The Killing 3 (36 page)

‘The police,’ he muttered. ‘What have they done for us?’

‘I know . . .’

Hand to her shoulder.

‘I’ve never asked for anything. Not before. But . . . please.’

Once she’d have stepped back from him, shook her head automatically. Not now.

‘Just this,’ he begged.

The room next door. Two chairs in front of the window. Lights. Cameraman. A director, a woman with a microphone.

Nothing to talk to but the single, blind eye of a lens.

Ussing’s office, a small, plain room at the back of the Parliament building. He didn’t sit. Didn’t want to acknowledge Lund and Borch had any right to drag
him out of the campaign. An aide sat and listened as a witness.

‘This is about finding Emilie Zeuthen,’ Lund cut in when he kept on whining. ‘I’m sure the electorate will forgive your absence.’

A stocky man with a sly, aggressive face. He glared at her then and said, ‘Don’t try and pull those tricks with me. I’m not Troels Hartmann and this isn’t the Birk Larsen
case. You’re not throwing me in a cell. I’ve told you the truth already.’

She went over the questions anyway.

‘Peter Schultz was a friend of yours. You met. Your car was in the area when Louise Hjelby disappeared. Do you honestly think we’ve got no right to be here?’

‘Look. I’m appalled by what’s gone on. If I could help I would. Schultz and I were just friends—’

‘We’ve got a witness who says he heard you talking about the Hjelby girl,’ Borch said.

Ussing laughed.

‘Seifert? I threw the idiot out of here for dipping into the campaign budget. He’s damned lucky I didn’t have him charged with theft.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Lund asked.

Not a welcome question.

‘We didn’t need the publicity. You have to watch your public profile . . .’

Lund pulled out a photo of Louise Hjelby, brandished it in his face.

A new picture. Just a week before she vanished. Pretty girl. Long dark hair. Too-pale skin. No smile.

‘Did you ever meet her?’ she demanded.

Ussing looked at his aide. The man stared at the floor.

‘We checked your movements,’ Borch added. ‘On April the twentieth two years ago you were campaigning in Gudbjerghavn. Where Louise was killed.’

‘So was everyone. Zeeland were closing down the port. There was a debate. It was a big issue.’

‘Here’s a copy of your hotel bill,’ Lund added and threw a sheet on the desk.

Ussing sat down, looked at the invoice. Kept quiet.

‘You drove a black car,’ Borch said. ‘BMW. It was seen on the same road Louise took. Same day. Around the same time.’

‘I was campaigning!’

Lund grabbed a chair, sat down. A sign that said: going nowhere.

‘The girl was raped then murdered. Your friend Peter Schultz wrote it off as a suicide. Emilie Zeuthen could die because of that. So let’s be precise here. What did you and Schultz
talk about for nearly an hour? And don’t tell us it was the weather . . .’

The aide came over. Private whispered words.

‘It seems we used the girl in one of our campaigns,’ Ussing said finally.

The man placed a brochure on the desk and said, ‘It was to try to get people interested in becoming foster parents. A number of private children’s homes had closed recently. There
was a need. Still is. It was a local initiative . . .’

‘And you are?’ Borch asked.

His name was Per Monrad. Ussing’s campaign manager.

‘Anders set up the organization in the first place. We wanted to use the girl as an example of how it could work. Then . . .’ He frowned. ‘We found out she’d killed
herself.’

He tapped the brochure.

‘I had thousands of these printed. We had to scrap the lot. It wouldn’t have looked good . . .’

Lund skimmed through the pages.

‘How was Schultz involved? What did you need him for?’

Ussing shrugged.

‘He wasn’t really. We heard the girl had killed herself. I had to make a decision whether we ran with the campaign or not. So we talked about what had happened. I was anxious that we
hadn’t upset the kid by using her in the ad. She seemed a bit shy. Also the agency never got permission from the foster parents or the school for some reason. An oversight I guess. They said
she didn’t want them to know until it came out.’

A double page photo across the centre spread of the brochure. Anders Ussing and Louise Hjelby. He was smiling broadly, had his arm around her shoulder.

Lund held up the picture, showed it to Borch, then to Ussing. Waited.

He was struggling.

‘I didn’t even know the girl. I just turned up for the photo. Never saw her before or after.’

