‘Someone cut her nails.’
He let the hands fall back onto the white sheet. Lund picked up each in turn, took a close look.
‘There are traces of ether in her liver and lungs,’ he said, reading from a report. ‘So she was drugged. Perhaps several times. This was all planned. He knew what he was doing. I wouldn’t . . .’
He paused, as if unsure of himself.
‘This isn’t my field but I wouldn’t be surprised if you found he’d done this before. There’s a . . . method to it.’
Lund took the report from him.
‘Does that help?’
She shrugged.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’ll send you anything else that comes along. Oh . . .’ He smiled. ‘And that recipe for cider.’
Lund went back to her office. Buchard was arguing with the bald lawyer outside the door. Struggling to keep hold of Oliver Schandorff and Jeppe Hald. The lawyer would be going in front of a judge to get them freed soon. From the look on Buchard’s face the chief didn’t have much hope of winning that particular argument.
Eller closed the door behind her. Sat down, placed her broad hands on her broad hips and said, ‘That was some trick you played I must say.’
‘No trick, Kirsten.’
‘I hope not.’
He waited.
‘I said no to Bremer. Don’t think that was an easy decision. It’s not a word he likes to hear.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘It wasn’t much of a choice really. We’re natural partners. He’s just . . .’ She smiled. ‘The bastard who pulls all the strings.’
Still he said nothing.
‘I hope you can live up to our expectations,’ Eller added. ‘My neck’s on the line.’
‘Your group . . .?’
‘. . . will do as I say. Now . . . shall we get down to business?’
Five minutes later, around the table in a meeting next to the campaign office, the negotiations began. Policies and appointments. Funding and media strategies. Rie Skovgaard took notes and made suggestions.
Hartmann and Eller cut the deal.
Meyer was back from searching the student flat again.
‘Did you release those kids?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll have to bring them back in.’
Lund scanned through some of the photos on the desk. Nanna’s wounds. The boots.
‘I don’t think they did it,’ she said.
‘I’m sure they did.’
He had a memory card reader with him. Meyer placed it on her desk and plugged the cable into the PC.
‘Take a look at this.’
The computer recognized what it was being given, fired up a window.
Shaky video came on the screen. The Halloween party. Kids in costume. Drinking beer. Screaming. Acting the way kids did when they knew no one was watching.
Lund watched. There was Jeppe Hald, bright, quiet Jeppe, star pupil, head boy. Screaming at the lens, drunk or doped or both.
Lisa Rasmussen in a short tight dress, sashaying, much the same.
‘Where’d you get this?’
‘Jeppe Hald’s room. He recorded it on his mobile phone then saved it on a memory card.’ Meyer looked at her. ‘So he could watch it on his computer.’
Lund nodded.
‘I don’t think he’s as bright as that school says,’ Meyer added.
‘Stop!’
Meyer froze the frame.
Nanna in her black witch’s hat. Nanna alive and breathing. Beautiful, so beautiful. So . . .
old
.
She didn’t look drunk. She wasn’t screaming. She looked . . . bemused. Like an adult suddenly surrounded by a bunch of infants.
‘Play,’ Lund said.
Meyer set it running slowly. The picture panned from Nanna to Oliver Schandorff, wild hair, wild eyes. Schandorff staring hungrily at Nanna as he swigged at a can of beer.
‘We didn’t have parties like that at my school,’ Meyer said. ‘Yours?’
‘They wouldn’t have invited me.’
‘I bet. Here we go.’ Meyer let out a long sad sigh and sat down next to her. ‘Show time.’
The picture changed. Somewhere else. Somewhere darker. A few lights. Drinks on the table. The place in the basement. Had to be.
Something moving in the background, getting bigger as the lens approached.
Lund leaned forward, looked at this carefully, felt her heart begin to race.
There was a sound. Panting, gasping. Oliver Schandorff naked, ginger head swaying as he writhed over the figure beneath him, naked too, legs splayed and not moving.
The contrast between him and the girl was striking. Schandorff all manic energy and desperation. She . . .
Drunk? Unconscious?
Couldn’t tell. But not right.
Closer.
Schandorff ’s hands came and grabbed her legs, made her grip him. Her fingers rose as if to beat him off. He was like a madman, pushed them down, grunted, screaming.
Lund watched.
The lens shifted behind them, to Schandorff ’s back. Her legs had locked round him. Sex the teenage way. As if a clock somewhere was running, saying, ‘Do it now and do it quickly, or you’ll never get the chance again.’
More grunts, more savage thrusts.
Closer. The black witch’s hat they saw earlier, down over the eyes, over the face. Blonde hair. The hat moves . . .
‘Shit,’ Lund said.
Something had happened. The camera was off the couple. They heard him, sneaking up on them. Curses and swift movements. The girl just visible, scuttling to cover herself. Blonde hair, witch’s hat, bare breasts. Not much more.
‘I think I’ll bring them in again,’ Meyer said.
On the steps of the City Hall Troels Hartmann and Kirsten Eller stood next to one another, blinking in the bright lights of the cameras, smiling, shaking hands.
Waiting for Meyer, Lund watched it all on the news channel on her computer. Then went back to the video. The school.
One segment she’d skipped through earlier.
Nanna in her party dress. Hat on. Beaming into Jeppe Hald’s phone. Raising a glass of what looked like Coke. Smiling. Sober. So elegant and natural. Not a kid at all. Not like the others.
And a few minutes later . . .
Naked in the basement, Oliver Schandorff thrusting at her like an animal.
‘Be right, Meyer,’ she whispered.
The caretaker was letting Lund into the school when Meyer called.
‘I’ve got them both.’
‘Don’t question them yet.’
