The Killing - 01 - The Killing (68 page)

The cemetery superintendent wore a green industrial suit and galoshes. He held out the turquoise urn.

So small, inside nothing but dust.

‘Do you want to place it?’ he asked.

Pernille took the vase, bent down, lowered it into the ground with trembling fingers.

Stood back. Looked. Felt as if she were in a dream.

‘Is it Nanna?’ Anton asked.

‘Yes,’ Lotte said. ‘She’s ashes now.’

‘Why?’

Lotte hesitated.

‘So it’s easier to get to heaven.’

The boys looked at each other and frowned. They never liked Lotte’s stories.

‘Isn’t that true, Pernille?’

‘What?’

Lotte tried to smile at her.

‘Yes,’ Pernille said. ‘It’s true.’

‘When’s Dad coming?’ Emil asked.

The cemetery man was carrying over a large wreath with a crown of roses.

‘He’ll be here later,’ Lotte said.

‘Why isn’t he here now?’

Pernille was staring at the wreath.

‘What’s that? I didn’t ask for it.’

He shrugged. Placed it by the hole for the urn.

‘It arrived this morning.’

‘Who sent it?’

‘I didn’t see a card.’

‘It’s lovely,’ Lotte butted in.

Pernille was shaking her head.

‘You have to know where it came from.’

Lotte had some single white roses. She handed one each to the boys and told them to place them by the urn. They obeyed. Small black figures in the sun. They might have been playing on a chilly beach by the Øresund.

‘Well done,’ she said when they had finished.

Pernille stared around her. The small square lake full of rotting wood and algae. The monuments with their mould and fungus. The place stank of decay. She began to feel sick.

Then she bent down, picked up the giant wreath, gave it to the cemetery man.

‘Take it away. I don’t want it here.’

Lotte was staring at the grass. The boys looked scared.

‘I don’t want this plot,’ Pernille said. ‘I don’t like it. There must be another one.’

With the wreath in his arms the man in the green suit looked embarrassed.

‘You chose this one.’

‘I don’t want to bury her here. Find another place.’

‘Pernille,’ Lotte said. ‘It’s lovely. We all agreed. It’s perfect.’

Voice rising, Pernille Birk Larsen glared at them all.

‘I don’t want this wreath. I don’t want this plot.’

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ the man said. ‘If you want somewhere else you have to talk to the office.’

‘You talk to the office! I paid you, didn’t I?’

She walked away and stared at the small lake.

The rotting wood. The algae.

A figure in scarlet striding along the path.

Vagn Skærbæk took one look at Pernille and marched straight up to Lotte.

‘Have you heard from him?’ he asked.

‘No. Where is he?’

He glanced at the woman by the water.

‘A wreath arrived without a name,’ Lotte whispered. ‘She’s getting all sorts of ideas. I don’t know . . .’

Skærbæk took the wreath, walked to the water’s edge.

‘Pernille. We bought it. Rudi and me had a collection at work. I’m sorry. We didn’t know what to write so we just asked them to deliver it.’

She looked at him, expressionless.

He held out the laurel wreath with its crown of roses.

‘It’s from us.’

She shook her head and went back to looking at the dead water.

‘When’s Dad coming?’ Emil bleated.

On the other side of Vesterbro, in one of the poorer, rougher, dirtier areas he used to frequent as a young ambitious thug, Theis Birk Larsen was drinking. Long glasses of strong lager from the Vesterbro Bryghus. A shot of akvavit.

The way it was. The way the long days passed before Pernille. Chasing money on the street. Working with the dealers and the gangs. Snatching at whatever might be passing.

There was a time he could have walked into this bar and silenced them all with a stare. But that was long gone. None knew him now. The thug of old had mutated into the industrious, decent father with a small business seven blocks away, one that kept him away from these old haunts and these old habits.

His big hand gripped the cold glass. The beer went down to a rhythm. Blocking the pain not killing it. But that was enough.

Behind he heard the clatter of billiard balls, the foul-mouthed chatter of the young kids doing what he once had.

Maybe even worse.

These were bad times even though he tried to pretend otherwise. The hunt for money and opportunity. The desperate business of staying alive. Life had never been harder and no shell a man might build could keep him safe from that fact. Or protect his family.

Theis Birk Larsen smoked and drank and tried to still his thoughts, listening to the childish too-loud pop music on the radio and the clatter of billiard balls on the tables.

Somewhere an urn with what was left of Nanna was disappearing into the earth.

Nothing he could say or do would change that. He’d failed her. Failed them all.

He finished the beer, head starting to spin. Looked round. Once he’d been king of these places. His voice, his fists had ruled. Another Theis. A different, harder man.

Would he have saved her? Was that the lesson he was supposed to learn? That a man was what he was, however much he tried to change, to conform, to obey, to be that shapeless, untouchable thing called good.

The teacher, Kemal, had forgotten his roots too. And paid the price.

If only . . .

He lurched to his feet, staggered towards the exit, stumbling against a kid by the billiard table.

Birk Larsen pushed him roughly to one side the way he always did once upon a time. With a warning and a curse.

Stumbled on. Didn’t see the outstretched foot of the kid to follow. Fell hard and grunting to the floor.

Memories.

So many fights and none he lost. Some that went so far . . .

He rolled through the muck and cigarette ends on the floor, listening to their laughter. Groaned as he got to his feet.

