The Killing

Five

Lund was pulling on her black and white sweater, juggling a piece of toast when her mother said, ‘I thought we were leaving tonight?’

‘No. We’ll go tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon? That’s when the guests are arriving.’

‘It’ll be fine.’

‘I can’t stay in Sweden long. There are things to do.’ She looked at the dress. ‘There’s a wedding on the way.’

‘There’s always a wedding on the way. We were hoping you’d be with us for a week. Meet Bengt’s family.’

A grim laugh.

‘You mean take your son to school while you go to work?’

‘Never mind.’ Lund gulped at her mug, pulled a face. ‘It was just an idea. Do we have any hot coffee?’

She went to the percolator. No.

‘Is this the kind of mother I’ve brought you up to be?’ Vibeke asked, shaking her head. ‘You haven’t even talked to Mark while you’ve been here. Do you have any idea—?’

‘It’s been a busy week. I thought you might have noticed.’

Quickly, without a mirror, thinking about Nanna and the school all the time, she took an elastic band from her jeans and tied her long brown hair into a rough ponytail.

‘He’s twelve years old—’

‘I know how old he is.’

‘You know nothing about him! Or his life.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Do you even know he’s got a girlfriend?’

Lund stopped. Struggled for a moment.

‘Mark’s like me,’ she said. ‘Very independent. We’re not in each other’s faces all the time. And yes… I do know about his girlfriend. Thank you.’

‘I’m off,’ said a voice behind that made her jump.

Mark, in a blue jacket, ready for school.

She followed him down the stairs.

A dull dry day. He had his scooter with him, started pushing it away the moment they were in the street.

‘Mark! You haven’t had breakfast.’

He slowed down, got off the thing.

‘Not hungry.’

‘I’m sorry about this week. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.’

He got back on the scooter. She struggled to keep up.

‘Gran said you had a girlfriend.’

Mark stopped, didn’t look her in the eye.

Lund smiled.

‘That’s nice.’

She tried not to let the earring get to her. He’d got his ear pierced without even asking, by some stupid kid at school.

‘What’s her name?’

‘It’s not important.’

‘You can invite her to Sweden.’

‘I’m going to be late for school.’

‘Mark? I’m interested in what goes on in your life.’

‘She just broke up with me.’

Twelve years old and such pain on his young face.

‘And you don’t give a shit. You’re only interested in dead people.’

Lund stood on the pavement. Seeing the boy he was at four or five. At eight. Ten. Struggling to separate that child from the surly, sad kid who stared at her now looking…

What?

Disappointed.

That was the word.

Mark turned his back on her, pushed himself down the street.

Hartmann came in at nine. Lund took him into her room.

‘You told me we were off the hook?’

‘I didn’t say that…’

‘You never mentioned a teacher.’

‘It’s one line of inquiry.’

‘Into what exactly?’

Meyer stuck his head through the door, said, ‘Are we going?’

Hartmann didn’t move.

‘What have you come up with now?’

Lund shook her head.

‘I can’t say.’

‘These are my schools and my teachers. You will tell me.’

‘When I can—’

‘No. No!’

He was getting mad. She’d seen this temper before. On TV when he flew at the reporter. Now she had it in her face.

‘I need to know who it is! Christ! I have to take precautions.’

‘It’s not possible—’

‘You’ve made a fool of me once, Lund. It’s not happening again.’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t put your election above a murder inquiry. It wouldn’t be right…’

He looked livid.

‘Don’t you understand the damage you’ll do? To teachers? To the pupils? To the parents? You spread suspicion like a farmer spreads shit. And you don’t give a damn—’

‘Don’t you dare say that!’ she yelled back at him.

Hartmann fell quiet, surprised by the sudden volume.

‘Don’t ever say that,’ Lund repeated more quietly. ‘I’m not a politician, Hartmann. I’m a police officer. I don’t have time to think about all the consequences. I just have to… to…’

‘What?’ he demanded when she never finished the sentence.

‘Keep looking.’ She dragged her bag onto her shoulder. ‘We’ll be discreet. We won’t start any rumours. We’ve no interest or desire to damage any innocent party. We just want to find out who killed that girl. OK?’

His sudden rage had fled. These outbursts, she thought, were sharp and unexpected, as much unwanted by Troels Hartmann as they were to those who heard them.

‘Fine,’ he said, nodding. He looked at her. ‘Will you let me help?’

She said nothing.

‘I want to, Lund. I’ll ask the office to get copies of the personnel files. For the teachers. All the staff.’

‘Send them to my office. I’ll have someone look through them.’

‘I want to help. Believe me.’

His phone went. The mask of the politician, unemotional, distanced, impassive, came upon him again in an instant. Lund left him to his call.

There was a smiling woman in the winding corridor of black marble, fair-haired, carrying a supermarket bag.

She asked Lund, ‘Is Jan Meyer here?’

‘In a moment.’

Lund went back to checking through the messages on her phone.

‘I’m Hanne Meyer,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve got something for him.’

A wife. Lund remembered the call the other night. Now you’ve woken the whole house. A baby crying. Meyer had a life beyond the police station. The idea astonished her.

‘Sarah Lund,’ she said, and shook her hand. ‘I work with him.’

‘So this is what you look like!’

She was very pretty, with a scarf round her neck and a peasant dress beneath her brown wool coat.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘Ah.’ She gave Lund a knowing look. ‘He means well. It doesn’t always comes across.’ A pause. ‘And he thinks you’re… amazing.’

Lund blinked.

‘Amazing?’

‘He’s to take two of these every hour,’ Hanne Meyer said, giving her a bottle of pills. ‘If that doesn’t help you have to try the bananas.’

She pulled a couple out of her bag, passed them to the wide-eyed Lund.

‘Whatever he tells you, Jan must not have coffee, cheese or crisps.’ She tut-tutted. ‘They upset his stomach.’

The woman clapped her hands: all done.

‘New jobs are always difficult. Let’s hope it works out this time.’

Meyer came round the corner. Old green anorak, sailor’s jumper, embarrassed expression on his face.

‘What the…?’

‘Hi, darling!’ Hanne Meyer called cheerily.

Beaming, oblivious to all else, Meyer walked up, kissed her on the lips.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

She indicated the bananas and the pills in Lund’s hands.

‘You left them in the car.’

‘Ah…’

Meyer shrugged.

She stroked his stubble, said, ‘Take care. Have a good day, you two.’

He watched her every inch of the way, smiling, entranced.

When she was out of his sight his face dropped, turned dead serious.

Meyer took the fruit and the pills from Lund and tucked a banana in each pocket like a gun. Retrieved one, aimed it down the corridor, went, ‘Kapow.’

‘Amazing,’ Lund said.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Let’s go.’

The campaign team was in place for the morning briefing. Eight workers, Rie Skovgaard running things. Hartmann left the Birk Larsen case till last.

‘The press might get hold of something,’ he finished. ‘But it’ll only be guesswork. We’re sending the personnel files to Lund. Let’s not get distracted. We’ve got more important work to do.’

‘Wait, wait, wait.’ Skovgaard waved at them to stay seated. ‘You’re saying they think it’s a teacher.’

Hartmann packed his papers into his briefcase.

‘That’s one theory.’

‘You know what that means, Troels? We’re back in the story again. The press will involve you anyway.’

‘It’s a police matter…’

‘You’re Mayor of Education. If it’s a teacher they’ll hold you accountable.’

She never gave up. Never would.

He sat down again, looked at her and asked, ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘That we act first! Let’s read those files before Lund gets them. Check we didn’t screw up.’

‘How could we have screwed up?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t want any surprises. Besides… Imagine if we passed on some information that helped them find the man. We’d pick up some credit instead of the blame.’

Hartmann gazed at her.

‘Troels,’ she added, ‘if it’s a choice between losing votes and winning them it’s not much of a choice at all.’

‘Fine. Do it.’

When the team left she gave Hartmann his schedule for the day, went through it line by line, minute by minute. The last event was a photo opportunity about social integration. Bringing foreign groups into the community. About role models, the immigrants Hartmann’s team had picked to front the initiative.

‘Shall we have dinner afterwards?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ Hartmann said without a thought.

‘You can make time for me?’

‘Sure.’

‘Troels!’

‘Oh.’

There was so little time for anything. Hartmann took her in his arms, liked the way her face brightened then. He was about to kiss her when there was a knock on the door. One of the City Hall employees. A young man. He looked embarrassed at walking in on them.

‘You asked about some files? The schools?’

‘I’ll leave this to you,’ Hartmann said and left.

Skovgaard sat the civil servant in front of her, listed the ones she wanted. Staff records for Frederiksholm High. Contracts. Assessments. Any complaints.

He listened, said nothing.

‘Is this a problem?’

‘The city records are for your use as an official? Not for… politics? I’m sorry. I have to ask.’

‘No,’ Skovgaard said. ‘You don’t.’

‘But…’

‘Hartmann wants this done. Hartmann’s the Mayor of Education. So…’

He still didn’t budge.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Olav Christensen.’

‘Is this a problem, Olav? If it is say so. You’ve seen the polls, haven’t you? You know Troels Hartmann’s the next Lord Mayor?’

A thin, sarcastic smile.

‘It’s not my job to dabble in politics.’

‘No. It’s your job to do what you’re asked. So get on with it before I find someone else.’

In a small storeroom off the library, surrounded by books about English, about physics, about art, Lund and Meyer began talking to teachers one by one. About Nanna, about Lisa Rasmussen, Oliver Schandorff and Jeppe Hald. But mostly about themselves. What they did the previous weekend, a question Meyer asked while Lund watched, thinking, listening. Hunting for a flaw.

He ate a banana. Drank two bottles of water, smoked constantly. Consumed two packs of cheese crisps, against her orders. Looked at her between the endless procession of teachers. Said little. Didn’t need to.

There was nothing in these ordinary, decent, dedicated people. They were teachers. Nothing more. Or so it seemed.

Pernille Birk Larsen sat in the chilly kitchen, hands on the table they both made. Stared at Nanna’s bedroom door, the marks there, the arrows.

Knew now this had to be done.

Heard him downstairs, talking to the men. Low gruff voice. The boss.

Walked into her room. So much gone. Nanna’s books and diaries. The photos and notes had disappeared from the corkboard on the wall. The place stank from their chemicals, so strongly it overcame the waning fragrance of flowers. Their pens and brushes and markers stained the walls.

She fought to remember before.

Her daughter here, so full of life and energy.

Pernille sat on the bed, thinking.

This had to be done. This had to be done.

She went to the small wardrobe, looked in.

The smell of Nanna lingered. A perfume, gentle and exotic. More sophisticated than Pernille recalled.

That lingering thought afflicted her again… You never really knew her.

‘But I did,’ she said out loud. ‘I do.’

That morning the medical examiner’s office called. The body was to be released. A service was needed. A funeral. The last scene in the bleak extended ceremony of a violent and premature death.

In the bedroom, deep in the fragrances of the wardrobe, Pernille fought to remember the last time she chose Nanna’s clothes. Even as a child at primary school, seven or eight, she made that decision for herself. So bright, so pretty, so self-confident…

Later she’d walk round the house choosing her own. Take things from Pernille’s drawers. From Lotte’s when she stayed there.

Nothing constrained Nanna. She was her own person. Had been from the moment she could speak.

And now a mother had to choose the last thing her child would wear. A robe for a coffin. A gown for fire and ashes.

Her fingers reached out and fluttered through the flimsy fabrics. Through flowery prints and shirts, through shifts and jeans. They fell upon a long white dress, seersucker, Indian, brown buttons down the front. Cheap in a late summer sale since no one would want it for the cold winter.

No one except Nanna, who would wear these bright things rain or shine. Who never felt the cold. Never cried much. Never complained.

Nanna…

Pernille clutched the soft material to her face.

Looked at the floral smock next to it. Wished she could face anything in the world but this.

Theis Birk Larsen sat in the office with the estate agent, looking at numbers and plans. The name Humleby sounded like a curse to him now. A black and vicious joke that life had waited to play.

‘You stand to lose a lot,’ the woman said. ‘The rot. The condition…’

‘How much?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’

Pernille was walking towards them, wide-eyed, chestnut hair unkempt, face blank and pale and miserable. In her hands were two dresses: one white, one flowery.

‘Maybe as much as half a million,’ the estate agent said. ‘Or you could go ahead and renovate it. Takes time but then you might…’

He was looking out through the glass door. Not listening.

The woman stopped. Saw. Got to her feet, embarrassed. Made the noises they both knew now. Hurried words, stuttering condolences. Then fled from the office.

Pernille watched her go, watched her husband snatch a cigarette from the pack on the desk, light it anxiously.

‘Is there a problem, Theis?’

‘No. It was about selling the house. It’s in hand.’

He rifled through the papers.

She held up the dresses.

‘I need to know.’

She lifted the white one then the flowered one, as if this were the prelude to an evening. One of the social occasions they never went to. A dinner. A dance.

‘Which one?’

He looked for a second, no more.

‘The white is nice.’

Sucked on his cigarette, stared at the desk.

‘The white?’

‘The white,’ he said again.

Rama, the teacher they saw earlier in the week, was halfway through the list. Same questions. Same uninformative answers. The man was thirty-five. Had worked at the school for seven years.

They asked everyone: what did you make of Nanna?

‘Outgoing, happy, clever…’ Rama said.

Meyer rolled one of his pills onto the table, stared at it.

‘You two had a good relationship?’ Lund asked.

‘Definitely. She was a very clever girl. Hard-working. Mature.’

‘Did you see her outside school?’

‘No. I don’t socialize with pupils. I’m too busy.’

Meyer glugged down his tablet, lobbed the empty water bottle into a waste bin.

‘My wife’s pregnant,’ Rama added. ‘Almost due. She works here too. Part-time now. Finishing up.’

‘That’s nice,’ Lund said.

Meyer broke in, asked, ‘Did you see Nanna at the party?’

‘No. I did the first shift. I left at eight.’

Lund said, ‘That’s all, thanks. Can you send in the next person?’

She laughed.

‘I sound like a teacher.’

Meyer stared at the empty yellow skins on the table.

‘Did you eat my bananas?’ he demanded.

‘One.’

He got up, went to the window cursing, lit a cigarette.

The teacher still sat there.

‘There’s one thing a while back. A few months ago Nanna wrote an essay. For a mock exam.’

Lund waited.

‘She wrote a short story.’

‘Why’s this important?’ Lund asked.

‘Maybe it isn’t.’ Rama looked at her. ‘It was about a secret affair. Between a married man and a young girl. It was very…’

The teacher was searching for the right word.

‘It was very explicit. She wrote it as a piece of fiction. It bothered me.’

Meyer came back to the table, looked at him, asked, ‘Why?’

‘I read a lot of essays. It sounded to me as if she was talking about herself. Talking about something she’d done.’

‘Explicit?’ Lund asked.

‘They had meetings. They had sex.’

‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’

He squirmed.

‘I don’t know if it’s important or not.’

‘We need to read it,’ Meyer said.

‘It should be in the storeroom with the others. It was a mock exam. We keep them.’

They waited.

‘I can help you look if you like,’ Rama said.

The officer from the education department returned with a pile of blue folders underneath his arm. Skovgaard thanked him. Smiled.

‘What do they say?’

‘Model school. Private. Not cheap.’ He flicked through some folders. ‘The teachers seem well qualified and enthusiastic. The grades are good.’

She stared at the pile of documents.

‘No complaints?’

‘Nothing I can see. But I don’t know what you’re looking for.’ He waited for a response. ‘If I did—’

‘It’s just routine. We want to know everything’s in order.’

Olav Christensen seemed pliable, willing to help, even though she’d leaned on him earlier.

‘Everything to do with Troels is usually in order,’ he said. ‘I wish…’ he nodded back towards Poul Bremer’s office, ‘it was the same everywhere. Maybe soon.’

She wondered why he’d suddenly turned helpful. Held up a folder. Said thanks.

Ninety minutes Lund and Meyer spent going through the filing cabinets. The teacher had to leave them to take a class. Then Rektor Koch walked in, scowled at Meyer’s cigarette, said, ‘Have you found it yet?’

‘It’s not here,’ he said.

‘It has to be here,’ Koch insisted.

‘It’s… not… here. We’ve been through everything.’

Lund brought over a file box.

‘This was open when we came to it.’

Koch checked the names on the label, people who’d used it and when.

‘One of our teachers is a linguist. He’s writing a paper on trends in language. Word usage. I gave him permission to go through anything he needed.’

‘Name?’ Meyer demanded.

There was a pause, an uneasy look on the woman’s face.

‘Henning Kofoed. I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t put it back. He’s usually very meticulous. A highly intelligent…’

‘Why haven’t we spoken to him?’ Lund broke in.

‘He wasn’t one of Nanna’s teachers. He only works in the mornings. He’s…’

Lund picked up her phone, her notepad and her bag.

‘We need his address,’ she said.

Hard wood and wicker seats. Candles. Gold crosses. Dim lights. A crucifix.

Pernille and Theis Birk Larsen sat next to each other in silence. She clutched the white dress. Freshly washed, freshly pressed, it smelled of flowers and summer.

On the leaded windows above them the winter rain hammered in a constant rattle.

After a while a man emerged. Black suit, white beard, a kindly face, a fixed professional smile. He took the dress, complimented them on the choice. Said, ‘Ten minutes.’ Then left.

It seemed much longer. They moved from seat to seat, stared at the walls. He took out his black woollen hat, turned it in his fingers. She saw, and tried not to watch.

Then the undertaker returned. The door was half open. A pale gentle light beyond. He beckoned them through.

Afterwards, in the red van driving slowly on the shining city road, Pernille said, ‘She looked beautiful.’

Theis Birk Larsen stared through the windscreen, out into the grey rain.

Her hand strayed out, touched the bristle of his sideburn, the rough familiar warmth of his cheek.

He smiled.

‘We’ve got to pick up the Thermos flasks,’ she said. ‘We can borrow two from Lotte.’

He tapped at a light on the dashboard.

‘I need some screen wash.’

A small filling station. Cars and vans. Men and women. The ordinary life, the mundane passage, the daily routine. All this swam around them as if nothing had happened. Nothing changed or broken or lost.

He didn’t reach for the pump. Didn’t do anything except march into the shop, race to the toilet.

There, in this anonymous place, door locked, in his black coat and woollen cap, Theis Birk Larsen crouched over the basin, sobbing, shaking, bawling like a child.

Twenty minutes she waited. No one approached. No one spoke. Then he came out pink-eyed, red-cheeked. Scraps of paper towel clung to his stubble where he’d wiped his face. Tears still lurked, grief still lingered.

In his hands was a small plastic bottle. Blue.

‘Here,’ he said and placed the screen wash in her lap.

Henning Kofoed’s home was a one-room flat behind the station. As squalid a bachelor place as Lund had ever seen. Books were thrown everywhere, food rotted on unwashed plates in the kitchen. Kofoed was a shifty-looking forty-year-old with a straggly brown beard and unkempt hair. He sucked on a foul-smelling pipe and regarded them with suspicion the moment they arrived.

‘Why should I have this paper?’

‘Because you took it,’ Meyer said. ‘For your… What is it? Linguistic study. That’s about how people talk, right?’

‘In a very crude fashion…’

‘In a very crude fashion let me say this… Find the fucking paper, Henning.’

‘I probably misplaced it. I’m sorry.’

There was a computer in the bedroom. Meyer went through and started nosing around. Kofoed followed getting edgier by the minute.

‘Did you read what Nanna wrote?’ Meyer asked.

‘I… I… read lots of things.’

‘Simple question. You don’t need a degree in linguistics to comprehend it. Did you read Nanna’s story?’

Silence.

‘I specialize in language. I look at words. Not the sentence so much. Did you know the word ciabatta never existed…?’

Meyer clutched his fists together and swore.

‘Forget about ciabatta, will you? Find us the damned essay.’

‘OK, OK, OK.’

He meandered into the adjoining room, started sifting through a jumble of files and papers scattered everywhere. The place looked like a record office that had been hit by a bomb.

Meyer glanced at Lund, smiled, pointed to the floor.

‘Did you throw it away?’

‘I’d never do that.’

He bent down over a set of collapsed drawers. Retrieved a plastic document folder.

‘Ah! I knew I had it.’

He handed it over.

‘Sorry. I’ll show you out.’

Kofoed walked to the door, opened it. Lund stood where she was.

‘I think we need to talk,’ she said.

‘About what?’

Meyer held up one of the magazines he found on the floor beneath the computer.

Hot Teenagers.

‘About young girls.’

The teacher sat on the computer chair in the bedroom watching Meyer sift through the magazines, flick open the photos.

He was sweating a lot and Lund had taken away his pipe.

‘Where were you on Friday?’ she asked.

‘At a conference in the city. About the language of youth.’

‘When did it end?’

‘Ten p.m.’

‘And then?’

‘I came home.’

Meyer leaned on the door frame, alternately scowling at the magazines and then Kofoed.

‘Are there any witnesses?’

‘No. I live alone. I work mostly.’

‘When you’re not playing with yourself,’ Meyer grunted. ‘Or looking at your girls.’

The teacher bristled.

‘I don’t like your tone.’

Meyer shook his head.

‘You don’t like my tone? I could arrest you for this.’

‘Those magazines aren’t illegal. I bought them here. Anyone can.’

‘You don’t mind if we take your computer then. You’ve got a portable hard drive down there too. What fun and games will we find on there?’

Kofoed went quiet. Went back to sweating.

‘Oh, Henning.’ Meyer came and sat in front of him. ‘Do you have any idea how guys like you get treated in prison?’

‘I haven’t done anything. I wasn’t the one they pointed the finger at…’

‘I’m pointing the finger!’

‘Meyer!’ Lund looked at the shaking teacher. ‘What do you mean, Henning? Who got the finger pointed at him?’

Silence.

‘We’re trying to help,’ she said. ‘If someone was under suspicion we need to know.’

‘It wasn’t me—’

‘So you keep telling us. Who was it?’

Scared man. But he didn’t want to say it.

‘I can’t remember—’

‘I’m taking the computer,’ Meyer said. ‘You’re going to jail. No job. No teaching. No chance to get close to the girls in the corridor—’

‘It’s not like that! It wasn’t me. The girl retracted everything…’ He was close to weeping. ‘He was cleared. He’s a nice guy.’

