The Killing

Seven

Weber had everyone associated with the office assembled by eight in the morning. Hartmann stood to address them.

‘This is unusual but the police need our help. They’ll be here interviewing everyone today. You’ll be summoned to headquarters one by one. I want you to talk to them frankly. Answer all their questions. We’ve nothing to hide.’

Olav Christensen was there.

‘What’s this about?’ he asked.

‘That’s for the police to say. I can’t go into details. I must stress that everything you hear is confidential. I’m counting on your full discretion.’

Hartmann looked round the office.

‘Especially outside these walls. We’re drowning in gossip as it is. We don’t need any more.’

Then Weber ushered them out.

‘Why was that creep Christensen here?’ Hartmann asked when the door was closed.

‘You said everyone with access to the office. He’s here all the time.’

‘He hangs around like a bad smell. Did you get Lund the material she wanted?’

‘All the bookings for the flat. When it was used. Who by.’

‘Troels?’

Skovgaard’s voice had that silky, wheedling tone to it that grated sometimes.

‘What?’

‘The group leaders are on their way. You don’t have to do this.’

‘Send them in.’

‘Troels!’

He walked into his office and waited.

Holck was first.

They got the best computer technician forensics could find, a young woman who looked no more than nineteen.

‘Can you hack the site?’ Meyer asked.

‘Hacking’s illegal. We’re police. I can’t believe you said that.’

‘So how do we get in?’

‘I ask nicely. If that doesn’t work I say I’m coming round to check all the pictures on his PC.’

She was blonde with an amiable face and smile.

There was a piece of paper in her hand, a line of letters and numbers written on it.

‘Voilà,’ she said. ‘See. Nicely didn’t work, mind.’

Then she went into a part of the site Lund never saw on her laptop at home.

‘These places have different levels. There’s one for casual outsiders like you. There’s something else for the privileged few. Something exclusive if you’re prepared to pay for it.’

She typed more quickly and fluently than anyone Lund had ever seen. The light of the screen shone on her plain, confident face.

A list of names came up. Lund ran through them.

‘Can you see any connections with Hartmann?’ Meyer asked.

‘Give me a chance.’

The forensics girl frowned.

‘They’re all fake names. This is a sleazy place, people. If it was just about, um…’ She waved her hands in the air. ‘… matrimonial services they wouldn’t need to hide like this.’

Another flourish at the keyboard.

‘ “Faust” is one of the more conventional names we have. Some are a bit more descriptive, shall we say?’

A line of entries came up in what looked like a spreadsheet.

‘Not that our Faustian friend hasn’t been busy.’

The entries kept flashing down the screen.

‘He created this profile a year ago. He’s been talking to a lot of women.’

She opened up some of the messages.

‘Oh, what a charmer. He knows fancy hotels.’ She winked at Meyer. ‘Care for a suite in the Hilton?’

‘Not right now. Where’s the personal information?’

‘Where do you think? In his wallet.’

The screen kept filling.

‘Oh this is good. In April Faust contacts someone called NBL. Kids. I mean why not spell out your real name, Nanna?’

A few keystrokes and the messages narrowed down to that one identity.

‘They meet. They’re in contact regularly throughout the spring. They stop in the summer.’ She scrolled to the end of the screen. ‘He keeps trying to reach her but she doesn’t reply.’

She scratched her cheek.

‘Normally the other way round with me.’

‘Can we see who Faust is?’ Lund asked.

‘Not directly. Places like this are too smart to store credit card details. I could try leaning on the site administrator.’

‘Do it,’ Meyer ordered.

‘If you want my honest opinion it won’t work. These people aren’t fools. They don’t want a service with trackbacks to their users. That just causes problems. They genuinely won’t know who they are.’

‘So we’ve no idea who he might be?’ Lund asked.

‘I didn’t say that, did I?’

Another screen. Dates, times, long strings of numbers.

‘These are the access log files. They show you the IP address of the networks he used when he went onto the site.’

Lund noticed her fingers fall still on the keys.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘All these hits. He only ever uses two networks. Funny. Most people move around these days. Just two specific places is weird…’

She typed some numbers into a form.

‘Most of the time he was using the internal Rådhus wifi network. The rest… Bear with me.’

More screens, more rapid typing. A page from a telecoms company. A baffling line of text and figures.

‘The rest are from the router in the flat in Store Kongensgade.’

Meyer watched her.

‘But you don’t know who?’

She licked her finger, stuck it in the air, waited a moment, then said, ‘Sorry. No.’

Lund’s mind was turning.

‘What about any other women he dated? Can you trace them?’

She took a swig from a can of Coke, thinking.

‘I can try.’

Svendsen came through the door.

‘Hartmann’s alibi checks out. Rock solid. He was at the conference centre the whole weekend. Oh, and Lennart Brix is in your office.’

‘Buchard can deal with him.’

Svendsen shook his head and leered.

‘Buchard isn’t here any more.’

Brix was playing with the toy police car on Meyer’s desk. Spinning the wheels, laughing at the way they sparked up the red light on the top.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘The people upstairs wanted me to have a word with you.’

‘About what?’ Lund asked.

She stayed on her feet. Meyer parked himself next to the window.

‘About dereliction of duty in the Birk Larsen case.’

‘Being lied to and messed about isn’t dereliction of duty!’ Meyer snapped.

‘Some phone records slipped out of the system,’ Brix said. ‘You don’t need to read too much into it.’

He pulled an envelope out of his black jacket.

‘Here’s a court order to requisition new records.’

Lund didn’t take the paper.

‘Buchard said he was going to do that.’

Brix thrust his hands into his trouser pockets.

‘Buchard’s gone. For now let’s say he’s on holiday.’ He squinted at the rain beyond the glass. ‘Bad time for it.’

He looked at them.

‘Don’t expect him back.’ He put up a hand, beamed. It wasn’t pretty. ‘You’ve got me now. No worries. We’ll manage.’

Then he headed for the door.

‘I don’t think Buchard was acting alone,’ Lund said.

Brix stopped, looked at her, said, ‘Come with me for a moment, will you?’

The two of them walked down the corridor.

‘You’ve got a job with the Swedish police, Lund,’ Brix said. ‘I want you to finish your work here without any more fuss. And then…’

He made a shooing gesture with his long hands.

‘Depart. Until then you report to me. No one else.’

When she got back to the office Meyer was staring miserably at the papers on the desk.

‘I never thought I’d say this, Lund,’ he grumbled. ‘But I think I preferred the other one.’

Theis Birk Larsen sat opposite her at the table, beneath the chandelier. Pernille and the boys had spent the night at her parents. Anton and Emil were now at school. Just the two of them in the empty flat, Vagn Skærbæk barking orders in the garage below.

He stared at his hands. Struggled for the right words.

‘I talked to Lotte,’ he said, and she turned away from him, got up, paced the room. ‘I should have said something. I know.’

Pernille stopped and looked at him from the bedroom door.

‘Something was wrong and you never told me. You knew where she was working. You knew she was in trouble. You didn’t say a thing.’

He kept wrestling with his hands, as if an answer lay there.

‘Why?’

‘Because she begged me not to. She didn’t want to upset you.’

Pernille shook her head, eyes blazing.

‘She didn’t want to upset me?’

‘That’s right.’

‘She could tell me anything.’ Her hands flew out. Her voice cracked. ‘Anything!’

Birk Larsen screwed his eyes shut.

‘She promised it wouldn’t happen again. She’d work for us. She promised she’d keep up with her schoolwork. Even though she was sick of it.’

Pernille went and stood by the bathroom door, back to him, back to everything.

‘Nanna said she’d pull herself together. I had to trust her. What else could I do?’

She returned to the table, full of a calm, cold fury.

‘What else haven’t you told me?’

‘That’s it.’

He picked up his hat and keys.

‘That’s it!’ she shrieked. ‘And now you go to work? There must be more lies. More things I don’t know.’

She glared at him.

‘Come on, Theis. Spit it out.’

‘There’s nothing else,’ he said gently. The stony look on her face hurt him more than all those lonely hours in a cell. ‘Nanna knew she’d messed up. I didn’t think she had to hear it from you too.’

There were tears in her eyes and he wished he could wipe them away.

‘I wanted her to do well in school!’

‘I know you did. But it wasn’t just school. There was a reason why it was me she talked to. Don’t you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘You never wanted to let her make the mistakes you made. That we made. You wanted her to be perfect because we weren’t.’

‘Don’t talk to me about mistakes, Theis. I won’t take that from you.’

She turned her back on him again. Walked towards the bathroom. Past the washing machine and the dryer. The clothes basket. The detergent.

There something happened. She shrieked and screamed, she clawed at the things around her. Clothes flew, glass shattered, washing powder broke and ran around her in a white, embracing cloud.

Birk Larsen went to her, tried to take her in his arms. She fought him off, crying, swearing, kicking, yelling.

Then she fell against the door, breathless and sobbing.

The moment gone, the fury abated. The reason for it still alive and painful between them.

Pernille walked into the bedroom, closed the door behind her. Slowly, with clumsy big fingers, he started to pick up the things from the floor. The sheets. The children’s shirts and underwear. The small things that once made up the bond called family, a covenant that now lay shattered around them like the broken glass upon the floor.

Olav Christensen sat opposite Lund looking nervous in his grey civil servant’s suit.

‘You’ve never been in the flat?’ she asked.

‘No. Why should I? It’s the party’s. I work for City Hall.’

She was quiet.

‘What’s going on?’ Christensen asked.

‘You just had to say no.’

Lund scribbled down some notes.

‘Did others use it after the poster party?’

‘Why are you asking me this? I wouldn’t know.’

‘Why not?’

‘I work for school services.’

‘They say you’re always in Hartmann’s office.’

‘He’s the boss of education. I have to go there.’

‘Do you like him?’

Christensen hesitated.

‘It’s not easy getting on his good side.’ Then again, a little more anxiously, ‘What’s going on?’

‘Does the name Faust mean anything to you?’

‘Yes.’

She looked up from her notepad.

‘He sold his soul to the Devil.’

Christensen looked briefly pleased with himself.

‘Do you know anyone who uses that nickname?’

‘No. But if the cap fits I’m sure there’s plenty who’d wear it.’

Meyer rapped on the glass door. She went outside. The computer specialist had uncovered a message from a woman who’d written to Faust on the Heartbreak website. They had a name.

Lund took it, went back in to the interview.

‘Am I done now?’ Christensen asked.

‘No. My colleague will continue. I have to go somewhere.’

She went out. Christensen sat at the table, sweating in his office suit.

