The Killing

Six

She slept in a chair by the bed in his hospital room. Bengt had a bandage round his head, a drip in his right arm, a cast on his left.

He didn’t wake up. Not even when she came close to his face and whispered his name.

When the morning light began to filter through the dusty windows Lund looked around. They’d brought some of the things he’d had with him in the car when he crashed on the way to the bridge to Malmö.

A coat. A scarf and sweater.

A black leather briefcase. Some papers were sticking out of the top. They had the police stamp on them.

Lund checked him. Still sleeping. Then she began to look through the documents.

The file was thick, full of official reports. Autopsies and crime details. Photos and forensic material.

She sat down, spread them out on the floor in front of her, began to go through them one by one.

A voice broke her concentration.

‘You’re right,’ Bengt said in a pained, croaky voice. ‘He’s done it before.’

Lund put the papers to one side, came and stood over him.

‘How are you feeling?’

He didn’t answer.

‘They said you had concussion and a broken arm. The car’s a write-off. You were lucky.’

‘Lucky?’

‘Yes. Lucky. You hadn’t slept in a day…’

‘I was so pissed off with you.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘I decided to drive home. I’d had enough. Jesus…’

Lund wondered if she was about to cry. Her eyes pricked. Her mind was wandering.

‘I don’t know why I’m like this,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. Sometimes…’

Bengt’s hand came out and took hers. Fingers entwined. Warmth. Closeness.

‘I read the file. It wasn’t a crime of passion. It wasn’t the usual.’

‘We can talk about this later,’ she said, and wondered if she meant it.

‘Maybe he has a kind of method,’ Bengt went on, eyes closed, thinking.

‘We looked at that. We can’t find any links to anything earlier.’

‘That doesn’t mean they’re not there. He dumped Nanna in the water. You saw what it was like. Wild. Remote. There are probably more you don’t know about.’

‘Later, Bengt.’

‘No.’ His voice sounded cross, his eyes were open and flashing. ‘Not later. You don’t know what that word means. I’m telling you. It turns him on that only he and the girl know how and where it ends. To him that’s intimacy. Like a love affair.’

‘Later,’ she said and turned on the TV.

They watched the news together. Buchard had put out a statement clearing Kemal. He’d been a suspect through a tragic coincidence, the chief said. Nothing about how the police had been misled.

That was the way of things. You were either right and a hero or wrong and a villain. There was no halfway house, no grey area. Not in the eyes of the media. Black and white. Nowhere else.

Same in politics, she thought, watching the rerun of Hartmann and Bremer bickering in a clip from their earlier debate on TV.

Nothing was different in their words, their gestures, their expressions. But before it was Bremer who seemed to have the upper hand, his sense of superiority obvious, the hint of victory in his eyes. Now that identical interview had a different, opposing tone. Bremer’s statesmanship seemed smug and superficial. Hartmann’s incautious and seemingly unwise defence of the teacher appeared brave and farsighted.

It was the context that made the difference. But to understand the context one needed facts, waypoints, fixed positions from which to judge perspectives.

All of which the Birk Larsen case lacked.

‘They said I can leave later today,’ he said, switching off the news.

‘I’ll talk to my mother. We can move in with her.’

‘You don’t need to go to the trouble. I’m going home to Sweden.’

A flicker of something that might have been panic.

‘Why?’ Lund asked.

‘You’re busy. We’ve got workmen in the house. Your mother would find it odd.’

He closed his eyes for a moment. She looked at the bruising on his face. Wondered how long it would take to disappear.

‘There’s no shame in being wrong,’ he said.

‘Do you want some water?’

She got up. His hand reached out to stop her.

Bengt looked at her and said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll find him. Be patient.’

Lund sat on the edge of the bed.

‘What if we don’t?’

‘You will.’

‘We’re at a dead end. I don’t have any more ideas.’

‘They’re there. Keep going. What do you know for certain?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Stop this, Sarah. You know that’s not true.’

‘OK. On Friday the thirty-first of October Nanna Birk Larsen goes to a party at her high school. Earlier the same day a driver delivers campaign material for Troels Hartmann there.’

Lund got up, walked round the room, trying to think this through.

‘The driver feels unwell. He loses the car keys and goes to hospital. About nine thirty Nanna leaves the party on her bicycle. Someone found the car keys and followed her.’

‘Wait, wait,’ Bengt interrupted. ‘Stop there. This can’t be spontaneous. He didn’t just happen upon the keys and commit a crime.’

She shook her head.

‘He must have.’

‘He’s not impulsive. He plans his actions and then he covers them up.’

‘Bengt! The car was outside the school. That’s what happened. No one could have known the driver was going to be taken ill.’

‘It doesn’t fit the profile I came up with.’

‘What if your profile’s wrong? I know you’re trying to help but… what if everything’s wrong? The way we’re trying to see this. The idea there’s a pattern. Some kind of logic.’

Lund got herself some water.

‘A nineteen-year-old girl is snatched and held and raped repeatedly. Horribly. There’s a kind of logic usually. But this…’

‘Forget what you know. Forget everything I told you. Go back to the beginning. Then go back further. There’s a method here, Sarah. A way of working he’s established in his own mind.’

She waited.

‘The scissors, the soap, the ritual…’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe Nanna was the first. Go back further. Until you find something.’

‘Further,’ Lund whispered.

Out in the Kalvebod Fælled by the Pentecost Forest. A black shape emerging from the water. An eel slithering over a dead girl’s naked limbs.

Events had shaped everything that came after. Events had stolen her head.

She kissed him carefully on the cheek, avoiding the bruises, then with a brief word of thanks she left.

The black Ford was stored in a garage used by the forensic department. It was in the basement of the headquarters, reached by a ramp that led to the yard by the prison where Theis Birk Larsen was now in custody.

The vehicle looked grubbier now it was dry. Mud-stained and covered in leaves. All the doors open and up on a ramp.

The forensic technician got her the current reports as Lund turned on the huge vertical fluorescent tubes that surrounded the car. Numbered markers were stuck everywhere, on the windows, on the doors, on the floorpan.

She looked at the paperwork. Nothing new.

Lund took off her jacket, walked round with the duty officer.

There was a sad chalk outline in the boot where Nanna was found. She felt she’d looked at it a million times. Lund pulled on some throwaway plastic gloves, sat in the driver’s seat, the passenger’s. Checked the mirrors, the glovebox, the door compartments. Sat in the back, did the same.

The man stayed on a bench outside watching her, bored.

She got him to raise the thing, checked underneath. Mud and sticks from the canal. Nothing else.

‘Like I said,’ he told her. ‘There’s not a thing on it. He got everything out from the inside. The water did the rest.’

He finished his coffee, threw the plastic mug into a bin.

‘I’ve been here all night looking. You’re wasting your time. There’s nothing new.’

She went back to the paperwork.

‘I promised my wife I’d remind her what I looked like,’ the man said, pulling on his jacket. ‘Is that OK?’

Lund had the tech report in front of her.

‘It says here there were fifty-two litres of petrol in the tank when the car was found. Are you sure of that?’

He sighed.

‘Yes. It was five or six litres short of a full tank.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure. Turn the lights off when you’re done. Bye.’

‘You’re sure?’ she shouted as he left.

‘How many times—?’

‘This is important. Could you have made a mistake? It was in the water—’

‘No, no mistake. We checked that car over a thousand times. Five or six litres short of a full tank. Where’s the problem? What did we do wrong?’

‘I didn’t say you did anything wrong.’ She waved a document from City Hall at him. ‘According to the logs the tank was last filled a week earlier. If that’s the case it should be almost empty.’

He came over, looked at the log.

‘Oh. I’m sorry. We should have…’

‘So who filled it up?’ Lund wondered.

It was sunny though grey clouds were gathering. Meyer was waiting for her in the yard outside forensics. He wore a shiny leather jacket she’d never seen before and fashionable shades.

Cool, she thought. He belonged in narcotics or robbery or the gang squad. Not murder. He took it personally. That was always a mistake.

‘How’s Bengt?’ Meyer asked as he handed her a cup of coffee.

‘What?’

‘How…?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you?’

‘We need to check for young women who’ve disappeared in the last ten years.’

‘Because?’

‘In the city. All over the country. See if anything links to the Kalvebod Fælled. Or anywhere in Vestamager.’

Meyer took off his sunglasses and looked at her.

‘How’s Bengt? How are you?’

‘I told you.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘He’s fine. Can we get to work now?’

They had a room for lawyers’ meetings in the main block of the Politigården, near the court. The woman was called Lis Gamborg. Birk Larsen looked at her smart business suit, her pearl necklace, her immaculate hair and wondered how he was going to pay for this.

He was in a prisoner’s blue suit, unshaven, dirty, hungry.

‘Take a seat,’ she said.

A guard stood and watched, a handgun on his belt.

It looked bright outside the barred window.

‘I’m your court-appointed lawyer. It’s very busy today. We won’t get a hearing for a few hours.’

He sat twiddling his thumbs, barely listening. Two decades ago, when he married Pernille, Birk Larsen had promised himself he’d never be in this situation again. Not that he mentioned this to Pernille. It was part of an unspoken pact between them. He would be a different man. No more tangles with the law. No more skipping dates for reasons he’d never reveal to her. He was young then. Angry and determined to mark his place in the world, with his strength, with his fists if need be.

Then along came family and he tried to forget what he once was. Buried young Theis. Tough Theis. Theis the thug who would never be needed again.

‘Still,’ she went on, ‘that gives us time to talk about your case.’

‘What’s there to talk about?’

‘The prosecution are going to charge you with attempted manslaughter, false imprisonment and grievous bodily harm.’

Birk Larsen closed his eyes.

He had to say something. Had to ask.

‘How’s the teacher?’

She kept looking at him as if he were a specimen. A zoo animal trapped in a cage.

‘He’ll recover. He says he won’t press charges.’

Birk Larsen watched her.

‘That’s not enough. It won’t get you acquitted. Not on charges like this.’

‘The police told us it was him. The papers said it was him. No one did a damned thing.’

She took a deep breath.

‘The judge may think there are some mitigating circumstances.’

‘I’ll plead guilty. Just tell me what to say.’

He didn’t want to utter the words for fear of the answer that was coming.

‘I just want to go home to my family.’

She said nothing.

‘I need to go home.’

‘I understand. In the circumstances we should hope for leniency.’

She put her slender hands together, leaned over the table, looked into his face.

‘I’ll try to convince the judge that you don’t need to stay in custody. You’ve confessed. You came in willingly. You’re not going to flee. You’ve got a family. A business to run—’

‘I’d like to talk to my wife.’

The lawyer shook her head.

‘You have to wait until after the hearing.’

His head went down.

‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘Your friend? Vagn?’

‘Vagn had nothing to do with this. He tried to stop me. Don’t involve him.’

‘He is involved. He’s charged as an accessory.’

‘That’s not right!’

‘It’s a minor charge. He’s free. I don’t think…’

He waited.

‘Don’t think what?’

‘He won’t go to jail. I wish I could promise the same for you.’

Silence.

‘Any questions?’ she asked.

When he didn’t answer she looked at the guard.

Part of the process. Part of a system that almost swallowed him once before. Theis Birk Larsen was back in the belly of a beast he hated, and that hated him. With no one to blame but himself.

Pernille was manning the phones. Lotte had arrived to help. Their usual luck. Every minute a customer was on the line demanding something straight away.

‘I can’t do that right now,’ Pernille said to the latest. ‘Let me get back to you. I will. I promise.’

Lotte waited until she put down the phone then asked, ‘What’s he going to be charged with?’

Another call.

‘Birk Larsen’s Removals. Please wait a moment.’

Hand over the mouthpiece.

‘I don’t know. Can you look after the boys for a while?’

‘Sure. What did Theis do?’

Pernille went back to the phone and made excuses.

Lotte was still there, getting cross.

‘He did something to that teacher, didn’t he?’

‘It’s all my fault. I pushed him.’

Her hand ran through her straggly hair. She looked a mess and didn’t care.

She looked at the appointments, wondered how all this was done.

One of the men came in asking for instructions. Pernille did her best. The phone went. Lotte answered.

‘Do the job in Østerbro first,’ she told him. ‘Do it the way Theis would do it. Ask Vagn.’

He stared at her.

‘Where’s Vagn?’ she asked.

‘I dunno.’

‘Just…’ She waved a hand at him. ‘Just do what you think. I’m sorry…’

‘Pernille?’

Lotte had waited till he was gone.

‘What?’

‘The bank called when you were out. They said they need to talk to you.’

Buchard wore his best shirt, freshly pressed. Best suit. The uniform for a lecture from the commissioner.

He was straight from that and hurting.

Bent over that morning’s papers, reading them in the grey light streaming through the window of Lund’s office. Downturned mouth, shaking head.

Saying plenty without speaking a word.

Lund and Meyer sat next to one another, fidgeting like naughty children brought before the teacher.

Meyer broke the silence.

‘We realize things haven’t gone as well as they should.’

Buchard said nothing, just showed them another headline: ‘Hartmann’s Role Model Cleared’.

‘If Kemal had told us the truth…’ Lund started.

Buchard shut her up with a single caustic glance.

‘I told you our working relationship wasn’t the best,’ Meyer added. ‘Not that I’m kind of blaming anyone.’

‘Kemal lied!’ Lund said again. ‘He had every opportunity to clear himself and didn’t. If he’d—’

Buchard waved the paper at her again.

‘All people see is this,’ he snarled. ‘Not your excuses.’ A pause. ‘The commissioner wants you off the case. We don’t need this kind of coverage. Getting caught up in an election campaign… it’s embarrassing. And now the father’s charged with manslaughter.’

‘Kemal doesn’t want him prosecuted!’ Meyer cried. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything?’

‘It’s up to the lawyers, not him. You screwed up, both of you.’

They stared at the carpet.

‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kick you out of here right now?’

‘Just the one?’ Lund said straight off. ‘I could give you…’

‘Start then.’

‘We know more about this than anyone. Bring in a new team and they’ll take a week to go through the papers.’

‘I’d rather wait a week and get it straight than have you two bringing the commissioner down on my head again.’

‘We know more than we did yesterday.’

‘I’ve got an appointment at the school,’ Meyer added. ‘I can clear things there. We’ll bring this under control. Lund’s right. Get someone else and they’ll be starting from scratch.’

Buchard thought for a long moment.

‘If this case is still going nowhere tomorrow you’re off it. Both of you.’

He stood up, headed for the door.

‘Stay well away from the Rådhus. And Troels Hartmann. I don’t want any more shit from that direction. Understood?’

‘Sure,’ Meyer said.

Buchard left. Lund sat silent, thinking, arms tightly folded over her black and white sweater.

Meyer went out into the corridor, talked to the day team.

‘We need to get this back on track,’ he ordered. ‘Go back to the school. Talk to everyone. Workmen, cleaners. Everyone.’

Lund got up and started going through the evidence bags, found the one she wanted.

‘Get Nanna’s picture out to all the taxi drivers,’ Meyer said.

‘We did that already,’ Svendsen moaned.

Meyer turned on him.

‘Every driver? Every last one in Copenhagen? No. I didn’t think so. See who was working near Kemal’s flat. Find out if she took a taxi from there. Anything!’

He came back into the office, grumbling.

‘Jesus. How hard can it be?’

