The Killing 3 (40 page)

He glared at Borch.

‘I just watched the CCTV. He was limping. He’s hurt. Really impressed you couldn’t catch the bastard in those circumstances.’

Lund threw an evidence bag on the table. Inside was the notebook they’d recovered from the basement.

‘Have we got Hartmann’s car movements yet?’ Brix asked.

‘Still waiting.’

‘For what?’ Dyhring snapped. ‘A few scribbles in a kid’s notebook? Why the—’

‘I wish I’d known about them this morning,’ Brix broke in. ‘When you said you’d told us everything you knew.’

The PET man shrugged.

‘It was news to us.’

‘A lot is,’ Brix noted. ‘So Hartmann’s private car was definitely in Jutland?’

Dyhring threw up his hands.

‘It was an election. We were too busy to keep a check on private cars.’

Borch picked up the bag with the book in it, took it out, flicked through to the back.

‘Someone tore the page out, Dyhring. They did that for a reason. Someone was trying—’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! It could have been Schultz. Could have been the boy.’

‘And it could have been someone from PET who saw that book two years ago,’ Lund said.

Dyhring waved at her, scowled.

‘We need to demonstrate we want to solve the Hjelby case,’ she insisted. ‘That’s the only way we can stay in touch with him.’

‘Who’s the victim here, Lund?’ Dyhring was getting mad. ‘Who’s the criminal? We’re here to find the bastard. Not do his bidding.’

Borch got to his feet, slammed both fists on the table.

‘That’s what we’ve been doing, dammit! With no help from the likes of you . . .’

A long silence. Dyhring got up, told Borch to join him outside.

He didn’t move.

‘Borch! Come with me.’

They went across the corridor. Lund and Brix could see them through the glass, arguing, yelling.

‘I need you to go to the commissioner and ask him to approve a full search of Hartmann’s offices,’ she said.

‘On the basis of a young boy’s hobby of collecting number plates?’

‘Then think of something else. If we’re not seen to be doing something we’ll never hear from him again.’

‘I once nearly charged Troels Hartmann over a murder he had nothing to do with.’

‘Because he lied to us. Lied and lied and lied.’

A shape in the door. Ruth Hedeby was there.

‘I’ve had the container numbers sent to Zeeland,’ Lund said. ‘I’ll check out how that’s going.’

‘Don’t go till you hear this too,’ Hedeby said. ‘Since it’s your doing yet again.’

Lund looked puzzled.

‘What is?’

‘I just got a formal complaint from the Prime Minister’s office about your behaviour. Rudeness. Aggression. Unfounded allegations . . .’

‘The rudeness was from Borch,’ Lund said, pointing to the window. ‘He’s already apologized.’

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Hedeby demanded. ‘First you try and pin a murder on one of the leaders of the opposition. Now the Prime Minister.’

Lund shook her head.

‘No we didn’t. We just asked them some questions. Ussing was trying to hide the fact he’d met Louise Hjelby. Hartmann . . .’ A shrug. ‘We still don’t know why
his car was in the area.’

She looked at Brix and waited.

‘There was a sound reason for everything we did,’ he said finally. ‘I stand by it. As I stand by my officers.’

Hedeby waited then asked, ‘Is that it?’

‘What else do you want?’

‘I want to hear about the iceberg when you see it,’ she said. ‘Not when it hits. No more surprises. From either of you.’

Then she left.

Thanks were never easy. For her to say. For Brix to hear.

Lund looked through the window. The office opposite was empty.

‘We can do without PET,’ Brix said.

It took a while for Hartmann to calm down. The rest of the parliamentary staff went home. A forensic team continued to work in the server room. Weber got a bottle of brandy,
made him take a big drink, poured one for Karen Nebel and himself, sat down with the two of them in the study, listened, growing ever more glum.

‘I’m not going through this again,’ Hartmann complained. ‘Lund can’t do it to me twice over.’

‘The election’s on Friday, Troels,’ Nebel said. ‘I’ve got every reason to lean on Brix and keep her out of here.’

‘Fuck the election!’ he screeched. A stab at his chest. ‘This is about me.’

‘Drink your brandy,’ Weber advised. ‘Keep your cool.’

Hartmann glared at him.

‘You don’t know what it’s like.’

‘Actually, Troels. I do. I was there, remember.’

