The Killing

Fourteen

A bright day, painted in sparse colours. Winter was falling on Copenhagen, the salt air sharp and cold, the sun harsh and dazzling. Lund sat outside the hospital shivering in the thin blue cagoule. Her belongings were still in Vibeke’s basement. Just a few clothes and a washbag had followed her to the hostel room she’d taken by Central Station, wondering what to do, where next to go.

She’d been about to go inside an hour earlier only to see Hanne Meyer and her children turn up in a cab as she approached the entrance. So Lund waited, hugging herself in the too-flimsy jacket, sitting on a wall, smoking, clutching the folder Jansen had smuggled to her that morning, running through the options in her overactive mind.

At a quarter to eleven they left, hunched against the cold.

Lund tucked the folder beneath her jacket, pulled the hood over her face, stayed where she was till they were out of sight.

Then she went to the hospital reception, pleaded for entry.

It took ten minutes. Finally she was led down a long white corridor to a private room at the end. The police would be paying. They had to in the circumstances.

She walked in, was briefly dazzled by the light from the long windows.

A shape by the glass. White hospital gown, blue pyjamas underneath, gleaming silver wheelchair.

Pale face, stubbly skin. Big ears. Pop eyes that seemed sadder than ever. A saline bag on a silver IV stand, a line running into the back of his left hand.

The television was on. Troels Hartmann’s coronation as Lord Mayor of Copenhagen. He was taking his seat in the council chamber, majestic as he waved to an audience on its feet, applauding enthusiastically, heralding the new master of the Rådhus.

Young and vigorous. Full of energy and hope.

Hope.

Meyer sat at a round table. He had a short knife in his hand and was peeling an apple very slowly, the line of the drip shifting up and down with each sluggish movement.

‘I brought you something,’ Lund said and pulled out two bananas from her pocket.

He looked at the yellow fruit, no expression on his face.

‘I knew you’d beat it. I couldn’t see your name on a wall in the Politigården.’

Pale blue pyjamas. White smock.

Hartmann was starting to make a speech on the TV.

‘Bastard,’ Meyer muttered.

Fine words. Noble aspirations. Poul Bremer’s natural heir.

‘He thinks…’ Meyer struggled to find the right words. ‘He thinks being not guilty’s the same as being innocent. They all do. Just wash their hands…’

‘I need—’

‘They lied to us. The kids. The teacher. Those sons of bitches in the Rådhus.’

‘You’ve got to—’

‘Every last one of them. They didn’t give a fuck about Nanna. It was all about them.’

He reached for the remote. Hartmann was getting into his stride. Talking about responsibility and social cohesion. Integration and sustainable development.

The Birk Larsen case was dead, gone for good. It hadn’t been mentioned in the press at all that morning.

Meyer turned off the TV. The room became heavy with their silence.

Lund pulled Jansen’s folder out of her jacket.

He stared as she emptied the contents onto the table next to the bananas.

Photos. New ones.

‘What do you want?’ he asked in a high, broken voice.

‘There’s something you need to know. Something…’

It was racing around her head, hadn’t stopped since soon after Vagn Skærbæk died. Jansen’s photos only made it run more quickly, like a movie looping through her imagination. There was evidence there. Dots screaming to be joined. If only someone would help. Someone who trusted her.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can see it. So can you.’

Through the dark wood where the dead trees give no shelter Mette Hauge runs.

Breathless, shivering in her torn shirt and ragged jeans, bare feet stumbling in the clinging mud.

Cruel roots snag her ankles, snarling branches tear her strong and flailing arms. She falls, she clambers, she struggles out of vile dank gullies, trying to still her chattering teeth, to think, to hope, to hide.

Two bright beams follow, like hunters after a wounded deer. Moving in a slow approaching zigzag, marching through the Pinseskoven wasteland, through the Pentecost Forest.

Bare silver trunks rise from barren soil like limbs of ancient corpses frozen in their final throes.

Another fall, the worst. The ground beneath her vanishes and with it her legs. Hands windmilling, crying out in pain and despair she crashes into the filthy, ice-cold ditch, collides with rocks and logs, paddles through sharp and cutting gravel, feels her head and hands, her elbows, her knees, graze the hard invisible terrain that lurks below.

The chill water, the fear, their presence not so far away.

And a savage storm is raging through her head.

She thinks of her parents, alone in their distant farmhouse. A small, quiet world left behind.