She had the City Hall vehicle logbook open.

‘Send a photo of the car to all the petrol stations in the city,’ Lund said. ‘Ask if they saw it on the evening of October the thirty-first.’

‘Why?’

‘We missed something.’

She passed him the logbook.

‘According to this there shouldn’t have been much petrol left in the car. The tank’s almost full. If he went to a petrol station—’

‘He’ll be on a surveillance tape. Yes. I know. I’m not stupid.’

‘Good! Let’s start with the petrol stations near Nanna’s school.’

‘Lund. If you were driving a stolen car with a kidnapped girl in the boot would you fill the car up yourself? The log might be inaccurate.’

She nodded.

‘You could be right. Check it out with the security people at the Rådhus.’

Meyer laughed.

‘Oh! Good joke! You heard what Buchard said. He’ll have my balls if I go near that place.’

She stared at him. Hands on hips. Bright wide eyes. Expectant. Dogged.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Meyer complained. ‘I don’t like it.’

She didn’t move an inch.

‘I’m not going to City Hall, Lund. That’s that. You do what you want. I am not going.’

He went back towards the corridor.

‘You told the father you’d find whoever did this, Meyer.’

He stopped, turned, scowled at her.

‘Was that just something to say?’

‘I also told my wife I’d hold down a job for more than three weeks. Which do you think matters most?’

She started saying something.

‘No,’ Meyer cut in. ‘Not a word. I know the answer. Really. No need.’

Same people, same room. Yet everything now was different. The group meeting was beginning and the tension of the night before had vanished. Smiling, joking, acting as if nothing had happened at all they sat waiting, Knud Padde beaming more broadly than the rest.

He’d been on the phone to Rie Skovgaard already. Wondering what the available committee places were. Angling for promotion.

Troels Hartmann sat at the head of the table next to Elisabet Hedegaard. The rest picked at croissants and pastries. He stuck to a single cup of coffee.

‘Good morning,’ Hartmann said and went through all the polite preliminaries. Thanks for their attendance. Apologies for the short notice.

Bigum sat at the far end of the table, slumped in his chair, trying to smile.

‘There’s no need for this to be long,’ Hartmann began.

‘Troels.’

It was Bigum. The smile looked ever more forced.

‘Please. I would like to speak for a moment.’

Hartmann acted surprised.

‘Of course, Henrik. If you wish.’

Bigum took a deep breath.

‘I owe you all an apology. For the unfortunate course of events.’

No one spoke.

‘It’s been difficult for all of us.’

Padde had seated himself next to Elisabet Hedegaard who stared at Bigum, hand on her chin.

‘I hope we all realize our disagreements only came about because of a mutual concern for the welfare of the party.’ Henrik Bigum glanced at Hartmann. ‘Nothing else, Troels. Nothing personal. So…’

An attempt at laughter. A deferential pass of the right hand.

‘I’d like us all to bury the hatchet and move forward.’

‘Thank you, Henrik,’ Hartmann said with good grace.

‘It’s a pleas—’

‘But you were right. This can’t go on.’

Bigum squirmed on his seat.

‘Troels. There’s really no reason for you to withdraw now. The constituency and the group are behind you. Your stand on the role model—’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Hartmann waved him down. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not withdrawing.’ He looked at each of them in turn, smile set to modest and self-effacing. ‘Don’t panic. Our common goal is to change the system here at City Hall. Right?’

They nodded, Bigum more vigorously than anyone else.

Hartmann rapped a finger on the table.

‘We can’t do this if we’re fighting amongst ourselves.’

An approving murmur.

Hartmann played the crowd.

‘I can’t hear you!’ He laughed. ‘Am I right?’

Louder this time, and Henrik Bigum laughed too, said, ‘You’re right, Troels. You were right all along.’

Hartmann gazed at him the length of the shiny committee table.

‘I know, Henrik. So I’m giving you the same choice you gave me yesterday.’

Bigum’s smile froze.

‘I’m sorry?’

Hartmann’s face had changed again. Serious. The expression he used when facing Bremer.

‘Either you step down…’ He paused. ‘Or we take a vote on it.’

Bigum shook his head.

‘What?’

The room was silent. Hartmann had kept Weber out of this. He never liked conflict. Rie Skovgaard, standing close to the table, smiling, expectant, had worked the phones from six that morning. They knew precisely where he stood.

Bigum was getting angry.

‘This is absurd. I’ve worked for this party for twenty years. As long as you, Troels. I was only acting in our best interest.’

‘You went to Bremer, Henrik. You offered him a pact.’

The lecturer’s bony, ascetic face flushed.

‘I wanted to gauge opinion. Nothing more. We won’t win outright. There are compromises to be made—’

‘What’s it to be, Henrik? Your resignation or a vote?’

Bigum looked at each of them. No one met his eyes. Not even Padde.

‘I see.’

He got up, leaned across the table, glowered at Hartmann, said, ‘Fuck you, Troels. You’ll never be Lord Mayor. You haven’t got the… the…’

‘Stomach?’ Hartmann asked.

Rie Skovgaard opened the door, smiling brightly.

‘Fuck you all,’ Bigum muttered and left.

Hartmann folded his arms and sat back in his chair.

Finally, Knud Padde said, ‘Well. That’s that. As chairman I will now give the floor to Troels.’

Hartmann got the coffee pot and poured himself another cup.

‘That goes for you too, Knud. On your way.’

Padde laughed like a nervous child.

‘Oh come on, Troels. I know I screwed up. But I worked hard for the party. I’m a loyal…’

Hartmann took a sip of his coffee.

‘You’re out,’ he said, nothing more.

No one looked at him. No one uttered a word.

Skovgaard had the door open again, still smiling.

‘That’s why you dragged me here?’ Padde said. ‘To humiliate me?’

‘Knud,’ Skovgaard called, knocking on the door with her knuckles. ‘We’ve a meeting to start. Please…’

He mumbled the first curse Hartmann had ever heard him utter then shambled out.

‘Good,’ Hartmann declared brightly. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

He beamed at the faces around the table. They were his now. No one else’s.

‘Elisabet. You’ll take over from Knud as chair. Is that OK?’

She nodded, smiled.

‘Now I’d like you to meet two new people.’

Skovgaard called out into the corridor.

‘Sanjay? Deepika? Will you come this way?’

A young man and a young woman. Asian. Smartly dressed, professional. Straight from the role model programme.

‘You may know Sanjay and Deepika from our youth organization,’ Hartmann announced. ‘Have a seat. Welcome. They’re our two new group committee members.’

He waited. Then asked, ‘Are there any questions?’

There were none.

Halfway through the meeting Hartmann came out to ask for some photocopies. Morten Weber and Rie Skovgaard were bickering over the machine.

‘You never told me the knives were coming out,’ Weber complained.

‘You wouldn’t have liked it.’

‘This isn’t a good time to start sacking people.’

‘They asked for it, Morten,’ Skovgaard said. ‘How can we have a snake like Bigum sitting amongst us?’

‘And Knud?’ Weber asked. ‘What did he do except behave the way he always did? Bending with the wind?’

‘Knud’s an example,’ Hartmann answered.

Weber opened his mouth, in mock amazement.

‘An example? Am I really hearing this from Saint Troels? Since when did you learn to wield daggers in the night?’

‘Since I wanted to bring down Poul Bremer. They’re gone. That’s it.’

He slapped some papers on the machine.

‘I want copies of these and some more coffee.’

‘Get your own damned coffee! Bigum won’t take this lying down. He’ll cause shit for you in the party.’

‘Listen, Morten,’ Hartmann told him. ‘We’ve been the nice guys too long. On the defensive. I had to act. I had to show I could be strong.’

‘You did that. I hope you talked it over with Kirsten Eller. Bigum was close to her in case you didn’t know.’

Nothing.

‘Oh,’ Weber snapped. ‘You didn’t. If you’d asked…’

Hartmann fought to keep his temper.

‘I’ll deal with Kirsten. You don’t need to worry about that.’

‘The problem,’ said the bank manager, ‘is you’re paying for two places.’

He’d come to the depot to see her. Sat in the office, face a mix of shame and anger. She wanted to ask him: why now? Didn’t he read the papers? Couldn’t he see this wasn’t the time?

But he was a bank manager. A man in a smart suit. Doubtless with a big house in one of the fancier suburbs. It was his job to chase small, struggling businesses in Vesterbro. Circumstances didn’t matter. Only kroner in the bank.

‘It won’t go on for long.’

‘It can’t. You don’t have the finances to sustain it. So…’

‘So what?’

‘When will you be able to sell the house?’

One of the men came through the door and said, ‘The tail lift on the big truck’s stuck.’

What would Theis do? What would Vagn say?

‘Make two trips with the little one. We can’t cancel.’

‘If we do that the next job’s late.’

She looked at him, said nothing. He left.

‘I can put your loan on hold,’ the bank manager said. ‘That means you skip this month’s payment. But…’

She was thinking about trucks and jobs and appointments. Work hard enough and the money came in. That was what Theis always said.

‘Pernille? You’ve got a big overdraft. There’s the cost of the funeral. We need some kind of—’

‘Money?’ she asked. ‘Collateral?’ She looked around at the office, the depot, the men outside. ‘All this is yours anyway. What else can I offer?’

‘You need a plan. Otherwise…’

‘Theis will be home soon,’ she said firmly. ‘He’ll find a solution. He always does.’

‘Pernille…’

‘You can wait till Theis comes, can’t you? Or do you want to serve papers at the cemetery when I put Nanna’s urn in the earth?’

He didn’t like that. It was, she thought, a cruel thing to say.

‘I’m trying to help.’

Her phone was ringing.

‘You’ll get your money. Excuse me. I have to take this.’

It was Theis, calling from the jail.

She went out into a quiet corner of the garage to talk.

‘Hi.’

‘Are you OK, Theis?’

‘Yeah.’

She tried to picture him there. Had they put him in uniform? Did he get enough to eat? Would there be an argument? His temper…

‘How are the boys?’

He sounded old and broken.

‘They’re fine. Waiting for you to come home.’

There was a long, asthmatic breath on the line, then he said, ‘I won’t be coming home today.’

‘When will they let you out?’

‘They want to keep me in custody.’

A couple of the workers were staring at one of the trucks. There was a problem there as well.

‘For how long?’

‘A week today I go back to court. Maybe then.’

She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

‘I’m sorry about…’

She’d never seen him cry. Not even when his mother died. Everything about Theis happened inside, hidden, trapped in silence. The emotions were there. She’d learned to feel them, to sense them. Never expected to see them made plain.

‘I have to go now, love,’ he said.

She was choking back the tears, for him, for her, for Nanna and the boys. For all the sad grey world.

Pernille had no words either and this seemed the worst thing, the greatest sin of all.

‘Bye,’ he said and then was gone.

Lund went to the brown-brick fortress that was the Rådhus, found the place in the basement that dealt with the cars. Stood there in her black coat, jeans and woollen sweater dealing with a tetchy old man in uniform who thought he had better things to do.

The parking garage was dealt with by a security office situated near the exit. There was a glass screen between the man and her, for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom. CCTV screens covered the building, the prison-like halls of the council quarters, the civil servants’ offices, the basement, the garage.

‘We’re busy,’ the security man said.

‘This won’t take long. I need to understand how your system works.’

He looked as if he’d worked here since the place was built a century or so ago. An unsmiling man of about sixty-five, half-moon spectacles he liked to fiddle with, bald with a fringe of silver hair. Self-important in his official blue jumper as if the city crest, three gold towers rising from the water, were a badge of office. More interested in his keys and cameras and pigeonholes than looking at the people around him.

‘It’s a garage,’ he said. ‘What do you expect? They hand in the keys once they’ve parked. They pick them up when they leave.’

There was a board behind him. Full of key rings. A driver came and asked for a car. The man got up, stretched out the half-moon glasses with his left hand so he could read the numbers. A long way. To the end of his sharp nose.

‘You need to see an optician,’ she said trying to be friendly.

He handed the driver a set, glared at her, sat down, said nothing.

‘So the key to the stolen car should have been hanging there?’

‘If it hadn’t been stolen.’

‘Who’s responsible for filling up the cars?’

‘Whoever’s driving them, I guess. I don’t deal with that side of things.’

‘And is that always entered in the log?’

He didn’t like that question.

‘I can’t speak for the electoral candidates. Talk to them.’

Lund hesitated, looked at him. Stood where she was.

‘I’m talking to you.’

Then she walked into his office, placed the vehicle log in front of him.

‘This is the log we took from here. Explain it to me. Does it mean no one filled the car?’

‘You’re supposed to stay outside the glass.’

‘You’re a city employee. You’re supposed to help the police. Tell me about the log.’

‘Doesn’t mean a thing,’ the man said. ‘Drivers don’t fill them in straight away. They wait till they’ve got time. Sometimes they don’t fill them in at all.’

He peered at the entries.

‘This driver never came back here. So he never filled in the log. Where’s the surprise? Can I go back to my work now?’

He messed with his glasses again, peered at her.

‘Unless you have some more questions?’

She walked out of the office, went to the door. Looked outside at the monochrome winter day.

No one helped the police much. They were an enemy of a kind. Even in the bowels of City Hall.

Lund went back and stood outside the glass as she was supposed to. He was still fidgeting with his spectacles, nervously it seemed to her.

‘How do the drivers pay for petrol?’

He pressed the button for his mike.

‘What?’

‘How do the drivers pay for petrol?’

He thought about this.

‘There’s a charge card in the car. Look. This isn’t anything to do with us—’

‘We didn’t find any charge card. What kind is it?’

‘I don’t know. We’re security. We don’t handle money. Now if you’ll excuse—’

‘I understand that. But you can look it up. See which petrol stations they usually use.’

‘You want me to look it up?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘And then I’ll let you get back to work.’

He sat on his little seat, miserable pale face, fingers playing with his glasses.

‘I promise,’ she said.

The details were in a book in front of him. He scribbled on a piece of paper and passed them under the glass.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘Not right now, thanks.’

Meyer and his men were at the school wearing hard hats, looking at the building site that was to become the new wing.

‘Talk to all the workers,’ he ordered. ‘Find out what time they arrived. When they left. Anything they saw. When you’ve done that talk to the cleaners. After that—’

His phone rang.

Lund.

‘Are you coming to the school or what? We’ve got plenty to do here.’

‘There was a charge card for the car. I don’t have the card but I’ve got the number.’

A pause. The sound of traffic. He could see her juggling the phone, some papers, trying to drive, all at the same time.

‘That Friday it was used at seven twenty-one in the evening. Petrol station on Nyropsgade.’

‘Where?’

‘Two minutes from City Hall.’

Meyer said nothing.

‘We’ll get hold of the surveillance tapes,’ Lund said.

‘We should do what Buchard tells us.’

She didn’t answer.

‘Can’t you do this on your own?’ he asked, and felt bad the moment he’d said it.

‘Sure,’ she replied in that lilting sing-song tone she could turn on and off at will. ‘If you like.’

Then she was gone.

The men were looking at him.

Meyer threw the nearest his hard hat.

‘You know what you need to do,’ he said.

‘Going somewhere?’ the man asked.

‘I’ll be back at headquarters if you need me.’

The days were shortening. It was dark just after four.

Pernille Birk Larsen found herself alone in the office, fending off phone calls from irate customers, the media, strangers with odd offers of help.