Then Meyer walked in, looked him up and down. Took out a pack of cigarettes and a banana. One bite of the banana then a cigarette.

‘I’ve got work to do,’ Christensen said.

‘You don’t say?’

Meyer took another bite of the banana then rolled up his sleeves.

‘I’ve been having a really shitty day so far,’ he said, looking at the papers Lund had left. ‘Let’s see if you can make it better, shall we… Olav?’

Birk Larsen was alone in his scarlet truck, parked by the side of the road south through Valby. A pack of Tuborg on the passenger seat. Two cans gone, the third disappearing quickly.

He watched the cars and trucks. He smoked. He drank. And tried to think.

In the green fields, along the path, a man was walking his kids. Three of them and a dog.

The boys never had a dog. They wanted one so badly. No good in the flat. A house…

He thought of Humleby and the wreck there. All that money tied up in dry rot and crumbling brick.

Dreams didn’t call to him. They were for fools. Birk Larsen thought himself a practical man, one who lived in the present, never thinking of the past, never fearing the future.

A man who worked and kept his family. A man who did his best and that was as good as goodness got.

And still it fell apart. One day bliss and hope. The next the quicksands shifting, cracks in walls that once seemed solid.

He hadn’t spoken to Pernille since the row that morning. As far as he knew she was still in the bedroom, weeping through furious eyes. Vagn had taken over, gone through the schedules, allocated the jobs.

Vagn kept them on track. Kept him on track sometimes, not that Pernille knew.

Little Vagn with his stupid silver necklace. Pathetic Vagn who hung around them so much because he’d got nowhere else to go.

Three years ago, when he was in money trouble, Birk Larsen had let him sleep in the garage for a good six months. Vagn felt grateful and embarrassed. Turned up with pizzas they didn’t want. Started spoiling the boys, buying presents for Nanna she didn’t need.

Uncle Vagn. No blood there. But love?

When everyone else walked away Vagn Skærbæk would be there till the last. He was a recluse of a kind, with no one but the Birk Larsens and his sick uncle to think about. A failure mostly. Nowhere else to go.

Birk Larsen snatched at the can, finished it, threw the thing out of the window.

He’d hated that last thought. It was part of the old him, the ungenerous, bullying thug that still lurked inside, grumbling to be let free.

That night in the warehouse with the teacher he’d had his moment. If it wasn’t for Vagn Skærbæk he’d have taken it too. Kemal would be dead. And he would be locked up in a cell in a blue prison suit facing years inside.

The old Theis still slumbered, talking in his sleep.

He didn’t know about generosity, about forgiveness, about grief. Only anger and violence and a fiery, urgent need to quench both.

The old Theis would stay buried. Had to. For Pernille’s sake. For the sake of the boys.

For him too. Even in the bad days, when things happened he didn’t care to remember, Theis Birk Larsen was aware of that nagging, awkward ghost in his head called conscience. Knew it picked at him, chipped at him, nagged him in the night.

Still did.

He looked at the three remaining beers, swore, threw them into the back of the van, wheeled round, then set off back into the city and the hospital.

The wing in Rigshospitalet was new and seemed to be made of glass. Its transparent walls amplified the anaemic November light until the day looked like summer. Bright, relentless, unforgiving.

Birk Larsen spoke to reception, waited as the woman made a call. Watched her face. Knew that she knew.

‘He’ll see you,’ she said finally.

Then glared at him. She was a foreigner. Middle Eastern. Lebanese. Turk. He’d no idea.

‘God knows why,’ the woman added.

Kemal was in a wheelchair in a day room one floor below. His face was covered in bruises, wounds and plasters. His right leg was in plaster, horizontal. His left arm sat in a cast too.

‘How are you?’ Theis Birk Larsen asked when he could think of nothing else to say.

The teacher stared at him, face expressionless. He didn’t look in pain.

‘I get discharged tomorrow.’

A long silence.

‘Can I get you something? A coffee? A sandwich?’

Kemal looked out of the glass window, looked back at him, said no.

‘Any news on the case?’ he asked.

Birk Larsen shook his head.

‘I don’t think so. They wouldn’t tell me anyway. Not now.’

Teachers never impressed him. They were too full of themselves. As if they knew something that was kept secret from everyone else. But they didn’t. They’d no idea about growing up in the Vesterbro of yesterday, walking to school among the hookers and the dope dealers and the leftover drunks. Trying to stay alive. Fighting to get to the top.

Fighting was Birk Larsen’s first skill and he had the strength for it. Later he thought he’d learned to fight in different, more subtle ways. For Pernille’s sake. For Nanna and the boys.

But there he was wrong. He was stupid.

Kemal watched him, didn’t flinch.

‘They said you won’t press charges.’

The teacher said nothing.

‘Why?’

‘Because I lied to you. Nanna did come over that night. Briefly. But she was there. I should have said.’

He glanced at his phone.

‘I’m waiting for the call. My wife’s due any day.’

Birk Larsen looked at the bare white wall then the man in the wheelchair.

‘I’m sorry.’

The teacher’s head moved. A nod. Painful maybe.

‘If there’s anything I can do, Kemal, please let me know.’

The man in the wheelchair still said nothing.

‘A baby changes you,’ Birk Larsen murmured. ‘Maybe you don’t need changing. With me…’

Kemal leaned forward.

‘There’s nothing you need do,’ he said.

They found the woman by the skating rink in Kongens Nytorv. Lots of middle-class homes, brown brick, four storeys. Lots of middle-class children in bright expensive clothes.

She was in the arms of a man who had to be her husband, laughing at a boy about Mark’s age larking about on the ice.

Good-looking woman. Thirty-five or so. Long curly hair, bright happy face. Grey-haired husband. Older. Not so happy.

The kid came off and the husband took him to a stand to buy coffee and biscuits.

An only child, Lund thought. Like Mark. It was obvious.

The woman was on her own. Meyer marched over and asked, ‘Nethe Stjernfeldt?’

They showed their IDs.

‘Your office told us we could find you here.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘We’d like to ask some questions about a contact of yours.’ He looked round. The husband had got the coffee. ‘From a dating site?’

She didn’t say anything. The man strode over.

‘I’m Nethe’s husband. What is this?’

Lund said, as pleasantly as she could, ‘We’re police officers. We need to talk to your wife.’

He bristled. Possessive type. Superior.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Lund said. ‘It’s not serious. She might have seen something that’s all.’

‘If you could stay here,’ Meyer added. ‘We need a private word.’

They walked her to the edge of the rink. Nethe Stjernfeldt didn’t look so happy.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said when Lund asked about the Heartbreak Club website.

‘You’ve never used a dating service?’

Her face coloured.

‘No. Why would I?’

‘You’ve never been in touch with a man called Faust?’ Meyer asked.

The boy was back on the ice. The woman looked at him, smiled, waved.

‘Someone called Fanny Hill dated Faust,’ Lund said. ‘She had your email address.’

Nethe Stjernfeldt was glancing at her husband as he watched the kid on his skates.

‘It’s not a crime,’ Meyer said. ‘We just need to know if it’s you.’

‘It’s not me. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

Meyer’s mood was changing.

‘On the fourteenth of December Fanny wrote to Faust to say she wanted to go out with him. Same time, same place. What do you know about that?’

‘Nothing at all. This is my son’s birthday!’

She started to walk away. Lund followed.

‘Did you go to the flat on Store Kongensgade?’

Curly hair going from side to side as she shook her head.

‘I don’t know about any flat.’

Meyer got in front, put out a hand to stop her.

‘We need to know who Faust is,’ Lund said.

‘Is this what the police do? Hunt through people’s messages?’

‘If they’re not your messages, Nethe—’ Meyer began.

‘Leave me alone.’

She stormed off. The husband came over, glaring at them.

‘If you want to talk to her call my office first. You can’t just show up here and ruin a child’s birthday party. What kind of people are you?’

‘Busy people,’ Meyer said. ‘Busy getting lied to.’

He winked at the man.

‘I guess you know how it feels.’

A flurry of curses and then he left.

‘Have her followed,’ Lund said. ‘We need to talk to her when she’s alone.’

It was just after six when Theis Birk Larsen got back home. The garage was empty. Upstairs he found Pernille helping the boys pack their things.

‘Hi, Dad,’ Anton said. ‘You can’t come.’

‘Mum says you have to work,’ Emil added.

Pernille was in her winter coat, suitcase by her side, watching them.

‘Make sure you have everything for school,’ she said.

Instead the boys ran to him. He picked them up in his arms. Small warm bodies in strong, old arms.

They smelled of soap and shampoo. Straight from the bath. Soon he ought to read them a story.

‘Why do you have to work?’ Anton asked.

‘Because I do.’

He put them down, ruffled their hair.

‘Can we talk, Pernille?’

‘We have to be at my parents’ for dinner.’

‘It won’t take long.’

Anton had a plastic sword, Emil a toy gun.

She took the things, pushed them into the bag.

‘Go and play,’ she said and off they ran.

In the kitchen, beneath the unlit chandelier, by the photographs, among the pot plants, next to the table Pernille and Nanna made.

‘Ever since I first saw you,’ Birk Larsen said slowly, hands in pockets, counting out every word in his head before he spoke. ‘I…’

They wouldn’t come. Not the way he hoped.

‘No one knows me like you do.’

‘Is that true, Theis? Do I know you?’

He sat down, began to knead his fists, not looking at her.

‘I know I fouled up. I know…’

She didn’t move, didn’t speak.

‘We have to try. We have to. We lost Nanna.’ His narrow eyes closed in pain. ‘I don’t want to lose more than that. Without you… Without the boys.’

Something came clear.

‘You make me… what I’m supposed to be. What I want to be. I’ll do anything if you’ll just stay.’

His eyes strayed nervously to hers.

‘Don’t leave me.’

His hand stretched out to hers, big and callused, rough and marked by years of labour.

‘Don’t leave me, Pernille,’ Theis Birk Larsen said again.

Meyer was filling the office with smoke once more.

‘We need to track down some other women who met Faust,’ Lund said. ‘Someone has to know who he is.’

A short figure went briskly down the corridor. Lund thought for a second then followed.

By the time she caught up he was beneath the colonnades of the circular courtyard, a box in his arms, fleeing for the exit.

‘Buchard!’ Lund called.

He kept walking towards the security office. She dashed across the central circle of marble slabs, grass poking between them. Stood in front and stopped him.

‘The phone company’s records are on your desk, Lund.’

He looked at her.

‘You’re in my way. Again.’

She stepped to one side, walked with him on the way out.