Meyer picked up a magazine, waved it in his face.

‘Who?’

‘Rama,’ Kofoed said.

He looked ashamed of himself. More ashamed than when Meyer pulled out the porn.

‘The girl made it up. He’s a nice man. Kind to everyone.’

‘Just like you,’ Meyer said and threw the mag in his face.

Pernille sat at the table trying to smile for the teacher, Rama. The handsome, polite one from the school. He’d brought flowers, photos, messages from the shrine. Took the chair opposite looking serious and sorrowful.

‘They’re a bit wilted. I’m sorry.’

She took them, knowing they’d go in the bin the moment he left. And that Rama understood this too.

‘Some of Nanna’s class would like to come to the funeral. If that’s OK.’

‘That’s fine.’

Rama smiled a brief, melancholy smile.

‘You can come too. Please.’

He seemed surprised. Did they think she wouldn’t want a foreigner?

‘Thank you. We’ll all be there. I won’t keep you any longer—’

‘Don’t go.’

He wanted to, she thought. But Pernille was past worrying about what others wanted any more.

‘Can you tell me something about her?’

‘Like what?’

‘Something she did.’

He thought about the question.

‘Philosophy. Nanna always loved that. She was really into Aristotle.’

‘Who?’

‘He was Greek. She was in our drama group.’

‘Acting?’

She never mentioned this. Not once.

‘I told them what Aristotle said about acting. She was very interested in that. She thought our plays should last from dawn till dusk. Just like the ancient Greeks.’

‘She was a schoolgirl,’ Pernille said, cross suddenly. ‘She had a life. Here. A real one. It wasn’t a dream. She didn’t need to make something up.’

A mistake. He looked embarrassed.

‘I think it was a joke.’ Checked his watch. ‘I’m sorry. I have to go. I work at a youth club. There’s an appointment. I can’t miss it.’

Pernille looked into his calm, dark face. Liked this man. Looked at the table. Ran her fingers across the dimpled lacquered surface, stared at the photos and the faces.

‘We made this together. Planed the timber. Glued it. Stuck the photos.’

The wood felt smooth now and worn. It wasn’t always. There were splinters. Tears sometimes.

‘You’re alone,’ the teacher said. ‘Is that—?’

‘Theis is downstairs. In the office. Doing…’

It was dark in there when she answered the bell. Not a single light.

Doing what?

Smoking. Hugging a bottle of beer. Weeping.

‘Paperwork,’ she said.

It wasn’t paperwork.

Birk Larsen sat still and silent in the dark office. The door opened. Vagn Skærbæk walked in, turned on the dim light by the notice-board. Keys in his hand. Checked the line of hooks on the wall. Found the right place. Kept things in order.

Didn’t see the man in the black jacket hunched over the desk, cigarette in hand, bottle in fist until Birk Larsen grunted something wordless.

‘Shit! You scared me.’

The figure didn’t move.

‘Are you OK, Theis?’

Turned on the main light. Walked forward, looked.

‘I’ll go and get Pernille.’

A strong hand reached out and held him.

Birk Larsen’s eyes were pink and watery.

Drunk.

He said, ‘A week ago I had a daughter. She walked out of here. Went to a party.’

‘Theis…’

‘I saw her again today.’ The eyes beneath the black hat closed, tears squeezed between the lids. ‘It wasn’t really her. It was like something… Something…’

‘I’m going to get Pernille. You don’t drink any more either.’

‘No!’

His voice was loud and fierce. Vagn Skærbæk knew not to ignore it.

‘Theis. I got this friend Jannik. He heard something.’

Skærbæk hesitated. Felt Birk Larsen’s eyes on him.

‘Heard what?’

‘Maybe nothing.’

Birk Larsen waited.

‘Jannik’s wife works at the school. He said the police came back again.’ Hands fidgeting with the silver chain. ‘They started questioning the staff. All Nanna’s teachers.’

Another cigarette. Another pull at the beer. He gazed at Vagn Skærbæk.

‘Maybe she knows more than he told me.’ Skærbæk licked his lips. ‘The police are useless shits. If they weren’t you and me—’

‘Don’t talk of that,’ Birk Larsen snarled. ‘Those days are gone.’

‘So you don’t want me to talk to Jannik’s wife?’

Birk Larsen sat on the hard seat, staring into space.

‘Theis…’

‘You do that.’

Elections played on ideas. Themes. Icons. Brands. So Troels Hartmann found himself that night putting on tennis shoes then walking in his office suit, out to the sports hall, Rie Skovgaard by his side.

Basketball was a young sport. He was the young candidate. A photo opportunity. A chance to shake hands.

‘Frederiksholm’s a model school,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing on any of the teachers. I’ve been through every file. Lund’s got them. We’re in the clear.’

The smell of sweat, the sound of a ball bouncing on wood.

‘You’ve got a photo shoot. Then we meet some of the role models. We get youth, we get recreation, we get community. One strike, three hits.’

Hartmann took off his jacket, pulled his shirt out of his trousers, rolled up his sleeves.

‘When do the civil servants go home?’

‘Concentrate on why we’re here. These people are important for us.’

They walked into the hall. Figures playing. Black and white. Moving quickly, noisily.

‘Morten told me he noticed a couple of civil servants working late. Why would they do that?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘He says we need to watch them.’

‘Morten’s paid to run your campaign. Not offer you advice like that.’

‘What if Bremer’s got someone inside? Causing mischief? Leaking emails. Getting hold of my diary.’

‘Leave me to worry about that. You’re the candidate. The public face. I can handle the rest.’

Hartmann didn’t move.

‘I went out of my way to fix this opportunity,’ Rie Skovgaard added. ‘We’ve got every media outlet that matters out there. Try to smile for them, will you?’

Onto the floor. Strong handshakes. Friendly greetings. One by one Hartmann talked to them, Iranian and Chinese, Syrian and Iraqi. Danish now, working for his integration programme. Unpaid role models for the communities around them.

Two teams. One with a gap for him.

Hartmann tied his laces, looked at the opposition, said: ‘Ready to be thrashed?’

For ten precious minutes this was all there was. Racing around the polished floor, throwing the ball. Passing it. Physical exertion. No thoughts. No strategies. No plans. Even the flash of the cameras didn’t bother him. The Rådhus. The Liberal Party. Poul Bremer. Kirsten Eller. Even Rie Skovgaard. All of them were gone.

A break in play. The throw came to him. Hartmann dashed, dummied, bounced, launched.

Watched the ball turn slowly through the air, descend to the net, fall through.

A roar. He punched the air. Pure emotion. No thought in his head.

The cameras burst like lightning. Smiling he turned, high-fived the nearest player.

Captured for ever: two men grinning happily at one another. Troels Hartmann in a blue shirt, victorious. The teacher called Rama, clasping his hand.

‘She walks down the corridor and finds the right hotel room. She’s about to knock. She wonders if this is wrong. Should she have come? It’s so different being with him. So different from everything at home. The garage she played in as a little girl with its smell of petrol. Her room and all her things. Far too many things because she can’t throw anything out. The kitchen where she spent hours with her mum, dad and two brothers, where they celebrated birthdays, Christmas and Easter. At home she will always be a little girl. But now… here in the hotel corridor… she’s a woman. She knocks. He answers.’

Feet up on her desk in her office Lund was reading Nanna’s story. Meyer walked in, arms full of food.

‘For your sake there’d better be a hot dog for me.’

‘No. Kebab.’

‘What kind?’

A shrug.

‘The meat kind. It’s a kebab, Lund.’

He placed a white plastic box on her desk, then a couple of pots of sauce.

‘No name,’ she said. ‘No description. Just a secret man she meets at various hotels.’

They flipped up the boxes and started to eat.

‘All we have,’ she went on, ‘is a pair of boots, an old essay and some gossip among the teachers.’

‘It’s not just gossip.’ He pulled out his notebook. ‘I spoke to Rektor Koch. Rama… or rather Rahman Al Kemal was involved in something a few years ago. A third-year student said he groped her.’

‘What happened?’

‘She withdrew the complaint. Koch thinks the kid had a crush on him. Made it up when he didn’t play.’

Lund emptied the entire pot of hot sauce on her kebab and took a bite. Meyer watched in horror.

‘Go careful with that stuff.’

‘Nothing wrong with my stomach. Why tell us about the essay if it was him?’

‘We’d have found it anyway. Let’s talk to him. He said he was at home with his wife. We can check that.’

Lund sifted through the personnel records.

‘That incident should have been written up in his file.’

‘Dead right,’ he agreed.

She was rifling through the papers.

‘Don’t waste your time, Lund. We never got his file. Hartmann’s people sent over all the rest. Not his.’

She was thinking.

‘We did ask for them all, didn’t we?’ Meyer asked.

‘Of course we did.’

Lund picked up the remains of her kebab and got her jacket.

‘Well?’

Outside Rama’s block in Østerbro she called home, got Mark. Spoke to him in the cobbled street, Meyer listening, not discreetly either.

There was a party. She issued instructions. Go straight home afterwards. Call if he needed her.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow,’ Lund said. ‘Saturday night. I’ll book the tickets.’

She looked at the phone.

‘Mark? Mark?’

Put it in her pocket.

Meyer said, ‘How old’s your boy?’

‘Twelve.’

‘Want some advice?’

‘Not really.’

‘You need to listen to him. A kid of that age has got a lot on his plate. What with girls and all the rest. His brain…’ Meyer’s voice took on a different tone, one she didn’t recognize. ‘It’s at a certain stage of development. Just listen to him.’

Lund strode ahead of him, trying not to get angry.

‘He says I’m only interested in dead people.’

Meyer stopped, stuttered some words she didn’t hear.

‘Must be his brain,’ Lund said. ‘Number four, isn’t it?’

They found the place and rang the bell.

A blonde woman, very pregnant, very tired, answered the door and let them in without an argument.

Rama wasn’t there. She said he had an appointment at the local youth club.

‘You teach at the school too?’ Meyer asked.

It was a nice, modern flat, only half-renovated. Stripped walls, naked doors. Barely habitable.

‘Yes. Just part-time at the moment. The baby…’

While he talked Lund wandered round, looking. They’d fallen into this routine easily, without talking about it. The pattern seemed to work.

‘Did you know Nanna Birk Larsen?’ he asked.

The slightest hesitation.

‘She wasn’t a student of mine.’

Pots of paint, rolls of carpet waiting to be laid. No photos. Nothing personal at all.

‘Were you at the party last Friday?’

‘No. I get tired easily.’

Lund found nothing of interest, wandered back to the main room where Meyer stood with Rama’s wife.

‘So you were at home?’ he said.

‘Yes. Well, I wasn’t actually at home.’

Nothing more.

Meyer took a deep breath and said, ‘So you weren’t at home?’

‘We’ve got a little cottage on some allotments outside Dragør. We were there all weekend.’

Dragør. The other side of Kastrup. Not more than ten or fifteen minutes by car from where Nanna was found.

‘This place is a mess,’ she added. ‘The floors were being sanded. We couldn’t stay.’

‘Ah.’ Meyer nodded. His ears, Lund thought, looked bigger when he was curious. Which seemed impossible. ‘So you were both there?’

‘Rama picked me up at half past eight. We drove out there.’

‘Let me get this straight…’

A lot bigger, Lund realized.

‘You and your husband spent the weekend at your allotment?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. I thought you might know something about the party at school.’

‘Nothing, sorry.’

Lund walked towards the window. Felt her shoe stub against something. A roll of carpet. What looked like some blinds.

A black circle of plastic was curled on the floor. She bent down, picked it up. Thought of Nanna in the back of her car. Ankles tied. Wrists tied. By something like this.

Meyer said they used them in gardens. To secure building material too. For lots of things.

Lund took out an evidence bag, dropped in the tie.

‘Do you want to talk to him again?’ the woman asked.

‘Not at the moment,’ Meyer said, packing his notebook.

Lund came back and asked, ‘Can I use the toilet?’

‘Through there. I’ll show you—’

‘No need. I’ll find it.’

‘Your first child?’ Meyer asked.

‘Yes.’

Lund walked on. Still heard them.

‘It’s a girl.’

Meyer’s voice brightened.

‘A girl! Really! That’s great. And you know too. Did you want to? Me, I like surprises…’

Plastic sheeting everywhere. A set of coat hooks. A painting.

‘I could give you some good tips if you’re interested.’ Meyer’s voice sounded cheery. ‘The first few months… You need to make him work.’

Lund heard her laugh.

‘You don’t know my husband. He’ll work. I won’t need to ask.’

Very quietly Lund walked into the bedroom. Clothes. Photos. Rama younger, bare-chested, smiling in what looked like a swimming team. Army insignia behind. A military pool perhaps. Good-looking man. Fit and muscular. A calendar. A school timetable.

Lund looked in the en suite bathroom. New sink, new toilet. Bare walls. There was another room. The sign on the door said ‘Nursery’.

It was dark. Just enough light from the street to see. Junk in the corner. Men’s toys. A sports kite. A speedboat.

By the window a pair of men’s hiking boots. She picked them up, looked at the sole, felt the mud there, rubbed it between her fingers.

Thought of the canal and the woods. And Dragør close by.

There was a bottle on an upturned box. White label, brown glass. Lund picked it up, made a note.

A cross voice behind said, ‘You walked past the toilet.’

The bottle went back. The bag with the tie she slid into her pocket.

‘Thanks,’ Lund said and went straight back to the hall. Then took Meyer outside.

Rektor Koch was in Hartmann’s office, Rie Skovgaard and Morten Weber listening.

‘They suspect one of our teachers,’ she said. ‘You need to tell me what to do.’

‘What do you mean?’ Hartmann asked.

‘They called me just now. Asking questions. They seem to know—’

‘Know what? We’ve an agreement with the police. They’ll talk to us first.’

‘They seem to know something.’ She squirmed on the seat. ‘I don’t want any damage. We’ve had enough bad publicity as it is. Should I suspend him?’

‘Have they taken anyone in for questioning?’

‘They’re going to. A particular teacher. There was an old incident.’

‘What incident?’ Skovgaard cut in. ‘I checked the files. There was nothing there.’

‘It was… unproven,’ Koch insisted. ‘But it was on the files. I wrote it myself. Nonsense on the part of a stupid girl. The teacher was innocent I’m sure. The police only started to look at him because he was Nanna’s form tutor.’

Hartmann asked, ‘So that’s why they’re interested?’

‘What other reason could there be?’

No answer.

Koch looked at the two of them.

‘I’ve explained the situation to you. I’ve done my duty. It’s your responsibility if the police or the newspapers come looking—’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Hartmann said with a wave of his hand. ‘Give me his name. I’ll talk to the police. I’m sure this is nothing.’

He got a pen.

‘His name is Rama. We call him that. His full name is Rahman Al Kemal.’

She spelled it out. Hartmann started writing. Stopped.

‘And he’s a teacher at Frederiksholm?’

‘I just told you.’

‘And they’re asking about him?’

An impatient sigh.

‘Yes. That’s why I’m here.’

He looked at Skovgaard. She frowned, shook her head.

‘Is something wrong?’ Koch asked.

‘No. I just wanted to be sure. Will you…?’ He looked at her. ‘Please step outside. Help yourself to a coffee. I’ll be with you in a moment.’

He closed the door. Skovgaard got up.

‘What’s going on here?’ Morten Weber asked.

‘I just shook hands with a role model called Rama,’ Hartmann said. ‘At the youth club.’

‘What?’

Weber glared at Skovgaard.

‘He met a teacher from that school? And you didn’t know?’

‘I didn’t see a teacher’s name on the list. I went through every file myself. Troels wouldn’t have been in the same room if I thought there was something wrong.’

‘But there is something wrong!’ Weber cried.

‘Every single file, Morten!’

Hartmann watched them, torn, not wanting to take sides.

‘Who gave you the files?’ Weber asked.

Skovgaard swore under her breath.

‘One of the civil servants in administration.’

Weber threw up his hands in exasperation.

‘I told you!’

‘They gave me the files. I looked at them. What else was I supposed to do? What…?’

Weber was on his feet, red-faced, screaming.

‘You could come to me, Rie. You could ask a question once in a while. Instead of marching off and doing whatever comes into your vapid little head—’

‘Morten,’ Hartmann intervened. ‘Calm down.’

‘Calm down? Calm down?’ He pointed to the door. ‘I’ve spent twenty years working these corridors. She comes from selling soap powder, spends ten minutes here and thinks she knows it all—’

‘Morten!’ Hartmann’s voice silenced him. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Yeah, Troels. It’s enough.’ Weber got hold of his bag. Stuffed in his papers with a shaking hand. ‘Let’s face it. If this election’s going to be run from between your bedsheets there’s not much room for me—’

Hartmann was on him, furious, fist in his face.

‘I don’t care how long I’ve known you. I won’t take that. Get out of here. Go home.’

Weber did that. No more speeches. No more hurled insults. Picked up his bag and left.

Rie Skovgaard watched.

Then when Weber had left said thanks.

‘I should have listened to him though,’ Hartmann said. ‘Shouldn’t I?’

‘I guess,’ she agreed.

The car back from Østerbro.

‘We need to check his past,’ Lund said. ‘He hasn’t always been a teacher. Check his allotment and his alibi.’

She pulled out the plastic evidence bag.

‘This goes to the lab. He’s got a bottle of ether. I wrote down the brand name. Find out if it’s the same kind that was found on the girl.’

Meyer wasn’t happy. For a change.

‘With all that evidence why didn’t we wait until he got home? Now he can get rid of everything.’

Her phone was ringing. Hartmann was in the contacts list by now. She could see it was him.

Lund passed the mobile to Meyer.

‘It’s Poster Boy. You talk to him. He probably wants to complain.’

‘Not the only one, Lund. What time’s your plane tomorrow? Do you need a lift to Kastrup?’

Bedtime stories. Pernille reading. The boys in their pyjamas, chests against the soft duvets, elbows on the bed, waggling their feet.

‘Is Nanna in the coffin?’ Anton asked when she closed the book.

Pernille nodded, tried to smile.

‘Is she going to be an angel?’

A long wait.

‘Yes. She is.’

Bright baffled faces gazed at her.

‘Tomorrow we say goodbye to Nanna. Then—’

‘Some of the children at school are saying things.’

Anton’s feet moved a little faster.

‘What sort of things?’

‘Someone killed her.’

Emil added, ‘And there was a man who did something bad.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Some children in the class.’

She took their hands, gently squeezed their small fingers, looked into their sparkling eyes. Could think of nothing to say.

Five minutes later they were tucked up and quiet. She heard Theis moving, went downstairs. The garage was filled with furniture. Rented tables and chairs. He stacked and moved some, picked up more in one hand than most men could with two.

‘The boys wanted to say goodnight.’

He heaved a table across the room.

‘I had to get on with this.’

‘They hear things at school.’

Nothing.

Pernille’s hand went to her neck.

‘I said it was the bogeyman.’

A trellis table. More chairs.

‘Theis. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to take them to the funeral. I mean…’

He didn’t listen, didn’t turn to look at her.

‘They should say goodbye, I know. But there’ll be so many people.’

A box of plastic plates and cutlery. He wiped his brow.

‘I don’t know how you and I will…’

The table he’d moved from right to left he now moved back where it came from.

‘Would you please stop doing that?’

He put it down, looked at her in silence.

In the pocket of the blue checked shirt his phone trilled.

Birk Larsen listened.

‘I’ll find out more from Jannik tomorrow,’ Vagn Skærbæk said. ‘The woman hasn’t heard anything new. I’ll try.’

‘OK.’

‘So you need any help tonight?’

‘No. See you tomorrow.’

When he came off the phone the garage was empty. He watched Pernille walk up the stairs. Then went back to moving tables, stacking chairs.

Mark seemed animated. As if he saw an opportunity.

‘So if we’re not going—’

‘We are going,’ Lund insisted. ‘Bengt is having a house-warming party.’

Her mother was ironing. She was packing clothes, throwing them into an empty suitcase, squashing them down with her palms and elbows, ready to sit on the thing if need be.

‘What if—?’

‘Mark! There’s no what if. We leave tomorrow. Gran’s coming with us for a few days. That’s it—’

Her phone rang. Bengt. Sounding anxious.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Lund told him. ‘Under control. We’ll see you tomorrow night. We’ve almost finished packing…’

She covered the mouthpiece, mouthed at Mark, ‘Pack!’

Then listened, heard a sound at the door. Vibeke answered. Lund looked. Troels Hartmann was standing there in a black winter coat looking every inch the politician.

Bengt said something she didn’t quite hear.

‘Of course I’m listening,’ Lund said.

She took the call into the other room, watched as Vibeke got Hartmann folding a long tablecloth for the new house.

In Sweden.

The new life.

‘Bengt,’ Lund said. ‘I’ve got to go.’

When she came back into the room Vibeke was asking him, ‘So are you the coroner?’

‘No,’ Hartmann said, holding the long white piece of cotton.

‘You’ve never folded a good tablecloth before,’ Vibeke told him, shaking her head. ‘I can see that. Look—’

‘Mum. I don’t think Troels Hartmann has time for that.’

Vibeke’s mouth fell open.

‘Hartmann?’ She looked him up and down. ‘You’re different on the posters.’

In the kitchen, the two of them alone, he shook his head, like a man disappointed.

‘You promised you’d keep me informed.’

‘I didn’t promise anything.’

She got a slice of bread, plastered on some butter and cheese, bit into it while he rambled angrily.

‘You’re looking at one of my teachers now. I had to hear about that from the school.’

Mouth half full, she asked him, ‘Why did you tell your people not to give us Kemal’s file? Where’s the cooperation there?’

He shook his head, said nothing.

‘We asked for all the files. On all the teachers, Hartmann. Why didn’t we get his?’

‘It’s the first I knew about it. Believe me.’

‘How come? You’re the boss, aren’t you?’

She finished the cheese, put the plate in the sink.

‘Yes, OK, it doesn’t look good. What do you want me to do?’

She raised an eyebrow, dried some dishes with a cloth.

‘Cooperate.’

‘I’m trying! I don’t know why I didn’t get his file.’ Then, a tone lower, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here. There’s something, someone, in my office…’

Lund looked interested.

