The Killing - 01 - The Killing (78 page)

‘Can’t you see? Holck’s face. He’s not happy. If Nanna had come back to him why would he look so miserable?’

A final hug, a kiss that was friendship not passion. Holck looked like a man who’d lost everything. And Nanna as happy as the child she dreamed she no longer was.

Meyer nodded.

‘OK. It still doesn’t mean he didn’t meet her at the flat.’

He got up and started nosing around. Looking at the reports on the work desk. The photos on the mannequin.

‘Where’s your mother?’

Lund froze the video.

‘Meyer. You have to help me.’

Nothing.

‘If you have the slightest doubt . . .’ she started.

He waved the freezer bag and the envelope at her.

‘I don’t like this. Someone delivers a tape and we’re back in all that shit at City Hall again.’

‘It doesn’t matter where it is.’

‘You only get stuff like this if they’ve something to gain.’

‘You’re very cynical sometimes. Maybe they just want to help.’

Meyer looked mournfully at the frozen picture. A miserable Holck kissing a joyful Nanna.

‘Oh crap,’ he said.

Monday, 17th November

First thing that morning Hartmann had Gert Stokke in his office. The civil servant looked shifty.

‘All I’m asking is you tell the truth. That you say you told Bremer about Holck using our flat.’

‘You don’t want much, do you?’

Stokke had a long grey bloodhound face and pink, watery eyes.

‘I can’t get involved with you and Bremer.’

‘You already are,’ Rie Skovgaard said.

Morten Weber leapt in.

‘Do you think he’ll reward you for keeping quiet, Gert? You know him. You’re a civil servant. He can’t dump this on Holck any more. So he’ll pick on the department. You’ll be the first to go.’

Stokke scowled at the three of them. A smart man, cornered.

‘And you’re on my side? My friends now, huh? Go stab one another. Leave me out of it.’

‘If Bremer survives this you’re gone,’ Weber said.

The civil servant shook his head.

‘Bremer’s never going to admit we had that conversation.’

‘There must be minutes,’ Skovgaard said.

A moment’s hesitation. Then he said, ‘Bremer didn’t want it minuted. He said he’d have a quiet word with Holck. Then it would be over with.’

Weber swore and slammed his papers on the table.

‘I’m sorry. If I come forward I’m finished. I always thought you’d make a good Lord Mayor, Hartmann. Maybe next time round.’

‘There won’t be a next time,’ Hartmann grumbled. ‘We need you, Gert.’

‘Who’d hire me if I spoke out? I’m fifty-eight. What about my pension?’

Skovgaard was livid.

‘So Troels should pay the price instead? When he did nothing?’

‘Leave it, leave it,’ Hartmann cut in. ‘Let’s not pressure Gert any more. If he won’t do it, he won’t do it. It’s up to him.’

He held out his hand. Stokke took it.

‘Thanks for coming anyway,’ Hartmann said, and watched the civil servant button his jacket and leave.

Weber had a copy of Stokke’s minutes from the original meeting.

‘Is it there?’ Hartmann asked.

‘No. Look for yourself.’

He passed over the sheets.

‘We should have leaned on him more,’ Skovgaard said.

Morten Weber shook his head.

‘Pointless. He’s terrified of Bremer. Won’t work.’

Hartmann stopped on the second page.

‘It says here there’s an appendix. Where is it?’

‘Probably technical documentation,’ Weber suggested.

Hartmann wasn’t convinced.

‘Stokke’s a good civil servant. I can’t believe he wouldn’t set down something. It’s financial impropriety for God’s sake. He’d want to cover his back.’

‘He’s terrified of Bremer. I told you.’

‘Maybe. Are we friendly with anyone in Holck’s department? That big woman—’

‘You mean Rita?’ Skovgaard asked.

‘If that’s what she’s called.’

‘Yes. I know Rita.’

‘Well,’ he said, throwing the minutes at her, ‘you know what to do.’

Then she started bickering about a media strategy. Hartmann didn’t listen. Weber was on the phone again. Getting heated.

‘What is it?’ Hartmann asked when he was done.

‘You’re going to have to talk to that lawyer of yours again, Troels.’

‘Oh for God’s sake. Not Lund.’

‘Not Lund. Bremer wants to sue for libel.’

Vibeke’s car was a ten-year-old green Beetle. Lund didn’t feel minded to drive it very carefully.

The laundry was in Islands Brygge. She’d used it once before when the police couldn’t find the right person.

A charity. Sponsored by the city. Most of the people working there were disabled in some way. A few deaf from birth.

The manager remembered her.

‘Why does everybody think that because someone’s deaf they can lip-read?’ he moaned when she turned up. ‘It’s not true. Even if they can they probably only pick up a third of what they see.’

The place handled many of the big city hotels. She walked past industrial washing machines, piles of sheets and pillows. The air was hot and humid, and sickly with the smell of ironing and detergent.

‘I’ll take a third,’ she said.

‘You need to know the subject matter, the context.’

‘I can do that.’

He stopped.

‘I imagine you can. If anyone can help it’s Ditte. She’s a smart little thing. Deaf and dumb. Bright as they come.’

She looked about twenty, long fair hair, immobile face. Working a commercial ironing machine with a steady, practised ease.

Lund spoke, the manager signed. The girl watched Lund mostly.

Bright as they come.

Ditte’s fingers flew.

‘She wants to see your badge.’

Lund fumbled in her pockets. The girl’s eyes never left her.

