The Killing

Two

‘Around the back,’ the cop said. ‘Some homeless guy found her.’

Seven thirty in the morning. Still dark with the rain coming down in straight and icy lines. Vicekriminalkommissær Sarah Lund stood in the lee of the dirty brick building near the docks, watching the uniform men lay out the Don’t Cross lines.

The last crime scene she’d ever see in Copenhagen. It had to be a murder. A woman too.

‘The building’s empty. We’re checking the block of flats opposite.’

‘How old is she?’ Lund asked.

The cop, a man she barely knew, shrugged his shoulders then wiped the rain from his face with his arm.

‘Why’d you ask?’

A nightmare she wanted to say. One that woke her at six thirty that morning, screaming bolt upright in an empty bed. When she got up Bengt, kind, thoughtful, calm Bengt, was padding round the place finishing the packing. Mark, her son, lay fast asleep in front of the TV in his room, didn’t even stir when, very quietly, she peeked in. That night the three of them would catch the flight to Stockholm. A new life in another country. Corners turned. Bridges burned.

Sarah Lund was thirty-eight, a serious woman, staring endlessly at the world around her, never once herself. She was starting her final day in the Copenhagen police. Women like her didn’t have nightmares, terrors in the dark, fleeting glimpses of a frightened young face that might, once upon a time, have been hers.

They were fantasies for others.

‘No need for an answer,’ the cop said, scowling at her silence as he lifted up the tape and walked her to the sliding metal door. ‘I’ll tell you something. I’ve never seen one like this.’

He passed her a pair of blue forensic gloves, watched as she put them on, then put his shoulder to the rusting metal. It opened squealing like a tortured cat.

‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he said.

She didn’t wait, just walked ahead the way she always did, alone, staring, this way then that, bright eyes wide open, always looking.

For some reason he rolled the sliding door shut the moment she was inside, so rapidly the cat squealed an octave higher than before. Then fell silent with the metallic clatter of the heavy iron slamming out the grey day behind.

Ahead lay a central corridor and a chamber like a meat store hung with hooks at intervals along the rafters. A single set of bulbs in the ceiling.

The concrete floor was damp and shining. Something moved in the shadows at the end, swinging slowly like a gigantic pendulum.

There was the clatter of an unseen switch and then the place was as dark as the bedroom that morning when a savage unwanted dream shook her awake.

‘Lights!’ Lund called.

Her voice echoed round the black and empty belly of the building.

‘Lights, please.’

Not a sound. She was an experienced cop, remembered everything she was supposed to carry, except for the gun which always seemed an afterthought.

She had the torch though, safe in her right pocket, took it out and held it the way cops did: right hand upright, wrist cocked back, beam ahead, searching, peering into places others didn’t look.

The light and Lund went hunting. Blankets, discarded clothes, two crushed Coke cans, an empty packet of condoms.

Three steps and then she stopped. By the right wall, visible at the point it met the floor was a puddle of liquid, scarlet and sticky, two horizontal lines along the peeling plaster, the way blood smeared when a body was dragged along the floor.

Lund reached into her pocket, took out the packet of nicotine gum, popped a piece in her mouth.

It wasn’t just Copenhagen getting left behind. Tobacco was on the hit list too.

She bent down and placed a blue gloved finger in the sticky puddle, lifted it to her nose and sniffed.

Three more steps and she came upon a woodman’s axe, the handle clean and shiny as if it had been bought from a store the day before. She placed two fingers in the pool of red liquid that ran around the blade, tested it, sniffed and thought.

She’d never learn to like the taste of Nicotinell. Lund walked on.

The thing ahead was getting clearer. It swung from side to side. An industrial tarpaulin so smeared with red it looked like the shroud of a slaughtered beast.

What lay inside had a familiar, human shape.

Lund changed the position of the torch, held it close to her waist, beam upwards, checking the fabric, looking for something to grip.

The material came away in one swift movement and what lay beneath swung slowly in the beam. The frozen face the light caught was male, mouth open in a perpetual O. Black hair, pink flesh, a monstrous plastic penis erect and winking. And over its head a vivid blue Viking helmet with silver horns and gold braids running down.

Lund cocked her head and, for their sake, smiled.

Tied to the chest of the sex toy was a notice: Thanks boss, for seven great years. The boys.

Laughter from the shadows.

The boys.

A good prank. Though they might have got real blood.

The Politigården was a grey labyrinth on reclaimed land near the waterfront. Bleak and square on the outside, the interior of the police headquarters opened up to a round courtyard. Classical pillars stood in a shadowy arcade around the edge. Inside spiral staircases led to winding corridors lined with striated black marble running round the perfect circle like calcified veins. It had taken her three months to find her way around this dark and maze-like complex. Even now, sometimes, she had to think hard to work out where she was.

Homicide was on the second floor, north-east. She was in Buchard’s room, wearing the Viking helmet, listening to their jokes, opening their presents, smiling, keeping quiet beneath the cardboard horns and the golden braids.

Then she thanked them and went to her office, began to clear her belongings. No time for fuss. She smiled at the photo of Mark she kept in a frame on the desk. Three years before, back when he was nine, long before he came home with the ridiculous earring. Before — just — the divorce. Then along came Bengt to tempt her to Sweden and a life across the bleak, cold waters of the Øresund. Young Mark, unsmiling then as now. That would change in Sweden. Along with everything else.

Lund swept the rest of the desk, her three-month supply of Nicotinell, the pens, the pencil sharpener in the shape of a London bus, into a flimsy cardboard box then placed the photo of Mark on top.

The door opened and a man walked in.

She looked, she judged, the way she always did. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. His hair was short, his face severe. Big eyes, big ears. Clothes cheap and a little too young for a man who wasn’t far off her own age. He was carrying a box much like hers. She could see a map of Copenhagen, a kid’s basketball net for the wall, a toy police car and a pair of headphones.

‘I’m looking for Lund’s office,’ he said, staring at the Viking helmet perched on the new pair of skis they’d given her at breakfast.

‘That’s me.’

‘Jan Meyer. Is that uniform around here?’

‘I’m going to Sweden.’

Lund picked up her belongings and the two of them did a little dance around each other as she struggled to the door.

‘For the love of God… why?’ Meyer asked.

She put down the box, swept back her long brown wayward hair, tried to think if there was anything left that mattered.

He took out the basketball net, looked at the wall.

‘My sister did something like that,’ Meyer said.

‘Like what?’

‘Couldn’t keep her life in one piece here so she moved to Bornholm with a guy.’ Meyer stuck the net above the filing cabinets. ‘Nice guy. Didn’t work.’

Lund got sick of her hair, pulled an elastic band from her pocket and tied it in a ponytail.

‘Why not?’

‘Too remote. They went mad listening to cows fart all day long.’ He took out a pewter beer tankard and turned it in his hands. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Sigtuna.’

Meyer stood stock still and stared at her in silence.

‘It’s very remote too,’ Lund added.

He took a long draw on his cigarette and pulled a small child’s football out of the box. Then he put the toy police car on the desk and started running it up and down. When the wheels moved the blue light burst into life and a tiny siren wailed.

He was still playing with it when Buchard walked in, a piece of paper in his hand.

‘You’ve met,’ the chief said. It wasn’t a question.

The bespectacled uncle figure she’d sat next to at breakfast had vanished.

‘We had the pleasure—’ Lund began.

‘This just came in.’ Buchard handed her the report slip. ‘If you’re too busy clearing up…’

‘I’ve got time,’ Lund told him. ‘All day…’

‘Good,’ Buchard said. ‘Why not take Meyer with you?’

The man with the box stubbed out his cigarette and shrugged.

‘He’s unpacking,’ Lund said.

Meyer let go of the car, picked up the football and bounced it in his hand.

He grinned. Looked different, more human, more rounded that way.

‘Never too busy for work.’

‘A good start,’ Buchard said. There was an edge to his voice. ‘I’d like that, Meyer, and so would you.’

Window down, looking round from the passenger seat, Lund scanned the Kalvebod Fælled. Thirteen kilometres south of the city, near the water. It was a bright clear morning after a couple of days of rain. Probably wouldn’t stay fine for long. Flat marshland, yellow grass and ditches, stretched to the horizon, with a bare dark wood to the right. Faint smell of sea, closer stink of dank decaying vegetation. Moisture in the air, not far from freezing. A hard cold winter stirring.

‘You can’t carry a gun? You can’t make arrests? What about parking tickets?’