Thinks of the day, the tiny pink tab they gave her. The rush, the glee, the promises. The demands.

A cheap gilt chain round her neck. A black heart made of glass. A half-finished tattoo on her ankle.

And then came the fury. The acid magic from Christiania working its livid sorcery. On her. On them.

Out in the bleak lands beyond Kastrup. Hidden in the yellow grass, teeth chattering, blood racing.

An initiation she asked for. A ritual she cannot now reject.

Mette Hauge runs, knowing she is lost. Ahead of her lies nothing but the wasteland, and then the grey chill barrier that is the sea.

Still she flees, then falls.

Falls and waits, fists bunched and ready.

This Lund sees bright and clear in her restless head.

‘The photos…’

Meyer wouldn’t look at them.

‘I got Jansen to go back and check things. Everything we had. What was left in the Merkur store.’

‘I thought you were fired.’

‘Mette’s autopsy. The tape in the Rådhus garage. We never looked properly. You have to look.’

A picture passed across the table.

‘On Mette’s right ankle there are traces of a tattoo. A black heart. Half-finished. I think it happened the day she died. It was part of the… ritual.’

He stared out of the window, blinking at the brilliant winter’s day.

‘It wasn’t done in a tattoo parlour. Not with professional needles. They did this themselves. It came with the ceremony. An ordeal you had to undergo to join.’

Meyer closed his big eyes, sighed.

‘There was a gang called the Black Hearts. Small. They distributed dope and acid and cocaine from Christiania into Vesterbro.’

More papers.

‘There’s some intelligence in the files. They disbanded not long after Mette vanished.’

‘What are you saying, Lund?’

‘I’m saying Mette hung out with them. Wanted to join them. That’s why they gave her the necklace. The tattoo. There was an initiation rite—’

‘You said.’

‘If she wanted to join she had to…’

It’s coming clearer as she speaks. Makes her breath short. Makes her head spin.

‘Had to what?’

‘Let them do anything they wanted. Take whatever dope they pushed on her. It was a biker gang, Meyer. You know what I’m talking about. What she had to pay…’

Pay the price.

Two men. One she liked. One she hated. Both the same now with the pink tab of acid running through their veins too. A lone beast, a single intent.

Trapped in the mud and the mire, half naked, screaming at the lowering sky, Mette Hauge sees them.

Feels them.

Hand on her, fingers ripping at her clothes.

Faces the decision.

Give in or fight.

A fist in her face. The crack of bone. The shriek of fear and pain.

A choice made. In the Pentecost Forest where none can hear.

‘Here,’ Lund said.

Another photo. Nanna in the Rådhus security office, talking to Jens Holck, asking for the keys to the flat in Store Kongensgade, telling him she’s leaving.

The picture’s blown up.

Around her throat, fuzzy from the magnification, sits what looks like the black heart necklace.

‘She put it on when she changed after the Halloween party. Nanna had the necklace already.’

Pernille and Lotte both said… she was always going through drawers, looking where she shouldn’t, borrowing things without asking.

‘Nanna found that for herself.’

More pictures. A body floating face down in the water. The autopsy after. The shot marks of pellet wounds. A dead face. Grey moustache and scar. A fading mark on the arm.

Black heart.

‘John Lynge. Picked out of the water near Dragør on Sunday. Shotgun wounds to the chest and head. He had the tattoo. I got out his files. When he attacked girls before he made them wash. He cut their fingernails.’

‘We cleared the driver,’ Meyer said with a pained, bored groan. ‘He was in hospital.’

She hesitated. He seemed fragile. Upset by her presence.

‘They let him out at seven the next morning. We’ve got the logs. Vagn called the agency that employed him not long after. Birk Larsen used them too. So we never thought much of it. The agency gave him Lynge’s mobile. Vagn talked to him. He was trying to avoid trouble. For Nanna’s sake—’

‘But—’

‘Vagn shot you. Vagn killed Leon Frevert. Killed John Lynge.’

This much was clear.

‘You saw for yourself. He loved that family. Loved the boys. Loved…’ Thinking, imagining. ‘Loved what the Birk Larsens became. Something he could never find for himself.’

‘Lund…’

She peeled the nearest banana, took a bite, liking the way the images formed in her head as she spoke.

