The Killing - 01 - The Killing (87 page)

‘What about the boys? Are they ready?’

Pernille joined her husband. The two of them stood together.

‘They can’t go today,’ Birk Larsen said. ‘Anton’s got a cold.’

Skærbæk’s face turned suspicious.

‘What do you mean he’s got a cold? He was fine this morning.’

‘Yeah, well . . .’

Pernille was silent.

Skærbæk stood there.

‘You always got me to lie for you, Theis. You’re so bad at it yourself.’

‘Vagn,’ Birk Larsen groaned. ‘Not now.’

‘This is ridiculous. I love the boys. I was really looking forward to picking them up.’

He looked ready to cry. Or lose his temper.

‘Yes,’ Birk Larsen said.

‘Can’t you see what they’re trying to do? They’re trying to break us up. They can’t find the bastard who did it so they turn on us.’

‘Did you lie to us, Vagn?’

A long pause.

‘What did they say? Tell me.’

Together they stood there in silence.

‘Jesus . . .’

He turned to go.

‘Vagn,’ Birk Larsen said.

Skærbæk turned, pointed an accusing finger.

‘I always stood up for you, Theis. And you, Pernille. You know that.’

‘Vagn!’

The door went up.

‘Always!’ Vagn Skærbæk shrieked, then walked off into the rain.

The TV studio was in Islands Brygge, brand new, low blue lights everywhere. Bremer turned up just before they were due to go on air, apologizing, looking flustered.

They sat at the interview desk, Hartmann making notes, Bremer fidgeting nervously. The cameras were dead and silent. The circus had yet to begin.

‘I have to tell you, Troels,’ Bremer said in a low, spiteful voice, ‘I find your conduct appalling.’

Hartmann glanced at him then went back to writing.

‘Instead of jumping to conclusions you could have come to me and checked these ridiculous accusations.’

‘Shall we begin the debate with that?’

A make-up woman came over and started to put powder on Bremer’s sweating forehead. Someone called four minutes to go. The lights went down.

‘Or with you fleeing to the police to file stupid reports?’ Bremer retorted.

‘You lead, I’ll follow.’

Bremer laughed. Caught him with a sly look.

‘You can no longer accuse me of covering for a murderer. The police know Holck didn’t do it. I’ve told his wife.’

‘Have you spoken to Olav Christensen’s mother? Asked her opinion?’

‘You don’t know a thing. To think I once believed you worthy—’

‘Save your breath. Save it for the police.’

Bremer grasped at the glass of water in front of him, gulped some down.

‘There won’t be any charges. Unless they go for Gert Stokke.’ He brightened. ‘Oh, look. Here comes Rie Skovgaard. She’ll probably bring you the same news.’

Hartmann got up to speak to her.

‘I talked to the police,’ she whispered. ‘Bremer has witnesses who’ll say he never spoke about Holck at the meeting with Stokke.’

‘There were no witnesses. The minutes make that clear.’

‘There are now. It’s going to be Stokke’s word against the Lord Mayor’s. Troels?’

Hartmann walked back to the table. Sat down in the interviewer’s seat, close to Bremer.

‘Stokke’s going to be fired,’ Bremer said, eyeing the camera. ‘That’ll be the end of it. And the end of you.’

Hartmann leaned over, whispered, ‘Can you feel the world crumbling beneath you, old man?’ Looked into his hooded grey eyes. ‘You’re like a decrepit actor who doesn’t know it’s time to leave the stage. The only one who doesn’t see it. Tragic in a way.’

A pause.

‘And when it’s over, Poul, people will try to forget about you. What you were. What you stood for. You’ll just be one grubby little detail in the history of this city. No plaques. No streets named after you. No monuments. No flowers on your grave. Just a dirty sense of shame.’

Bremer stared at him, mouth gaping, shocked, speechless.

‘Do you think you can save yourself by conjuring up witnesses?’ Hartmann asked with a smile. ‘It’s pathetic.’

Someone called one minute. The lights went up.

‘Your house is built on lies and it’s starting to burn all round you. Before long you won’t see the world for flames. And then you’re just ash and cinders. You’re gone.’

He got up, went back to his own seat.

Bremer gazed at him with such bitterness and hatred.

‘And what about you? Are you any better?’

‘Yes,’ Hartmann said. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘So tell me how you think the surveillance tape disappeared. How could the party’s flat be connected to this poor child’s murder and no one notices, not one of you?’

Hartmann stared at the notepad, scribbled doodles on it.

‘Who stole that tape, Troels, and kept it secret even though it seems to exonerate you? How come Skovgaard suddenly gets a tip about Gert Stokke?’

No answer.

‘You’re no better than me,’ Bremer snarled. ‘You just don’t know it.’

The interviewer strode past them, took her seat, said, ‘We’re nearly on.’

More lights. The cameras closed in, lenses hunting.

Poul Bremer smiled.

So did Troels Hartmann.

Two scuba divers in the dank and muddy waters of the canal on the Kalvebod Fælled, dark shiny shapes in the floodlights. Lund and Meyer watched as a portable gurney was lowered down to them on ropes.

The men above pulled something to the surface. It looked like a chrysalis the size of a man. Blue plastic. Shiny and held with tape.

Four forensic officers got it to the bank. The duty pathologist waited in a white bunny suit, medical case by his side.

Gloves on, he took a scalpel, ran it down the plastic. Opened up a flap, got ready to wind it back.

‘All sensitive souls retire now,’ the man said and no one moved.

It stank of rotten flesh and rotten water.

Torches ran over it, caught yellow bone. Ribs and a skull.

Brix waited on the upper bank. Lund stayed as close as the pathologist allowed.

‘There,’ she said, spotting something. ‘What’s that? Try scraping it.’