‘Doing what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hartmann said. ‘Snooping. Seeing things they shouldn’t. It’s an election. You expect dirt to fly. But not…’

He looked at her.

‘If someone’s broken into our system that’s a crime, right?’

‘If—’

‘There’s something going on. You could take a look—’

‘I’m a homicide detective,’ Lund cut in. ‘Trying to find who raped and murdered a young girl. I don’t do office work. And I want that file.’

‘Fine.’ He looked furious. Desperate too. ‘I’ll get it. There must be a duplicate. Somewhere.’

‘Is there something special about Kemal?’ she asked.

‘He’s one of our role models. He helps young immigrants who’ve got into trouble. I’ve got his party records for that. He’s—’

‘So if he did it you’ll look bad? Is that it?’

Hartmann scowled at her.

‘It damages your campaign.’ She picked up an apple, thought about it, grabbed a bag of potato crisps instead. ‘You lose votes.’

‘You don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?’

Lund offered him a crisp.

‘If this is your man that’s all there is to it,’ Hartmann said. ‘No one in my office will stand in your way. I just want to know.’

‘Is that all?’

He brightened a little.

‘Yes. That’s all. Your turn now.’

She laughed.

‘What is this? A game? I’ve nothing to tell you. Kemal’s one line of inquiry. There are questions we need answered. Where he was…’

‘Fine. I’ll have him suspended.’

‘You can’t do that. We don’t have enough to arrest him.’

Lund got herself a bottle of milk from the fridge, sniffed it, poured herself a glass.

‘You can’t,’ she repeated. ‘I know you want a yes or no. I can’t say yet.’

‘When?’

Lund shrugged.

‘I’m handing the case over to a colleague tomorrow.’

‘Is he reliable?’

‘Unlike me?’

‘Unlike you.’

She toasted him.

‘He’s very reliable. You’re going to love him.’

Eleven in the evening in Hartmann’s private office. Under the blue light of the hotel sign he met Rie Skovgaard. She took one look at him and said, ‘It’s that bad?’

He threw his coat on the desk.

‘I don’t know exactly. Lund won’t tell me anything she doesn’t want to. They seem to think it’s him. She just won’t say it.’

Skovgaard checked her laptop.

‘The pictures they took tonight are going out. I can’t stop that. But no one knows he was a suspect, any more than you did when you shook his hand.’

‘Who kept back that file?’

‘I’m looking into it.’

She threw a set of dummy ads on the table. Foreign faces alongside white ones. Smiling. Together.

‘The next run of the campaign was all about integration. We pushed the role model idea a lot. I’m going to pull them. We’ll stop using the term. Focus on other issues till this blows over.’

‘The debate tomorrow—’

‘I’ll get you out of it. This is a gift to Bremer. Let me make some calls.’

Skovgaard walked to her desk, picked up the phone.

‘No.’ Hartmann watched her. Still dialling. He walked over, put the phone back on the hook. ‘I said no. The debate goes ahead.’

‘Troels—’

‘This is one man. A suspect. He hasn’t been found guilty and even if he is that doesn’t say anything about all the other role models. They’ve done plenty of good work. I won’t let them be slandered through this.’

‘Oh fine words!’ she yelled at him. ‘I hope they sound good when we lose.’

‘This is what we’re about. What I’m about. I have to stand by what I believe—’

‘You have to win, Troels. If you don’t it doesn’t matter a shit.’

He was getting mad now. Wished he’d expended some of this on Lund, watching him all the time with those glittering eyes while she munched on a sandwich and gulped at her milk.

‘We owe these people something. Day in, day out, they work with these kids. Do things you wouldn’t dream of. Me neither.’

He picked up a stash of papers, threw them at her.

‘We’ve got the statistics. The proof it works.’

‘The press…’ she began.

‘To hell with the press!’

‘They’ll crucify us if he did it!’ She got up, came to him, put her arms on his shoulders. ‘They’ll crucify you. Like they did your father. This is politics, Troels. Save your fine words for speeches. If I’ve got to go into the gutter to get you into that chair I’ll do it. That’s what you pay me for.’

Hartmann turned away, looked out at the night beyond the window.

Her hand came to his hair.

‘Come home with me, Troels. We can talk about it there.’

A moment of silence between them. An instant of indecision, of doubt.

Then Hartmann kissed her forehead.

‘There’s nothing to talk about. We’re going ahead as planned. Everything. The posters. The debate. Nothing changes.’

Eyes closed, fingers at her pale temple.

‘The civil servant who brought you the school files…’ Hartmann said.

‘What about him?’

‘Make some room in my schedule. Tomorrow. I want to see him.’

Lund was pinning pictures of Kemal on the board, listening to Meyer read out what he’d found. Ten officers in the room, Buchard on his feet at the head of the table.

‘Born in Syria. Damascus. Fled with his family when he was twelve. His father’s an imam and frequents the Copenhagen mosque.’

Meyer looked around them.

‘Apparently Kemal has severed ties with his family. They think he’s too Western. Danish wife. No religion. After school and national service he became a professional soldier.’

Pictures of him smiling in a blue beret.

‘Then he went to university and completed his Masters. Joined the school seven years ago. Two years ago he married a colleague. The school says he’s popular. Well-respected—’

Buchard cut in, shaking his head.

‘This doesn’t sound like the kind of man—’

‘He was accused of molesting a girl,’ Lund said. ‘No one wanted to believe it at the time.’

The chief still looked unconvinced.

‘What does the girl say?’

‘We can’t reach her. She’s backpacking in Asia.’

Meyer held up the evidence bag with the plastic tie.

‘Lund found this in Kemal’s apartment. It matches the one used on the girl.’

‘And you’ve got ether too?’ Buchard asked. He scratched his pug head. ‘Lots of people use those ties. Ether… I don’t know. This isn’t enough.’

‘We’ll run through his alibi,’ Lund said. She unsealed the first of a set of envelopes. Photos of Nanna. ‘I want these pictures distributed around all the city hotels. She went somewhere.’

‘Put a team on Kemal,’ Buchard ordered. ‘So we know what he’s doing. Not too close. The funeral’s today. We don’t want to disturb the family.’

The chief cast his beady eyes around the table.

‘It’s bad enough as it is. Let’s not make things worse.’

Twenty minutes later Lund and Meyer sat down to interview Stefan Petersen, a podgy, retired plumber who had one of the little houses on the allotments on the edge of Dragør.

‘I’ve got number twelve. He’s got number fourteen. In a year’s time I’ll have been there long enough to live in it all year round,’ he said proudly. ‘Can’t choose your neighbours. But it’s a nice place all the same.’

Meyer asked, ‘On Friday? Did you see Kemal and his wife arrive?’

‘Oh yes.’ Petersen’s attention was fully on him, not Lund. He liked talking to a man. ‘About eight or nine I think. I saw something else later too.’

He looked pleased with himself.

‘It’s because I smoke cigarillos.’ Petersen pulled out a packet of small cigars. ‘Mind if I—?’

‘Damned right I mind,’ Meyer barked at him. ‘Put those things away. What did you see?’

‘Smoke if you want,’ Lund said, taking a lighter out of his bag, flicking it for him.

The fat plumber grinned and lit up.

‘Like I was saying… I’m a smoker. But the missus won’t let me have a cigarillo indoors. So I sit on the patio. Rain or shine. There’s a roof.’

Lund smiled at him.

‘The Arab came out of his house. And drove away.’

‘Kemal, you mean?’

He looked at Meyer as if she was being dim.

‘What time was that?’ Lund asked.

He thought about this, wreathed in a cloud of stinking fumes.

‘I watched the weather forecast afterwards so it must have been about half past nine.’

‘Did you see the car return?’

‘I don’t stay out all night. But it was there the next morning.’

She got up, shook his hand, said thanks.

When the plumber was gone Meyer marched up and down the office, as if claiming it for himself.

Lund leaned on the door, watching.

‘Why would Kemal’s wife lie about his whereabouts?’ she asked.

‘Let’s find out.’

‘We wait until after the funeral.’

‘Why? Do you want me to call Hartmann and ask his permission?’

Buchard was at the door.

‘Lund,’ he said, jerking his thumb towards his office.

‘What about me?’ Meyer asked.

‘What about you?’

She went to get away from the plumber’s cigarillo smoke.

‘The answer’s no,’ Lund said before Buchard got out a word.

‘Listen to me—’

‘I can help you by email. Or over the phone. Maybe pop over once in a while.’

‘Let me speak,’ the old man pleaded. ‘That’s not it. Did you check out the father?’

‘Of course I checked out the father!’

‘What did you find out?’

She frowned, trying to remember.

‘Not much. Nothing interesting. Minor offences. Stolen goods. Bar brawls. It was twenty years ago. Why?’

Buchard helped himself to some water. He looked tired and sick.

‘I got a call from a retired DCI. You know the kind. Nothing better to do than read the papers.’

He passed her a note.

‘He says Birk Larsen was dangerous. Really dangerous.’

‘Anything sexual?’

‘Not that he’d heard. But he said we didn’t know the half of it.’

‘So what? We checked. He’s got an alibi. It can’t be him.’

‘You’re sure?’

Sure.

There was a word. Everyone wanted to be sure. No one was really. Because people lied. To others. To themselves sometimes. She even did it herself.

‘I’m sure,’ she said.

In the kitchen the boys ran around, Vagn’s little cars in their hands. Theis Birk Larsen in black, ironed white shirt, funeral tie. Talking on the phone. Of Thermos flasks and tables, sandwiches and what to drink.

Anton stumbled, knocked a vase to the floor. The last of Nanna’s flowers. Pink roses, more stalk than petal.

Stood with his brother, both heads down. Waiting for the storm to break.

‘Go and wait in the garage,’ Birk Larsen said. Not severely.

‘I didn’t mean…’ the child started.

‘Go and wait in the garage!’ Their things were on the table. ‘And don’t forget your coats.’

When they left he heard the radio news. The first item: Nanna’s funeral at St John’s Church. As if she belonged to them all now. Not the family that used to eat around the table, in the bright light of the window, thinking nothing would ever change.

‘Many people have arrived to pay their respects,’ the announcer went on. ‘Outside there’s—’

He turned it off. Tried to still his thoughts. Called, ‘Sweetheart?’

An old word. One he’d used since she was a mouthy, pushy teenager looking for excitement. A glimpse of the rough world outside the middle classes where she belonged.

He remembered her clearly. Saw himself too. A thug, a thief. A villain. Getting tired of that life. Looking for a rock. Looking to be one himself.

‘Sweetheart?’

It was her from the start. She saved him. In return…

A family. A home. A small removals firm built from nothing, their name on the side. It seemed so much. All he could hope to offer. All he had to give.

Still she didn’t answer. He walked into the bedroom. Pernille sat naked and hunched on the bed. On her upper left arm, still vivid and blue as the day she got it, sat a tattooed rose. He remembered when she went down the hippie parlour in Christiania. They’d been smoking. He’d been dealing, not that she knew. It was Pernille’s way of saying, ‘I’m yours now. Part of that life you have. Part of you.’

He hated that rose and never said so. What he wanted of her were the very things she took for granted. Her decency, her honesty, her integrity. Her infinite capacity for blind, inexplicable love.

‘Are you coming?’

The black dress lay on the bed with her underwear. A black bag. Black tights.

‘I can’t decide what to wear.’

Birk Larsen stared at the clothes on the duvet.

‘I know…’ she began.

Voice cracked, tears starting.

He heard himself shrieking inside.

‘It doesn’t matter, does it, Theis? Nothing does.’

Her hands went to her brushed chestnut hair.

‘I can’t do this. I can’t go.’

He thought, as best he could.

‘Maybe Lotte can help.’

She didn’t hear. Pernille’s eyes were fixed on the mirror: a naked woman in middle age, body getting flabby, breasts loose. Stomach stretched by children. Marked by motherhood. How it should be.

‘The flowers should be right…’ she murmured.

‘They will be. We’ll get through this.’

Birk Larsen bent down, picked up the black dress, held it out.

‘We’ll get through this,’ he said. ‘OK?’

Downstairs Vagn Skærbæk sat with the boys. Out of his red overalls. Black shirt, silver chain, black jeans.

‘Anton. It was just a vase. Don’t worry.’

Birk Larsen heard this as he walked through the round tables and chairs, looked at the white porcelain plates they’d rented, the glasses, the food under foil at the side.

‘I broke a bottle once,’ Skærbæk said. ‘I did lots of stupid things. We all do.’

‘We need to get in the car,’ Birk Larsen ordered. ‘We’re leaving.’

The boys moved quickly, heads down, not a word.

Skærbæk looked at him.

‘What about Pernille?’

‘Her sister’s going to take her.’

‘Isn’t Mum coming?’ Anton asked, climbing into the car.

‘Not with us.’

Skærbæk said, ‘Theis, I was thinking… The woman at the school. It’s best I don’t talk to her.’

‘Why not?’

Skærbæk shrugged.

‘You’ve got a lot on your plate. Maybe she doesn’t know a thing. Just gossip.’

‘That’s not what you said last night.’

‘I know but…’

Birk Larsen bristled, stared at Skærbæk, a smaller man. A weaker man. This was always their relationship. One cemented by violence, by fists in the early days.

Finger in Skærbæk’s face he said, ‘I want to know.’

The civil servant called Olav Christensen was in Hartmann’s office, looking at the campaign posters. About role models. Integration. The future.

Twenty-eight but he seemed younger. Fresh-faced. Biddable.

He was sweating.

‘We have a small problem,’ Hartmann said. ‘The files you gave us on the teachers.’

A baffled smile.

‘What about them?’

‘One was missing.’

A pause.

‘Missing?’

‘It doesn’t look good, does it, Olav? I mean we ask. You deliver.’ Hartmann stared at him. ‘That’s the way it works, doesn’t it?’

Christensen said nothing.

‘I’m going to be boss of you and everyone who owns you soon. How about an answer?’

‘Maybe it got lost when we moved the archives.’

‘Maybe?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘This is the Rådhus. We’ve got documents going back a century. All kept in locked cabinets.’

Hartmann waited.

‘They are,’ Christensen agreed.

‘There are no cabinets missing,’ Skovgaard chipped in. ‘Or reports of lost files. I asked your boss. He’s sure of it.’

‘Maybe there was an error made with the filing.’

The two of them waited.

‘We have these trainees. Kids. I’m sorry. Mistakes happen.’

Hartmann got up, went to the window, looked out.

‘Funny the one file they should lose is the one we wanted. The one that could embarrass us. The police needed that, Olav. They think I held it back. They think I’ve got something to hide.’

Christensen listened, nodded.

‘I’ll find out what happened and get back to you.’

‘No,’ Hartmann said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’

He came and stood very close to the man.

‘Here’s what happens,’ Hartmann said. ‘On Monday we order a formal inquiry. We get to the bottom of this. That’s for sure.’

‘An inquiry?’

Rabbit in the headlamps. Deer in the sights.

‘But if the file turns up,’ Hartmann added. ‘It won’t matter, will it?’

‘I don’t know anything about this.’

‘Well. Then we’re done.’

They watched him go.

‘I remember him now,’ Hartmann said. ‘He applied for the job of director last year. Cocky little bastard. I didn’t even put him on the short list. He’s getting his own back.’

‘You think he’s doing favours for Bremer?’

‘I don’t know. He’s got access to our network. Make everyone change their passwords. Let’s take care.’

Hartmann looked out into the main office.

‘Where the hell’s Morten? I know I bit his head off but—’

‘He called in sick. He’s not a well man, Troels. He shouldn’t be doing a job like this.’

‘He’s diabetic. It comes and goes. His moods are unpredictable sometimes. You learn to live with it.’

She came and sat on the edge of the sofa.

‘I’ve been here five months. How long’s Morten worked for you?’

He had to think.

‘Off and on? For ever.’

‘And how long have people regarded you as a serious contender to be Lord Mayor?’

Ambition. She was never short of it. Ambition was a good thing. Nothing happened without it.

Her hand fell on his cheek.

‘We’ll get by without Morten,’ Rie Skovgaard said. ‘Don’t worry.’

It was bright and cold outside. A sharp winter sun. Weekend shoppers. Families out for the day.

Olav Christensen walked into the square and called.

‘I want that file back,’ he said.

Things were changing in City Hall. No one knew which way they’d go.

Silence on the line.

‘Did you hear me?’

He was getting mad, which maybe wasn’t such a good idea. But he couldn’t help it. Hartmann was no fool. No naive good guy either. Christensen could see that in his eyes.

An inquiry…

Documents got tagged, counted in, counted out. It would take a day to discover that he’d retrieved the Kemal file along with all the others. Seen the trouble it might cause. Put it to one side just in case.

There was no way out. No excuse. No lie he could invent.

His head would be on the line in an instant. Career down the drain.

Still not a word.

‘I did a big favour for you, man!’ A kid walking past with a couple of red balloons stared at him for yelling. ‘Don’t screw me around. I want some help here. I told you before. I don’t go down on my own.’

That was stupid. It sounded like a warning. Olav Christensen knew exactly who he was dealing with. Someone who issued threats, didn’t take them.

‘Look… What I’m trying to say is…’

He listened. Nothing there. Not even the slow rhythmic sound of his breathing.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Hello?’

Brown brick spire against a pale blue sky. Bells in tumbling chimes. Cameras outside. Crowds in the street.

Lund thought of the case, of the investigations ahead.

Was he here too? The man who held Nanna hostage, raped her repeatedly, beat her, tormented the girl for hours on end? Forensics were getting somewhere. The soap on her skin was recent and unlike anything at home. There was blood beneath the mud in her nails, skin cut clumsily by scissors or clippers. How many explanations were there? Just one. He’d bathed her somewhere, washed clean her bruised, torn skin, clipped her fingernails as she fought him. Then set her running through the dark woods barefoot in her scanty slip. Until…

Hide and seek.

Meyer said that and Meyer was no fool.

This was a game. Not quite real. When he locked her alive in the boot of Troels Hartmann’s campaign car and sent her screaming into that distant canal, he watched. The way another might enjoy a movie. Or a road accident.

Or a funeral.

A savage, unreal game.

What did he look like?

Ordinary. Criminals weren’t a race apart, marked by scars or strange physical afflictions. Separate from their victims. They were one with them. A stranger on a bus. A man in a shop who says hello every morning.

Or a teacher who came to the same school day after day, impressed everyone with his honesty, remarkable only for his apparent decency in a world where few cared.

Lund looked around as she always did, lustrous eyes roaming. Looked and imagined.

Monstrous deeds had no need of monsters. They were the work of the everyday and the undistinguished. Cruel tears in the fabric of a society struggling to be whole. Wounds in the city’s communal body, bleeding and painful.

She observed the sea of faces around her as she walked, found a space in the darkness by a pillar, sat down.

A place from which she could watch unseen.

The organ struck up wheezing. An old hymn. Lines from a Christmas carol she could barely remember.

Lund did not sing.

Lisa Rasmussen, across the aisle, did not sing.

Birk Larsen’s right-hand man from the garage, Vagn Skærbæk, face streaming with tears, black hat clutched to his chest, did not sing.

The teacher known as Rama, seated in a pew with his pupils, did not sing.

At the front, seated by the white coffin, Pernille and Theis Birk Larsen did not sing, but sat with their boys looking lost, as if everything — the church, the people, the music, but most of all the shining white coffin that sat by their side — was unreal.

The priest. A thin man, with a craggy, miserable face. In black with a white ruff round his neck, he emerged from the gloom by the altar, glanced at the casket with its rose wreath, gazed slowly round the packed and silent rows ahead.

Said in a ringing, loud, theatrical voice, ‘Today we bid farewell to a young woman. She was taken from us far too young.’

Hidden in the shadows Lund looked at the parents. Pernille dabbing at her eyes. Her husband, a lion of a man, a grizzled old beast. Head down, face rigid, staring at the stone floor.

‘It’s most unfair,’ the priest said in a tone that reminded Lund of a letter to the bank. ‘Beyond comprehension.’

She shook her head. No. This was untrue. It had to be.

‘So we ask ourselves — what is the meaning?’

Kemal — Rama, she still thought of him this way — was three rows back in a black suit and white shirt. Dark hair clipped close.

‘We question our faith, our trust in one another.’

Lund took a deep breath, closed her eyes.

‘And we ask — how are we to move on?’

She stiffened at that dread, deceptive phrase. Loathed it with a vengeance. No one moved on. They swallowed their grief. They hoped to bury it. But it lived with them. Always would. A cross they had to bear. A constant, recurring nightmare.

‘Christianity is about peace. Reconciliation and forgiveness. But it’s not easy to forgive.’

Lund nodded. Thought: right there.

His voice took on a high, ethereal tone.

‘Yet when we forgive, the past no longer controls us. And we can live in freedom.’

Lund looked at the man, in his black robe, white ruff. Wondered: what would he say if he was there by the canal that bleak cold night? Watching Theis Birk Larsen scream and rage. Watching Nanna’s dead limbs tumble from the boot with the filthy rank water, seeing the black line of snaking eels writhe down her naked legs.

Would he forgive? Could he?

The organ struck up. She noted who sang and who did not. Then Sarah Lund walked outside.

They knew the teacher would be at the funeral. So Meyer went to the apartment to talk to his wife.

Midday and she was in a bulging white nightdress and black cardigan.

Didn’t take long to get her talking about the accusation from the girl a few years back.

‘It’s a stupid old story,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘Rektor Koch wrote a report.’

‘The kid made it up. She admitted it.’

‘We spoke to a man from the allotments at Dragør. The plumber.’

Kemal’s wife grimaced.

‘He saw your husband go out about half past nine on Friday night.’

‘He hates us. Doesn’t mind borrowing our hedge trimmer. I always have to ask for it back.’

Meyer asked himself: what would Lund do?

‘Did your husband go out?’

‘Yes. He drove to the petrol station.’

‘When did he get back?’

‘About fifteen minutes later, I suppose. I went to bed while he was out. I was very tired.’

‘I can imagine. When did you see him again?’

‘About three. I woke up. He was lying next to me.’

Meyer thought about Lund’s long pauses. That relentless, glittering stare.