An early morning dog walker had found some girl’s clothes on wasteland near a patch of silver birch woodland known as the Pinseskoven. The Pentecost Forest.

‘You’ve got to be Swedish to arrest people. It’s a…’ Lund wished she’d never answered his questions. ‘It’s how it works.’

Meyer shoved a handful of potato crisps into his mouth then balled the bag into the footwell. He drove like a teenager, too fast, with little thought for others.

‘What does your boy think?’

She got out, didn’t check to see him follow.

There was a plain-clothes detective by the find, a uniform man wandering through the hummocks of grass, kicking at the dying clumps. This was all they had: a flowery cotton top, the kind a teenager might wear. A card for a video rental store. Both inside plastic evidence bags. The top had bloodstains on it.

Lund turned three hundred and sixty degrees, her large and lustrous eyes looking for something the way they always did.

‘Who comes here?’ she asked the uniform man.

‘During the day nursery school kids on nature trips. At night hookers from the city.’

‘Some place to turn a trick,’ Meyer said. ‘Where’s the romance these days? I ask you.’

Lund was still going round slowly on her heels.

‘When was this stuff left here?’

‘Yesterday. Not Friday. There was a school trip then. They’d have seen it.’

‘No calls? No hospital reports?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No idea who she is?’

He showed her the bag with the top.

‘Size eight,’ the detective said. ‘That’s all we know.’

It looked cheap, the flowers so garish and childlike they might be ironic. A teenager’s joke: childish and sexy too.

Lund got the second bag and examined the video rental card.

It had a name: Theis Birk Larsen.

‘We found that near the track,’ the cop added. ‘The top here. Maybe they had a fight and he threw her out of the car. And then…’

‘And then,’ Meyer said, ‘she found her shoes and coat and purse and pack of condoms and walked all the way home to watch TV.’

Lund found she couldn’t stop looking at the woods.

‘You want me to talk to this Birk Larsen guy?’ the uniform asked.

‘Do that,’ she said and glanced at her watch.

Eight hours and it was over. Copenhagen and the life that went before.

Meyer came round and she found herself swamped in smoke.

‘We can talk to him, Lund. Leaving a hooker out here. Beating her up. My kind of customer.’

‘Well it’s not our kind of work.’

The cigarette went into the nearest ditch.

‘I know. I just…’ A pack of gum came out of his pocket. This man seemed to live on crisps and sweets and cigarettes. ‘I just want to have a little talk with him.’

‘About what? There’s no case. The hooker never complained.’

Meyer leaned forward and spoke to her the way a teacher might address a child.

‘I’m good at talking.’

He had prominent, almost comical ears and a good day’s stubble. He’d do well undercover, she thought. And maybe had. She remembered the way Buchard spoke to him. Street thug. Cop. Meyer could play either.

‘I said…’

‘You should see me, Lund. Truly. Before you go. My gift to the Swedes.’

He took the card from her fingers. Read it.

‘Theis Birk Larsen.’

Sarah Lund turned one more circle and took in the yellow grass, the ditches and the woods.

‘I’ll drive,’ she said.

Pernille perched above his big chest laughing like a child.

Half-dressed on the kitchen floor in the middle of a working morning. That was Theis’s idea, like most things.

‘Get dressed,’ she ordered and rolled off him, rose to her feet. ‘Go to work, you beast.’

He grinned like the tearaway teenager she still remembered. Then climbed back into his bright-red bib overalls. Forty-four, ginger hair turning grey, mutton-chop sideburns reaching down to his broad chin, face ready to switch from hot to cold then back to its usual immobile in an instant.

Pernille was one year younger, a busy woman, still in shape after three children, enough to catch his eye as easily as she had twenty years before when they first met.

She watched him clamber into his heavy uniform then looked around the little apartment.

Nanna had been in her belly when they moved to Vesterbro. In her belly when they married. Here, in this bright, colourful room, pot plants in the window, photographs on the wall, full of the mess of family life, they raised her. From squawking baby to beautiful teen, joined, after too long an interval, by Emil and Anton, now seven and six.

Their quarters stood above the busy depot of the Birk Larsen transport company. The place downstairs was more ordered than the cramped rooms in which they lived, five of them, forever in each other’s way. A jumbled mess of mementoes, drawings, toys and clutter.

Pernille looked at the herbs on the window, the way the green light shone through them.

Full of life.

‘Nanna’s going to need an apartment soon,’ she said, straightening her long chestnut hair. ‘We can put down a deposit, can’t we?’

He grunted with laughter.

‘You choose your moments. She can choose hers. Let Nanna finish school first.’

‘Theis…’

She wound herself back into his burly arms, looked into his face. Some people were scared of Theis Birk Larsen. Not her.

‘Maybe it won’t be needed,’ he said.

His rough face creased in a crafty, teasing grin.

‘Why?’

‘Secret.’

‘Tell me!’ Pernille cried and punched his chest with her clenched fist.

‘Then it wouldn’t be a secret.’

He walked down the stairs into the depot. She followed.

Trucks and men, pallets and shrink-wrapped goods, inventory lists and timetables.

The floorboards always creaked. Maybe she’d cried out. They’d heard. She could see it in their grinning faces. Vagn Skærbæk, Theis’s oldest friend, who predated even her, tipped an imaginary hat.

‘Tell me!’ she ordered, taking his old black leather coat from the hook.

Birk Larsen put on the jacket, pulled out the familiar black woollen cap, set it on his head. Red on the inside, black on the out. He seemed to live inside this uniform. It made him look like a truculent red-chested bull seal, happy with his territory, ready to fight off all intruders.

A glance at the clipboard, a tick against a destination, then he called Vagn Skærbæk to the nearest van. Scarlet too, and like the uniforms it had the name Birk Larsen on the side. Like the red Christiania tricycle with the box on it that Skærbæk kept running eighteen years after they bought it to ferry Nanna round the city.

Birk Larsen. Patriarch of a modest, happy dynasty. King of his small quarter in Vesterbro.

One clap of his giant hands, barked orders. Then he left.

Pernille Birk Larsen stood there till the men went back to work. There was a tax return to finish. Money to be paid and that was never welcome. Money to be hidden too. No one gave the government everything if they could help it.

We need no more secrets, Theis, she thought.

Beneath Absalon’s golden statue, beneath the bell-tower turret and castellated roofline, against the red-brick, turreted fortress that was the Rådhus, Copenhagen City Hall, stood three posters.

Kirsten Eller, Troels Hartmann, Poul Bremer. Smiling as only politicians can.

Eller, the woman, thin lips tight together in something close to a smirk. The Centre Party, forever stuck in a philosophical no man’s land, hoping to cling to one side or the other then catch the crumbs that slip from the master’s table.

Below her Poul Bremer beamed out at the city he owned. Lord Mayor of Copenhagen for twelve years, a plump and comfortable statesman, close to the Parliamentarians who held the purse strings, attuned to the fickle opinions of his shiftless party troops, familiar with the scattered network of backers and supporters who followed his every word. Black jacket, white shirt, subtle grey silk tie, businesslike black spectacles, Bremer at sixty-five wore the friendly disposition of everyone’s favourite uncle, the generous bringer of gifts and favours, the clever relative with all the secrets, all the knowledge.

Then Troels Hartmann.

The young one. The handsome one. The politician women looked at and secretly admired.

He wore the Liberal colours. Blue suit, blue shirt, open at the neck. Hartmann, forty-two, boyish with his Nordic good looks, though in his clear cobalt eyes a hint of pain escaped the photographer’s lens. A good man, the picture said. A new generation vigorously chasing out the old, bringing with it fresh ideas, the promise of change. Part way there since, thanks to the voting system, he ran with energy and vision the city’s Education Department. Mayor already, if only of its schools and colleges.

Three politicians about to fight each other for the crown of Copenhagen, the capital city, a sprawling metropolis where more than a fifth of Denmark’s five and a half million natives lived and worked, bickered and fought. Young and old, Danish-born and recent, sometimes half-welcome, immigrant. Honest and diligent, idle and corrupt. A city like any other.

Eller the outsider whose only chance was to cut the best deal she could. Hartmann young, idealistic. Naive his foes would say, bravely hoping to knock Poul Bremer, the grandee of city politics, from the perch the old man called his own.

In the chill November afternoon their faces beamed at the camera, for the press, for the people in the street. Past the smoke-stained ornamental windows of the red-brick castle called the Rådhus, in the galleried corridors and cell-like chambers where politicians gathered to whisper and plot, life was different.

Behind the fixed and artificial smiles a war was under way.

