The Killing 3 (41 page)

‘Hi, Dad,’ the boy cried, trying to sound cheery.

Just the sound of his young voice was cheering. Zeuthen smiled, ruffled his hair.

‘What’s up?’

She didn’t want to look at him.

‘I wondered if we could stay in the guest rooms.’ A shrug. ‘Just until we find something else.’

It came as a surprise. He took the bag, said of course.

Eyed Carl.

‘We could get pizza from Toni’s. Like . . .’

Like before.

He didn’t dare say it.

‘No anchovies!’ Carl cried.

The old argument. A running joke.

Zeuthen folded his arms, looked stern.

‘But I love anchovies.’

‘No anchovies, Dad! Yeeucch. Extra cheese . . .’

It never palled.

A glassy look in Maja’s eyes. She took her son’s hand, walked towards the Range Rover at the end of the line.

‘Anchovies for the daddy,’ she said. A nod to Carl. ‘Cheese for the boy.’

Happy.

This was what it felt like. Simple. Inexplicable. Real.

The three of them walked through the dank, airless car park and slowly her free hand reached out, found his.

Lund had pizza too. No anchovies. A very obvious police guard still stood outside her house when she got back. Two men she knew, cheerily asking for a piece.

Brix called as she went inside. Hartmann had been in touch to confirm his private car was in Jutland at the time of Louise Hjelby’s murder, driven, without his knowledge, by his younger
brother Benjamin.

The house seemed empty. Lund walked round calling for Eva.

‘What was the brother doing there?’ she asked.

‘It sounds like he was a mess. Involved with drink and drugs. Some left-wing group.’

‘Doesn’t explain why he was in Jutland.’

‘He was mad at Hartmann. PET had picked him up at a demo in the city. He wasn’t going to be charged. Preferential treatment.’

She thought about that.

‘Why didn’t Morten Weber tell me?’

‘Supposedly someone in admin mislaid the report when he asked for it. They’re very apologetic.’

‘I bet they are. Do we believe them?’

A pause then Brix said, ‘I think so. Weber saw the brother when he drove out there. He took him back to the city. He’d run out of money. Was in a state. He’s willing to give us
a statement tomorrow.’

‘You bet . . .’

On the fridge, above the ultrasound pictures was a note in a scrawled, childish hand. It read:
I’ve moved in with a friend. A thousand thanks for all your help. Hugs, Eva.

‘Hugs?’ Lund said.

Brix asked, ‘What?’

‘Nothing. Let’s bring in the brother.’

A sigh.

‘Try and keep up. Benjamin Hartmann’s dead. The inquest said it was an accident. He got hit by a train a couple of weeks after his brother won the election. PET say it was probably
suicide. They don’t think he could have been involved with the Hjelby girl.’

‘Why?’

‘He was a hippie or something. We’ll look into it tomorrow. Keep your phone on. Let’s hope our man calls.’

Lund got a beer, looked at the two pizzas. A vegetable one for Eva. Another packed with three kinds of meat for herself. Eva’s went in the bin. She sat down, began to eat from the box,
drink from the bottle. There was a rap on the back door. A face there she didn’t want to see.

Borch was back in rough clothes, seaman’s hat pulled down low.

‘I’ve been freezing out there for an hour. Is that pizza?’

‘Only got one.’

He didn’t say anything. Perhaps he saw.

‘Can we talk for a minute? Or are you too pissed off with me?’

‘One minute . . .’

He came in, closed the curtains. There was a document folder under his arm. He looked frozen, starving.

Lund retrieved the vegetable pizza from the bin and said, ‘You can have some of that if you want. Doesn’t she feed you?’

He eyed the beer. She sighed, got one from the fridge.

‘You can’t stay . . .’

‘I’m not going to. If you’ve heard about Hartmann’s brother you know they’re hiding something. There’s more to it than—’

‘What do you want?’

He put the folder on the table, picked up a bit of pizza in his fingers. Popped the beer open, took a swig.

‘This is a copy of our file on Benjamin Hartmann. I wanted you to have it. He was . . . known.’

‘Brix said he was a hippie.’

‘Yeah. A malcontent. Mixed with some of the protest groups. Bit embarrassing for big brother I guess.’