He took off his anorak. The woman’s eyes were fixed on the gun on his hip.

‘So you didn’t see him between half past nine and three the next morning?’

‘No. But I’m sure he was there. He likes to read or watch TV.’

She smiled at him.

‘Do you have a wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know when she’s in the house? Can’t you feel…?’

Meyer didn’t answer. Instead he said, ‘Were you there all weekend? While the floors were being sanded?’

‘That’s right. The workmen were being difficult.’

He got up, started walking round the room, checking out the building material.

Looking.

‘In what way?’

‘They didn’t turn up. Rama had to sand the floors himself. On Sunday he spent all day putting up new tiles in the bathroom.’

‘So he was gone all day Saturday and Sunday? Did he leave first thing?’

She hugged herself inside the cardigan.

‘I think you should go now.’

‘Was he gone from six in the morning until eight in the evening?’

The woman got up, got angry.

‘Why are you asking me these questions when you don’t believe a word I tell you? Please. Leave.’

Meyer got his jacket. Said, ‘OK.’

Forgive us our trespasses.

Pernille barely heard the Lord’s prayer, the one she’d listened to, recited since she was a girl.

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

All she saw was the shiny white wood. The flowers, the notes. The coffin that hid the truth. Inside…

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Anton nudged her, asked in a clear, young voice, ‘Why doesn’t Dad have his hands together?’

Forever and ever.

‘Shush,’ she said, putting a finger to her lips.

‘Why don’t you?’ asked Emil, staring at her hands.

The boys were in their best clothes, fingertips pressed together.

Her eyes filled with tears. Her mind with such memories.

Amen.

The sound came first. The low gentle fluting of the organ. Then shapes slowly rose around her, one by one. Flowers in hand. Faces blank and numb. Relatives. People she half knew. Strangers…

Roses placed on the casket by pale, trembling fingers.

‘We’ve got something,’ Anton said. ‘Mum. We’ve got something too.’

He was the first of the family to stand. Theis the last, brought to his feet by Anton’s gentle touch. Together the four walked towards her.

Towards it.

White wood and roses. A fragrance to hide a stench.

When they got there the two boys linked hands, placed a small map on the coffin. The city. Its rivers and streets.

‘What’s that nonsense?’ Theis asked in a low furious voice. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s for Nanna,’ Emil said. ‘So when she flies past she can see where we live.’

By the casket, four of them, both bound and separated by emotions they could not name.

Anton crying, asked, ‘Are you cross, Dad?’

Are you cross?

Not an angry man. Not of late. Not since the children came along and made their lives whole.

She knew that. As did he.

And the boys, mostly.

‘No,’ Birk Larsen said, bending down to kiss both on their heads, taking their shoulders into his wide arms, holding them to him.

Pernille barely noticed. All she saw was the coffin. Her tears running down, salt stains on white wood.

His hand, rough callused fingers, reached out, entwined themselves in hers.

‘Theis…?’ she whispered.

Pernille bent her head, puzzled how the single word her mind was forming could contain so much meaning, so much life and hurt and grief.

Looked into his coarse and grizzled face and said, ‘Now?’

A squeeze of the fingers, a nod of the head.

They walked down the aisle, past the lines of mourners. Past pupils and teachers, past neighbours and friends. Past the inquisitive policewoman who watched them at the door with glittering sad eyes.

Out into the wan daylight, leaving Nanna behind.

Hartmann was listening to the hourly newscasts now. Couldn’t stop himself. The police had put out another statement, as meaningless as most of the others. They had every available resource working on the case. Buchard, the pugnacious chief inspector, came on, sounding gruff and tetchy.

‘We’re following a lead but that’s all we can say.’

And then the weather.

Rie Skovgaard came in, said edgily, ‘My dad needs to see you.’

The debate with Bremer was an hour away. He pulled a tie out of the drawer, got up, tried it on in a mirror.

‘Busy?’ Kim Skovgaard asked taking a seat.

‘Never too busy for you.’

‘So you’re going to the debate? You’re going to talk about integration? Foreigners? Role models?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Rie’s worried about you, Troels.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘She’s a very smart woman. I’m not just saying that because she’s my daughter.’ He got up, came and put his hand on Hartmann’s arm. ‘You should listen to her more. But right now you should listen to me. Don’t talk about role models. Not tonight.’

‘Why?’

Skovgaard’s voice changed, became stern and impatient.

‘It’s enough that one of your cars is involved in the Birk Larsen case. Anything the papers have about you and immigrants will be dug out of the archives and thrown in your face. Save your love for dark faces till later. When it wins some votes, not loses them.’

‘And tonight?’

He straightened Hartmann’s tie.

‘Tonight you’ll focus on housing. On the environment.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

Skovgaard wasn’t smiling any more, and that was rare.

‘But it is. You don’t seem to understand. I’m telling you to do this. Not asking. There are people watching you. In this place. In Parliament. You will do what I say.’

Hartmann stayed silent.

‘It’s in your best interests. Everyone’s—’

‘But…’

‘I’m only trying to help my future son-in-law.’

He patted Hartmann’s arm. It was a condescending gesture. Meant that way.

‘You’ll get your reward, Troels. And it won’t be in heaven either.’

Hartmann and Rie Skovgaard were walking to the TV studio. What started as a discussion was boiling up into an argument.

‘You knew he was coming,’ he said. ‘You fixed that.’

She stared at him as if he were crazy.

‘No. Who do you think I am? Machiavelli? Dad was in the Rådhus. He turned up in front of my desk. What was I supposed to do?’

Hartmann wondered whether he believed her.

‘But you agree with him?’

‘Of course I do. It’s obvious. To everyone except you. When you see an iceberg you steer away from it. You don’t—’

‘I’m not your little puppet,’ Hartmann broke in. ‘Or your father’s.’

She stopped, threw up her hands in despair.

‘Do you want to get elected or not? There are no prizes for losers. All your fine ideals mean nothing if Poul Bremer marches back into office.’

‘That’s not the only issue.’

‘What is then?’

The producer was walking towards them.

Skovgaard beamed at him, turned soft and charming in an instant.

‘Not now, Troels,’ she hissed.

Lund found Meyer in the Memorial Yard, an open space on the ground floor of the Politigården. Quiet and solitary. A statue, the Snake Killer, good fighting evil. On one wall the names of a hundred and fifty-seven Danish police officers killed by the Nazis. On another a shorter list: those killed on duty more recently.

He was eyeing that wall, smoking anxiously.

‘What was he like?’ Lund asked.

Meyer jumped, surprised by her presence.

‘Who?’

‘Schultz.’

Hurt in his eyes. An accusation too.

‘You’ve been checking up on me?’

‘I looked through the press archive for Hartmann. I just thought…’

Four years before. She dimly remembered the case. An undercover narcotics cop in Aarhus was murdered by one of the gangs. Meyer was his partner. Sick on the day he was killed. His career had been shaky ever since.

‘He was an idiot,’ Meyer said. ‘Went off on his own. If he’d waited a day I’d have been back on duty.’

She nodded at the wall.

‘Then maybe there’d be two names there instead.’

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s not the point.’

‘What is?’

‘We were a team. We did things together. Looked out for each other. That was part of the deal. He broke it.’

She said nothing.

‘Like me forgetting to buy you a hot dog. For which I apologize.’

‘Not quite the same.’

‘Yes, it is.’

He pulled a half-eaten banana from his pocket, bit at it between pulls on the cigarette.

‘Buchard wants to see us,’ she said.

Back in their office. An empty packet of crisps sat on the desk. Along with a sceptical Buchard.

‘Kemal leaves his wife to go and meet the girl. They have an argument in the flat,’ Meyer said.

Lund was on the phone.

‘He ties her up and drugs her. And drives home.’

Buchard propped his chin on his fist, stared at Meyer with his round, beady eyes. Said nothing.

‘On Saturday morning he claims the workman has cancelled. But really Kemal has cancelled him.’

Buchard made to say something.

‘The workman confirmed that,’ Meyer said quickly. ‘I tracked him down.’

Lund’s voice rose from the other side of the office.

‘There’s time, Mum. Stop panicking. I said I’d be there. Why won’t you believe me? OK?’

The call ended. She pulled a pack of Nicotinell out of her packet, eyed the cigarettes on the desk.

‘So,’ Meyer went on. ‘He returns to the flat and the girl. He waits for it to get dark. Then he picks up the car at the school, drives back, carries the girl to the car and goes off to the woods.’

Lund came over, sat down, listened.

Meyer was warming to his idea.

‘On Sunday he removes any traces, sands the floor and puts up tiles.’

‘I’m going,’ Lund said to Buchard. ‘Talk to you soon.’

Meyer waved a hand in the air.

‘Wait, wait,’ he cried. ‘What’s wrong with it? Share the secret with dumb little Jan. Please.’

The two of them watched him.

‘Please,’ he repeated.

‘How could he have driven Hartmann’s car?’ Lund asked.

Meyer struggled.

‘He probably found the keys at the school on Friday night.’

Meyer watched Lund, waiting. So did Buchard.

‘I don’t think he’s that stupid,’ she said. ‘In fact I think he’s very clever.’

‘Exactly,’ Meyer agreed.

‘If I were you,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t drag him in until you get some hard evidence.’

She smiled.

‘But it’s your case.’ She held out her hand. ‘Thanks for everything. It’s been really…’

The word seemed to elude her.

‘Really educational.’

He took her hand, shook it vigorously.

‘You can say that again.’

‘I’ve left my number. If…’

He stared at her.

‘I’m sure you won’t need it. But…’

Buchard sat on the desk looking miserable. Before he could say a word she shook his hand too, said goodbye.

Then walked out of the Copenhagen Police Headquarters. Career over. Job gone.

Case still open.

The cab had a dropdown TV. Mark one side, Vibeke the other, Lund watched the nightly news. A debate between Hartmann and Bremer. All the polls said the fight for City Hall was a battle between these two. One misstep might give the other the game.

‘We haven’t bought any beer or brandy,’ Vibeke complained.

‘There’s plenty of time.’

‘And chocolates to go with the coffee.’

‘They sell chocolates in Sweden I believe.’

‘Not our chocolates!’

Lund’s phone rang. She looked at the number.

Skov. The detective she’d sent chasing information about Theis Birk Larsen after Buchard’s tip-off from the retired cop.

Waited. Thought about leaving it. Answered anyway.

‘What took you so long?’ He sounded excited. ‘I got the file from the retired DCI.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you want to know what’s in it?’

‘Give it to Meyer.’

He hesitated.

‘To Meyer?’

‘That’s what I said.’

The weather report. Lund picked up the remote, turned it off.

‘What does it say?’

‘It’s a case from twenty years ago. Some kind of vendetta between dope dealers. It never went to court.’

Mark looked around the car, mumbled, ‘I’ve forgotten my cap. Left it at Gran’s…’

‘It looks to me as if…’

‘Mum?’

‘I’ll buy you a new one.’

The cop droned on, ‘It’s about a…’

‘I don’t want a Swedish cap.’

‘We’re not turning back now, Mark.’

Silence on the phone.

‘I’m listening,’ Lund insisted.

‘Really?’ Skov said. ‘It involved a pusher from Christianshavn. Got beaten up. Almost killed. They never found who was responsible. Theis Birk Larsen was the main suspect. They questioned him.’

‘Mark!’

He was rootling round the footwell, looking for something else.

‘I forgot—’

‘I don’t care what you forgot,’ she snapped. ‘We’re going.’

‘Brandy and beer and cigarettes,’ her mother murmured from the other side.

‘Birk Larsen had a motive,’ the cop said. ‘The drug dealer had threatened to reveal something involving him. Was going to talk to us.’

‘About what?’

‘Don’t know. He kept quiet after that. Real scared of Birk Larsen it seems. The man’s got a reputation. Violence. Bad temper. Wait… I’m still reading this. There’s a second file underneath.’

Then, so loud she took the phone from her ear, ‘Christ!’

Mark was fidgeting, her mother still moaning.

‘What is it?’

Silence.

‘What is it?’

‘They went back a month later to see if the pusher had changed his mind. Intelligence asked for it. They really wanted Birk Larsen.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. They found him dead. I’ve got the pictures here. Jesus…’

‘What?’

‘This is worse than the first time. The guy looks like a piece of meat.’

‘OK,’ she cut in. ‘You need to tell Meyer.’

‘Meyer’s busy.’

‘Tell him to call me right away.’

‘OK. Bye.’

The garage was full, the wake quiet. No speeches. No songs. Only tables covered with white cloths and flowers, portable chairs, simple food.

Theis Birk Larsen wandered among their guests, nodding, saying little. Watching the boys, Emil and Anton, grow puzzled and bored.

Pernille flitted from table to table. Listening, speaking rarely. Letting the gentle murmur of so many voices dull her pained, bruised mind.

This was a business. People still called. Customers. They had no idea.

By the door, on the extension, Vagn Skærbæk fielded them all, watching, sad-eyed in his black jumper, black jeans.

Coffee and water. Sandwiches and cake.

Birk Larsen walked like a ghost between tables, making sure cups were full, plates never empty. A waiter with nothing to say.

Then, in the office, by the hot silver urn, Skærbæk cornered him.

‘Theis. I just had a call.’

‘No business today, Vagn. I’m making coffee.’

‘I just spoke to Jannik’s wife. The woman at the school.’

Birk Larsen turned off the tap, put the half-filled cup on the table.

Walked into the shadows, away from the people outside.

‘Now’s not the time—’

‘No,’ Skærbæk insisted. ‘Now is the time.’

‘I told you. It can wait.’

‘I’ve got something.’

Birk Larsen looked at him. That plain thuggish face he’d known since childhood. More lined. The hair receding. Still a little scared. A little stupid.

‘I told you, Vagn. I’m making coffee.’

Skærbæk stared at him. Defiant. Angry even.

‘He’s here,’ he said.

Birk Larsen shook his head, stroked his chin, his cheek, wondered why he couldn’t shave well on a day like this.

Asked, ‘Who is?’

‘The man they think did it.’ Skærbæk’s dark, tricky eyes were shining. ‘He’s here.’

A name. Said with that savage distaste Skærbæk saved for the foreigners.

Through the glass Birk Larsen stared.

The room began to empty. The wake was coming to an end. After a long time he walked out of the office, crossed the room with slow, ponderous steps, trying to think of the right words to say. The proper thing to do.

Pernille was thanking the teacher for the wreath.

Rama, smart and handsome in a dark suit, prepared and presentable in a way Birk Larsen knew he could never hope to emulate, said, ‘It was from the school. From all of us. Students and staff.’

The man looked at Birk Larsen, expecting something.

Words.

‘We need some coffee.’

Pernille stared at him, affronted by his rudeness.

‘You want me to make some coffee?’

A nod.

She left.

Words.

‘Thank you for welcoming us into your home,’ the teacher said.

Birk Larsen looked at the table. The cups, the glasses, the plates with half-eaten food.

Lit a cigarette.

‘It means a lot to her classmates.’

His voice was slick and sweet. Just a touch of the exotic there. Not like most of them, inarticulate. Strangers. Foreign.

‘It means a lot to me,’ Rama said and reached out to touch his arm.

Something in Birk Larsen’s eyes stopped him.

Parks and recreation. Clean technology and environmental jobs. The interview was going well. Hartmann knew it. So did the studio. He could tell from the tone of the questions, the nodding heads behind the cameras in the dark.

From Poul Bremer’s stiff responses too.

‘You must be happy with all these ideas, Lord Mayor?’

The interviewer was a woman Hartmann had met before. Smart and attractive.

A nod of that grey magisterial head.

‘Of course. But let’s talk about something different. Immigration. Role models especially.’

He looked at the camera, then at Hartmann.

‘Really, Troels. They’re just a gimmick.’

Hartmann stiffened.

‘Try saying that in your ghettoes.’

A genial laugh.

‘We built good affordable housing for people who mostly arrived here uninvited. They seem grateful. We can’t tell them where to live.’

Hartmann’s temper stirred.

‘You can try to address social inequality—’

‘Let’s go back to role models,’ Bremer broke in. ‘You seem so fascinated by them. Your personal invention. Why is this? Why are they so important?’

‘Social inequality—’

‘Why treat immigrants differently? I won’t tolerate discrimination against minorities. But you wish to give the minorities rights that are denied to the rest of us. To people born here. Why not treat them like everyone else?’

Troels Hartmann took a deep breath, studied the man across the table. He’d heard these sly gambits so many times…

‘That’s not the point and you know it.’

‘No I don’t,’ Bremer retorted. ‘Enlighten me. What is the point?’

Hartmann fumbled for the words. Bremer sensed something.

‘You don’t seem very proud of your role models right now. Why is that?’

Poul Bremer knew something. It was written in that smirk.

Hartmann’s hands performed contortions. His mouth opened. Said nothing.

In the darkness he heard a faint instruction.

‘Stay on him. Camera one.’

A politician’s career could disappear in an instant. With a single thoughtless action. A solitary careless word.

‘I’m very proud of them.’

‘Are you?’ Bremer asked amiably.

‘These people work unpaid to make Copenhagen a better place. We should thank them. Not dismiss them as third-class citizens—’

‘This is wonderful.’

‘Let me answer!’

‘No. No. It’s wonderful.’

A glance at the camera. Then Bremer’s cold eyes fell on the man across the table.

‘But isn’t it true some of your role models are criminals themselves?’

‘That’s nonsense—’

‘Be honest with us. One of them’s involved in a murder case.’

The interviewer broke in.

‘What murder case?’

‘Ask Troels Hartmann,’ Bremer said. ‘He knows.’

‘An actual case?’ the woman asked.

‘As I said. A murder. But…’ Bremer frowned as if unwilling to elaborate for reasons of taste. The point was made. The bomb was dropped. ‘Hartmann’s the Mayor of Education. Ask him.’

‘No.’ The interviewer was cross now. ‘This is unacceptable, Bremer. If you won’t be specific you must drop this subject.’

‘Unacceptable?’ He raised his hands. ‘What’s unacceptable is—’

‘Stop this!’

Hartmann’s voice was so loud a technician near the table ripped off his headphones.

‘Imagine you’re right. Let’s say this is true.’

‘Yes,’ the old man agreed. ‘Let’s say that.’

‘Then what? If one immigrant makes a mistake does that implicate all immigrants? That’s absurd and you know it. If that’s so then what applies to one politician must apply to all of them.’

‘You’re avoiding the point—’

‘No.’ Hartmann no longer cared how this might look. ‘These role models have achieved more for integration in four years than you’ve managed in all your time in office. Unpaid, without thanks. While you did nothing—’

‘Not true—’

‘It’s true!’

Hartmann heard his own furious tones echo back at him from the dark belly of the studio.

Bremer relaxed in his seat, arms folded, smug and satisfied.

‘I’ve got plans for Copenhagen,’ Hartmann began.

‘We’ll hear more of this,’ Bremer broke in. ‘We’ll hear more very soon I think.’

Kastrup. Fifteen minutes to departure. Their seats were halfway along the plane. Mark by the window. Vibeke in between. Lund in the aisle, phone in hand.

Meyer’d called.

‘Did you hear about Birk Larsen?’ she asked, cramming her bag into the overhead locker.

‘No. But we’ve found the girl’s bike. What did you want?’

‘What bike?’

‘A patrol car stopped a girl on a bike for riding without lights. Turned out to be Nanna’s.’

A severe-looking flight attendant came up to Lund and ordered her to turn off the phone.

‘The girl said she stole the bike from outside Kemal’s place. We’re picking him up. Where are you?’

‘On the plane.’

‘Have a nice flight.’

‘Meyer. Keep an eye on Birk Larsen.’

She sat down. The flight attendant was at the front of the plane, haranguing someone else.

‘Why?’

‘Read the old case file like I told you. Don’t let him near Kemal.’

She could hear him pulling on a cigarette.

‘Now you tell me. The two of them just left the wake.’

‘What?’

‘I sent someone to pick up Kemal. He was there after the funeral. Birk Larsen had already offered him a lift. What’s wrong?’

‘Has Kemal arrived home?’

‘Listen.’ Meyer was getting cross. ‘Birk Larsen knows nothing. If he did why would they have let Kemal into their place? Why—’

‘Has he arrived home?’ she repeated.

‘As it happens, no. I don’t have time for this. Go fly away.’

‘Meyer!’

The line went dead.

The attendant came back, ordered her to put on her seat belt.

They were still at the gate, door open. Not for long.

Lund punched at her phone.

‘I’ve already told you once,’ the woman said. ‘Turn off that phone and put on your seat belt. We’re leaving.’

Lund stared at the dial. Hit the off button. Noticed Mark was looking at her. Her mother too. Probably had been for a while.

The pilot came on. Said the usual things.

Welcome on board your flight to Stockholm. Any minute now we’ll push back from the stand. The weather is fine en route. We expect an on-time arrival…

Lund thought about Nanna and the teacher. Meyer and Theis Birk Larsen.

The flight attendant had her hand on the door. She was talking to the man outside on the gate. Getting ready to close it. Saying goodbye.

‘Fetch the luggage,’ Lund said, throwing off her seat belt.

‘What?’ her mother roared.

Mark punched the air, cried, ‘Yes!’

Then Lund marched down the plane, waving her police ID in one hand, clutching her phone to her ear with the other.

Through the dark Theis Birk Larsen gunned the van. The teacher in the passenger seat talking.

About school. About Nanna. About families and children.

Words lost on the big man at the wheel.

From Vesterbro into the city. Past Parliament and Nyhavn.

The water. The empty ground around the Kastellet fortress.

Long dark roads becoming narrow and deserted.

The teacher went silent.

Then said, ‘I think we passed the turning a while back.’

Birk Larsen drove and drove, into the black night, trying to think. Wishing he could find the words.

‘So we did,’ he said, and carried on.

In the cab from the airport Lund read over the details to the control room. Red van number plate UE 93 682. From Birk Larsen’s removals company. A general call to stop and wait for orders.

Vibeke sat in the back scolding Mark.

‘Of course you’re going to Sweden. You don’t think some silly trick of your mother’s will stop that, do you?’

When Lund came off the phone Vibeke said in a long, low voice, ‘Poor Bengt. Whatever must that nice man think?’

‘Bengt doesn’t just think of himself. He understands me better than you do.’