The bank manager had been on the phone asking for financial information. So she’d been forced to find the key to Theis’s private files to look for some missing bank statements. There was a picture in there: Theis and Nanna. Probably taken just a few weeks before, she guessed. He wore his black woollen hat and the guileless smile she loved. Nanna was beautiful, arm round her father’s shoulders as if protecting him. Not the other way round. The way it was supposed to be.

She turned it over. A scribble on the back in Nanna’s handwriting: Love you!

Pernille had never seen this photo. One more secret of Nanna’s. And her father’s. Nanna was always messing around in places she wasn’t allowed. She took Pernille’s clothes sometimes without asking. Hunted in other people’s drawers for things she might want. It caused an argument from time to time. Never a serious one. They didn’t have those. In some ways she wondered if they ever really connected with Nanna at all. Perhaps that was the inevitable distance brought about by her death. Perhaps…

Nanna was a curious kid, always looking for something new. Maybe she looked down here at Theis’s private things too.

He wouldn’t like that, Pernille thought. There was a side to him he wanted to keep to himself. She’d seen it the previous night. A huge, savage figure holding a sledgehammer over a bleeding figure on the floor of that distant warehouse. A man she loved, one she scarcely recognized at that moment.

A noise in the darkness of the garage made her jump. Vagn Skærbæk came out of the shadows. He looked guilty, furtive. There was a cut on his face and some bruising.

‘Hi,’ he said.

She put the photo away, looked up at him. Could think of nothing to say.

He stood hunched in his scarlet overalls, black woollen hat. The little brother. They’d known each other before she met Theis. Before she took the risk, felt the thrill of being with a man like him. The silver chain glittered at Skærbæk’s neck.

‘It was my idea,’ Skærbæk said. ‘Blame me. Not him.’

Pernille closed her eyes briefly, went back to the papers.

‘Is he still inside?’

There was a pile of invoices. Some statements in red. She opened a drawer and brushed them inside with her hand.

‘I can manage this, Pernille. Let me help you with the business. With the boys. I’ll do whatever I can. I just…’

More papers. More bills. They seemed to be growing in front of her.

‘I just want to help.’

Pernille strode up and slapped him on his cut, bruised face. As hard as she could.

He didn’t flinch. Just put a hand up to his cheek. The wound had reopened with the blow. He wiped the blood away.

‘How could you do that?’ she asked. ‘How could you?’

He swept away more blood with his hand, looked at her oddly.

‘Theis thought he was doing it for you.’

‘For me?’

‘If it had been him, Pernille. If it was the teacher. What would he be now? Your hero? Or an idiot?’

She drew back her hand again. He didn’t move.

‘I shouldn’t have told him,’ Skærbæk said. ‘I did my best to stop it. When I saw. Kemal would have been dead if I hadn’t.’

‘No. No more.’

He nodded. Went to the desk. Looked at the jobs for the following day.

She had to ask.

‘Vagn. Back then. Twenty years ago. Before I knew him.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What was he like?’

He thought about this.

‘Unfinished. Waiting. A kid. The way we all were.’

‘The police showed me some pictures.’

‘What pictures?’

‘Someone murdered. A man. A drug dealer.’

‘Oh.’

‘What happened? Tell me the truth.’

‘We all get stupid sometimes. Your parents thought that when you took up with Theis. Didn’t they?’

‘The police—’

‘The police are trying to trick you.’

He came and peered at her. These two were close before she knew him. Thick as thieves.

‘Theis didn’t do anything, Pernille. Not a thing. OK?’

Kirsten Eller stuck out a flabby, sweaty hand.

‘I’m so glad everything turned out well for you. All this unpleasantness was quite unwelcome.’

‘Yes. Sit down.’

She planted her full frame on the sofa in his office.

‘And you’ve sorted out your group. This is good.’

Hartmann took the chair opposite.

‘I didn’t have any choice, Kirsten. I had to do something.’

She had an image of a kind. Long coat to cover the weighty body. Permasmile. Owlish spectacles pushed back on a head of dyed brown hair as if she’d just come from a busy board meeting. Eller had been around City Hall for as long as he had. In a way she’d achieved more. By means he was beginning to appreciate.

‘At least it’s all over now,’ she said. ‘The polls are looking good. The media are starting to see which horse to back. So now we reap the benefits.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’

She took a folder out of her briefcase and opened it.

‘We have some suggestions for winning any floating voters out there. It’s the undecided who’ll put us in, Troels. Let’s not forget it.’

He grinned at her, shook his head. Genuinely amused.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘You’re a wonderful actor. Quite a talent.’

The smile stayed. No response.

‘Bigum would never have tried a trick like that without talking to you first. He went to Bremer. He came to you. And you gave him the nod.’

The smile went.

‘Troels—’

‘No. Please. Don’t insult my intelligence by trying to deny it.’

‘This is—’

‘The truth,’ he cut in. ‘I know my people, Kirsten. I know Bigum. He’s not big enough or brave enough to do this on his own. Maybe you went to him. I don’t care.’

This was clear in his head now. He wondered why it had taken so long to see it.

‘They were acting out of fear. Not strength. Not courage. Fear. I guess you could smell it.’

She held up her hands.

‘Troels. Before you say another word… understand this.’

‘I’m giving you two choices.’

Kirsten Eller fell quiet.

‘Either I inform the press and they paint you for the untrustworthy, disloyal, conniving bitch you are.’

He waited, head to one side, listening.

‘And the alternative?’

‘You step down. Let your deputy take over.’

Kirsten Eller turned to look at Rie Skovgaard happily making notes.

‘You need me, Troels. You all need me. Think of—’

‘No, Kirsten. I don’t need you at all.’

She waited. Not another word. Then Eller angrily gathered up her things, stormed to the door. There she turned and looked at him.

‘This was about winning. Not you. Don’t flatter yourself.’

‘I won’t,’ he promised.

She bustled into Morten Weber on the way out. He watched her go.

‘What happened there?’ Weber asked. ‘I thought we were having a meeting.’

Hartmann got to his feet.

‘Rie!’ Hartmann called. ‘Line up some press interviews for me. Pick friends.’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Weber cried.

‘I was going to tell you. There wasn’t time. Kirsten’s resigning.’

‘Jesus, Troels! We’ve fought for this alliance—’

‘She put Bigum up to it. She wanted me out all along.’

‘You can’t keep rocking the boat like this.’

‘Morten.’ Hartmann took him by his frail shoulders. ‘Bremer’s been one step ahead of us every inch of this campaign. It’s time we set the agenda. It’s time we moved more boldly than him.’

‘By firing everyone in sight?’

Hartmann’s temper broke.

‘She went behind my back. She tried to cut deals with Bremer. Then with Bigum. You need to change your thinking. We can knock Bremer off his perch without those mealy-mouthed sons of bitches in the Centre Party.’

‘No, Troels! We can’t. On our own we don’t have the votes.’

Hartmann shook his head. Rie Skovgaard stayed silent, smiling.

‘How long have we played these games, Morten? Twenty years? Always the same rules. Theirs. From now on we play by mine. Call the minority leaders to a meeting tonight. Tell them I have an important proposition.’

‘Half of them hate you,’ Weber said.

‘No more than they hate each other.’

‘They’re with Bremer!’

‘Not if they’ve seen the polls. They’re with whoever’s going to win.’

He looked around the campaign office. There were posters everywhere, his own face. Modest smile. Blue eyes wide open. The new broom looking to sweep out the old.

Hartmann pointed to his portrait.

‘That’s me.’

‘He filled the car the night Nanna died, ten days ago,’ Meyer said.

They were in the office looking at the CCTV tapes. Black and white, split into four windows. Date and time in the corner of each grainy frame.

‘The tapes run twenty-four hours a day. The chances of finding it after all this time are pretty slim, Lund.’

She was closest to the screen, looking. The numbers. The shadowy figures moving between the pumps.

Everything.

‘Also,’ Meyer added, ‘all these people reuse the tapes. So if it’s that old—’

‘It’s not this one,’ Lund cut in, popping out the cassette.

‘We’ve only got one left.’

‘It’s always the last.’

He took a deep breath.

‘It’s rarely the last, Lund.’

‘Look at the screen. See something I can’t. Please.’

He picked up a banana in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Lit the cigarette.

The video started. The date in the corner of the frames said 7th November.

‘Shit,’ Meyer muttered. ‘It’s from last Friday. Like I said. They reuse the tapes. That’s why they’re so scratchy.’

She took a sip of tepid coffee. Everyone else had gone home. A cleaner was sweeping along the corridor outside.

‘Doesn’t mean the rest of it’s from the seventh, does it?’ she said. ‘When we had videotapes at home…’

Mark as a baby, back when she was married. They were all jumbled up together. Different months, different years. It was hard to keep track when you used the same cassettes over and over again.

‘Fast forward,’ she said.

Meyer worked the remote.

Black and white cars, hazy figures running around.

‘Stop there,’ Meyer said.

He clapped his hands and let out a whoop of joy. She looked at him. Big ears, big eyes. Big kid.

Meyer’s face fell.

‘I was trying to cheer you up.’

‘It’s the thirty-first,’ Lund said.

‘I know. That’s what I was saying.’

Around eight p.m. He rewound, went too far, started moving forward more slowly.

They came to seven seventeen p.m. Four frames. Only one car.

It was a white Beetle.

‘Shit,’ Meyer muttered again.

‘The clock’s wrong. Why would you keep it accurate to the minute? Keep going forward.’

The Beetle left. No cars at all. Just empty concrete and the lights above the pumps.

Then at twenty minutes and thirty-seven seconds past seven a black car pulled onto the forecourt, to the pump in the right-hand upper frame, arriving with the jerky motion of a kid’s stop-frame film.

Meyer squinted at the plate.

‘That’s the car,’ he said.

It was raining. She hadn’t seen that till now. Knew what it meant. Had to mean. It was that kind of case.

The door opened. The driver got out. He was dressed in a long dark winter anorak. The hood was pulled up over his head. He walked to the boot and the fuel cap.

His face didn’t show for a moment.

‘Sh…’ Meyer began.

She put her hand on his.

‘Patience.’

Round the boot to the pump. Face down every step.

‘Come on, for Christ’s sake,’ Meyer whispered then took an anxious pull on the cigarette.

It was a pump with a card slot by the handle. They saw his hand go out, insert something, take it out.

No face.

He finished, went round the back to the fuel cap, then made for the door.

‘Come on. Smile for the birdie. Just look at something, will you?’

Straight behind the wheel. Features hidden by the angle. The Ford drove off.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Meyer groaned.

‘Wait a minute.’

She pressed the back button. Looked at the man working the pump.

Looked at his left hand. The way it stretched out and up to his head then took hold of something when he went to read the card numbers.

‘I know who that is,’ Lund said.

Meyer looked nervous.

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘I’m going to City Hall. Want to come?’

Five minutes through the rain and the sparse night traffic. The security man was about to come off duty. He began squawking the moment Meyer waved the cuffs at him.

‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.’

‘Good God,’ Meyer said. ‘I never heard that one before. You’re coming with us, mate.’

‘All I did was fill up the car.’

Lund followed as Meyer marched him to the door, thinking, listening.

‘Before or after you snatched Nanna Birk Larsen?’ Meyer asked.

The man in the blue city sweater looked at him aghast.

‘I’m sixty-four years old. What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t touch anyone.’

‘Sit him on that bench over there,’ Lund ordered.

‘We need to take him in.’

Lund looked the old man up and down. Bent back. Lousy eyesight. He didn’t seem to breathe too well.

‘Tell us the truth,’ Lund said. ‘Tell us what really happened. Then maybe you’ll keep your job.’

‘My job? My job? It’s because I was doing my job I’ve got you baboons in my face.’

Meyer shoved him onto the stone bench by the bike rack.

‘They’re never going to put you front of house are they, chum? Tell us what happened or you won’t see daylight for sixteen years.’

The security man stared at him with a mixture of fear and outrage.

‘Do I need to turn up your hearing aid, Grandad?’ Meyer yelled.

‘Where’s the charge card?’ Lund asked more gently.

He didn’t say a thing.

‘I’m trying to help,’ she told him. ‘If you don’t talk now we’re taking you in.’

‘I took the card with me. I was going to put it back when I came in to work on the Monday. But then…’

‘Then what?’ Meyer asked.

‘You people were here. Everywhere.’

‘Why did you go to the school?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? My flat’s round the corner. I walked home and saw the car there. One of our cars. Just left. I didn’t understand. I knew the schedules. They were all supposed to be back.’

‘And you had the keys?’ Meyer said.

‘No. They were still in the ignition. I guess the driver forgot them or something.’

He shook his head.

‘I couldn’t leave it there, could I? Keys in the ignition. Some thug would have had it before midnight.’

Lund was getting impatient.

‘No. This isn’t good enough. You could have called the campaign office. It was their car.’

‘I tried,’ he said very deliberately. ‘They said the secretary was in Oslo. It’s the city’s car, you know. Not theirs. We own it. Our taxes—’

‘You could drive me nuts,’ Meyer spat at him. ‘The girl—’

‘I didn’t know that girl. I didn’t do anything. Except a favour.’

‘What did you do with the car?’ Lund asked.

‘It belongs to Hartmann’s pool. He’s a flashy prick but that’s not my business. Maybe he needed it. So I drove it to the petrol station, filled it up, and drove it back. Put the keys back.’

‘Back? Back where?’

‘Back here. Where else? There’s a car park opposite. We keep the pool over there. So that’s where I left it.’

She waited.

‘I never gave it a second thought,’ he said. ‘Not until I read about the dead girl. And then…’

She sat down next to him.

‘Then you kept quiet.’

He was fiddling with his glasses again. Licking his lips nervously.

Meyer sat down on his other side, gave him an evil smile, asked, ‘Why?’

‘A city official needs to stay out of politics. It’s very important. We don’t take sides. We don’t get involved.’

‘You’re involved now,’ Lund said. ‘Very.’

‘I thought I’d check the tapes to see who’d taken the keys. It was only right.’

‘And?’

‘It wasn’t there.’ He looked baffled. ‘All I can think is whoever took the keys must have taken the tape too. How else—?’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Meyer hissed.

‘It’s the truth. I’m telling you the truth. I’m sixty-four years old. Why would I lie? If they knew the tape was gone we’d all be in trouble. Those bastards upstairs can’t wait to kick our arses. I’ve got one year left. Why should I carry the can for someone else? I brought that car back when I wasn’t even on duty. And here you are treating me like I’m some criminal—’

‘You are a criminal,’ Meyer said. ‘We’ve wasted a week chasing ghosts. There’s a decent man in hospital and that kid’s father in jail. If we’d known this from the beginning… Lund? Lund?’

She was on her feet, staring back into the Rådhus. The elegant tiled corridors. The shining wooden staircases. Crests and chandeliers. Plaques and memorials. All the trappings of power.

Someone had walked down here, taken the keys to the car in which Nanna Birk Larsen died. Taken the tape that would have shown who he was.

They’d been looking in the wrong place all the time.

‘Show me. Show me where the car was.’

Meyer hesitated.

‘The chief told us to call if—’

‘Buchard can wait,’ she said.

The council used a multi-storey garage across the road. Bare floors of grey concrete. The old security guy was getting scared.

‘I parked the car here at half past seven that Friday.’