‘Vagn didn’t have the black heart tattoo. That part of the wood he took Theis wasn’t where Nanna was attacked. There’s no evidence she was ever there. Vagn didn’t know. Because he didn’t kill her.’

Meyer had his head in his hands, looked ready to weep.

Saturday morning, the day after Halloween, outside the house in Humleby. Bright and sunny. Paper monster masks from the night before blowing up and down the street.

Vagn Skærbæk paced around the plastic sheets and scaffolding, turning to stop and yell at an angry face in the blue glass windows of the basement.

Someone was walking towards him from the green patch of Enghaven park. One day soon Anton and Emil would play there on the new bikes Skærbæk had reserved in the toy shop in Strøget, paying for them with some smuggled alcohol he’d got on the side. Soon…

The man who was approaching was tall and muscular. He stopped at the house, checked the number, looked at the Ford then said, ‘Hi. I’m John. You called about the car.’

One more glance at the black vehicle.

‘It doesn’t look damaged.’

‘It isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with it.’

A pause.

‘Did you look inside?’

‘It was a misunderstanding, OK? A mistake.’

The two men stood in silence for a moment, eyeing each other.

‘Don’t I know you?’ Skærbæk asked, feeling a sudden and puzzling sense of recognition.

‘If there’s no damage…’ the man began.

‘I do know you.’

‘What happened?’

‘Does it matter? You’ve got it back. There’s no damage. Can’t we leave it there?’

Pasty face, sick maybe. Cheap clothes. Grey hippie moustache. Scar on right cheek. A memory swam through Skærbæk’s head, teasing him, refusing to surface.

It had been a long and difficult night. The argument with Nanna at the flat where he found her after Frevert’s call still rankled. Trying to find some truth among the lies she’d thrown at him, spitting, scratching with her nails.

‘You’re not going to the police, are you? She’s a good kid really. She didn’t steal it. There was an Indian boy who was messing with her. God, if I get my hands on him. I found your agency ID on the floor. Here…’

The man with the scar took the card and keys.

‘I don’t like the police,’ he said. ‘The car looks fine. Let’s forget about it. No harm done.’

‘I do know you,’ Skærbæk said again. ‘Maybe the agency. We use them sometimes…’

The bright morning felt confusing and strange. He’d scarcely slept in the Humleby house, listening to her cries and pleas locked in the basement, one floor below.

Now the young voice beyond the scaffolding and sheeting was back to high and shrill and getting louder.

Temper rising, Vagn Skærbæk went to the front door, bent down, looked at the blue glass and the shrieking face there.

‘Nanna! For fuck’s sake shut up! You’re staying there till I get your dad. I’ll be back here at twelve whatever. At least I’ll know where you are.’

Eyes to the window, blonde hair bobbing, she yelled, ‘Vagn, you creep—’

‘Just wait, for God’s sake! They’re supposed to be on a break, you know. Having a weekend away. From you for one thing.’

She went silent then.

‘Think about what your dad’s going to say when he hears, huh? Jesus. Ripping off a car—’

‘I didn’t steal the fucking car!’

‘Your raghead boyfriend then. Christ, you’re Theis’s daughter. Aren’t you just?’

The man by the black Ford shifted on his big feet.

Skærbæk barely noticed. He was thinking about what Nanna was wearing.

‘And take that bloody necklace off before your dad gets back. If he sees that…’

He left it there. Went to the road, to the man who was checking out the boot of the car.

‘There’s nothing missing, is there?’ Skærbæk asked.

The lid went down quickly.

‘Nothing.’

‘Damned kids,’ Vagn Skærbæk grumbled. ‘She can stay in that hole and rot for all I care. If her old man hears…’

The stranger was listening.

‘What did she do?’

‘Never mind.’ Skærbæk took out his phone. Tried to call again. Got voicemail. ‘Come on, Theis. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Best leave her there,’ the stranger said. ‘Kids need a lesson.’

A bleat from behind.

‘She’d have to listen for that,’ Skærbæk muttered, then yelled some more abuse at the blue window.

It was pointless. She’d never taken any notice of him. Of anyone really.

So he left the car with the man who looked vaguely familiar then stomped off back to the depot, cursing under his breath, juggling phone calls and schedules, callbacks and deliveries. Wondering how he might make everything fit, run along in one piece the way it should.

Twenty minutes later Vagn Skærbæk fell fast asleep on the chair in the office. Didn’t stir for three hours. And then a sharp, cruel nightmare woke him with a startling memory. Too real, it felt. Too real.

