The Killing 2 (2 page)

‘What I just said. Bring him in.’

He went back along the narrow muddy path, through the field of gravestones, past the names on the wall, the statue of the mother clutching her murdered son, the memorial plaque with the
patriotic verses of an awkward priest named Kai Munk, slaughtered by the Gestapo one dark January night near Silkeborg in Jutland a lifetime before.

Walked down the concrete steps, carefully, the way he had as a five-year-old child leaving this place feeling sick and giddy, aware that the world was not the safe and happy realm he thought,
and that a shadow waited for him, as it did for everyone some day.

At the foot of the steps Lennart Brix looked right, looked left, made sure no one saw him. Strode over to the undergrowth next to the busy road, and did what he did all those decades before:
vomited into the grubby bushes, strewn with trash, discarded bottles and cigarettes.

Then sat mute and miserable in his unmarked car, beneath the revolving blue light, listening to the sirens and the chatter on the police networks, wishing he possessed the faith to pray that
Madsen was right. That this was a curiously violent domestic interlude to be swiftly and cleanly concluded.

A crime of passion, nothing more.

Monday 14th November

7.45 a.m.
  Gedser sat by the dull waters of the Baltic, a tiny town of eight hundred souls, most of them living off the ferry that came and went
to Rostock throughout the day. When Germany was divided between East and West, the main smuggling activity was political refugees from the Communists. The twenty-first century had proved more
enterprising. Drugs, hard and soft, human traffic from the Middle East and beyond. The nature of contraband had changed, and all the authorities could do was hope to hold back a little of the
floodtide.

Sarah Lund, in her blue border guard’s uniform, long dark hair tied up behind a regulation cap, had lost none of her powers of imagination and curiosity. After the disaster of the Birk
Larsen case and the shooting of her partner Jan Meyer, she’d been fired from the Copenhagen police and offered this humble, poorly paid post in a backwater where she knew no one, and none
knew her.

Had taken it with alacrity, settled into a tiny wooden bungalow which, even after two years, had no personal items inside it save for a few practical clothes and several photos of her son, Mark,
now turned fourteen and living with his father outside Copenhagen.

Her life was in limbo, a dead, numb place though free, to an extent, of the nagging sense of guilt she’d felt in the city.

It was her fault the Birk Larsen case ended so messily. She was to blame for the fact that Meyer, an active, happy man, so in love with his family, would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest
of his life.

And so she worked in Gedser and watched the trucks roll on and roll off the massive vessels in the port, followed the expressions on the drivers’ faces as they took the lorries out onto
the quayside, became quickly proficient at spotting those with a nervous cast in the eye.

No one had caught more illegals in the previous year. Not that anyone was impressed. What did it matter? The challenge was to cross the narrow stretch of water between Rostock and Gedser. Once
that was conquered they were on Danish soil and few, legal or not, would in the end be repatriated.

So she did her job as best she could. And between the ferries coming and going she read and wrote the odd letter to Copenhagen.

The week before she’d turned forty, marked the occasion on her own. Three cans of beer and a letter to Vibeke, her mother, telling of a fictitious party with her fictitious new friends.
And bought herself a pocket radio.

Now, seated alone in the little cabin of the border office, rain coming down out of a flat dull sky, she listened to the eight o’clock morning news through her headphones.

‘The future of the government’s anti-terror package is in doubt . . .’ the announcer began.

Lund’s watchful eyes followed the departing ferry as it manoeuvred out of the dock and made its sluggish way out onto the water.

‘. . . after the Justice Minister Frode Monberg was rushed to hospital with a heart attack. His present condition is not known. Parliament was due to debate the new anti-terror bill today.
The Prime Minister, Gert Grue Eriksen, says Monberg’s absence will not affect negotiations with the ruling Centre Party’s coalition partners . . .’

Politicians, Lund muttered, remembering. They’d done Nanna Birk Larsen no favours. Just looked after themselves.

The suave voice of the Prime Minister filled her ears. Grue Eriksen had been close to the helm of Danish politics for so long that just the sound of him provided a picture: silver hair, beaming
genial face. A man to trust. A credit to the nation.