‘I forgot it. It’s supposed to be my day off. I must have left it at home.’ She smiled at the manager. ‘I’ve been here before. He knows me.’

Nothing.

‘I can give you my card.’

Brix hadn’t taken those.

Ditte read the card carefully and then they went and sat in a storeroom.

The video was on her laptop. Lund took her through it slowly, rewinding when necessary. That wasn’t often.

The girl signed, the man talked.

‘She came because he promised to give her some keys.’

Frozen on a frame. Nanna looking at Jens Holck. Begging.

‘She wants to pick up something she forgot.’

Ditte’s fingers twisted and turned.

‘She doesn’t want him to come with her.’

The girl stopped, eyes locked to the screen.

‘What is it?’ Lund asked.

The man’s hands gestured. Ditte responded, slowly.

‘She says this is very sad. The girl’s saying she told him it was over.’

‘Does she say what she forgot?’

‘She came to get her . . .’

The hands stopped.

‘Her what?’

Nothing.

‘Do you want me to rewind it?’

Ditte made a soft, meaningless noise, not vowel, not consonant.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Let it play.’

‘They went away somewhere for the weekend.’

Ditte nodded. Happy with something. She turned and looked at Lund. Fingers very certain.

‘She says she left her passport in a drawer in the flat afterwards.’

Lund took a deep breath.

‘Her passport? Are you sure about that?’

Ditte was back, trapped by the screen.

‘Her plane leaves tonight,’ the manager said.

‘Her plane? Where to?’

The laundry girl looked puzzled. Lund halted the video. Let her catch her breath.

‘Take this slowly. There’s no rush.’

‘She wants you to play the video,’ the man said.

So Lund did.

‘The man asks her where she’s going to. But she just asks for the keys. She says she’s met someone else. Someone she loves very much. Someone she’s going away with.’

Two faces on the screen, love and hate in the same moment. Both dead.

‘He asks her where she’s going again.’

Lund closed her eyes.

‘And she says Paris. But Paris . . .’

Ditte stopped. She looked cross.

‘What about Paris?’

The hands again.

‘It isn’t Paris. She’s lying.’

‘How do you know?’

She pointed to the video.

‘When the girl speaks she won’t look him in the eye.’

Lund nodded. The hands flew again.

‘Just like you, when you said you’d forgotten your badge. And it was your day off.’

The laundry girl sat at the laptop smiling at Lund. Proud of herself.

‘I won’t get into trouble for this, will I?’ the manager asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

Outside, in the hard seat of Vibeke’s green Beetle, travelling back into the city, she called Meyer.

‘Nanna’s plane was leaving that night. She lied about the destination.’

She could hear the sound of papers getting slammed on the desk. Meyer had her on speakerphone. He was probably making rude gestures at the handset as she spoke.

‘We never came across anything to suggest she was going on a trip.’

‘She said goodbye to her parents. Goodbye to her friends at school. To Kemal. To Holck. You saw that too.’

‘Did I? Who was she going away with?’

‘Get all the passenger lists. Talk to the airlines.’

‘No problem. I’ve got nothing else to do.’

‘Did you check the old cases?’

‘I’m looking at them now. I can’t see any link. Except for Mette Hauge’s bike and really—’

‘Check the departures and find out who she was travelling with. The Hauge girl—’

The phone clicked.

‘Meyer?’ Lund said into the neck mike. ‘Meyer?’

Nanna’s room looked different again. Pernille had relented. Got some Birk Larsen boxes. Carefully started stashing her belongings.

Moving things. Changing things.

There was a globe on Nanna’s desk. Marked with ink stars for all the cities she wanted to visit one day. London and Rome. New York and Beijing.

Pernille looked at it. A simple piece of plastic. Placed it in the cardboard box and walked back into the living room. Looked around.

All their life had been here, from Nanna to the boys. All the love and squabbles. All the pain and joy.

On the door in crayon were the height marks. Red for Nanna, green for Anton, blue for Emil. The junk the police had posted was gone. She could see the place again without being reminded of the world outside and what it contained.

Lives were never still. They shifted always. Or they weren’t lives at all. She’d forgotten this in the dreadful limbo that had consumed them. Forgotten it before, perhaps, in the comfort of their cramped apartment above the grubby, busy depot. Bringing up kids. Feeding Theis. Enjoying his strong arms around her when they were alone.

Never still. You either moved with time or it flowed past heedless. Left you stranded in the bare, cold sand.

She walked downstairs. The woman from the agency had called. Theis was talking to her. Knuckles still raw from whatever happened two nights before. Face grim and dark.

Pernille knocked on the door, went in, sat down.

The woman said, ‘I really think you should take the offer. I know it’s not wonderful. But the market’s not very good. With your finances the bank expect the money.’

‘The bank,’ he muttered.

She smiled, and said to Pernille, ‘Now that it’s all over a clean break might be nice.’

Pernille froze.

Quickly, the estate agent added, ‘I don’t mean over with, of course, but—’

‘When would they move in?’ he asked.

‘Very soon. The money—’

Pernille said, ‘We’d like to talk about this. Can you wait outside?’

She seemed shocked, but went.

‘Stinking banks,’ he muttered.

The plans were on the desk. Some drawings. The agency photos.

‘I never had the time to look at it.’

‘No. . .’

‘What’s it like? Is it nice? Is there a garden?’

‘It’s Humleby. Three floors . . .’

‘Would the boys like it, Theis?’

‘Their own rooms? They could have a train set. Of course they’d like it.’