Her mother scowled at her.

‘I hope so. For your sake.’ A long, judgemental stare. ‘So shouldn’t you call him? Tell him there’s no point in waiting at the airport any more?’

Lund nodded.

‘I was about to. Thanks.’

Svendsen was outside the teacher’s home by the time Meyer got there. Kemal still hadn’t arrived. His wife had heard nothing. Theis Birk Larsen was missing. Not answering his phone.

‘Where’s Kemal’s car?’

‘Still in the garage.’

‘OK. Go drive the route from Birk Larsen’s house to here again.’

The detective bridled.

‘We did that already.’

‘You know that word I just used? Again?’

Svendsen didn’t move.

‘Shall I report Kemal missing?’

‘What for?’ Meyer asked.

‘Lund talked to Skov before she left. Birk Larsen was dangerous.’

Meyer popped some gum into his mouth, came up to the man, looked around, started calling, ‘Lund! Lund!’

Shrugged. Looked at the cop and asked, ‘Do you see Lund here?’

The man looked at him, said nothing.

‘From now on we do things my way. Understand? Lund’s away with the fairies. Milking cows or something.’

The radio was squawking. A message about Birk Larsen’s van.

Meyer called the control room and said, ‘This is 80–15. I didn’t put out a search for anything. What gives?’

‘Vicekriminalkommissær Lund requested the search.’

Meyer tried to laugh.

‘Lund’s in Sweden. Cut the jokes.’

‘Lund called five minutes ago and requested a search.’ A pause. ‘We don’t do jokes.’

Then hung up.

‘This is Theis Birk Larsen. Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.’

Pernille held out the phone while the message played. Lund listened. The cab had gone on to take Vibeke and Mark home. She was alone with the Birk Larsen woman amidst the dirty plates, dirty cups, dirty glasses, uncleared tables of Nanna’s wake.

‘And you’ve no idea where he is?’ Lund asked.

‘He drove Rama home.’

Pernille looked pale, drained. And curious.

‘What’s so important?’

‘Did anything happen before they left? Between the two of them?’

‘I was talking to the teacher. Theis came over. He wanted some more coffee made.’ She scanned the remains of the wake, the empty garage. ‘So I went and made some. For the guests. What’s this about?’

‘Did your husband seem angry or upset. Or—?’

‘Upset?’

Pernille Birk Larsen glowered at her. A strong woman, Lund thought. A match for her husband in some ways.

‘How do you think Theis feels today? How do you think I feel? Take a look around. You’ve been everywhere anyway, haven’t you?’

‘Pernille.’

‘Everywhere…’

There was a noise from the office. The man who seemed to be here all the time, one of the workers, was there.

She knew his name. They’d run some checks. Minor crimes. Just like Birk Larsen.

Vagn Skærbæk.

‘Your husband may be about to do something stupid,’ she said, watching the woman very carefully. ‘It’s important I find him.’

‘Why? What would he do that’s stupid?’

There was a young voice from the stairs. One of the boys, calling for her.

‘My son needs me,’ Pernille said then left.

Lund walked straight into the office, showed the man her card.

‘You’re a friend of his?’

He was dealing with some papers. Didn’t look at her directly.

‘Yeah.’

‘Where did he go?’

Straight out, ‘I don’t know.’

More papers. She walked over, took them from his hands.

‘Listen to me. This is important. If you’re his friend you should help him. Where did they go?’

He had a silver necklace and a young man’s face growing old. Lund had dealt with a generation of people like this. Not much money. Not many prospects. She knew what to expect.

‘I’ve no idea.’

Sound at the door. Someone chewing, clearing his throat. She recognized his presence by now.

Lund was on the phone to control by the time she turned to face Meyer.

‘I need you to trace two mobiles. Theis Birk Larsen’s and Rahman Al Kemal’s. Here are the numbers.’

She handed the phone over to Meyer and nodded: do it.

‘God, you’ll pay for this, Lund.’

‘We don’t have time. Vagn?’

He was back in the corner, hiding.

‘Where are your warehouses?’

Meyer was on the phone, handling the numbers.

‘Vagn?’

Out by the waterfront, north of the city, the deserted docks in Frihavnen. Rain like tears from an endless black sky.

The red van sauntered slowly to the end of the road. A line of concrete. A path by the water. No cars. No lights. Not a sign of life.

Theis Birk Larsen bumped the front tyres against the path, pulled on the brake.

They’d sat together like this for almost an hour driving through the city. Going north. Going nowhere. Scarcely exchanging a word.

Now he killed the engine. The headlights. There was just the dim bulb above the mirror between them.

The phone in Birk Larsen’s suit pocket rang again. He took it out. Turned it off without answering. Put it back. Stared ahead.

‘What’s going on?’ the teacher said. ‘What…?’

Birk Larsen reached down, opened his door, climbed out.

Pulled the jacket of his funeral suit round his big frame. Walked through the blustery wind and freezing rain out to the water’s edge.

Turned, stared at the van. A dark face at the glass. Worried, grey in the single light.

Birk Larsen took out a packet of cigarettes, struggled to light one in the downpour. Shielded it with his powerful shoulder. Brought the flame to life.

Alone in his office Troels Hartmann was locked on to the news again. There was a time when he craved to be the lead item. Not now. Not like this.

‘The battle for the mayoral post took a dramatic turn when Bremer accused one of Hartmann’s role models of being involved in a murder case.’

Rie Skovgaard walked in, chanting the standard no comment at one more reporter looking for an interview. She came off the line, handed Hartmann a sheet of paper.

‘The Centre Party want a meeting. I had to promise it.’

Hartmann turned off the TV. She was walking out.

‘What did the police say?’ he asked.

She stopped at the door.

‘I can’t get through to anyone. Troels?’

She didn’t even look tired. She’d grown up in the brawling world of city politics from which his own father had been excluded. It was as if this all came naturally…

‘You realize you’ve got to suspend Kemal and issue a statement. Otherwise—’

‘Not until I’ve heard from the police. When I get a reason—’

‘You have to do this! It’s important we show you’ve got nothing to hide. This is about transparency.’

‘No it’s not. It’s about giving in. Letting the pressure dictate what you do. Not what’s right.’

He got up from the chair, found his jacket. Felt calm. Content this was the way forward.

‘Bremer stirred this up for a reason…’

She leaned back against the door, shifted her head left to right. Dark hair moving. What was it Morten said? The Jackie Kennedy funeral look.

‘You should have stuck to the script. No mention of role models. Just because Bremer went there you didn’t have to follow.’

‘I did what was right.’

‘You fouled up.’

‘Is that Daddy speaking?’

She broke, spat at him, ‘No, it’s me. I want you to win. Not throw away your chances for no good reason.’

‘Whose chances, Rie? Mine? Yours? Your father’s?’

She shook her head, narrowed those bright, piercing eyes.

‘Is that how you see it?’

‘I asked—’

‘You know maybe I’m not the adviser for you. What’s the point? If you ignore every damned thing I say.’

A turning point.

‘Maybe not,’ Hartmann said.

‘Here’s the truth, Troels. That teacher’s guilty. It doesn’t matter whether they convict him or not.’

‘You think so?’

‘If that’s what the press say. And they do…’

He grabbed his coat from the stand.

‘Talk to the police. If they say something… if they arrest this man. If they tell me he’s guilty…’

‘Too late.’

‘Then I act.’

She watched him get ready to leave.

‘Where are you going?’ Skovgaard asked. ‘Troels? Where?’

‘Have they traced those phones yet?’

Meyer didn’t answer. He was still on a call.

Lund was going through the documents on the wall, tracing the company premises, watched by a silent, surly Skærbæk.

She read them out to the control room. A warehouse at Sydhavnen. A depot in Valby. A warehouse at Frihavnen with no address.

‘Where in Frihavnen?’ she asked Skærbæk.

‘I’ve never been to that one.’

There was a cupboard full of keys. She went through those.

‘What about this workshop? Could he be there?’

‘I told you. I don’t know a bloody thing.’

Meyer came off the phone.

‘We’ve got a trace off a mobile phone mast. Kemal’s in Frihavnen.’

Port area. Not much used at night. Easy to hide, Lund thought.

‘He’s in Frihavnen,’ she told control. ‘Send out a car.’

No rain now. Just the Øresund’s black water, Sweden somewhere in the distance. Waves reflected in the lights from across the channel. Birk Larsen stood at the edge, in the headlamps of the van. Back to the world.

A sound. He turned. The teacher was out now. Not running. Which he could. Younger and fitter. Could race all the way back to the city. Avoid Birk Larsen and the van.

Instead he walked to the water. Stared at the waves.

‘I’m sorry…’

They never lost the accent completely. Never shrugged off who they were.

‘My wife’s waiting for me.’

Words. Where were the words?

‘She’s pregnant. I don’t want her to worry. Maybe I should call and tell her…’

Another cigarette in Birk Larsen’s fist. Barely touched. But now he raised it to his lips, dragged the harsh smoke into his lungs. Wished it would spread from there, fill his big body. Make him nothing. Invisible. Gone.

Words.

They should be about her. About no one else. Always.

‘Nanna was a stargazer. Did you know that?’

The teacher shook his head.

‘That’s what they call it when you look up when you’re born. See your mother’s eyes. See something else. The sky.’

So many memories. A jumble of images and sounds. A child is a child. Its life flows like a river, never stopping, never fixed.

‘We said she’d be an astronaut. Parents say…’ He pulled on the cigarette again. ‘We say such stupid things. Make stupid promises we’re never going to keep.’

The teacher nodded. As if he knew.

Birk Larsen threw the cigarette into the water. Shrugged. Looked back at the van.

‘She liked going to school, didn’t she?’

‘Very much so.’

Stamped his feet in the damp cold.

‘I wasn’t any good at school. Got into trouble. But Nanna was…’

Memories.

‘Nanna was different. Better than me.’

There was a look on the teacher’s dark face. The one they show parents.

‘She was a very able student.’

‘Able?’

‘Hard working.’

‘And she was fond of you, wasn’t she?’

Memories. They burned like acid.

The man was silent.

‘She told us about your lessons.’

Birk Larsen took a step towards him.

‘People are talking about you, teacher.’

He was sweating. It wasn’t rain.

‘No matter what you’ve heard…’ He shook his head. Didn’t move. ‘I can assure you. Nanna was my student. I would never…’

Birk Larsen waited.

‘Never what, teacher?’

‘I would never hurt her.’

Closer. His breath was sweet. Not mints. Something exotic.

‘So why are people talking?’

Quickly, ‘I don’t know.’

Birk Larsen nodded.

Waited.

A long time. Then the teacher said, a touch angry, ‘I didn’t touch her. I never would. This is all a misunderstanding.’

‘Misunder—’

‘I’m going to be a father!’

Two men by the Øresund’s cold expanse.

One walked to the van. Turned on the engine. Looked back at the tall hunched figure caught in the headlights by the water’s edge.

Meyer hung on the phone, getting nowhere. Skærbæk was turning ugly in the corner. Pernille Birk Larsen had had enough.

‘Do you get a kick out of this?’ the woman stormed at them. ‘You come to my daughter’s funeral. I don’t know what you think but…’

Keen, smart eyes turned on Lund.

‘Theis hasn’t done anything.’

Skærbæk leaned back against the office door, lit a cigarette.

‘I believe he has,’ Lund said.

Meyer came off the phone.

‘There’s no one at the harbour. They’ve looked everywhere.’

‘Try the other warehouses.’

‘Done what?’ Pernille Birk Larsen demanded. ‘You people—’

There was a sound. Lund looked, wondered about Meyer’s weapon. He always had it.

The sliding door was moving upwards. Meyer was still on the phone.

Theis Birk Larsen walked in. Sharp black suit. Ironed white shirt. Black tie.

Looked at them. Cops first. Skærbæk. Then Pernille.

‘Are the kids asleep?’ he asked.

Lund couldn’t stop staring.

‘Where’s Kemal?’

Birk Larsen’s massive head lolled from side to side. There was something in his narrow, sly eyes she couldn’t interpret, hard as she tried.

‘I think he took a taxi.’

Lund glanced at Meyer. Pointed to his phone.

Birk Larsen walked for the stairs. His wife stopped him, asked, ‘Where’ve you been, Theis? Two hours…?’

‘It’s not so late.’ He nodded at the apartment. ‘I’d like to read them a story.’

‘Wait. Wait!’ Lund called.

He walked off, out of view.

Meyer got off the line.

‘Kemal just called his wife. He’s on his way home.’

Pernille Birk Larsen glared at them both, shook her head, swore, stomped off. There was just Skærbæk then. Silver chain at the neck. Giving them the fuck-you punk look of a teenager.

‘Call off the search,’ Meyer barked down the phone. ‘Bring Kemal down to the station as soon as you can.’

He pocketed his mobile. Followed her outside.

‘Well,’ Meyer said. ‘What the hell was that about?’

Lund called Sweden.

‘This is Bengt Rosling. I can’t take your call right now. Leave your name and number and I’ll call you back.’

Best voice, trying not to sound apologetic because she wasn’t. Not really.

‘Hi, it’s me. You must be busy welcoming the guests.’

All this she said while she was taking off her jacket, throwing it onto a chair in the corner of the office, scanning the documents on the desk.

Her desk?

Meyer’s?

Didn’t know. Didn’t care. The documents mattered. Nothing else.

‘I wish I could be there, Bengt.’

There hadn’t been much new since the afternoon.

‘The thing is… something came up in the case.’

Meyer walked in.

‘I’m really, really sorry. Give everyone my best…’

She took a seat at the desk. It still felt hers. Rifled for her pens, her papers. Her place here.

‘Tell them…’

He’d moved things. Her things. She felt a flicker of annoyance.

‘It’s a shame. But well…’

Meyer stood with his hands on the back of the opposite chair. Staring at her, open-mouthed.

‘I’ll talk to you later. Bye.’

Phone down, more sifting through the papers.

‘Is he ready for questioning?’ Lund asked.

‘Look, look.’ He seemed more amazed than angry. ‘You can’t do this. I don’t know what you think—’

‘I think you’re right, Meyer.’

‘I am?’ he brightened. ‘Oh great.’

‘It isn’t working. So I’ve decided to stay until the case is solved.’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t make sense going back and forth between here and Sweden. It’s a mess. The Swedish police say—’

‘Stop this, Lund.’

With his sticky-out ears and bright, hurt eyes Meyer suddenly looked very young.

‘This is my case now. You’re not staying here. End of story. We’re done. The girl visited him on Friday night. Once he’s admitted that I’m charging him.’

Lund took one last look at the files, picked up a couple, stood up.

‘Let’s hope he confesses then. Shall we go?’

‘Oh no.’

Meyer stood in the way.

‘I’m doing the questioning.’

‘Don’t make me talk to Buchard, Meyer.’

He bristled.

‘I’m being nice here. You can sit in if you like.’

Kemal was at the table, black tie pulled down. Exhausted. Nervous.

Meyer sat on his left. Lund opposite.

‘Want a coffee or a tea?’ Meyer asked, throwing his files on the table.

He did all the policeman voices. Threatening. Sympathetic. Neutral now and calm.

The teacher poured himself a glass of water. Lund leaned over, shook his hand, said, ‘Hi.’

‘You’re not under arrest,’ Meyer recited from memory, ‘but you have the same rights as someone who has been accused. You have the right to a lawyer.’

‘I don’t need a lawyer. I’ll answer your questions.’

The teacher looked at Lund.

‘There’s something you should know.’

They watched him. Sweating. Trying to find the courage to say something. This didn’t happen often, Lund thought.

‘Last Friday I was supervising the Halloween party at school. My shift ended at eight thirty. I drove home to pick up my wife.’

She wondered what had happened in the van with Birk Larsen. What difference that might have made.

‘We went to our house on the allotment. About nine thirty I realized we had forgotten to bring coffee. So I drove to the petrol station.’

Making it up, she thought. You are making this up.

‘On the way back I remembered the workman was coming on Saturday. I drove back to the flat to clear things out of the way.’

Meyer shuffled forward on the table.

‘Just after ten the doorbell rang. It was Nanna.’

They waited.

‘She wanted to return some books I’d lent her. She was only there for two minutes.’

Meyer leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head.

‘That’s it,’ Kemal said and finished the glass of water.

‘She came round to return some books?’ Meyer asked.

‘School books?’ Lund wondered.

‘No, my own books. Karen Blixen. She seemed to want to give them back to me right then. I don’t know why. I was surprised.’ He shrugged. ‘I just took them.’

‘On a Friday night?’ Meyer asked. ‘At ten o’clock?’

‘She was always looking for something to read.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I know I should have told you this before.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Lund demanded.

He looked at his hands, not at them.

‘There was an incident with another student. A few years ago. A false accusation. I was scared you’d think—’

‘Think what?’ Lund asked.

‘Think I’d had some kind of relationship with Nanna.’

Dark eyes met hers.

‘I didn’t,’ he said.

‘That’s it?’ Lund asked.

‘That’s it. That’s all I’ve got to say.’

Hartmann’s car roamed the bars for a while, him in the back, phone off, radio off.

‘It’s got to be around here somewhere,’ he told the driver.

A sign he remembered. A name.

‘There! There!’

It was an old pub. Noisy. Busy. Full of men who’d taken on too much beer. Bottles on the table. Clouds of cigarette smoke in the air.

Hartmann strolled through the dark bar. Found Morten Weber finally, head back on his shoulders, curly hair grubby, all over the place.

There were six men around the table. Working steadily at their drinks. Saying nothing.

Hartmann stood in front of them, held up the plastic bag. Weber groaned, got up, came over.

The insulin was delivered to the campaign office. The place where Weber seemed to live.

‘I saw you on TV,’ he said, taking it.

The glass in his hand was whisky. Hartmann could smell it. The last in a long line he thought.

‘You don’t have time to play doctor, Troels.’

‘Rie thinks you’re sick. She doesn’t know you so well. Yet.’

Bleary-eyed, Morten Weber tried to smile.

‘I’m allowed one drunk day a month. It’s in my contract, isn’t it?’

‘Why this one?’

‘Because you yelled at me.’

‘You asked for it.’

‘Because I needed some time out of that marble prison. To think without you or her or some damned minion getting in my face. Besides…’

There was an expression he didn’t recognize on Weber’s sad, lined face. Bitterness, Hartmann realized.

‘It doesn’t matter, does it? You don’t listen to me any more. Does she know you’re here? Your new consort?’

He knocked back the drink. Went to sit at an empty table cuddling his glass. Hartmann took the bench opposite.

‘You haven’t even suspended the teacher yet, have you?’ Weber said. ‘From what I’ve heard you’re right. But what does Kirsten Eller think?’

Hartmann said nothing.

‘Has she dumped you yet, Troels? Or is she waiting till tomorrow? What’s Rie’s advice there? Go running to her? Go begging? Give her what she wants? That teacher’s head on a plate?’

‘I need you two to work together.’

‘Oh do you? Just because you brought me some insulin it doesn’t…’ His speech was slurred. His thoughts seemed clear. ‘It doesn’t make everything all right.’

Hartmann pulled his coat around him, ready to leave.

‘I was trying to make amends. I’m sorry if I wasted your time.’

‘Poor Troels. Always wants to do the right thing. But he listens to the wrong people. Poor…’

‘I need you back in the office tomorrow. I need you to cut out these binges until this election’s over. And get along with Rie.’

Weber nodded.

‘Yes. I imagine you do. Now you’re in the shit.’

A short, drunken laugh.

‘You know it’s only just started, don’t you? All those hangers on who think they saw the spark of opportunity. They’ll come for you, Troels. Once they think you’ve disappointed them. Watch out for the civil servants. Watch out for your own people. Bigum.’

Henrik Bigum, one of the senior party figures, a dour academic from the university.

‘What about Bigum?’

‘He loathes you and trouble’s in his nature. He’s the one who’ll wield the dagger. But he’ll get someone else to make the first move, naturally. You’ve no idea…’

He’d never seen such bleak fury in Morten Weber’s face. Not directed at him anyway.

‘When your wife died, Troels’ — Weber banged his fist on the table — ‘you were sitting here. And I was sitting there. Remember?’

Hartmann didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t want to think about it.

Cheap, stupid pop music playing in the background. Loud voices. Men working through the prelude to a fight.

‘You should listen to me, Troels. I deserve that. What else do I have?’

A last hateful look then Weber left the table and stumbled back to the bunch of drunks.

Hartmann had missed a call. Rie Skovgaard. He phoned her back.

‘They found the girl’s bike,’ she said. ‘It was at her teacher’s flat the night she went missing.’

The music got louder. The fight was just a word, a push away.

‘It’s in the press already. Front page tomorrow. Pictures of you and Kemal. He’s named as a suspect.’

Silence.

‘Troels,’ she said. ‘I’m drafting the suspension papers now. I’m calling a press conference in an hour. I need you there.’

Buchard stormed into the office.

‘How come our suspect’s name’s on television? Lund?’

‘It’s not a problem,’ Meyer cut in. He nodded at the figure in the interview room beyond the glass. ‘He’s sitting right in there. We have him.’

‘When the commissioner calls me it’s a problem. Lund’s gone from here for an hour or two and see what happens.’

‘It’s not Meyer’s fault,’ she said.

‘What does the teacher say?’ Buchard wanted to know.

Meyer sneered.

‘Some crap about meeting the girl at his flat. She wanted to bring back some books.’

Buchard’s lined face screwed up in bafflement.

‘Books?’

Lund barely listened, kept running through the latest files on the PC.

‘It’s bullshit,’ Meyer said. ‘He sanded the floors. Removed everything.’

‘They’re renovating the flat,’ Lund pointed out. ‘That part’s true.’

‘Give me two hours with him, chief,’ Meyer begged. ‘I’ll find out.’

Buchard looked unconvinced.

‘The way you did with those boys?’

‘I’ll question him as a witness. I can—’

‘He’s lying,’ Lund said and that stopped them.

Buchard folded his arms, looked at her.

‘He’s lying,’ she said again.

‘Search the flat,’ Buchard ordered. ‘Basement, the allotment in Dragør, everything. Locate the building waste. Tap his phone.’

Meyer didn’t seem to be part of the conversation. Buchard was watching Lund scribble this down.

