by David Hewson
By the time Skærbæk had got them out of there the night had turned pitch-black, damp and bitter.
He’d never forget this. Vagn Skærbæk knew that. Understood he’d joined himself to them. Was no different.
Where the public road started, and a few street lights marked the site of the coming metro station, he stopped the van, told them to get out. Made them empty all their pockets, the hash, the resin, the tabs and pills. Bellowed at them, made threats until it was gone.
Twenty minutes later he dumped John and his battered Honda on a back street near Christiania and thought: I never saw your face before today and I pray I never will again.
Drove back to Vesterbro, listening to the grunts of the big man in the passenger seat, huddled into a heap with his shame and his returning memories.
‘I can’t save you twice.’
There was puke in the footwell. He’d thrown up somewhere along the way.
‘I mean that, Theis. You’ve got to cut this out. Leave the gang guys behind. Pick up with that nice girl again. The one who’s sweet on you.’
No answer.
He pulled in by the side of the road not far from the Dybbølsbro bridge, looked at the early evening hookers out flashing their legs for the cars.
Turned to the slumped figure next to him.
‘If you don’t you’re dead. Just one more piece of Vesterbro shit gone to waste.’
The sly, narrow eyes stared back at him.
Skærbæk never could read them.
He wound down the window, let the smell of puke drift out into the cold winter air.
Reached into his pocket, pulled out the thing he’d taken from the dead girl’s neck.
‘Here,’ he said, and forced it into Birk Larsen’s bloody hand.
A cheap necklace, a black heart made out of glass.
‘It’s yours now. I want you to remember. I want you to think of it and pray something like that never . . .’
He got mad. Had to scream.
‘Never comes back and haunts you. I can’t save you twice. Even if I wanted.’
There was a rap on the windscreen. A haggard skinny face, once pretty. A Vesterbro girl Vagn Skærbæk half recognized.
‘Are you crying?’ she asked, and seemed surprised.
He crunched the gears. Got the Merkur van out of there.
Next to him Theis Birk Larsen sat clutching the necklace. Staring at the black heart.
‘Put it in your pocket,’ Skærbæk told him and watched to see it was done. ‘You keep that. You look at it the next time some moron comes along and puts some stupid idea in your stupid head. I want you to think. . .’
Debts owed, debts repaid. They were Vesterbro brats and they lived on the edge, always would. That made it all the more important to remember how easy it was to slip over and fall for good.
‘I want you to think if you ever let go of that thing we’ll end up back in this nightmare some day. Because you let the monster out again.’
No answer.
We’re not like that, he thought. Not quite.
Vesterbro. Grubby streets. Cheap houses. Hookers and dope. The world as it was.
A black heart necklace. Like a Romany curse. Theis Birk Larsen could take it to his grave.
‘You don’t want that to happen,’ Vagn Skærbæk said, driving over the bumpy cobbled road, staring into the drab distance. ‘No one does.’
Lund got a bike from the study centre near the station, pedalled through the icy rain out to the marshland and the woods. Found the low metal bridge, sat on the concrete slabs that crossed it. Arms through the railings, feet dangling over the canal. The way Amir El’ Namen was the week before with his sad bouquet of flowers behind him, tears falling down to the black water where Nanna died.
It was all in the photos and documents Jansen had found for her. Enough on its own. She didn’t need Meyer really. That was cowardice on her part. Even Brix would listen if she made him.
If . . .
She put that decision to one side and counted what she knew.
Nanna was leaving, taking memories with her. A reminder of her father, who never rolled up his sleeve when he was working or washing the dishes, never showed his bare arms when the police were around.
But a child would see those old tattoos. A child would make the connection when she found a black heart necklace hidden away in a locked drawer. And a loving runaway daughter would want a memory to take with her for the journey.
Vagn did what he did because that was who he was. The man who fixed things, the one who kept the wheels turning.
Nanna was gone from Humleby. There was blood in the basement and it led all the way to the Pentecost Forest.
They were all gypsies. Lonstrup’s daughter said that. Paths crossing constantly over the years, lugging furniture, cutting crooked deals. Theis and Vagn and the creature that was John Lynge, the first man they chased and then let go, trying to stay alive in the dismal underworld of Vesterbro.
She reached into the blue cagoule. The drizzle was pondering whether to turn to snow, settling on her, freezing her cheeks, making her simple ponytail hang icily against her neck.
Lund took out the last photo. The one she never showed Meyer.