A bright day. An empty day.

John Lynge looked at the black Ford. Couldn’t stop listening to the high-pitched voice coming from the house, through the blue glass windows.

A girl’s voice. Strong and weak at the same time. Young and knowing too.

A girl’s voice.

He looked along the empty street of grey houses. Walked up to the window. Could see her through the stained glass. Bubbly hair. Beautiful face. Pleading eyes.

‘Get me out of here, mister.’

One more careful sweep of the deserted road in Humleby. Up. Down.

‘Get me out of here before that bastard comes back.’

Just after ten. A good hour to spare.

‘Please. I’ll give you something.’ She paused. ‘Some money.’

November. The month he always chose. He hadn’t expected the opportunity to come so soon. The very first day. But it would come. It always had since that first time set the wheels in motion, turning like clockwork once a year.

‘OK,’ he said, then went back to the Ford and found the briefcase he had left in the boot the previous night.

Opened it.

Scissors and a bottle of ether. A gag. Two knives, two rolls of duct tape. A screwdriver and chisel. A bottle of liquid soap, a sponge and some medical wipes. Two packs of condoms and a tube of lubricating jelly. He was a careful man and always came prepared.

‘Mister! Hey!’ squealed the young voice from the basement.

Lynge closed the briefcase, walked to the door. They’d left their tools there anyway. A crowbar, waiting, begging.

That was easy.

At the foot of the stairs the door was locked and bolted. Her glittery handbag lay outside, left there he guessed for when she decided to be good.

He picked it up. Tissues, a purse, a phone. A pack of condoms with a happy couple on it. Naked. Smiling.

Lynge lifted it to his lips and kissed the picture there. Laughed to himself.

The girl called out through the door.

‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

Lund fidgeted in her chair, blinking at the washed-out sun. There were more photos in Jansen’s file. He’d done a good job. Risked a lot to help her.

‘Vagn told Theis he got the call from Nanna. We’d worked that out. He locked her in the basement in Humleby overnight. But it was Lynge who attacked her there. Got her out the next morning. Took her somewhere else.’

‘Why didn’t Vagn go to the police?’

His voice was tetchy, hurt.

‘He didn’t realize who it was till Nanna was gone. He called the agency Birk Larsen used again. Vagn was checking. He’d remembered.’

‘Remembered what?’

‘Vagn loved Nanna. Loved them all—’

‘Then why did he say he killed her? Why didn’t he talk to us?’

She ate some more banana. Said nothing.

‘You need help,’ Meyer told her. ‘You should be in here. Not me. You break lives, you know that?’

‘Meyer—’

‘You broke your own. You broke mine. You break everyone’s and you don’t even notice enough to care—’

‘I care!’

A nurse appeared in the corridor, looking through the glass, checking out the sound of angry voices.

‘I care,’ she said more quietly.

‘No. You just think you do. If you care you’ve got connections. Relationships. You depend on other people and other people depend on you. You don’t connect, Lund. Not to me, not your mother, not your son. Any more than that bastard Hartmann connects. Or Brix…’

His eyes were shining. She thought he might cry.

‘I’ve got a family. Theis and Pernille had one too until this black fucking thing came along and ripped them apart. With a little help from us. Don’t forget that—’

‘I care,’ she whispered, feeling the tears begin to cloud her own eyes.

He wasn’t a cruel man. A hard man even. She’d judged him badly at the start. Meyer didn’t want to hurt her. He simply didn’t understand.

‘Vagn didn’t do it. When you’re feeling better. When you’re out of here, back at work. You can go and find the records. I’m so close. For God’s sake. You’ve got to help me—’

Jan Meyer threw back his head and howled.

Twenty years before, mobile phones cost a fortune so a run-down, near-bankrupt outfit like Merkur had just two. Aage Lonstrup was drunk in the office, no idea one of them was missing. No clue where the temps who made up the day’s staff had gone. No work on the schedules. No future ahead.

Vagn Skærbæk went through the diary, trying to keep things afloat. Worrying. About money. About friendship. About the future.

The big black mobile on the desk rang. So crackly it was barely audible.

Skærbæk listened.

An inarticulate, scared plea for help.

Looked at Lonstrup snoring at his desk.

