The Killing 2 (8 page)

‘Medicate him,’ she ordered. ‘Put him in the room.’

Strong arms dragged him screaming, kicked and forced him into the solitary cell, lifted him onto the metal table, wrapped the leather straps round his struggling body as he cursed and spat at
them.

A hypodermic stabbed into his shoulder. Memories of another place, a different kind of violence swam into view.

Jens Peter Raben wondered if he’d ever escape this nightmare, find refuge and peace at home with Louise and the little boy who scarcely knew his face.

Wondered what he might turn into – return to – if they never let him out. Thought of Myg Poulsen too, the scared little soldier who’d been with him in Helmand when the walls of
their small, shared world began to tumble into dust.

Poulsen never wanted to go back to war. There was only one reason he would. He was too scared to do anything else.

Then the chemical bit, hard and loud and rushing. After that he didn’t fight against the leather straps or think much at all.

Plough remained as furious as his tightly reined civil servant’s temper would allow. Then, ten minutes after Erling Krabbe stormed out of Buch’s office, he was back
on the phone, meekly offering his party’s support for the bill with a few minor amendments.

‘And yet,’ Buch said, once the call was finished and he was packing his things for the evening, ‘you don’t look happy, Carsten.’

‘I’m not. In no way can the law of 1941 be compared to the People’s Party suggestions. Next time I would appreciate it if you asked my opinion first before consulting any legal
experts.’

‘You’re right. I’m new to this job. Allow me a little latitude, please. Also I’m a politician. I want to get my own way.’

Plough appeared to have summoned all his courage and strength for an argument. Buch’s immediate apology threw him.

‘I understand that, Minister, but in future . . .’

‘First day!’ Buch patted him on the arm. ‘It didn’t go
too
badly, did it?’

The large man from Jutland had a pleasant smile and knew when to use it.

‘I wasn’t saying that. There are ways of doing things. Ministerial ways . . .’

Karina marched in from the office.

‘You need to look at this. Both of you.’

‘No,’ Buch replied, gathering his things. ‘There’s a reception at the Polish Embassy. Sausages . . .’

‘I’ve cancelled. Please . . .’

She looked close to tears, and she was a strong, confident young woman.

‘PET are on their way,’ she said, walking back to her desk.

The two men followed. She sat down in front of the computer. A video was on the screen, paused. A house in darkness, lights on inside.

‘What is this, Karina?’ Buch asked again.

‘An email we kept getting. It’s coming from an address in the Finance Ministry. A fake. The link wouldn’t open till seven thirty. It’s . . .’

She took a deep breath and hit the play button.

‘See for yourself.’

The screen jerked into life. A light came on. A woman appeared in an upstairs window, towelling her hair as if she’d just come out of the bath. There was the sound of anxious shallow
breathing from the camera. The lens followed her through the windows into the kitchen. She drank a glass of water, appeared to look at something then walked away.

‘This is all very well,’ Buch said. ‘But the Polish Embassy . . .’

‘Forget it,’ Karina insisted.

The sound of footsteps, the camera moving closer. The woman chopping vegetables on a board in the kitchen. Her hair’s wet. She’s wearing a blue dressing gown. She hears something,
stares through the windows, lets out an unheard cry, drops the knife.

Rapid movement, the sound of glass breaking.

Then forward an unknown amount of time. A close-up. She’s in a chair by a lamp, still in the blue dressing gown. Blood pours from her nose, one eye black and bruised, a cut above the brow.
The robe is down close to her breasts, above it cruel slashes streak her skin through the flesh.

She looks torn between fury and defiance, stares into the lens.

‘My God,’ Carsten Plough murmured and pulled up a chair.

Buch moved closer and as he did the lens pulled back. They could see the ropes around her torso. In her left hand a sheet of paper. Her bloodied, frightened face turns to it and, in a broken,
tremulous voice she begins to read.

‘I accuse the hypocritical Danish government and the infidel Danish people of crimes against humanity.’

The sheet of paper shakes. Her eyes move to the camera seeking pity, a response, receive nothing.

