The Killing - 01 - The Killing (44 page)

‘No, Troels! We can’t. On our own we don’t have the votes.’

Hartmann shook his head. Rie Skovgaard stayed silent, smiling.

‘How long have we played these games, Morten? Twenty years? Always the same rules. Theirs. From now on we play by mine. Call the minority leaders to a meeting tonight. Tell them I have an important proposition.’

‘Half of them hate you,’ Weber said.

‘No more than they hate each other.’

‘They’re with Bremer!’

‘Not if they’ve seen the polls. They’re with whoever’s going to win.’

He looked around the campaign office. There were posters everywhere, his own face. Modest smile. Blue eyes wide open. The new broom looking to sweep out the old.

Hartmann pointed to his portrait.

‘That’s me.’

‘He filled the car the night Nanna died, ten days ago,’ Meyer said.

They were in the office looking at the CCTV tapes. Black and white, split into four windows. Date and time in the corner of each grainy frame.

‘The tapes run twenty-four hours a day. The chances of finding it after all this time are pretty slim, Lund.’

She was closest to the screen, looking. The numbers. The shadowy figures moving between the pumps.

Everything.

‘Also,’ Meyer added, ‘all these people reuse the tapes. So if it’s that old—’

‘It’s not this one,’ Lund cut in, popping out the cassette.

‘We’ve only got one left.’

‘It’s always the last.’

He took a deep breath.

‘It’s rarely the last, Lund.’

‘Look at the screen. See something I can’t. Please.’

He picked up a banana in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Lit the cigarette.

The video started. The date in the corner of the frames said 7th November.

‘Shit,’ Meyer muttered. ‘It’s from last Friday. Like I said. They reuse the tapes. That’s why they’re so scratchy.’

She took a sip of tepid coffee. Everyone else had gone home. A cleaner was sweeping along the corridor outside.

‘Doesn’t mean the rest of it’s from the seventh, does it?’ she said. ‘When we had videotapes at home . . .’

Mark as a baby, back when she was married. They were all jumbled up together. Different months, different years. It was hard to keep track when you used the same cassettes over and over again.

‘Fast forward,’ she said.

Meyer worked the remote.

Black and white cars, hazy figures running around.

‘Stop there,’ Meyer said.

He clapped his hands and let out a whoop of joy. She looked at him. Big ears, big eyes. Big kid.

Meyer’s face fell.

‘I was trying to cheer you up.’

‘It’s the thirty-first,’ Lund said.

‘I know. That’s what I was saying.’

Around eight p.m. He rewound, went too far, started moving forward more slowly.

They came to seven seventeen p.m. Four frames. Only one car.

It was a white Beetle.

‘Shit,’ Meyer muttered again.

‘The clock’s wrong. Why would you keep it accurate to the minute? Keep going forward.’

The Beetle left. No cars at all. Just empty concrete and the lights above the pumps.

Then at twenty minutes and thirty-seven seconds past seven a black car pulled onto the forecourt, to the pump in the right-hand upper frame, arriving with the jerky motion of a kid’s stop-frame film.

Meyer squinted at the plate.

‘That’s the car,’ he said.

It was raining. She hadn’t seen that till now. Knew what it meant. Had to mean. It was that kind of case.

The door opened. The driver got out. He was dressed in a long dark winter anorak. The hood was pulled up over his head. He walked to the boot and the fuel cap.

His face didn’t show for a moment.

‘Sh . . .’ Meyer began.

She put her hand on his.

‘Patience.’

Round the boot to the pump. Face down every step.

‘Come on, for Christ’s sake,’ Meyer whispered then took an anxious pull on the cigarette.

It was a pump with a card slot by the handle. They saw his hand go out, insert something, take it out.

No face.

He finished, went round the back to the fuel cap, then made for the door.

‘Come on. Smile for the birdie. Just look at something, will you?’

Straight behind the wheel. Features hidden by the angle. The Ford drove off.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Meyer groaned.

‘Wait a minute.’

She pressed the back button. Looked at the man working the pump.

Looked at his left hand. The way it stretched out and up to his head then took hold of something when he went to read the card numbers.

‘I know who that is,’ Lund said.

Meyer looked nervous.

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘I’m going to City Hall. Want to come?’

Five minutes through the rain and the sparse night traffic. The security man was about to come off duty. He began squawking the moment Meyer waved the cuffs at him.

‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.’

‘Good God,’ Meyer said. ‘I never heard that one before. You’re coming with us, mate.’

‘All I did was fill up the car.’

Lund followed as Meyer marched him to the door, thinking, listening.

‘Before or after you snatched Nanna Birk Larsen?’ Meyer asked.

The man in the blue city sweater looked at him aghast.

‘I’m sixty-four years old. What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t touch anyone.’

‘Sit him on that bench over there,’ Lund ordered.

‘We need to take him in.’

Lund looked the old man up and down. Bent back. Lousy eyesight. He didn’t seem to breathe too well.

‘Tell us the truth,’ Lund said. ‘Tell us what really happened. Then maybe you’ll keep your job.’

‘My job?
My job?
It’s because I was doing my job I’ve got you baboons in my face.’

Meyer shoved him onto the stone bench by the bike rack.

‘They’re never going to put you front of house are they, chum? Tell us what happened or you won’t see daylight for sixteen years.’

The security man stared at him with a mixture of fear and outrage.

‘Do I need to turn up your hearing aid, Grandad?’ Meyer yelled.