Favours done, then forgotten. They didn’t come out of the Birk Larsen case smelling of roses. Lund had good reason to resent the lack of cooperation she got back then.

‘What the hell’s my private car got to do with this?’

The whining wasn’t going to stop. Weber could see that.

‘Why is someone keeping tabs on it here?’

‘Because you’re Prime Minister,’ Weber said gently. ‘They have to.’

‘Then work out who was driving, will you? It wasn’t me.’

Nebel shrugged. Said the obvious. The transport details were on the hard drive the man had stolen. They were the backup copies. The originals were gone too.

‘Back to business,’ Weber said. ‘I’ve cancelled all meetings for tonight. Tomorrow you’ve got to have breakfast with some business sponsors. After
that—’

‘I want those records,’ Hartmann interrupted, staring at Nebel. ‘I’m doing nothing until this is cleared up . . .’

‘I’m looking!’ she cried. ‘The original’s gone missing. The backups are with whoever stole them. I don’t know who else—’

‘Find somebody! How hard can it be?’

Weber got up, poured himself more brandy.

‘You don’t need to ask anyone else,’ he said eventually.

Hartmann scowled and said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I took the damned report. I got it out of the system as soon as I heard Lund was sniffing round this afternoon.’

He picked up his briefcase, found a printout, threw it on the desk.

‘Benjamin was driving your car that day. He took it to Jutland. Sit down. Let’s get this out of the way.’

Benjamin.

Kid brother. Almost a son to Hartmann. A pain in the arse. A clown. A joker. A tragedy waiting to happen. Twenty-six years old, acting like a teenager. Drink. Hanging round with left-wing
extremists. God knows what else.

Not the kind of relative a man who craved to be Prime Minister wanted around.

‘You didn’t see him that day,’ Weber said. ‘I made sure of that. There was a demo in Copenhagen against the banks. PET had picked him up.’

‘I should have known . . .’ Hartmann whispered.

‘You were in the middle of a campaign! Dyhring knew who he was. If it had been anyone else he might have wound up in court. But he talked to me. We agreed to let it ride.’

A sip of brandy. A guilty look.

‘Seems Benjamin wasn’t happy with that. He came home. Took your car keys. Drove off to Jutland to cause more trouble. He was writing stories, taking pictures for some anti-capitalist
website or something—’

‘You should have told me!’

A shrug.

‘Maybe. But I didn’t want you involved. He was in a bad way. Mad as hell. He’d had a few drinks. I didn’t want that in the papers. I don’t think he did either. He .
. .’

The little man put his glass down, closed his eyes.

‘He really admired you, Troels. It’s hard to explain. I don’t think he understood himself. But he loved you. Didn’t want to harm you. He was just . . . lost I
guess.’

Nebel asked, ‘How long did he have the car?’

‘All day,’ Weber replied. ‘I got a call from him around ten in the evening from a filling station outside Esbjerg. He’d run out of money. Run out of petrol. Didn’t
know what to do.’

‘Did he meet the girl?’ Nebel asked.

‘No! He was just driving round, doing nothing. I put some petrol in the car and got him home. And that was it. Or at least . . . I thought so.’

Hartmann pointed an accusing finger.

‘I want a full report on this. When he called. Where he went. Where you found him. Any other lies you want to get off your chest?’

Weber stiffened.

‘I didn’t lie to anyone. I just kept quiet. I didn’t know anything about a murder. Besides . . . Benjamin didn’t kill that girl. He was the gentlest human being I ever
met. Too gentle. Too—’

‘You can tell all that to the police.’

Weber and Nebel exchanged glances.

‘We need to think this through,’ she said carefully. ‘If it comes out the wrong way people will think we’ve been pulling strings.’

‘I don’t give a damn. You’ve got to—’

A knock on the door. One of the media team was there. She looked worried, wanted Nebel to see something on TV.

Weber leapt up and switched on the set in the corner of the office. Brix, a late-night statement from the steps of the Politigården on the Zeuthen case.

‘We’re investigating a series of events in the Prime Minister’s office,’ he said. ‘This is a routine inquiry. It will continue until we receive some satisfactory
answers.’

Shouted questions over the line of TV mikes. Brix shook his head.

‘I can’t go into details and you wouldn’t expect me to,’ he insisted, eyes straight into the camera. ‘All I can say is we will leave no stone unturned in the effort
to get Emilie Zeuthen back alive.’

