it. Ambition was a good thing. Nothing happened without it.

  Her hand fell on his cheek.

  ‘We’ll get by without Morten,’ Rie Skovgaard said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  It was bright and cold outside. A sharp winter sun. Weekend shoppers. Families out for the day.

  Olav Christensen walked into the square and called.

  ‘I want that file back,’ he said.

  Things were changing in City Hall. No one knew which way they’d go.

  Silence on the line.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  He was getting mad, which maybe wasn’t such a good idea. But he couldn’t help it. Hartmann was no fool. No naive good guy either. Christensen could see that in his eyes.

  An inquiry . . .

  Documents got tagged, counted in, counted out. It would take a day to discover that he’d retrieved the Kemal file along with all the others. Seen the trouble it might cause. Put it to one side just in case.

  There was no way out. No excuse. No lie he could invent.

  His head would be on the line in an instant. Career down the drain.

  Still not a word.

  ‘I did a big favour for you, man!’ A kid walking past with a couple of red balloons stared at him for yelling. ‘Don’t screw me around. I want some help here. I told you before. I don’t go down on my own.’

  That was stupid. It sounded like a warning. Olav Christensen knew exactly who he was dealing with. Someone who issued threats, didn’t take them.

  ‘Look . . . What I’m trying to say is . . .’

  He listened. Nothing there. Not even the slow rhythmic sound of his breathing.

  ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Hello?’

  Brown brick spire against a pale blue sky. Bells in tumbling chimes. Cameras outside. Crowds in the street.

  Lund thought of the case, of the investigations ahead.

  Was he here too? The man who held Nanna hostage, raped her repeatedly, beat her, tormented the girl for hours on end? Forensics were getting somewhere. The soap on her skin was recent and unlike anything at home. There was blood beneath the mud in her nails, skin cut clumsily by scissors or clippers. How many explanations were there? Just one. He’d bathed her somewhere, washed clean her bruised, torn skin, clipped her fingernails as she fought him. Then set her running through the dark woods barefoot in her scanty slip. Until . . .

  Hide and seek.

  Meyer said that and Meyer was no fool.

  This was a game. Not quite real. When he locked her alive in the boot of Troels Hartmann’s campaign car and sent her screaming into that distant canal, he watched. The way another might enjoy a movie. Or a road accident.

  Or a funeral.

  A savage, unreal game.

  What did he look like?

  Ordinary. Criminals weren’t a race apart, marked by scars or strange physical afflictions. Separate from their victims. They were one with them. A stranger on a bus. A man in a shop who says hello every morning.

  Or a teacher who came to the same school day after day, impressed everyone with his honesty, remarkable only for his apparent decency in a world where few cared.

  Lund looked around as she always did, lustrous eyes roaming. Looked and imagined.

  Monstrous deeds had no need of monsters. They were the work of the everyday and the undistinguished. Cruel tears in the fabric of a society struggling to be whole. Wounds in the city’s communal body, bleeding and painful.

  She observed the sea of faces around her as she walked, found a space in the darkness by a pillar, sat down.

  A place from which she could watch unseen.

  The organ struck up wheezing. An old hymn. Lines from a Christmas carol she could barely remember.

  Lund did not sing.

  Lisa Rasmussen, across the aisle, did not sing.

  Birk Larsen’s right-hand man from the garage, Vagn Skærbæk, face streaming with tears, black hat clutched to his chest, did not sing.

  The teacher known as Rama, seated in a pew with his pupils, did not sing.

  At the front, seated by the white coffin, Pernille and Theis Birk Larsen did not sing, but sat with their boys looking lost, as if everything – the church, the people, the music, but most of all the shining white coffin that sat by their side – was unreal.

  The priest. A thin man, with a craggy, miserable face. In black with a white ruff round his neck, he emerged from the gloom by the altar, glanced at the casket with its rose wreath, gazed slowly round the packed and silent rows ahead.

  Said in a ringing, loud, theatrical voice, ‘Today we bid farewell to a young woman. She was taken from us far too young.’

  Hidden in the shadows Lund looked at the parents. Pernille dabbing at her eyes. Her husband, a lion of a man, a grizzled old beast. Head down, face rigid, staring at the stone floor.

  ‘It’s most unfair,’ the priest said in a tone that reminded Lund of a letter to the bank. ‘Beyond comprehension.’

  She shook her head. No. This was untrue. It had to be.

  ‘So we ask ourselves – what is the meaning?’

  Kemal – Rama, she still thought of him this way – was three rows back in a black suit and white shirt. Dark hair clipped close.

  ‘We question our faith, our trust in one another.’

