The Killing 3 (48 page)

‘That’s not easy, Robert. For heaven’s sake . . . Brix and Lund are wasting so much time. Emilie’s out there somewhere.’

‘Go home,’ Zeuthen repeated. ‘Stay there with Annette. The police may want to talk to you again.’

Reinhardt looked uncertain then. As if reluctant to say something.

‘What about Maja?’ he asked. ‘She wouldn’t look at me when I came in. She surely doesn’t think . . .’

‘No. Of course not. We both know—’

‘That would be the worst thing. If—’

‘We don’t,’ Zeuthen cut in. ‘That’s it.’

Reinhardt’s art gallery turned out to be the basement of an unused warehouse on a distant stretch of the harbour, a fifteen-minute walk from his home. Lund and Borch
parked by the water, used the keys from his office.

A bare grey room, canvases stacked against the walls, not hung.

There was a Bauhaus chair in the middle on a rug. A low table next to it with a glass and an expensive bottle of whisky. His wife said he liked to be alone when he looked at his paintings. The
unit was supposed to be turned into a shopping mall but the owners had gone bankrupt. Reinhardt, a man of some wealth, had bought the freehold, along with the land on both sides.

‘He certainly had the place to himself,’ Lund said.

Borch looked at a canvas of an abstract nude and scratched his head.

‘Why didn’t he buy himself his own home instead of living on the job in the grounds of Zeeland?’

‘I don’t know. I need to get back.’

He stood in the way.

‘Sarah. I’m sorry I got you mixed up in all this . . .’

‘I really don’t want to talk about it.’

‘We’ve had problems for a long time. It wasn’t just down to you . . .’

‘I said I don’t want to talk about it.’

She knew that look on his face: hopeful.

‘I know. You’re right. I just think—’

‘Stop thinking, Mathias!’ Lund yelled. ‘There’s no point. It didn’t work before and it won’t work now.’

He stood there silent, eyes on her.

‘I think we should just forget the whole thing . . .’

‘I don’t want to. I can’t.’

She turned round, confused. Went to the wrong door. Then another. Couldn’t remember which way they came in.

‘If we work at it this time. We’re older. Smarter . . .’

‘Ha! You think?’

She dodged behind a big canvas, one of the few on a frame. Tried another door, locked.

‘I lost you once,’ he said in a loud, firm voice. ‘I’m not letting you run away again.’

With a brisk step she went for another corner, stopped. Borch caught up.

‘I just think if we talk things through honestly. Spend a little time together. Maybe a holiday . . .’

‘Not going back to bloody Norway,’ she whispered.

A tall canvas was turned the wrong way round. Paint to the wall. It was the only one like that. She walked to it, moved the thing to one side.

There was a door behind. Lund tried the handle: open.

Looked down a long dark staircase with a metal banister to one side.

Borch’s head appeared around the frame. He pulled out a torch and aimed the beam down the steps.

She did the same then got in front of him and said, ‘Me first.’

It was a garage, set beneath the building one level below the basement. No windows, even on the metal door that led to a winding drive at the end. A high-pressure washer at the back. Polish.
Cleaning material and liquids.

At the far side was a set of storage units. Plastic sheeting over the nearest. Beneath a large cardboard box.

Gloves on, she opened it, aimed the torch. He came and joined her. Tugged out some more boxes.

Every one full of printouts from children’s homes. Details of children, photos, dates of birth, addresses of foster homes, medical records.

‘This whole set is from Majgården,’ he said.

His torch flashed to the next corner. Borch got up, took a look.

‘Sarah?’

She came over. He’d found a workbench. Spanners and drill heads. Socket wrenches. Cleaning fluid.

And a watch.

It was a short drive back to the Zeeland offices. Reinhardt barely looked up as they came in. But Maja Zeuthen was eyeing them from the next room. Lund noticed that.

‘You own a building across the harbour,’ Borch said. ‘You never told us.’

He got up, looked tired and hurt.

‘It’s just a place I keep my paintings.’

‘You don’t just keep paintings there,’ she told him. ‘You’ve got records from the children’s homes. Louise’s at Majgården among them.’

Robert Zeuthen marched in, started complaining the moment he reached them.

But he went quiet when Lund asked for it.

‘Why do you have records of children hidden away in the basement?’ she asked.