‘It’s a pre-paid phone card but the phone number’s no longer in use.’

‘And the name that was deleted?’

‘I never saw it.’

The old chief glanced at her. All the stubbornness, the temper, the arrogance had left him.

‘Believe that or not. It’s true.’

‘Why do you put up with this?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes.’

They walked past the Memorial Yard, beneath the tall yellow lights and the iron stars on the walls.

‘Either I get left holding the baby. Go count paper clips in some station in the sticks. Or I’m out. Forcibly retired. After thirty-six years they pin this shit on me.’

He turned to her.

‘Good luck, Lund.’

She watched him go. Called, ‘Who asked you to bury the information, Buchard?’

The old man didn’t look back.

In her office Lund checked what he’d left. Pages of calls. Nothing to indicate whose number had been erased.

‘What about the flat?’

‘Hartmann’s prints everywhere,’ Meyer said.

‘That fits with his story. Hartmann’s got an alibi. What else?’

‘We’ve got saliva, hair and fingerprints.’

‘DNA?’ she asked.

‘Nothing that matches any database records.’

Meyer shook his head.

‘There’s hardly any blood to speak of. It could have been an accident.’

Meyer shrugged. She watched. He was thinking in a way he didn’t when they first met. Not rushing to a conclusion. Now he was trying to see. To imagine.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘You know that smug bastard Olav Christensen? The smart-arse from City Hall?’

‘Yes?’

‘One piece of incriminating testimony.’

He threw Christensen’s file across the desk. She stared at the photo: young, thin face, staring eyes. Cocky.

‘Some time ago Hartmann refused to promote him. One of the campaign team told me he took the teacher’s file we asked for. He hates Hartmann. There’s going to be an inquiry. Christensen could lose his job.’

Meyer had brought in a loaf of bread, some butter and some ham. She got a plastic knife, slapped all three roughly together, made something that approximated to a sandwich, bit into it.

‘City Hall bitching,’ Lund said, mouth full. ‘It’s not him.’

Meyer grabbed the food, the knife, made a sandwich of his own. Lund looked at it. His seemed so much better.

‘Why not?’

‘Why would anyone delete calls from some pipsqueak civil servant? Christensen doesn’t have any class. Nanna met someone important through the Heartbreak Club. Not a pen-pusher.’

He sighed.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. When I talked to him he was squirming like a pig with piles. I was sure he was lying. If I’d had one thing to throw at him…’

‘But you didn’t.’

A rap on the door. One of the night team detectives.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘We looked at some cold cases like you asked.’

‘And?’

‘I’ve got some names…’

A woman was walking down the corridor. Full head of curly hair. Pretty face. Not smiling any more.

‘Let’s do this later,’ Lund said and walked out to meet her.

‘I love my husband.’

Lund and Meyer sat side by side. He didn’t smoke.

‘He was away on business for two hundred days last year. Just me and my son. Week after week.’

Lund pushed a printout of the Heartbreak site across the table.

‘You do have a profile, don’t you?’

Nethe Stjernfeldt looked at the logo. A heart torn in two by an arrow.

‘It was fun. That’s all. Nothing serious.’

A glance at Meyer’s notebook.

‘Do you have to write this down?’

He put aside the pen.

‘It was ridiculous. I put up this photograph.’ She primped her hair. ‘Half profile. You couldn’t tell it was me. Could have been anybody. It was like… a million lonely men appeared. All of them rich and handsome. All of them single. Supposedly.’

‘You checked?’ he asked.

‘No.’

There was a note of petulance in her voice. Lund kicked Meyer’s leg underneath the table.

‘Only one looked interesting. He was different.’

‘In what way?’ Lund asked.

‘He took notice. He was interested in me. When I wrote something he read it. We were on the same wavelength. I could tell. You couldn’t fake that.’

‘Then you met?’

‘I wasn’t looking for an affair. I was just lonely.’

‘You met him several times?’

She glared at them.

‘You want the details? Where and when?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘I thought I could control it. But…’

She smiled, remembering something.

‘For a while I felt I was… crazy. I thought I could give up everything. My husband. My son. My job. Just run to him. Be with him. He made it that way. Then…’

A flash of ugly bitterness.

‘I got too close. He didn’t want a relationship. Just names on a website. A night in a hotel. So he stopped answering my messages. I woke up I guess.’

Lund asked, ‘Have you seen him since?’

She was lost somewhere.

‘This sounds stupid but I think he saved my marriage. I realized what’s really important.’

‘OK, OK,’ Meyer snapped. ‘We don’t care if he ruins marriages or saves them. We just want to know who he is.’

‘I can see that.’ She watched them. ‘Why? Why do you need to know?’

Meyer growled.

‘This isn’t a flea market, sugar. Just tell us.’

‘I don’t want to bad-mouth him. He dumped me. But he was a good man. He cared.’

‘For God’s sake just tell us his bloody name. Before the Pope makes him a saint or something.’

Lund looked at her.

‘We need to know, Nethe. We will. One way or another.’

She looked at the door.

‘I don’t want to wait for your husband to turn up with a lawyer. But if I have to… Who’s Faust?’

An hour and ten minutes later Hartmann was in an interview room listening to the lawyer Rie Skovgaard had found. A severe, middle-aged woman from one of the big city practices. A party supporter. She’d donated. He ought to remember her name.

‘We’ve some time before they interview you,’ she said, taking off her coat, bidding him to sit down. ‘Let’s make the most of it.’

‘I’ve got to get out of here. This is ridiculous.’

‘You’re not going anywhere until they question you.’

‘But—’

‘They’ve got emails that can be traced back to you.’

‘What business do they have going through my emails?’

She looked at her notes.

‘A woman called Nethe Stjernfeldt has made a statement. She claims to have had sexual relations with you. She identified you as the man behind the profile Faust. The man who also met Nanna Birk Larsen.’

Hartmann got up, started walking up and down the room like a hungry cat.

‘Are you going to say something, Troels?’

‘I told them already. I’ve never met the Birk Larsen girl. I’ve got nothing to add. No statement to make.’

She waited. Disappointment on her lined and serious face.

‘Shall we talk about controlling the damage?’

‘What damage? I’m innocent.’

‘Let’s not get diverted by innocence, shall we? The police face a heavy burden of proof but…’

He shook his head, astonished.

‘Burden of proof?’

‘They’ve got the makings of a case. It’s important they know your side of the story.’

‘My side?’ Hartmann laughed. ‘Don’t you see what’s going on here? Every time one trumped-up effort fails they invent another. This is Bremer’s doing.’

‘Poul Bremer didn’t invent the Stjernfeldt woman.’

He was silent.

‘It sounds as if he didn’t invent your messages either.’

‘I never talked or met or communicated in any way with Nanna Birk Larsen. As they know.’

She scrawled something on her pad.

‘I’ll talk to Rie Skovgaard to see if we can take some civil action against them. I agree. The way they’ve acted is outrageous.’

‘Quite.’

‘Which is all the more reason to talk to them. You have to—’

‘No.’

She folded her arms.

‘You have to, Troels. If you don’t what will they think? What would anyone think?’

Meyer stood outside in the corridor, yawning. Lund leaned against the wall.

‘What’s the big idea, Lund? Are we supposed to wait around all night?’

She looked at her watch.

‘They’ve had enough time.’

A tall lean figure appeared. Lennart Brix striding down the corridor, on the phone, to the media by the sound of it.

Lund waited. Brix came and stood in front of her.

‘It was the right thing to do,’ she said. ‘We had good cause.’

‘Picking up a party leader? Without asking me?’

‘Do we normally make appointments with murder suspects?’ Meyer asked.

‘It could have waited.’

‘Hartmann’s Faust,’ Meyer said. ‘He drove the car. He was in the flat. It has to be him.’

‘Except,’ Brix said, ‘he has an alibi.’

‘We’re working on that,’ Lund told him.

The door opened. The lawyer came out.

‘He’ll talk to you now,’ she said.

Six of them in the room. Hartmann’s lawyer and a clerk to take notes. Lund, Meyer and Brix.

And Troels Hartmann, pale, weary, angry and determined.

‘My wife died two years ago. It was very sudden.’ He sipped at a coffee. ‘For a while I kept it to myself. I worked. I pretended there was nothing else.’

He stopped there.

‘Go on, Troels,’ the lawyer said.

‘One day I got some leaflets through the door. A nightclub. I don’t go to clubs but it advertised a dating chat room. You could talk to people. That’s all it was. Talking.’

Meyer coughed into his fist.

‘I created a profile. Under the name of Faust.’

‘How many women did you meet?’

‘That’s got nothing to do with this.’

Meyer cocked his head to one side.

‘More than ten, less than twenty,’ Hartmann snapped. ‘Something like that.’

No one spoke.

‘I’m not proud of it.’

‘You’re in the public eye,’ Lund said. ‘Where could you go?’

‘Just once in public. The first time. After that… if we got on… I had a cab pick them up.’

‘And go where?’

‘Mostly to the party flat on Store Kongensgade.’

‘Then what happened?’ Meyer asked.

Hartmann scowled at him.

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘But it is,’ Meyer insisted. ‘Nanna Birk Larsen was there. Two days later she was found raped and murdered. I don’t know whether you believe in coincidence in politics, Hartmann, but round here—’

‘I never met her! I never even knew she existed.’

Meyer’s head was still cocked.

‘Let me refresh your memory.’

He went through the stack of papers on the table.

‘We’ve got printouts of your emails. And Nanna’s. Take a look.’

He passed over a stack of sheets. Hartmann started to read them.

‘In April,’ Lund said, ‘you contacted her for the first time. She got back to you through the dating site. The messages continued until a few weeks before her murder.’

‘No,’ Hartmann said. ‘I didn’t write any of this. Look at the emails I do write. This isn’t my style.’

‘Your style?’ Meyer said, laughing.

Hartmann pointed to the dates on the messages.

‘These are months after I stopped using the site. I met someone. Rie. I didn’t want to go on like that any more.’

He stacked the pages, passed them back.

‘I put it behind me. I didn’t write those messages.’

The lawyer said, ‘Someone hacked into his email account.’

‘In City Hall?’ Lund asked.

‘I told you before,’ Hartmann said. ‘I had concerns.’

‘Anyone could have had access to the flat,’ the lawyer added. ‘The keys were kept in a desk. A visitor, someone else in City Hall could have copied them.’

‘Oh please—’ Meyer started.

‘Listen to me! I admit I created that profile. I don’t know who wrote those messages or how they got into the flat. They must have got my password. They pretended to be me.’