Snatched the cue from the kid who’d tripped him, held it like a sword, a weapon. Like the sledgehammer he’d wielded above the shrieking, bleeding foreigner in the depot, Vagn Skærbæk whimpering all the while.

The kid had a black jacket and a black woollen hat. An expression that was both scared and defiant.

Theis Birk Larsen knew this face. He’d lived with him all his life.

So he swore and threw the cue on the table, then staggered outside, wondering where to go.

These streets, once home, were foreign to him now. He got to a deserted archway, started to take a piss. Had barely finished when they pounced. Five of them, heads in hoods, fists flying. A billiard cue thrashing him round the head.

‘Hold him,’ someone screamed, and two weak arms tried to pin Birk Larsen to the wall he’d pissed against. A boot flew at his groin.

Kids.

He threw off two, got the third by the scruff of the neck, launched himself across the narrow street, pinioned the weak and skinny figure against the crumbling plaster of the wall.

Big fist pulled back, ready to strike. One hard, vicious punch and this was a day the kid would never forget, would leave enough damage to last the rest of his meagre life.

Birk Larsen held back the blow and stared.

The hood had fallen. The face that looked back at him, so full of hatred, was a girl’s. No more than sixteen. Ring through the nose, tattoos over the eyes.

A girl.

In that moment they fell on him with such a fury he knew he was lost to them.

Boots and hands and knees. The cue and flailing fingers. They took his wallet, his keys. They swore at him, spat at him, pissed on him. Birk Larsen did what he’d never done before, rolled into a ball like a victim, cowered on the ground. A pose he’d seen so often, but never for himself.

One hard blow to the head and the day grew dark.

Then a voice, older, angrier, crying.

‘What are you doing? What the . . .?’

He lay in the gutter, drunk and hurting.

And they were gone.

A bleeding hand went to the wall. He staggered to his feet.

A woman. Middle-aged. Holding a bike.

‘Are you all right?’

Head against the cold brickwork Theis Birk Larsen started to throw up. Blood and beer. Some of the blackness inside him.

‘I’m calling the police,’ the woman said.

He vomited some more. Put a hand to her shoulder. She shied away from him, wriggled out of his grasp.

‘No police,’ he muttered, coughing, then stumbled out towards the light.

She left him. Alone again he found he couldn’t stand. Like a felled tree Theis Birk Larsen tumbled slowly onto the broken stones of Vesterbro, knelt there, knelt then keeled over, letting the darkness roll over him like the black swampy waters of the Kalvebod Fælled.

Back in the interview room, Hartmann faced his lawyer.

‘The evidence is circumstantial, Troels. On this I wouldn’t expect the judge to extend your custody. But if they find something in your cottage . . .’

He sat in his blue prison suit, silent and miserable.

‘The more you tell me, the more I can help you.’

Nothing.

‘Do you understand?’

Nothing.

She tidied her papers, uttered a small dyspeptic sigh of disapproval.

‘Well then. I’ll come back tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll be of a mind to talk to me then.’

He watched her sort the documents into a pile and place them in her briefcase.

‘What’s going on at City Hall?’

She stopped and gazed at him.

‘What do you think? The Electoral Commission has gone along with Bremer’s wishes. They’ve made their final decision.’

‘Final? You’re sure about that?’

She had a hard-set face.

‘I’m a criminal lawyer. Not a political one. As I understand it the decision is made. It simply needs to be approved by the council tonight.’

The lawyer stared at him.

‘Then you’re gone, Troels. Shame. I put money into your campaign. What on earth was I thinking?’

He was barely listening.

‘What time’s the meeting?’

The woman folded her arms.

‘I’m glad you’ve decided to talk to me. Perhaps we could discuss your defence?’

‘Can you get me a copy of the council constitution?’

A pause, then, ‘Why?’

‘I need to know something about the Electoral Commission. I need the detail—’

‘Troels! You’re facing a murder charge! Have you lost your mind?’

A grim smile, a second long, no more.

‘No. I haven’t. Get me Brix. Tell him I’m ready to talk. I’ll let him know what I did that weekend.’

She reached into her bag and retrieved her notepad.

‘Finally. Let’s hear it.’

The smile again. Longer this time, and more confident.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t have time.’

He snatched the pad from her and started writing.

‘I want you to contact the prosecutor. Ensure we have a meeting as soon as possible. It’s important the police drop the charges before the end of the afternoon.’

‘You can’t get out of here for another day at least.’

He finished the note.

‘Give this to Morten.’

‘I can’t.’

‘All it says is that he should tell the truth. That’s what they want, isn’t it? That’s what you want.’

She hesitated.

‘I have to get out of here by tonight. Please help me.’ He held the note across the table. ‘And thanks for the contribution.’

Phillip Bressau was on the phone when Meyer and Lund walked into his office.

He put his hand over the receiver.

‘The mayor’s not here.’

‘No problem,’ Meyer said. ‘We came for you.’

‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’

‘Five minutes. Then you’re done.’

They sat around a coffee table, Lund taking notes, meek and obedient like a secretary.

‘Before the poster party that Friday,’ Meyer said. ‘There was a gathering in Hartmann’s office. You went along?’

Bressau was neatly dressed for a Saturday. Well-pressed suit, blue shirt, tie.

‘Yes. For a while.’

‘Did you see Hartmann there?’

‘No. I didn’t stay. Work to do. What is this?’

‘Just routine,’ Lund said. ‘When you met with Hartmann on the third of August . . .’