Third floor. Not a vehicle there any more.

‘You’re sure of the time?’ Meyer wanted to know.

‘Yes! Then I hung up the keys on the board behind our desk. Then I went home.’

Lund was looking at the ceilings, the walls, the layout of the place.

‘Who’s got access to your room?’ Meyer said.

‘Not many people. We’re security, aren’t we? But there was a party that night.’

‘In City Hall?’

‘Yes.’ He scowled. ‘One of their parties. Not what you’d call a party.’

He tried to smile at Meyer.

‘Me neither. All piss and wind and cheap champagne. They always launch an election campaign with a party. A poster party they call it. Once the posters are ready they come and stand around and kid themselves they’ve won.’

‘So what if there’s a party?’ Lund asked.

‘You’ve got people coming and going. You can’t keep track of everything. They leave their keys, they want their keys. You’ve got to show people where to find the room, take them for a piss.’

She waited.

‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘If I was I’d try to keep control of things. But it’s not easy. We don’t man the place all the time. We can’t.’

‘So anyone could walk in and get the keys?’

‘And the tape,’ he added.

Meyer slapped his forehead and grunted, ‘Wonderful.’

‘Let’s get hold of what’s still there,’ she said.

She turned to the security man.

‘Whose party was it?’

He looked as if she ought to know.

‘Hartmann. The one who keeps strutting round thinking he can boot old man Bremer out into the street. The ladies love him, I know. He makes a pretty picture. But honestly…’

A brief, grim laugh.

‘Boys against men.’

Half past eight. Back at headquarters. Lund and Meyer in front of the PC, watching the security tapes. Buchard next to them, hands in pockets.

‘We can’t know who picked up the keys,’ Lund said. ‘Someone took that tape. But…’

She sat happy and comfortable in front of the screen, working the forward and back buttons, edging the video to the right place.

‘At seven fifty-five this happened.’

Two cars left on the third floor of the garage. The black Ford on the far side of the image, a silver Volvo close to the camera.

At the right of the screen, two spaces along from the car in which Nanna died, a door opened from the staircase.

People started coming through. A family. Fresh from the party.

‘Balloons,’ Buchard said. ‘You brought me here to see balloons?’

‘Forget the balloons,’ Lund said. ‘Watch the background.’

A man. Two little kids with balloons. The Volvo was theirs. As they walked towards it a figure was just visible going through the shadows to the other vehicle. Little more than a shadow. A blur on the screen.

‘How the hell do you see these things?’ Meyer asked.

‘I look. He’s a man, about six foot two I’d say. At this point Nanna is still at the school party.’

The black Ford reversed just as Volvo man and his kids were getting into the car. Blocking the view.

‘Later she stops by her teacher’s. And then…’

The Ford headed for the exit, left of the screen, behind the car in front.

‘Then I think she meets this man.’ Lund watched the screen, caught by it, unaware she was smiling. ‘Somewhere.’

She switched to another camera. The black Ford cruising along the garage. Then another on a corner. Turning towards the down ramp. The registration number was clear on the monochrome screen.

‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘XU 24 919. That’s the car Nanna was found in.’

Cigarette in mouth, eyes shiny and tired, Meyer gave her a little salute.

‘Thank you,’ Lund said with a note of dry sarcasm.

‘No, Lund. I mean it. Jesus…’

‘We were wasting our time with the school. Nothing happened there. The car was back at the Rådhus garage all the time.’

‘Someone’s been taking the piss…’ Meyer grumbled.

‘We can rule out Hartmann and his staff,’ she went on. ‘We looked into them. The thing is…’

The two men waited.

‘Nanna was going somewhere. The way she was acting at the party. Kemal said she picked up a school photo at his place for some reason. It’s as if…’

‘She was saying goodbye?’ Meyer said.

‘Maybe.’ Lund shrugged, and tugged at the sleeves of her sweater. ‘I think she was having an affair with someone. The parents suspect it too. They don’t want to tell us. Perhaps they don’t want to face it.’

‘Birk Larsen’s got history, chief. That teacher would have been dead.’

‘Forget the parents,’ Buchard ordered. ‘They’re stuck out in Vesterbro. What’s going to get people like that into City Hall?’

Lund couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

‘It’s someone who cultivated her. Nanna was beautiful. Old for her years. Someone told her she was special. Gave her expensive gifts. Told her to keep quiet. To wait.’

She thought of the cramped bedroom above the garage in Vesterbro, full of books and souvenirs and mementoes. The clothes in the cupboard. The faint smell of a perfume that should have been beyond a teenager.

‘Nanna had another life that no one knew about.’

‘Doesn’t work like that, Lund,’ Meyer said. ‘Someone had a clue.’

‘Not Pernille. Or Theis maybe.’

‘Someone,’ Meyer insisted.

‘Who’ve you told about this?’ Buchard asked. ‘The car being back in the City Hall garage?’

The question surprised her.

‘No one except you. I’ll get things started right now. Maybe there are some cameras in the street.’

Buchard strode out of the room.

‘Maybe…’ Lund said watching him.

The chief was in the corridor, visible through the glass. On his mobile.

‘Is he calling his wife, do you think?’ Meyer asked. ‘Ordering a celebration pizza?’

Lund was back at the screen.

‘What?’

‘I was just wondering. You show him something like this. He doesn’t say a word. Walks off. Calls someone.’

She waved away his smoke.

‘I wish you’d stop that.’

‘I worked in a little town down south before all this shit. No one ever complained about the smoke there.’

‘Maybe you should go back.’

He looked a little down in the mouth.

‘Can’t,’ Meyer said, nothing more.

Buchard marched back in.

‘Check the guards’ schedules and records. Pull in this old man who had the keys—’

‘He didn’t do it,’ Meyer snapped.

‘Bring me everything you can find on the staff.’

‘It’s not someone on the staff,’ Lund said. ‘They’re not the kind of people to groom a pretty young kid like Nanna. Give her things she couldn’t dream of. Pull tapes, fix keys, find places God knows where—’

‘Look at the staff. Bring me what you find,’ Buchard repeated.

She was thinking as she spoke. Couldn’t stop even if she wanted.

‘It has to be someone higher up. Someone who thinks they can get away with all this. Because we’re beneath them. We’re—’

‘That’s already been checked,’ Buchard broke in.

‘What?’ Meyer asked.

Lund wanted to laugh.

‘Checked? Who checked it? We’re working this case. If we didn’t check it—’

Buchard exploded.

‘If I tell you it’s been done it’s been done. Now get going on the guards.’

Lund flew at him as he went for the door. Meyer wasn’t far behind.

‘No. This isn’t good enough, Buchard. Who did you call?’

He was scuttling towards his office, back turned to them.

‘Never mind who I call,’ Buchard said and didn’t even bother to turn.

‘Wait, wait.’ Meyer was mad too. ‘This doesn’t make sense.’

Buchard stopped, looked over his burly shoulder.

‘Then I guess you must feel at home.’

‘I want to know what’s going on,’ Lund demanded.

He turned. Big barrel chest pushed out. Face a picture of misery.

‘Come with me,’ Buchard said.

The two of them moved.

‘Lund!’ he barked at Meyer. ‘Not you.’

She looked at the man next to her. Tried to smile.

Then followed Buchard, ignoring Meyer’s bleats behind in the corridor.

The chief closed the door. She did smile then. She’d known this man all her working life. Had learned from him. Fought with him sometimes. Eaten dinner round his house. Even made up a foursome when she was married.

‘You can tell me,’ Lund said. ‘It won’t go any further. You know that.’

Buchard looked at her.

‘You can tell that cretin too if you want. I don’t mind.’

‘Meyer’s good,’ Lund said. ‘Better than he knows.’

The chief raised his hands. Took on that arrogant, scholarly pose he used when delivering a lecture.

‘If I say they’re not involved,’ he told her, ‘they’re not involved.’

She cocked her head, looked at him in disbelief.

‘Listen, Sarah. I want this solved just as much as you do.’

‘So why are you tying my hands behind my back?’

He didn’t like that.

‘I’m your boss. I decide what you do. I’ve made myself clear.’

Then he left.

Meyer marched up, wanting to know what the chief said.

‘Nothing,’ Lund told him. ‘When we checked Nanna’s mobile how far did we go back with the calls?’

‘I don’t know. A week or so. There was no one from City Hall showing there. Just kids and home.’

‘Can you check it again? Go back further?’

The phone was ringing back in the office. She marched off to get it. Meyer followed, whining all the way.

‘What did Buchard say? Lund? Lund!’

The call was from a radio journalist asking for a comment on the case and Hartmann’s campaign.

‘We heard the focus is now back on City Hall,’ the reporter said. ‘Why is that? Is Hartmann a suspect?’

‘Who told you that?’ Lund asked.

‘Sources.’

‘Well, ask your sources what’s going on,’ she said.

She passed the phone to Meyer.

‘What did Buchard say, Lund?’

Her phone beeped. A text message. She looked at it. Got her jacket and her bag. Didn’t know what to think.

‘I have to go.’

‘Where?’

‘Keep me informed,’ Lund said and heard him bawling out the reporter as she left.

She left the car on the pavement outside the station, lights on, unlocked. Left her jacket in the driver’s seat. Raced down the stairs in her black and white sweater and jeans.

Raining again. No moon. A few people fleeing the weather and a couple of drunks spoiling for a fight.

The train to Stockholm was close to leaving. That long journey over the water by the Øresund Bridge. One she could have made herself. Any time. If only…

Five hours later Stockholm. The new life. Bengt and Mark. A quieter job. A different world.

He stood by the platform, coffee cup in hand, left arm in a sling, face still bruised and swollen.

Lund stopped for a moment. Wondered what to say. What to do.

He hadn’t seen her. Had turned towards the train. She could walk away now and she wondered whether that might be for the best.

Instead she strode up to him, said to his back, ‘Bengt.’

Saw the pain, physical and inward, in his familiar, craggy face as he turned.

The first thing you did was make excuses. Always.

‘Something came up again. I’m sorry. There was a…’

Her eyes were welling up. The words didn’t come right.

‘Things happening.’

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

‘Can we talk about it in the car?’

Something different in his eyes. An expression she’d never seen before. A distance. A look that almost seemed like pity.

‘Really,’ Lund said. ‘I understand why you don’t want to stay at my mother’s. I didn’t think we’d be there long.’

A hope. A plan.

‘Let’s find a hotel,’ she said. ‘We can get a family room. It won’t take long.’

He was shaking his head and she wanted to find the words that would stop him.

‘We rushed into things, Sarah,’ he said in a voice that seemed remote and impersonal. ‘Maybe it’s for the best. Moving to Sweden…’

That sharp stinging pain was back in her eyes.

‘No! We didn’t rush anything. What do you mean?’ A single tear escaped and ran down her right cheek. ‘I want to do this.’

Her sleeve went to her face, as if she were one more distraught kid at Nanna Birk Larsen’s school.

‘I want to be with you, Bengt. Please stay.’

‘I can’t watch this any more,’ he said, then coffee cup in hand, embraced her once.

A short hug. The kind a friend gave. It didn’t even feel like goodbye.

‘Take care,’ he said casually. Then climbed on the train.

Lund saw the station lights go blurry as she stood on the platform, watching the train pull out. Sobbing in a way she hadn’t for years.

Words were never easy.

Not saying them anyway. What they signified, what the world meant in all its strange and impenetrable faces… these were matters that fascinated her in an obsessive, constant fashion.

She’d told Bengt she loved him. Not often. Not repeatedly. It seemed unnecessary. Importunate.

And it made no difference anyway. She was what she was and happy with it. The cost…

That rough wool sleeve fell across her face again, harsh against her eyes and skin.

For a moment the lights around her dimmed. She was back in the Pentecost Forest, amidst the dead trees with their shedding silver skin. Back chasing the man who chased Nanna Birk Larsen. Lost again, as Nanna must have been in those last few savage moments.

The dark wood…

Nanna fighting for her life amid the birch trunks. Her own struggle through the shadows of the girl’s violent death, Meyer fighting to keep up by her side. They had all disappeared into the woods too. Faced with a choice of forks in the road. Left or right. Up or down. The straightforward pathway hidden from view.

Alone.

In a way she had been from the very beginning.

Perhaps that was what Bengt recognized. That when he was out of sight he was out of her thoughts. That nothing mattered except what she saw ahead of her with those gleaming, searching eyes.

And even that now seemed a lie, a joke, a phantom flitting, laughing through the shadows.

For her there was no pathway. No right direction, no correct course. Only the search for it. The chase not the conclusion.

The train pulled out towards the straight and certain track that led to the Øresund Bridge.

A turning not taken. A path that soon would be lost and overgrown.

They were all in the darkness, hunting the quarry within them and without. Meyer grappling to keep his job. The Birk Larsens fighting over how to bury their grief. Even Troels Hartmann, the poster boy of politics. A striking, intelligent man haunted by a demon beneath the surface. Of that she was sure.

So perhaps, Lund thought, she wasn’t alone at all.

Meyer called when she was back in the car.

‘Hello? Cat got your tongue?’

‘What is it?’

‘I went to forensics and made them take another look at her phone. There were fifty-three numbers on her contacts list.’ He paused. ‘We were only given fifty-two.’

She couldn’t face talking to him.

‘Can this wait till the morning?’

‘I found a list of the calls she made going back a couple of months. I compared it to the data on the phone. Someone’s screwing us around here, Lund. The list wasn’t complete. She made calls we were never told about.’

‘Where are you speaking from?’

‘Outside. You think I’m stupid, don’t you?’

‘No. I don’t. Do I have to keep saying this?’

‘Here’s the worst part. The first person to see those lists and take a look at the phone was Buchard.’

Lund kept driving.

‘That can’t be right.’

‘It’s right, Lund. I don’t like this. If Buchard is covering for someone it’s got to be Hartmann. Everything points there.’

‘Not now,’ she whispered.

‘If we can’t talk to Buchard who can we talk to? Huh? Who pulls his strings? Jesus…’

She took the phone from her ear.

‘Lund? Lund!’

The headquarters building loomed ahead in the darkness, a pale grey palace, with so many curving corridors, offices and hidden corners, she could still lose herself there if she tried.

Sarah Lund kept going. Right past. On the way to what was, for now at least, home.

There were four minority parties on the Copenhagen City Council, right and left and somewhere in between, all bickering constantly, then pandering to Bremer to win a few prize committee chairs and paid appointments.

At a quarter to ten Hartmann had their leaders in his office.

He’d got a new shirt from the wardrobe, shaved, had Rie Skovgaard check him over. Combed his hair.

These people didn’t get the smile. They were part of the game. They didn’t need it.

‘We represent five parties and five very different kinds of politics,’ he said in a calm, practised tone. ‘If we took the last election and added your votes to ours we would have had a clear majority.’

He paused.

‘A clear majority. From what we’ve seen of the polls it’s the same this time around. Maybe even better in our favour.’

Jens Holck, the leader of the Moderate Group, the biggest, the toughest nut to crack, sighed, took out a handkerchief and began to polish his glasses.

‘Don’t act bored, Jens,’ Hartmann said. ‘We’re looking at the difference between victory and defeat. Bremer knows it. Why do you think he’s playing these games with me on TV?’

‘Because you keep inviting it, Troels.’