Borch nodded as if to say, ‘Really?’

‘You didn’t give her a lift that afternoon?’ Lund asked. ‘You didn’t put her bike in the back of your car?’

‘No! Are you suggesting I killed that girl?’

‘We’re just asking,’ Borch told him.

Monrad placed another sheet on the table.

‘This is what Anders did that day. A very busy schedule. Meetings throughout. In the afternoon we went to Esbjerg for a debate with Hartmann.’

‘Good enough?’ Ussing asked and got up from the table, went for his coat.

‘I want everything from your campaign logs for that day,’ Lund said.

‘This is outrageous . . .’

Borch was on the phone already.

‘If I don’t have what I want by this afternoon I’ll be back with a warrant,’ she promised.

Outside Borch came off the call. He said the advertising agency had confirmed Louise had taken part in a photo shoot for the brochure one week before she went missing. Ussing had other links
with Schultz, to do with a bank loan. They were trying to firm up information on that.

‘How the hell did your people miss all this?’ Lund asked. ‘What were they doing?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve asked for copies of all the photographs.’

She nodded at Ussing’s office.

‘What do you know about him? His private life?’

Nothing.

‘Or is that secret too?’

‘You do go on sometimes. Ussing was divorced five years ago. He’s got two grown-up children. Doesn’t see them much. He’s heterosexual and likes women. Not girls as far as
I know. Anything else?’

‘Get people going over his diary with a fine-tooth comb,’ she ordered. ‘Talk to his campaign staff. Not just his pet monkey Monrad in there. I want to see Hartmann’s
people. Let’s work out if these meetings hold water. And . . .’

Borch wasn’t listening. There was a TV at the end of the corridor. He was walking towards it, staring at the screen.

Maja and Robert Zeuthen side by side, comfortable that way for once. Behind them the port and a flat icy sea.

‘We’re hoping that people will help us,’ Zeuthen was saying.

‘If someone has seen something, seen Emilie, please come forward,’ Maja added, straight off a hidden autocue.

The camera focused on her face.

‘She knows we’re looking for her. She knows we’ll continue until we find her.’

The clip cut to the news presenter. A reward on offer for Emilie’s safe return – up to a hundred million kroner.

Lund recalled the Birk Larsens running down the same blind alley, not that they could offer a fraction of that money.

‘I thought you had Zeuthen under control,’ Borch said. ‘The phones are going to be off the hook with every lunatic in the country. This is—’

‘Bad,’ she interrupted. ‘Really bad. Yes, I know.’

Maja Zeuthen went back to Drekar after the TV interview. Carl was there, pedalling up and down the corridors on his trike.

The mansion seemed empty. Perhaps some of the staff had been given leave.

Carsten called and asked, ‘Are you two coming home soon?’

Home.

Such a short word. Full of so many complexities and dilemmas.

‘Sometime,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you.’

That was it.

She watched the boy race to the fireplace in the study, park the trike there.

‘You could always pedal to “the gap”,’ Maja suggested. ‘It’s not a secret any more.’

Carl gave her a look and said, ‘Mum . . .’

Then picked up a set of cards and started to mess with them.

‘I know where it is anyway.’ She watched him, saw how at ease he was in the big old house. ‘It’s in the garage.’

He snorted.

‘No it’s not!’

‘The basement then.’

‘No.’

‘Then . . .’

‘I don’t want to ride all the way up to the gap.’

She nodded, tried to imagine where he might be talking about.

‘Up?’

The cards. He shuffled them.

‘Carl. What do you mean by “up”?’

‘Emilie said I wasn’t to tell you. She said . . .’

Enough. She came and took him by the shoulders, peered into his young and puzzled face.

‘You’ve got to show me where it is, Carl. Maybe Emilie left something there. Maybe we could . . .’ Dreams. That’s all they were and they seemed more distant than ever.
‘Maybe we could find her.’

He went over and waited for her at the door.

Four floors up in the roof, somewhere in the east wing close to the stone dragon that always fascinated them. Derelict rooms. Places they never needed, never cleaned, never occupied.

A storeroom, plain shelves, cardboard boxes. Things there that pre-dated the marriage, hadn’t been touched since Robert’s parents were around.

The roof got lower. Carl went straight to a hidden light switch. Crouching she followed him into a narrow division between two walls.

