The Killing - 01 - The Killing (57 page)

‘What happened here?’ he asked.

‘Tell me what you did when you came in,’ Lund said.

‘I hung up my jacket. I remember having a headache. It was a busy week.’

He walked to the desk by the window. Meyer followed him.

‘I sat here. I wrote some of the speech I was going to give.’

‘What speech?’ Meyer asked.

‘It was for sponsors and businessmen. We were looking for support.’

Lund asked what he did with the car keys.

He looked at the shattered glass table.

‘I left them on there. I didn’t need them again.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Meyer said. ‘Why come here to write a speech? Why not just go home?’

Hartmann hesitated before answering.

‘I think differently in different places. At home I get distracted. Here . . .’ He looked round the room. The white piano. The chandelier. The velvet wallpaper and expensive furniture. The shattered glass. ‘It was like a little island. I could think.’

‘Why did you give your driver the weekend off?’ Meyer asked.

‘I didn’t need him. Rie was going to drive. There was no point in having him waiting around.’

‘So you dismissed him and took a campaign car from the City Hall? Then left it here?’

‘Is that a crime? I wrote my speech. Then around ten thirty I walked round to Rie’s. That’s it. What else can I tell you?’

‘This is enough,’ the lawyer said. ‘My client’s assisted you as much as possible. If you’re finished here . . .’

Lund walked to the window, looked out. Meyer was getting desperate.

‘How did your speech go, Troels?’ he asked.

‘Quite well. Thanks for asking.’

‘You’re welcome. So you were with businessmen and sponsors all weekend?’

‘That’s right.’

He looked lost for a second. As if Meyer had tripped him.

‘The truth is it was mostly Rie. I came down with flu. I was in bed until Sunday.’

Lund came back to him.

‘How much did you drink here?’

‘That’s irrelevant,’ the lawyer butted in.

‘Forensics found an empty bottle of brandy and a glass with your prints on it.’

‘Yes. I had a drink. To help with the flu.’

‘A bottle of brandy?’

‘It was nearly empty anyway.’

Lund sorted through her notes.

‘The housekeeper had been shopping that day. She said she stocked up on everything.’

Hartmann glanced at the lawyer.

‘She wouldn’t throw out an unfinished bottle, would she? I had a drink. OK?’

Lund waited.

‘It was our wedding anniversary. My wife and I—’

‘So it was a special day?’ Meyer said.

‘None of your damned business.’

‘You take sedatives,’ Lund said. She picked up an evidence bag from the desk. ‘We found your pills.’

‘How low do you people intend to go? Does Bremer promote you afterwards?’

‘Alcohol and drugs,’ Meyer cut in. ‘I’m shocked. You’re a politician. You put up all these posters round the place. They’re a dangerous cocktail, aren’t they? So it says every time I take a piss.’

‘I had a drink. I haven’t taken any medication in months.’

‘So you just had a really shit day?’ Meyer’s eyes were bulging. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Hartmann was walking up and down the room, looking at the marks on the walls.

‘You drank a bottle of booze,’ Meyer went on. ‘You took some funny pills. One, maybe two.’

‘This is getting tedious.’

‘What’s tedious is you telling us you came here, got shit-faced and still remember you left around ten thirty.’

‘Yes! As it happens I do. I also remember which switches I touched. How many times I went to the toilet. Are you interested? Let me hold your hand and we can go and check the lift button together. How about it?’

Lund said, ‘You took the lift?’

‘Yes. Incredible, isn’t it? I took the lift.’

Lund shook her head.

‘According to the building manager the lift was out of service that Friday.’

He threw his arms open wide.

‘Then I took the stairs. Does it matter?’

‘Hartmann’s told you what he did in the flat,’ the lawyer insisted. ‘Rie Skovgaard has confirmed he came to her afterwards and when.’

The lawyer went to the main door, ushered Hartmann towards it.

‘My client’s been more than helpful. We’ve no more business here.’

They watched him go.

‘Why is that lying bastard lying to us?’ Meyer asked.

Lund was looking in the bedroom at the crumpled sheets. No one had got underneath them. It was as if they simply sat on the bed. Talked even.

‘Where did Nanna go?’ she murmured.

Hartmann was passing the long ochre lines of the Nyboder cottages when Morten Weber called.

‘How did it go?’

It seemed an odd question. There could only be one answer.

‘It went well, Morten. What’s happening?’

‘Do you remember Dorte? The temp?’

‘Not really.’

‘The nice woman with back trouble? She went to my acupuncturist?’

‘Yes, yes. I remember. What about her?’

Down the long drag of Store Kongensgade. Cafes and shops. On the left the grand dome of the Marble Church.

‘She told me something interesting.’

Hartmann waited. When Weber kept quiet he said, ‘What?’

‘I don’t like saying over the phone.’

‘Jesus, Morten! Do you think they’re tapping my calls now?’

A moment of silence then Weber said, ‘Maybe they are. I don’t know. We need to talk to Olav. You were right.’

The bereavement group met in a cold grey hall near the church. Ten people round a plastic table in a bare and cheerless room.

The Birk Larsens sat next to one another as the leader listened to their stories.

Cancer and traffic accidents. Heart attacks and suicide.

Tears from the living. Silence from the dead.

Pernille didn’t listen. He nodded, said nothing.