  Lund took a deep breath, closed her eyes.

  ‘And we ask – how are we to move on?’

  She stiffened at that dread, deceptive phrase. Loathed it with a vengeance. No one moved on. They swallowed their grief. They hoped to bury it. But it lived with them. Always would. A cross they had to bear. A constant, recurring nightmare.

&nb
sp; ‘Christianity is about peace. Reconciliation and forgiveness. But it’s not easy to forgive.’

  Lund nodded. Thought: right there.

  His voice took on a high, ethereal tone.

  ‘Yet when we forgive, the past no longer controls us. And we can live in freedom.’

  Lund looked at the man, in his black robe, white ruff. Wondered: what would he say if he was there by the canal that bleak cold night? Watching Theis Birk Larsen scream and rage. Watching Nanna’s dead limbs tumble from the boot with the filthy rank water, seeing the black line of snaking eels writhe down her naked legs.

  Would he forgive? Could he?

  The organ struck up. She noted who sang and who did not. Then Sarah Lund walked outside.

  They knew the teacher would be at the funeral. So Meyer went to the apartment to talk to his wife.

  Midday and she was in a bulging white nightdress and black cardigan.

  Didn’t take long to get her talking about the accusation from the girl a few years back.

  ‘It’s a stupid old story,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Rektor Koch wrote a report.’

  ‘The kid made it up. She admitted it.’

  ‘We spoke to a man from the allotments at Dragør. The plumber.’

  Kemal’s wife grimaced.

  ‘He saw your husband go out about half past nine on Friday night.’

  ‘He hates us. Doesn’t mind borrowing our hedge trimmer. I always have to ask for it back.’

  Meyer asked himself: what would Lund do?

  ‘Did your husband go out?’

  ‘Yes. He drove to the petrol station.’

  ‘When did he get back?’

  ‘About fifteen minutes later, I suppose. I went to bed while he was out. I was very tired.’

  ‘I can imagine. When did you see him again?’

  ‘About three. I woke up. He was lying next to me.’

  Meyer thought about Lund’s long pauses. That relentless, glittering stare.

  He took off his anorak. The woman’s eyes were fixed on the gun on his hip.

  ‘So you didn’t see him between half past nine and three the next morning?’

  ‘No. But I’m sure he was there. He likes to read or watch TV.’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Do you have a wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know when she’s in the house? Can’t you feel . . . ?’

  Meyer didn’t answer. Instead he said, ‘Were you there all weekend? While the floors were being sanded?’

  ‘That’s right. The workmen were being difficult.’

  He got up, started walking round the room, checking out the building material.

  Looking.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They didn’t turn up. Rama had to sand the floors himself. On Sunday he spent all day putting up new tiles in the bathroom.’

  ‘So he was gone all day Saturday and Sunday? Did he leave first thing?’

  She hugged herself inside the cardigan.

  ‘I think you should go now.’

  ‘Was he gone from six in the morning until eight in the evening?’

  The woman got up, got angry.

  ‘Why are you asking me these questions when you don’t believe a word I tell you? Please. Leave.’

  Meyer got his jacket. Said, ‘OK.’

  Forgive us our trespasses.

  Pernille barely heard the Lord’s prayer, the one she’d listened to, recited since she was a girl.

  As we forgive those who trespass against us.

  All she saw was the shiny white wood. The flowers, the notes. The coffin that hid the truth. Inside . . .

  Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

  Anton nudged her, asked in a clear, young voice, ‘Why doesn’t Dad have his hands together?’

  Forever and ever.

  ‘Shush,’ she said, putting a finger to her lips.

  ‘Why don’t you?’ asked Emil, staring at her hands.

  The boys were in their best clothes, fingertips pressed together.

  Her eyes filled with tears. Her mind with such memories.

  Amen.

  The sound came first. The low gentle fluting of the organ. Then shapes slowly rose around her, one by one. Flowers in hand. Faces blank and numb. Relatives. People she half knew. Strangers . . .

  Roses placed on the casket by pale, trembling fingers.

  ‘We’ve got something,’ Anton said. ‘Mum. We’ve got something too.’

  He was the first of the family to stand. Theis the last, brought to his feet by Anton’s gentle touch. Together the four walked towards her.

  Towards it.

  White wood and roses. A fragrance to hide a stench.

  When they got there the two boys linked hands, placed a small map on the coffin. The city. Its rivers and streets.

  ‘What’s that nonsense?’ Theis asked in a low furious voice. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s for Nanna,’ Emil said. ‘So when she flies past she can see where we live.’

  By the casket, four of them, both bound and separated by emotions they could not name.