Twenty-one years before. A fading Kodacolor snapshot. Outside a hippie house in Christiania, gaudy with peace and love signs. Three people. In the middle Mette Hauge, hair long and greasy, face blank and stoned. An innocent wandering from the straightforward pathway, out of curiosity and a childlike sense of excitement. As Pernille did once. As Nanna strayed too.
On Mette’s left a long-haired man with a Zapata moustache, a furrowed forehead, dark, deep-set eyes, what looked like a fresh knife slash across his right cheek.
Take away the hair. Age the scar. Cut and grey the moustache. John Lynge.
On the other side the young Theis Birk Larsen, huge and brutally imposing. Ginger hair, ginger stubble. Grinning triumphantly at the camera, blue jeans, a denim waistcoat with gang colours. Possessive arm around her. King of the quarter. On his bulging right bicep, just visible, a line of tattoos. Among them what looked like – had to be – a small black heart.
There was only one answer to the riddle she’d refused to answer in the hospital. Racked by grief and guilt and shame, Vagn Skærbæk sacrificed his life to keep this other Theis hidden. Buried the truth about Nanna out of horror that a worse nightmare might rise from the bleak wasteland of the Kalvebod Fælled alongside John Lynge’s black Ford dripping stagnant water and fresh blood. And take with it the secret miracle he cherished – envied – most of all, the precious bond of family, the ties that kept Pernille, Theis and the boys together in the face of a bleak, uncaring world.
All the lines were joined, in Lund’s head if no one else’s.
The wind murmured in the bare silver trees of the Pentecost Forest. She heard the soft hoots of owls, the pained screeches of a fox, the world breathing, rustling, moving. In her imagination she saw all the dead faces John Lynge had left rotting beneath the scummy water, watched their mouths open, heard them scream.
It was their shrieks with Nanna’s that woke her that first morning, before the trip to Sweden, asleep in the arms of Bengt Rosling, a man she’d never see again.
Cries she’d never lose. A guilt she couldn’t evade.
Seated on the hard ground, legs over the edge, Sarah Lund stared at the grainy snapshot leeching out its colour with age. Three faces, two dead, one living, trapped inside his own inarticulate guilt.
Eighteen months and Theis Birk Larsen would be back in the world, trying to rebuild his business, his family, to find the man he wanted to be, to lose the creature he once was.
Mette Hauge’s murderer. The proof was in her hands.
Watching the icy rain fall on the old snapshot in her fingers, Sarah Lund leaned against the cold metal railings, wondering whether to let go.
Also by David Hewson
Nic Costa series
A Season for the Dead
The V
illa of Mysteries
The Sacred Cut
The Lizard’s Bite
The Seventh Sacrament
The Garden of Evil
Dante’s Numbers
The Blue Demon
The Fallen Angel
Carnival for the Dead
Other titles
The Promised Land
The Cemetery of Secrets
(previously published as Lucifer’s Shadow)
Death in Seville
(previously published as Semana Santa)
Acknowledgements
Trying to turn an epic television crime tragedy into an epic crime book is no easy feat, especially with a story set in a country I’d never visited before, one that is a million miles from the warm, outgoing climate of Italy where most of my work is located. I couldn’t have embarked on this journey without a lot of selfless, dedicated work from people close to this project both in Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Søren Sveistrup, the creator of the original series, very kindly made time from shooting the third Killing series to brief me on his thoughts, and then generously advise me to make up my own mind when it came to moving the story from screen to page. Susanne Bent Andersen of my Danish publisher, Engstrom, helped me enormously with local insight into the city and culture of Copenhagen, as did Søren’s ever-obliging agent Lars Ringhof. I was also assisted by countless individuals, too many to name, inside Copenhagen Police Headquarters, the city Rådhus, and other local institutions.
In the UK, my editor Trisha Jackson and her colleagues at Pan Macmillan – all dedicated Sarah Lund fans to a man and woman – were a constant source of advice, opinion and encouragement, as were many ‘civilian’ Killing fans. Among the latter I’m especially grateful to Keith Blount, not only for his own insights into this story, but also for writing a piece of writing software, Scrivener, that allowed me to capture and control the three threads of the narrative from beginning to end (without which I can’t imagine how this major project could have been undertaken).
That said, this reimagining of the original story – and it is necessarily a different take since books and TV are not the same – is mine and mine alone.
Tak.
David Hewson
First published 2012 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2012 by Pan
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Copyright © David Hewson 2012
The right of David Hewson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Table of Contents
Principal Characters
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen