The Killing - 01 - The Killing (71 page)

‘Put it on the tab,’ he said to the barman then followed her to the door.

The room wasn’t big. Double bed. Shiny table. Laptop on a desk. The kind of bad-taste furnishing no one bought but a hotel.

He was flustered, nervous, fumbling with the key, slapping the wall for the light switch.

There were clothes on the bed. A shirt. Underpants.

He grabbed them off the sheets, threw them into a cupboard.

‘I didn’t know I’d have company. Do you want a drink?’

It was the size of Nanna’s room. Nothing personal here. Nothing she would remember.

‘When I was a student I worked as a barman at the Grand Hotel in Oslo.’

He said this as if it was one of his great achievements. Like starting his own company and having a factory in Vietnam.

Two gins from the minibar. A single bottle of tonic. He bounced the bottles on the tiny tabletop, splashed the spirit into the glasses.

‘Ha! See! I still have it.’

No, smaller than Nanna’s she thought. A box for a faceless man. A place outside the life she knew.

‘Gin and tonic. No ice. No lemon.’

He shrugged. He was drunker than she had realized. So, perhaps, was she, though there was a sense of clarity here. Of purpose even.

The drink was in her hand. She didn’t touch it, didn’t want it.

She thought of Theis. Rough, coarse Theis. No manners, no fine words.

No delicate thoughtful touches, only a direct and physical embrace.

Yet there was something sensitive, even tender in him. Had to be. Why else did she love him, marry him, bear him three children?

The Norwegian was different.

Drink in hand, drink on breath, he stood next to her, brushed aside her long chestnut hair, damp from the rain. Stroked her cheek with his pale fingers.

Tried to kiss her.

The glass fell from her fingers. Bounced booze on the plush hotel carpet.

‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded concerned more than disappointed. ‘I’m not much good at this.’

It was a lie, she thought.

‘I thought . . .’He shrugged. ‘No matter.’

He picked up the glass, put it on the minibar. When he turned she was on the bed.

Puzzlement and hope in his face. A nice-looking man. No name.

Not at all like Theis, who could only dream of going to a place like Vietnam. Who struggled to pay ten workers let alone fifty.

‘Another drink?’ he asked.

She said words she’d not uttered in years, and then to one man only.

‘Take my clothes off.’

He laughed, looked foolish.

‘Are you sure? I mean . . . you seem a bit . . .’

She closed her eyes. She let her head roll back, mouth half open.

She smiled.

A kiss then. He was on her. Fumbling, feeling. Boozy lips against her neck. Panting too quickly, as if trying to convince himself.

Pernille lay back on the hard double bed, let his arms engulf her, as he writhed and tugged desperately at the dark blue dress.

These clothes she wore when she placed Nanna’s urn in the brown earth. She didn’t want them any more, or anything to do with them.

Theis Birk Larsen drank his soup, found what things he still had left, checked his cuts, begged plasters. Got dressed in his scarlet work suit, his black leather jacket.

The white-haired man from the hostel watched him.

‘You’re sure you don’t want to stay? It’s not the Radisson I know . . .’

‘Thanks for your help. I have to go.’

Handshake. A firm, determined grip.

‘You’re welcome. Any time.’

He tidied away the bedclothes.

‘I lost something that mattered once,’ the man said. ‘How and why doesn’t matter. But that’s what happened.’

It was nearly nine in the evening. He pulled on his black woollen hat.

‘Life wasn’t worth living. And all the guilt made me do awful things. I hated myself. What I’d become.’

He handed Birk Larsen a lighter and a pack of cigarettes.

‘Keep them. I hated life itself. But today I see there’s a plan behind everything.’

He said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Birk Larsen lit a cigarette.

‘What seemed like the end turned out to be a beginning.’

Smoke in the little room that smelled of booze and sweat and men.

‘God gives us hardship for a reason. Not that we understand that when we’re up to our necks in shit.’

‘A plan?’ Birk Larsen said and couldn’t stop the sneer.

‘Oh yes. There’s a plan, Theis. For you. For me. For everyone. We’re walking down the road that’s given us whether we know it or not. What’s waiting at the end . . .’

Birk Larsen took a deep pull on the cigarette. He didn’t want to see this man again. Didn’t like the way he looked at him, demanding answers.

‘Say something, Theis.’

‘Say what?’ Birk Larsen snapped and felt ashamed at the sudden fierceness in his voice. ‘Before I met my wife, before the kids I did a lot of bad things.’

He glared at the man.

‘Not your kind. Beyond your league. I hurt people because I thought they earned it. I did . . .’

His narrow eyes closed in pain.

‘Enough of this shit.’

There was a crucifix on every wall, a slender broken figure staring down at each shambling body that passed through the door.

‘It was a long time ago.’ He pointed at the figure of Christ in his agony. ‘But I don’t think that guy’s quite forgotten. So all I got was parole. A little time with my family. And now that’s done.’

Too many words. He was back to the cigarette, sly eyes stinging in the smoke, watching the man from the hostel.

‘I’m sure there’s something, Theis. Some help, some comfort that gives you and your family hope.’

‘Yeah,’ Birk Larsen said. ‘There could be.’

He looked at the man.

‘I just don’t think you’d find it very Christian.’

Finally the white-haired man seemed out of words.

‘Goodnight,’ Birk Larsen mumbled then walked outside into the damp cold street.

A sudden start, a bright red pain at the back of her skull. Lund came to on the floor of the basement garage, tried to stand, could barely move. Her hands were tied, her ankles too. The place was lit now. She was by the white estate car. Not far from the half-made wardrobe and the tools.

Scrabbled on the floor, breathing in the dust, the oil fumes, the smell of sawdust.

And cigarette smoke.

She managed to work herself round until she saw the tiny red fire flickering in the corner.

Eyes adjusting.

Holck sat on what looked like an oil barrel, puffing on a cigarette. A man deciding what to do.

You talk, Lund thought. The gun was gone. Nothing left.

‘Untie me, Holck. You know this can’t work.’

He didn’t answer.

‘Come on.’

Silence.

‘We can work something out.’

She sounded pathetic, wrong.

‘How about it?’

He kept smoking, looking at her. Looking round the garage.

‘Headquarters can trace me.’

Holck threw something through the shadows. It landed in front of her. Phone, smashed and cracked.

‘I suppose you want to know,’ he said.

‘Untie me.’

He laughed.

‘Which way’s it supposed to be? If I tell you . . .’

She didn’t speak.

‘No, really.’ He sounded coldly amused. ‘I’m interested. If I tell you I kill you. If I don’t . . .’

He tossed the cigarette towards her. It spun fizzling into a pool of oil.

‘Oh. I still kill you. In that case . . .’

‘Untie me, Holck.’

He cocked his head as if listening for something.

‘So quiet out here. Don’t you love it?’

‘Holck . . .’

He got up, came to her.

‘I told headquarters where I was going,’ Lund said quickly. ‘They’re on their way.’

He had his wallet out, was looking at something.

‘Do you have children?’

She was shaking. The cold. The fear.

He came close, crouched down, showed her his wallet.

‘You got kids? These are mine.’

A girl and a boy, laughing with a woman who smiled at the camera.

Holck’s fingers ran over each figure.

‘My wife.’ He shook his head. ‘My ex-wife. She won’t let them see me much.’

‘Holck—’

‘You wanted to know. You never stopped asking. Now look where you are.’

He tapped his own chest.

‘And you’re blaming me now? Me? I never wanted to kill anyone. Who does? Never. Not even that filthy little whore.’

‘Jens—’

‘That slimy bastard Christensen wouldn’t let it go. He wanted money. A job. He wanted . . .’

A fierce, crazed anger contorted Holck’s miserable grey features.

‘This shit’s cost me too much already.’

‘I know,’ she said, trying to bring down the temperature. ‘That’s why we need to talk. You’ve got to untie me. We can sort this out.’

‘Yes.’

Hope.

‘I’d really like to.’

‘Let’s do it then. Untie me.’

‘But it’s not that simple, is it?’

‘Holck . . .’

He stood up, looked around.

‘I knew you’d understand.’

Walked over, lifted the rear door of the white estate.

Lund struggled, got nowhere, tried to think.

Then he was back, hand on her jacket, dragging her across the filthy floor.

Shattered handset on the ground.

‘That’s my phone, Holck!’ she cried.

They were at the back of the car. He was looking for something. A weapon. Beat her unconscious. In the boot. In the river. Just like Nanna.

‘It’s my phone. Not the police one.’

He stopped.

‘I told you. They’re on their way. The police phone’s in the car.’

‘Where?’

She didn’t speak.

He went and got the wheel brace, held it over her, said again, more loudly, ‘Where?’

‘In my bag.’

‘Don’t go away,’ Holck said and laughed.

One minute, maybe two. Lund shuffled back across the floor, towards the half-made wardrobe and the tools.

There was no second phone. No magic beacon that would bring the police to this lost, dark semi-industrial part of the city where Holck lived alone, in a half-finished warehouse block owned by relatives who’d decamped to Cape Town for the winter.

Only a handbag full of chewing gum and tissues, mints and rubbish.

He started sifting through it. Got angrier with each failed second. Ripped open the glovebox. Saw nothing there but Nicotinell packets and parking receipts.

He didn’t know why he showed her the photo of his wife and kids. Didn’t know why he didn’t kill her straight off, shove her bleeding corpse into the back of the white car, drive out into the distant woods, find a river, a canal. Push Lund and the white estate into the dank waters where they’d stay for ever.

Lost. Unseen. Forgotten.

Holck took one last look.

He hadn’t wanted to run down Olav Christensen. The creep had left him no choice. That was life. No choices anywhere. Just a long road that kept getting bleaker, narrower with every passing day.

‘Bitch,’ Holck spat as he slammed the car door shut then went back to the black hole that led to the garage and Lund.

Scrabbling on the floor, towards the sawdust and the tools, the crooked shape of the half-finished wardrobe.

A hammer. A chisel. Some nails and screws and dowels.

And a saw.

Hands tied, fingers trembling, she closed on the handle, got it to her legs, trapped the blade between her knees. Began to work at the plastic tie that bound her.

A noise. He was back. Scrabbling somewhere in the pool of darkness by the entrance.

Pictures in Lund’s head.

A man who thinks ahead. Needs things. Plans things.

A sound, rustling plastic.

A black bag to hide a body in the boot.

Metal clattering, blade against blade.

Knives or scythes or something else that cuts, a weapon to pair with the wheel brace, tools for the task.

Footsteps.

When he came into the light Holck had the black bin liner beneath his right arm and was stretching out a line of industrial tape between his hands.

Nanna went into the river alive, but at least she had her mouth free and could scream.