Shining wood. Long slender leaded windows. Leather furniture. Gilt and mosaics and paintings. The smell of polished mahogany.

Posters of Hartmann stood everywhere, leaning against walls, ready to go out to the city. On the desk, in a wooden frame, a portrait of his wife on her hospital bed, placid, brave and beautiful a month before she died. Next to it a photograph of John F. Kennedy and a doe-eyed Jackie in the White House. A band played in the background admiring them. She was smiling in a beautiful silk evening dress. Kennedy was talking to her, saying something private in her ear.

The White House, days before Dallas.

In his private office Troels Hartmann looked at the photos, then the desk calendar.

Monday morning. Three of the longest weeks of his political life ahead. The first of an endless succession of meetings.

Hartmann’s two closest aides sat on the other side of the desk, laptops before them, going through the day’s agenda. Morten Weber, campaign manager, friend since college. Committed, quiet, solitary, intense. Forty-four, unruly curly hair beneath a growing bald patch, a kind, intense and neglected face, roving eyes behind cheap gold-rimmed glasses. Never knew what he looked like or cared. For the last week he’d seemed to live in the same shabby creased jacket that didn’t match his trousers. Happiest in the minutiae of committee paper and cutting deals in smoke-filled rooms.

Sometimes he’d roll his office chair away from the table, propel himself into a quiet corner, take out his needle and insulin, pull his shirt from his waistband and jab a shot into his flabby white belly. Then slide back into the argument, tucking himself back in without losing a single thread.

Rie Skovgaard, the political adviser, always pretended not to notice.

Hartmann’s mind wandered from Weber’s tally of the appointments. He found himself torn from the world of politics for a moment. Thirty-two, angular, intense face, attractive more than beautiful. Combative, strident, always elegant. Today she wore a tightly cut green suit. Expensive. Her dark hair she seemed to take from that photo on Hartmann’s desk. Jackie Kennedy around 1963, long and curving into her slender neck, seemingly casual though not a strand was ever out of place.

The ‘presidential-funeral cut’ Weber called it, but only behind her back. Rie Skovgaard hadn’t looked that way when she arrived.

Morten Weber was the son of a schoolteacher from Aarhus. Skovgaard came with better connections. Her father was an influential backbench MP. Before she moved to the Liberals she was an account executive with the Copenhagen office of a New York-based advertising agency. Now she pitched him, his image, his ideas, much the way she once sold life insurance and supermarket chains.

An unlikely team, awkward sometimes. Did she envy Weber? The fact that he preceded her by two decades, working his way up the Liberal Party secretariat, the backroom man while Hartmann’s handsome smile and fetching ways brought in the publicity and votes?

Rie Skovgaard was a newcomer, scenting opportunity, bored by ideology.

‘The debate this lunchtime. We need posters at the school,’ she said in a calm, clear professional voice. ‘We need—’

‘It’s done,’ Weber replied, waving his fingers at the computer.

It was a dull day. Rain and cloud. The office gave out onto the front of the Palace Hotel. At night its blue neon sign cast an odd light on the room.

‘I sent a car out there first thing.’

She folded her skinny arms.

‘You think of everything, Morten.’

‘I need to.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Bremer.’ Weber muttered the name as if it were an expletive. ‘He didn’t own this city by accident.’

Hartmann came back to the conversation.

‘He won’t own it for much longer.’

‘Did you see the latest poll numbers?’ Skovgaard asked.

‘They look good,’ Hartmann answered with a nod. ‘Better than we hoped for.’

Morten Weber shook his head.

‘Bremer’s seen them too. He won’t sit on his comfy arse and let his kingdom slip through his fingers. This debate at lunchtime, Troels. It’s a school. Home ground. The media will be there.’

‘Talk education,’ Skovgaard cut in. ‘We’ve asked for extra funds to put in more computers. Better access to the net. Bremer blocked the allocation. Now absenteeism’s up twenty per cent. We can throw that at him…’

‘Blocked it personally?’ Hartmann asked. ‘You know that?’

A subtle, teasing smile.

‘I managed to get hold of some confidential minutes.’

Like a guilty schoolgirl Skovgaard waved her delicate hands over the documents in front of her.

‘It’s there in black and white. I can leak this if I have to. I’m finding lots we can throw at him.’

‘Can we avoid this kind of crap, please?’ Weber asked with an ill-disguised peevishness. ‘People expect better of us.’

‘People expect us to lose, Morten,’ Skovgaard replied straight away. ‘I’m trying to change that.’

‘Rie…’

‘We’ll get there,’ Hartmann interrupted. ‘And we’ll do it properly. I had a meeting with Kirsten Eller over breakfast. I think they want to play.’

The two of them went silent. Then Skovgaard asked, ‘They’re interested in an alliance?’

‘With Kirsten Eller?’ Weber grumbled. ‘Jesus. Talk about a deal with the devil…’

Hartmann leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, felt happier than he had in days.

‘These are different times, Morten. Poul Bremer’s starting to lose support. If Kirsten throws her not inconsiderable weight behind us…’

‘We’ve got a coalition that holds the majority,’ Skovgaard added brightly.

‘We need to think this through,’ Weber said.

His phone rang. He walked to the window to take the call.

Troels Hartmann skimmed the papers she’d prepared for him, a briefing for the debate.

Skovgaard moved her chair next to his so they could read them together.

‘You don’t need my help, do you? You came up with these ideas. We’re just reminding you what you think.’

‘I need reminding. I lost my watch! A good watch. A…’

Skovgaard nudged him. The silver Rolex was in her hand, held discreetly beneath the table so no one else could see.

She opened his fingers and pressed it into his palm.

‘I found it under my bed. I can’t imagine how it got there. Can you?’

Hartmann slipped the Rolex onto his wrist.

Weber came back from the window, phone in hand, looking worried.

‘It’s the mayor’s secretary. Bremer wants to see you.’

‘About what?’

‘I don’t know. He wants to see you now.’

‘Fifteen minutes,’ Hartmann said, checking the time. ‘I’m not at his beck and call.’

Weber looked puzzled.

‘You told me you’d lost your watch.’

‘Fifteen minutes,’ Hartmann repeated.

The hallways ran everywhere, long and gleaming, frescoes of battles and ceremonies above them, grand figures in armour staring down at the figures beetling along beneath.

‘You don’t look happy,’ Hartmann said as they walked to the Lord Mayor’s quarters.

‘Happy? I’m your campaign manager. We’re three weeks from an election. You’re forming alliances without even telling me. What do you want? A song, a dance and a joke?’

‘You think Bremer knows? About Kirsten Eller?’

‘Poul Bremer can hear you mumbling in your sleep. Besides, if you’re Kirsten Eller trying to cut a deal… do you only offer it to one side?’

Hartmann stood outside the council chamber door.

‘Leave this to me, Morten. I’ll find out.’

Poul Bremer was in shirtsleeves standing on the podium by the ceremonial chair he’d occupied these past twelve years. Jovial on the phone.

Hartmann walked ahead and picked up the book on the table by the mike. A biography of Cicero. And listened, as he was meant to.

‘Yes, yes. Hear me out.’ That deep and generous laugh, Bremer’s breathy blessing on those he favoured. ‘You’ll be in the government next. A minister. I predict it and I’m never wrong.’ A glance at his visitor. ‘Sorry… I must go.’

Bremer took the deputy’s seat. Not the Lord Mayor’s.

‘You’ve read the book, Troels?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘Take it. An instructive gift. It reminds us the one thing we learn from history is… we learn nothing from history.’ He had the voice and manner of a genial schoolmaster, honed across the years. ‘Cicero was a fine man. Would have gone far if he’d bided his time.’

‘It looks heavy going.’

‘Come and sit with me.’ Bremer beckoned to the seat beside him. The Lord Mayor’s. The throne. ‘Try it for size. It doesn’t belong to anyone. Not even me, whatever you think.’

Hartmann went along with the joke. Fell onto the hard polished wood. Smelled the mahogany, the scent of power. Looked around the chamber with its semicircle of empty councillors’ seats, flat-screen monitors and voting buttons in front of them.

‘It’s just a chair, Troels,’ Bremer said, grinning at him.

He always spoke and moved like a younger man. That was part of the image.

‘Rome liked Cicero, appreciated his ideas. Ideas make pretty rhetoric. Not much more. Caesar was a dictator but a rogue the Romans knew and loved. Cicero was impatient. Pushy. An upstart. You know what happened to him?’

‘He went into TV?’

