The Killing - 01 - The Killing (99 page)

A beep.

‘Good evening,’ said a stiff and tetchy male voice. ‘Henrik Poulsen from HP Office Supplies.’

Skærbæk stopped writing, looked round, made sure he was alone, then walked into the office.

‘You called about the move we ordered for the first weekend in November,’ the voice said. ‘To be honest we were very disappointed. We’d planned it for weeks. And suddenly your man cancels at the very last minute. It was very unfortunate. If you need more information you can call me at home. The number is . . .’

He let it run, took the tape out of the machine, placed it in his jacket pocket. Then switched the calls to upstairs.

Rie Skovgaard was bright and cheerful again, showing him the private polls. It was going the way Weber had predicted. A two-horse race with him in the lead. Bremer’s illness provoked sympathy but not support. If anything it improved Hartmann’s chances, not diminished them.

‘I talked to a friend in the police,’ Skovgaard said. ‘There’s something going on. It doesn’t affect us.’

Hartmann got a decanter of brandy, poured himself a glass, said nothing.

‘There’s nothing to worry about. All this nonsense Erik Salin’s been peddling. It’s just . . .’

He was staring at her.

‘Hot air,’ she said in a voice close to a whisper. ‘Should this be in private, Troels?’

Weber started to get up.

‘Morten stays,’ Hartmann said.

The brandy was old and expensive. A fire in the throat, in the head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘if you feel I let you down somehow.’

Hartmann sipped the strong liquor, thought of the night in Store Kongensgade. Had felt much the same way then. As if nothing really mattered. As if he were hurtling towards a fate over which he had no control.

‘I’ll give you a choice, Rie. Either tell me the truth about the video, about the flat, and we go to the police. Or you take the consequences.’

Skovgaard stared at him, shook her head.

Morten Weber squirmed at the table, said, ‘What the—?’

‘I’ll deal with this,’ she broke in. ‘What are you talking about, Troels?’

‘Don’t lie to me any more. I know. You went looking for me that night. You went to Store Kongensgade. When you saw the place you knew something was wrong. Come Monday when the police were sniffing around here you thought if you could keep people out of there for a few weeks it would all go away.’

She laughed.

‘You’re more ridiculous than that Lund woman. I was at the conference.’

‘Not till ten o’clock.’

‘If this is one more piece of shit from Bremer—’

‘Was it someone from Parliament? Your father? Did he order you to step in and cover for your little puppet?’

Rie Skovgaard’s mouth opened. No words.

‘Or was this your own career move?’

Bright wide eyes filling with tears.

‘How can you even think this?’

‘There’s a gross misconduct clause in your contract. Go home and read it. I want you out of here now. I don’t want to see you again. In this office. Or anywhere else. Is that understood?’

He got up and went to the window. Took the brandy with him. Sipped it in the light of the blue neon sign.

She followed him.

‘If I thought you’d killed that girl . . .’

Hartmann didn’t turn to look at her.

‘Do you think I’d have still stayed with you? I did this for us—’

Hartmann spun round, eyes wild, voice roaring.

‘I know why you did it! I know what I was! A step on the ladder. A means to an end.’

‘Troels—’

‘Get out!’

Weber was behind her. An arm on her shoulder. Easing her towards the door.

‘Get off me, Morten!’ she yelled at him, and broke free.

Hartmann went back to the window. Looked at the city beyond the glass.

‘They’re the only people that matter,’ Rie Skovgaard shot at him. ‘Aren’t they? You don’t want love. You want adulation. You want—’

‘Just go,’ he said, not looking at her, waving with a single hand.

Not listening either to her curses and her screams.

And then she really was gone. Along with his only chance to seize Copenhagen for himself. A battle lost. The only victory that mattered put beyond reach.

When he went back to the brandy and poured another big glass, he thought he was alone.

Then a sound.

Morten Weber.

‘Troels,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’

‘Call for the car,’ Hartmann said. ‘I want to see Bremer in the hospital.’

‘We need to talk . . .’

There was a flame in his head and it wasn’t the booze.

Hartmann turned on the little man screaming, high-pitched, like a lunatic, out of himself, out of the tidy, manicured, manufactured mannequin he’d become.

‘Is there one fucking person in this office who will do as I say?’

He’d never seen Morten Weber look at him this way before.

‘Of course, Troels. I just wanted to—’

Hartmann smashed the brandy glass against the window. It shattered a pane. Cold winter air came through, whipped round him, chilled his skin.

There was a release for everything somewhere. In booze. In action. In the physical rush of love. And still it led to the same bleak place, to nothing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in his old, quiet voice. ‘I just thought she was . . .’

He kicked at the shards of broken glass with his shoe.

‘I thought it was me she wanted. Not . . .’He looked at the poster, his face young and smiling from the wall. ‘Not the other one.’

‘He’s the one they all want,’ Weber said in a low, sad voice. ‘This is politics. It’s not for real people. They want figureheads. Icons they can watch rise and fall and say . . . Hey, they’re all in it for themselves, aren’t they? Just like us. Frail and human and venal. That’s the game we’re in.’

‘Tell the police about the flat. About the video. We’ve been party to an obstruction of justice. Brix can work out what to do.’

‘Now? It’s late. And you’re seeing Bremer. Why not . . . I don’t know. Let me see if I can find some way we can make this work for all of us.’

‘It can’t work—’

‘Troels, if we go to the police you’re finished. It’s too late to be the comeback kid again. You’re dead.’

Hartmann glared at him.

‘Call the police,’ he ordered. ‘You’re not fixing this.’