She put the documents to one side.

‘You could have given me this tomorrow.’

‘No. I couldn’t. I won’t be there. Dyhring’s taken me off the case. I’m supposed to keep clear of everything to do with it. Hartmann. Zeuthen.’ A pause.
‘You.’

More pizza. He was always a delicate eater. More so than she was.

Borch looked at her, winced, said, ‘I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble. I didn’t mean to . . .’

‘You don’t have to say this.’

‘I do, Sarah. I should have told you from the beginning. I really don’t know what happened to the page in that notebook. Dyhring had it. It went into the system. When we thought
there was nothing to it the boy got it back.’

And there he was again, just the way he’d been at the academy. Boyish, a little naive, desperate.

‘I want to know you believe me. It matters. It . . .’

This was how it began so many years before. Lund stepped back, tried not to look at him. Didn’t say anything at all.

His arm stretched out. She moved away again. Borch’s head went down. He sniffed, took another swig of the beer.

‘Thanks for the food,’ he said then went out the way he came.

Twenty years they’d been apart. She was the one who brought them back together. It would never have happened without that sudden desperate need in Jutland.

Why?

Lund looked at the little house. The plants. The pictures on the fridge. The message that finished ‘Hugs . . .’.

There was an ordinary life to be led, however much it had eluded her, however hard she tried to escape it.

And perhaps there, somewhere, lay happiness.

With Mathias Borch . . .

Her eyes drifted to the table. A folder with a name:
Benjamin Hartmann.
A photo inside of a young man with long hair and his brother’s handsome, compelling features. But a
different cast to his face too. Hartmann could be brittle, damaged at times. But not like his younger brother.

Perhaps
. . .

The idea returned. She pushed it away. Tore another piece of pizza. Flicked through the pages. Buried herself there.

Wednesday 16th November

At ten thirty the next morning Troels Hartmann was doing his best to pretend it was business as usual. Nebel was with him for a public appearance at a school in the city. A
posse of reporters and cameramen followed them from the car into the hall, lobbing questions about the car, his dead brother, the lack of progress in the Zeuthen case.

Hartmann kept quiet, walked into the school, broke into a wide smile for the young pupils lined up to greet him.

Handshakes. No questions from them except a request for souvenir photos while Nebel made some calls.

Afterwards, a brief private moment.

‘Morten’s with the police,’ she told him. ‘I’m telling the media it’s a briefing.’

He nodded. Waved to the kids.

‘I’m trying to get through to Zeuthen’s man, Reinhardt. We need to clear the air there. No luck so far.’

‘There’s nothing to clear.’

‘Best we tell him that. Also . . .’ She looked down the corridor. ‘It seems Ussing’s gatecrashed the event.’

A look of fury in his eyes, and it was directed at her.

‘Tell me that‘s a joke. We dictate who we appear with and when.’

‘Well he’s done it. The school’s after money for a refurb. He’s making promises. You’ve got a brief appearance together then some more photos with the kids in the
yard.’

She passed him a piece of paper: a draft release from the Socialists about raising the local education budget.

‘Spending money we don’t have again,’ Hartmann grumbled. ‘Tell them we’ll match it. Any other good news?’

‘The police say they can’t account for Benjamin’s movements for twelve hours.’

‘Morten can put them straight on that.’

‘He can’t. They still don’t have an exact satnav record for the car. He killed himself two weeks later. The police are bound to think he’s linked somehow . . .’

Hartmann got directions from a passing pupil, started walking for the hall.

‘There’s no connection, Karen. I knew my brother better than anyone. He was mixed up. Depressed. That’s all.’

A smiling woman emerged. The head teacher. She asked Hartmann to wait in a side room for the audience to assemble.

Must have been a young class. The walls were covered with bright, imaginative paintings. Anders Ussing stood in front of them with his aide, Per Monrad.

‘Bit of colour always brightens things up, don’t you think?’ he asked with a broad grin.

‘True,’ Hartmann murmured.

‘Funny old world, isn’t it? One minute those idiots in the police believe it was my car that picked up that girl before she was murdered.’ The grin got wider. ‘And now
they think it was yours.’

Hartmann put his head to one side and looked at him.