‘Very funny. They slaughtered him. Put his hands and head on show in the Forum for everyone to laugh at. We serve an ungrateful bunch of bastards sometimes.’

‘You wanted to see me?’

‘I saw the polls. Did you?’

‘I did.’

‘You’ll make a fine Lord Mayor. You’ll run this city well.’ Bremer smoothed down the sleeves of his black silk jacket, pulled out the cuffs of his smart white shirt, took off his glasses and checked they were clean, ran a hand through his silver hair. ‘Just not this time around.’

Hartmann sighed and looked at his silver Rolex.

‘I retire in four years. What’s the hurry?’

‘I believe it’s called an election. Third Tuesday in November. Every four years.’

‘I’ve an offer for you. A seat around my table. Running more than schools. There are seven mayors. Lord Mayor and six for the departments. You’ll get any of the six you want. You’ll learn how this city runs. When the time comes you’ll be ready for the job and I’ll happily hand it on.’

Bremer turned that swift smile on him.

‘I guarantee no one will stand against you. But you can’t have it now. You’re not ready.’

‘That’s not your decision, is it?’

The smile was gone.

‘I’m just trying to be friendly. There’s no need for us to be enemies…’

Hartmann got up to leave. Poul Bremer strode in front, stopped him with an outstretched hand. He was a burly man, still fit. There were stories about how he’d strong-arm for support when he was young. No one knew whether they were true. No one had the courage to ask.

‘Troels.’

‘You’ve outstayed your welcome,’ Hartmann said curtly. ‘Go quietly. With dignity. Maybe I could find you a job somewhere.’

The suave old man stared at him, amused.

‘Does one tiny promise from the Centre Party inspire such confidence? Oh please. They’re the house pets. That fat bitch Eller will suck the cock of anyone then let you piss on her. So long as she gets a subcommittee after. Still…’ He straightened his gold cufflinks.

‘They know their place. A wise politician does.’

Bremer picked up the book, held it out to him and said, ‘Read about Cicero. You might learn something. No one wants to end up torn to pieces for the public to gloat over. It’s best these transitions are managed. Quietly. Efficiently. With some—’

‘You’re going to lose,’ Hartmann cut in.

The old man chuckled.

‘Poor Troels. You look so impressive on the posters. But in the flesh…’

He reached out and touched the collar of Hartmann’s silk suit.

‘What’s under here, I wonder? Do you even know yourself?’

Meyer was out before she’d time to kill the engine, flashing his ID at a woman packing the boot of an estate car.

Red.

Everything here seemed a vivid shade of scarlet. The workmen in their bib overalls. The vans. Even a shiny Christiania trike with a box on the front for taking kids to school, bringing back the shopping, riding a lazy dog around town.

All the same colour, all with the name Birk Larsen on them.

Lund walked over, half-listening to Meyer, mostly looking around.

Two sliding doors opened to a depot-cum-garage. Beyond the crates and cases and machinery she could see an office behind glass windows in the corner, stairs at the back with a sign that read ‘Private’. This was Birk Larsen’s home address. He had to live above the job.

‘Where’s Theis Birk Larsen?’ Meyer asked.

‘My husband’s working. And I’m going to the accountants.’

A woman in her forties, smart, good-looking with chestnut hair just a touch better tended than Lund’s own. She wore a fawn gaberdine coat and a harassed, preoccupied air. Kids, Lund thought. She owned the badge. And she didn’t like the police. Who did?

‘You live here?’ Lund asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Is he upstairs?’

The woman walked back into the garage.

‘Is this about the vans again? We’re a transport company. We get in the way.’

‘It’s not about the vans,’ Lund said as she followed a couple of steps behind. More scarlet and uniforms. Hefty men heaving around crates, checking clipboards, looking her up and down. ‘We just want to know what he did at the weekend.’

‘We went to the seaside. With our two boys. Friday to Sunday. Took a cottage. Why?’

Tarpaulins and ropes. Wooden chests and commercial pallets. Lund wondered what she’d meet as a not-quite-cop in Sweden. She’d never really asked herself that question. Bengt wanted to go. She wanted to follow.

‘Maybe he came back to town on business?’ Meyer said.

The woman picked up an accounts ledger. She was getting sick of this.

‘But he didn’t. First weekend off we’ve had in two years. Why would he?’

Untidy office. Papers everywhere. Big companies didn’t work this way. They had systems. Organization. Money.

Lund walked outside and looked in the woman’s boot. Papers and folders. Kids’ toys. A small football, much like the one Meyer had left in the office. A battered Nintendo. She wandered back into the office.

‘What did he do when you got home?’ Meyer was saying.

‘We went to bed.’

‘You’re sure.’

She laughed at him.

‘I’m sure.’

While they talked Lund strolled around the office, looking at the mess, searching for something personal in all the bills and receipts and invoices.

‘I don’t know what you think he did… and I don’t care either,’ the woman was saying. ‘We were at the seaside. Then we came home. That’s it.’

Meyer sniffed, looked in Lund’s direction.

‘Maybe we’ll come back another time.’

Then he went outside, lit a cigarette, leaned against one of the scarlet trucks and stared at the starkly pallid sky.

At the back of the office, behind some rickety, old-fashioned filing trays, was a set of photographs. A beautiful teenage girl smiling with her arms round two young boys. The same girl close up, bubbly blonde hair, bright eyes, a little too much make-up. Trying to look older than she was.

Lund took out her packet of nicotine gum and popped a piece in her mouth.

‘You’ve got a daughter?’ she asked, still looking at the girl, the fetching smile. Both photos, alone, too old, and with the young boys when she played big sister.

The mother was walking out of the office. She stopped. Turned, looked at her and said, her voice quiet and small, ‘Yes. And two boys. Six and seven.’

‘Does she borrow her dad’s video rental card sometimes?’

The Birk Larsen woman was changing as Lund watched. Face falling, getting older. Mouth open. Eyelids twitching as if they had a life of their own.

‘Maybe. Why?’

‘Was she here last night?’

Meyer was back inside, listening.

The woman put down the papers. She looked troubled now, and scared.

‘Nanna spent the weekend at a friend’s house. Lisa. I thought…’ Her hand went up to her chestnut hair for no real reason. ‘I thought she might phone us. But she hasn’t.’

Lund couldn’t take her eyes off the photographs, the face there, happy, staring out at the camera without a care.

‘I think you should ring her now.’

Frederiksholm High School in the city centre. Where the money was. Not Vesterbro. Morning break. Lisa Rasmussen phoned again.

‘This is Nanna. I’m doing my homework. Leave me a message. Bye!’

Lisa Rasmussen took a deep breath and said, ‘Nanna. Please call me.’

Stupid, she thought. Third time that morning she’d left the same message. Now she was sitting in school, listening to Rama the teacher talk about citizenship and the coming election. No one knew where Nanna was. No one had seen her since the Halloween party downstairs in the school hall the previous Friday.

‘Today,’ Rama said, ‘you’ll have the opportunity to decide who to vote for.’

There was a photo on the whiteboard. The semicircle of seats in the Rådhus. Three politicians, one good-looking, an old man, a smug fat-faced woman. She couldn’t care less.

Out came the phone again and she typed one more message. Nanna, where the hell are you?

‘We’re lucky to live in a country where we have the right to vote,’ the teacher went on. ‘To decide our own future. To control our destiny.’

He was thirty or so, from the Middle East somewhere, not that it showed in his voice. Some of the girls fancied him. Tall and handsome. Nice body, cool smart clothes. Always helpful. Always had time for them.

Lisa didn’t like foreigners much. Even when they smiled and looked good.

‘So let’s hear the questions you’ve prepared for the debate,’ Rama said.

Class full, the rest of them seemed interested.

‘Lisa.’ He had to pick her. ‘Your three questions. Are they on your phone?’

‘No.’

She sounded like a petulant kid and knew it. Rama cocked his head and waited.

‘I can’t remember them. I can’t…’

The door opened and Rektor Koch walked in. Scary Koch, the stocky middle-aged woman who used to teach German before she rose to run the school.

‘Excuse me,’ Koch said. ‘Is Nanna Birk Larsen here?’

No answer.

Koch walked to the front of the class.

‘Has anyone seen Nanna today?’

Nothing. She walked over to talk to the teacher. Lisa Rasmussen knew what was coming next.

One minute later Lisa was outside with the pair of them, Koch glaring at her with those fierce black eyes and asking, ‘Where’s Nanna? The police are looking for her.’

‘I haven’t seen Nanna since Friday. Why ask me?’

Koch gave her that ‘you’re lying’ look.