Jansen had a third of the floorboards up. Lund was looking at the concrete floor beneath. The two of them were covered in sawdust, plaster, wood chips, broken board.

Lund got down on her knees, put her face against the cold floor below the boards.

‘Give me the inspection lamp.’

She placed the bright bulb next to the joist and peered beneath the section leading back from the wall.

‘I think they did this part first,’ she said into the dead space. ‘Where the hell’s Brix and some help?’

Held out a hand.

‘Hammer.’

Jansen put it in her fingers. She got the claw end lodged some way down the board, eased it up. He wound a crowbar in. Another line of Vagn Skærbæk’s carefully laid, brand-new flooring rose from its fastenings.

‘Can you see anything?’ he asked.

‘He won’t have laid it straight over. He’ll have cleaned the floor first. Bleach. I think it’s on the walls too.’

She stood up. White and black sweater filthy with wood dust and dirt.

A light outside. Headlamps coming through the narrow blue window.

‘About time,’ Lund said. ‘Pull up the rest and let’s see what we’ve got.’

She walked upstairs. Brix was by his black Volvo.

‘Have you picked up Skærbæk?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She put on her jacket. Looked round.

‘Where’s the new man?’

Bülow was walking towards her from the left. On the right Svendsen was getting out of his car. He looked happier than she’d ever seen him.

‘You stupid bastard,’ she hissed at Brix.

‘He’s doing his job,’ Bülow said. ‘You should have done yours.’

Brix looked at her, shrugged.

‘There’s nothing in the basement, Lund. We’ve been here before.’

‘You were looking for Frevert before. Not Nanna.’

Svendsen came up, grabbed her arm and said, ‘You’re under arrest.’

She dragged herself free, stood in front of Brix.

‘Frevert called Birk Larsen that night. He wanted to say he’d picked up Nanna and she was going somewhere. The call came through to Vagn Skærbæk instead.’

Svendsen began to grab at her arms.

‘Don’t touch me!’ Lund shrieked at him. ‘Brix! Listen. Skærbæk went to the flat. He took the keys to the car Hartmann used. He hid her in the basement here. If we look—’

‘You can rant all you like in headquarters,’ Bülow cut in.

She tried to dodge Svendsen’s flying arms.

‘Skærbæk shot Meyer. He didn’t say Sarah. He said Sarajevo. Eighty-four. Look at Skærbæk’s jacket. Shit!’

Svendsen had her arm in a lock, was twisting hard.

‘Tell them about the missing picture, Brix. Tell them!’

She was caught then. Dragged towards the car.

‘Skærbæk put in a new floor. Covered the walls. Check it out! Get him before he kills someone else . . .’

The cop’s right hand grabbed her long hair, dragged her to the door. Pushed her down into the back.

Then he got in the front next to another man in the passenger seat. Rear doors secured.

Jansen came out of the house, walked up to Brix.

‘Is there anything down there?’

‘Nothing I can see,’ the forensics man said. ‘That doesn’t mean—’

‘Get out of there,’ Bülow ordered. ‘I’ll send people to assess the damage Lund’s done. We’ll have to pay out for that too.’

He went back to his car.

‘Wait.’

The squat man from prosecutions turned and scowled.

‘It may be your job to prosecute Sarah Lund,’ Brix said. ‘But I run homicide.’

‘Your case is solved. Cut yourself loose from that mad bitch while you can.’

He started walking again.

‘Get a full lab team out here,’ Brix said to Jansen. ‘Everyone we have. I want the basement checked.’

Bülow turned, shook his head.

‘We leave when I say so,’ Brix insisted.

‘Done,’ Jansen said, reaching for his phone.

A birthday song. This is how we play the trumpets. Everyone standing round the table, making pretend instruments with their hands.

Party hats. Presents. Cake. Candles and little Danish flags.

A toast of wine and orange squash. Vagn Skærbæk in his smartest clothes, smiling like a proud uncle, beaming at the boys.

Pernille looked at him. So young sometimes, though there were bags beneath his eyes she hadn’t noticed much before. And maybe he was starting to dye the grey flecks in his hair.

Vagn had been a part of them for so long she couldn’t remember how it began. With Theis. Everything started with him. In that mad rush, when she was pregnant with Nanna, running away, getting married. Persuading him to give up the round of petty jobs and try to settle down. Start his own company.

The slight, diffident, sometimes frightened figure of Vagn was always there in the background. Always ready to help. To offer a kind word. To put the life of someone else before his own.

Now she watched him looking at the boys and felt with every passing second that something which once seemed so right, so natural, was deeply wrong. Not for any reason she could comprehend. Not through any single fact, more a line of circumstances and intuitions that still failed quite to connect.

‘The boys are beautiful,’ Vagn said, smiling in that unforced, genuine way she’d taken for granted.

Maybe he saw himself there. Or the boy he wished he’d been.

‘The food was really delicious.’

‘I’m glad, Vagn,’ she said quietly.

And wanted to ask: why?

Was about to when Theis stood up, cleared his throat, announced he wanted to say a few words.

Were there any others, she thought. She loved this man but knew that, in some ways, he was as much a mystery to himself as he was to her.

‘First of all,’ Theis Birk Larsen declared in a voice that was mock-serious, though perhaps he didn’t know it. ‘I would like to say happy birthday to Anton. I hope it’s been a nice day. A little bird told me . . .’

The man across the table put a hand over his mouth and giggled.

‘That Uncle Vagn has another surprise for you later.’

He stood next to her like the rock, like the great tree in the forest he always was. Swaying a little now. Not the arrogant young tough of old.

Bowing down, his hand reached to the table and gently covered hers.