‘Tell Hartmann what we’re doing. And don’t screw up with the press again.’

He was leaving. Meyer said, ‘Talking about screwing up I need to talk to you in private.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Buchard snapped. ‘Right now I want you working not whining.’

‘So what do we do with him?’ Meyer asked.

Buchard waited for Lund.

‘We make him stay at his wife’s house. Or a hotel,’ she said. ‘He’s got to keep away from his flat and the place on the allotments. We ’re searching them. We need his passport. We need him watched.’

Something nagged at her and Lund couldn’t begin to guess what it was.

‘He says he used his own car on Friday. We need to connect him to Hartmann’s vehicle. He was a role model, wasn’t he?’

The press conference was fifteen minutes away. Skovgaard was laying down the line.

‘The suspension’s effective immediately. I’ve got the paperwork. I’ve informed the administration.’

Hartmann looked at the documents she’d placed in front of him.

‘You need to distance yourself from the whole thing. Say you regret your error of judgement. You support the police’s efforts.’

He scanned through the statement, the apologetic, self-serving language.

‘When they ask about role models, say you can’t comment. If anyone…’

Hartmann got up from the desk and prowled the office, hands thrust deep in his pockets, blue shirt stained with sweat.

‘If you’re in the public eye and make a mistake it’s important to apologize immediately. Put the whole thing to bed and move on. There are some fresh clothes in the wardrobe. You need them.’

He looked at the early edition of the newspaper on his desk. The teacher, Kemal, shaking his hand at the basketball match. Both of them smiling.

‘I don’t get this. He seemed a nice guy. No one has a bad word to say about him. I checked some of the records. There’s a kid out there, straight and decent now. Would have been in jail if it wasn’t for him.’

The first three pages were dedicated to the story.

‘So I played basketball with him.’

Skovgaard was watching him with tired, worried eyes.

‘And the weekend before he’s supposed to have raped and murdered one of his own students.’

She looked deeply bored with this conversation.

‘They’re waiting for you, Troels. We need to sort out the lighting. The way you look.’

‘Do you think he did it?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care. What I care about is saving you. I never realized it was going to be so hard.’

There was a knock on the door.

Lund stood there, waiting.

‘What?’ Skovgaard barked at her.

She walked in. Same old coat. Same black and white sweater. Same ponytail, long straight brown hair tied clumsily at the back.

This woman seemed to have attached herself to his life like a limpet.

‘Hartmann said he wanted to be briefed,’ Lund said, looking puzzled.

A shrug. Bright eyes boring into him.

‘So here I am.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Sweden?’ Hartmann asked.

She smiled at that.

‘Eventually. Kemal admits he met the girl at his flat. He says she left, but no one’s seen her since. We’re—’

‘Give us the short version,’ Skovgaard broke in. ‘We’ve got a press conference.’

That smile again, a little different this time.

‘The short version. He might have held her captive somewhere. We won’t be charging him until we’ve searched his place. Maybe not then.’

‘We read the papers,’ Skovgaard said. ‘We know all that.’

‘I’ll need mileage logs and documentation for any drivers using your cars over the last two years.’

‘What for?’

‘Kemal must have taken the car Nanna was found in. There has to be a connection…’

Hartmann stopped.

‘He didn’t drive that car.’

‘It says in your records,’ Lund insisted. ‘The role models have access to them.’

‘Not the campaign fleet. They’re all brand new. Rented for a few weeks. Rie?’

She was watching him, arms folded, trying not to get drawn in.

‘Rie!’

‘The campaign cars are bright and shiny,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a point to make. The role models get the junk no one else wants to drive.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Hartmann said. ‘You’re going to charge him?’

‘I said if we find more evidence—’

‘But if Kemal never drove the car how could he even know it was one of ours?’

‘Perhaps…’ She was lost, and he’d never seen that before. ‘Maybe… I don’t know.’

Hartmann sensed something.

‘We’ve only had those cars for two weeks or so. Maybe he’s not guilty at all. We’ve got a press conference called about this in five minutes. What the hell are we supposed to say?’

‘I don’t run your press conferences, Hartmann.’

‘If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t need the damned things! You’ve been wrong before. Who’s to say you’re not wrong this time? You think I should suspend this man when you don’t even have any evidence?’

‘I just need some cooperation. You leave me to my job. I’ll leave you to yours.’

She left with that. Skovgaard was watching him. He could hear the reporters assembling in the room next door.

Hartmann got the new suit, the clean shirt, started changing.

‘Troels?’ Skovgaard said. ‘Don’t even think of backing out. We’ve got the suspension papers. For your sake—’

‘Kemal didn’t do it.’ He was grinning as he struggled into clean clothes. ‘It’s not him.’

Theis at the sink, broad back to her, pulling on a beer. Pernille at the table, watching him, pushing him to talk.

‘They suspect the teacher,’ she said. ‘It’s on the news.’

He sank some more beer and closed his eyes.

‘Where did you go? What took you so long?’

‘I don’t know.’

Letters on the table. Bills. Late notices.

‘I’ll go to the house tomorrow. Do some work on it.’

She blinked.

‘The house?’

‘I’ve got to fix it up. Can’t sell it till I do.’

He went to the drawer he always kept locked with a key she couldn’t find. A habit from the past. Not the only place like that.

There were sheets inside. Architect’s drawings.

‘These were the plans. I’m sorry. I should have told you.’

‘He was here,’ she murmured.

Pencil projections. Dead dreams.

‘We talked about Nanna.’

He folded out another sheet, smoothed it down with his elbow.

‘I thanked him for the flowers in the church.’

He ran his finger over the drawings, said nothing.

‘He touched her coffin.’

She looked at her fingers. The old wedding ring. The wrinkles. The marks of labour.

‘I touched him.’

A rustle of papers. Nothing more.

In a calm, pleading tone she said, ‘Why won’t you talk to me?’

His eyes rose from the measurements and angles and drawings of beams.

‘We don’t know for sure.’

‘You think he did it. Don’t you?’

A long day. He never shaved well anyway. Now he looked like a miserable bear who’d strayed from the woods.

‘Let’s leave this to the police.’

Her hands flew across the table, swept away the papers of the home they’d never see.

‘The police?’

Tears in her eyes. Fury in her face.

‘Yes. The police.’

Bengt was still on voicemail. Vibeke was back at her sewing machine, running up another perfect dress for another perfect wedding.

An expression on her face that said: I knew it all along.

‘Hi,’ Lund said and threw her bag on the nearest chair.

Her mother turned off the machine, rolled back the white billowing fabric. Pushed the glasses down to the end of her long sharp nose.

‘If you want a family, Sarah, you have to work for it.’

‘I tried calling Bengt. He’s not answering. I tried.’

Her mother said, ‘Huh!’

‘It’s because of the party. He can’t hear the phone.’

Vibeke came and sat next to her. An unexpected, almost apologetic expression on her face.

‘I know you think I chased your father away before he died.’

‘No.’

‘I know you think that. I may not have been the best example for you…’

‘We haven’t broken up, Mum.’

‘No. But you never let him close, do you? He’s like the rest of us. Outside your life.’

‘That’s not true. You don’t know us.’

Vibeke took the half-made dress off the stand, examined the seams.

‘I just want you to be happy. I don’t want you to be lonely in your old age.’

‘You’re not lonely, are you?’

Vibeke looked thrown by the question.

‘I wasn’t talking about myself.’

‘I won’t be lonely. I wasn’t lonely before Bengt. Why should I…?’

Now there was an expression she did recognize. Summed up in one word: exactly.

Lund turned on the TV and watched the news headlines. One story only. Troels Hartmann at his press conference, saying he wasn’t suspending the teacher Kemal.

‘Why in God’s name not?’ she whispered.

On the TV Hartmann answered.

‘Rahman Al Kemal has been neither charged nor convicted. I won’t take part in an act of character assassination. Bremer may be hell-bent on that. Let him square it with what passes as his conscience.’

His right hand rose, a gesture of politicians everywhere.

‘Only if there’s concrete evidence will there be a suspension.’

He leaned forward, an earnest face for the camera.

‘It’s the job of the police to convict criminals. Not politicians. We should stay out of their way except to offer every possible assistance we can. And that I will do. Thank you.’

A crowd of bodies rose, flinging questions. Lund watched, wished she’d got this on the recorder, could play back every word, catch every inflection, every expression on Hartmann’s face.

‘What if he murdered the girl?’ yelled a reporter.

‘As far as I know,’ Hartmann replied, ‘in this country a man is innocent until he’s proven guilty. That’s all…’

‘That’s all?’ Lund murmured.

Then it was over. On to other news. The Middle East. The economy. She turned off the TV. Realized the room was dark and empty. Vibeke had gone off to bed without a word.

She was alone.

Dull morning. Lund walked into headquarters and was briefed by the leader of the overnight team. A security camera at the petrol station showed Kemal buying coffee at twenty to ten on the Friday night Nanna disappeared. He received a call from a launderette payphone around the same time. A place near his flat in the city. Twenty minutes before Nanna visited.

There was still nothing of use from the home. But if they could prove he’d arranged to meet her that broke his story. A lie.

The only other call he made was to the workman cancelling him.

Lund was thinking about this when she glanced into her office. Bengt was sitting there.

A quick smile. She closed the door, got some coffee from the flask.

‘How’d you get here?’ Lund asked.

‘I drove last night.’

She handed him a cup, still wondering about the phone calls. Why would Nanna be in a launderette? Why wouldn’t she use her own mobile?

‘How did the house-warming party go?’

‘Fine.’ He looked tired and a little grubby from the drive. For once there was a touch of anger in his calm grey eyes. ‘I sent people home at nine.’

She was wearing the black and white Faroese jumper from the day before. If she’d known Bengt was going to be there… She ran a hand through her untidy hair and thought: I’d still have worn it.

He came and put his hands on her shoulders. Professional face. Very serious. Fatherly.

‘Listen, Sarah. It’s not hard. Just walk out of that door, get in the car and we’ll go home. You don’t know those people. What about your family? What about Mark? He’s supposed to be starting school.’

Lund walked to her desk, grabbed a folder.

‘I want you to read the case. Here’s the coroner’s report. Here’s what we found by the canal—’

‘No!’

It was as close to a shout as she’d ever heard.

‘I need your help,’ she said calmly.

‘You need? What about everyone else?’

She wasn’t listening.

‘He bathed her and clipped her nails. What kind of person does that? He removed every trace, carefully. Or there’s some other reason I haven’t guessed yet. Look…’

She got some of the morgue shots. Injuries. Bruises. Blood.

‘The coroner thinks he’s probably done this before. But I can’t find anything similar.’

‘I’m not interested in your case. I’m interested in you.’

He pointed to the door.

‘The car’s out there.’

There was a knock. Meyer came in. Sailor shirt, open-necked jerkin. Looking brighter and tidier than usual.

‘I’m going to see Birk Larsen,’ he said. ‘But you don’t need to—’

‘I’ll be right there.’

She grabbed her coat.

Bengt Rosling was a handsome man. That wasn’t why she liked him. Loved him. He was placid, intelligent, patient.

‘Please stay, Bengt.’ She came and took his hand, smiled, looked into his eyes. ‘It would mean a lot to me.’

He was wavering.

She picked up the folders, thrust them at him.

Then she quickly kissed him and went out to meet Meyer.

Rie Skovgaard had been through the vehicle files. The role models didn’t use the cars.

‘That’s good news,’ Hartmann said.

‘We need a new campaign manager. If Morten isn’t coming back.’

‘He won’t be.’

‘I’ll find someone. Knud Padde’s here. He wants to talk to you. Alone. He’s in your office.’

Padde held the assembly group chair, a mid-ranking party hack. Influential, important even at times. Tedious.

‘Can’t you—?’

‘No. Go and talk to him.’

A trade union official, Padde was a bear-like shambling man with a bad suit, big spectacles and wild, uncombed hair.

‘Have you seen the papers?’ he complained the moment Hartmann walked in.

‘Of course I’ve seen them.’

‘The constituency’s worried, Troels. The group wants a meeting. Today. One o’clock.’

‘Knud. Not now. Kirsten Eller will be here in two minutes.’

‘Why didn’t you suspend the teacher? It looks as if you’re covering for him.’

Hartmann looked him in the eye.

‘According to the police the teacher’s probably innocent.’

‘That’s not what the papers say.’

Padde was feeling unusually brave, Hartmann thought.

‘I’m not sure we can take this pressure, Troels.’

Hartmann thought of his conversation the previous night with Weber.

‘I’ll deal with this. We don’t need a meeting at one…’

‘But there is a meeting. It’s fixed,’ Padde said. ‘Best you be there.’

‘You never told me he was a nut doctor,’ Meyer said.

She was letting him drive again. It stopped him stuffing crisps and sweets and hot dogs into his mouth. Most of the time.

Lund didn’t answer.

‘Not that there’s anything wrong in going out with your therapist.’

She sighed.

‘He’s a criminal psychologist.’

Meyer raised an eyebrow as if to say: does that matter?

‘He’s the cleverest man I know.’

‘Met him through work, eh?’

Silence.

‘Am I right in thinking your ex-husband was a cop too?’

Silence.

‘You’re not the only one who can run background checks, Lund.’

Meyer shook his head. Stared at her as he took the corner.

‘Watch the road,’ she ordered.

‘Do you know anyone outside the police?’

‘Of course I do! Bengt—’

‘Is a criminal psychologist.’

‘I know lots of people.’

‘Of course you do. I’ve asked Buchard for a meeting. About us.’

She looked at him. Big ears. Bulbous eyes. Stubble and that cocky haircut.

Meyer started to whistle. Then he turned the corner into Birk Larsen’s street.

‘Where’s your husband?’ Lund asked.

Pernille Birk Larsen was wiping down the kitchen table. The place looked too clean. As if the woman was trying to scrub away the memory of her lost child.

The tablecloth was unusual. Photographs and school reports were lacquered into the surface. Faces and words. A young Nanna, on her own, in the box of the red Christiania trike with a tiny Indian boy. The sons as toddlers.

A sweep of the tablecloth which was spotless already.

‘He works weekends too.’

‘We need information,’ Lund said. ‘We need to understand whether Nanna knew her murderer or not. Would you mind…?’

The obsessive sweep of the hand, the cloth that removed nothing because there was nothing to remove.

‘Would you mind doing that later please?’ Lund said.

Pernille Birk Larsen didn’t look at her. Just kept rubbing at the table.

Meyer rolled his eyes.

‘It could be something she said,’ Lund went on. ‘Times she wasn’t at home. Anything. Presents, books she borrowed…’

Pernille Birk Larsen stopped working with the cloth, leaned on both hands, glowered at both of them.

‘You knew that teacher was a suspect. And you let him come to the funeral. Let me welcome him into my home.’

Meyer was shaking his head.

‘He held my hand. And you said nothing!’

Lund shrugged, got up, looked around.

‘And now you come asking questions!’ Pernille shouted at them. ‘It’s too late.’

They didn’t say a word.

‘What are you doing about him?’

‘We’re searching his home,’ Meyer broke in. ‘As soon as we know something I’ll call you.’

A look of bewilderment in the woman’s intelligent, searching eyes. A connection she’d never made.

‘Nanna was there?’

No answer.

‘She was at his home that night?’

Lund shook her head, started to say, ‘We can’t go into details…’

‘Yes,’ Meyer broke in. ‘She was there that night.’

Lund closed her eyes, furious.

‘No one’s seen her since,’ he added.

Still livid, Lund said, ‘This doesn’t prove anything. We need information that links the two of them. We need…’

What? She wasn’t sure either.

‘We need a reason,’ Lund said half to herself.

Pernille Birk Larsen picked up the cloth, wiped the clean table again.

‘All I know is Nanna liked him as a teacher.’ She waved at the girl’s bedroom. ‘Go round the place. Help yourself. There’s nowhere you haven’t poked your noses already.’

She glared at them.

‘But keep me informed. You hear that?’

‘Sure,’ Meyer said.

Theis Birk Larsen and Vagn Skærbæk had picked up some fresh timber beams from the yard. They were in the garage stacking them in the van. There were jobs to be done. But the house in Humleby came first.

‘I’ll help you with the work, Theis,’ Skærbæk promised. ‘Just tell me what you want.’

Birk Larsen heaved some more timber into the truck, said nothing.

Skærbæk dodged a beam.

‘Just as well you didn’t touch him with all those police about.’ He picked up some more planks, threw them in the van. ‘How can an ape like that be a teacher? It’s a sick world.’

Birk Larsen took off his black hat, looked at the wood. Fetched some more.

‘Know what?’ Skærbæk checked around, made sure no one was listening. ‘He’s finished. I promise you. Listen…’

He put a hand on Birk Larsen’s black coat. Stopped him.

‘We wait,’ Skærbæk said. ‘We’ve done this before. We know how.’

A sudden fury gripped Birk Larsen’s stony face. He picked up the smaller man by his overall, threw him towards the back of the van. Grabbed him by the throat.

‘Don’t ever talk like that again. Ever.’

Skærbæk stood still, defiant, almost squared up to him.

‘Theis. It’s me. Remember?’

A shape at the edge of his vision. The lean, gruff cop came into view, phone ringing. Birk Larsen let go.

‘Meyer speaking,’ the cop said.

The Lund woman was with him, walking round the place the way she always did. Eyeing up everything as if she could record it with those unblinking eyes.

Birk Larsen loaded the van and closed the door. Vagn had made himself scarce without a sound. A talent he’d had since the two of them were kids on the street.

Lund came up to Birk Larsen.

‘If there’s anything I can do…’

‘You know what you can do,’ he said.

Kirsten Eller arrived, a look of mild outrage on her pasty face.

‘This role model of yours is the prime suspect. In a murder case.’

‘He may be innocent.’

‘Not suspending him is madness.’

‘That may be your opinion but it’s not mine. Don’t let this ruin our agreement.’

‘Our agreement?’

He waited. Rie Skovgaard studied her nails.

‘Words on paper,’ Eller said. ‘That’s all they are. Nothing more.’

There was coffee on the table and croissants. Barely touched.

‘You mean you want out?’

‘It’s a question of credibility.’

‘It’s a question of principle.’

‘Your principles. Not ours. I won’t go down with you. I won’t be held accountable. I won’t—’

‘What,’ he cut in, ‘are you saying?’

‘If you don’t make this go away I’ll distance myself from you. We have to—’

A knock on the door. Morten Weber walked in. He looked as if he’d been shopping. Smart new jacket, red sweater, white shirt.

Hartmann and Skovgaard stared at him.

‘Here’s the document you asked me to find,’ Weber said, coming over to Hartmann, a sheet of paper in his hand.

No one spoke.

Weber asked, ‘More coffee?’

When there was no answer he smiled and left.

Hartmann looked at the colour printout. It was a page from Kirsten Eller’s own website.

‘What’s it to be, Troels?’

He read the sheet carefully.

‘OK,’ she went on. ‘I won’t be seen with you. All joint arrangements are cancelled, including tonight’s.’

Eller tidied her papers, dropped them into her briefcase with her pen. Got ready to go.

‘What about your credibility?’

‘What do you mean?’

Hartmann passed the paper across the table.

‘You’ve been taking credit for my role models. It’s here. On your home page.’

She snatched the page, read it.

‘You liked our joint initiative so much you wrote about it.’ Hartmann leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head. ‘I’m happy to share the credit, Kirsten. But the trouble is… if there’s blame to be apportioned you have to share that too.’

He leaned forward, smiled at her, added, ‘That’s what being accountable means.’

‘This is blackmail.’

‘No it’s not. It’s your website, not mine. Your responsibility. A matter of public record. Hang me out to dry and you’ll find yourself swinging from the same line. But—’

‘Thank you for the coffee,’ Eller snarled.

‘It was a pleasure. I’ll see you tonight. As arranged.’

They watched her go then went back into the main office.

‘She didn’t like that,’ Skovgaard said.

‘I don’t give a damn whether she liked it or not. I won’t take lectures on accountability from some carpetbagging hack who’ll climb into bed with anyone who’ll have her.’

Morten Weber was at his desk. Hartmann walked over. Weber didn’t take his eyes off his computer screen.

‘I thought you’d deserted us.’

Weber scanned his inbox. Line after line of messages.

‘I get bored on my own.’

Hartmann placed the page from Eller’s website in front of him.

‘How did you know?’

Weber stared at him as if it were obvious.

‘I’d have grabbed the credit if I was running her campaign. You need to think like other people sometimes. It helps.’

‘I’m glad you’re back, Morten,’ Skovgaard said.

He laughed, looked at her.

‘Me too.’

Kemal’s flat in Østerbro. The forensic team had pored over every inch of every room. All they had were two prints from Nanna Birk Larsen by the front door.

Meyer wanted more.

‘Look,’ the head forensic guy said. ‘We’ve done everything. That’s all there is.’

Lund read through the preliminary reports.

‘What about the boots?’ Meyer demanded.

‘We analysed the mud. It’s not from the crime scene.’

‘What about the ether? Who the hell keeps ether in the house?’

‘People with helicopters.’

One of the team pulled out a model helicopter.

‘Boys’ toys,’ the forensic guy said. ‘He likes them. This thing flies on a mixture of oil, paraffin and ether.’

‘The neighbours?’ Lund asked. ‘What do they say?’

‘There was a party on the third floor. A tenant saw him take out some rubbish at one thirty in the morning. That’s all.’

Lund stared at him. The man wilted.

‘Rubbish? At one thirty?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Twenty minutes later Kemal arrived for the reconstruction. He didn’t look like a man expecting to be arrested. Smart jacket, grey scarf. Schoolteacher even on a Sunday.

‘She never got much beyond the door?’ Lund asked. ‘That’s what you’re saying?’

‘I buzzed her in. She rang the bell.’

‘And then?’

‘She felt guilty about some books I’d lent her.’

‘You didn’t go inside?’

‘No. We talked here. At the door.’

‘So why are her prints on a photo in the living room?’

‘I was going to sand the floor. All the things were out here. It was the class photo. She looked at it before she left.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. She wanted to for some reason.’

‘Then?’

‘Then she left.’

‘Did you see her out of the building?’

‘No. I just closed the door. It’s safe here. No reason…’ He fell silent. ‘I thought it was safe.’