‘No,’ Hartmann insisted. ‘I didn’t. What happened to me could happen to any of us if he felt you threatened him. That’s the state the Rådhus is in. That’s why we need a broad alliance that gets Bremer out for good.’

Mai Juhl was a small, intense woman who’d created the Environment Party out of nothing. She carried plenty of respect and little goodwill. Politics was everything for her, which seemed odd to Hartmann since she’d achieved precious little in her time in office.

‘That’s all very well but what do we have in common?’ she asked. ‘How could we—?’

‘We’ve plenty, Mai. Education, housing, integration. The environment too. You’re not the only one to care, you know. We’ve more common ground among us than you think.’

‘And the role models?’ On most conventional issues Juhl swung to the right. ‘You’d do anything to keep them.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I would.’

‘We’re a million miles apart there.’

Someone else agreed.

He looked at each of them, picking the subject carefully from the research Morten Weber had provided.

‘Leif. Last time round Bremer promised you he’d reduce CO₂ levels? Never happened. What’s he done for the elderly? Isn’t that a key issue for you too? Bistrup? Did he create jobs like he promised? Jens? You used to say the city needed to attract families with children. What happened to all that?’

They didn’t answer.

‘Bremer took your well-meant commitments when he needed your support then threw them in the bin afterwards.’

He pushed their own election material across the table.

‘If we were sitting round a TV studio now I’d tear you apart for this. You’re asking for votes yet you never deliver on your promises. Because Bremer never delivers to you. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can work together. We can compromise.’

He raised his shoulders in a gesture of indifference.

‘We’ve all got issues we’ll sacrifice. Me too.’ Hartmann held up his own manifesto. ‘This is a piece of paper, not the Bible. What matters is we win something. With Bremer you’ll come away empty-handed and you know it.’

Hartmann got up, distributed Morten Weber’s document around the table.

‘I’ve drafted a collaboration between the five of us. Obviously it’s only a beginning. Everything’s up for discussion. You’ll want changes. I welcome that.’

He went back to his seat, watched as they picked up the paper.

‘I know it’s a big step. But between us we have the talent and the energy and the ideas to make this city better. If we don’t do something now he’s back again. An administration stuck in the doldrums. No imagination. No fresh blood—’

‘I think Bremer’s done a good job,’ Jens Holck broke in.

‘So do I!’ Hartmann said. ‘Twelve years ago he was the right man. Now—’

‘This is Copenhagen. Not paradise. I haven’t seen anything from you that suggests you can be as good a Lord Mayor. Lately, more the opposite.’

‘Fair enough. We should talk frankly. Let’s see what the voters think.’

‘And,’ Holck added, ‘you’re on bad terms with Parliament. The Lord Mayor’s there to negotiate the city’s budget. If Parliament hates you they starve us. I really don’t see this—’

‘The way we deal with Parliament is through strength. If we have a broad alliance…’ His hand swept the table. ‘Then we can do better than Bremer. If they piss us off they piss off everyone. Don’t you see?’

Jens Holck got to his feet.

‘No. I don’t. I’m sorry, Troels. I don’t believe in you.’

‘Won’t you even look at the proposal?’

‘I already did. Goodnight.’

Mai Juhl was leaving too.

‘We couldn’t do this without Jens,’ she said.

The other three followed.

Alone in the office, in the blue light of the Palace Hotel’s neon sign, Hartmann wondered whether he’d jumped the gun.

There’d never been a broad coalition like this before. Maybe it was madness. But madness had its place in politics sometimes. When the old order gave way a little chaos was only to be expected. That was when the bold would strike.

And he wasn’t the only bold one around.

Morten Weber predicted Holck would reject the offer outright and the others follow. He rarely read the situation poorly. He also said they’d think about it offline. That before long someone would call.

Hartmann poured himself a brandy.

It took exactly seven minutes.

He looked at the name flashing on the phone and laughed.

Jens Holck was in the garden courtyard hidden in the heart of City Hall, smoking among the Russian vines and ivy next to the fountain.

‘You’re back in bad habits,’ Hartmann said, looking at the cigarette. ‘That’s a shame.’

‘Yes. It is.’

Holck was a couple of years short of Hartmann’s age, about the same height and build, a one-time student leader, young-looking at first glance but worn down by underachievement. He had dark hair and black fashionable glasses, a bleak schoolmasterly face. He hadn’t smiled much of late. Or shaved either. He looked a mess.

‘Didn’t I make myself clear?’ Holck asked.

‘Very. So why did you call?’

Holck’s head went from side to side.

‘In case I could make myself a little clearer.’

‘Jens. We’ve got to do something. The city’s drifting. Bremer’s administration is disorganized. The finances are a mess. He only listens to himself.’

Holck took a draw on the cigarette, blew smoke over the fountain.

‘He’s like a dying king,’ Hartmann added. ‘We all know he’s not long for this world. But no one wants to mention it. Or say a word in case the old man hears.’

‘Then maybe we should wait for the funeral. And pick up the pieces from there.’

Hartmann looked around the courtyard. They were alone.

‘Did you hear about his trip to Latvia?’ he asked.

Holck’s head bobbed up. He was on the audit committee. Rie Skovgaard had been fishing there too.

‘What about it?’

‘Officially it was a visit to a company. Inward investment. But the expense account—’

‘Been snooping have we, Troels? I thought you were the good guy.’

‘I don’t mess with public money.’

‘We see the expenses. There wasn’t a thing wrong with them.’

‘What you saw was tampered with. Thousands—’

‘Oh for God’s sake. Is this your new politics? I don’t give a damn if Bremer creams a little here and there. He’s an old man and he’s worked like a dog here. Always has. In spite of the miserable salaries and the godawful hours.’

‘So we just carry on as we are?’

‘Someone has to be Lord Mayor. Do you really think you’re different?’

‘Give me the chance.’

‘And you are on terrible terms with Parliament. That’s the heart of it. They don’t like you, Troels. They don’t like the way you preen yourself for the cameras. The women swooning. Your sanctimonious smugness. The way you think you’re better than everyone else.’

Holck laughed, a short, harsh sound.

‘Not me. I don’t have that problem. I’ve known you long enough to see through the performance. Tell me. Are you running for the sake of Copenhagen? Or the benefit of Troels Hartmann? Which matters most?’

‘You called to tell me this?’

‘Pretty much,’ Holck said, then threw the cigarette into the fountain and walked off.

Ten minutes later.

‘You’re wasting your time on Jens Holck,’ Morten Weber said. ‘He’s Bremer’s lapdog.’

‘Then let’s throw him the right bone. They were interested, Morten. They were wavering. If I’d got Holck on side they’d all fall in line behind him. In a heartbeat. Do we have any food?’

Weber bowed, said, ‘At your service.’

Then went off to find something.

‘So if we don’t placate Jens Holck we’re sunk?’ Skovgaard said.

She sat on the desk, feet on his chair, chin propped on her hands. She didn’t look unhappy with the idea.

‘No,’ Hartmann insisted. ‘We know who we are. We’re strong.’

Skovgaard held out her arm, flexed her bicep.

‘I’m strong too. Feel.’

Hartmann laughed, came to her, tested her arm with his fingers.

‘Not bad. One more thing.’

He bent down. Her arms went round his neck. They kissed. Fingers though hair. Grey business suit against black business dress.

She stayed in his embrace, said dreamily, ‘It seems a long time since that happened.’

‘When this is over I will take you somewhere with the biggest, softest, warmest bed…’

‘When it’s over?’

‘Or sooner.’

‘Is that a politician’s promise?’

Hartmann pulled away from her, smiling.

‘No. It’s mine. Call your father and get him to talk to the Interior Minister. Tell me what I have to do. Just a word from Parliament. Holck will hear it.’

Morten Weber walked back in with a dinner plate full of sandwiches.

‘The car park’s crawling with policemen,’ he said.

‘Why?’ Skovgaard asked.

Weber frowned.

‘Search me.’

Lotte Holst was eleven years younger than her sister Pernille, pretty enough to hold down a job behind the bar of the Heartbreak Club for five long and eventful years. The place catered to businessmen, young executives, anyone with enough money to pay two hundred kroner for a weak cocktail. It was near Nyhavn, close to the hordes of tourists heading for the canal boats and the restaurants.

She had her hair up, glossy lipstick, a revealing halter dress open at the midriff, and a permanently bored smile as she served up bottles of Krug and vodka to the deafening music.

The money was good. The tips better. And sometimes there were surprises.

Around eleven one of the barmen came over and said she had a visitor.

Lotte walked to reception, saw Pernille there in her fawn raincoat, hair a mess. Put a hand to her own head, felt embarrassed, the way she always did as a kid.

Pernille was pretty. But she was the beautiful one. Everyone said that. No one knew why it was Pernille who got married, even to a rough and inarticulate man like Theis, not her.

Her sister was rocking to and fro. She looked terrible. There was a small storeroom next to the cloakroom. They went there, sat on beer crates. Lotte listened.

‘I didn’t want to bother you,’ Pernille said.

‘Then why… I mean. It doesn’t matter. The boys are round with Mum. They’re OK.’

‘I know. I asked.’

‘I have to work, Pernille.’

‘I know that too.’

‘Have you heard from Theis? When he’s coming home?’

‘No. The lawyer’s doing her best.’

She hugged herself in the stained raincoat even though the little room was stifling.

‘Did Nanna say anything to you about…’

The words died.

‘About what?’

‘I don’t know. You were so close. Like sisters.’ There was something accusing in her eyes. ‘Closer than I got.’

‘You were her mum.’

Pernille was starting to cry.

‘She told you everything! She told me nothing.’

The door was open. One of the security men was watching them.

‘She didn’t…’

‘Nanna had a life I didn’t know about! I’m sure of it.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Pernille.’

‘What did she say? Were there problems at home? With me? With Theis?’

‘No…’

‘Sometimes we argued. She never stopped. Always coming and going. Taking things. Wearing my clothes.’

‘She wore my clothes too,’ Lotte said. ‘Never asked.’

‘Did she…?’ The tears again, closed eyes. An agony Lotte Holst didn’t want to see. ‘Did she hate us?’

Lotte put a hand on her sister’s arm.

‘Of course not. She loved you. Both of you. And the boys. She never said anything.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘So it’s just me?’

The security man was making signs. She wasn’t supposed to take breaks from work. Not more than five minutes an hour.

‘Something happened last summer,’ Pernille said. ‘Between her and Theis.’

She nodded, as if trying to recall a specific incident.

‘When I look back I can see it. She was always Daddy’s girl. She could wind Theis round her little finger. Then they suddenly stopped doing things together. She didn’t tell me.’

‘Theis thought it was too early for her to move out. She was a bit upset.’ Lotte shrugged. ‘That’s all. She was nineteen. She wasn’t a kid. It was nothing.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘You have to stop thinking about it so much. Theis was a good father. He still is. Even if he did something stupid.’

The barman was at the door, beckoning her.

‘I’ve got to go. I don’t want to get fired. Listen.’

She squeezed her hands.

‘I’ll come round tomorrow and do what I can. Come on. You can get through this.’

She got Pernille to her feet, embraced her, took her to the exit.

Went back, made drinks for rich businessmen, smiled when they leered.

Then waited an hour till the break came again, walked into the toilet, took out the coke, snorted a long, expensive line, trying not to cry.

Eight in the morning. Lund was watching the security tapes from the garage. Again. The family, the kids with the balloons getting into the silver Volvo. The black Ford pulling away.

Meyer came in with news. There was no sign of any connection between Nanna Birk Larsen and City Hall. She never worked there as staff or volunteer. Didn’t even seem to have visited on a school trip.

‘I’ve been through her things again,’ he added. ‘That key ring we found.’

He showed her an evidence bag.

‘What about it?’

‘They’re not hers. Not for home.’

Lund had pushed those to the back of her mind.

She took the bag off him. They were Ruko keys. Used everywhere.

‘They don’t look like anything they use at City Hall,’ he said. ‘They have all these old fancy locks. I don’t know…’

‘Later,’ she said. ‘Can we enhance the picture? Zoom in on the driver and see what he looks like?’

‘In theory.’

‘Then let’s do it.’

Meyer hesitated.

‘Buchard says this has all been checked.’

She pointed at the reports.

‘I can’t see anything about it in here.’

‘You heard him. I don’t want any part in this.’

He came and sat down next to her. Looked almost humble.

‘I really don’t want to spell this out. But this…’ He looked round the office. ‘This is my last chance. Things didn’t go too well in a couple of other places.’

‘A couple?’

‘I use that in a broad sense. I’ve got to keep this job. I have to.’

‘Is that why he didn’t kick us off the case?’ she wondered. ‘Because he’s got us where he wants?’

Meyer stared at her with his big, sad eyes.

‘If I was Buchard I would have fired us by now,’ Lund added.

‘The next time you’re going to say something like that will you please warn me. So I can put my hands over my ears.’

‘They’re big ears. It won’t work.’

‘Thank you. If Buchard says it’s been looked at—’

‘No one’s looked at this. You don’t believe that either.’

He had his hands over his ears.

Quickly he took them away and said, ‘He’s coming.’

The chief marched in.

‘You wanted to talk to me?’

Lund smiled.

‘I wanted to say sorry about yesterday. We were both tired.’

Meyer nodded.

‘Tired,’ he agreed.

‘No problem,’ Buchard said. ‘So long as we’re making progress.’

‘Progress.’ She nodded. ‘We are.’

‘Good.’

He was ready to go.

‘Who checked the contacts and the list of calls on Nanna’s mobile?’ Lund asked.

Buchard froze in the door.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Something might point to one of the guards. Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Look into it.’

Another smile.

‘I will,’ she said.

They watched him go.

‘What would you have been?’ Lund asked. ‘If you weren’t a cop?’

‘A DJ,’ Meyer said. ‘Did it when I was a student. I was very good. Except the face.’

He ran his hand over his bristle and cheeks.

‘I don’t know if I’ve got the looks.’

She laughed.

‘And you?’

‘Nothing,’ Lund said. ‘I’d have been nothing.’

‘I did consider running a hot dog cart once,’ Meyer added. ‘You’re your own boss there. Maybe one day soon. The way we’re going. Lund?’

She was somewhere else.

‘Nothing at all,’ Lund said.

There was nothing to look at in the phone records. But twenty minutes later a detective stuck his head through the door with news. A taxi driver had appeared in the office after one more run by the night team pushing out pictures of Nanna. He said he thought he might have picked her up the night she died.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Meyer said.

‘Believe what?’

‘This is the first time anyone’s volunteered a damned thing about that poor kid. Didn’t you notice, Lund? Everyone else expects us to be mind-readers.’

He rubbed his stubbly chin.

‘They do want us to find this bastard, don’t they?’

The taxi driver was called Leon Frevert, a tall, skinny man in his mid-forties. He had a long grey face that matched his cheap suit and smelled of cigarettes and sweat. Straight from a night driving a cab round the city.

‘I’m not positive it’s her,’ Frevert said, looking at the photos they’d given her.

‘Forget whether it was her or not,’ Meyer ordered. ‘Tell us what happened.’

He worked weekends driving a cab for one of the city firms.

‘I picked her up on Friday. If it was her. We talked a bit. She wanted to go into town. I dropped her off on Grønningen, near the junction with Store Kongensgade.’

Long straight street at the edge of the city. Next to the Kastellet fortress. Nowhere near any of the addresses they’d looked at.