‘Her mother told the police she spent the weekend at your house.’

Lisa Rasmussen laughed. People used to think she and Nanna were sisters sometimes. Same height, same clothes, blonde hair too though Nanna’s looked better. And Lisa was always heavier around the middle.

‘What? She didn’t stay with me.’

‘You don’t know where she is?’ Rama asked a little more gently.

‘No! How could I?’

‘If she calls tell her to ring home,’ Koch said. ‘It’s important.’ She glanced at Rama. ‘They need your classroom for the debate. Be out of there by eleven.’

When she was gone Rama turned, took Lisa Rasmussen’s arm and said, ‘If you’ve any idea where she is you must say so.’

‘You’re not supposed to touch me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He took his hand away. ‘If you know—’

‘I don’t know anything,’ Lisa said. ‘Leave me alone.’

Lund and Meyer were upstairs in the Birk Larsen flat. It was as cluttered as the office but in a pleasant way. Photos, paintings, plants and flowers. Vases and mementoes from holidays. Decorated, Lund thought. She never got round to that herself. The woman she now knew to be Pernille Birk Larsen worked at being a mother. Seemed good at it. As far as Lund could judge.

‘She’s not at school,’ Lund said.

Pernille still wore her raincoat as if none of this was happening.

‘She must be at Lisa’s. They’re friends. Lisa rents a flat with a couple of boys. Nanna’s always there.’

‘Lisa’s at school. She says Nanna never stayed with her.’

Pernille’s mouth hung half open. Her eyes were wide and blank. On the kitchen wall Lund saw the same two photos from the office: Nanna with the boys, Nanna on her own looking beautiful and too old for nineteen. Fixed to a corkboard alongside a timetable for school sports events. The easy, casual air of domesticity hung around this place. Like the smell of a dog, unnoticed by the owner, apparent to a stranger from the outset.

‘What’s happened to her? Where is she?’ Pernille asked.

‘Probably nothing. We’ll do our best to find her.’

Lund walked into the tiny hall and phoned headquarters.

Meyer took Pernille out of earshot and began asking about photos.

Through to Buchard, Lund said, ‘I need everyone we can spare on this.’ The old man didn’t even ask a question, just listened. ‘Tell them we’re looking for nineteen-year-old Nanna Birk Larsen. Missing since Friday. Send someone here for the photos.’

‘And you?’

‘We’re going to her school.’

Hartmann and Rie Skovgaard had an empty classroom to prepare. She went through the numbers about the education allocation again. He paced round nervously. Finally she closed the laptop, came and checked his clothes. No tie, blue shirt. He looked good. But still she fiddled with his collar, came close enough so he had to hold her.

Hartmann’s hands slipped round her back. He pulled Skovgaard to him, kissed her. A sudden passion. Unexpected. She wanted to laugh. He wanted more.

‘Move in with me,’ he said and pushed her against the desk. She fell on it, giggling, wrapped her long legs round him.

‘Aren’t you too busy?’

‘Not for you.’

‘After the election.’

His face changed. The politician returned.

‘Why the big secret?’

‘Because I’ve got a job to do, Troels. And so have you. We want no complications.’ Her voice fell a tone. Smart eyes flashing. ‘And we don’t want Morten jealous.’

‘Morten’s the most experienced political aide we have. He knows what he’s doing.’

‘So I don’t?’

‘I didn’t say that. I don’t want to talk about Morten…’

Her hands were on his jacket again.

‘Let’s deal with this when you’ve won, shall we?’

Hartmann was reaching for her again.

The door opened. Rektor Koch was there. She looked embarrassed.

‘The Lord Mayor’s arrived,’ she said. A confidential smile. ‘If you’re ready.’

Hartmann buttoned his jacket and walked out into the corridor.

Poul Bremer was beaming beneath a poster of a half-naked pop singer. Skovgaard left them alone and went to check out the room.

‘I hope the Centre Party likes your ideas, Troels. A lot of them are good. Very like your father’s.’

‘Is that so?’

‘They have his vigorous energy. His optimism.’

‘Conviction,’ Hartmann said. ‘They came from what he believed. Not what he thought might win a few votes.’

Bremer nodded at that.

‘It’s a shame he was never quite good enough to see them through.’

‘I’ll think of him. When I’ve got your job.’

‘I believe you will. One day.’ Bremer pulled out a handkerchief and cleaned his spectacles. ‘You’re more robust than he was. Your father was always… How should I put it?’ The glasses went back on, those icy eyes looked him up and down. ‘Fragile. Like porcelain.’

Bremer held up his right hand. A big fist. A fighter’s, in spite of all outward appearances.

‘He was always going to snap.’

The click of his strong fingers was so loud it seemed to echo off the peeling walls.

‘If I hadn’t broken him he’d have broken himself. Believe me. It was a kindness in a way. It’s best not to allow one’s delusions to linger too long.’

‘Let’s get to this debate,’ Hartmann said. ‘It’s time…’

When they turned to go Rektor Koch was walking towards them. She looked worried. With her was a woman in a blue cagoule, an odd black and white patterned sweater visible beneath it, hair swept back from her face like a teenager too busy to think about boyfriends.

A woman who thought nothing of her own appearance. Which was odd since she was striking and attractive.

Now she was looking straight ahead, at them, nowhere else. She had very large and staring eyes.

Somehow Hartmann wasn’t surprised when she pulled out a police ID card. It read: Vicekriminalkommissær Sarah Lund.

Bremer had retreated to the back of the corridor the moment he saw the cop approaching.

‘You have to cancel the debate,’ Lund said.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a missing girl. I need to talk to people here. People in her class. Teachers. I need…’

Rektor Koch was ushering them into a side room, out of the corridor. Bremer stayed where he was.

Hartmann listened to the cop.

‘You want me to cancel a debate because a pupil’s skipping school?’

‘It’s important I talk to everyone,’ Lund insisted.

‘Everyone?’

‘Everyone I want to talk to.’

She didn’t move. Didn’t stop looking at him. Nothing else.

‘We could put back the debate an hour,’ Hartmann suggested.

‘Not for me,’ Bremer cut in. ‘I have appointments. This was your invitation, Troels. If you can’t make it…’

Hartmann took a step towards Sarah Lund and said, ‘How serious is it?’

‘I hope nothing’s happened.’

‘I asked how serious it was.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ Lund replied then put her hands on her hips and waited for an answer. ‘So…’

She looked round, checking the rooms.

‘That’s agreed then,’ Lund added.

Bremer took out his phone, checked some messages.

‘Call my secretary. I’ll try to fit you in. Oh!’ A sudden flash of geniality. ‘I’ve got good news for your inner-city schools. It seems absenteeism is up by twenty per cent.’ He laughed. ‘We can’t have that, can we? So I’ve allocated funds for extra facilities. More computers. Children love those things. That’ll fix it.’

Hartmann stared at him, speechless.

Bremer shrugged.

‘I would have told you in there. But now… We’ll put out a release straight away. Good news. I trust you’ll welcome it.’

A long moment of silence.

‘You’re happy, I see,’ Bremer said, then, with a wave, walked off.

Half past three in the afternoon. They were still in the room where the debate was supposed to happen, getting nowhere. Nanna had been to the Halloween party in the school hall the previous Friday, dressed in a black witch’s hat and garish blue wig. No one had seen her since.

Now it was the teacher’s turn.

‘What’s Nanna like?’

They all called him Rama. He stood out and not just because of his dark, striking Middle Eastern looks. He was one of Troels Hartmann’s role models, part of an initiative to bring immigrant groups more closely into the fabric of the community. An articulate, intelligent, convincing man.

‘Nanna’s a clever kid,’ he said. ‘Always full of energy. Always wanting to do something.’

‘I saw the photo. She looks older than nineteen.’

He nodded.

‘They all want that, don’t they? Desperate to grow up. Or to feel they have. Nanna’s top of her class in most things. Bright kid. Doesn’t stop her wanting what the rest do.’

‘Which is?’

The teacher looked at her.

‘They’re teenagers. Are you serious?’

‘What happened at the party?’

‘Fancy dress. A band. Ghosts and pumpkins.’

‘Does she have a boyfriend?’

‘Ask Lisa.’

‘I’m asking you.’

He looked uncomfortable.

‘It’s best a teacher stays out of these things.’

Lund went outside, stopped the first girl she found, sat her down, talked to her until she got an answer.

Then she went back to the teacher.

‘Oliver Schandorff. Is he here?’

‘No.’