A rug on the floor beneath a tiny window in the roof. He got down, crawled into the corner, found a low lampshade, turned it on.

Maja looked at the circular glass above them, recognized the shape. This was one of the eyes of old man Zeuthen’s stone monster. The mythical creature of the Vikings that he made the
emblem of Zeeland. Beneath it was the place they retreated when she and Robert fought. A secret refuge from a family falling apart.

Maja got on her hands and knees, sat by the rug. Looked at the scraps of paper. Like her scrapbook. The same simple, childish hand.

Hearts and flowers. The words ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ joined together as if in hope. She turned the page. A photo from the wedding album stuck with glue. She and Robert looked
young. So much in love.

‘Does Dad know you come up here?’

He brushed aside his fringe and looked at her. Shook his head.

‘We just played. That’s all.’

She sifted through the papers. Photos too. Prints of a little cat on long grass. Then, hidden beneath a soft toy, a thin white cable. She pulled on it and an iPad emerged from the rug. It had a
leather case, black, like an executive toy.

‘This isn’t Emilie’s. Hers is downstairs.’

He looked blank.

‘Where did it come from, Carl?’

The boy hesitated.

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘This is important.’

‘Emilie said the man gave it to her.’

Breath short, pulse racing.

‘What man?’

He closed his eyes. This hurt.

‘
What man?
’

‘The man with the cat.’ He was crying. Knew he should have said this. Daren’t somehow. ‘The little cat, down by the fence.’

Maja Zeuthen opened the heavy cover of the iPad. Found the switch. Turned the thing on.

Morten Weber called on the way back from the event at the garden nursery. He sounded happy.

‘The press are all over Ussing,’ he told Hartmann and Nebel listening in the back of the car. ‘I’m putting it round that there’s more to come. Here’s
hoping.’

‘Don’t push too hard,’ Nebel warned. ‘Let’s leave him to hang himself now.’

A pause then Weber said, ‘One can but hope. All those people who were ready to fire you last night are coming round, Troels. Birgit Eggert’s clucking like a happy mother hen. My own
inclination is to wring her scrawny neck . . .’

‘Morten . . .’ she howled.

‘I said my inclination. Not intention. Not yet. Oh, and I got a message that Rosa Lebech’s changed sides for some reason. She’s with us again.’ Another break. ‘I
can’t imagine what prompted that.’

‘I told you it would all work out,’ Hartmann declared.

‘Was that when you were chopping logs yesterday, ready to quit? One last thing. Lund’s been on the line. She’s asking for our diaries from the last election. They want to check
out Ussing’s claims he was on the stump with you when the girl went missing.’

‘Give her everything she wants, Morten. Just keep the woman out of my way.’

Laughter.

‘I’ll do my very best, promise.’

It was Hartmann’s turn to hesitate. Then he said, ‘And thanks for coming back. I wavered, didn’t I?’

‘You did, Troels. And you’re not the wavering kind.’

‘Won’t forget again,’ he promised.

The call was over. Nebel looked at him as the car headed into city traffic.

‘What did that mean?’ she asked.

‘You don’t look a day older, Lund,’ Weber said as she and Borch entered the Prime Minister’s quarters.

‘Is that so?’ she said.

Weber seemed much the same too. A short, slightly scruffy man with unruly curly black hair and thick glasses. He seemed to have acquired a badly fitting suit and waistcoat on the way from local
to national power but that was it. He’d been bright, cunning, utterly dedicated to Hartmann during the lengthy Birk Larsen investigation. An obstacle when he wanted. Someone who greased the
wheels when it was in Hartmann’s interests.

‘This is Mathias Borch from PET,’ she said, introducing the two of them. ‘Have you met before?’

They both shook their heads. Lund guessed she believed them.

Brix had been on the phone just before they went into the building. The Politigården was inundated with calls after the Zeuthens’ TV appeal. Half of Denmark seemed to think
they’d seen Emilie and wondered how to get their hands on the reward.

‘Ussing’s giving us hell,’ Lund told Weber. ‘He says you’re dropping him in the shit for political reasons.’

‘Did he sound convincing when he said that?’

‘Not really,’ Lund agreed. ‘He looked as if he was lying through his teeth.’

Weber smiled.

‘But then he’s a politician,’ she added. ‘So what should we expect?’