The Killing 3 (32 page)

The place was so dark. Even the brass and bronze of the candelabra seemed to be in mourning.

The minister made a note, said it was a beautiful choice.

‘There’s a point in the ceremony where I can say a few things about Emilie.’ She looked at them in turn. ‘If there’s something in particular you’d like me to
talk about. I don’t know if her little brother will be joining us. But if he is I’d like to mention him.’

Silence between them. Their eyes didn’t meet.

‘We haven’t decided whether Carl’s coming yet,’ Zeuthen told her.

The woman nodded.

‘Sometimes it can be helpful for them. A way of saying goodbye. To walk forward. Place a flower on the casket. There’s a certain beauty—’

‘Beauty?’ Maja Zeuthen cried. ‘My daughter’s dead. Murdered. How can that be beautiful?’

The minister stiffened.

‘No one can take away your pain, Maja. But we mourn because we’ve loved. It’s the love you must remember. The love that remains. For you. For Carl. Maybe it would be good for
him to see you supporting each other . . .’

Head down, fighting back the tears, Maja Zeuthen got up, walked to the massive doors, shook them.

Tight shut.

‘Maja?’

His footsteps coming nearer.

‘Why’s this bloody place locked?’ she shrieked. ‘Who did that? I want out of here. These stupid platitudes . . .’

He was there, eyes pleading, hands too.

‘We need to arrange this. We need to make these decisions.’

‘Let me out of here, Robert. You don’t own me. The church doesn’t either.’ She turned, yelled for the minister. ‘You hear that?’

He leaned against the pillar.

‘We need to tell Carl. We should do that together . . .’

As dark as night in the alcove by the door. She stopped shouting, saw him starkly outlined in a single shaft of light from the bulb above.

The same face she’d fallen in love with. Never thinking that one day she’d witness such pain there.

‘Let me out . . .’ she whispered turning round and round.

Brix was tidying his things. Getting rid of a few papers he’d rather not share. Wondering when Ruth Hedeby would be back with Tage Steiner, preparing for another assault.
The last one.

He’d called Lund in Gudbjerghavn. Heard nothing that made him think he could save himself. Stood by the window in his office wondering how much he’d miss this place.

Then Madsen came rushing in.

‘If it’s Hedeby tell her I’m busy.’

The detective looked puzzled at that.

‘It’s not Hedeby. The salvage crew have got the kid. They’re bringing her in now.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘In ten minutes she’ll be in forensic. I was
wondering if . . .’

Before he could finish Brix was on his way.

One last drive round the town. Lund at the wheel. Borch sat tired and silent next to her.

‘He’s got to be here,’ she insisted. ‘Anything from Asbjørn?’

The rain was back. A steady, icy wind too.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Is this really worth it?’

The map was spread out on his lap.

‘We’ve looked everywhere. It’s a waste—’

‘He’s clever! Don’t we know that? He’s . . .’ Lund had been thinking about this for a while. ‘I worked with someone once. He’d been in the Army. Special
forces. He said there were people there who could go anywhere. Make themselves invisible. Louise’s mother told her he was a hero. Travelled a lot. Maybe . . .’

Maybe he’s like Ulrik Strange, she thought. A decent man destroyed by history, by events.

Borch took a deep breath.

‘About last night . . .’

‘I know,’ she cut in anxiously. ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’

A car came down the opposite lane. The headlights caught his face. Hurt. Frightened even. Eyes on her, nowhere else.

‘No. It shouldn’t,’ Borch agreed.

Nothing more. She pulled into the side of the road, took the map from him.

‘The problem is . . .’

‘It’s all right. You don’t need to say anything.’

That got to him.

‘Actually I do. The problem is . . . I don’t regret it.’

Lund ran her finger down the map. Looked ahead. Tried not to listen.

‘Not one bit,’ he added. ‘So . . .’

She kept silent for a long while then pointed ahead.

‘That lane.’ A stab of a finger on the map. ‘Where does it go?’

The headlights had caught a line of construction tape, snapped by something as it crossed the track.

Borch sighed.

‘There’s a derelict boatbuilder’s yard down there. The local men checked it out.’

‘A boatyard?’

‘OK. So he likes boats . . .’

‘They would have put the tape back, wouldn’t they?’

‘Sarah . . .’

She put the car in gear, drove over the torn barrier.

