The Killing 3 (53 page)

‘I’m telling you, Loke. I’m telling . . .’

She stopped. Something silver, familiar, stood in Zeuthen’s hand. A rich man’s semi-automatic. In one short violent movement he dashed it hard against Loke Rantzau’s
temple.

Then to one side. Hand shaking, Zeuthen loosed off a single shot into the darkness.

Hearing it dance around them Borch tried to move forward, saying all the words.

Robert. Relax. Keep cool. Don’t
. . .

‘Tell me where she is!’ Zeuthen roared.

The gun was back in the manacled man’s face. Lund felt she’d never seen Loke Rantzau so calm, so resigned. As if this was the place he’d wanted to be all along.

‘Tell me . . .’ Zeuthen began.

‘I know how you feel,’ Rantzau said in a jaded, casual tone. ‘We’re the same. You and me . . .’

‘Drop the gun, Robert,’ Lund begged. ‘We’ll never find her this way.’

Rantzau closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he wasn’t looking at Zeuthen any more. Just the tall grey figure of Reinhardt opposite.

Frightened.

Silent.

Doubt in Zeuthen’s face.

‘Just do it,’ Lund pleaded. ‘We’re not finished here.’

Slowly Zeuthen lowered the gun. Had it to his waist when Rantzau flew at him, taking the two of them tumbling to the grimy floor.

The silver weapon fell from Zeuthen’s hands, rattled on the cold concrete. The shackled man’s fingers lunged for it, grasped the handle, started to take hold, to aim at Niels
Reinhardt.

One shot.

Two.

The nervy young Norwegian cop had his gun out before any of them.

No body armour for Loke Rantzau this time. Prone on the floor his body leapt with each impact.

Borch was down first, dragging Zeuthen out of the way, kicking the silver gun into the shadows. Lund was next, crouching by Rantzau.

Blood on his chest. Eyes opening. Blood seeping from his mouth.

A word. Or a ghost of one. She put her ear to his lips. The softest of whispers, ‘Lund . . .’

‘If you’d wanted Emilie dead you’d have killed her long ago, Loke. For God’s sake where is she?’

Her fingers were in his greasy hair. His eyes on hers, lips shifting towards something like a smile.

‘There’s a god?’ Rantzau croaked.

Mouth to his ear, so close she could smell the sweat and dirt on him.

‘I promise you, Loke. I swear . . . I won’t forget Louise. I’ll see this through . . .’

Fragments of words.

‘Won’t . . .’

The breath fading, and the light in his eyes.

‘Let . . . you . . .’

‘They won’t stop me,’ she swore. ‘They never have.’

The man was dying. She knew what that looked like.

Lund took his manacled hands, held them, pleaded, ‘Emilie . . .’

One word, half heard, as much a final groan as anything. Then the hard spark of hatred vanished from his eyes and his head fell to one side.

Lund got out her phone, fingers trembling, walked to the door, out into the languid winter day.

Zeuthen behind, throwing all the questions she couldn’t answer.

No time for argument or explanations.

‘Lund?’ Zeuthen cried. ‘What did he say?’

No time for Brix either. She got straight through.

‘Asbjørn. Get Madsen. Get all the good men you can find.’

‘Yes?’ said a young, surprised voice a long way away.

‘Then find yourself a boat.’

Hartmann was in the conference room in the Prime Minister’s quarters with Mogens Rank and Karen Nebel. Fine paintings. Old furniture. A long polished table. He tried not
to think how much he’d miss it.

‘We need something, Mogens.’

‘I know,’ Rank said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Weber came in with a couple of sheets of paper.

‘This doesn’t look good. We’re halfway through the day and the polls are against us. If you don’t get out there, talk to the party, do something . . . we’re
screwed.’

Hartmann shook his head, looked out of the window. He would miss Christiansborg. Such a long journey here. No way back.

‘Here’s an idea,’ Weber suggested. ‘Let me try and patch things up with Rosa. If we throw the Centre Party some cabinet posts . . .’

‘I’m not crawling,’ Hartmann retorted. ‘Neither is she.’

‘Actually she is,’ Weber said and took out his phone. ‘I’ve had two messages in the last thirty minutes.’

He held out the handset.

‘Come on. This is what we do. Haggle. Trade. Barter. Just call her.’

Hartmann took the phone, went to his office on his own.

‘You wanted me, Rosa?’