Outside, on the bare branches of a tree, a ragged white scarf writhed and twisted in the wind like a lost prayer.

When it was their turn they barely spoke. No one pressed them. Only one, a skinny man whose head was erect and proud, even when he talked of his lost son, paid them any attention.

Perhaps it was embarrassment, Birk Larsen thought. He didn’t care. The social worker said come or go back to jail. So he came and hoped it would help. Though looking at Pernille’s frozen, emotionless face he doubted it.

Nothing helped except release. Knowledge. A waypoint passed. And that seemed further away than ever.

Outside he offered to put her bike in the back of the van and drive her home.

‘I need some fresh air,’ Pernille said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ll see you later.’

She pushed her cycle through the car park, out to the street and Vesterbro.

The thin man stopped her in the car park. His name was Peter Lassen.

‘I didn’t get the chance to say hello in there.’

She shook his hand.

‘I hope it was some use to you.’

‘It was fine,’ she said.

He looked at her.

‘I don’t think you mean that.’

She wanted to walk on but didn’t.

‘I remember how awkward it felt the first time,’ Lassen said. ‘You can’t relate to anyone. You think their pain’s not like yours. And it isn’t.’

‘If I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,’ Pernille said with a sudden savagery.

Then pushed her bike away, eyes beginning to water.

By the road she stopped, ashamed. He’d been polite and pleasant. She’d been rude and caustic.

She went back, said sorry.

Lassen smiled a slow, soft smile.

‘No need. Let me buy you a coffee.’

A moment’s hesitation and then she said yes.

The cafe was tiny and empty. They sat in front of cappuccinos and biscotti.

‘It’ll be five years in January. I’d made lasagne. We sat at the table waiting for him to come home.’

There were kids outside the window, a long crocodile line of them heading off on a visit somewhere. Lassen smiled as they passed.

‘We’d put new batteries on his bike lights. He knew the way. We used to cycle it together sometimes.’

He stirred the coffee he’d never touched.

‘But he never came.’

One more round of the cup. She watched the froth subsiding.

‘They said it was a red car. The police found paint on one of the pedals.’

He shook his head and, to her astonishment, laughed.

‘I used to sit there by the turning in the road, looking for a scratched red car. Every evening around the time it happened.’

His delicate, pale hand waved at her.

‘The car never came. So then I started sitting there during the day. It didn’t come then.’

The brief amusement had left his face.

‘In the end the only thing I could do was sit and wait. Day and night. Watching the cars. Thinking it will come. And when it does I’ll drag that bastard out and . . .’

Lassen’s eyes shut briefly and she saw on his face the mask of pain he still sought to hide.

‘My wife tried to get me to stop. How could I? How? I lost my job. I lost my friends.’

He pushed away the coffee and the biscotto.

‘Then one day I came home from the street and she was gone too.’

Outside a mother by the road, holding the hand of a child, waiting to cross. The everyday was special. For people like her, like Lassen, there was nothing else, nor need of it. The everyday was holy, as precious as anything could be.

‘There isn’t a moment passes when I don’t regret letting go of my loved ones. The red car didn’t just take my son. It took everything I had. And still I never found him. Pernille?’

She turned away from the window, met his eyes.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘But you still keep looking, don’t you? How can you forget? What if you hadn’t given up?’

Lassen shook his head. He seemed disappointed.

‘You can’t think of it like that.’

‘But you do. You think . . . where is he? Where’s the car? You don’t stop thinking. You can fool yourself if you like. You can try to hide.’

‘You have to let it go.’

He was starting to annoy her.

‘Tell me you’ve forgotten then. Tell me you’re OK with the fact that the bastard who killed your boy is still walking around out there.’

A glance outside the window.

‘Maybe ready to do it all over again to someone else’s son.’

Lassen said, ‘What if they don’t find him? What if you’re locked in this hell for ever?’

‘They’ll find him. If they don’t I will.’

He blinked. That hint of disappointment again.

‘And then?’ Lassen asked.

‘You have to excuse me now. I’ve got to pick up my boys from school.’

She rose from the table.

‘Thanks for the coffee.’

Hartmann’s office. Weber had more sandwiches and coffee. There was a woman in the doorway and he fought for a moment to remember her name.

Nethe Stjernfeldt.

He got up quickly, walked to the door, saw Skovgaard’s head go up.

She was as pretty as he remembered, slim and elegant. With that same anxious, needy look in her sparkling eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Troels,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to come barging in.’

‘It’s not a good time.’

‘I’m sorry if I said something wrong.’

‘It’s not your fault. I know what the police are like.’

‘They came and threw all these questions at me. They had emails and . . . they seemed to know everything.’

‘I talked to them,’ Hartmann said. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t go any further. Everything’s fine.’

She was close. Her hand touched his lapel.

‘Thanks for coming. But really I’ve got a lot of things to do.’

Her fingers brushed his jacket.

‘I know. Ring me if there’s any way I can help.’ She smiled at him. ‘Anything.’

Her hand flattened, touched his white ironed shirt, pressed. Hartmann retreated a step. She glared at him.

‘I’ll leave then,’ she said.

‘That would be best.’

He walked back into the office, stood next to Skovgaard as she read through the papers. Weber had made himself scarce.

‘She . . . she wanted to apologize.’

Skovgaard’s head never came up from the documents.