‘My client has an alibi,’ the lawyer added. ‘He was with Rie Skovgaard later that evening. They spent the weekend at a conference.’

Brix was staring at Lund, and letting Hartmann and the lawyer see it.

‘Well?’ the woman persisted. ‘How is it possible in these circumstances that Troels Hartmann can be a suspect?’

‘If I read one word of this crap in the press,’ Hartmann threw at them, ‘I will sue everyone in sight. This department. You all personally. I will not be libelled by Poul Bremer’s puppets—’

‘Enough,’ Brix said. ‘We need to talk about this.’

‘What’s the likelihood he’s telling the truth?’ Brix asked when they went outside. ‘That someone could have been using his dating profile?’

‘It’s balls,’ Meyer said. ‘You’d need to have the password. And the computer that was used was in the party’s flat.’

Lund was at the blinds, peering through them at Hartmann.

‘What do you think?’ Brix asked.

‘We won’t get any more out of him now. We need a court order to get his phone records. Why does he think Bremer’s involved in this?’

‘Because he’s paranoid,’ Brix said. ‘Let him go. I don’t want this in the media—’

‘We don’t do that,’ Lund cut in. ‘How many times—?’

‘I don’t want it leaked. Keep me posted. Don’t do anything without clearing it with me first. I’m going to tell Hartmann he can go.’

When Brix had left Lund said, ‘We need to talk to Rie Skovgaard. And the conference centre. Who confirmed the two of them were there?’

Meyer went to the desk and picked up the reports.

‘Svendsen. According to reception they checked in at nine on Saturday. They rented a room and a large conference space. Then they checked out on Sunday afternoon.’

‘Svendsen’s a lazy bastard. How did they pay?’

A flick through the pages.

‘Skovgaard’s credit card.’

Meyer watched Hartmann walking down the corridor towards the spiral staircase. So did Lund.

‘So Poster Boy’s a serial philanderer,’ he said. ‘And I thought he was supposed to be a perfect gentleman.’

‘Apart from Skovgaard who saw Hartmann? Let’s find out.’

‘I’ll get someone to look. It will leak, you know. Someone’s talking to the press. It’s not you. It’s not me.’ He jerked a thumb towards Brix’s office. ‘But someone is.’

Her phone rang. Vibeke.

‘Hi, Mum. I’ll ring you back. And I’ll be late. Don’t talk to Mark about Bengt and Sweden. I’ll do that myself.’

‘Mark’s father’s here,’ Vibeke said.

Lund struggled to separate her thoughts.

Hartmann.

Mark.

Theis Birk Larsen.

Carsten.

‘If you want to see him,’ her mother said, ‘you’d better hurry.’

Theis Birk Larsen and Pernille sat next to each other around the table, beneath the Murano chandelier. The social worker they’d been sent was around forty, well-dressed, professional. She might have been a lawyer if they hadn’t known.

‘You’ve no previous experience of this?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Birk Larsen said.

Pernille stared out of the window, barely listening.

‘Neither of you has seen a therapist or been in counselling?’

He shook his head.

‘Having a child together establishes a very strong connection. Losing that child has consequences for the relationship.’

She sounded as if she were reading from a textbook.

Pernille got up, leaned against the tiled kitchen wall, folded her arms.

‘It’s not our relationship I’m worried about right now,’ she said.

‘What worries you then?’

The woman had piercing blue eyes and hair that was too young for her.

‘Do you have children?’ Pernille asked.

‘That’s irrelevant. There’s nothing you can do to solve the case. You have each other. You have your family.’

‘I don’t need your advice about my boys!’ Pernille snapped.

The social worker reached into her bag and took out some leaflets.

‘These pamphlets will give you an idea of what counselling can offer.’

She placed them on the table. Got up, pulled on her coat.

‘I recommend our bereavement counselling groups. It can be helpful to talk to others.’

‘We’ve got better things to do,’ Pernille answered.

The blue eyes stared at her.

‘It’s not an offer. It’s a condition of your husband’s bail. If you don’t attend he’ll go back to jail. After the episode with the teacher he’s lucky to be walking the streets at all.’

He saw her out, said thanks.

Back upstairs. Pernille leaning on the sink, staring out of the window.

‘She said the bereavement counselling group have a meeting tomorrow.’

The call from the newspaper had come just before the woman from the council arrived. He’d taken it, kept it quiet. Knew he couldn’t for much longer.

‘The papers are going to write about the politician again,’ he said.

‘What are they going to say?’

‘I don’t know.’

She reached for the phone.

‘The police won’t tell you anything, Pernille. Don’t you understand? It’s not our business. Not for them.’

Lund was on voicemail.

She turned on the TV, hunted for the news. It was there. The murder team had taken in Hartmann for questioning. He’d been released after an interview.

Pernille turned up the volume, listened, rapt, eyes glistening.

A sleepy, high voice said, ‘Mum? I can’t sleep.’

Small shape at the door in pyjamas.

Theis Birk Larsen rose in an instant, scooped up Emil in his arms. Kissed him, whispered nonsense in his warm ear.

‘Nanna was found dead in one of Hartmann’s campaign cars,’ the newsreader said. ‘She’d been raped repeatedly, and reports say…’

He rushed the boy back into the bedroom, clutched him tightly, held the child’s shaking frame to his.

Weber was watching the news when they got back to the Rådhus.

‘Dare I ask how it went?’

Hartmann sat down.

‘This is serious. We need to know who used the flat.’

Weber looked relaxed. No tie. Cup of coffee. Ready to sleep in the office again.

‘I checked the records. It was mainly people we knew. People we trusted. The police have got all that.’

‘No, no, no. That civil servant. Olav. He’s been all over this office somehow. It has to be him.’

‘Lund had him in along with the rest of us.’

Skovgaard listened looking gloomy. Hair swept back in a band now. Severe. Businesslike. Distant.

‘What am I supposed to say to the press?’ she asked.

‘How the hell did they find out? The minute I was out of that room? Lund—’

‘It’s what the press do, Troels,’ she said. ‘Someone on the door could have tipped them off. Here or at the Politigården. There’s no way you can bury a story like this—’

‘Someone got my password. Someone used my profile to email that girl. And Nethe Stjernfeldt told the police about me. Jesus…’

In a sudden fit of anger he swept the papers off his desk, stood at the window in the light of the blue neon sign.

‘What dating profile?’ she asked in a cold and curious voice. ‘Who’s Nethe Stjernfeldt?’

Weber got up, mumbled something about taking a second look at the files, then left the office, closing the door behind him.

‘Fine,’ she said when Hartmann didn’t speak. ‘No answer. We’ll start a civil action. Get a gagging order. We don’t want more headlines. They get the papers tomorrow.’

‘We’re not bringing a civil action. Forget it. How can I hope to be Lord Mayor of Copenhagen if I’m in the middle of a legal battle with the police?’

‘Is that the only reason?’

It had been almost six months now. Six happy months for the most part. She was good at her job, quick and sharp and imaginative. But the work pushed them together too closely. He needed distance. So did she.

‘The police are looking for a man who contacted the Birk Larsen girl through a dating site,’ he said, trying to keep the words as simple, as plain and boring as possible. ‘It turns out it was through a profile I created. A long time ago. Before we ever…’

There was no expression on her face, no warmth or shock in her dark eyes.

‘I don’t know how this happened. After I stopped using it someone else got hold of the profile. Wrote to the girl. Sent her messages. Met her in the flat in Store Kongensgade.’

He came and stood in front of her.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Rie. You knew what I was like when you met me.’

He closed his eyes. The blue lights outside were so bright he could still see them.

‘When did you stop?’

‘When I met you.’

He came close, held out his arms. She walked to the desk for no reason.

‘So now there are two things,’ Skovgaard said. ‘The flat and the dating profile. Make a list of the people who might know your password. Think about what you’re going to say to the alliance tomorrow.’

She picked up the desk diary.

‘I’ll get Morten to update your appointments. I’ll deal with the press. Go home, Troels. Keep out of the way. I don’t want people to see you now, like this.’

‘Like this?’

‘Pathetic and sorry for yourself.’

He nodded, taking the blame. Put his arms down. Stuffed his hands in his pockets.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘Is that all you’ve got to tell me? Is there more to come? More I don’t know?’

‘No,’ he promised.

‘I hope so.’

When Lund got back to her mother’s flat she could hear Carsten, Mark’s father, talking ice hockey. She took off her coat, went into the bedroom, got a new sweater, not black and white but white and black, put it on.

Then she went into the living room.

Carsten.

An athletic, engaging man. Too cerebral, too ambitious, too offended by the everyday to remain a police officer. He was talking Mark through some hockey rules, waving around a brand-new stick he’d bought.

Lund’s son was watching. Caught. Engaged. As was Vibeke. Carsten still had that talent.

‘Then it’s easier to score?’ Mark asked.

‘Exactly. You can do it. We’ll go and practise sometime.’

Lund stood in the shadows watching this exchange. Envying it. Fearing it.

Carsten turned. His hair was blonder than she remembered. Longer too. He had new fashionable plastic-framed glasses and a slick brown suit. No one would have dared to walk around headquarters like that.

‘Hi!’ she said brightly, coming out of the dark to smile at him.

‘Sarah!’ Carsten cried, too loudly.

No embrace.

Mark was smiling too. For a moment she felt the brief and fragile bond of family between them.

Lund walked over, stroked Mark’s hair, took no notice when he frowned and shrank away.

‘So, Carsten. When did you get here?’

He held the hockey stick easily, like a pro. For Mark.

‘This afternoon. It happened so suddenly.’

‘They’ve rented a house in Klampenborg,’ Vibeke said. ‘Do you want some dinner?’

Lund nodded. Vibeke moved happily to the pans.

‘The job came up last week,’ Carsten carried on. ‘The chance to come home… It was too good to say no. Brussels and two little girls… all we did was work.’

Mark got up, took the stick from him, practised a few strokes.

‘And I missed this guy as well,’ Carsten added, putting a hand round Mark’s shoulder.

The two of them stood side by side, as if posing for a photograph.

Again Lund made herself smile.

‘What about you and Sweden?’ he asked.

‘It’s been postponed for a while,’ she said immediately.

‘I heard Bengt had an accident.’

Lund looked at her mother.

‘It wasn’t so bad.’

‘He broke his arm!’ Vibeke cried.

She handed Lund a plate of stew.

‘The house-warming party was cancelled,’ her mother went on. ‘So was my trip to Løgumkloster.’

‘I’ve been working on a case,’ Lund said. ‘It’s not like Brussels. Nine to five.’