Took a Merkur van out to Vestamager, down the narrow roads, past the fencing that marked what would one day be new houses and a metro line running out into the wilds by the grey Øresund, past the warning signs of the dead firing range, into the wilderness.

Heart thumping, mind racing.

Found two motorbikes by the side of a black canal. One, the Triumph, he recognized. The other, a cheaper, smaller Honda, he didn’t.

Thought for a moment. Opened the back doors, ran down the ramp, strained and heaved to get both machines inside.

November. Light falling. No sound except the jets going in and out of Kastrup.

He could have turned back. Gone home to his little flat. Taken out the books again, the training guides on becoming a teacher. Tried to pick up the threads of a life that had never truly started.

But debts were owed. Lives were saved. A conscience was like a wound. Once pricked it kept bleeding until something, some balancing deed, came along and staunched the flow.

So he took a torch out of the back and headed off into the wilderness, calling out one name over and over again.

‘Thanks,’ the girl said when Lynge broke open the downstairs door.

Pretty. Blonde. Tired. Angry.

Not frightened. Not yet.

He turned and closed the basement door behind him.

An hour and then they’d be somewhere else. Out in the wetlands. A hunter’s hide. A log store. He knew the Pentecost Forest well. Could always find a place there. Could wash her in the cold black water, trim her nails, make her his.

‘I’m going now,’ she said.

He leaned against the wall. Looked.

Two decades, one girl each November, like a Christmas present come early. Hookers and drifters mainly. Dregs on the edge of the world, like him. So many over the years they all got blurred after a while.

But this one was different. This one was beautiful and young and pure.

He opened the case, retrieved the bottle of ether and the gag, placed them on the floor. Removed his belt, took out a roll of duct tape and ran out a length, cut it free.

Was on her the instant she started to scream. Strong arms round her golden head, strong fingers turning the tape around her pretty mouth, one hard blow to the skull dashing her to the floor.

Easy, he thought.

It was always easy. They begged for it anyway.

John Lynge checked his watch. Then began.

‘Why would Vagn do that?’

‘I need to be sure. I don’t want to screw up again. To cause more pain.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Yes. It is.’

He blinked. Picked up the knife, returned to peeling the apple, not noticing the exposed flesh had turned brown.

The transparent line in his arm bobbed up and down beneath the bag and the silver pole.

‘You should go now,’ he said.

She kept back the last picture. It wasn’t the right time. Later. When he was better. When he came round.

‘You’ll be back in the Politigården before long. Once Brix realizes. Once you go through the files I tell you to—’

‘Get out!’ he yelled.

‘I need you! I need your help!’

The nurse was through the door flapping, tugging at her arm.

‘Meyer. When you’re back at work…’

He held the knife upright, pushed it in front of her face.

The blade was so close. Lund went quiet. So did the nurse.

‘What did you say?’

‘When you’re back at work,’ she whispered, looking at him properly for the first time. Noting the strange, immobile way he sat. The force with which his left hand gripped the wheel of the chair.

There were no crutches in the room. None of the signs of recuperation she might have expected.

Jan Meyer waved the fruit knife in front of her then turned it, gripped the wooden handle hard in his fist, stabbed the sharp point through his blue pyjama leg with a vicious, deliberate force.

The nurse was screaming. Lund sat on her chair, stiff and cold and frightened.

He let go. The blade stood firm and upright in his thigh. Blood began to seep through the blue fabric. Meyer stared at her with his sad pop eyes.

No pain. No feeling at all. She saw this now and wondered why she’d never asked the simple, sensible question when she arrived.

How are you?

It wasn’t because she didn’t want to know. There were more pressing ones. That was all.

‘Get out of here,’ Meyer pleaded. ‘For God’s sake leave me alone.’

A doctor and a male nurse were there. Two of them dragging her to the door, one racing to Meyer, yanking the knife out of his flesh.

Dark blood staining the blue fabric. Spreading slowly. Not a sign of pain on his stubbly face. Not a hint he felt a thing.

They had Lund’s arms, too strong for her.

There was something she wanted to say. But couldn’t.

Something…

Three years was all Theis Birk Larsen would get. That was the betting in the Politigården.

Three years, half with parole. Out in eighteen months. Theis and Pernille would survive, perhaps made stronger in some strange, cruel way.

Outside the sky was darkening. Rain on the way. Snow even.