‘You’ve got a receipt?’

‘Sure. You’re in trouble if you haven’t.’

Frevert pulled a bunch of papers out of the pocket of his threadbare suit.

‘I think it was this one. I picked her up near Ryparken. See.’ He pointed to the receipt. ‘The ride started at ten twenty-seven p.m. Finished at ten forty-five.’

Lund asked, ‘What happened when you got to Grønningen?’

‘She got out. I found a new customer straight away. Didn’t even have to drive off. Plenty of work on Fridays.’

He scratched his thinning fair hair.

‘The thing is we didn’t go direct. We stopped. You don’t get that so much with kids. They don’t have the money.’

‘Stopped where?’

‘On Vester Voldgade. At the back of City Hall.’

Meyer closed his eyes and groaned.

‘What happened there?’ Lund asked.

‘She got out and asked me to wait. I wouldn’t do that normally. They just run off. But she seemed a nice girl. She wasn’t drunk or anything.’

‘What did she want at City Hall?’

‘She didn’t say. She went inside for a couple of minutes.’

‘Did you see anyone with her?’

‘No. She came out. And then we went to Grønningen. I don’t want to waste your time. I can’t promise it was her.’ He glanced at the photos again. ‘Maybe, but…’

‘Thanks.’

She shook his hand, waved at Svendsen who was wandering down the corridor outside, asked him to take a statement.

Then the two of them sat in the office alone.

‘There are lots of hotels around there,’ Lund said.

‘We’ve been round the hotels.’

‘Then go round again. Ask them if they’ve seen a politician. If anyone from City Hall lives nearby. Are you working on the guards?’

He was getting tense and angry. Wouldn’t look at her.

‘Yes. I certainly am.’

‘The taxi took her from Kemal’s house to City Hall,’ Lund went on.

‘He said he wasn’t sure if it was her.’

She didn’t want an argument. Meyer was scared for his job. Torn, she guessed. Between what he thought was right and what he thought was smart. For himself.

‘I’ve an appointment,’ she said getting up, grabbing her jacket. ‘Call me when you hear something.’

Rie Skovgaard had been putting out feelers to Parliament overnight. Hartmann’s relations with the Interior Minister remained good.

‘The problem’s the Prime Minister. He thinks you’re ambitious. You steal the limelight. He thinks you’ll come for him if you unseat Bremer.’

Hartmann listened, shook his head.

‘I’m not coming for him. Not for four years anyway.’

Morten Weber was reading the morning papers.

‘At least the polls are staying with us. No one believed that nonsense about the girl.’

‘If we’ve got the Interior Minister on board that’s enough.’

‘Only if the Prime Minister allows it,’ Skovgaard said. ‘He could still sink you.’

‘This is ridiculous. We’re in the same party. And they’re backing Bremer?’

She was smiling at him.

‘Out with it,’ he said.

‘There’s one possibility. The Prime Minister’s not doing well at the moment. He could use some of your limelight.’

Hartmann felt out of his depth for a moment. Skovgaard and Weber swam so easily in these muddy waters.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘He’s never caught on to the integration issue properly. If we said his office helped put together our programme. Helped with role models. Some of the school projects…’

Hartmann laughed.

‘Not a chance. We came up with that. They hated the idea.’

‘Forget the past, Troels. If we give them credit—’

‘For what?’

‘For anything. So long as we get their backing.’

‘It’s a lie!’

Weber’s head went from side to side.

‘Lie’s a very strong word. This is politics. What’s true… what’s untrue. After a while it doesn’t matter so much.’

‘Then what does matter?’

‘What works,’ Weber said, looking at him as if he were a simpleton.

‘No. It’s out of the question.’

‘OK,’ Skovgaard said and stared at the sheets in front of her.

‘OK,’ Weber agreed and read the paper.

A long minute’s silence.

‘I’m glad to see you’re working well together,’ Hartmann noted.

‘We usually do,’ Skovgaard replied.

‘The answer’s still no.’

Another long minute.

Then Hartmann took a long deep breath, looked around at the wooden walls, the leaded windows, the crests and gilt, up at the fancy artichoke lamp.

All the trappings of office. None of the power.

‘What would we get in return?’

‘We could invite him to your campaign meetings,’ Skovgaard said.

‘The most important thing is to get Holck into the deal,’ Weber added. ‘I hate this shit as much as you do.’

He shrugged.

‘But if it can bring us the alliance…’

‘Find out exactly what we can expect in return. I don’t want any escape routes.’

‘If we ask that question we’ve already said yes,’ Weber told him. ‘No going back.’

‘No going back,’ Skovgaard repeated.

‘Cut the deal then make me an appointment. With the Prime Minister. If it gets us into office I don’t give a shit who gets the credit.’

He got up from the table, walked out.

The two of them sat there, uneasy allies.

‘Any news on why the police were in the car park?’ Skovgaard asked.

‘What?’

‘You heard, Morten. You hear everything, even if you pretend you don’t.’

‘No news that I know of. I’ll call Parliament.’

‘I can do that. This is policy. You leave it to me.’

There was a new man round from the bank. Younger. Friendlier. Pernille had called the jail, tried to talk to Theis, failed. He was going to be kept in for another day at least. No phone calls but at least she might be able to see him later.

‘Sorry,’ she told the bank man. ‘I can’t talk to my husband.’

‘No problem.’ He spread out the papers in front of her. ‘So let’s assume the house will go on the market while you continue the renovations.’

‘OK.’

‘We’ll extend your credit so you don’t have to pay the instalments. Let’s hope the house sells quickly so we can break even.’

‘That’s fine by me.’

‘Then there’s the account your daughter opened.’

She stared at him.

‘In Anton and Emil’s names. Where should that money go?’

Pernille brushed back her hair.

‘What account?’

He pushed forward a statement.

‘It’s got eleven thousand kroner in it. She was a steady saver. It’s a lot of money…’

‘What kind of account?’ she asked.

‘It’s a savings account for the boys.’

‘Can I see?’

She snatched the statement before he could answer. Stared at the figures. Regular deposits. Hundreds of kroner a time. Never a withdrawal.

‘Where did she get the money?’

‘From a job?’ the man suggested. He was blushing, embarrassed.

‘She didn’t have a job. She worked for us from time to time. But that was pocket money. Not this…’

He shrugged, said nothing.

The account was opened the previous January. Regular deposits every fortnight. They stopped in the summer.

‘There’s no rush,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to make a decision right now. Well…’

A brief smile. He stood up.

‘Unless there’s something else.’

Pernille couldn’t take her eyes off the bank statement. It sat on the table, above the family pictures captured in the surface. Taunting her. Laughing.

When he was gone she called the prison again. Found someone amiable.

‘I’ll come now,’ she said.

The guard let Pernille into the tiny prison interview room then stood by the door. Theis sat hunched at a scratched wooden table in a bright-blue prison suit, eyes on the floor.

A moment of indecision. Then Pernille walked over, threw her arms round him, felt him clasp her, felt the tears rise in her face.

The two stayed locked together, rocking gently, his huge hand moving through her long chestnut hair as if looking for something that was lost.

Then they sat down opposite each other, Pernille’s eyes swimming as she cried.

Finally he asked, ‘How are the boys?’

‘The boys are fine.’

He wouldn’t look at her as he spoke.

‘I talked to the lawyer. She’s doing everything she can. When I get out I’ll take care of the bank and the house.’

She turned away, wiped the tears. Felt a stiff hot flicker of anger and couldn’t work out why.

‘I’ll fix everything,’ he said. ‘It’ll be OK.’

Looking out of the window at the monochrome day beyond she asked, ‘What happened between you and Nanna last summer?’

His head went up. His eyes — they were the part of him she liked the least — caught her. Unreadable. Aggressive sometimes.

‘What?’

‘You used to…’

The tears were coming again and she couldn’t stop them, however hard she tried.

‘Did you have an argument? Did you say something to her?’

Her voice was breaking and it was full of unintended blame.

‘What do you mean?’

Two decades she’d been with this man. There were always secrets between people. Perhaps there had to be.

‘Nanna opened a bank account in the boys’ names,’ Pernille said. ‘She made regular deposits. She had a job. The account…’ She said this very slowly. ‘It had eleven thousand kroner in it.’

‘You know she had a job! With us.’

‘She didn’t earn that kind of money with us.’

‘Maybe I paid her extra. Or she saved it up.’

‘Then why keep it a secret?’

‘I don’t know.’

She’d no idea whether she believed him or not.

‘Nanna never said anything to you?’

‘No.’ He rubbed his bearded chin, closed his eyes. ‘She was angry with me. I know that. I thought it was too early for her to move out.’

He reached over and took her hands across the table.

‘I used to give her money to cheer her up sometimes. What she did with it…’

‘Yes,’ Pernille said.

‘That’s all I can think of.’

She watched him trying to smile. Trying to say what he always said.

I will fix this. Things will get better.

So she smiled back, squeezed his hands in return, came forward over the old wooden table and kissed him.

‘Everything’s going to be OK,’ he said again.

Lund drove to the TV station to see a reporter who was making a documentary about the election campaign. The woman was following Hartmann and Bremer from beginning to end.

‘I’m just interested in what happened on the night of the poster party,’ Lund said.

They were seated in front of a screen, the woman flicking through unedited video.

‘What do I get out of this?’

‘Nothing.’

The TV woman blinked.

‘It’s only fair—’

‘No it isn’t. I could get a warrant in five minutes. If I do that you won’t work again today. We’ll take everything.’ Lund smiled at her. ‘If I think there’s evidence here I can stop you using this.’

‘So why should I show it you?’

‘Because you don’t have a choice.’

‘I still want something.’

‘If there’s a story you’ll get it first. If there’s a story…’

Lund sat on the edge of the desk, not moving an inch.

‘All I need is footage from seven p.m. to eight p.m.’

‘The poster party was October the thirty-first?’

‘That’s right.’

‘OK. I remember that. They were in Hartmann’s office.’

Her fingers flashed across the keyboard. Then she scrolled through the footage. Poul Bremer came on the screen, laughing and joking, glass in hand.

‘I love the way they pretend they respect each other. You should hear what they say in private.’

‘Like what?’

‘They smile and smile and hate each other’s guts. And they’d climb into bed with anyone if it’d get a few votes.’

Lund was watching the screen, barely listening.

‘Hartmann invited everyone into his office for a drink.’

Skovgaard, the leaders of the minority parties, Morten Weber, Bremer, all together, laughing and joking over glasses of wine.

‘Does anything interesting happen?’ Lund asked.

‘Hartmann gives a short speech. Nothing special. No point in wasting effort on this bunch, is there? Either they’re voting for him or they’re not.’

Lund leaned forward, looked more closely. There was a figure in black at the back of the crowd. Talking to no one. Looking uncomfortable.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Jens Holck. Leader of the Moderates. He’s behind Bremer.’

‘Was he there all evening?’

‘Yep.’

Hartmann clinked a glass against a bottle. Poul Bremer came and stood next to him beaming, genial.

Lund wasn’t watching them. Her eyes were on the figure at the back.

‘So why’s Holck putting on his coat?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Is there any more footage of him?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Curiosity.’

Lund nodded at the keyboard. The woman worked it, set the video to run more quickly.

The camera scanned the room. She went forwards, back, looking round the sea of bodies.

‘I can’t see him. I thought he was there. Sorry.’

‘What’s he like?’ Lund asked.

‘Holck? Been in politics for years. Serious. Bit of a loser. Nothing without Poul Bremer.’

She sat back in her chair, put her hands behind her head.

‘Not exactly oozing charm if I’m honest with you. There was some gossip about him having an affair and getting found out. It never made the papers. His wife’s divorced him though.’

‘He had an affair? Is that true?’

The woman laughed at her.

‘You don’t know politics, do you?’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘They feed off gossip. Off one another. They live in this little world of their own and nothing else matters. I’ll tell you something…’

Lund waited.

‘Anybody who had an affair with Jens Holck must have been pretty desperate. Or they had a high boredom threshold.’

Lund called Meyer as she left the TV station.

‘The car left at seven fifty-five. Jens Holck slunk out of the poster party fifteen minutes earlier and wasn’t seen again.’

‘Buchard’s been asking for you,’ Meyer said.

‘Does Holck live near Grønningen? It might even be a hotel room.’

‘I couldn’t care less, Lund.’

‘The talk in City Hall is that he’s been having an affair.’

‘We’re not making inquiries at City Hall. Not with the politicians. Leave it. Didn’t I mention Buchard was asking for you?’

‘You did.’

‘Were you listening by any chance?’

She looked at the phone. Tried to imagine Jan Meyer’s face at that moment.

‘Lund?’ said a tinny, uncertain voice from the speaker. ‘Lund?’

She found Troels Hartmann as he was leaving his office.

‘I need two minutes of your time,’ she said.

‘Does your boss know you’re here?’

‘It’ll only take a moment. I just wanted to apologize.’

‘You need to leave,’ Rie Skovgaard said. ‘You’ve caused us no end of problems.’

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. This is a difficult case. Two minutes…’

Hartmann waved her into the office and closed the door.

‘I need your help,’ she said.

‘I have a citizens’ surgery on Mondays. You can make an appointment like anyone else.’

‘What if I said your car wasn’t at the school?’

‘Then I’d say you’d screwed up again.’

‘What if I said it was driven back here? To the City Hall car park?’

He was silent.

‘That Friday night. When you held your poster party. All the group leaders. All your campaign workers.’

‘What the hell is this about, Lund?’

‘I need to know if anyone left the party early.’

‘Wait, wait. I don’t understand. You’re saying the car was brought back here?’

‘Did anyone leave early?’

Skovgaard walked in. She was on the phone. Saying, ‘Can I speak to Buchard now?’

‘Did Jens Holck leave early?’ Lund asked.

‘Holck?’

Skovgaard was through, whining to Buchard.

‘Do you remember seeing him later in the evening?’

Hartmann shook his head.

‘Your boss wants to talk to you,’ Skovgaard cut in, offering the phone to Lund.

She stared at this woman. Attractive in a hard, unemotional way. It never seemed to touch these people that a young girl had died. No one except Hartmann, and that still interested her.

‘Yes?’ Lund said, taking the phone, not really listening.

When it was done she passed the handset back to Hartmann’s smiling campaign manager.

‘Get out of here,’ Skovgaard said.

Lund looked around her. At the wooden walls, the panelling, the beautiful lamps, the expensive furniture.

‘This place must feel like a castle,’ she said.

‘Go,’ Skovgaard repeated.

Lund glanced at her, then, lingering more, at Hartmann.

‘It’s not a castle,’ she said.

Back in her empty office Lund took a cigarette from Meyer’s pack, rolled it in her fingers. Did all the bad things. Turned it round, tip to end, juggled it, smelled it. Lifted it to her lips, felt the dryness as she put it in her mouth, lit the thing and breathed in the choking smoke.

It didn’t taste good. It didn’t make anything better. It just was.

Outside Buchard was briefing the team, in a voice pitched loud enough for her to hear.

‘Lund starts her new job in Sweden tomorrow,’ the chief told them. ‘Meyer takes over. Svendsen, you’re Meyer’s assistant.’

He’d taken her name off the door already. Now it simply said: Vicekriminalkommissær Jan Meyer.

Buchard came in to see her straight after. He looked at the cigarette.