‘The anti-terror package is necessary in the present situation,’ Grue Eriksen said in measured, confident tones. ‘We’re a nation at war with a vicious enemy so cowardly
it seeks to make itself invisible. The fight against terrorism must go on, here and in Afghanistan.’

The illegals Lund had caught didn’t look like terrorists to her. Just sad, impoverished foreigners who’d swallowed the lie that the West was a pleasant and generous land eager to
welcome them with open arms.

Another news item.

‘The suspect in the Memorial Park murder is still in custody. Little information has been released by the head of homicide, Lennart Brix, since the killing ten days ago. Sources within the
Politigården suggest the man in custody, believed to be the victim’s husband, will be released shortly unless the police make a breakthrough and . . .’

She snatched the headphones out of her ears. There was a truck in the queue for the next departure. That was why. No other reason.

It didn’t matter that her shift had ended, or that her duty replacement was already marching towards the cab to deal with it.

Copenhagen was in the past. And so was police work. She wasn’t happy about that. Or disappointed. It was how things were.

So she went to see the new man, talked about rosters and the latest bulletins from control. What the new anti-terror laws might mean for them. More paperwork probably, little else.

Then went back to the office to check out after a ten-hour shift, wondering whether she’d manage to sleep much when finally she got back to her little bungalow on the edge of this dreary
little town.

There was a black Ford by the door. A parking badge in the front window that looked familiar: the Politigården. A man about her age stood by the door. Taller than Jan Meyer, more wiry. But
with the same kind of clothes: black leather jacket and jeans. Same worn, pale face, short cropped hair and a couple of days of stubble.

Jan Meyer had pop eyes and big ears. This one had neither. He was handsome in an understated, almost apologetic way. Thoughtful behind the professional, distanced mask the job made him wear.

A cop through and through, she thought. He might as well have been wearing a badge on his chest.

‘Hello?’ he said in a bright, almost childlike voice as he followed her into the office.

Lund turned off her walkie-talkie, put it in the drawer. Got a cup of coffee.

He was in the door.

‘Sarah Lund?’

The coffee tasted stewed as usual.

‘Ulrik Strange. I’ve been calling you lots of times. Left messages. I guess you never got them.’

She took off her cap, let down her long dark hair. He didn’t take his eyes off her. Lund wondered if she was being admired. That hadn’t happened much in Gedser.

‘There’s coffee in the flask if you’re feeling brave,’ she said and filled out the night log: two lines, nothing to report.

‘I’m Vicepolitikommissær . . .’

Details, Lund thought. They always mattered.

‘You mean Vicekriminalkommissær?’

He laughed. Looked friendly when he did that.

‘No. Things have changed in two years. Lots of reforms. Can’t smoke in the building any more. We’ve got new titles. They dropped the word “kriminal”. I guess it was
thought to be a bit . . .’

He scratched his short hair.

‘Judgemental.’

Cup of coffee in hand, he toasted her. Lund checked the entry in the log and closed the book.

‘There’s a case we’d like to discuss with you.’

She walked out to the clothes racks. Strange followed.

‘A woman was murdered ten days ago. In very strange circumstances.’

Lund got her plain jacket, blue jumper and jeans.

‘I’ll wait till you’ve changed.’

‘Keep talking.’ She squeezed behind the lockers and climbed out of the cold, wet uniform.

‘You probably read about it. Mindelunden. A woman murdered in the memorial park. We’d like you to go over the case records to see if we missed something.’

‘We?’ Lund asked from behind the lockers.

‘Brix asked for it. We need a new angle. He thinks you can give us one.’

Lund sat on her chair and tugged on her long leather boots.

‘I can stay till midday,’ Strange offered. ‘Brief you here if you like.’

‘I’m a border guard. I don’t work murder cases.’

‘We’re pretty sure we’ve got our man. The victim’s husband is in custody. We can’t keep him for more than another day or so, not without charging him. You’ll
be paid for your time. It’s fine with the people here.’

She got up, didn’t look at him.

‘Tell him I’m not interested.’