Vibeke had taken back her green Beetle. So Lund walked to the station and bought a ticket to Vestamager, sat on the empty train, watched the city disappear out of the windows. After a while there was nothing left but a flat bleak wasteland speeding by as she headed towards the end of the line.

There were three of them in a shallow, muddy indentation hidden among the yellow grass, not far from a narrow canal. One, the smallest, a half-naked, bloody woman, not moving. The second, a man with a Zapata moustache and scarred cheek, tattoos and long black hair, wild-eyed and cackling, prodding at her from time to time. The other, the biggest, curled up in a foetal ball, eyes vacant and lost, a pool of vomit by his ginger head.

‘Theis,’ Skærbæk said.

The narrow slit eyes looked up at him. Pupils black and glassy, as blank and deep as the water in the canal.

‘Jesus. What did you do this time?’

The guy with the stupid moustache stopped poking at the girl, pulled a bottle out of his pocket. Swilled some beer, passed it to Theis Birk Larsen.

Skærbæk grabbed the bottle, threw it away, screamed at them.

For no good reason. The girl was dead. These two were lost in an imaginary world of acid where nothing was real.

Forks in the road.

He wanted to turn back, leave them there.

Wanted to call the police for the first time in his small and irrelevant life.

But debts were owed. Consciences pricked. They were out on the Kalvebod Fælled, a wasteland no one visited. A place for hiding things. The harsh choice was made.

So he went to the Merkur van, climbed behind the Triumph and the Honda, took out plastic wrapping and strong tape, returned to the trio in the mud. Kicked the idiot with the moustache out of the way when he objected. Rolled the dead girl round and round, bound her tight like a carpet about to be moved.

Dumped her in the deep canal. Went back and yelled at them till they stumbled to the van.

The stranger was called John. He didn’t want to leave at all. Looked ready to stay there, drag the dead body out of the water, unwrap her from the Merkur sheeting and start all over again.

By the time Skærbæk had got them out of there the night had turned pitch-black, damp and bitter.

He’d never forget this. Vagn Skærbæk knew that. Understood he’d joined himself to them. Was no different.

Where the public road started, and a few street lights marked the site of the coming metro station, he stopped the van, told them to get out. Made them empty all their pockets, the hash, the resin, the tabs and pills. Bellowed at them, made threats until it was gone.

Twenty minutes later he dumped John and his battered Honda on a back street near Christiania and thought: I never saw your face before today and I pray I never will again.

Drove back to Vesterbro, listening to the grunts of the big man in the passenger seat, huddled into a heap with his shame and his returning memories.

‘I can’t save you twice.’

There was puke in the footwell. He’d thrown up somewhere along the way.

‘I mean that, Theis. You’ve got to cut this out. Leave the gang guys behind. Pick up with that nice girl again. The one who’s sweet on you.’

No answer.

He pulled in by the side of the road not far from the Dybbølsbro bridge, looked at the early evening hookers out flashing their legs for the cars.

Turned to the slumped figure next to him.

‘If you don’t you’re dead. Just one more piece of Vesterbro shit gone to waste.’

The sly, narrow eyes stared back at him.

Skærbæk never could read them.

He wound down the window, let the smell of puke drift out into the cold winter air.

Reached into his pocket, pulled out the thing he’d taken from the dead girl’s neck.

‘Here,’ he said, and forced it into Birk Larsen’s bloody hand.

A cheap necklace, a black heart made out of glass.

‘It’s yours now. I want you to remember. I want you to think of it and pray something like that never…’

He got mad. Had to scream.

‘Never comes back and haunts you. I can’t save you twice. Even if I wanted.’

There was a rap on the windscreen. A haggard skinny face, once pretty. A Vesterbro girl Vagn Skærbæk half recognized.

‘Are you crying?’ she asked, and seemed surprised.

He crunched the gears. Got the Merkur van out of there.

Next to him Theis Birk Larsen sat clutching the necklace. Staring at the black heart.

‘Put it in your pocket,’ Skærbæk told him and watched to see it was done. ‘You keep that. You look at it the next time some moron comes along and puts some stupid idea in your stupid head. I want you to think…’

Debts owed, debts repaid. They were Vesterbro brats and they lived on the edge, always would. That made it all the more important to remember how easy it was to slip over and fall for good.

‘I want you to think if you ever let go of that thing we’ll end up back in this nightmare some day. Because you let the monster out again.’

No answer.

We’re not like that, he thought. Not quite.