Carsten still had his arm round Mark. It looked possessive now, not an embrace.

‘These things happen,’ he said. ‘But I suppose there’s no rush.’

‘Ha!’ Vibeke again. ‘How can there be? Bengt sent back their moving boxes. They’re sitting downstairs in my basement. Untouched.’

Mark brightened again.

‘Does that mean we’re not moving?’

Carsten unwound his arm.

‘I really have to go home and help. Thanks for the drink.’

He embraced Vibeke, kissed her. Got the warmest smile in return.

‘It’s always nice to see you, Carsten,’ she said. ‘Come any time.’

He hugged Mark. Rapped his knuckles on the hockey stick.

‘I’ll walk you outside,’ Lund said.

The flat was on the third floor. She pressed the button for the lift.

‘I don’t want to pry. But I hope there aren’t problems between you and Bengt.’

‘We’ll work it out.’

‘Karen wants to know if you’d like to have dinner with us tomorrow. It would be nice. The girls can say hello to Mark.’

‘I can’t.’

The smile was gone. He never liked to hear the word no.

‘Is it OK for Mark to come?’

The lift was slow. She pushed the button again.

‘You want me to say yes so you can cancel again? The way you usually do?’

He folded his arms. Expensive raincoat. Expensive glasses. Floppy academic hair. Carsten had reinvented himself to be the man he wanted.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said. ‘I don’t see anything else that’s changed.’

‘I’m fine.’

Her phone went. The name Meyer flashed on the screen.

‘I’ve left my phone number and address with Vibeke.’

‘Good.’

She was walking back to the door listening. Carsten gave up on the lift and took the stairs.

‘I talked to the conference centre,’ Meyer said.

‘And?’

‘No one saw Hartmann until Sunday afternoon. He had the flu. It was Rie Skovgaard who held the meetings with sponsors.’

She heard the door go on the ground floor. Carsten leaving.

‘Let’s talk about this in the morning, Meyer. Goodnight.’

Just after eight, Lund and Meyer were watching the morning news in the office. Rie Skovgaard talking to a forest of microphones.

‘The Mayor for Education spoke to the police last night,’ she said. ‘He cooperated fully and was able to provide them with information they hadn’t previously gathered. I can’t go into details but let me emphasize that Troels Hartmann has no — I repeat no — connection with the murder of Nanna Birk Larsen. He will help…’

‘All the usual bullshit,’ Meyer said.

He waved a typed sheet.

‘I checked up on him. Forty-two. Born in Copenhagen. Son of a politician, Regner Hartmann. The father was Poul Bremer’s bitter enemy. Lost every battle. Went to pieces. Died a while back.’

Skovgaard was fielding questions.

‘Speculation made in bad taste by political opponents is deplorable,’ she said.

Lund waved her coffee mug at the screen.

‘So now the son’s taking on his father’s battles?’

‘Been doing that all along,’ Meyer agreed. ‘Joined the Liberal youth branch at nineteen. Elected to the city assembly when he was twenty-four. Served on committees. Became group leader four years ago. Got to run the education department as a result.’

Lund was making the bread, butter and ham sandwiches again. She had one for him. Meyer bit into it.

‘You do realize this man’s never had a real job. He’s spent his entire life playing round in that phoney world of theirs inside the Rådhus. No wonder he turns flaky the moment his little glass palace gets a crack in it.’

‘The alliance will succeed,’ Skovgaard emphasized to the cameras.

‘Hello?’

He waved his sandwich in the air, scattering crumbs across the desk.

‘Are we listening?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘He married his childhood sweetheart the year he became leader. She died two years ago. Cancer. She was six months pregnant.’

‘That must have felt real enough,’ Lund said. ‘Any criminal record?’

‘Not a thing. Whiter than white. Did you read the emails?’

‘Yes. I don’t buy the idea they were written by two different people. They sound the same. He always signs himself just as F.’

Meyer looked at the printouts.

‘Can you see any differences?’ she asked.

‘No. So what? How many ways can you write… meet me in the Hilton at eight thirty, sweetheart? My turn with the condoms. Any preference, darling?’

Svendsen came in and threw some files on her desk.

‘What’s this?’

‘Missing women from the last ten years. You asked for them.’

‘Did you see anything?’

‘No. Brix thought it was a waste of time.’

‘Did you look?’

‘Brix says you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you want any more you’re to do it in your own time. Not ours.’

‘How many murdered women?’

Svendsen rapped his knuckles on the blue folder.

‘I’m busy right now,’ he said. ‘Here you go.’

Coffee on the table and pastries, beneath the wan light of the pink artichoke lamps, the group meeting began. The four minority leaders and Hartmann.

Jens Holck looked a little better. He’d shaved. Put on a jacket.

‘What’s going on, Troels?’ he asked. ‘Was the girl in your flat? Yes or no?’

‘Yes. At least that’s what the police say.’

Holck sighed.

‘This is wonderful. And you were there too?’

Skovgaard sat down next to Hartmann, started making notes.

‘I was in the flat shortly before her.’

He looked at each of them.

‘That caused a misunderstanding with the police. It’s clear now.’

‘And you drove the car?’ Holck asked. ‘What the hell is this? How can we even think—’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Jens!’ Hartmann cried. ‘Get off your high horse. I had nothing to do with that girl. I never met her. Never talked to her. I’m as shocked… as baffled by this as you are.’

‘That doesn’t help.’

‘They’re looking at City Hall. Isn’t that obvious? Not me any more. But they’re looking here. Someone had access to my computer. To my passwords.’ He pointed at the door. ‘Someone here. I’ll help the police. What else can I do?’

‘You could have told us all this before we read it in the papers,’ Mai Juhl said.

‘I didn’t know! I was at a sponsor conference that weekend. If they thought I was guilty do you think I’d be here talking to you now?’

Holck was silent. So was Mai Juhl.

Morten Weber came to the door, tapping his watch.

‘Let’s stay calm,’ Hartmann said. ‘Are you happy with that? Are we still together or not?’

It was Mai Juhl who spoke first.

‘You said this is the end of it?’

‘It’s the end of it.’

She glanced at Holck.

‘Then I’m in.’

‘What choice do we have?’ Holck asked. ‘If the alliance doesn’t hold we’re all finished.’

He got up, glowered at Hartmann.

‘You got us into this corner, Troels. You can get us out of it. Step up, talk to the press. It’s no good hiding behind Rie. This is your problem. Bury it or it’ll bury all of us.’

Morten Weber watched them go.

‘What happened? Are they still in?’

‘Yes. Found anything?’

‘The three of us are the only ones set up as users on the flat’s PC. You, me and Rie. Who might have your password?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe you forgot to log off.’

‘It’s not that. Someone’s been snooping round here. Keep asking. Keep looking.’

‘It’s not easy. These are people we trust. Or we’re supposed to.’

Hartmann looked at Weber. A man he’d known all his adult life. A solitary bachelor, carrying his insulin and needle around without a complaint. Doing the menial work, the drudgery. The dirty work when needed.

‘I’m sorry, Morten.’

‘About what?’

‘About not listening to you.’

Weber laughed.

‘That was yesterday! This is politics. Today and tomorrow. Nothing else exists.’

‘Will you fix this?’

‘If I can.’

Skovgaard came up. She was carrying her coat.

‘Lund wants to talk to you again,’ she said.

‘No—’

‘The lawyer says you have no choice. Leave by the side door. I’ve arranged a private car.’

She looked him in the eye.

‘They’re taking you to the flat in Store Kongensgade.’ She passed Hartmann his gloves. ‘Lund wants to put some questions to you there.’

Anton and Emil were in their winter jackets. Pernille was checking they had everything for school. At the office desk, red overalls, black hat, Theis Birk Larsen had been on the phone to the bank, talking calmly, trying to think things through.

The storm that had hung over them the night before had never broken. They slept in the same bed, not touching. Not sleeping really. Halfway through the night Emil had come in crying. Anton had wet the mattress for the first time in months.

The storm hadn’t passed them by. It was simply waiting.

‘They might give us an overdraft of a hundred thousand,’ Birk Larsen said when she came in. ‘With that we can pay the staff this month and sell the house.’

Just one month. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl up to the grubby ceiling.

‘Have you seen Emil’s hat?’ she asked.

He closed his eyes.

‘Isn’t it on the shelf? Where it usually is?’

‘If it was there I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’

He stubbed out his cigarette.

‘OK. I’ll find it.’

When he was gone she walked round the office, looked at the bank statements. Wondered what else she didn’t know about. He’d bought a paper. The politician’s face stared out from it. He wasn’t arrested. Just questioned then released.

‘Mum?’ one of the boys called.

Anton ran in.

‘Someone wants to talk to you.’

A tall man of about thirty stood silhouetted in the garage door. Dark designer ski jacket. Big smile.

‘I’m here to talk to Theis Birk Larsen,’ he said.

‘If it’s about a move my husband will be right down.’

‘Pernille?’

He didn’t wait for an answer.

‘My name’s Kim Hogsted.’ He pulled out a business card. ‘I’m a TV journalist. I rang a few times.’

He held out his card. She took it.

‘I know you don’t want to talk to the likes of me.’

‘We don’t.’

‘It’s the police.’ He seemed earnest. ‘I cover crime. I’ve never seen a foul-up like this. It must be awful for you. I can’t imagine.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t.’

‘Now there’s a politician involved…’

He shrugged.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘They’ll try and keep everything under wraps. For you too.’

‘What do you want?’

‘We want to help. Give you the opportunity to tell your story. In your words. Not theirs. Not ours.’

She tried to imagine this.

‘You want me to talk about Nanna?’

He didn’t answer.

‘What kind of people are you? It’s best you leave. If my husband comes down—’

‘Three years ago in Helsingborg a five-year-old boy went missing. The police hadn’t a clue. We ran an interview. Offered a reward. They found him. Alive. You remember?’

‘You really should go.’

‘We can’t get Nanna back for you. But we can put up a reward for information. I know you want to find out what happened. Think about it, please.’

‘Leave!’ she shrieked at him.

The reporter walked out into the daylight. She threw the card in the office bin.

Theis Birk Larsen was back with the hat.

‘Shall I take them to school?’

‘No! We already talked about this. Why do you keep asking twice?’

He stood stiff and awkward in the doorway.

‘I’ll meet you at counselling.’

‘Emil!’ Her voice was high and brittle. ‘I told you not to bring that. Why don’t you ever listen?’

Birk Larsen gently prised the toy from Emil’s tight little fingers.