‘Did you know Oliver was her boyfriend?’

‘I told you. It’s best we keep some distance.’

She waited.

‘I’m their teacher. Not their guardian. Not a parent either.’

Lund looked at her watch. The interviews had run on for more than three hours and this was all they had. All anyone had. Meyer, out in the woods and fields near the airport with a search team, hadn’t found a thing.

‘Shit.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the teacher said.

‘Not you.’

Me, she thought. She could surely have got this out of Pernille in a few minutes if she’d tried. Why was it the best questions only came when she had something — people, evidence, crimes — in front of her?

Two hundred and thirty-five three-storey terraced houses made up the place called Humleby, a tiny estate four streets from Birk Larsen’s home. The colour of slate and gunmetal, they were built in the nineteenth century for workers at the nearby shipyard. Then the Carlsberg brewery expanded and the houses fell into the hands of men who made beer. They came onto the market slowly, sought after even if some needed much expensive restoration. Theis Birk Larsen had bought the cheapest he could find. Squatters had been in before, leaving behind their junk, mattresses and cheap furniture. It needed clearing, a lot of repair work. He’d do most of it himself, quietly, without telling Pernille, not until it was close to time to move in and escape the tiny apartment above the garage.

Vagn Skærbæk was helping. The two had known each other since they were teens, gone through a lot together, including a few appearances in court. To Birk Larsen he’d become almost a younger brother, uncle to the kids, steady employee in the transport company. Reliable, trustworthy, kind to Anton and Emil. A solitary man who seemed to have no life of his own once he took off the scarlet uniform.

‘Pernille’s looking for you,’ Skærbæk said coming off the phone.

‘Pernille’s not going to know about this place. I told you. Not a word until I say.’

‘She’s phoning round, asking where you are.’

There was scaffolding on the outside, sheeting against the rotting windows. Birk Larsen was paying his own men to carry in new floorboards, guttering and piping, making them promise to keep quiet about the place when Pernille was around.

‘The boys can have their own rooms,’ he said, looking at the grey stone house. ‘You see that top window?’

Skærbæk nodded.

‘Nanna gets that whole floor, a staircase of her own and some privacy. Pernille a new kitchen. And me…’ He laughed. ‘Some peace and quiet.’

‘This is going to cost a fortune, Theis.’

Birk Larsen stuffed his hands into the pockets of his red bib overall.

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Maybe I can help.’

‘Meaning?’

Skærbæk was a slight and fidgety man. He stood there shuffling from foot to foot even more than usual.

‘I know where there’s thirty B&O TVs going cheap. All we’ve got to—’

‘You’re in debt? That’s it?’

‘Listen. I’ve got buyers for half of them… We can share…’

Birk Larsen pulled a wad of notes out of his pocket, ripped off a few.

‘All I need is to borrow a forklift…’

‘Here you go.’ He folded the money in Skærbæk’s hand. ‘Forget the TVs. We’re not teenagers any more, Vagn. I’ve got a family. A business.’ Skærbæk kept hold of the money. ‘You’re part of both. Always will be.’

Skærbæk stared at the cash. Birk Larsen wished he’d lose that stupid silver neck chain.

‘How’d the boys feel if they had to visit their Uncle Vagn in jail?’

‘You don’t have to do this…’ Skærbæk started.

Theis Birk Larsen wasn’t listening. Pernille was riding towards him on the Christiania trike, so quickly the shiny scarlet box on the front bumped up and down over the cobblestones.

He forgot all about the secret house, about building work and where the money might come from.

She looked terrible.

Pernille got off, came straight up to him, took the collars of his black leather coat.

‘Nanna’s missing.’ She was breathless, pale, scared. ‘The police found your video rental card out near the airport. They found…’

Her hand went to her mouth. Tears started in her eyes.

‘Found what?’

‘Her top. The pink one with the flowers.’

‘Lots of kids wear tops like that. Don’t they?’

She gave him a sharp look.

‘And the video card?’

‘Did they talk to Lisa?’

Vagn Skærbæk was listening. She looked at him and said, ‘Please, Vagn.’

‘You want any help?’

Birk Larsen stared at him. He went away.

‘What about that bastard kid?’

‘She isn’t seeing Oliver any more.’

There was a touch of red anger in his cheeks.

‘Did they talk to him?’

A deep breath then she said, ‘I don’t know.’

He had his keys out, called to Skærbæk, ‘Take Pernille home. And the trike.’

A thought.

‘Why didn’t you drive?’

‘They wouldn’t let me use the car. They said I couldn’t move it.’

Theis Birk Larsen took his wife in his broad arms, held her, kissed her once, touched her cheek, looked her in the eye and said, ‘Nanna’s fine. I’ll find her. Go home and wait for us.’

Then he climbed into the van and left.

‘I’ll drop you off at Gran’s. You’ve got your key?’

The weather was closing in, the day ending in mist and drizzle. Lund was driving out to Østerbro, her twelve-year-old son, Mark, in the passenger seat.

‘You mean we’re not going to Sweden after all?’

‘I’ve got something to do first.’

‘Me too.’

Lund looked at her son. But in truth all she was seeing in her head was the flat yellow grass, a teenager’s bloodstained top. And the photograph of Nanna Birk Larsen, smiling like an older sister proud of her little brothers. Looking too grown-up with all that make-up.

She hadn’t a clue what Mark was talking about.

‘I told you, Mum. Magnus’s birthday party.’

‘Mark. Our flight’s tonight. We decided this ages ago.’

He grunted and turned to stare out of the rain-streaked window.

‘You look like a moose with the mumps,’ she said.

Lund laughed. He didn’t.

‘You’ll love it in Sweden. It’s a great school. I’ll have more time for you. We can—’

‘He’s not my father.’

Lund’s phone started ringing. She looked at the number and began fumbling the headset into her ear.

‘Of course he’s not. He’s found you a hockey club.’

‘I’ve got one.’

‘You must be sick of being the youngest at FCK.’

Silence.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘It’s called KSF.’

‘Yes,’ she said to the phone.

‘KSF,’ Mark repeated.

‘I’m on my way.’

Mark began to speak very slowly.

‘K… S… F…’

‘Yes.’

‘You get it wrong every time.’

‘Yes.’

It wasn’t far now which pleased her on two counts. She wanted to see Meyer. And Mark was… in the way.

‘Not long now and then we go to the airport,’ she said. ‘You do have your key, don’t you?’

Beneath a sullen monochrome sky a single line of twenty blue-clad officers moved slowly across the yellow grass, prodding the mud and clumps of vegetation with red and white sticks, search dogs snuffling at the damp earth.

Lund watched them for a moment then went into the wood. There a second team was working through the lichened trees, examining the ground, putting down markers, following another set of dogs.

Meyer was in a police jacket, soaked to the skin.

‘How clear’s the trail?’ she asked.

‘Clear enough. The dogs followed her from where we found the top.’ He looked at his notes and gestured to a thicket ten metres away. ‘We also got some blonde hair caught on a bush.’

‘Where does it lead?’

‘Here,’ Meyer said, gesturing with the map in his hand. ‘Where we’re standing.’ Another look at his notes. ‘She was running. Zigzagging through the woods. This was where she stopped.’

Lund came and peered over his shoulder.

‘What do we have close by?’

‘A logging road. Maybe she was picked up there.’

‘What about her mobile phone?’

‘Switched off since Friday night.’ He didn’t like these obvious questions. ‘Listen, Lund. We’ve gone over her route with a fine-tooth comb. Twice. She isn’t here. We’re wasting time.’

She turned and walked away, looked back to the marshland and yellow grass.

‘Hello?’ Meyer said with that dry sarcasm she was starting to recognize. ‘Am I invisible?’

Lund came back and said, ‘Spread out. Go over it all again.’

‘Did you hear a word I said?’

The local intercom on one of the search team’s jackets squawked her name.

‘We’ve found something,’ a voice said.

‘Where?’

‘In the trees.’

‘What is it?’

A pause. It was getting dark. Then, ‘It looks like a grave.’

The same sluggish twilight crept over the city, damp and dreary, wan and cold. In his campaign office, beneath the coral-coloured petals of the artichoke lamps, Hartmann listened to Morten Weber’s answers. Poul Bremer wouldn’t return to the school for another debate. Running the city was more important than begging for votes.

‘Doesn’t that suit him?’ Hartmann said.

Rie Skovgaard placed a cup of coffee on his desk.

‘Bremer’s office announced the new allocation of funds while we were at the school. He was ready to come out with it whatever happened.’