He was in the door, didn’t budge.

‘Why not?’

Lund stared at his chest until he moved then walked past and grabbed her jacket.

‘Brix told me you’d say no. He said I should stress how important this was. That we need your help . . .’

‘Well.’ Lund turned to look at him. ‘Now you’ve done it, haven’t you?’

Strange clutched his coffee mug, lost for something to say.

‘Make sure you close the door when you leave,’ she added then walked out to her car.

When the call came Thomas Buch was alone in his MP’s office in the Folketinget, bouncing a rubber ball off the wall. A habit he’d had since he was a kid. It annoyed
people and so did he.

Some thought Buch an interloper, someone who’d only got into the Danish Parliament on the back of a better man lost to the nation. Buch was thirty-eight, had been a successful chief
executive of a farming corporation in his native Jutland, outside Aarhus. Content with the countryside, running a company his family had built over the years until it employed more than four
hundred people.

Then came the second Iraq War. Jeppe, his elder brother, the bright one in the family, slim, handsome, articulate, the media star who would soon enter politics, decided to rejoin the army.

Jeppe cast a long shadow. It seemed to loom ever larger after he was murdered by insurgents who attacked his unit as it delivered medical aid to a hospital on the outskirts of Baghdad.

For reasons Thomas Buch still didn’t quite understand he agreed to fight the seat his brother had been promised in Parliament, exchanging the complexities of the Common Agricultural Policy
for the intricate, prolix detail of Danish parliamentary law. Which was not so different, he discovered, as he gently prospered in the middle ranks of Centre Party MPs, tolerated mostly, suspected
in some quarters, always thought of, he felt, as ‘Jeppe’s fat little brother’.

He missed his wife Marie who stayed at home in Jutland with their two children, hating the cynical, urban atmosphere of the city. But duty was duty, and the family company remained in good
professional hands.

The idea of advancement within the rungs of government hadn’t occurred to him. Overweight, with a gentle walrus face and wispy ginger beard, he was never a figure the media warmed to. Buch
half hoped that once his present term had expired he could slink back to the quiet fields of home and become anonymous once more. In the meantime he would deal with what legislation came his way,
the needs of constituents, the daily round of parliamentary duties.

And bounce the rubber ball against the office wall, always trying to judge the way it would respond to each careful change of angle. Watching that little object react to the tests he gave it
helped him think somehow, and the call he’d had gave him plenty to consider. It was a summons, to an execution or an elevation.

A tie and a jacket were called for. So he bounced the ball one last time, judged precisely the way it would return from the wall, placed it in his pocket, dragged off his sweatshirt, and
retrieved the best clothes he had from the little wardrobe by the window.

There was egg yolk on the tie. The one clean white shirt too. Buch scrubbed them but the yellow stain was persistent. So he found a black polo neck instead then walked out into the cold November
day, crossed the cobbled space that separated the Folketinget from the Christiansborg Palace and walked up the long red staircase to the office of Gert Grue Eriksen, Prime Minister of Denmark.

The bungalow was bitterly cold however high she turned up the puny heating. Lund knew she wouldn’t sleep. So she fried some bacon, burnt some toast, checked the train
times.

Bus to Nykøbing Falster, then train. Two and a half hours. Regular departures.

Since the Birk Larsen case she’d scarcely been home at all. The city didn’t frighten her. It was the memories. The guilt. In Gedser her life was bounded by the grey sea of the
Baltic, the boring routine of work at the port, her lonely hours in the bare little cottage, watching the TV, messing round on the Web, reading, sleeping.

The city was different. Her life was no longer her own, became driven by exterior events beyond her control, full of dark streets she longed to walk down.

It was the place, not her.

You brought Meyer to that building late at night. You forced Bengt Rosling out of your life. Chased away Mark, his father too. Took all those wrong turnings trying to work out who killed
Nanna Birk Larsen.

She hadn’t heard that voice in a while.

Mark’s photo was pinned to the fridge. She hadn’t seen him in five months. He’d be even taller.

There was a sweatshirt she’d bought from Netto for his birthday. A cheap gift on her pathetic salary.