A pause.
‘The last time I checked we had the same stripes.’
‘I need to see something first.’
A long sigh.
‘Don’t worry, Lund. You’ll get the credit.’
Her footsteps echoed down dark and empty corridors.
‘Wait twenty minutes,’ she said and cut the call.
The flowers on Nanna’s shrine beside the lockers looked dead, the candles burned to stumps. Lund walked down the cold stairs to the basement, shining her torch, fumbling for light switches she couldn’t find.
Past the Don’t Cross tape. Into the hidden room. Lines and markers everywhere. Empty bottles circled, dusty with print powder.
She looked at the bloodstained mattress. There was one single large stain at the foot, then a line of red on the piping at the edge. Not so much blood. And it wasn’t smeared.
Meyer didn’t wait, didn’t see why he should. He had Oliver Schandorff in Lund’s office, seated in front of the computer, forced to watch the video. The pumpkin head. The drunken kids. The dope. The booze.
On his own now, free to act as he pleased, Meyer was more relaxed. He sat next to the kid, watched him as he stared at the PC, ginger hair everywhere, face screwed up with fear and pain.
‘You’ve got two choices, Oliver,’ he said in a flat, calm voice. ‘Either you confess now . . .’
Nanna. In her witch’s hat. Smiling. Happy. Beautiful.
‘Or we watch the rest. And wait for your lawyer to come in the morning. If he can be bothered to get out of bed.’
The phone was moving, from the hall down the stairs. Into the basement. Towards the hidden room.
Two figures naked in the distance, beneath a single bulb, wrestling.
Schandorff couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.
‘I’ve got all night,’ Meyer told him. ‘But I know you two did it and so do you. So let’s get this over with, shall we?’
Silence.
Meyer felt the faint stirrings of anger, tried to quell it.
‘Oliver?
Oliver?
’
Lund took out the photos she’d brought. Close-ups of Nanna’s body. Details of the sores, the lesions on her back.
The power was off for some reason so she checked them in the light of her torch. Held them up as she looked at the mattress, the spots of blood on the floor.
Took out a photo of Nanna’s hands. Clipped fingernails.
Ran her torch around the room.
Checked the inventory.
No sign of scissors.
Took out her phone, looked at the screen. No signal in this underground tomb.
Oliver Schandorff sat rigid in front of the screen. Two bodies coupling. His own ginger hair bobbing up and down. He grabs her legs, makes her grip him. He pushes away her hands as they reach to claw at him.
The lens is up close behind. His back, his body pumping at her in a crazy, frenetic rhythm. Then confusion. Picture moving everywhere as he pulls himself away, confronts the intruder sneaking up on them.
Lips downturned like a naughty child, face full of shame and anger, Schandorff sat in the homicide office refusing to speak.
‘Maybe Jeppe will talk first,’ Meyer said.
There was Hald on the screen. Drunk. Out of control.
‘You know he might be next door.’ Meyer tapped Schandorff on the arm. ‘Could be saying it was all you. Just you. Wouldn’t be nice, would it?’
Meyer’s hand went to his shoulder.
‘He’s not your friend, Oliver. Think about it. I know I yelled at you, son. I’m sorry. It’s just . . .’
Schandorff sat there like a rock.
‘Those pictures of Nanna after we got her out of the water.’ Meyer watched him. ‘I can’t get them out of my head. Don’t make me show them to you. Best for both of us if I don’t do that.’
Lund wasn’t ready to go outside and find a signal. More to do here. She pulled out a pair of forensic gloves and picked up a broken beer glass sitting in a ring of chalk.
Shone the torch on it.
Lipstick along the edge. Bright orange. Gaudy.
Got the photo of Nanna from the school set, shot at the party.
Nanna in her witch’s hat, the only thing about her that seemed young.
Reached into the ashtray. Sifted through the cigarette ends and joint butts. Pulled out a rolled-up wad of tin foil. Pulled it open with her gloved fingers. Not dope. An earring.
In the light she saw three fake diamonds on a silver setting.
Back to the photos. Nanna and the other kids. Lisa Rasmussen.
It was four days now since they pulled Nanna Birk Larsen’s body out of the chill canal by the airport. In all that time they’d scarcely worked without a lead. Chasing shadows running from them. A puzzle promising answers. Yet . . .
This case was like none she’d ever worked. It had layers and texture. Mysteries. Riddles. Investigations were never black and white. But never had she met one quite so grey and insubstantial.
Lund stared at the photo, Nanna and Lisa, smiling, happy.
Then there was a sound above her. Footsteps in the dark.
‘Maybe it wasn’t your idea,’ Meyer said. ‘Jeppe thought of it and you came along for the ride.’
He leaned over, tried to get Schandorff ’s attention.
‘Oliver?’
Nothing. Just a miserable face locked on the computer.
‘That would make a difference. If you told us. So what’s it to be?’
Meyer leaned back in his chair, put his arms behind his head.
‘Do we sit here all night and go through some more pictures? Or get it over with?’
Nothing.
‘Fine.’ There was an edge in Meyer’s voice and he regretted that. ‘I’m feeling hungry. Don’t have money for two—’
‘It’s not her, you moron,’ Schandorff snarled.
Meyer blinked.
That petulant, tortured teenage voice again. But finally Oliver Schandorff looked at him.
‘The girl in the boiler room. It’s not Nanna.’
Upstairs in the corridor, in front of Nanna’s shrine. A stump of candle flickered in the dark.
Lund checked her phone. There was a signal.
Heard something, footsteps close to the door. Didn’t think of hiding. Turned her torch towards the source.
‘Lisa?’
The girl stood frozen in the bright white light, a glass vase with some roses in her hand.