‘It’s not the body.’

‘I can see it’s not the body.’

With the back of his scalpel he wiped the grime and mud from the tape that bound her.

A word emerged. Blocked blue letters. MERKUR, with a flying wing to the left.

Lund started walking to the car.

Driving through the dark night Meyer got a call from headquarters.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘I think they found what Vagn was talking about. Twenty-one years ago there was an incident in Christiania. Probably down to selling dope or something. Vagn got badly beaten up. Might have been killed.’

‘Theis stopped them,’ Lund said.

‘I sometimes wonder why you ask questions.’

It wasn’t far to Vesterbro. Skærbæk lived in a public housing project near the meat-packing district.

‘There had to be something tying them together.’

‘So why would Vagn kill his daughter?’

‘Let’s ask him,’ she said.

It was an ugly white block, three storeys with a supermarket in the basement. At the end of the road the hookers were out for the night. Jaded girls trying to look pretty, showing their legs to the cars streaming towards them over the Dybbølsbro bridge.

They were some of the cheapest flats around. Long lines of small units joined by an exterior walkway with an iron grille fence at the front. Skærbæk lived on the first floor. Svendsen was outside the door already. The apartment was empty. No one had been home all day. He’d left the Birk Larsens. He wasn’t at the nursing home.

Svendsen started for the stairs. Lund and Meyer paced the walkway.

‘Let’s add this up,’ she said. ‘Vagn gave his uncle the medication at ten. Nanna arrived at the flat in Store Kongensgade one hour later.’

‘The timing works for me.’

‘But how did Vagn know where she was?’

There was someone up ahead walking past the pale grey doors.

Tall figure, skinny. Baseball cap. He pulled the peak over his face as soon as he saw them.

‘Maybe he kept an eye on her,’ Meyer suggested. ‘He knew where to go.’

‘How? She just happened to go to the flat to get her passport. It’s not a routine.’

The man in the baseball cap had gone back to the lift. Pressed the button.

Lund and Meyer got there behind him. He turned away from them, took a phone out of his pocket, looked ready to make a call.

‘We questioned him twice!’ Meyer said. ‘We should have arrested him.’

Whoever he was calling hadn’t answered.

‘Let’s take the stairs, Lund. We could wait for ever.’

She followed back the way they came.

Then stopped, looked back.

The man in the baseball cap never made the call. But he couldn’t stop himself turning. And then she saw.

‘Hey,’ Lund cried. ‘Hey!’

He was starting to run, dashing down the narrow corridor towards a distant stairwell.

‘Meyer!’

Lund turned to follow, found herself in darkness, struggling to get her bearings.

Fast footsteps on metal. Iron railing, iron steps below. She’d got halfway down when she saw it.

White Mercedes. Taxi sign on the top.

Leon Frevert. The last man to see Nanna alive.

Meyer was running for it too, trying to leap on the bonnet.

He didn’t have a gun, she thought. Thanks to Brix.

‘Meyer!’

Didn’t matter anyway. The Mercedes wheeled out of the parking area, tyres squealing and smoking.

Lund got to their car first. Passenger seat. Blue light out of the glovebox, popped flashing onto the roof.

‘This time, Meyer, you drive.’

‘Who the hell was that?’ he asked, falling into the seat.

She didn’t answer. Just called headquarters.

‘I want a search for Leon Frevert. White Mercedes. Taxi sign. Registration HZ 98050. Approach with caution. Frevert’s a suspect in the Birk Larsen case.’

Meyer took the car out so quickly she had to catch her breath.

Maybe he turned right into Vesterbro. Or over the Dybbølsbro bridge, back to the city, or out to Amager, to the bridge to Malmö.

He slammed on the brakes, sending the flock of mini-skirted hookers scattering onto the pavement.

‘Which way?’ Meyer asked. ‘Which way, Lund?’

To the woods, she thought. To the dead trees of the Pentecost Forest. In the end it always goes there.

‘Lund! Which way?’

The wet shining roads led everywhere.

‘I don’t know.’

Leon Frevert had a brother. Svendsen brought the man to Frevert’s dismal studio apartment off Vesterbrogade.

He was called Martin. An accountant with his own company in Østerbro. Dark suit and tie. Younger than his brother, not so skinny or so grey. More money, Lund thought. More brains.

Meyer looked round the place.

‘Doesn’t your brother believe in furniture?’

Martin Frevert sat on the single chair. There was a sofa, a single bed. Nothing else.

‘Last time I was here the place was fully furnished. Three weeks ago,’ he added before either of them could ask.

Lund asked, ‘What’s missing?’

Frevert looked around the place.

‘The table. All his CDs. His stuff.’

‘So you didn’t know he’d given notice?’

‘He never told me. Leon always said he liked this place. His choice.’

They’d found a ticket to Ho Chi Minh City via Frankfurt. Due to leave the following Monday. Bought two days before.

Meyer said, ‘He didn’t tell you he was going to Vietnam?’

‘No. He went there on holiday a year or so ago.’

Martin Frevert scowled, looked guilty.

‘He used to go to Thailand too. It was the girls, I think—’

‘Oh come on,’ Meyer said. ‘He’d got tickets. Got money. He’d packed his bags. Sold everything. And he didn’t tell his baby brother?’

Frevert looked incensed.

‘He didn’t tell me! What do you want me to say? Why would I lie to you?’

‘What about girlfriends?’ Lund asked.

‘Not recently. He used to be married.’

‘Kids?’ said Meyer.

‘No. It didn’t end well.’

‘Friends then?’

Martin Frevert glanced at his watch.

‘Leon doesn’t have many friends. We’d have him round for dinner now and then. But really . . .’ He shrugged. ‘What was there to talk about? He drove a taxi. He humped cardboard boxes around the place.’