‘The time has come for Allah’s revenge. The Muslim League will punish the sufferings Denmark has caused . . . in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.’

Wet hair down on her naked shoulders, head shaking, tears starting to streak the snotty gore that runs from her mouth, her nose, she half cries, half whispers, ‘I plead guilty. My blood
will be shed. And many will die along with me.’

The camera zooms in. Her face in terror and agony.

‘I haven’t done anything . . . I’ve a little girl . . . For the love of God . . .’

Closer still, closer. Bloodied mouth, bloodied teeth, a scream, a frozen image. Then silence.

On the screen. In the room.

Karina got up, excused herself, strode quickly out of the office.

Thomas Buch sat down heavily beside her desk.

This was the same woman in the photograph he’d seen in Frode Monberg’s file.

Anne Dragsholm. Buch had learned one politician’s trick. He was now good at names. He would not forget this one easily.

The veterans’ club was in Christianshavn, not far from the former military area that had turned into the hippie free state of Christiania. Strange drove, looking grumpy
all the way.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lund asked as they passed Slotsholmen, still lit, and then the Knippelsbro bridge.

‘You.’

He was nothing like Meyer. No sense of jocularity around this man. He seemed decent, quiet, responsible. She liked that, up to a point.

‘I’m sorry if the work’s getting in the way of your social life.’

He looked at her, frowned. Maybe there was a note of humour in there somewhere.

‘It was a joke, Strange.’

‘I don’t live and breathe the police. I’ve got things to do. Haven’t you?’

She didn’t answer.

‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘you came back to Copenhagen to see your mother. Not stick your nose in a murder case.’

‘Brix asked me.’

‘To read the files.’

‘Which I did.’

‘And here we are. Out on a call.’

He had an unusual face. Very alert, younger than his years yet mature in its intensity. Good-looking but careworn.

‘You don’t have any authority here, Lund.’

‘Brix asked me . . .’

‘When we get there you stay in the car unless I call for you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

He didn’t like that. Strange checked the traffic, pulled into the side of the road, cut the engine.

‘You stay here until I say otherwise,’ he repeated. ‘Agree to that or you can get out now and find your own way home. Which is where you should be by the way. Not out here in
the pissing rain with me.’

He folded his arms, waited.

‘You’ll come and get me?’ she asked.

‘When I’m happy it’s safe.’

‘I’m not a child, Strange! I had your rank once.’

‘Once.’ His acute eyes looked straight into hers. ‘And then what happened?’

He waited. She wasn’t going to rise to that bait. Not with a stranger. Not with anyone.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Strange said quite gently. ‘People talk. What do you expect?’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Want to tell me?’

The silence again.

‘Good. Because I don’t want to hear.’ He started the car. ‘I’m the cop here. Not you.’

Without waiting for an answer Strange started the car, pulled out, back into the evening traffic.

The rain was coming down in vertical stripes as he drove into the empty car park behind a derelict block next to one of the pedestrian lanes leading into Christiania.

‘I checked the club. It’s got ten, eleven thousand members all over Denmark. The secretary’s called Allan Myg Poulsen. He’s got a room near the office. Number
twenty-six.’

‘He’s still a soldier?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Served in Afghanistan?’

Strange didn’t answer.

‘Dragsholm was giving these people money. Every month,’ Lund said. ‘You have to find out why.’

‘I’ll ask.’ Strange turned off the engine, took the keys, opened the driver’s door. ‘Wait here until I get back.’ He turned and looked into her face.
‘Is that understood?’

Lund saluted and pulled the most severe face she could muster.

Watched him get out of the car, walk along the line of doors, find the communal entrance to the building and go in.

Swore and said something caustic and deeply unfair.

He’d get kicked for bringing along a civilian. Maybe. Or perhaps he was just making a point. Jan Meyer always felt challenged around her, which she never fully understood. He was a good
cop, bright and imaginative. He learned quickly too. From her mostly.

She watched a light go on in the building ahead.

Strange was different. A lot more sure of himself for one thing. She wanted to hear him talk to someone. Judge how he threw questions at people.