‘Have a nice day, boys,’ he said, and patted them on the head.

The Liberals’ apartment was covered in forensic marks. Stickers and arrows. Numbers and outlines.

Troels Hartmann stood in the main room next to the grand piano. The party lawyer was with him.

‘I parked outside and let myself in.’

‘Did you see anyone on the way up?’ Lund asked.

‘Not that I know of. I wasn’t looking much. It was just…’

‘Just what?’

‘Just another night.’

Lund waited. Wondered if he was going to say something else.

Hartmann looked at the shattered table. The broken mirror. The crumpled sheets on the double bed in the room beyond.

‘What happened here?’ he asked.

‘Tell me what you did when you came in,’ Lund said.

‘I hung up my jacket. I remember having a headache. It was a busy week.’

He walked to the desk by the window. Meyer followed him.

‘I sat here. I wrote some of the speech I was going to give.’

‘What speech?’ Meyer asked.

‘It was for sponsors and businessmen. We were looking for support.’

Lund asked what he did with the car keys.

He looked at the shattered glass table.

‘I left them on there. I didn’t need them again.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Meyer said. ‘Why come here to write a speech? Why not just go home?’

Hartmann hesitated before answering.

‘I think differently in different places. At home I get distracted. Here…’ He looked round the room. The white piano. The chandelier. The velvet wallpaper and expensive furniture. The shattered glass. ‘It was like a little island. I could think.’

‘Why did you give your driver the weekend off?’ Meyer asked.

‘I didn’t need him. Rie was going to drive. There was no point in having him waiting around.’

‘So you dismissed him and took a campaign car from the City Hall? Then left it here?’

‘Is that a crime? I wrote my speech. Then around ten thirty I walked round to Rie’s. That’s it. What else can I tell you?’

‘This is enough,’ the lawyer said. ‘My client’s assisted you as much as possible. If you’re finished here…’

Lund walked to the window, looked out. Meyer was getting desperate.

‘How did your speech go, Troels?’ he asked.

‘Quite well. Thanks for asking.’

‘You’re welcome. So you were with businessmen and sponsors all weekend?’

‘That’s right.’

He looked lost for a second. As if Meyer had tripped him.

‘The truth is it was mostly Rie. I came down with flu. I was in bed until Sunday.’

Lund came back to him.

‘How much did you drink here?’

‘That’s irrelevant,’ the lawyer butted in.

‘Forensics found an empty bottle of brandy and a glass with your prints on it.’

‘Yes. I had a drink. To help with the flu.’

‘A bottle of brandy?’

‘It was nearly empty anyway.’

Lund sorted through her notes.

‘The housekeeper had been shopping that day. She said she stocked up on everything.’

Hartmann glanced at the lawyer.

‘She wouldn’t throw out an unfinished bottle, would she? I had a drink. OK?’

Lund waited.

‘It was our wedding anniversary. My wife and I—’

‘So it was a special day?’ Meyer said.

‘None of your damned business.’

‘You take sedatives,’ Lund said. She picked up an evidence bag from the desk. ‘We found your pills.’

‘How low do you people intend to go? Does Bremer promote you afterwards?’

‘Alcohol and drugs,’ Meyer cut in. ‘I’m shocked. You’re a politician. You put up all these posters round the place. They’re a dangerous cocktail, aren’t they? So it says every time I take a piss.’

‘I had a drink. I haven’t taken any medication in months.’

‘So you just had a really shit day?’ Meyer’s eyes were bulging. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Hartmann was walking up and down the room, looking at the marks on the walls.

‘You drank a bottle of booze,’ Meyer went on. ‘You took some funny pills. One, maybe two.’

‘This is getting tedious.’

‘What’s tedious is you telling us you came here, got shit-faced and still remember you left around ten thirty.’

‘Yes! As it happens I do. I also remember which switches I touched. How many times I went to the toilet. Are you interested? Let me hold your hand and we can go and check the lift button together. How about it?’

Lund said, ‘You took the lift?’

‘Yes. Incredible, isn’t it? I took the lift.’

Lund shook her head.

‘According to the building manager the lift was out of service that Friday.’

He threw his arms open wide.

‘Then I took the stairs. Does it matter?’

‘Hartmann’s told you what he did in the flat,’ the lawyer insisted. ‘Rie Skovgaard has confirmed he came to her afterwards and when.’

The lawyer went to the main door, ushered Hartmann towards it.

‘My client’s been more than helpful. We’ve no more business here.’

They watched him go.

‘Why is that lying bastard lying to us?’ Meyer asked.

Lund was looking in the bedroom at the crumpled sheets. No one had got underneath them. It was as if they simply sat on the bed. Talked even.

‘Where did Nanna go?’ she murmured.

Hartmann was passing the long ochre lines of the Nyboder cottages when Morten Weber called.

‘How did it go?’

It seemed an odd question. There could only be one answer.

‘It went well, Morten. What’s happening?’

‘Do you remember Dorte? The temp?’

‘Not really.’

‘The nice woman with back trouble? She went to my acupuncturist?’

‘Yes, yes. I remember. What about her?’

Down the long drag of Store Kongensgade. Cafes and shops. On the left the grand dome of the Marble Church.

‘She told me something interesting.’

Hartmann waited. When Weber kept quiet he said, ‘What?’

‘I don’t like saying over the phone.’

‘Jesus, Morten! Do you think they’re tapping my calls now?’

A moment of silence then Weber said, ‘Maybe they are. I don’t know. We need to talk to Olav. You were right.’

The bereavement group met in a cold grey hall near the church. Ten people round a plastic table in a bare and cheerless room.

The Birk Larsens sat next to one another as the leader listened to their stories.

Cancer and traffic accidents. Heart attacks and suicide.

Tears from the living. Silence from the dead.

Pernille didn’t listen. He nodded, said nothing.

Outside, on the bare branches of a tree, a ragged white scarf writhed and twisted in the wind like a lost prayer.

When it was their turn they barely spoke. No one pressed them. Only one, a skinny man whose head was erect and proud, even when he talked of his lost son, paid them any attention.

Perhaps it was embarrassment, Birk Larsen thought. He didn’t care. The social worker said come or go back to jail. So he came and hoped it would help. Though looking at Pernille’s frozen, emotionless face he doubted it.

Nothing helped except release. Knowledge. A waypoint passed. And that seemed further away than ever.

Outside he offered to put her bike in the back of the van and drive her home.

‘I need some fresh air,’ Pernille said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ll see you later.’

She pushed her cycle through the car park, out to the street and Vesterbro.

The thin man stopped her in the car park. His name was Peter Lassen.

‘I didn’t get the chance to say hello in there.’

She shook his hand.

‘I hope it was some use to you.’

‘It was fine,’ she said.

He looked at her.

‘I don’t think you mean that.’

She wanted to walk on but didn’t.

‘I remember how awkward it felt the first time,’ Lassen said. ‘You can’t relate to anyone. You think their pain’s not like yours. And it isn’t.’

‘If I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,’ Pernille said with a sudden savagery.

Then pushed her bike away, eyes beginning to water.

By the road she stopped, ashamed. He’d been polite and pleasant. She’d been rude and caustic.

She went back, said sorry.

Lassen smiled a slow, soft smile.

‘No need. Let me buy you a coffee.’

A moment’s hesitation and then she said yes.

The cafe was tiny and empty. They sat in front of cappuccinos and biscotti.

‘It’ll be five years in January. I’d made lasagne. We sat at the table waiting for him to come home.’

There were kids outside the window, a long crocodile line of them heading off on a visit somewhere. Lassen smiled as they passed.

‘We’d put new batteries on his bike lights. He knew the way. We used to cycle it together sometimes.’

He stirred the coffee he’d never touched.

‘But he never came.’

One more round of the cup. She watched the froth subsiding.

‘They said it was a red car. The police found paint on one of the pedals.’

He shook his head and, to her astonishment, laughed.

‘I used to sit there by the turning in the road, looking for a scratched red car. Every evening around the time it happened.’

His delicate, pale hand waved at her.

‘The car never came. So then I started sitting there during the day. It didn’t come then.’

The brief amusement had left his face.

‘In the end the only thing I could do was sit and wait. Day and night. Watching the cars. Thinking it will come. And when it does I’ll drag that bastard out and…’

Lassen’s eyes shut briefly and she saw on his face the mask of pain he still sought to hide.

‘My wife tried to get me to stop. How could I? How? I lost my job. I lost my friends.’

He pushed away the coffee and the biscotto.

‘Then one day I came home from the street and she was gone too.’

Outside a mother by the road, holding the hand of a child, waiting to cross. The everyday was special. For people like her, like Lassen, there was nothing else, nor need of it. The everyday was holy, as precious as anything could be.

‘There isn’t a moment passes when I don’t regret letting go of my loved ones. The red car didn’t just take my son. It took everything I had. And still I never found him. Pernille?’

She turned away from the window, met his eyes.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘But you still keep looking, don’t you? How can you forget? What if you hadn’t given up?’

Lassen shook his head. He seemed disappointed.

‘You can’t think of it like that.’

‘But you do. You think… where is he? Where’s the car? You don’t stop thinking. You can fool yourself if you like. You can try to hide.’

‘You have to let it go.’

He was starting to annoy her.

‘Tell me you’ve forgotten then. Tell me you’re OK with the fact that the bastard who killed your boy is still walking around out there.’

A glance outside the window.

‘Maybe ready to do it all over again to someone else’s son.’

Lassen said, ‘What if they don’t find him? What if you’re locked in this hell for ever?’

‘They’ll find him. If they don’t I will.’

He blinked. That hint of disappointment again.

‘And then?’ Lassen asked.

‘You have to excuse me now. I’ve got to pick up my boys from school.’

She rose from the table.

‘Thanks for the coffee.’

Hartmann’s office. Weber had more sandwiches and coffee. There was a woman in the doorway and he fought for a moment to remember her name.

Nethe Stjernfeldt.

He got up quickly, walked to the door, saw Skovgaard’s head go up.

She was as pretty as he remembered, slim and elegant. With that same anxious, needy look in her sparkling eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Troels,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to come barging in.’

‘It’s not a good time.’

‘I’m sorry if I said something wrong.’

‘It’s not your fault. I know what the police are like.’

‘They came and threw all these questions at me. They had emails and… they seemed to know everything.’

‘I talked to them,’ Hartmann said. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t go any further. Everything’s fine.’

She was close. Her hand touched his lapel.

‘Thanks for coming. But really I’ve got a lot of things to do.’

Her fingers brushed his jacket.

