The Killing - 01 - The Killing (106 page)

Twenty years before, mobile phones cost a fortune so a run-down, near-bankrupt outfit like Merkur had just two. Aage Lonstrup was drunk in the office, no idea one of them was missing. No clue where the temps who made up the day’s staff had gone. No work on the schedules. No future ahead.

Vagn Skærbæk went through the diary, trying to keep things afloat. Worrying. About money. About friendship. About the future.

The big black mobile on the desk rang. So crackly it was barely audible.

Skærbæk listened.

An inarticulate, scared plea for help.

Looked at Lonstrup snoring at his desk.

Took a Merkur van out to Vestamager, down the narrow roads, past the fencing that marked what would one day be new houses and a metro line running out into the wilds by the grey Øresund, past the warning signs of the dead firing range, into the wilderness.

Heart thumping, mind racing.

Found two motorbikes by the side of a black canal. One, the Triumph, he recognized. The other, a cheaper, smaller Honda, he didn’t.

Thought for a moment. Opened the back doors, ran down the ramp, strained and heaved to get both machines inside.

November. Light falling. No sound except the jets going in and out of Kastrup.

He could have turned back. Gone home to his little flat. Taken out the books again, the training guides on becoming a teacher. Tried to pick up the threads of a life that had never truly started.

But debts were owed. Lives were saved. A conscience was like a wound. Once pricked it kept bleeding until something, some balancing deed, came along and staunched the flow.

So he took a torch out of the back and headed off into the wilderness, calling out one name over and over again.

‘Thanks,’ the girl said when Lynge broke open the downstairs door.

Pretty. Blonde. Tired. Angry.

Not frightened. Not yet.

He turned and closed the basement door behind him.

An hour and then they’d be somewhere else. Out in the wetlands. A hunter’s hide. A log store. He knew the Pentecost Forest well. Could always find a place there. Could wash her in the cold black water, trim her nails, make her his.

‘I’m going now,’ she said.

He leaned against the wall. Looked.

Two decades, one girl each November, like a Christmas present come early. Hookers and drifters mainly. Dregs on the edge of the world, like him. So many over the years they all got blurred after a while.

But this one was different. This one was beautiful and young and pure.

He opened the case, retrieved the bottle of ether and the gag, placed them on the floor. Removed his belt, took out a roll of duct tape and ran out a length, cut it free.

Was on her the instant she started to scream. Strong arms round her golden head, strong fingers turning the tape around her pretty mouth, one hard blow to the skull dashing her to the floor.

Easy, he thought.

It was always easy. They begged for it anyway.

John Lynge checked his watch. Then began.

‘Why would Vagn do that?’

‘I need to be sure. I don’t want to screw up again. To cause more pain.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Yes. It is.’

He blinked. Picked up the knife, returned to peeling the apple, not noticing the exposed flesh had turned brown.

The transparent line in his arm bobbed up and down beneath the bag and the silver pole.

‘You should go now,’ he said.

She kept back the last picture. It wasn’t the right time. Later. When he was better. When he came round.

‘You’ll be back in the Politigården before long. Once Brix realizes. Once you go through the files I tell you to—’

‘Get out!’ he yelled.

‘I need you! I need your help!’

The nurse was through the door flapping, tugging at her arm.

‘Meyer. When you’re back at work . . .’

He held the knife upright, pushed it in front of her face.

The blade was so close. Lund went quiet. So did the nurse.

‘What did you say?’

‘When you’re back at work,’ she whispered, looking at him properly for the first time. Noting the strange, immobile way he sat. The force with which his left hand gripped the wheel of the chair.

There were no crutches in the room. None of the signs of recuperation she might have expected.

Jan Meyer waved the fruit knife in front of her then turned it, gripped the wooden handle hard in his fist, stabbed the sharp point through his blue pyjama leg with a vicious, deliberate force.

The nurse was screaming. Lund sat on her chair, stiff and cold and frightened.

He let go. The blade stood firm and upright in his thigh. Blood began to seep through the blue fabric. Meyer stared at her with his sad pop eyes.

No pain. No feeling at all. She saw this now and wondered why she’d never asked the simple, sensible question when she arrived.

How are you?

It wasn’t because she didn’t want to know. There were more pressing ones. That was all.

‘Get out of here,’ Meyer pleaded. ‘For God’s sake leave me alone.’

A doctor and a male nurse were there. Two of them dragging her to the door, one racing to Meyer, yanking the knife out of his flesh.

Dark blood staining the blue fabric. Spreading slowly. Not a sign of pain on his stubbly face. Not a hint he felt a thing.

They had Lund’s arms, too strong for her.

There was something she wanted to say. But couldn’t.

Something . . .

Three years was all Theis Birk Larsen would get. That was the betting in the Politigården.

Three years, half with parole. Out in eighteen months. Theis and Pernille would survive, perhaps made stronger in some strange, cruel way.

Outside the sky was darkening. Rain on the way. Snow even.

Vibeke had taken back her green Beetle. So Lund walked to the station and bought a ticket to Vestamager, sat on the empty train, watched the city disappear out of the windows. After a while there was nothing left but a flat bleak wasteland speeding by as she headed towards the end of the line.

There were three of them in a shallow, muddy indentation hidden among the yellow grass, not far from a narrow canal. One, the smallest, a half-naked, bloody woman, not moving. The second, a man with a Zapata moustache and scarred cheek, tattoos and long black hair, wild-eyed and cackling, prodding at her from time to time. The other, the biggest, curled up in a foetal ball, eyes vacant and lost, a pool of vomit by his ginger head.

