‘Sometimes life falls to pieces. You do something idiotic. Something that’s not you. Never was. And still . . .’ The wine was back in his hand. ‘It’s there.’
‘Like calling yourself Faust on a dating site?’
‘Quite.’ His phone rang. ‘If I’d been thinking straight I’d have called myself Donald Duck instead. Excuse me.’
‘Troels? Where are you?’
It was Morten Weber.
‘I’m at home.’
‘They know your alibi’s bogus.’
Hartmann smiled at Sarah Lund. Got up from the table, walked out into the hall.
‘What do you mean?’
A long pause, then Weber said, ‘Rie’s on her way back from police headquarters. They really turned the screws on her.’
‘Tell me, Morten.’
‘They worked out she’d tried to call you when you were supposed to be together.’
‘How long have they known?’
‘A while. They took in Rie a couple of hours ago. Troels? It’s important you don’t talk to them. Come in here. Let’s get the lawyer. We need to think this through.’
Lund was alone at the table. Same black and white sweater. She’d got make-up on for once, had done something to her hair. She looked good. Had prepared for this.
He felt a fool.
‘Troels?’
Hartmann walked back into the kitchen.
‘What are we going to do, Troels?’
He cut the call and put the phone in his jacket.
‘Where were we?’
‘You were telling me about yourself.’
‘Right.’
‘Don’t you have to go?’
‘Not yet. We can talk for a while.’
He gulped at the wine. It spilled down the front of his blue shirt. Lund passed him a napkin.
‘I’ve got a press conference soon. Will anyone notice?’
She laughed.
‘I think so.’
‘I’d better . . . sorry.’
Then he went upstairs and left her alone.
Alone.
He’d gone up two floors from the sound of it.
Lund got to her feet. Strode back into the study. Found the diary she’d been looking through before. Skipped to the end of the previous month.
One entry.
Miss you. Lonely. Can’t sleep.
More pages. Blank.
Then two, covered in an anxious scrawl. Nothing tangible, just disjointed thoughts and cries. Someone in torture shrieking at himself.
‘Shall I turn the lights on?’ Hartmann said just inches from her neck.
Lund jumped, mumbled something, turned.
Saw him in the shirt with the wine stain down the front.
He wasn’t that clumsy and she should have realized.
She didn’t speak.
‘What was this?’ Hartmann asked in a calm, cold voice. ‘Were we supposed to drink all night until we became best friends? Then what? I confess? Is that it?’
His hard blue eyes wouldn’t leave her.
‘Is there really nothing you wouldn’t do?’
He pointed upstairs.
‘Do we go up to the bedroom and I tell you everything after?’
‘You don’t have an alibi. You lied to us. Rie Skovgaard . . .’
‘So what? Does that give you the right to talk your way in here and read my diary behind my back?’
She watched, wondered what he’d do.
‘Let me understand this,’ Hartmann said. ‘I take my own campaign car and drive to the party flat. Where I rape a nineteen-yearold girl, then kill her. Then drive the body out to the woods and ditch the car and the girl in the water. Is that right?’
‘You lied to us. All that fine talk. About Poul Bremer. About politics—’
‘What I do in public and what I do in private are two different things.’
‘Not to me. Let’s talk about this back at headquarters.’
‘No. We talk about it here. So I do all this and I never think of covering my tracks. Why?’
‘You did. You took the surveillance tape from reception.’
‘I don’t know a damned thing about that.’
‘She went to your flat. The emails. Maybe . . .’
He came close, was getting mad.
‘Maybe, maybe, maybe. I didn’t do it. Can’t you even consider that a possibility?’
‘I’d be happy to. If you told me where you were that weekend.’
He was so close she could smell his cologne and the wine on his breath. Eyes blazing, Hartmann glared at her. Lund didn’t move.
There was a rap at the door. A familiar voice crying, ‘Police!’
‘That’s all you have to do,’ Lund said.
‘Troels Hartmann!’ someone yelled.
Meyer’s voice.
‘This is the police. Open the door.’
Outside, Meyer and Svendsen were getting impatient. They could see the lights. They knew from Skovgaard he’d be here, got the arrest cleared by Brix after a fight.
‘Dammit,’ Meyer said. ‘I’ll take a look round the back. Call up for help. We’ll break down the door if he doesn’t come out in a minute.’
Sounds of footsteps. A light came on above them.
The door opened. Lund walked out, pulling her bag around her shoulder. She walked past him, down the steps, Hartmann following, stern-faced and silent.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
Meyer stood beneath the outside light, mouth open, staring, as did Svendsen.
Lund clapped her hands.
‘Let’s go,’ she repeated.
The reporter came with a cameraman. They set up their equipment amidst the dust and chaos of the garage. Theis Birk Larsen stayed upstairs.
Pernille had written what she wanted to say on a single sheet of paper.
‘That’s fine,’ he said when he read it.
‘Will it do any good?’
‘Sure it will. When we’re done here we’ll go up to the flat—’
‘We’re not going to the flat.’
The reporter looked ready for an argument. It was his job. Getting the story he wanted. She should have known that.
‘We want to do the best we can, Pernille.’
‘We’re not going to the flat.’
A floodlight came on. It made the place look even grubbier.
‘Very well.’ He didn’t look pleased. ‘What about your husband?’
‘What about him?’
‘It looks better if you speak as a couple.’
‘I decide how we do this. Not you. Not Theis.’
No answer.
‘Take it or leave it,’ she added.
Pernille waited.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Just you.’
Upstairs Theis Birk Larsen was finishing the boys’ supper. Ice cream from the supermarket, on their special plates, beneath the Murano chandelier.