‘Where’s the charge card?’ Lund asked more gently.

He didn’t say a thing.

‘I’m trying to help,’ she told him. ‘If you don’t talk now we’re taking you in.’

‘I took the card with me. I was going to put it back when I came in to work on the Monday. But then . . .’

‘Then what?’ Meyer asked.

‘You people were here. Everywhere.’

‘Why did you go to the school?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? My flat’s round the corner. I walked home and saw the car there. One of our cars. Just left. I didn’t understand. I knew the schedules. They were all supposed to be back.’

‘And you had the keys?’ Meyer said.

‘No. They were still in the ignition. I guess the driver forgot them or something.’

He shook his head.

‘I couldn’t leave it there, could I? Keys in the ignition. Some thug would have had it before midnight.’

Lund was getting impatient.

‘No. This isn’t good enough. You could have called the campaign office. It was their car.’

‘I tried,’ he said very deliberately. ‘They said the secretary was in Oslo. It’s the city’s car, you know. Not theirs. We own it. Our taxes—’

‘You could drive me nuts,’ Meyer spat at him. ‘The girl—’

‘I didn’t know that girl. I didn’t do anything. Except a favour.’

‘What did you do with the car?’ Lund asked.

‘It belongs to Hartmann’s pool. He’s a flashy prick but that’s not my business. Maybe he needed it. So I drove it to the petrol station, filled it up, and drove it back. Put the keys back.’

‘Back? Back where?’

‘Back here. Where else? There’s a car park opposite. We keep the pool over there. So that’s where I left it.’

She waited.

‘I never gave it a second thought,’ he said. ‘Not until I read about the dead girl. And then . . .’

She sat down next to him.

‘Then you kept quiet.’

He was fiddling with his glasses again. Licking his lips nervously.

Meyer sat down on his other side, gave him an evil smile, asked, ‘Why?’

‘A city official needs to stay out of politics. It’s very important. We don’t take sides. We don’t get involved.’

‘You’re involved now,’ Lund said. ‘Very.’

‘I thought I’d check the tapes to see who’d taken the keys. It was only right.’

‘And?’

‘It wasn’t there.’ He looked baffled. ‘All I can think is whoever took the keys must have taken the tape too. How else—?’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Meyer hissed.

‘It’s the truth. I’m telling you the truth. I’m sixty-four years old. Why would I lie? If they knew the tape was gone we’d all be in trouble. Those bastards upstairs can’t wait to kick our arses. I’ve got one year left. Why should I carry the can for someone else? I brought that car back when I wasn’t even on duty. And here you are treating me like I’m some criminal—’

‘You are a criminal,’ Meyer said. ‘We’ve wasted a week chasing ghosts. There’s a decent man in hospital and that kid’s father in jail. If we’d known this from the beginning . . . Lund? Lund?’

She was on her feet, staring back into the Rådhus. The elegant tiled corridors. The shining wooden staircases. Crests and chandeliers. Plaques and memorials. All the trappings of power.

Someone had walked down here, taken the keys to the car in which Nanna Birk Larsen died. Taken the tape that would have shown who he was.

They’d been looking in the wrong place all the time.

‘Show me. Show me where the car was.’

Meyer hesitated.

‘The chief told us to call if—’

‘Buchard can wait,’ she said.

The council used a multi-storey garage across the road. Bare floors of grey concrete. The old security guy was getting scared.

‘I parked the car here at half past seven that Friday.’

Third floor. Not a vehicle there any more.

‘You’re sure of the time?’ Meyer wanted to know.

‘Yes! Then I hung up the keys on the board behind our desk. Then I went home.’

Lund was looking at the ceilings, the walls, the layout of the place.

‘Who’s got access to your room?’ Meyer said.

‘Not many people. We’re security, aren’t we? But there was a party that night.’

‘In City Hall?’

‘Yes.’ He scowled. ‘One of their parties. Not what you’d call a party.’

He tried to smile at Meyer.

‘Me neither. All piss and wind and cheap champagne. They always launch an election campaign with a party. A poster party they call it. Once the posters are ready they come and stand around and kid themselves they’ve won.’

‘So what if there’s a party?’ Lund asked.

‘You’ve got people coming and going. You can’t keep track of everything. They leave their keys, they want their keys. You’ve got to show people where to find the room, take them for a piss.’

She waited.

‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘If I was I’d try to keep control of things. But it’s not easy. We don’t man the place all the time. We can’t.’

‘So anyone could walk in and get the keys?’

‘And the tape,’ he added.

Meyer slapped his forehead and grunted, ‘Wonderful.’

‘Let’s get hold of what’s still there,’ she said.

She turned to the security man.

‘Whose party was it?’

He looked as if she ought to know.

‘Hartmann. The one who keeps strutting round thinking he can boot old man Bremer out into the street. The ladies love him, I know. He makes a pretty picture. But honestly . . .’

A brief, grim laugh.

‘Boys against men.’

Half past eight. Back at headquarters. Lund and Meyer in front of the PC, watching the security tapes. Buchard next to them, hands in pockets.

‘We can’t know who picked up the keys,’ Lund said. ‘Someone took that tape. But . . .’

She sat happy and comfortable in front of the screen, working the forward and back buttons, edging the video to the right place.

‘At seven fifty-five this happened.’

Two cars left on the third floor of the garage. The black Ford on the far side of the image, a silver Volvo close to the camera.

At the right of the screen, two spaces along from the car in which Nanna died, a door opened from the staircase.