‘I know. Ring me if there’s any way I can help.’ She smiled at him. ‘Anything.’

Her hand flattened, touched his white ironed shirt, pressed. Hartmann retreated a step. She glared at him.

‘I’ll leave then,’ she said.

‘That would be best.’

He walked back into the office, stood next to Skovgaard as she read through the papers. Weber had made himself scarce.

‘She… she wanted to apologize.’

Skovgaard’s head never came up from the documents.

‘Don’t you trust me?’ Hartmann asked.

Nothing.

He sat on the desk, made her look at him.

‘Don’t shut me out, Rie. That’s all in the past. I told you.’

She folded her arms, stared at the ceiling, her eyes damp and unfocused.

‘Rie!’

A knock on the door.

Olav Christensen walked in without waiting.

‘I heard you want to talk to me,’ he said.

‘Morten!’ Hartmann called.

They made the civil servant sit opposite them. Weber read through the material he’d assembled.

‘You’ve taken a close interest in the flat, Olav,’ he said.

‘No. Not at all. I put up some guests there a few times.’ He pointed at Hartmann. ‘With the mayor’s permission.’

‘Hartmann just signed an approval slip. Your guests never turned up.’

His brittle show of arrogance was cracking.

‘What am I? A hotel receptionist? I do what I’m told. Do I need a lawyer or something?’

Hartmann asked, ‘Did you use the flat yourself?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Weber placed a paper in front of him.

‘Six months ago you asked Dorte if it was free at the weekend.’

Christensen took the document, read it.

‘If I remember correctly that was for the Poles who were doing a report on the welfare system.’

‘The Poles stayed in a hotel!’ Weber snapped. ‘I had dinner with them. Don’t give me this shit.’

‘Really? Then I don’t remember.’

More paperwork.

‘Several times a week you booked the flat for no-shows. Never went in the file. If it wasn’t for Dorte—’

‘Dorte isn’t here. People changed their minds. Sometimes—’

‘Do we look like idiots?’ Hartmann pointed to Weber, to Skovgaard sitting taping the conversation. ‘Do we look as if we were born yesterday?’

‘Don’t blame me if you’re in the shit. It’s not my fault.’

‘One more time. Did you book the flat for yourself?’

‘You be careful what you accuse me of—’

‘No, no, Olav! You’re the one who needs to be careful.’

Hartmann waited a moment.

‘Did you bring the girl there?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Did you make a copy of the key? Did you use my computer?’

He was laughing.

‘So it’s scapegoat time in the Liberal Party?’

Rie Skovgaard passed a document across the table.

‘We had a security scan of the network this morning. They found key loggers on all our PCs. Someone was keeping track of everything. Passwords. What we typed. They could log in and pretend they were us.’

‘What’s this to do with me?’

‘You’ve got a degree in computer engineering. You did this.’

‘Me? A civil servant? No.’ He smiled at the man across the table. ‘He’s the one who needs to do the explaining. I read it in the papers.’

‘I’m going to drive you down to police headquarters myself,’ Troels Hartmann promised.

‘He didn’t kill the girl, Troels!’ Skovgaard shrieked. ‘He was at the poster party with us. It couldn’t have been him in the flat.’

Olav Christensen smirked at them.

‘You know what?’ he said, getting up. ‘I’m going to leave this in your hands. You people…’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘It’s like Poul Bremer said. You’re falling apart, aren’t you?’

‘If it wasn’t you who was it?’ Hartmann roared.

There were Christmas decorations in a box by the door. Christensen pulled out some tinsel, waved it at them.

‘Santa Claus?’ he asked.

Meyer was running through what they had.

‘Hartmann saw plenty of women in that flat. He stopped for a few months. Then he started again.’

Blue lights from the headquarters yard flashed through the window.

‘He tried to get hold of Nanna Birk Larsen. He was jealous. He went to see her. It all went wrong.’

‘Someone must have seen something,’ Lund said. ‘A paper boy. A parking attendant.’

‘No one’s seen anything. Let’s bring in Skovgaard again.’

‘She won’t say anything.’

‘How the hell do you know? You talked to her last time.’

He felt the lapel of his wool zipper jacket.

‘I have a way with women.’

Lund glanced at him, sighed, shook her head.

‘He never called Nanna,’ she said. ‘His phone was turned off at ten twenty-nine that night.’

‘A way with women,’ he repeated very slowly.

She felt her head. A migraine was hovering.

‘OK,’ Lund said and threw the papers on the desk.

‘That’s that then,’ Meyer announced.

He went off with his jaunty punk walk. Lund felt sure she’d arrested someone very like Jan Meyer once upon a time.

She picked up the phone records. Someone had called Hartmann at ten twenty-seven just before he turned off the phone. There was a list of names of callers somewhere. She found it. Looked. Thought of telling Meyer. Got her coat instead.

Back in Store Kongensgade she stood in the courtyard, looking at the circular iron fire-escape stairs running up the back.

Nethe Stjernfeldt came ten minutes after Lund called.

‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘I told you everything—’

‘You said you hadn’t talked to Hartmann for a long time.’

‘I haven’t. I’ve got to pick up my son from youth club.’

‘You rang him that Friday night. October the thirty-first. Ten twenty-seven p.m. I can prove it. I can prove you lied.’

The woman fiddled with her leather gloves.

‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ Lund said.

She looked around, saw they were alone.

‘I promised my husband I’d never see him again.’

Lund waited.

‘I missed him. I wanted to see him.’

‘What did he say when you called?’

‘He said it was over. I had to stop ringing him.’

‘Then what did you do?’

She didn’t answer. Just turned to leave.

‘You got a parking ticket that evening. Here, on Store Kongensgade. You were too close to the corner.’

Lund caught up with her.

‘Bad luck,’ she said. ‘I get that sometimes.’

‘Does my husband have to know?’

‘Just tell me what happened.’

Stjernfeldt looked up and down the long, empty street.

‘I didn’t like the way he cut me dead. I was home. On my own again. Going crazy.’

‘So you came here to see him. What time, Nethe? This is important.’

‘Doesn’t the parking ticket say?’

‘I want to hear it from you.’

‘It was almost midnight. The lights were on. So I rang the bell.’

Lund looked at the shiny brass doorplate.

‘Did he let you in?’

‘No,’ she said bitterly. ‘He didn’t even answer. I kept my finger on the buzzer until someone picked it up.’

‘Then you talked to Hartmann?’

‘I didn’t talk to anyone. Whoever it was…’ She shrugged. ‘They didn’t say a word.’

‘You didn’t hear anything?’

‘I tried to get them to let me in. But then they hung up.’

Lund looked up at the big red-brick building.

‘Did you drive home?’

‘No. I was furious with him. I went into the courtyard and screamed his name.’

They walked back beneath the arch, stood in the open interior space.

‘I saw a silhouette.’

She stopped and looked up at the fourth-floor windows.

‘It wasn’t him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It wasn’t him! It didn’t look like him.’

‘How could you tell? It was dark.’ Lund gestured at the building. ‘It’s high up. How can you be sure?’

‘You really want to nail Troels, don’t you?’

‘I want the truth. How do you know?’

‘He seemed shorter. Troels is tall. He holds himself well. The man I saw…’

She shrugged and looked at the street outside.

‘It wasn’t Troels Hartmann.’

Lund said nothing.

‘He saw me,’ Stjernfeldt said. ‘He was looking directly at me. It made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want to stay here. Troels wasn’t in that flat any more. What was the point?’

Pernille drove the boys home listening to them bicker in the back. It never used to get to her.

Now…

‘It’s mine,’ Anton said. ‘Give it to me. You should’ve brought your own.’

‘Mum, tell him to stop!’

The traffic was bad. The night wet. The noise of their voices filled her head but not so much it drowned out the dark thoughts.

‘You’re mean.’

‘Tell him, Mum! I haven’t played with it all day.’

‘Can’t you take turns?’

The stupid things parents said. Share what you have. Be quiet. Be good and obedient. Tell us what you think, where you go, what you do.

And who with.

‘Mum! Tell him!’

‘Shut up!’ Anton wailed.

Or Emil.

When they screeched they both sounded the same.

‘My toy! My toy! My toy!’

Like two little kettles coming to the boil.

There was a gap in the cars by the side of the road. She swung the car violently knowing it would shake them in their safety seats. Slammed her foot on the brakes. Listened to the tyres screaming.

Hit the pavement. People scattering and shouting around her.

They shut up then. They let her sit in the driver’s seat, staring at the figures milling round the car.

No damage done. Just a brief and insane turn off the steady stream of traffic that was life.

‘Mum?’ asked a quiet, frightened voice from behind.

She looked at their faces in the mirror. Felt shocked she’d done this. Put such fear into their unformed, fragile lives.

‘Emil can have the toy,’ Anton said. ‘It’s OK. We can take turns.’

She was crying again. Tears streaming down both cheeks, making the night seem blurry. The wheel felt too heavy to drive. The car stank of kids and petrol and Theis’s cigarettes.

‘Mum? Mum?’

Theis Birk Larsen was cooking supper when the boys came through the door.

‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘I picked up the boys. I told you.’

‘I know, but the time. I was ringing round. I called Lotte…’

‘I told you.’

He didn’t push it.

‘I made spaghetti bolognese.’

She didn’t look right.

‘I called the journalist who came this morning,’ she said.

He stopped stirring the sauce.

‘I set up a meeting. He’ll be here soon.’

‘Why the hell did you do that? Without talking to me? The police say I’m not supposed to go near the case.’

She laughed at him.

‘The police? You’re doing what they tell you now?’

‘Pernille—’

‘We need help. We need to get things moving. Someone must have seen something. They’ll offer a reward.’

He had his eyes closed, his head up to the ceiling.

‘If it’s not Troels Hartmann then it’s someone else.’

He went back to the stove, stirred the sauce.

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Well that’s the way it’s going to be.’

‘Pernille—’

‘I’ve agreed and that’s that!’ she cried. ‘Stay here and do the cooking if you like. I’ll deal with it.’

Meyer kept running over the same points with Rie Skovgaard, again and again.

‘So none of the sponsors saw Hartmann until Sunday?’

‘As I’ve told you a million times, he was ill.’

Meyer shrugged.

‘But he told me his speech went down well. I don’t get it. Why are you covering for him? Your father’s an MP. How’s he going to feel when we drag you into court for aiding and abetting?’

She looked as if she’d changed for the interview. Smart pin-striped shirt. Glossy, well-brushed hair. A pretty woman. Beautiful even when she chose to smile.