‘Why did you cancel the floor people?’ Meyer asked.

‘It was going to be too expensive. I thought I’d do it myself.’

‘So you phoned him? At one thirty in the morning?’

‘He had an answering machine. Why not?’

Lund checked the door, went in and out again.

‘You took a call minutes before Nanna arrived.’

The man’s dark eyes flickered between the two of them.

‘It was a wrong number. That was when I was at the petrol station.’

Meyer said, ‘What? You talk for ninety seconds on a wrong number?’

‘Yes…’ The two of them watched him struggling. ‘He wanted to talk to the person who had the number before me.’

‘The call came from a launderette just round the corner. Quite a coincidence, huh?’

‘I don’t know.’

Lund said, ‘You threw out some rubbish.’

‘On Saturday,’ he agreed.

‘On Saturday at one thirty in the morning. What was in the black bag?’

‘An old rug.’

‘A rug?’

‘I took it to the bins on my way back to the allotment.’

Silence.

‘If that’s all…’

Silence.

‘My wife’s coming here soon. I’d like you gone by then.’

‘Don’t run away,’ Meyer told him.

Back at headquarters Buchard listened to their briefing.

‘So you don’t have a bloody thing?’

‘Kemal’s lying,’ Lund said.

‘You found nothing at the flat.’

‘He cleaned up. He took her somewhere else.’

The chief was stomping round the office like an angry dog.

‘Where? You’ve checked everything. Flat, car, basement, allotment, youth club—’

‘If you feel pressured by Troels Hartmann’s campaign, chief,’ Lund cut in. ‘Do let us know. Only polite.’

Buchard looked ready to explode.

‘I don’t give a shit about politics. There’s nothing here that makes the man a rapist and a murderer.’

‘Kemal’s lying,’ Lund said again. ‘He’s got to have a place—’

‘Then find it,’ Buchard ordered.

Kemal’s wife was walking round their apartment, looking at the walls covered in crimson fingerprint dust. There were markers everywhere.

He stood in the hall, not following her as she went round turning on the lights in each room, clutching at her big belly, face angry and confused.

‘What were they looking for?’

No answer.

‘What do they think you did to her?’

‘They’ll soon see they’re wrong.’

‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell them before.’

He leaned against the wall, didn’t meet her eyes.

‘I didn’t want you to worry.’

He wrapped his arms around her, persisted even when she tried to fight him off.

‘I told you I’m sorry. I can’t undo what’s been done. We—’

She pulled away. Still furious. His phone rang.

‘Rama speaking.’

He strode off, out into freshly sanded living room with its bare floorboards and the marks of the police forensic team everywhere.

She hated it when he spoke Arabic. A language she couldn’t begin to understand.

Hated it when he got angry too. This was so rare. He was a placid, decent man. Yet as she listened to him, voice rising to a fury in that foreign tongue, she wondered how much she really knew him. How much there was still hidden in his life.

The tap on Kemal’s phone caught the loud and angry exchange. Forty minutes later a woman in a cream chador was sitting in front of a computer listening to the phone tap.

Duty translator. She scribbled down the original, looked at it.

‘What did he say?’ Meyer asked.

‘ “Keep quiet. Don’t go to the police or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” ’

‘Have you traced it?’ Lund asked.

‘Landline. Somewhere in the north-west.’

They listened to the tape again. There was a sound in the background. A long cry. He replayed it, slowed down but at the same fidelity. Full volume.

The translator listened, nodding.

‘It’s Isha,’ she said. ‘It’s the evening prayer.’

Meyer was working on the computer.

‘The phone belongs to Mustafa Akkad. No criminal records. Runs a small business renting lock-up garages near Nørreport Station.’

‘Tell Svendsen to get Akkad in here,’ Lund said as she went for her jacket.

The lock-ups were underneath a flyover. It was a grubby, desolate place. Metal doors covered in graffiti. Rubbish strewn in the lane. Bad drains.

Jansen was outside, blue plastic shoes on his big feet, ginger hair wet in the rain. A team of three technicians were working on the door.

‘Only one of the garages isn’t rented,’ Jansen said. ‘We thought we’d start there.’

They pulled on gloves and blue plastic shoe covers. Then the technicians got the padlocks off the door and slid it open.

Meyer was in first, Lund second, torches high in their hands.

In the wandering, searching beams the place looked like nothing but a junk store. Tables, half-dismantled engines, office storage racks, tents, fishing rods, furniture…

Lund walked through to the back. Lines of paintings in frames stood along both sides with some model ships and plaster statues.

At the rear of the garage, against the wall that ran parallel with the street, stood several large canvases. Cheap paintings, the kind a restaurant might use for decoration. They were stored oddly. Propped against each other, two frames high. Set at an angle of thirty degrees or so against the brickwork.

Lund looked and thought.

She went up close, removed all four frames. There was a door behind.

Her gloved hands fell on the handle. Unlocked, it opened easily. Lund stayed on the threshold for a moment, checking the interior carefully, looking for a figure trying to hide in the dark.

This place was smaller. More organized too. A couple of metal chairs stood together, nothing on the seats as if they’d been used recently. A lamp stand was next to them, the cable running to a socket in the corner.

Lund’s torch checked the walls once more then she stepped inside, ran the beam down to the floor.

A worn, stained double mattress lay there, with a crumpled blue and orange sleeping bag on it next to an ashtray.

Closer. There was a child’s teddy bear next to the makeshift bed. She got down, started looking more closely.

‘Lund?’

Meyer had walked in and she’d barely noticed.

‘Lund?’

She looked. He’d found a girl’s yellow zipped top. There was a bloodstain on the front.

It was old and dark and big.

Yellow, she thought. The kind of thing a schoolgirl might wear. Childish even.

One o’clock. Hartmann watched the committee members assembling in the meeting room.

‘The vultures are circling, Troels,’ Weber said. ‘Watch your back.’

‘Anything from the police?’ Hartmann asked.

‘Not a thing.’

‘Let’s get this done with.’

When he entered they were scattered round the room, talking in fragmented groups.

Cabals and cliques. Every party had them.

Two women, the rest men, mainly middle-aged, in business suits. Long-term party workers.

‘This meeting was called with insufficient notice,’ Hartmann said, taking a chair at the head of the table. ‘So let’s keep it short.’

Knud Padde ruffled his curly hair nervously, glanced across the table, said, ‘It’s short notice, Troels. On the other hand. The situation with the press. The publicity…’

‘Fine, Knud. Could we get to the point, please?’

‘You’re the point.’

Morten Weber’s prediction was accurate as usual. It was Henrik Bigum who spoke. A lean, unsmiling economics lecturer at the university, bald with the severe, ascetic face of a judgemental priest. Bigum had put himself forward for election to the city council and the Parliament on several occasions. Never got past the short list. An intelligent, committed man, but caustic in private and addicted to scheming.

‘Henrik. How nice to hear from you.’

The room was silent, tense.

Hartmann put down his pen, sat back in his chair.

‘OK. Let’s hear it.’

‘We’re all very fond of you,’ Bigum went on, as if pronouncing a death sentence. ‘Appreciative of the work you’ve done.’

‘I hear a but, Henrik.’

‘But lately your judgement and your honesty have been called into question.’

‘Bullshit. By whom? You?’

‘By events. The evidence suggests the teacher’s guilty. By not suspending him you give the impression you’re protecting the innocent when in fact you’re protecting yourself.’

Morten Weber asked, ‘Where’s this on the agenda?’

‘We’re beyond agendas. Secondly, Kemal’s file wasn’t handed over to the police at the outset.’

Bigum looked round the table, addressing the meeting now, not Troels Hartmann.

‘Why not? Does Troels have something to hide? Thirdly, confidential information has been leaked from this office. Very private information. Handed to people who can do us harm. We’re losing votes. We’re losing credibility. Our support in Parliament is fragmented and waning. Does it look as if you have the situation in hand, Troels? Not to me. Not to anyone.’

Hartmann stared at him across the gleaming table, laughed and asked, ‘Is that it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t expect you to possess the assassin’s skills of Poul Bremer, Henrik. But really… You abandoned your students for this?’

‘Isn’t it true? Everything, about the file, the police, the leaks from this place?’

‘No. Everything you say has been taken out of context. These problems are dealt with. You don’t need to worry—’

‘If Troels doesn’t withdraw his candidacy of his own accord,’ Bigum interrupted, ‘I propose a meeting be called for a vote of confidence.’

‘Are you serious?’ Hartmann.

‘I am.’

‘And who would stand in my place?’ Hartmann gazed at him, waiting for an answer. ‘Do you have any suggestions? I wonder—’

‘That we deal with when the need arises. You’re destroying what we’ve worked for—’

‘This is not your decision, Henrik!’ a lone female voice cried. ‘It’s not up to you.’

Elisabet Hedegaard, a nursery school teacher from Østebro.

Bigum took a moment to answer. This was an opportunistic stab in the back. Based on hope and the moment.

‘It’s in the constitution,’ he said. ‘Knud?’

‘According to the regulations,’ Padde said, pulling a copy out of his pocket, ‘a majority of votes allows it.’

‘What about the constituency?’ Hedegaard asked. ‘They chose Troels in the first place. They have a say.’

An old man Hartmann barely recognized snarled at her, ‘We’re looking for a solution to the problem, here. Some of us have been working for the party for decades. Not since yesterday…’

Hartmann sat back, stayed silent.

‘The constituency has a voice,’ the woman went on. ‘What you suggest will only make matters worse.’

‘They can be worse?’ Bigum asked. ‘We’ve got a candidate for Lord Mayor who’s embroiled in a murder investigation. With leaks from his office. Numerous highly questionable decisions—’

‘The constituency—’ Hedegaard went on.

‘The constituency decides whether Troels is fit to stand as a councillor,’ Padde broke in. ‘It’s up to us to say who leads the campaign.’

‘I propose…’ Henrik Bigum began.

Theis and Pernille Birk Larsen turned up at headquarters just after two. Lund pulled out photos of some of the items from the lock-up. Meyer stood behind her, watching closely.

‘I need you to tell me if you recognize any of these things,’ she said.

A khaki rucksack.

Nothing.

A red notebook with a distinctive leaf pattern on the cover and a felt-tip pen.

‘No,’ the mother said.

The mattress with the teddy bear and the blue sleeping bag.

Theis Birk Larsen stared at the items.

Lund looked at him, looked at the photograph. Next to the mattress was a cup half full with orange juice. An uneaten biscuit on a plate. A bowl with the remains of what looked like curry. An ashtray with several stubbed-out cigarettes.

‘Nanna didn’t smoke,’ he said. ‘She always nagged me about it.’

Lund passed over a close-up of the teddy bear and a key ring. Two keys, and a plastic design of clover leaves and flowers.

‘You’ve already got her keys, haven’t you?’ Pernille said.

‘We thought there might be a second set.’

‘I’ve never seen any of this.’

Then the yellow top with the bloodstain and a brand logo.

Pernille Birk Larsen’s eyes opened wide, never left the photo.

‘I think she’s got one like that,’ she said, still staring at the yellow fabric and the bloodstain on the left side, close to the zip at the waist.

‘You’re sure?’ Lund asked quickly. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

‘Like it,’ Pernille said, nodding.

‘Thanks.’

Lund took the photos away.

‘Where’s he now?’ Birk Larsen asked. ‘The teacher?’

‘He’s in custody,’ Lund said. ‘He’s under arrest until we’ve finished our investigation.’

He got up. Black jacket, red boiler suit.

‘What do you know?’ Pernille persisted.

‘We can’t go into details—’ Meyer began.

‘I’m her mother,’ the woman cried. ‘I have the right—’

‘We can’t go into—’

Lund interrupted.

‘Apparently she went to his flat after the party. Maybe they had a relationship. We’re not sure. She was taken somewhere. Perhaps this place. Then driven out to the woods.’

Meyer was grumbling wordlessly behind her.

‘Thanks,’ Birk Larsen said.

‘Thanks,’ the woman echoed.

There was nothing more. They left. Meyer sat in the corner of the office, smoking.

After a while he said, ‘Lund?’

She was looking at the photos again. They had a potential ID of an item of clothing. It was the hardest piece of information they possessed.

‘Lund?’

She met his gaze. Two days’ stubble, big ears, glassy round eyes.

‘That,’ Meyer said, shaking his miserable head, ‘was wrong.’

Buchard listened to Lund’s report and shook his head.

‘The mother identified the shirt,’ Lund said.

‘It’s a kid’s top,’ Buchard complained. ‘Millions like it. Forensics found nothing to suggest it was Nanna’s.’

‘The blood—’

‘We haven’t got the results yet.’

‘There’s enough evidence.’

Meyer watched in silence.

‘Like what?’ Buchard asked.

‘Like a witness who saw Kemal carry something to his car.’

‘No,’ Buchard said. ‘The only evidence you have is an inconclusive phone call.’

‘And the fact that he lied!’

‘If we charged everyone who lied to us half of Denmark would be in jail. Any judge with half a spine’s going to tear us to pieces with this shit. Find Mustafa Akkad. Clear this up one way or the other. Or I’ll get someone who can.’

Theis Birk Larsen went out to cost a job for the week ahead. Pernille hung round in the arcades outside police headquarters then, when he’d driven off, talked her way back inside.

She confronted Lund in her office.

‘Why haven’t you arrested him?’

‘We don’t have enough evidence.’

‘How much do you need?’ she yelled. ‘You said she was at his flat. At the party. In the garage.’

‘We’re still looking.’

‘And if you don’t find more? After everything—’

‘I told you,’ Lund said. ‘We’re still working on the case. We’re making progress. I understand—’

‘Don’t tell me you understand.’ She stood there rigid, determined, right hand raised, finger wagging, like a teacher, like a mother. ‘Don’t do that. Do not tell me you understand.’

Back home. Back at the sink, manically washing dishes that didn’t need washing, wiping surfaces that were already clean.

He’d returned, sat at the table, saying nothing. In their small quarter of Vesterbro he was a king of a kind. The man the neighbours asked for help when there were problems with tearaways. Even the immigrants would knock on the door sometimes and beg Theis Birk Larsen for advice. When Nanna was tiny, five or six or seven, she’d seized an Indian kid and made the bright-eyed little waif her first boyfriend.

Amir.

Pernille remembered the two of them together, hand in hand, giggling as she rode them down the street in the box of the Christiania trike. Remembered the way Theis dealt with a couple of local thugs who picked on Amir too. Not gently. It wasn’t his way. But it worked.

Amir he defended. The boy was still in a picture on the table, in the scarlet box of the Christiania trike.

Nanna…

‘They’ll get him,’ he said finally. ‘In the end.’

‘You know about these things?’

She glared at him as she stacked the plates.

‘They never found enough evidence for you, did they? Not for everything…’

His face fell, became fierce.

Birk Larsen got up from the table, confronted her.

‘Did I fail you? Am I a poor husband?’ His eyes were sly again, but full of pain. ‘A bad father?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said you of all people know the police don’t find everything they ought to. Don’t ask me to believe in them.’

He put his hands on her waist. She wriggled from him.

Birk Larsen cursed, got his leather jacket, put it on.

‘I’m going over to the house.’

‘Do that.’

She started washing the boys’ dishes again.

‘Go back to your stupid house and hide.’

‘What?’

‘It’s what you do when things get difficult. Isn’t it? Run away.’

She put down the dishes, pulled off her gloves, faced him, discovered a savage thrill in her own courage, found words she’d never dared speak before.

‘That’s what you did with Nanna.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘When she wanted to talk. You never had time. Then you’d go. Down into the garage. Down to talk to Vagn. Isn’t that right?’

‘No.’ He took a step towards her. ‘It isn’t.’

Pernille picked up the plates from the table, tidied them away. The boys were out with Lotte. She was glad of that.

‘Why did she have so many secrets? Why didn’t we know about her life?’

‘Because she was nineteen years old! Did you want your parents knowing what you did then? Besides… You two stuck together like glue…’

‘Because you weren’t around.’

A roar like a lion, fury and pain.

‘I was working. Paying for her school. Paying for all this. You were the one who let her do what she wanted. Go out at night, come back God knows when, never say who with or why.’

‘Not me, not me.’

‘Yes you. It didn’t bother you at all.’

Tears in her eyes. Anger in her face.

‘How can you say that? How dare you say that? I couldn’t sleep until she was home.’

‘That helped.’

‘At least I didn’t take it out on her.’

‘And look where we are now.’

He waved a hand around the empty kitchen.

‘Look at this,’ Theis Birk Larsen said. ‘This…’

But she was gone, back into their bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

He ate his sandwiches at his desk. Didn’t want to leave the garage. Didn’t want to work.

Vagn Skærbæk came in. Black cap, scarlet overalls, usual jaunty walk, silver chain round his neck.

‘Rudi and I are going to the house. Are you coming?’

Birk Larsen huddled over the desk and the uneaten food, a cigarette in his fist. He shook his head. ‘Is there something I can do, Theis?’

Birk Larsen stubbed out his cigarette in the bread. Skærbæk pulled up a chair, put his elbows on the table.

‘You know how much she meant to me, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You and Pernille. The boys. Nanna. You’ve been my family. I hate seeing all this.’

Birk Larsen watched him.

‘It isn’t fair, Theis.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Skærbæk said, ‘OK.’

He didn’t leave. Sat there. Waiting.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ Birk Larsen said eventually.

‘I don’t know.’

Birk Larsen stood up. A head taller than Skærbæk. A year older. Stronger by far. King of the quarter. Once anyway.

‘It never lets you go,’ Birk Larsen said.

‘What?’

‘What you’ve done. Who you are.’

Birk Larsen nodded at the van keys on the wall.

‘Don’t go to the house, Vagn,’ he said. ‘Send Rudi on his own.’

‘OK.’

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ the big man said.

Svendsen’s men found Mustafa Akkad when he walked back to the garages at Nørreport, straight into the arms of the team working there. By five that Sunday he was in an interview room with the woman interpreter. Lund was watching through the door, talking on the phone to Mark, telling him to get something to eat. Meyer came out and she ended the call.

‘He won’t say a word,’ Meyer told her.

‘We’ll see about that,’ she muttered and walked towards the room.

He didn’t follow.

She stopped.

‘What is it?’ Lund asked.

‘Are we sure he’s involved?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘He’s got a clean record. He works. He’s got four children. He prays five times a day.’

‘So what?’

‘So something doesn’t fit.’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake. Where did you come from? Are they meant to wear badges or something?’

‘There’s something wrong! He could have removed all that stuff from the garage if he’d wanted.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘And he came back. To a murder scene. Please…’

‘Watch me,’ she said and marched into the room.

Akkad was a swarthy man of thirty-five. Leather bomber jacket. Scruffy gleaming black hair. Scared face that looked too young for his age.

Lund sat down, threw some papers on the table, said, ‘Here’s the thing. If you don’t talk I throw you in a cell. With a couple of bikers we picked up pushing dope in Christiania. They’re not into integration, Mustafa. Or didn’t you know that?’

He suddenly looked worried.

‘No language problems then.’ She pointed to the door. ‘So what is it? The cell? Or you talk? You tell me.’

The interpreter was still translating.

‘He doesn’t need this,’ Lund said. ‘Don’t translate another word. He talks to me in Danish. Or he goes to meet his new biker friends. Listen.’

Akkad’s eyes were on the table.

‘Listen!’ Lund shrieked in his face. ‘The court doesn’t care what you promised Kemal. Any more than I do. I can get you served with a deportation order in three days flat. You won’t see daylight. We’ll bundle you on a plane straight back to the place you came from.’

Finger in his face. That got some attention.

‘Straight back, Mustafa. We’ll make sure the police meet you at the airport.’ She waited a moment. ‘How are the police back home? Do they smile at you like we do? Are they nice?’

The translator was interpreting anyway. Lund let her chant on. It helped with the atmosphere.

‘After that,’ Lund said, speaking over the woman in the burka, ‘I visit your wife and kids. Check their papers. See if I can send them after you.’

His face went down into his hands.

‘Can you support them from a jail back home? Can they go to school? Go to hospital for free? Pick up benefits when they feel like it while everyone else goes out to work? Or maybe they’ll be begging on the streets like everyone else—’

‘I work!’ he roared.

The armed uniformed cop at the door took a step towards the table.

‘I work every hour I can.’

‘You speak good Danish too,’ Lund said, and folded her arms, sat back as if to listen. ‘So why the silence?’

‘It’s not what you think.’

Meyer pulled up a chair.

‘What is it then?’ he asked.

Mustafa Akkad shook his head.

‘Rama’s a good man. You’ve got to believe me.’ He stared at Lund. ‘He wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes.

‘He just did something stupid.’

‘What?’ Lund asked.

‘I went to his place that Friday night. He knew the girl would be coming by. I said I didn’t want anything to do with it.’ A shrug. ‘But he needed somewhere. When I arrived the girl was hurt. She’d been beaten up. She could hardly walk. We carried her to the car and drove her to my garage. So she could hide from her family. Then I left…’

‘Her family?’ Lund asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The girl. You keep asking me about the girl. I’m telling you… the girl Rama helped.’

‘What girl?’

Mustafa Akkad said, very slowly, ‘The girl from his father’s congregation. The one you keep asking about. Abu Jamal’s daughter. Leyla. They wanted her to marry some guy from home so he could come in here. So she tried to run away.’

‘Shit,’ Meyer muttered.

‘If they found her I don’t know what they’d do.’ He glared at them. ‘Not that you’d be much help. So Rama got her away from them. He hid her in my garage. Then somewhere else on Sunday. I don’t know where.’

Meyer swore again then got up and walked out of the room. Lit a cigarette in the dim corridor. Looked down towards the end.

Kemal’s wife was there. Big in an old khaki anorak. Phone in hand.

She said, ‘Rama didn’t come home. Where is he?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not his babysitter.’

‘He went to pick up some shopping. He doesn’t answer his phone.’

Lund came to the door, listened.

‘I left lots of messages. He never got back to me.’ She showed Meyer the phone. ‘He always calls.’

Lund walked into Svendsen’s office. He was there looking relaxed over a mug of coffee.

‘Where’s Theis Birk Larsen?’ she asked.