‘You met the girl, Anders. I didn’t. Any more than my brother—’

‘That’s not what Lund reckons. She’s on your tail again. Must be scary. Don’t worry. I won’t mention it.’ He looked round the class. ‘Not
here.’

‘Don’t hold back on my account.’

Ussing laughed.

‘You know that’s exactly what my staff said. Morten took his time coming forward, didn’t he? He and Mogens Rank are close. Are you sure they didn’t lean on
Schultz?’

‘I’m sure.’

A nod. He finished his coffee.

‘I guess you’ve got to say that. Otherwise things would look really bad with Zeeland and the Zeuthen girl. Two days to voting. How does it feel? As if it’s coming your
way?’

Hartmann walked to the window, looked out at the dismal playground, the grey, cold day.

Karen Nebel came over.

‘You’ll have to keep it short,’ she said. ‘Brix just called. They want to talk to you. They think Benjamin killed the Jutland girl.’

The night team had recovered the file on Hartmann’s brother, and his medical record. Ten months before he died he’d been thrown out of college in America after an
arrest during the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York.

Lund listened to Brix going through the details.

‘He was being treated for depression. Diagnosed as bipolar. Had arrests for minor drug possession . . .’

Twenty-six years old. No real job. Permanent student. He had links with some extreme left-wing groups. Had written for a number of activist magazines and websites. After getting into an argument
at a squat in the city he’d come to live in Hartmann’s house, not that his brother was home much.

The most recent photo was from the PET files: long hair, a nose ring, tattoos. The punk stare at the camera. The inquest was told that in the last two weeks of his life he’d been
disturbed, asking for medical treatment, complaining of headaches. Troels Hartmann had been busy forming a government, knew none of this. Then Benjamin walked in front of a freight train in
Nørrebro.

‘Morten Weber says he never went anywhere near where Louise Hjelby was in Gudbjerghavn,’ Brix went on. ‘He’d been driving round the countryside, following some of the
campaign cars.’

‘Any proof?’ she asked.

Lund had been trying to call Eva all morning. Just getting voicemail.

‘None. On the other hand there are no records of violence. Of sexual aggression. He just sounds like a mixed-up teenager who never grew up. Did Zeuthen send any new employee records
through?’

She shook her head.

‘We can’t wait for them. Zeuthen thinks he can handle this on his own. Hartmann’s got to come up with—’

‘Lund! The kidnapper’s not phoned you. I put Hartmann in the frame to help you there. Doesn’t seem to have worked, does it? And what are these?’

Scattered over the desk were a stack of files she’d got from the archives. Reports, names, photos from the Birk Larsen case. She should have cleared them away before he came in.

‘I was just looking . . .’ Lund started.

‘That case is long dead. I don’t want you trying to bring it back to life. Hartmann had nothing to do with that girl’s death . . .’

‘Doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn.’

‘If we put the Prime Minister through the emotional wringer for no good reason heads are going to roll round here.’

‘It’s got to be the brother!’ she cried, jabbing at the photo. ‘PET got him off a public order charge. Who’s to say what else they hid along the way?’

He seemed to concede that point.

‘I’m not arresting Hartmann. It’s up to him if he wants to be interviewed. And don’t place any great faith in the shit Borch feeds you either. We don’t know what he
and Dyhring got up to.’

Brix left it at that and followed her back to the office. Juncker had got nowhere tracing the stolen hard drive.

‘The guy’s got to have another place, Lund. He always has.’

But that was wrong. She could feel it. The man was hurt. Running out of options. Running out of time.

‘What happened to Borch?’ he asked.

She was looking at the photos on the wall: Emilie Zeuthen, Louise Hjelby, and now Benjamin Hartmann. Two dead. A third in jeopardy.

And a photo of a woman in a bikini, looking happy on a beach a long time ago.

‘He’s off the case. Did you get anywhere with Louise’s mother?’

‘Monika Hjelby. She lived by the yacht harbour. I’m trying to track where exactly. About Borch . . .’

‘Forget about Borch! I told you. He’s off the case. That’s all I know.’

She went to the table, started sifting through the documents for no good reason. He followed.

‘Was it because of you?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t get mad. I just asked. Did you get him bumped because he screwed us around in Jutland?’

‘I . . . don’t . . . know. OK?’