Half a kilometre along the track came to an end. Lund got out, Borch behind her.

A hazy line of mist was drifting in from the nearby sea, carrying with it the low moan of a distant foghorn. At the entrance to what must once have been a busy industrial area was a security
fence. Torches out. Borch walked in front. The gate was ajar, the padlock on it smashed.

They went through.

The place seemed to get bigger along the way. Workshops and storage units. Abandoned boats seemingly wrecked on the concrete. A couple of half-built hulls. Masts and rusting engines. One giant
propeller.

They reached the water. A single light blinked at the end of a small jetty like a waking eye staring at the coming fog.

Everywhere they passed looked wrecked. Broken windows. Leaky timber walls. Decrepit but scarcely private.

The last building was different. Metal, no glass, no opening at all except for a single door.

A paint shop from the smell. Or somewhere they once worked on engines. Maybe both. She started to say something but Borch shushed her into silence.

Pointed at the door: ajar.

Inside. Paint. Oil. Grease. Chemicals. Shapes under plastic shrouds. Tools rusting in racks. Decay alongside labour. If he had a hallmark this was it.

They pushed past the engine area. Found themselves in an extension. Thick ropes hung like nooses from the ceiling. From below came the rhythmic sound of waves lapping against stanchions. They
were over the sea, without windows, any frame of reference.

She found a light switch, flipped it. Moved on. After the ropes came chains and low sliding platforms for working under hulls, under engines.

Gun over the torch she walked on, forgot about Borch, was talking to herself.

He was here.

She knew that. Felt it. Could smell him.

Then, in a corner, the beam fell on a white shape and Lund understood she was finally closing on an answer.

They had bikes like this in Copenhagen. Not fashionable. Just cheap and serviceable. A little ungainly it leaned upright against a long grey plastic sheet.

Borch was behind her.

‘That’s hers,’ she said. ‘Louise’s. I saw it in the photograph at the foster home.’

She bent down, took a pair of latex gloves from her pocket. The chain was off. A schoolkid’s rucksack sat next to the back wheel.

‘Sarah?’

Not now, she thought. I’m thinking. Or trying to.

‘Sarah!’

Borch had shifted another set of plastic sheeting further along the wall. Something on his face, sad and young and shocked, told her to look.

Two beams in front of them. The grey curtain thrust aside.

On the floor a grimy fawn mattress. Bloodstains on the edge, on the floor by the side. A set of chains, like manacles.

‘You had men check this place?’ she asked.

‘They said the gates were locked. He must have turned up this evening. Jesus . . .’ Borch looked ready to scream. ‘That bastard Overgaard didn’t even bother to look here,
did he?’

While he poked around the interior she stayed there, looking at the mattress, the bloodstains. The manacles. Trying to picture something.

Phone.

‘Lund?’ Juncker said.

He sounded down.

‘Asbjørn—’

‘Listen to me,’ he cut in. ‘I just had a call from that garage we went to. The one with the kid who kept the numbers.’

‘Yeah. Fine. We’re at the boatyard the locals were supposed to check earlier. I need people—’

‘Listen to me! When I talked to him again he said Borch was out there before us first thing this morning. He spoke to that kid. Took one of his books before we ever got there.’

A mattress. An act of violence. A girl’s life ended here and in some way she couldn’t begin to comprehend the simple, brute cruelty of that act had been lost.

‘What book?’

‘From two years ago. He says they know Borch. He was out here when Louise Hjelby first went missing. He was around asking questions back then.’

It was dark. She didn’t know where Borch had got to.

‘You hear what I’m saying?’ Juncker’s voice was shrill and worried. ‘Someone’s screwing us around here and you don’t need to be a genius to work out
who.’

Footsteps. His torch. Lund put the phone away.

‘I found the red van parked out the back,’ Borch said. ‘Let’s get going. We can bring a team in here later.’

She didn’t move.

‘Sarah!’

Back to the new Borch. Bossy and efficient.

‘Why’s the book important?’ she asked.

He was in the corner, somewhere she couldn’t see.

‘What book?’

She followed the line of his voice, turned the torch on him.

‘The book you got from that boy this morning. Before we went out there.’

Nothing.

‘It was you and PET who took that black car out of the equation, wasn’t it? You just erased . . .’