  Anton crying, asked, ‘Are you cross, Dad?’

  Are you cross?

  Not an angry man. Not of late. Not since the children came along and made their lives whole.

  She knew that. As did he.

  And the boys, mostly.

  ‘No,’ Birk Larsen said, bending down to kiss both on their heads, taking their shoulders into his wide arms, holding them to him.

  Pernille barely noticed. All she saw was the coffin. Her tears running down, salt stains on white wood.

  His hand, rough callused fingers, reached out, entwined themselves in hers.

  ‘Theis . . . ?’ she whispered.

  Pernille bent her head, puzzled how the single word her mind was forming could contain so much meaning, so much life and hurt and grief.

  Looked into his coarse and grizzled face and said, ‘Now?’

  A squeeze of the fingers, a nod of the head.

  They walked down the aisle, past the lines of mourners. Past pupils and teachers, past neighbours and friends. Past the inquisitive policewoman who watched them at the door with glittering sad eyes.

  Out into the wan daylight, leaving Nanna behind.

  Hartmann was listening to the hourly newscasts now. Couldn’t stop himself. The police had put out another statement, as meaningless as most of the others. They had every available resource working on the case. Buchard, the pugnacious chief inspector, came on, sounding gruff and tetchy.

  ‘We’re following a lead but that’s all we can say.’

  And then the weather.

  Rie Skovgaard came in, said edgily, ‘My dad needs to see you.’

  The debate with Bremer was an hour away. He pulled a tie out of the drawer, got up, tried it on in a mirror.

  ‘Busy?’ Kim Skovgaard asked taking a seat.

  ‘Never too busy for you.’

  ‘So you’re going to the debate? You’re going to talk about integration? Foreigners? Role models?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Rie’s worried about you, Troels.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘She’s a very smart woman. I’m not just saying that because she’s my daughter.’ He got up, came and put his hand on Hartmann’s arm. ‘You should listen to her more. But right now you should listen to me. Don’t talk about role models. Not tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  Skovgaard’s voice changed, became stern and impatient.

  ‘It’s enough that one of your cars is involved in the Birk Larsen case. Anything the papers have about you and immigrants will be dug out of the archives and thrown in your face. Save your love for dark faces till later. When it wins some votes, not loses them.’

  ‘And tonight?’

  He straightened Hartmann’s tie.

  ‘Tonight you’ll focus on housing. On the environment.’

 
‘That’s not going to happen.’

  Skovgaard wasn’t smiling any more, and that was rare.

  ‘But it is. You don’t seem to understand. I’m telling you to do this. Not asking. There are people watching you. In this place. In Parliament. You will do what I say.’

  Hartmann stayed silent.

  ‘It’s in your best interests. Everyone’s—’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I’m only trying to help my future son-in-law.’

  He patted Hartmann’s arm. It was a condescending gesture. Meant that way.

  ‘You’ll get your reward, Troels. And it won’t be in heaven either.’

  Hartmann and Rie Skovgaard were walking to the TV studio. What started as a discussion was boiling up into an argument.

  ‘You knew he was coming,’ he said. ‘You fixed that.’

  She stared at him as if he were crazy.

  ‘No. Who do you think I am? Machiavelli? Dad was in the Rådhus. He turned up in front of my desk. What was I supposed to do?’

  Hartmann wondered whether he believed her.

  ‘But you agree with him?’

  ‘Of course I do. It’s obvious. To everyone except you. When you see an iceberg you steer away from it. You don’t—’

  ‘I’m not your little puppet,’ Hartmann broke in. ‘Or your father’s.’

  She stopped, threw up her hands in despair.

  ‘Do you want to get elected or not? There are no prizes for losers. All your fine ideals mean nothing if Poul Bremer marches back into office.’

  ‘That’s not the only issue.’

  ‘What is then?’

  The producer was walking towards them.

  Skovgaard beamed at him, turned soft and charming in an instant.

  ‘Not now, Troels,’ she hissed.

  Lund found Meyer in the Memorial Yard, an open space on the ground floor of the Politigården. Quiet and solitary. A statue, the Snake Killer, good fighting evil. On one wall the names of a hundred and fifty-seven Danish police officers killed by the Nazis. On another a shorter list: those killed on duty more recently.

  He was eyeing that wall, smoking anxiously.

  ‘What was he like?’ Lund asked.

  Meyer jumped, surprised by her presence.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Schultz.’

  Hurt in his eyes. An accusation too.

  ‘You’ve been checking up on me?’

  ‘I looked through the press archive for Hartmann. I just thought . . .’