Vesterbro. Grubby streets. Cheap houses. Hookers and dope. The world as it was.

A black heart necklace. Like a Romany curse. Theis Birk Larsen could take it to his grave.

‘You don’t want that to happen,’ Vagn Skærbæk said, driving over the bumpy cobbled road, staring into the drab distance. ‘No one does.’

Lund got a bike from the study centre near the station, pedalled through the icy rain out to the marshland and the woods. Found the low metal bridge, sat on the concrete slabs that crossed it. Arms through the railings, feet dangling over the canal. The way Amir El’ Namen was the week before with his sad bouquet of flowers behind him, tears falling down to the black water where Nanna died.

It was all in the photos and documents Jansen had found for her. Enough on its own. She didn’t need Meyer really. That was cowardice on her part. Even Brix would listen if she made him.

If…

She put that decision to one side and counted what she knew.

Nanna was leaving, taking memories with her. A reminder of her father, who never rolled up his sleeve when he was working or washing the dishes, never showed his bare arms when the police were around.

But a child would see those old tattoos. A child would make the connection when she found a black heart necklace hidden away in a locked drawer. And a loving runaway daughter would want a memory to take with her for the journey.

Vagn did what he did because that was who he was. The man who fixed things, the one who kept the wheels turning.

Nanna was gone from Humleby. There was blood in the basement and it led all the way to the Pentecost Forest.

They were all gypsies. Lonstrup’s daughter said that. Paths crossing constantly over the years, lugging furniture, cutting crooked deals. Theis and Vagn and the creature that was John Lynge, the first man they chased and then let go, trying to stay alive in the dismal underworld of Vesterbro.

She reached into the blue cagoule. The drizzle was pondering whether to turn to snow, settling on her, freezing her cheeks, making her simple ponytail hang icily against her neck.

Lund took out the last photo. The one she never showed Meyer.

Twenty-one years before. A fading Kodacolor snapshot. Outside a hippie house in Christiania, gaudy with peace and love signs. Three people. In the middle Mette Hauge, hair long and greasy, face blank and stoned. An innocent wandering from the straightforward pathway, out of curiosity and a childlike sense of excitement. As Pernille did once. As Nanna strayed too.

On Mette’s left a long-haired man with a Zapata moustache, a furrowed forehead, dark, deep-set eyes, what looked like a fresh knife slash across his right cheek.

Take away the hair. Age the scar. Cut and grey the moustache. John Lynge.

On the other side the young Theis Birk Larsen, huge and brutally imposing. Ginger hair, ginger stubble. Grinning triumphantly at the camera, blue jeans, a denim waistcoat with gang colours. Possessive arm around her. King of the quarter. On his bulging right bicep, just visible, a line of tattoos. Among them what looked like — had to be — a small black heart.

There was only one answer to the riddle she’d refused to answer in the hospital. Racked by grief and guilt and shame, Vagn Skærbæk sacrificed his life to keep this other Theis hidden. Buried the truth about Nanna out of horror that a worse nightmare might rise from the bleak wasteland of the Kalvebod Fælled alongside John Lynge’s black Ford dripping stagnant water and fresh blood. And take with it the secret miracle he cherished — envied — most of all, the precious bond of family, the ties that kept Pernille, Theis and the boys together in the face of a bleak, uncaring world.

All the lines were joined, in Lund’s head if no one else’s.

The wind murmured in the bare silver trees of the Pentecost Forest. She heard the soft hoots of owls, the pained screeches of a fox, the world breathing, rustling, moving. In her imagination she saw all the dead faces John Lynge had left rotting beneath the scummy water, watched their mouths open, heard them scream.

It was their shrieks with Nanna’s that woke her that first morning, before the trip to Sweden, asleep in the arms of Bengt Rosling, a man she’d never see again.

Cries she’d never lose. A guilt she couldn’t evade.

Seated on the hard ground, legs over the edge, Sarah Lund stared at the grainy snapshot leeching out its colour with age. Three faces, two dead, one living, trapped inside his own inarticulate guilt.

Eighteen months and Theis Birk Larsen would be back in the world, trying to rebuild his business, his family, to find the man he wanted to be, to lose the creature he once was.

Mette Hauge’s murderer. The proof was in her hands.

Watching the icy rain fall on the old snapshot in her fingers, Sarah Lund leaned against the cold metal railings, wondering whether to let go.