Cocked head. The ‘you’re going crazy again’ look.

‘What are you talking about now?’

‘Did Schultz order that? Or did you tell Schultz what to do?’

‘Neither.’

‘You didn’t come out here to find something for me!’ she yelled. ‘You were covering your tracks. Trying to make sure we never found . . .’ A glance back at the
mattress and the bloody chains. ‘Any of this.’

He looked outraged.

‘I know you saw the boy this morning.’

‘I can’t talk about that right now.’

‘Who’s in the book? Who are you hiding?’

He folded his arms. Came closer.

‘Here’s the picture, Sarah. The boy was noting random registration numbers when the girl went missing. One in particular stood out. We checked it. That was our job. It came out
clean. False lead. End of—’

‘Why were you involved?’

His hands went up.

‘Because . . .’

There was a sound from somewhere. Footsteps. Machinery. An old industrial engine kicking into life.

Then a loud crash. She flashed the torch. The heavy metal door at the end of the room slammed shut.

Borch ran, put his shoulder to the frame. Got nowhere.

Down from the ceiling it came, snaking and noxious, a blue-grey winding cloud.

Diesel smoke. Lots.

No windows. No ventilation she could see.

Just the picture in her mind, the one that always came unbidden: outside an ancient generator, a pipe from the exhaust to the single ventilation chimney in the roof.

Borch banging on the door, yelling, getting furious.

Lund kept her torch on the fumes curling towards them.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.

No choice.

The first unwanted lungful. She started to choke.

Karen Nebel briefed Hartmann on the way into the party committee. The police thought they were getting somewhere in Jutland. They still didn’t know whether Emilie was
dead or not.

On the way a well-groomed figure raced after him on the staircase. Mogens Rank.

‘Troels! Troels! Please stop. Don’t be mad at me.’

Hartmann turned.

‘I’m sorry it’s come to this,’ Rank told him. ‘I want you to know. I have a vote. It’s yours. It always will be. This has nothing to do with you.’

‘We’ve tried to tell Birgit that,’ Nebel pointed out. ‘She doesn’t seem keen to listen.’

Rank nodded.

‘She has ambitions. It’s just . . .’ A shrug. ‘Politics. I suggest when we start the meeting . . .’

‘There isn’t going to be one,’ Hartmann said brusquely and walked on.

Into the committee room. Long table, chandeliers above. Papers being spread. Water jugs in place. Birgit Eggert stood on her own at the end. New black suit, hair perfect, ready for the
cameras.

Hartmann walked straight up. Nebel and Rank stayed back, listened.

‘This is very simple, Birgit. We’re looking into new information about the Zeuthen case. I have every confidence it will clear the government of all suspicion.’

‘Troels . . .’

‘As a party member, as one of my ministers, you’re answerable to me and me alone. This disloyalty does not go unnoticed.’ He pointed at the table. ‘Go and tell your
acolytes you’re sorry you wasted their time.’

A hint of a smile.

‘And what information might that be?’

‘We’ve a witness who saw Ussing putting pressure on the prosecutor. Someone who was on Ussing’s staff. PET are investigating. For that reason I can’t say
more—’

‘Please tell me you’re not talking about that clown Kristoffer Seifert.’

Mogens Rank threw up his hands in despair.

‘Oh for pity’s sake, Birgit. Do you take us for complete idiots? Of course it’s not Seifert.’ He caught Hartmann’s stare. ‘I mean he nearly wound up in court
for stealing from Ussing’s campaign funds.’

‘Mogens . . .’ Nebel whispered.

‘Not that this is relevant,’ Rank added quickly. ‘In the circumstances. All the evidence must be examined. And will be . . .’

‘PET are looking into this,’ Hartmann insisted.

‘You had your chance.’ Eggert picked up her papers. ‘We’re starting the meeting. Stay or go. Up to you.’

Two floors down. Forensic. A plain cold room. Men Brix knew standing round, waiting.

This was the act in the drama they both wanted and loathed. The end of one hunt. The start of another.

Dripping dank water the bag stood on the shining silver table, the size and shape of a child. Pale blue through the mud and weed. A name on the side. A picture of a sail.

Lund had said something. About how it was hard to separate the man they sought from the ocean. Saltwater seemed to follow him everywhere. Perhaps flowed in his veins, pumped through an unfeeling
heart.