The Killing - 01 - The Killing (36 page)

‘You mean you want out?’

‘It’s a question of credibility.’

‘It’s a question of principle.’

‘Your principles. Not ours. I won’t go down with you. I won’t be held accountable. I won’t—’

‘What,’ he cut in, ‘are you saying?’

‘If you don’t make this go away I’ll distance myself from you. We have to—’

A knock on the door. Morten Weber walked in. He looked as if he’d been shopping. Smart new jacket, red sweater, white shirt.

Hartmann and Skovgaard stared at him.

‘Here’s the document you asked me to find,’ Weber said, coming over to Hartmann, a sheet of paper in his hand.

No one spoke.

Weber asked, ‘More coffee?’

When there was no answer he smiled and left.

Hartmann looked at the colour printout. It was a page from Kirsten Eller’s own website.

‘What’s it to be, Troels?’

He read the sheet carefully.

‘OK,’ she went on. ‘I won’t be seen with you. All joint arrangements are cancelled, including tonight’s.’

Eller tidied her papers, dropped them into her briefcase with her pen. Got ready to go.

‘What about your credibility?’

‘What do you mean?’

Hartmann passed the paper across the table.

‘You’ve been taking credit for my role models. It’s here. On your home page.’

She snatched the page, read it.

‘You liked our joint initiative so much you wrote about it.’ Hartmann leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head. ‘I’m happy to share the credit, Kirsten. But the trouble is . . . if there’s blame to be apportioned you have to share that too.’

He leaned forward, smiled at her, added, ‘That’s what being accountable means.’

‘This is blackmail.’

‘No it’s not. It’s your website, not mine. Your responsibility. A matter of public record. Hang me out to dry and you’ll find yourself swinging from the same line. But—’

‘Thank you for the coffee,’ Eller snarled.

‘It was a pleasure. I’ll see you tonight. As arranged.’

They watched her go then went back into the main office.

‘She didn’t like that,’ Skovgaard said.

‘I don’t give a damn whether she liked it or not. I won’t take lectures on accountability from some carpetbagging hack who’ll climb into bed with anyone who’ll have her.’

Morten Weber was at his desk. Hartmann walked over. Weber didn’t take his eyes off his computer screen.

‘I thought you’d deserted us.’

Weber scanned his inbox. Line after line of messages.

‘I get bored on my own.’

Hartmann placed the page from Eller’s website in front of him.

‘How did you know?’

Weber stared at him as if it were obvious.

‘I’d have grabbed the credit if I was running her campaign. You need to think like other people sometimes. It helps.’

‘I’m glad you’re back, Morten,’ Skovgaard said.

He laughed, looked at her.

‘Me too.’

Kemal’s flat in Østerbro. The forensic team had pored over every inch of every room. All they had were two prints from Nanna Birk Larsen by the front door.

Meyer wanted more.

‘Look,’ the head forensic guy said. ‘We’ve done everything. That’s all there is.’

Lund read through the preliminary reports.

‘What about the boots?’ Meyer demanded.

‘We analysed the mud. It’s not from the crime scene.’

‘What about the ether? Who the hell keeps ether in the house?’

‘People with helicopters.’

One of the team pulled out a model helicopter.

‘Boys’ toys,’ the forensic guy said. ‘He likes them. This thing flies on a mixture of oil, paraffin and ether.’

‘The neighbours?’ Lund asked. ‘What do they say?’

‘There was a party on the third floor. A tenant saw him take out some rubbish at one thirty in the morning. That’s all.’

Lund stared at him. The man wilted.

‘Rubbish? At one thirty?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Twenty minutes later Kemal arrived for the reconstruction. He didn’t look like a man expecting to be arrested. Smart jacket, grey scarf. Schoolteacher even on a Sunday.

‘She never got much beyond the door?’ Lund asked. ‘That’s what you’re saying?’

‘I buzzed her in. She rang the bell.’

‘And then?’

‘She felt guilty about some books I’d lent her.’

‘You didn’t go inside?’

‘No. We talked here. At the door.’

‘So why are her prints on a photo in the living room?’

‘I was going to sand the floor. All the things were out here. It was the class photo. She looked at it before she left.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. She wanted to for some reason.’

‘Then?’

‘Then she left.’

‘Did you see her out of the building?’

‘No. I just closed the door. It’s safe here. No reason . . .’ He fell silent. ‘I thought it was safe.’

‘Why did you cancel the floor people?’ Meyer asked.

‘It was going to be too expensive. I thought I’d do it myself.’

‘So you phoned him? At one thirty in the morning?’

‘He had an answering machine. Why not?’

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 . . .’