Reinhardt was looking at Zeuthen, no one else.

‘This is enough,’ Borch asked. ‘We’re taking you in for questioning. I don’t imagine you’ll have to look far for a lawyer in this place. They’ll know
where we are.’

He walked forward, put a hand to Reinhardt’s back.

‘Let’s go.’

The squat was in Nørrebro, not far from the Ungdomshuset, the radical meeting house that caused riots when it was torn down a few years before. Hartmann had never been.
It was the source of too much conflict. But he guessed it looked much like this: an old building, semi-derelict, covered in graffiti. The wrong place to visit in his ministerial car the day before
an election. Still he needed to know.

Morten Weber was nagging as they drew up.

‘This last debate’s going to be crucial. The polls are narrowing. We need a strategy. We have to bring Karen back. She knows TV better than any of us.’

‘Karen could bring us down . . .’

Weber scowled with disgust.

‘Oh don’t be so ridiculous. She took a donation from Zeeland. I bet they were giving Ussing a sweetener at the same time. Covering their bets. Don’t get high and mighty . .
.’

Hartmann started to get out. Weber’s arm stopped him.

‘Do you really want to do this? PET are going crazy. These people hate us. It’s not somewhere to be seen right now.’

Hartmann strode to the building, two bodyguards rushing to keep up. There was a racket that got louder when he walked through the door. Someone was thrashing a set of drums on a stage set up at
the back. A girl singer with plaits was yelling tunelessly into a mike. The place was almost in darkness. It smelled of sweat and dope smoke. The walls were covered in wild graffiti. Tables at the
edges, laptops on them, bottles of water and beer.

The people there looked at him, a man in a suit, as if an alien had landed. But Hartmann walked on and eventually a young woman with bright-blue mascara, red lips and a ring through her nose,
came up and said, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

He said no thanks, asked for Sally.

The girl’s eyes, flickering to a figure in black at a laptop in the shadows, told him.

Hartmann went to her, bent down and said, ‘I’m Benjamin’s brother.’

A cigarette at her lips she kept tapping at the computer.

‘I’m trying to find out what happened. I was hoping you could help.’

‘You’re the Prime Minister, aren’t you? Why ask me?’

There was a rickety chair. He pulled it up. Sat down. Told the two bodyguards to make themselves scarce.

‘Because I was too busy for Benjamin when he needed me. I feel . . .’

She had dark eyes, black mascara, a face made white with makeup. But she was looking at him.

‘I feel I let him down and I don’t know how. He came out to Jutland when I was campaigning there two years ago . . .’

‘I remember. He was mad at you. PET picked him up after we had a flash mob outside the bank here. Instead of throwing him in a cell like they did with the rest of us your people kicked him
out and told him to keep quiet.’

A cup of tea turned up anyway. He was grateful for it.

‘It’s true,’ he agreed. ‘I never found out till now. He took my car. Did he say what he did out there?’

The girl with the tea vanished. Sally said, ‘Why should I tell you?’

‘Because it’s important to me.’

‘Benjamin didn’t think so, did he?’

‘I don’t know. He told a doctor he’d done something unforgivable out there. I need to know what he meant by that.’

She stubbed out the cigarette, thought for a moment.

‘Benjamin saw one of your cronies sucking up to Zeeland. He’d been working on that story for weeks.’

‘What story?’

‘About where your money came from. But you put a stop to that, didn’t you?’

Hartmann shook his head.

‘No I didn’t. I didn’t even know.’

‘Oh come on. He was going to crap on your election . . .’

‘I loved my brother. I would have done anything to help him.’

‘Except be there.’

He looked round the place. There didn’t seem to be anyone over the age of twenty or so.

‘Is that why you encouraged Benjamin? So you could hurt me through him? He didn’t fit in here either. You used him. He was the one you damaged.’

She nodded at the door and said, ‘You should go. Your monkeys are getting restless.’

‘He felt guilty,’ Hartmann said. ‘For chasing that story. Guilty for chasing me. Guilty for disappointing you I guess. So we’re both responsible, Sally. Don’t fool
yourself otherwise.’

There was a look of doubt in her young face. He wondered if any of that had got through.

The bodyguards were chattering into their phones. Then Weber pushed his way through and said they had to leave.