‘He knew about the twenty per cent. How’s that possible, Morten?’ Hartmann asked.

Weber seemed thrown by the question.

‘Why ask me? Maybe he did his own survey. Makes sense. Promising money for education always wins you Brownie points.’

‘And he got the same results? He knew.’

Weber shrugged.

‘You shouldn’t have cancelled,’ Skovgaard said.

Hartmann’s mobile rang.

‘A young girl’s missing. I had no choice.’

‘It’s Therese,’ said the voice on the line.

Hartmann glanced at Rie Skovgaard.

‘This isn’t a good time. I’ll ring you back.’

‘Don’t hang up, Troels. You’re not too busy for this. We have to meet.’

‘That wouldn’t be a good idea.’

‘Someone’s trying to dig up dirt on you.’

Hartmann took a deep breath.

‘Who?’

‘A reporter rang me. I don’t want to talk about this over the phone.’

‘We’ve got a fundraiser here at five. Get here then. I can come out for a while.’

‘Five it is.’

‘Therese…’

‘Take care, Troels.’

Weber and Skovgaard were watching him.

‘Something we need to hear?’ Skovgaard asked.

Theis Birk Larsen went to the student house in Nørrebro where Lisa Rasmussen lived with Oliver Schandorff and some other kids from the school, pretending they were grown-ups, screwing around, drinking, smoking dope, acting the fool.

Lisa was outside wheeling away her bike. He took hold of the handlebars.

‘Where’s Nanna?’

The girl was dressed like a teenage tart, the way they all did, Nanna if he let her. She wouldn’t look him in the eye.

‘I told them. I don’t know.’

His big fist didn’t move.

‘Where’s that bastard Schandorff?’

Still staring at the wall.

‘Not here. Not since Friday.’

He bent down and put his whiskery face in hers.

‘Where is he?’

Finally she met his eyes. She looked as if she’d been crying.

‘He said his parents were away for the weekend. He was staying there I think. After the Halloween party…’

Birk Larsen didn’t wait to hear more.

On the way he called Pernille.

‘I just talked to Lisa,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get her.’

He could hear the relief in her single brief sigh.

‘It’s that rich punk again. His parents went away. He’s probably…’

He didn’t want to say it, think it.

‘You’re sure she’s there? Lisa said so?’

The evening traffic was heavy. The house was out on one of the new developments, south, near the airport.

‘I’m sure. Don’t worry.’

She was crying. He could see her tears. He wished he could touch them, brush them away with his fat, rough fingers. Pernille was beautiful and precious. Like Nanna, Emil and Anton. They all deserved better than he’d given them and soon they’d get it.

‘Won’t be long, sweetheart. I promise.’

When Lund was back among the bare dark trees Buchard called.

‘The helicopter. Three forensic units. I hope you’ve found something?’

‘A grave.’

‘You left me out of the loop.’

‘I tried. You were in a meeting.’

‘I was at your leaving party. People don’t say goodbye over breakfast…’

‘Hang on a minute.’

Meyer was walking towards her through the wood. In his arms was a plastic forensic sheet. Something beneath. A body.

‘Have you found something?’ Buchard demanded.

Meyer put the sheet on the ground, opened it and showed her a dead fox. Stiff and dry, caked with earth. It had a cub scout kerchief around its neck along with the wire noose that had strangled it.

‘We can put out a call for any kids nearby,’ Meyer said, lifting the fox by its back legs. ‘Animal cruelty’s a shocking thing.’

‘No,’ Lund told Buchard. ‘Not yet.’

‘Pack up, come home and give me a full report. Maybe there’s time for a beer before you catch your plane.’

Meyer was watching her, the stiff dead animal beneath his arm. Its eyes were black and glazed, its fur streaked with mud.

‘Meet my new friend Foxy,’ he said with a quick sharp grin. ‘You’ll like him.’

One more reception among so many. Part of the political calendar. A chance to meet, to negotiate, to forge alliances, confirm enmities.

The food came from an oil corporation, the drink from a transport magnate. A string quartet played Vivaldi. Morten Weber talked policy while Rie Skovgaard spoke spin.

Hartmann smiled and chatted, shook hands, made small talk. Then when his phone rang he excused himself and walked back to his office.

Therese Kruse was waiting for him. A couple of years younger than him. Married to a boring banker. A serious, well-connected, attractive woman, tougher than she looked.

‘You’re doing well in the polls. People in government are noticing.’

‘So they should. We worked for this.’

‘True.’

‘Did you get the reporter’s name?’

She handed him a piece of paper. Erik Salin.

‘Never heard of him,’ Hartmann said.

‘I made some enquiries. He used to work as a private investigator. Now he’s a freelance selling dirt for the highest fee. Newspapers. Magazines. Websites. Anyone who pays.’

He pocketed the note.

‘And?’

‘Salin wanted to know if you paid your hotel bills with your own credit card or the office’s. If you buy lots of presents. Stuff like that. I didn’t say anything, naturally…’

Hartmann took a sip of wine.

‘He wanted to know about us,’ she added.

‘What did you say?’

‘I laughed off the whole idea, of course. After all…’ The smile was brief and bitter. ‘It’s not as if it was anything important. Was it?’

‘We agreed it was best, Therese. I’m sorry. I couldn’t…’

He stopped.

‘Couldn’t what, Troels? Take the risk?’

‘What did he know?’

‘About us? Nothing. He was guessing.’ The caustic smile again. ‘Perhaps he thinks if he asks enough women he’s bound to strike gold. I think he’s got something else though. I don’t know how.’

Hartmann glanced at the door, made sure they were alone.

‘Such as what?’

‘He seems to have seen your diary. He was checking dates. He knew where you’d been and when.’

Hartmann looked at the name again, wondered if he’d heard it somewhere.

‘No one sees my diary outside this office.’

She shrugged. Got up. The door opened. Rie Skovgaard looked at the pair of them.

With that stiff suspicious smile she said, ‘Troels. I didn’t know you had company. There are people in reception you need to meet.’

The two women stared at each other. Thinking. Judging. No need for words.

‘I’m coming,’ Troels Hartmann said.

Oliver Schandorff was a skinny kid of nineteen with a head of curly ginger hair and a sour unsmiling face. He was puffing on his third smoke of the day when Theis Birk Larsen burst through the front door.

Schandorff leapt out of his chair and retreated as the big and angry man marched towards him.

‘Call her now,’ Birk Larsen bellowed. ‘She’s leaving.’

‘Hello!’ Schandorff cried, skipping into the hall. ‘There’s a bell here. Private house.’

‘Don’t mess with me, sonny. I want Nanna.’

‘Nanna isn’t here.’

Birk Larsen began marching round the ground floor, opening doors, yelling her name.

Schandorff followed, at a safe distance.

‘Mr Birk Larsen. I’m telling you. She isn’t here.’

Birk Larsen went back to the hall. There were clothes on a chair by the sofa. A pink T-shirt. A bra. Jeans.

He swore at Schandorff and made for the stairs.

The kid lost it, raced in front, punched Birk Larsen’s chest, yelled, ‘Do you mind? Do you—’

The big man picked him up by his T-shirt, carried the kid back down to the hall, launched him against the front door, balled a massive fist in his face.

Oliver Schandorff went quiet.

Birk Larsen thought better of it. Strode up the open-plan stairs two at a time. The place was vast, the kind of mansion he could never dream of owning, however hard he worked, however many scarlet trucks he ran.

There was deafening rock music coming from a bedroom on the left. The place stank of stale dope and sex.

A double bed with crumpled sheets, crumpled duvet. Curly blonde hair poked out from beneath the pillows. Face down, naked feet out of the bottom. Stoned. Drunk. Both, or worse.

He glowered back at Schandorff who was following him, hands in pockets, smirking in a way that made Theis Birk Larsen want to punch him out on the spot.

Instead he walked to the bed, wondering how to play this, pulled back the duvet and said gently, ‘Nanna. You need to come home. It doesn’t matter what happened. We’re going now…’

The naked woman stared up at him, her hard face a mix of fright and fury. Blonde too. Same shade. Twenty-five if she was a day.

‘I did tell you,’ Schandorff said. ‘Nanna was never here. If I could help…’

Theis Birk Larsen walked outside wondering what to do. What to tell Pernille. Where to go next? He didn’t like the police but maybe it was time to talk to them. He wanted to know something, find something. Or make it happen.

There was a sound overhead. A helicopter, the word POLITI underneath.