‘I was trying to get Morten. But you may as well hear direct. We’re going to back Ussing as the new Prime Minister.’

‘Oh.’

‘Unless you have an interesting offer. And some good news about Emilie Zeuthen.’

Benjamin’s baseball cap was on the desk. Harvard. He was smart enough for college. The will wasn’t there somehow.

‘For us to support you we’d need to be in government on equal terms.’

Hartmann turned the hat round in his fingers.

‘But you don’t have anything like equal votes.’

‘That’s the deal,’ she insisted. ‘Ministerial posts divided fifty-fifty. Give us a strong alliance and we could make this work.’

‘This isn’t negotiation. It’s blackmail.’

A pause, then she said, ‘That’s what you get when you dump on people.’

There was something hard beneath the brim. Hartmann fumbled inside, found it. A USB memory stick hidden away.

‘Troels?’

He cut her off without another word. Nebel was at the door.

‘Did she offer anything worthwhile?’

‘She just wanted me to surrender. Any news from Mogens?’

‘Nothing. Is Morten still here?’ she asked.

Hartmann shrugged.

‘If you didn’t see him on the way in I guess not.’

She hesitated, only spoke when he pressed her.

‘I talked to some kids playing basketball when we went to the lock-up today,’ Nebel said. ‘Gave them my card. One of them just called me back.’

She closed the door. Sat down.

‘He was asking why we kept going back there.’

Hartmann turned the USB stick in his hands, wondered what was on it, how long it might take to find out.

‘Going back?’

‘Two years ago, around the time Benjamin died, he saw one of us before.’

Asbjørn Juncker was in the bows of the police inflatable, face to the chilly winter wind. Black clouds building to a storm. An ambulance wailing on the waterfront. Cars
screeching to a halt there. Brix had been engaged in a heated row with Hedeby and Dyhring when the young detective went to talk to him about Lund’s call. So he hadn’t waited. Told
Madsen, got some men, ordered the boat.

Phoned back to the Politigården on the way and didn’t much listen to Brix’s instant fury at all.

But when Juncker looked back at the shore he could see a familiar tall figure striding up and down the growing pool of vehicles. Brix was there now. A blonde woman too. Maja Zeuthen, waiting.
The way she had throughout.

This was the last throw, Lund said. No more options. Loke Rantzau was dead, gone before he could give any precise instructions. All he’d said was a single word:
Medea.
On the
basis of that they’d have to pray that somewhere in the rusty belly of the decrepit freighter now bobbing in front of them a young girl was trapped, still alive.

Even though, as Brix had yelled at him already down the phone, they’d searched the place twice before.

Four men in the inflatable, Juncker first up the steps. Straight into the doors behind the bridge, on the phone to Norway.

‘Where am I supposed to look, Lund?’

The entrance led to a vast internal chamber that ran from the upper deck to the bottom of the hold. Rooms and storage space on every deck. He’d no idea how to start.

‘Do you know where they searched before?’ she asked.

‘Sure. I was here.’

‘Then don’t look there.’

Madsen and the other men were fanning out, taking the first level.

He’d watched Lund working, tried to learn the way she thought. It wasn’t easy. There was a hard, almost cruel logic to her sometimes. She had a way of setting emotion to one side,
cutting through the personal, human side of the problem, going straight for an answer most people didn’t want to contemplate.

‘We gave up when we found those dead guys the first time,’ he said. ‘The second time we were looking for the man. For computers. For somewhere he worked.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘So where didn’t you look?’

He thought about this.

‘What do you call the bottom of a ship?’

A long sigh.

‘I don’t know, Asbjørn. Will you just get moving?’

There, he thought, and started to run down the winding iron stairs.

A grubby engine room. Dead machinery he didn’t begin to understand.

His torch flashed into the shadows.

‘There’s nothing here.’

‘It has to be soundproof so we couldn’t hear her if she’s yelling. Try to think like him, Asbjørn.’

‘I’d rather not . . .’

‘Then start. A cold store. A small hold somewhere.’

‘We checked those out!’

‘Not all of them. You said so yourself. He looked after her. He fed her . . .’

At the end of the engine room was another door. They hadn’t been here. He was sure of it. Heart pumping, torch up, Juncker walked through.

‘Nothing, Lund,’ he said into the phone, and didn’t know if she could hear.

Lund.