Nebel got to her feet.

‘I’d better get in there for the phone calls. We’ll need to make a holding statement.’

Then she left.

‘So that’s why you wanted to quit?’

The question seemed to puzzle Weber.

‘Not at all. I was doing my job. The one I always do. Protecting your back. Last time round I had to save you from yourself. This time . . . it was your screwed-up little brother. All the
same—’

‘Get out of here.’

Weber didn’t move.

‘That’s not the way to handle things, I’m afraid. I’ll be gone soon enough. After you’re elected . . .’

It happened so rapidly even Hartmann was barely conscious of what he was doing. He picked up the little man in the cheap, creased suit, dragged him, screaming, fighting to the door.

Threw him out into the Christiansborg corridor. Went to the window and stared out at the riding ground, the cobblestones gleaming in the slick rain.

There was an unexpected face in the Zeeland executive offices. Robert Zeuthen had to think for a moment before he could place the man. Then he went over to Reinhardt, furious,
asked what Kornerup was doing there.

‘What you’ve asked for is complicated, Robert. No one knows this business better.’

‘I fired him.’

‘Technically you didn’t. The board haven’t ratified anything. They’ve asked him to stick around and see this through.’

‘Do my wishes mean nothing?’ Zeuthen asked.

‘They mean a lot. But we need experienced people around us. You have to put personalities to one side. If you don’t we can’t do this effectively.’

Kornerup was a great player of internal politics. More scheming than Zeuthen could ever be.

A call from reception. He walked out to the desk. Lund was there, pale, tired, nervous.

‘Unless you’re going to tell me you’ve found Emilie I can’t see we’ve anything to talk about,’ he said. ‘You let the man go again. Now there’s all
this crap about Hartmann . . .’

‘Forget about Hartmann. I sent you those container numbers . . .’

‘The ones in port we’ve searched.’

‘This man knows so much about you, Robert. He has to be a former employee . . . someone who’s had contact . . .’

Reinhardt was eavesdropping and came over.

‘We’ve been through all the staff records. I sent you the ones that met the criteria you specified.’

‘There has to be someone else . . .’

Zeuthen got a phone call, walked away, angry.

Reinhardt, frowned, apologized.

‘There isn’t. We’re very busy here, Lund. It’s stressful. We’re doing what we can.’

She still hadn’t worked out what Reinhardt did for the Zeuthens. At times he seemed to run the company. At others he appeared to be little more than a servant.

‘The murder in Jutland is the key to finding Emilie,’ Lund said. ‘The man who kidnapped her is the father of the girl who was killed. From what we know he worked in
shipping.’

‘What else can we send you?’ he asked. ‘Tell me. I’ll do it. But honestly . . .’

‘He knows computers. Knows weapons. How shipping works. He’s intelligent. He wasn’t some lowly sailor. It’s in Zeuthen’s interests . . .’

‘Don’t you dare tell me about Robert’s interests. I know them better than anyone. I’ve looked after him since he was little.’

‘Then help me! Maybe he’s an engineer. A tech person. He didn’t know the girl was dead so perhaps he wasn’t here two years ago. If there was something . . .’

He had an immobile, passive face. But for a moment something seemed to move him.

‘Back then the crisis was really hitting us, Lund. We had to lay off thousands of people. All over the world. We closed some companies. We took over others and got rid of staff.’

A nod, a sorry one.

‘If you’re really asking me to find you a disgruntled old employee of ours . . . I wouldn’t know where to start.’

She thought about it.

‘He’s in his forties. Got a degree in engineering or technology. He served in middle or upper management. He’s Danish. From Copenhagen. The accent . . .’

Reinhardt said nothing.

‘Send me the records,’ she added. ‘We’ll deal with them.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ he agreed.

She was about to go then his long arm came out and stopped her. Niels Reinhardt looked around and made sure no one could hear.

‘Just so that we understand one another.’

‘Yes?’

‘If Emilie loses her life because of some old murder case you couldn’t solve this will destroy Robert. His wife too.’

‘I can appreciate that.’

‘Can you appreciate the consequences?’ he asked. ‘Because I can’t. Not for one moment.’

The call was from Maja. She was in the basement car park for some reason.

Zeuthen took the lift, went down there. Found them by his car. Maja. Carl. A couple of holdalls.