Most of all she wanted to do that herself. There was a smell, a feel, a taste to a murder inquiry. Lost in Gedser, looking for pathetic illegals trying to smuggle their way into Denmark,
she’d forgotten what it was like. Now the scent was in her head again and she liked it.

‘You need me, Brix,’ she whispered in the passenger seat of the black unmarked squad car.

I can look, she thought. I can see.

There was an iron walkway on the first floor at the side of the building. Lund ran her eyes along the metal grating. A heavy padlock chain. Broken.

As she watched a figure in black, hooded against the foul night, walked out from the main body of the block, hands in pockets, head down, marched quickly towards a set of the stairs at the
end.

Hunched, in a hurry, trying to shrink inside his black winter jacket.

Lund rolled down the window, shouted, ‘Hey!’

One word and then he began to run.

She was out of the vehicle without thinking.

A single exit through a covered car park. Lund broke into a run, went after him, yelling all the time.

Beyond the lee of the block the squall hit her, heavy and icy. He was heading for the gates to Christiania, crude paintings of joints, peace signs, hippie symbols.

Inside the free state. No cars any more. A warren of buildings, groups of people shuffling through the night.

There were only two people running here. He was the other one.

She pushed on, careered through lazy, grumbling crowds, through the dope fumes, past the makeshift cafes. Music on the air, stupid laughter.

Pusher Street. Crowded with curious tourists and local buyers meandering among the busy stands.

Dope stalls lined with trays of hash, suspicious eyes watching her as she careered up and down, torch out, high in her hand, the way only a cop did.

One more brief glimpse of the fleeing hooded figure. Then he was gone. Lund tried to follow, found herself lost in the alleys and dead ends of Christiania, had to take out her phone to work out
where she was from the map.

Then made her way back towards the veterans’ club, found the normal streets with cars and people carrying shopping bags, not joints.

Was halfway there when someone leaped out from the side of the road, took her arm.

‘Jesus,’ she gasped, and then saw Strange’s worried, puzzled face.

‘You know that bit where I said stay where you are?’

‘There was a man running away from the building. I called and he couldn’t wait to get away. Something’s wrong.’

He leaned back against the grey brick wall behind him, rain streaming down his face.

‘Isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Search me. I barely got inside before you started yelling. Then I came after you. What else was I supposed to do?’

‘Find Myg Poulsen?’

He shook his head.

‘Do you really want to be a lone cop shouting out your existence to a bunch of dope dealers?’

‘I’m not a cop,’ Lund said. ‘You said so.’

She walked back towards the apartments and the veterans’ club.

Was inside before he caught up.

The door to Poulsen’s room was open. The place looked empty.

‘I’d got this far when you started squawking,’ Strange said, catching her up. ‘Maybe I should call control . . .’

‘And say what?’

She walked in. A chair was overturned. It looked as if there might have been a struggle.

Nothing more here. She came out, went down the corridor. The door ahead had a painted sign, ‘Veterans’ Club’.

Chairs. A table tennis table. A cheap computer. A kettle, some mugs and a gas hob.

‘They really know how to live,’ Strange said. ‘Maybe we can look at the books. See where Dragsholm’s money went.’

He had his torch out, was nosing round. Lund found the light switches, turned on every one.

A line of big, powerful fluorescents came to life. The place was a dump, dusty and bare.

At the end of the room opaque plastic sheeting blocked off a corner. For painting maybe. Or building work.

Lund walked closer. A red stain was smeared against the inside.

She didn’t wait for Strange who was still poking round the desk.

Strode over, threw back the plastic sheeting with her arm, looked.

A man upside down, feet held by a rope round an iron beam above.

Blood seeped from his slit throat, formed a dark sticky pool on the floor.

Lund got out her torch, looked more closely. Was aware Strange was closing in behind her now, muttering curses under his breath.

She still had the forensic gloves she’d used in Anne Dragsholm’s house. Lund took them out of her pocket, pulled them on, crouched down, went close to the corpse strung up in front
of her, swinging slowly side to side like a sick pendulum.

Used a pen to stretch out the object hanging round the dead man’s neck.