‘Theis,’ Skærbæk said.

The narrow slit eyes looked up at him. Pupils black and glassy, as blank and deep as the water in the canal.

‘Jesus. What did you do this time?’

The guy with the stupid moustache stopped poking at the girl, pulled a bottle out of his pocket. Swilled some beer, passed it to Theis Birk Larsen.

Skærbæk grabbed the bottle, threw it away, screamed at them.

For no good reason. The girl was dead. These two were lost in an imaginary world of acid where nothing was real.

Forks in the road.

He wanted to turn back, leave them there.

Wanted to call the police for the first time in his small and irrelevant life.

But debts were owed. Consciences pricked. They were out on the Kalvebod Fælled, a wasteland no one visited. A place for hiding things. The harsh choice was made.

So he went to the Merkur van, climbed behind the Triumph and the Honda, took out plastic wrapping and strong tape, returned to the trio in the mud. Kicked the idiot with the moustache out of the way when he objected. Rolled the dead girl round and round, bound her tight like a carpet about to be moved.

Dumped her in the deep canal. Went back and yelled at them till they stumbled to the van.

The stranger was called John. He didn’t want to leave at all. Looked ready to stay there, drag the dead body out of the water, unwrap her from the Merkur sheeting and start all over again.

By the time Skærbæk had got them out of there the night had turned pitch-black, damp and bitter.

He’d never forget this. Vagn Skærbæk knew that. Understood he’d joined himself to them. Was no different.

Where the public road started, and a few street lights marked the site of the coming metro station, he stopped the van, told them to get out. Made them empty all their pockets, the hash, the resin, the tabs and pills. Bellowed at them, made threats until it was gone.

Twenty minutes later he dumped John and his battered Honda on a back street near Christiania and thought:
I never saw your face before today and I pray I never will again.

Drove back to Vesterbro, listening to the grunts of the big man in the passenger seat, huddled into a heap with his shame and his returning memories.

‘I can’t save you twice.’

There was puke in the footwell. He’d thrown up somewhere along the way.

‘I mean that, Theis. You’ve got to cut this out. Leave the gang guys behind. Pick up with that nice girl again. The one who’s sweet on you.’

No answer.

He pulled in by the side of the road not far from the Dybbølsbro bridge, looked at the early evening hookers out flashing their legs for the cars.

Turned to the slumped figure next to him.

‘If you don’t you’re dead. Just one more piece of Vesterbro shit gone to waste.’

The sly, narrow eyes stared back at him.

Skærbæk never could read them.

He wound down the window, let the smell of puke drift out into the cold winter air.

Reached into his pocket, pulled out the thing he’d taken from the dead girl’s neck.

‘Here,’ he said, and forced it into Birk Larsen’s bloody hand.

A cheap necklace, a black heart made out of glass.

‘It’s yours now. I want you to remember. I want you to think of it and pray something like that never . . .’

He got mad. Had to scream.

‘Never comes back and haunts you. I can’t save you twice. Even if I wanted.’

There was a rap on the windscreen. A haggard skinny face, once pretty. A Vesterbro girl Vagn Skærbæk half recognized.

‘Are you crying?’ she asked, and seemed surprised.

He crunched the gears. Got the Merkur van out of there.

Next to him Theis Birk Larsen sat clutching the necklace. Staring at the black heart.

‘Put it in your pocket,’ Skærbæk told him and watched to see it was done. ‘You keep that. You look at it the next time some moron comes along and puts some stupid idea in your stupid head. I want you to think. . .’

Debts owed, debts repaid. They were Vesterbro brats and they lived on the edge, always would. That made it all the more important to remember how easy it was to slip over and fall for good.

‘I want you to think if you ever let go of that thing we’ll end up back in this nightmare some day. Because you let the monster out again.’

No answer.

We’re not like that, he thought. Not quite.

Vesterbro. Grubby streets. Cheap houses. Hookers and dope. The world as it was.

A black heart necklace. Like a Romany curse. Theis Birk Larsen could take it to his grave.

‘You don’t want that to happen,’ Vagn Skærbæk said, driving over the bumpy cobbled road, staring into the drab distance. ‘No one does.’

Lund got a bike from the study centre near the station, pedalled through the icy rain out to the marshland and the woods. Found the low metal bridge, sat on the concrete slabs that crossed it. Arms through the railings, feet dangling over the canal. The way Amir El’ Namen was the week before with his sad bouquet of flowers behind him, tears falling down to the black water where Nanna died.

It was all in the photos and documents Jansen had found for her. Enough on its own. She didn’t need Meyer really. That was cowardice on her part. Even Brix would listen if she made him.

If . . .

She put that decision to one side and counted what she knew.

Nanna was leaving, taking memories with her. A reminder of her father, who never rolled up his sleeve when he was working or washing the dishes, never showed his bare arms when the police were around.

But a child would see those old tattoos. A child would make the connection when she found a black heart necklace hidden away in a locked drawer. And a loving runaway daughter would want a memory to take with her for the journey.

Vagn did what he did because that was who he was. The man who fixed things, the one who kept the wheels turning.

Nanna was gone from Humleby. There was blood in the basement and it led all the way to the Pentecost Forest.

They were all gypsies. Lonstrup’s daughter said that. Paths crossing constantly over the years, lugging furniture, cutting crooked deals. Theis and Vagn and the creature that was John Lynge, the first man they chased and then let go, trying to stay alive in the dismal underworld of Vesterbro.