‘I’ve informed the Swedish police you’re ready to start there. I refrained from telling them about your activities.’

‘My gratitude knows no bounds.’

She took a suck on the cigarette and looked at him. Buchard wasn’t good at shifty.

‘I’m sorry things had to end this way,’ he added.

‘You’re the only one in this place who rates Svendsen.’

A flicker of anger in his pug eyes.

‘That’s the last thing you have to say to me?’

‘No. There’s more.’ The cigarette was starting to feel good now. ‘But you’ve probably got calls to make.’

When he’d gone Meyer came in, stood by the sign with his name on it. He didn’t seem happy.

‘We couldn’t find anything around Grønningen. Anything that links in Holck.’

Svendsen stuck his head around the door. He was smiling.

‘There’s a delivery from Sweden, Lund,’ he said. ‘You need to sign for it. Before you go.’

Emphasis on the last word then a big grin.

‘I will,’ Lund said. She pointed at the cigarette. ‘When I’m done.’

Lund watched him wander off, turned to Meyer, pointed at the retreating Svendsen and said, ‘He’s theirs, Meyer. Not yours. Remember.’

Then she went to the window. A yellow removals van stood below, the driver waiting by the door.

‘I’ve got some guy waiting in forensics,’ Meyer said. ‘So…’

She blew smoke out of the window, remembered how many times she’d scolded him for doing the same.

‘You can keep the packet.’

One more pull, one more lungful out into the damp November air.

‘Lund?’

‘Thanks,’ she said and didn’t look at him.

When he was gone she went to the desk, went through the plastic evidence bags, found Nanna’s keys, the Rukos on a red plastic ring, and pocketed them.

It was starting to rain. Bengt had sent back what things she had in Sweden. She opened up the first case. Clothes and bedding, nothing she could use.

So she signed for them, made a call to the company, ordered storage, then watched the yellow van drive off with a part of her life still inside. Gone until she reached some point in the future she still couldn’t begin to imagine.

The lawyer, Lis Gamborg, saw Birk Larsen in his cell.

‘Vagn’s been questioned. He confirmed he encouraged you to take revenge against the teacher.’

‘He didn’t do that. He tried to stop me.’

‘That’s what he says. It’s to your advantage. Let’s leave it there. Vagn will be charged as an accessory. He’s not looking at jail.’ She paused. ‘You are.’

Birk Larsen took a deep breath, stared at the grey concrete floor, said nothing.

‘I argued that you wouldn’t try to abscond. That you’d suffered enough. You wouldn’t interfere with witnesses, since you’ve already pleaded guilty.’

‘And?’

She shrugged.

‘And you’re free to go.’

In his blue prison suit Birk Larsen felt like a child being gulled by a performer on stage. He didn’t like tricks and maybe she realized that.

‘Provided,’ she added quickly, ‘you don’t leave Copenhagen. And under no circumstances must you interfere with the investigation again. I mean that, Theis. If you do anything else…’

‘I won’t do anything. I just want to go home.’

‘Good. For your sake and your family’s it’s important you keep a low profile. Don’t talk to the media. Don’t get involved. Go back to the way you were.’

He stared at her.

‘As much as you can. I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. You can get your things now. Theis…’

She hesitated over something.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘People have got such sympathy for you. For Pernille. But sympathy’s like a dripping tap. One little turn…’

The lawyer made a twisting gesture with her hand.

‘Then it’s off. What replaces it may not be so nice. Be invisible. Be patient. I’ll see you when we come back to court. If no one’s heard a word of you in the meantime then maybe I can keep you out of jail.’

He nodded.

She smiled then left him alone, in his blue prison suit and black boots. Unshaven, unwashed. Thinking about the strange world beyond the door.

Pernille took the call, shrieked with a sudden burst of joy. Called Lotte round to look after the boys, shuffled on her coat before getting the car.

Her sister came straight away with a bagful of shopping, ready for the night. Sweets ready, and a book.

Families ran on these daily rituals, all taken for granted, all so painful when the reason for them was gone.

Lotte started running the bath, got the boys in. Pernille went for her keys.

One packet of sweets only, she thought, and looked in Lotte’s shopping bag.

Plenty of crisps and snacks. Some shampoo. The kind of things a woman on her own bought in such small quantities it seemed ridiculous.

A pile of letters. Lotte must have picked them up on the way out, brought them round to read while she was babysitting.

The top one was square and formal, a card in an envelope.

It bore Nanna’s name and Lotte’s address.

Squeals from the bathroom, the noise of Lotte scolding them.

‘I want the duck,’ Emil cried.

‘Not until you stop splashing,’ Lotte said.

Without a thought Pernille reached in, took out the square envelope, ripped it open.

The card was silver with an ornate Christmas tree. An invitation to a staff Christmas party for a nightclub in the centre. Four weeks away.

She stared at it feeling cold and stupid and betrayed.

‘Where’s the duck?’ Lotte asked by the bathroom door. ‘Oh. Right.’

She’d found it. Then looked. Saw.

‘Nanna worked with you all along,’ Pernille said, the card in her hands. ‘She gave them your address. That’s why we never knew.’

Lotte came over, stared at the card, retreated, guilty.

‘When did she start there?’

Little sister, little sister, Pernille thought. I never did trust you really.

‘In January.’

Lotte had the evasive, shifty look of the naughty child she once was.

‘She only started as a temp. She left last summer.’

Pernille held the card and waited.

Lotte licked her lips, tried to get hold of herself. Look convincing.

‘She didn’t plan it. She came to visit me and thought it seemed…’ Lotte shrugged. ‘Exciting.’

Pernille looked around their little apartment. The cramped rooms. The photos on the walls. The table they made. The books. The TV. The kids. The close and intimate thing called family.

‘Exciting?’

‘It just happened. I didn’t see any harm in it.’

She didn’t know whether to cry or scream. To fly at Lotte or run away.

Instead she asked, ‘What happened last summer?’

Lotte folded her arms. Confident in herself now. Afforded an escape route.

‘Maybe you should talk to Theis.’

‘Charlotte. You’re my sister. Tell me what happened.’

Sounds from the bathroom. The boys giggling, splashing.

‘She liked the job. Then she started seeing someone. A man.’

‘Who?’

‘Someone she met there. I don’t know who. She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Did he give her money?’

Lotte looked sly again.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Just tell me. Did he give her money?’

‘I don’t think so. It wasn’t like that. She started to turn up late for her shifts. Then one day she didn’t turn up at all. I was worried.’

Pernille knew what was coming, had to hear it.

‘I called Theis,’ Lotte said. ‘I’m sorry. We found her in a hotel room. She was dead drunk. It was when you were away with the boys on the school trip. Nanna promised she’d stop seeing him. She promised Theis.’

Pernille laughed at the idea, laughed and held back her head, let the tears begin to flood her bright eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lotte said again.

Pernille walked over, took the towels off her and the rubber duck.

‘I want you to go now,’ she said.

‘Pernille—’

‘I want you to go.’

The debate was in the Black Diamond, the angular glass building by the water that housed the Royal Danish Library.

Still the Nanna Birk Larsen case haunted Troels Hartmann. Rie Skovgaard and Morten Weber had bickered about little else in the car.

‘Lund thinks the car was driven to City Hall,’ Hartmann said as they walked into the library. ‘Why? Why would anyone drive it back?’

‘If any of this was important,’ Skovgaard cut in, ‘we would have heard of it. Lund’s off the case. I told you.’

‘So that’s why the police were in the car park?’ Weber asked.

‘Doing what?’ said Hartmann.

Weber shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Whatever police do.’

They got out, walked through the doors.

‘This is a public event, Troels,’ Skovgaard said. ‘Time to smile.’

He wasn’t in the mood.

‘Why did she ask me about Holck?’

On the escalator, rising towards the busy crowds above.

‘The only thing that matters about Holck is whether he’s with us or not.’

‘No,’ Hartmann insisted. ‘We need to know what’s going on. I don’t want all that shit again.’

‘The shit came from Lund!’ she barked at him. ‘Lund’s gone. Focus on the meeting. This is important.’

‘I need to know!’

‘Jesus, Troels…’ Skovgaard muttered and wandered away.

Weber watched her, looked at Hartmann.

‘For once I’m with her. Think about the meeting. We can deal with the rest later.’

Then they wandered off into the audience while Hartmann lugged his briefcase to the podium.

Bremer was there already. Immaculately dressed. Smiling as always. A little flushed under the lights.

‘Welcome, Troels,’ he said, shaking Hartmann’s hand. ‘You’ve been fishing in troubled waters, I hear. Did you catch anything?’

A laugh. A hard slap on Hartmann’s shoulder. Then a wave to the crowd, some private gestures to people he maybe knew and maybe didn’t.

All the politician’s tricks and habits. Troels Hartmann had learned them, from Bremer mostly. Could summon them up too. But then…

A figure in a crumpled black suit entered from the right. Bremer leapt up, took Jens Holck by the hand, made a point of saying, ‘Good evening, old friend. Sit by me, Jens… Sit.’

He pulled up a chair. Holck looked at it.

‘No thanks.’

Walked on, looked at the empty seat next to Hartmann.

‘Is this free? I’ve been thinking…’

‘If you want it, Jens.’

‘I believe I do,’ Holck said and sat down.

Grønningen ran straight along the side of the Kastellet grounds for half a kilometre. There were buildings, apartment blocks, on one side only. Nanna’s Ruko keys didn’t work in any of the front doors.

After Lund wasted half an hour testing every lock there she checked the short road at the south, Esplanaden. Nothing.

She called Meyer.

‘I need your help,’ Lund said.

‘You were wrong about Holck. He drove off in his own car that night.’

‘Did you check if any party members owned flats around Grønningen?’

‘We did. No one does. And there are no politicians living nearby. The Liberals own a flat on Store Kongensgade.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘What are you up to?’

‘Where?’

‘Number hundred and thirty.’

Lund walked the short way into the street, checked the numbers. It was back to the north, closer to Grønningen. Store Kongensgade was a long and busy road that ran all the way from close to Østerport Station into the city itself. The taxi driver, Leon Frevert, said he dropped Nanna near to the junction between the two streets. She should have worked this out earlier.

On the left ran lines and lines of low, old ochre-coloured houses. The naval cottages of Nyboder, laid out in low rows in the dark like soldiers frozen to attention.

‘It’s on the fourth floor,’ Meyer said. ‘Where are you?’

A massive building. Red brick, white facings gleaming in the street lights. Grand communal entrance. Lots of bells. A Ruko lock.

‘It’s irrelevant,’ he added. ‘We’ve checked out Hartmann already. Lund?’

‘What?’

‘Where are you? What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, then put the phone in her pocket.

Two keys. One for the outside. One for the apartment.

Lund walked up to the double door, put the first key in the lock, turned.

Nothing.

Tried the second.

The door opened.

The lift was gleaming and ancient, double folding doors, room for no more than four inside.

She got in, pressed the button for the fourth floor. Listened to the mechanism whirr and hum.

The place seemed empty. She rose past offices and dentists’ surgeries, past private apartments and places that bore no name.

Then the lift stopped. Lund got out and started to look around.

Meyer was back in forensics, going through the video from the car park again. The black car pulling away. The driver just out of sight.

‘Stop it there,’ he told the technician. ‘What was that? It looked like a flash of light.’

‘It’s the fluorescent tube. On the way out. Flickering.’

‘Go back, back. Take it step by step.’

Seven frames. Just visible in the driver’s window, illuminated by a single brief flash of light, was the face of a man.

‘Who the hell is that?’ Meyer asked, trying to stifle his impatience. ‘Can you enhance it?’

‘I can try.’

His phone rang.

‘It’s Lund.’

‘Good timing. We’re about to find out who was in the car.’

‘It was Troels Hartmann,’ Lund said.

‘What are you talking about?’

Silence.

‘Lund? Lund? Where are you? What’s going on? Talk to me. Please.’

‘I’m in the Liberals’ flat in Store Kongensgade. Nanna’s keys open the door to the block and the door to the flat. Call forensics. Meet me here.’

‘Hartmann?’

‘That’s what I said.’

The screen was rendering the enhanced image. A face was emerging out of the grey murk. Angular and handsome. Grim-set and familiar.

Meyer thought: Poster Boy. You’re mine.

‘We’re on our way,’ he said.

A full team were in place within the hour. Ten men in the blue uniforms of forensics, white bunny suits, white gloves at the ready. Floodlights. Cameras. Chemicals.

Lund had a second unit outside, in the courtyard behind the block, was walking among them, checking their work, offering advice and opinions, some of them well received, others plainly ignored.

Meyer brought her coffee. Buchard didn’t say a word.

She took the two of them through the front door, into the noisy old lift.

‘The taxi driver dropped her off on Grønningen at quarter to eleven. I imagine she didn’t want anyone to know she was coming here. Nanna could have been in the flat four or five minutes later. It belongs to the Liberals. A donation from a supporter. They use it for work lunches, meetings, putting up guests.’

‘Who lives in this place?’ Meyer asked.

‘Most of the units are offices or corporate accommodation. It was pretty much empty all weekend.’

They got to the fourth floor. Lund walked to the flat, showed them how Nanna’s key worked.

‘She had one for the front door too?’ Buchard asked.

‘Yes.’

Six technicians in bunny suits and blue plastic mob caps were working in the interior. The place was decorated like a luxury hotel suite. Red velvet wallpaper, old, stylish furniture.

‘We’ve found her fingerprints already,’ Lund said, handing them forensic gloves and shoe covers to wear.

When they were ready she led them in.

Posters of Troels Hartmann were scattered round the room. There was a broken glass table and splinters from what looked like a tumbler on the floor.

Lund walked to the table, showed them the marks on the carpet.

‘The blood’s Nanna’s type. I’ve sent away for confirmation it’s hers. There was some kind of fight.’

There was a heavy walnut desk by the window.

‘We’ve got prints on the paperweight there. Nanna threw it at the mirror for some reason.’

Lund turned three hundred and sixty degrees on her heels, looking at the room. The broken glass. The disorder.

‘She didn’t just fight him. She got mad. Lost her temper I think. This wasn’t random. Unexpected. She knew him. It was an argument. A lovers’ tiff gone wrong.’

‘We’ve got lots to send to forensics,’ Meyer broke in. ‘With a bit of luck we’ll have a DNA result by tomorrow afternoon.’

Lund walked into the bedroom. The door was open, covered in forensic marks and stickers.

‘Nanna ran in here and tried to block the door. He kicked it open.’

The bed sheets were ruffled as if someone had sat on them, nothing more.

‘I don’t think he raped her here. Or beat her up. That was to come. Somewhere else.’

Lund tried to imagine what had happened. An argument. A fight. But Nanna didn’t die for another two days. A big piece of the jigsaw was still missing.

She walked outside onto the terrace.

Meyer and Buchard followed.

Buchard stood still, Lund eyeing him.

‘If you went down to forensics and checked the video you know perfectly well Hartmann was on the surveillance tape,’ Meyer added. ‘I got that in two minutes, Buchard. You’re no fool.’

‘I want to talk to Lund alone,’ the chief said.

‘Enough of that shit!’ Meyer shouted. ‘I’m sick of it.’

He slammed his hands on the iron railings.

‘Buchard! Buchard! Look at me! I want to know what’s going on. You owe us that. Both of us.’