‘Last I heard he was at home.’

‘I told you to keep him under surveillance.’

‘Give me a million men and maybe I can do a quarter of what you ask.’

‘Find out where he is,’ she ordered.

He picked up the coffee mug, toasted her.

At quarter past six the scarlet van drew up by the front door of the deserted warehouse. Skærbæk got out first, looked around.

No one came to this part of the city much on a Sunday night.

Checked right, checked left. Remembered the old days when he and Theis worked the streets. A good team. Good partners too, most of the time.

‘Clear,’ he said and banged the driver’s side. Then he took out the security card, opened the locks, rolled up the folding door, guided him in. Stood back and watched as Birk Larsen edged the vehicle into the half-empty interior.

A train went past. A shriek of a klaxon. Pigeons scattered round the inside of the building, flapped anxiously as they flew to the door.

Skærbæk popped on the lights then rolled the outside door back down.

The old days.

Birk Larsen had brought a sledgehammer with him. Skærbæk a pickaxe handle. Both men stood at the back of the van, swinging them idly, remembering.

‘Theis—’

‘Keep quiet.’

Skærbæk fell silent. Watched. Wondered.

It was Birk Larsen who walked up to the back, unlocked the doors, threw them open.

The teacher crouched by the racks still pretending to be white.

Smart black jacket. Preppy scarf. Shiny shoes.

Skærbæk had a torch. He shone it in the man’s eyes.

Kemal got up, climbed out, opened his arms, looked at both of them.

Half angry, half terrified.

‘Listen to me,’ the teacher pleaded. ‘I haven’t done anything. I told you everything I know. I told the police—’

Birk Larsen upturned the sledgehammer, held it by the iron head, swung the shaft round, landed it in his gut.

Kemal went down, shrieking. Birk Larsen got a kick into his head, watched as he rolled round once on the floor, dragged him up by the leather jacket, threw him against the van.

Stood there, next to Skærbæk, waited.

‘Your daughter was in my flat for a minute,’ Kemal said, wiping the blood from his mouth. ‘She brought some books back. Then she left.’

Birk Larsen upturned the sledgehammer, let the iron head hang down to the ground, swinging it like a pendulum.

‘There was another girl there that night. Someone I was helping. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell the police.’

Skærbæk wiped his nose with his sleeve, banged his pickaxe handle against the van wall.

‘I know I should have told you but I couldn’t,’ Kemal yelled. ‘It’s the truth.’

Birk Larsen nodded. Looked at Skærbæk.

‘Gimme his phone,’ he said.

‘Theis…’ Skærbæk began.

‘Ring her,’ Birk Larsen ordered, handing over the mobile.

The teacher stood by the back of the van, hunched over, rigid, hurting and scared.

‘Go on,’ Birk Larsen ordered. ‘Ring the girl.’

Trembling fingers stabbed at the buttons. Rahman Al Kemal made the call.

As soon as she knew Lund left in her own car. Now she was out on the road, listening to the radio.

Control said, ‘We have a possible kidnapping. We’re looking for number plate PM 92 010. It’s a red van from Birk Larsen’s Removals. It left the garage around 6 p.m.’

Meyer was working up a team. She liked being on her own, trying to think.

‘Theis Birk Larsen is six foot four tall. About forty-five years old. Exercise caution when approaching him. He may be violent. Apprehend immediately and…’

She put her phone headset on, called Meyer.

‘What do you know?’

‘Where the hell are you? You can’t just walk out on me like that.’

‘I did.’

‘We’ve got the kidnap negotiators on standby.’

‘It’s not a kidnap, Meyer. He’s going to kill him. What do you know?’

‘We found Kemal’s car near his house. Looks like there’s been a struggle. Birk Larsen took a van.’

She was heading towards Vesterbro. This was Birk Larsen’s territory. Surely…

‘Places,’ she demanded. ‘Give me places.’

‘Where the hell are you?’

‘Places!’

He sighed.

‘We’ve checked the garage and the warehouse next door. Trouble is Birk Larsen’s got little cubbyholes all round the city.’

‘Isn’t there a warehouse at Teglholmen?’

There was a big industrial park south of Vesterbro. The closest deserted area in the city to Birk Larsen’s home.

She heard the sound of papers being shuffled.

‘Yeah but he hasn’t used it in six months.’

‘What does Pernille say?’

‘I brought her in. She won’t even speak to me.’

‘Ask his best friend Skærbæk. If Theis is going to use anyone he’d pick him.’

‘Yeah,’ Meyer said. ‘I notice things too. Skærbæk’s not at home. Both of them have got their mobiles turned off.’

‘Shit.’

‘He used his credit card at a petrol station on Enghavevej about an hour and a half ago. That’s in Vesterbro, three streets from where he lives.’

Lund pulled in to the side of the road. She was near the turning for Vesterbro, by the Fisketorvet shopping centre. Several roads converged here. She could head anywhere in the city.

‘Wait,’ he ordered. ‘OK. We have a call from Kemal’s mobile registered in P Knudsens Gade. Let me look at a map.’

She knew where that was.

‘He’s going south-east to Valby,’ Meyer said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘He isn’t. I checked the Valby address.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Lund. Maybe he’s taking the motorway. What about Avedore? They’ve got a depot there.’

She pulled out into the traffic.

‘Would he use his own place?’

‘My psychic powers fail me. You got any better ideas?’

‘Birk Larsen isn’t stupid. He knows we have a list of his depots.’

‘Yeah!’ Meyer yelled. ‘They’re all we have. Think of something, will you? Damned if I can.’

‘Where did you say the call came from?’

‘P Knudsens Gade.’

‘I’ll take a look. Tell the wife she’d better talk to you if she wants to see her husband again.’

‘Yeah.’

The street was five minutes away, a broad, double carriageway lined with bare trees, running parallel with the motorway.

Houses and offices. Brightly lit.

Not the place for a killing.

Birk Larsen looked at his watch.

Kemal had tried the number repeatedly. Never got through. Now he sat on the ledge of the van door, pressing the buttons, getting nowhere.

‘I couldn’t give the girl away,’ the teacher said, getting more desperate by the minute. ‘It was an arranged marriage. You understand? You know what I mean?’

Vagn Skærbæk leaned against the wall, eyes closed, looking bored.

‘I couldn’t tell anyone. If her parents find her they’ll hurt her again.’ Kemal hesitated. ‘Kill her maybe.’

‘And?’ Birk Larsen asked, swinging the sledgehammer from side to side like the pendulum on a clock slowing down to nothing.

‘I was afraid they’d come after her. She’d run away from home.’

Skærbæk opened his eyes, looked at him, said, ‘You sound like a man digging his own grave.’

‘Why hasn’t she rung back?’ Birk Larsen asked.

‘I don’t know! How can I know? Nanna came round to return some books. That’s the last I saw of her—’

‘I said shut up,’ Skærbæk yelled, then slapped him round the head.

‘There is no girl,’ Birk Larsen said. ‘You’re lying.’

‘No! I left her a message. She’ll ring back in a minute.’

‘Long minute,’ Skærbæk moaned.

Then the phone rang. Kemal glanced anxiously at the screen. A name: Leyla. A number.

He answered, stood up, showed it them.

Birk Larsen came over, took the phone off him. Answered.

A voice.

Gave the phone to Kemal. He tapped the speakerphone. The three of them listened.

‘Leyla? This is Rama.’

‘Rama?’ She sounded sleepy. ‘Is that you?’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘Everything will be OK.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I really need your help now, Leyla. I need you to say what happened on the Friday you came to see me.’

Silence.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘Where are you calling from?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Do you remember the girl you met? The girl from my school? Her father’s with me. It’s important you tell him what happened. Tell him she brought me some books—’

‘Don’t tell her what to say, you idiot!’ Skærbæk shouted.

The girl began speaking in Arabic. Kemal answered in the same.

‘Hey! Hey! Bin Laden!’ Skærbæk screamed. ‘This is Denmark. Speak Danish. Don’t you understand?’

Birk Larsen snatched the phone, put it to his ear.

Said, ‘Hello? Hello?’

Looked at the dead phone. Looked at Kemal, eyes bright in the gloom.

One moment.

One decision.

The teacher ran behind the door. Skærbæk screamed and went for him. Hand on the scarlet metal, Kemal rammed it back into his face, grabbed his pickaxe handle, punched it hard into Birk Larsen’s chest as the big man came for him.

Ran for his life.

Panting.

Pigeons flapping frightened overhead.

Felt something take his legs from under him.

Down on the ground, chest heaving. Above him in the pale fluorescent light Birk Larsen raised the sledgehammer, swinging the head in a slow and certain arc.

She sat opposite Meyer in the low light of the office.

‘Pernille,’ he said. ‘You have to help us. Kemal didn’t kill your daughter. He had nothing to do with it. Theis has kidnapped him. Do you understand—?’

‘No,’ she cried. ‘I don’t! First it was that kid Scharndorff. Then the teacher. I don’t!’

‘If Theis hurts Kemal he’ll go to prison. Do you understand that?’

She was quiet for a moment.

‘Theis wouldn’t hurt him.’

‘Really?’ Meyer asked.

He picked up the file photos on the desk. The bloodied corpse in Christiania.

‘Twenty years ago a drug dealer was murdered.’

She looked at the grim pictures, didn’t flinch.

‘They thought Theis did it.’ Meyer looked at her. ‘I guess that was around the time the two of you got together. Did you not suspect—?’

‘We’re all different when we’re young. Then we leave it behind.’

She stared at him.

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Maybe. But this is now and he’s making a big mistake.’

She picked up the photos, looked at them, turned them over.

‘I told you. He’d never do that.’

‘I always thought it was Vagn who came up with the alibis.’

‘Screw you.’

‘Vagn’s with him too. They won’t run from this.’ He leaned forward in the dim light. ‘Help me. Help Theis.’

Slowly, ‘He wouldn’t do it.’

Sirens outside. Cars setting off into the night.

‘I know you lost your daughter. But Kemal’s innocent. His wife’s about to have a baby. He’s a good man. Don’t make it worse. You have to help me. I need to know where Theis is.’

Meyer watched her.

Silence.

‘We can stay here all night,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all the time in the world. Have you?’

She glowered at him. They hated you even when you tried to help, he thought.

‘Pern—’

‘There’s a place he uses sometimes. I don’t know why. An abandoned warehouse.’

‘What’s the address?’

‘I can’t remember. It’s out on Teglholmen. Somewhere.’

Lund drove up and down, looking, looking.

Finally, in the darkness close to the end of the road, she saw a red sign half-hidden behind a wire fence.

Birk Larsen Removals.

The phone rang.

‘We’re on our way to Teglholmen,’ Meyer said. ‘He’s there somewhere. I’ve got an armed response unit on the way.’

‘There already,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Birk Larsen’s got a lock-up on the industrial estate. The lights are on.’

She gave him the number and a street cross reference.

‘I’ve got Pernille with me,’ Meyer said. ‘We’ll be there in two minutes. Wait for us. Lund? Lund?’

She put the phone in her pocket, got out of the car, shone her torch on the security gates.

Open.

Walked in.

Cold dark night. Thin clouds. Half moon. No wind. No sound or sign of life.

Except for the lights all round the building.

There was a side door covered in graffiti. Open. She went through, shining the torch ahead.

A short corridor. Lights at the end.

A man screamed, the cry loud and liquid, full of agony and fear.

Lund began to run.

He didn’t want to kill him. Yet. He wanted to hear. The sledgehammer was gone. Now he had Skærbæk’s pickaxe handle, kept swinging it into Kemal’s guts and chest and limbs.

There was blood on the floor. One of the man’s arms hung crazily broken at the elbow. Birk Larsen swung again, caught him in that dark and handsome face.

Another scream and not a word.

‘Theis,’ Skærbæk said.

He stood there shuffling from foot to foot, hadn’t done a thing except watch and grumble.

Birk Larsen walked around the bloody heap on the floor, thinking of somewhere new to hurt. Kicked Kemal in the head.

‘OK, Theis,’ Skærbæk said.

Another thrashing blow with the wooden stick, another scream.

‘Theis, for God’s sake! He’s had enough. Maybe…’

Birk Larsen glared at him, a fierce and frightening animal expression.

‘Maybe what?’

‘Maybe he’s telling the truth.’

Birk Larsen cursed, swung the handle again, struck Kemal on the ribs.

Went for the sledgehammer.

‘Theis!’ Skærbæk pleaded.

A voice from the darkness.

‘Theis Birk Larsen. This is Sarah Lund.’

Skærbæk found his spine, got between Birk Larsen and the man, said, ‘Come on. We’re done here.’

‘You go running, Vagn,’ the big man roared, and with one huge hand tossed him aside like a rag doll, sending him crashing against the van.

The sledgehammer came up, caressed Skærbæk’s neck, drew back for a moment.

And then Vagn Skærbæk was gone.

A hand around a bloody neck, dragging Kemal from the ground.

‘Sit up,’ Birk Larsen ordered. ‘Sit up! On your knees.’

The way they were on TV. In the videos of executions. Blindfolded men in faraway places. Waiting for death.

‘Theis!’ The voice was louder, nearer, higher. ‘Stop. Stop now.’

But the heat was in him and the rage. They never abated easily.

He could hear her running across the concrete floor. Looked. In the harsh fluorescent light blue jeans and that black and white jumper.

‘Kemal’s innocent!’ she yelled at him. ‘Listen to me. He’s nothing to do with it.’

The teacher was on all fours, bloody mouth dripping gore on the ground. Birk Larsen kicked him hard in the ribs, grabbed his hair.

‘I said get up,’ he barked, and looked into the bruised and bleeding face.

The head of the hammer stroked Kemal’s neck. A single blow. To a kneeling man. Justice.

‘Sit up!’ he screamed.

In the van’s headlights, shadows silhouetted against the wall. This was the right place, the right position. This was the point where the pain came to an end.

Another figure racing from the door.

‘Theis! Put down the weapon. He didn’t do it.’

The mouthy bug-eyed cop with the big ears.

The hammer. One long, strong swing.

He heard a gun cock, saw out of the corner of his eye the cop called Meyer had a weapon on him now, pointed, ready to go.

A shot. The sound echoed round the empty warehouse like a burst balloon. Birk Larsen blinked, hesitated. Was lost.

Then a third shape. A fawn raincoat. Long hair. A face, the precious face.

Pernille stood next to them, staring at him open-mouthed.

This is me, Birk Larsen thought. The me you knew existed even if you never dared ask.

This is me.

The hammer came back one more time.

‘Theis!’ Meyer yelled, gun out, barrel at him. ‘Listen to me. Put the weapon down. I’ll shoot you before you touch him. I swear to God.’

Pernille walked past them, straight towards Birk Larsen and the bloody heap on the grimy floor.

‘Put it down!’ the cop screamed. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

He hesitated and that was time enough. When he was ready again there were three more of them, black pistols pointed at his face.

As if that was enough…

But there was Pernille too, a stride away, her pale, pained face caught in the hard light of the bright strips. Pernille gazing at him as if to say: I knew but I never wanted to.

‘Theis,’ she said. ‘Put it down.’

And so he did.

Rie Skovgaard and Morten Weber finished working the phones. Hartmann called a few more people himself. Spoke to police headquarters then, at eight exactly, walked into the meeting.

Knud Padde began.

‘It’s undesirable but necessary that we take a vote of no confidence against Troels Hartmann. May I—?’

‘We’re wasting time,’ Henrik Bigum said wearily. He looked as if the result had already been declared. ‘We all know where this is going.’

‘Don’t worry, Henrik,’ Hartmann said. ‘A vote won’t be necessary.’

‘I’m sorry, Troels. It will. We’ve decided to do this.’

‘If you want I’ll withdraw. You don’t need to vote. Except for…’ He smiled at Bigum. ‘Whoever takes my place.’

‘No, Troels!’ Elisabet Hedegaard protested. ‘Why? Why do this? Henrik speaks for himself, always…’

‘Withdrawal’s also an option,’ Bigum agreed. ‘If that’s your choice.’

He took a pen out of his jacket. Offered it to Hartmann.

‘You haven’t checked your phone, Henrik? No private messages? No tips from Bremer’s office? Not even the news?’

Bigum laughed, shook his head.

‘I thought you might have done this with a little dignity. Resign and have done with it.’

‘I just spoke to the police chief in charge of the Birk Larsen case,’ Hartmann said. ‘There’s new evidence that proves beyond any doubt the teacher’s innocent. He’s going on TV in a few minutes. If you want to ditch me for defending an innocent man that’s your prerogative. What it’s going to do for the prospects of my successor—’

‘Over to you, Knud,’ Bigum bellowed.

Padde sat open-mouthed, unable to decide which way to turn.

‘Maybe we should think about this,’ he said eventually. ‘Not vote now after all. If what Troels says is true we need to know the facts.’

‘The facts!’ Bigum was furious. ‘The facts are Hartmann screwed this up from beginning to end. If you fall for a trick like this…’

Hartmann was nursing a cup of coffee. He looked at it. Made them wait.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘we should all sleep on it and talk again in the morning. What’s a few hours? Agreed?’

A long silence. Broken only when Henrik Bigum swore, got up, stormed out of the room. Then Elisabet Hedegaard squeezed Hartmann’s hand, beamed at him, leaned over, whispered, ‘Well done.’

Ten minutes later, alone in his office, in front of the TV.

‘It’s now evident that Hartmann’s role model has been cleared of all suspicion,’ the newscaster said.

A reporter was chasing Poul Bremer down a City Hall corridor, shoving a microphone in the mayor’s face.

‘I’m pleased the case has turned out this way for Hartmann’s sake,’ Bremer said with no conviction. ‘But you saw the way he behaved. He was paralysed by indecision. Troels Hartmann isn’t fit to be Lord Mayor. Not up to the job.’

Weber walked in, all smiles for once.

‘Lots of people calling, Troels. The press would love to talk to you. Everyone’s happy with the outcome.’

Skovgaard was behind him.

‘Even in Parliament,’ she added. ‘People like a winner.’

Kirsten Eller came on the screen, smug outside her office.

‘This is a happy moment,’ she said. ‘It proves Troels Hartmann is a trustworthy alternative to Bremer. That’s why we placed our faith in him from the very beginning.’

Hartmann rolled back his head and laughed at the ceiling.

Then he turned off the TV.

‘The press,’ Skovgaard said.

‘I don’t want to talk to them till tomorrow. Put out a statement saying I’m glad justice has been done. Morten?’

Weber got out his notepad.

‘Step up the poster campaign. Let’s focus on our integration policy. Make a point of mentioning the role models. What a success they’ve been. Oh…’

He got his coat, put it on.

‘I want another group meeting tomorrow. Don’t call anyone till the morning. Tell them then. Say everyone who was here today needs to be there.’

‘Short notice,’ Weber said.

‘Same as they gave me.’

Weber wandered off.

Troels Hartmann got Rie Skovgaard’s coat, brought it to her. She looked happier than she had in days. Beautiful too, though exhausted. He worked everyone too hard.

‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘And we need to talk.’

Theis Birk Larsen sat in a room with two uniformed officers going through the paperwork. Lund watched from outside with Pernille.

‘What happens now?’

‘We charge him,’ Lund said.

‘Where will he go?’

‘A holding cell.’

The uniformed men nodded at the big man in the black jacket. He got up, walked out with them.

‘When can he come home?’

Lund didn’t answer.

‘We’ve got two boys. When can he come home?’

‘That depends on the charge.’

‘Is he going to jail?’

Lund shrugged.

‘This is all your fault, Lund. If it wasn’t for you—’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’ll have a car drive you home. Someone will be in touch after the hearing.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Pernille…’ She wondered if this was worth saying. Whether it might make a difference. ‘We’re not special. We’re just like you. If people lie to us we think ill of it. We don’t know whether their reasons are good or bad. All we know is… they’re lying.’

Pernille Birk Larsen stood in the Politigården office, rigid with fury.

‘You think I’m lying now?’

‘I think there’s a lot we still don’t know.’

She waited.

‘Fine,’ Pernille said and walked off.

Meyer was at his desk, going through the latest papers.

‘The Muslim girl’s made a statement.’ He looked like a tired schoolboy in his zip-up jerkin and striped T-shirt. ‘She confirmed Kemal’s alibi. She said it was her top we found. I’ve spoken to Kemal.’

She was listening, just. Mostly Lund was staring at the photographs on the wall. The car. The canal. The Pentecost Forest.

‘The doctors say he’ll recover,’ Meyer added. ‘He doesn’t want to press charges.’

‘It’s not up to him.’

‘Can you not do that again, Lund?’

‘Do what?’

‘Disappear on your own without telling me.’

‘Birk Larsen is going to be charged with false imprisonment and grievous bodily harm. For starters.’

Meyer lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the ceiling.

‘We did the right thing,’ Lund insisted.

‘We did nothing. The father’s going to prison. Kemal’s in hospital. Jesus…’

Knock on the door. Svendsen. He looked pleased with himself.

‘Buchard wants a meeting with you two in the morning.’

‘Thanks for keeping an eye on Birk Larsen,’ Lund shot at him. ‘Like I asked.’

Svendsen glared at her.

‘If you ask for too much, Lund, you get it in alphabetical order. I talked to the chief about that already. He’s straight on things.’

‘A meeting about what?’ Meyer asked.

Svendsen laughed.

‘The commissioner’s going to rip him apart tonight. I guess he wants to pass on some of the pain. Goodnight. Sleep tight.’

He closed the door behind him.

Meyer sat there looking shocked and worried, his big ears moving backwards and forwards as he chewed on some gum. Any other time it would have looked comical.

Lund kept peering at the photos on the wall.

‘I’m not taking the fall for this,’ Meyer said. He got up, got his jacket. ‘I refuse.’

She was glad when he was gone. It was easier being alone.

Back to the photos. Nanna Birk Larsen. Nineteen years old though she could easily pass for twenty-two or — three. Curly blonde hair. Good with her make-up. Smiling at the camera easily, confidently. Not like a teenager at all.

They still didn’t know this girl. Something was missing.

Lund went for her things, mumbled goodnight, walked off into the corridor.

Footsteps behind her. Meyer running, panting, wild-eyed.

‘Lund,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘About what?’

‘There’s been an accident.’