Nanna’s face still stared at them from the table.
‘Isn’t Mum having pudding?’ Anton asked.
‘She has to talk to somebody.’
‘We’re going to the woods tomorrow,’ Emil said.
‘No, we’re not,’ Anton butted in.
‘Yes, we are.’
‘Shut up.’
The boys glared at each other.
‘Why aren’t you going to the woods?’ Birk Larsen asked.
Anton toyed with his ice cream.
‘Mum doesn’t feel well.’
‘Of course you’re going to the woods. Mum thinks so too.’
Pernille came in from the stairs.
‘They’re offering a reward,’ she said. ‘The TV people. There was a neighbourhood collection too.’
Birk Larsen gave the boys more ice cream.
‘Anton and Emil want to go to the woods tomorrow.’
‘I know. I said I’d go with them.’
He couldn’t stop looking at the photos pasted into the tabletop all those years ago. Nanna . . . what, sixteen? The boys as toddlers. A piece of their life, trapped in time.
It was a table. If she had her way it would stay with them for ever.
‘When we went to counselling,’ Birk Larsen said, ‘they told us to think about what we have.’
She scowled at him.
‘I know what I’m doing, thank you.’
His face was hard, his mood was black.
‘So why aren’t you here with us? Instead of talking to that guy downstairs?’
A long silence. Pernille smiled at Anton and Emil.
‘Come on boys. Time for bed.’
They hadn’t finished their ice cream but they didn’t argue.
Birk Larsen threw his spoon on the plate as he watched her usher them out of the room.
Dirty cutlery and dishes. Bills and appointments. Burdens and cares.
All these things swept around him constantly, like a ceaseless tide of trouble.
He walked to the fridge, got a bottle of beer, sat in a chair and began to drink.
In the interview room at headquarters the lawyer looked as if nothing in the world had changed.
‘My client admits his alibi was fabricated,’ she said confidently. ‘He wasn’t with Rie Skovgaard.’
Hartmann sat next to her as she spoke. Lund and Meyer opposite. Lennart Brix listening at the end of the table.
‘Any particular reason he lied to us?’ Meyer wanted to know.
‘Everyone has a right to privacy. Especially a politician during an election.’
‘Irrelevant,’ Meyer said. ‘What were you doing that Friday, Hartmann?’
He stayed silent. The lawyer answered instead.
‘As we’ve emphasized throughout, my client maintains his innocence. He never knew or had any dealings with Nanna Birk Larsen. He went elsewhere because he needed some peace. He asked Skovgaard to cover for him.’
‘Not good enough—’
‘He takes full responsibility for his fabricated alibi. It was necessary because he was in the public eye.’
Meyer was getting mad.
‘Let me get this straight. You claim you were drinking yourself stupid all weekend because of your dead wife?’
‘My client—’
‘I’m not finished. Where were you, Hartmann?’
‘My client doesn’t want to comment. His private life is his own.’
‘You’ll go on TV and tell us how we’re supposed to run this city. But you won’t tell us one small thing to help out a murder inquiry?’
‘Hartmann,’ Lennart Brix broke in. ‘Forty-eight hours ago you told me you had an alibi. Now you don’t. If you won’t make a statement there’s only one thing I can do.’
He waited. Hartmann didn’t say a word.
‘Press charges and arrest you.’
‘There are no grounds for that,’ the lawyer cried. ‘You don’t have any evidence whatsoever to suggest Hartmann was involved with this girl. He’s tried to cooperate as much as he feels able.’
Her voice got louder. She looked at Lund.
‘At every turn he’s been harassed by your officers while they stumble about their business. Harassed at home, where his house was searched without a warrant. In secret. Under the pretext of a personal conversation.’
She turned to Brix.
‘Don’t threaten us. Illegal entry. Illegal search. I could throw you all to the wolves now if I felt like it. Find the man who used Hartmann’s email. The car, the flat . . .’
Meyer ran a finger along his notes.
‘Olav Christensen has an alibi. A real one. We checked. If Hartmann would care to tell us the truth about his whereabouts we’ll check his too.’
‘Christensen’s involved in this,’ Hartmann said, breaking his silence. ‘If you look at him . . .’
‘Why won’t you tell us where you were?’ Lund asked, gazing at him across the table. The same way she had in the house when they were alone together, drinking wine, picking at the pizza.
Hartmann looked away.
‘Christensen’s in the clear,’ Meyer insisted again. ‘The administration backs it up.’
‘Of course they back it up!’ Hartmann bawled. ‘They all belong to Bremer. They’re the ones Olav must . . .’
He stopped, seemed to think of something.
‘Must what?’ Lund asked.
‘I’ve got nothing more to say. If that’s all I’d like to leave now.’
‘No,’ Brix said. ‘You had your chance. You should have taken it.’
The three of them went to Lund’s office. Brix wanted to draw up charges and put them in front of a prosecutor straight away.
Lund sat on the edge of her desk trying to think.
‘The prosecutor’s going to want blood, saliva and semen for that. We don’t have it. I think we should wait. Let’s see if we can find more. There’s nothing to be gained from arresting him. It’s not as if he’s going to flee.’
‘We can shove him in Vestre jail,’ Brix said. ‘That should get him talking.’
‘No. This is wrong,’ Lund insisted. ‘When I talked to him he thought the girl had been killed in the flat.’
‘So?’
‘She wasn’t. She was chased through the woods, two days later. She drowned in the car. Whoever did it must have heard her screaming. He tied her up. Put her in the boot.’