Just saying her name made him wonder how she’d work this place. He remembered again what she did, and in this last desperate moment tried to copy it.

Deep in the hull of the ancient listing freighter Asbjørn Juncker turned on his heels, three hundred and sixty degrees, trying to see something that ordinary people couldn’t.
Perhaps shouldn’t because that kind of vision, a damaged and individual perception, came with such a price.

At the last moment the torch beam caught a flash of colour. Pink and white.

He walked forward, looked.

A yoghurt pot. Raspberry. Empty. Plastic spoon inside.

Behind it the smallest of doors, one that fell short of the ceiling and the floor. Juncker opened it. Went in. A tiny room, barely big enough for modest storage.

‘Asbjørn?’ Lund was a tinny voice in his ear. One he barely heard.

There was a shape on the floor. Small, in a black coat. Not moving.

He put down the phone, reached out with his arms.

On the pier Brix got the first call. Madsen saying they’d found her. The inflatable was on the way.

He told Maja Zeuthen. Saw the fear and hope in her eyes.

Next to the medics they stood, watching the dull water, a small boat bobbing up and down on the choppy sea.

The doctor ordered a stretcher with blue plastic sheeting, oxygen, checked his bag.

All eyes on the waves, the inflatable rising and falling.

Soon they could see her. A shape in Asbjørn Juncker’s arms. At the jetty Madsen and the others stood back, let Juncker lift her light frame, carry her up the metal stairs,
carefully, one step at a time.

Someone spoke.

Emilie.

It took Brix a moment to realize it was the mother, hand on mouth, tears in her eyes as she followed the still form in Asbjørn’s arms.

The shiny blonde hair of the pictures was dirty and lank. Her face filthy too. She seemed asleep. Or dead.

Juncker lifted her onto the gurney then did something Brix never expected. Got down on his knees. Eyes closed, fingers raised together, whispering a quiet prayer.

Maja Zeuthen’s hands were over her daughter’s. Tears welling. Sobbing. The doctor forced her out of the way. Oxygen mask. Pulse. A medic talking about hypothermia. Wrapping her in a
blue insulation jacket.

‘Emilie, wake up,’ Maja cried. ‘
Wake up!
’

Asbjørn Juncker stopped, came and stood next to the mother, both of them watching the immobile face on the stretcher.

A weak burst of moisture began to mist the transparent plastic of the mask, like shining pearls of life.

‘Wake up,’ Maja begged.

The cloud grew. Emilie Zeuthen’s eyes opened. Around the bleak jetty, over the grey water, a shout, a round of sudden joy, police and medics, all.

Brix turned and stared at the dead ship, crooked in the harbour. No words just then.

And Asbjørn Juncker half-staggered to a capstan, sat on it, took out the phone, resumed the call he’d never ended.

‘Bloody hell, Lund . . . we’ve got her,’ he said in a voice breaking with every syllable. ‘She’s alive.’

She’s alive.

Robert Zeuthen listened to the news from his wife. What the medics said. Hospital. Nourishment. Gentle care.

Emilie was safe at last.

Stood by the cold Norwegian fjord, not far from the body of Loke Rantzau getting loaded into a police van.

Tried to speak through the tears as she told him, ‘I’m holding her, Robert. I’m holding her . . .’

A stiff and reticent man. Not easy with emotions. It took a while.

‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll . . .’

The water seemed to mock him. Everything Zeuthen possessed came from that chill, uncaring source. And it meant nothing.

‘I’ll never let you go again,’ he whispered, cut the call, put a shaky hand to his face.

She’s alive.

Hartmann was alone at his desk, sketching out his resignation letter when Nebel walked in and broke the news.

Alive and in Copenhagen all along.

‘You’re sure this time?’ he asked. ‘No mistakes. No—’

‘She’s alive, Troels.’ Nebel looked as if she’d been crying. ‘She’s with her mum, on the way to hospital. They say she’s going to be fine. The man who
took her . . .’

Hartmann picked up the sheet of paper he’d been scribbling on, screwed it into a ball, threw it into the bin.

‘Best get the news out there, Karen,’ he suggested. ‘No delay.’

‘Done already,’ she said. ‘I know my priorities.’

‘Have you got anything back from the technical people yet? Do they know what was on that USB stick?’

‘Priorities,’ she repeated.

‘I asked for it.’

‘Then I’m sure it’s on the way.’