He hadn’t thought much about the location when he came here. Nanna was in Oliver Schandorff ’s house. There was nothing more to know. Now he realized he wasn’t far from the marshland east of the airport.

Pernille said that was the place where it all began.

Lund was back on the flat ground of the Kalvebod Fælled where they found the bloodstained top, looking at the map.

‘Let’s go home,’ Meyer said, lighting one more cigarette.

Her phone rang.

‘Are you coming to Sweden or what?’ Bengt Rosling asked.

She had to think for a moment before saying, ‘Shortly.’

‘How about a house-warming party on Saturday? We could invite Lasse, Missan, Bosse and Janne.’

Lund was scanning the fading horizon, wishing she could slow time a little and hold back dusk.

‘And my parents,’ Bengt added. ‘And your mother.’

Lund took one more look at the map, one more sweep of the marsh and the woods.

‘Your mother’s going to fix up the guest room,’ Bengt said.

Three young kids walked past pushing bikes. They were carrying fishing rods.

Mark never went fishing. No one to take him.

‘That would be nice,’ she said, gesturing at Meyer to get his attention.

‘I don’t want her sleeping on the sofa,’ Bengt said.

Lund wasn’t listening by then. The phone hung in her fingers by the side of her blue cagoule.

‘What’s over there?’ she asked Meyer.

‘More woods,’ he said. ‘And a canal.’

‘You did look in the water?’

He grimaced. Meyer was the kind of man who could look angry in his sleep.

‘The girl ran the other way!’

Lund went back to the phone.

‘We’re going to miss the flight.’

‘What?’

‘You catch it. I’ll come tomorrow with Mark.’

Meyer stood there, arms crossed, pushing crisps into his mouth between puffs on his cigarette.

‘Do we have trained divers among the forensic teams? And gear?’ Lund asked.

‘We’ve got enough men here to start a small war. How about Sweden? Let’s face it. That’s the only way you’ll get there.’

The two of them drove over to the canal. Walked up and down. There were tyre marks by a low metal bridge. Going off the edge of the muddy bank towards nothing but black water.

The bleak terrain mirrored Theis Birk Larsen’s state of mind: a maze of baffling dead ends and pointless turnings. A labyrinth without an exit.

He drove and drove, into the dying grey sunset, away from it, finding nothing. Even the drone of the helicopter had disappeared. Pernille was with him every aching second, her shrill scared voice chanting through the phone clamped to his left ear.

‘Where is she?’

How many times had she asked that? How many times had he?

‘I’m looking.’

‘Where?’

The Kalvebod Fælled he wanted to say. The place Anton came on a school nature trip once, and talked about bugs and eels for the best part of a day before forgetting the whole damned thing.

There were lights ahead. One of them was blue.

‘Everywhere.’

The narrow lane stood above the slender canal, built from the earth that created it. Lund stared at the tracks, the lifting truck, the chain. The car emerging from the sullen water.

Look, think, imagine.

Someone parked on the lane, front wheels turned towards the water at the top of the slope. Then got out, pushed it. Gravity did the rest.

Meyer was next to her, watching as the car rose against the sky. Water poured from all four doors. The paint was black, the colour of the canal, but very shiny as if it was cleaned yesterday.

Ford hatchback. Brand new.

‘Look up the registration,’ Lund said the moment the number plate was clear.

The truck was parked on the bank, long crane arm extending over the canal. It turned the vehicle away from the water, dangled it over the grassy lane. Then three officers guided the Ford slowly down to the ground until it sat there, unremarkable except for the torrents of foul-smelling liquid gushing from beneath each door.

Meyer was off the phone. The two of them walked over and looked through the windows. Empty.

The divider was down on the boot hiding anything inside.

He walked to the back and tried the rear door. Locked.

‘I’ll get a crowbar,’ Meyer said.

There were lights behind. Lund turned and looked. Not car lights. A van, she thought. It looked red in the beams of the police vehicles.

Birk Larsen was still on the phone when he reached the line of Don’t Cross tape. So close he couldn’t count the blue lights beyond it. They’d set up high portable floodlights, the kind they used at sports events.

His head didn’t feel right. His heart was beating so hard it banged against his ribs.

‘Hang on a second,’ he said and didn’t hear her reply.

Got out. Walked on.

‘Where are you?’ Pernille asked.

‘On the marshes in Vestamager.’

A pause then she asked, ‘Are the police still out there?’

Two cops came up and tried to stop him. Birk Larsen brushed them aside with a sweep of his huge arm, kept walking towards a low metal bridge across the narrow canal.

‘I’ll sort this out. I told you.’

‘Theis.’

More cops now. They swarmed on him like angry bees as he kept walking forwards, batting away their clutching hands, phone locked to his head.

He could still hear her voice above the commotion.

‘What’s there, Theis? What’s there?’

A sound ahead.

Water rushing.

Water rushing. It cascaded out of the rear compartment after Meyer levered it open. Gallons and gallons pouring onto the muddy ground.

The smell was worse.

Lund popped another Nicotinell in her mouth and waited.

After the water a pair of naked legs fell onto the shiny rear bumper. She shone her torch there. Naked ankles bound tightly with plastic fasteners.

Then movement. A snaking dark shape wound its way round and round the dead pale limbs, clinging to the skin, slithering down to the feet, over the bumper onto the ground.

One of the uniform cops started to puke into the yellow grass.

‘What’s the noise?’ Lund asked, taking a step towards the car.

Meyer nodded at the retching man.

‘Not him,’ she said.

It was a loud coarse voice and it was furious.

Lund watched the last of the water drain from the rear, two more eels sliding their way to freedom, then walked forward and put her head inside. The blonde hair didn’t look the way it had in the photos any more.

But the face…

The angry voice was bawling a name.

‘Oh Christ,’ Meyer said. ‘The father’s here.’

Theis Birk Larsen was a big strong man. It was a long time since he’d fought with cops. Some things you always remembered. Two swift punches, a roar and he was moving forward again, towards the black bridge.

Beyond that point he could see a car on the road next to a recovery truck. Busy shapes swarming there.

The phone was back to his ear.

‘Theis!’ Pernille cried.

‘I’ll talk to them.’

The cops he’d shaken off were at his back again. More this time. Too many.

A woman had left the car on the road and was walking steadily towards him. Beneath the harsh floodlights he saw she had a serious face, long brown hair, and shining, sad and interested eyes.

‘For God’s sake Theis…’ Pernille whined.

They had him now, six cops, maybe seven. Had everything but his free arm with the phone.

Birk Larsen stopped struggling. Said again, as calmly as he could, ‘I’m Nanna’s father. I want to know what’s going on.’

The woman stepped over one more line of red and white police tape.

She didn’t say a thing, kept walking steadily towards him, staring into his face, chewing gum.

A voice, detached, not his at all, said meekly, ‘Is that my daughter?’

‘You can’t stay here.’

Pernille was in his ear, his head, all in a single question, ‘Theis?’

The woman stood in front of him.

‘Is it Nanna down there?’ Birk Larsen asked once more.

She was silent.

‘Is it?’

The woman just nodded.

The roar was born deep in his belly, rose through him, burst into the damp night air. So loud and full of uncomprehending grief and fury it might have carried all the way to Copenhagen on its own.

But the phone was there. No need. As he struggled, screamed to see her, Pernille was with him shrieking, crying too.

Mother and father. Lost dead child.

Then all the fury, all the power, died. Theis Birk Larsen was a weeping, fractured man, feeble and distraught, held upright by the arms that seconds before had fought his boundless strength.

‘I want to see my daughter,’ he begged.

‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

A tinny howling sound came from the man’s right hand. Lund stepped forward, opened his fingers. Those of a labourer. Strong and scarred, the skin leathery and old.

He didn’t protest as she took the phone from him, looked at the name on the screen.

‘Pernille. This is Lund. Someone will be with you soon.’

Then she pocketed the phone, nodded to the officers to take Birk Larsen away, went back to the drowned Ford, shiny and black, by the lifting truck.

Forensics were swarming there already. All the set procedures were in place. Officers in protective clothing. She didn’t need to see any more.

Black car. Bright and shiny. Meyer was right. It was so very new and clean.

Lund found him smoking by the crane truck, shaking his head.

‘We’ve got an owner,’ he said. ‘You won’t believe this.’

Lund stood beside him, waited.

‘The car belongs to Troels Hartmann’s campaign office,’ Jan Meyer said.

‘Hartmann the politician?’

With a single finger Meyer flicked his cigarette out towards the canal.

‘The Mayor of Education. Poster boy. Yeah. Him.’