The old man looked downcast, lost, defeated somehow.

‘It’s not what you two think.’

‘What is it then?’ Lund asked. ‘You erased a name from her mobile. You deleted a call from the list.’

‘No I didn’t.’ It was a weak, pathetic whine. ‘It wasn’t me.’

‘Who was it then?’

He didn’t answer.

‘We’re bringing in Hartmann for questioning,’ Lund announced.

‘And we want that information,’ Meyer added.

He stood on the cold terrace, panting. Someone’s servant. Not a happy one.

‘Well?’ Lund asked.

‘I’ll get it for you.’

‘Good,’ she said and then they left him there, pop-eyed and breathless in the dark.

The three of them were back in Hartmann’s office feeling satisfied. The debate had gone well. Morten Weber said the minority leaders were meeting in the morning to discuss the alliance.

‘If we’ve got Holck,’ Skovgaard said, running to her computer, ‘the rest of them will come too. What changed his mind?’

Hartmann was the only one who looked unhappy.

‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. Why was Lund asking about him? What’s all this about the car?’

Skovgaard waved him away.

‘If Holck’s involved I need to know.’

‘I left Meyer a message.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

Weber was getting wine from the cupboard, putting out sandwiches he’d brought.

‘No surprises, Morten,’ he said. ‘That’s what you want too.’

‘No surprises.’ Weber uncorked the wine, poured three glasses, toasted them both. ‘Jens Holck’s just following his nose, Troels. He knows you’re going to win. Don’t complicate things unnecessarily.’

Skovgaard’s phone rang.

‘Bremer looked worried as hell,’ Weber added. ‘He can feel the ground disappearing beneath him.’

Skovgaard spoke quietly into the phone, ended the call. Looked at Hartmann.

‘That was the police,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘They want to talk to you.’

‘Oh for God’s sake—’

‘Troels. They want you to go to police headquarters. Now.’

‘Is this about Holck and the car?’

‘It didn’t sound like it.’

‘Then what could it be?’

‘I don’t know. They said straight away. Either that or they come here for you. I really don’t want that.’

Hartmann’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth. He slammed his hand on the table. Dark burgundy spilled over the walnut veneer.

Then he got his coat. So did Skovgaard. So, after she stared at him stuffing his face, did Morten Weber.

Ten minutes later they were crossing the open courtyard, heading for the spiral staircase that led to homicide.

Lund waited with Meyer and Svendsen outside the interview room.

‘I only asked for you, Hartmann,’ she said, looking at Skovgaard and Weber.

‘I really don’t have time for this.’

‘We want to talk to you alone.’

‘What’s this about?’

Lund indicated the door.

‘Just take a seat.’

Skovgaard was getting mad.

‘If this is an interrogation say so. We’ve taken so much shit from you, Lund.’

Meyer smiled at her.

‘It’s just a few questions. A politician ought to help the police, surely.’

‘If he wants a lawyer you can call one,’ Lund added.

Hartmann glared at her.

‘Why in God’s name would I want a lawyer?’

They didn’t answer.

Hartmann swore, walked into the room, indicated for Skovgaard and Weber to stay outside.

Lund and Meyer sat opposite him, showed him the video of the car leaving the parking garage.

‘Looks like one of ours,’ Hartmann said. ‘But there are a lot of black cars out there.’

‘Any idea who’s driving?’ Lund asked.

He shrugged.

‘No. Why should I? If it’s important I can ask one of our people to check.’

‘You don’t need to,’ Meyer said. ‘We’re police remember.’

He hit some keys on the computer. Zoomed in. Face on the screen. Just to rub in the point he passed over a printout.

Hartmann stared at her.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘It was after the poster party. I gave my driver the night off. So I borrowed a campaign car.’

Lund smiled. Svendsen came in with some coffee. Hartmann relaxed a little.

‘You left the poster party early?’ she said.

‘I had a headache. And a speech to write.’

Lund poured him a cup.

‘Where did you go?’

‘We’ve got a flat on Store Kongensgade. I thought I’d go there to finish the speech. Why?’

‘Who has a key to the flat?’ Meyer asked.

‘I do. There’s a spare key in the office. Some other officers too, I think. I don’t really know.’

‘But you use the flat?’

‘I told you. What is this?’

Lund shuffled some photos on the table, let him see them.

‘The car you drove is the car Nanna was found in. It was driven back to City Hall that night. You drove it away.’

He shook his head, said nothing.

‘What happened in the flat?’ Meyer asked.

‘It can’t be the same car,’ Hartmann said.

‘What happened in the flat?’ Meyer asked again.

‘Nothing. I was there for a couple of hours.’

‘So was Nanna Birk Larsen,’ Lund said, fetching some new photos. ‘She had a key. She was attacked there. Then driven away in the car you took.’

Lund pushed the photos from Store Kongensgade across the desk. Broken table, shattered mirror. Glass on the floor. Fingerprint markers.

‘In our flat?’ Hartmann asked finally.

‘How long did you know her?’ Meyer asked.

Hartmann couldn’t take his eyes off the pictures. Slowly he flicked through them, mouth open, face frozen.

‘I didn’t know her. I never met the girl.’

Meyer snorted.

‘The car. The flat. The fact you never mentioned any of this.’

‘There was nothing to mention! I took the car. I went to the flat. I had a couple of beers. Then I decided to walk home.’

They said nothing.

‘On Monday morning I came to pick up the car but it was gone. I assumed someone from the campaign office had gone in and found the keys. I left them on the table. Someone must have taken them.’

Meyer sighed.

‘Why did you take the surveillance tape? So we couldn’t see it was you in the car?’

‘What? I didn’t take any tape.’

‘Your number was deleted from Nanna’s mobile,’ Lund added.

‘That’s not possible. I didn’t even know the girl.’

‘What did you do with the rest of the weekend?’ Meyer asked.

Hartmann swore and got up.

Lund strode to the door, blocked it, looked at him. He was agitated and angry.

‘Are you going to tell us or not, Hartmann?’

‘Why the hell should I? My private life’s my own business. None of yours.’

‘This isn’t about your private life…’ Meyer began.

The door got pushed open. In walked Lennart Brix.

Brix.

Buchard’s new number two. Fresh from one of the regional forces. A tall and striking man with an angular unsmiling face. He’d arrived two weeks before, kept himself scarce. Now he looked as if he owned the department.

‘I’m the deputy chief here,’ Brix said. ‘Good evening.’

He walked straight over, shook Hartmann’s hand. Stood next to him, turned to Lund and Meyer and Svendsen.

‘I understand there’s a problem,’ Brix said.

Five minutes later. Lund lit her second cigarette of the month as she watched Hartmann leave with Skovgaard and Bremer by his side. Jan Meyer stood next to her chewing gum.

Brix saw the three of them out then came back to the office.

Black shirt. Black suit. Shiny black Italian shoes. He looked like a politician himself.

‘Hartmann told me he took the car in good faith. He clearly left the flat before the girl arrived. He’s willing to talk about the flat. You can question his employees as much as you need. You don’t even have evidence she was raped there, Lund. She might have just had an argument with someone.’

‘We don’t want to talk to his employees,’ Lund said.

Brix leaned against the door, watching her. A fixed, determined man.

‘If you’d asked nicely you’d have discovered he had an alibi. You’re looking for someone who had Nanna Birk Larsen all weekend. Hartmann left the flat around ten thirty and went to Rie Skovgaard’s.’

‘He said he went home.’

‘His relationship with Skovgaard is a private matter. He wishes to keep it that way.’

‘If these damned people told us the truth…’ Meyer began.

‘The next morning they went to a conference centre where they had meetings all day.’

‘Can we check that?’ Meyer asked.

‘You don’t need to.’ He pointed at the pair of them. ‘The next time you pull in someone like Hartmann I suggest you do your homework first.’

They watched him go. Lund passed the half-smoked cigarette to Meyer.

‘Let’s check the alibi. See if anyone else from City Hall uses the flat. Everyone in Hartmann’s office comes in for questioning.’

She looked at Meyer.

‘Are you OK with that?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

Svendsen came back in with a message. Pernille Birk Larsen was coming in. She wanted to see Lund urgently.

‘We don’t have time. If it’s about her husband being in custody…’

‘It can’t be that. He got let out.’ Svendsen shook his head, laughed. ‘She didn’t even come to meet him, Lund. You should feel flattered.’

Theis Birk Larsen walked home to Vesterbro. Twenty minutes in the rain through deserted streets.

Pernille wasn’t there. Nor were the boys. In the kitchen, by the pot plants and the photographs, he phoned her, got nothing more than voicemail, waited five minutes, phoned again.

Just after eleven a door slammed downstairs. He ran down into the garage. Lights on. Vagn in his red overalls and black woollen hat, looking at the diary in the office.

Skærbæk looked surprised to see him.

‘Have you seen Pernille, Vagn?’

‘When did you get out?’

‘Just now.’

‘That’s good. What happened with the teacher—’

‘Have you seen her?’

Skærbæk looked baffled.

‘Lotte came round to babysit. She wasn’t here long and then they left.’

Birk Larsen stood by the office, hands in pockets, trying to make sense of this.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where to?’

‘Christ, Theis! I don’t know.’

Birk Larsen glared at him.

‘You did talk to her?’

‘I thought she went to pick you up.’ Skærbæk hesitated. ‘Didn’t she?’

Birk Larsen went back upstairs. Called again. Got nowhere.

Pernille Birk Larsen brought her sister Lotte to headquarters. Dragged her there by the looks of it.

Lund listened then asked, ‘Tell me about this club, Lotte. The Heartbreak.’

‘It’s for members. Private. Invitation only.’

Meyer sat silent, scribbling notes.

‘What did Nanna do?’

‘She waited on tables. I always kept an eye on her.’

‘Nanna liked the place?’

‘Sure. It was exciting. Different.’

‘Different?’ Meyer asked.

‘Different from taking calls for a removals company.’

Pernille sat in the corridor beyond the glass. She’d refused to leave.

‘How did you know she was seeing someone?’

‘She missed some shifts and kept asking for time off. It seemed…’

She was a pretty woman, but with a sad and pasty face that spoke of late nights and maybe something else.

‘It seemed innocent.’

‘Then something happened?’

‘One night she didn’t turn up. I called Theis and told him about it. We drove around looking for her. I got a call from a hotel near the station. She gave them my number.’

Lund watched her, wondering.

‘Why did she get a room?’

‘She’d had too much to drink. She was upset. I think the guy had dumped her. He wasn’t there. It was just Nanna.’

‘Did she do drugs?’ Meyer asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Did she talk about the man?’

‘I think he was married or something. She was really secretive. She wouldn’t tell me his name. Nanna…’

A long pause.

‘It was kind of a time when a kid falls in love with someone different every week.’

‘But she didn’t,’ Lund said. ‘This went on for months.’

‘That time. She always called him Faust.’

‘Faust?’ Lund checked, writing this down.

‘It’s not his real name.’

‘It wouldn’t be. Why did she call him that?’

‘I don’t know.’

Meyer chipped in.

‘This was spring and summer. She didn’t talk about him after that?’

‘No.’ Her eyes strayed to the figure in the corridor. ‘Pernille thought this might be important.’

‘She was right,’ Meyer said and left it at that.

‘Did she tell you where she and Faust used to meet?’ Lund asked.

‘Hotels, I think.’

‘Do you know which ones?’

Lotte Holst was trying to remember something.

‘It was hotels in the beginning. Later on I think they went to a flat.’

‘A flat?’

‘Yeah. I remember she said it was really cool. Old furniture. Very expensive.’

Lund waited. When there was nothing else she said, ‘Whereabouts?’

‘I don’t know.’ One more memory. ‘All she said was it was near the old navy houses. The yellow ones they take you to on a school trip.’

‘Nyboder?’ Lund asked, staring at Meyer.

‘I think so.’

‘How about Store Kongensgade?’

Lotte blinked.

‘Yes. That was it.’ She looked at them both. ‘How did you know?’

Lund got back to her mother’s flat just after ten. Meyer called as she was walking up the stairs.

‘There’s no one called Faust on the Heartbreak Club’s membership list. Hartmann’s people have been on to say we can only talk to him through a lawyer from now on.’

‘Is anyone from his office a member?’

‘Not that I can see.’

The flat was dark and silent. And empty.

‘It’s an alias, Meyer. Remember Faust? The good man who was tempted by the Devil? Go to the club and ask around.’

‘Can’t you hear the music? Where the hell do you think I am?’

There was something in the background. Tinny disco and a million voices.

Lund kicked off her boots and turned on the kitchen light then opened the fridge.

Nothing.

There was a saucepan of stew on the hob.

‘I can’t see a politician prancing round this place,’ Meyer said. ‘People would know. But maybe he doesn’t come here.’

She put the phone on speaker, placed it on a kitchen top and lit a low flame beneath the pan.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The club has a dating chat room on its website. People meet up online. Maybe that’s it.’

The stew didn’t look as if it would improve with cooking. Lund got it to tepid then picked up a spoon and took a taste from the pan.

‘I’ll have a specialist take a look,’ Meyer said.

There was a Carlsberg in the fridge. She cracked the crown top and took a swig from the neck.

‘OK,’ she said, starting on her second spoonful. ‘Let me know if something turns up.’

‘Oh, lucky you,’ Meyer moaned. ‘Getting something to eat. I haven’t had a bite since lunch.’

Lund looked at the pan.

‘Yes. Lucky me.’

She went to the sofa with the stew, realized she was still in her coat, shrugged it off, threw it on the floor.

Then she turned on her laptop, sat there going from the pan to the beer to the computer.

Meyer was right. The Heartbreak had a dating section. Open to anyone, not just members of the nightclub.

She clicked for a new profile. Filled in the form as Janne Meyer. Female. Heterosexual. Password: bananas.

Her mother came back as she was waiting for the confirmation email.

‘Where’s Mark?’ Lund asked.

‘We went to see a film with Magnus. I bought them pizza afterwards. He wanted to spend the night at Magnus’s. I said it was all right.’

Vibeke smiled sourly at her.

‘You weren’t around to ask.’

The confirmation message came through. Lund clicked on the acceptance link and found herself in the Heartbreak’s dating forum.

‘It’s fine for him to stay there,’ she said.

Her mother busied round the room doing nothing.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘I’ve just eaten. It’s been busy.’

‘Are you getting anywhere?’

‘Yes. I’m still doing things. Sorry.’

There was a search box at the bottom of the page. She typed in ‘Faust’.

‘Mark talked to his father today.’

The site was slow to load. Lund took another swig of beer.

‘About what?’

‘He’s coming to Copenhagen. He’d like to see Mark. Mark didn’t know if you’d be in Sweden or not.’

‘This is dragging on. He can see Mark.’

‘Yes. We noticed that.’

Vibeke came and stood at the door, staring at her with that mix of anger, sympathy and bafflement she’d made her own.

‘The storage company called about the things Bengt sent back from Sweden. They wouldn’t take your boxes into storage without an account. So I said they could leave them here. They’re in the basement.’

Then she went to the bathroom without another word.

Lund was glad. She didn’t know what to say.

Bengt.

That odd farewell on the station seemed an age away.

She looked at the laptop. There was one result called ‘Faust’.

Lund clicked on it.

No photo. Just a silhouette. Next to it a quotation.

It read: ‘Ruling the heart is the most difficult thing.’