‘The press have got wind of this. Unless you want to be on the news surrounded by joints and herb tea we need to get out of here.’

Hartmann stood up, looked at the girl.

‘Long time since I had a joint. It’s really easy you know . . . shuffling off your responsibilities. Passing on the blame. Someone’s got to try to run things. Take
responsibility. Maybe one day you’ll appreciate that.’

He scribbled his number on a scrap of paper and threw it in front of her.

‘All I want is to understand why my brother died. If you change your mind and think you can help—’

‘Troels!’ Weber cried.

Hartmann tapped the paper.

‘Call me whenever you like.’

Reinhardt was in an interview room, camera on, Lund and Borch on the other side of the table.

‘An art gallery with a garage underneath,’ Borch said. ‘What do you do in there?’

‘Not much,’ Reinhardt answered. ‘Clean my car. Fix it.’

‘It’s a company car,’ Lund pointed out. ‘They do all that for you.’

Nothing.

‘We found a little bathroom too. A bed. Do you spend nights there?’

A shrug.

‘I like to look at my paintings. Study them. Sometimes it gets late . . .’

Borch flicked through some records from the Majgården files.

‘Seven boxes with photos of little children. Do you study them too?’

He groaned, as if the question were idiotic.

‘Louise’s details were in there, Reinhardt. The address of her foster home. Where she went to school.’

‘They were there for convenience. I didn’t even look at them.’

Borch picked up an evidence bag. The watch.

‘You know what this is?’

‘It’s my old watch.’

‘You like watches, don’t you? Your wife said. Couldn’t bear to throw it away even though it was broken.’

Lund pushed another bag in front of him.

‘This is the watch we took from you yesterday. It’s identical. You broke the old one. The watch your wife gave you. Then you replaced it with another.’

‘I didn’t want her to know. I was moving some things around and I caught it on a metal railing.’

‘Where?’

‘In the garage,’ he said straight away.

‘We’re going to check, Reinhardt. It was just after the girl died, wasn’t it? You broke the thing smashing her teeth—’

‘No!’

Temperature rising, more pictures.

‘This is your birthday party,’ Lund said. ‘The night after Louise was raped and murdered. There isn’t a single photo of you wearing a watch.’

He didn’t say anything. Just shook his head.

Borch took up the questions.

‘You said you drove straight past Gudbjerghavn. But we’ve got your credit card being used in a newsagent’s there. How come?’

‘I don’t . . .’

Hand to head. A look of pain.

‘I don’t deserve this . . .’

Another photo on the table. His car boot, the white paint scratches.

‘You tracked her,’ Borch went on. ‘You picked her up. Turned off your phone. Drove her to that boatyard. Tied her up. Raped her for hours . . .’

Lund pushed a photo of the dead girl’s mouth in front of him. Three teeth smashed, bloody lips.

‘Did she fight, Reinhardt? Is that why you hit her?’

Chains and manacles. Blood on the single mattress on the floor.

‘Wasn’t she obedient like the other girls? Is that why you kept hitting her? Didn’t she do as she was told?’

‘These are lies . . .’

‘She was alive when you dumped her in the harbour. Drowned her with that lump of concrete you tied round her legs.’

A pause. She waited, then asked, ‘What are your daughters going to think? Will it be a surprise? Or . . . ?’

There was a flash of anger and heat in his eyes and Lund thought:
Now I see him.

‘You didn’t go to any hotel,’ Borch went on. ‘You drove straight back to your garage. You cleaned the car. Took a shower. Then what? Poured yourself a drink. Pulled out
her record from your files. Thought . . . had that one now?’

‘I haven’t done anything!’

They were out of photos. Out of ideas. Apart from one.

‘We know you were there, Reinhardt,’ Lund told him. ‘We know we can prove this. The only question is . . .’

He knew what was coming.

‘Are you going to tell us now so we can find Emilie Zeuthen alive? Or just screw around like this until she’s dead?’

‘I would never do anything to harm Emilie,’ he spat back. ‘She’s a Zeuthen. A beautiful child. You should take that beast Rantzau into a room and force it out of him . .
.’

The door opened. Brix there, beckoning.

‘Busy,’ Lund told him.

‘Out!’

Back in the office by her desk. A lawyer called Keldgård. Donald Trump hair and the same smile, a lackey with him and lots of files. Dyhring too.