‘Is a man like Hartmann more important than your own career?’

‘You don’t know Troels Hartmann. And I’m not covering for him.’

‘Do you know him, Rie? He didn’t tell you he called himself Faust. He didn’t tell you he was screwing around through that dating site.’

She smiled.

‘Water under the bridge. Everyone does things they regret. Didn’t you?’

‘I always tell my wife. That’s safest. That’s the right thing to do.’

‘Nothing’s happened since we’ve been together.’

He got up, sat on the desk beside her. Read one of the emails.

‘ “I want you. I can’t hold back. I need to touch you. To feel you.” ’

Another page.

‘“I’m going to the flat now. Wait for me. Don’t get dressed.” ’

He placed them in front of her.

‘Every one signed F for Faust. How do you know he didn’t write to Nanna Birk Larsen too?’

She sighed, kept smiling.

‘How, Rie?’ Meyer said. ‘Please tell.’

No answer. He went back to the conference.

‘What was wrong with Hartmann? Why did he have to stay in his room?’

He lit a cigarette.

‘Flu. The same flu as before.’

‘Man flu? It’s not the real thing, is it? Real flu means you’re stuck in bed, sweating like a pig, coughing, wheezing. Was that it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lots of snot I guess.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Messy, huh?’

‘Messy.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ He looked at his pad. ‘I spoke to the maid who cleaned the room. She said it looked like there’d only been one person in there, not two. No snotty tissues. Nothing.’

‘She must have the wrong room.’

‘No. She didn’t. You’re covering for a murder suspect. That makes you an accomplice.’

He took a long drag.

‘Will Daddy come and visit you in jail? Do you think he can get you privileges?’

Nothing.

‘Is that how it works? One rule for you? Another for the dregs who pay your wages?’

‘You’re a man with a lot of hang-ups.’

Meyer waved a hand through the smoke.

‘And where do they come from I wonder.’

‘If that’s all I’d like to leave now.’

One of the night team was at the door with a note.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said.

A message from his wife. Shopping list. Cucumber, milk, bread, sugar, olives, feta. And bananas.

She had her bag, her coat.

‘So you were with Hartmann all weekend?’

‘A million times…’

Meyer stared at her.

‘Then why did you call his mobile phone on Saturday? When it was turned off?’

She stood there.

‘You were with him, Rie? Wouldn’t you know? Do people do phone sex when they’re sharing the same bed?’

‘I don’t remember—’

‘No, no. Don’t think you can wriggle out of this.’

He waved the shopping list at her, keeping the writing to himself.

‘I’ve got a call log from the phone company. You tried to phone him. Several times. Never got through.’

For the first time she looked vulnerable.

‘It’s as if you were worried about him. Which I don’t think would be the case if you were in the same hotel room.’ Meyer shook his head. ‘I can’t see that. Any way I look at it.’

He walked up to her.

‘This is the last time I ask. You’ve lied and lied and I’m willing to let that go. But not for ever. Once more and you’re an accomplice. Not a witness.’

He beckoned to the chair.

‘Your choice either way.’

She didn’t move.

‘Did Hartmann come over to your place on Friday night? Think about it.’

She walked to the door.

‘Last chance, Rie…’

Lund stood outside Hartmann’s house. There were lights in the long windows on the first floor. A well-kept front garden. What looked like an extensive lawn at the back. The place was on an open well-lit street in Svanemøllevej, northern Østerbro, near the embassies. A detached villa. Ten million kroner at least.

There was money in politics.

She prowled around the gardens looking for signs of activity. Something buried. Something fresh. Walked across the long, dense grass, checked the back. There was a basement, the door old with peeling white paint. Leaves stacked up against it, a couple of feet high. Unused in ages. She looked at the single light inside the ground floor. This was a house for a family. A dynasty even. And all it had was the sad and handsome figure of Troels Hartmann.

She walked all the way round, saw nothing. Went through a side gate, found herself back at the foot of the stone stairs to the street.

No sound from inside. No TV. No music.

Lund rang the bell.

Rang again and knocked five times, loudly.

A woman answered. Foreign. Filipino maybe.

‘Hi. Sarah Lund. Police. Is Troels Hartmann home?’

Without an argument she was in.

The kitchen was modern, immaculate. Expensive oven. Fancy central table. Spotless.

Cleaners, Lund thought.

A pizza was cooking in the see-through oven.

She stood in her raincoat and white and black sweater, rocking on her feet.

He could be anywhere in the house. So she waited, trying to be patient.

Hartmann came down the stairs, blue shirt, suit trousers, drying his hair.

Looked at her, open-mouthed.

He threw the towel on the table.

‘I’ve answered your questions, Lund. I won’t speak to you again without my lawyer present.’

‘You said you didn’t take any calls in the flat.’

He closed his eyes, shook his head.

‘Do you ever listen to what people say to you?’

‘All the time. You told me you didn’t take any calls.’

He looked at the pizza. Slapped his forehead.

‘OK. Nethe Stjernfeldt.’

‘She told me.’

‘We spoke for thirty seconds. No more. I made it absolutely clear I wasn’t interested.’

He got some oven gloves, took out the pizza, slipped it onto a plate.

Lund watched. A man used to living on his own.

‘She kept ringing me. Sending messages. It got tedious.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘For the last time. I’m sure. I wrote the damned speech. I drank too much booze. Then I went to Rie’s around ten thirty. I’ve told you that all along. I can’t keep repeating it.’

He opened the back door.

‘I have to eat now. Please.’

‘Let’s say someone else used your computer. Your car. Your flat. Who might know your password?’

‘I’ve told you before. Someone got into our network.’

The housekeeper came back, picked up the rubbish, told Hartmann she’d see him the following week, then left, closing the door behind her.

‘I want to help,’ Lund said. His fair eyebrows rose. ‘Honestly. I do.’

‘Talk to Rie. She found something on the system. Anyone could have got the passwords. I use the same one for everything anyway. Rie’s made a list for you. People we think you should look at. There’s a civil servant—’

‘I’d like that list.’

‘There’s a copy upstairs. I’ll get it.’

On the staircase Hartmann stopped.

‘Help yourself to pizza if you like. It’s too much for me.’

‘Just the list. But thanks.’

Lund watched him go.

It was an old house. She could hear the floorboards creak as he walked around, trying to find something.

Lund went into the adjoining room. A study overlooking the garden. She headed for the bookcase. Mostly they were political. Bill Clinton’s autobiography. A couple of titles about JFK. There was a photo of the doomed president and Jackie. She was struck by the resemblance. Rie Skovgaard had the same cold beauty. Hartmann looked nothing like Jack. But he was handsome, gazed into the camera with a certain cocksure confidence.

Kennedy was, in Meyer’s words, a serial philanderer too. A weakness he couldn’t abandon. And Clinton…

She browsed the shelf. Pulled out the one piece of fiction she could find. A translation into Danish of Goethe’s Faust.

Everything here was ordered and quiet and personal. So unlike the office in the Rådhus where he seemed to be under constant bombardment, from his own staff, from Bremer’s machinations. And from her.

A diary sat on the desk by the garden window. She walked over, began to flick through the pages. There were a few curt, oneline entries. Nothing interesting. She was about to turn to that Friday when her phone rang.

Quickly she closed the pages.

‘Lund.’

‘It’s Meyer.’

She could hear Hartmann walking down the stairs.

‘I can’t talk right now. I’ll ring you back.’

‘He doesn’t have an alibi.’

She walked into the kitchen. He was there, carving up the pizza. Opening a bottle of wine.

Troels Hartmann smiled at her.

Politicians and women. They went together. He was a striking, interesting, intelligent man. She could see why. Could almost imagine…

‘I got Rie Skovgaard to talk,’ Meyer said proudly. ‘She’s no idea where he was the whole weekend. None whatsoever. She lied to the sponsors. She made up the story about him being ill.’

Hartmann was wrapping a napkin round the neck of the wine bottle. Then he poured himself a glass.

‘What’s going on, Lund? Where the hell are you?’

‘That’s fine,’ she said brightly and ended the call.

‘Anything wrong?’ Hartmann asked.

‘No. Did you bring me the list?’

‘Here you go. Christensen. The one at the top. I’d start with him.’

‘Thanks.’

Hartmann sat down, glanced at his watch, started on the pizza.

‘Maybe I’ll have a slice after all,’ Lund said.

It didn’t take long before Hartmann was in full flow, talking politics, talking tactics, talking about anything but himself.

Lund sipped her expensive red wine, wondered if this was a good idea. She stayed to entice him, to trap him. But he was doing the same to her. Had done this to many women, she thought. His personality, his looks, his energy and apparent sincerity… he had a magnetism she never encountered in the police.

Bengt Rosling was a good, kind, intelligent man. But Troels Hartmann, now she saw him alone, at his dining table, free of the police and the trappings of City Hall, was different. Charismatic and gripped by a visible passion, one most men she knew in Copenhagen would be reluctant to allow a stranger to see.

‘Bremer… It’s outrageous to have a man like that in power. For twelve years! He thinks he owns us.’

‘Politics is about staying in power, isn’t it? Not just getting there.’

Hartmann topped up her glass.

‘You’ve got to get there first. Sure. But the reason we have power is to give it back.’

He looked at Lund.

‘To you. We get everyone to work like fury and take a share of what we create together. Copenhagen doesn’t belong to Poul Bremer. Or the political classes. It belongs to everyone. That’s what politics means.’

He nodded, smiled. Aware, perhaps, that he’d made a speech, seemingly without wishing it.

‘To me anyway. I’m sorry. I sound like I’m asking for your vote.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Of course.’ He raised his glass. ‘I need every one I can get. Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘As if I’m… odd.’

Lund shrugged.

‘Most people find politics boring. I get the impression you don’t think about much else.’

‘Nothing. We need to change. I want to lead that. I’ve always felt that way. It’s me, I guess.’

‘And your private life?’

‘That comes second,’ he said in a quiet, uncertain tone.

An awkward moment. Lund was smiling, out of embarrassment, out of a lack of anything to say.

‘You think that’s funny?’ Hartmann asked. ‘Why? I’ve dated half of Copenhagen, haven’t I? Or so you seem to think.’

‘Only half?’

He could have taken that badly. Instead Troels Hartmann broke into a broad smile and shook his head.

‘You’re a very unusual police officer.’

‘No I’m not. How did you meet your wife?’

He thought about his answer.

‘In high school. We were in the same class. We couldn’t stand each other at first. Then we agreed we wouldn’t live together. And under absolutely no circumstances…’

He held up his left hand, as if wishing to push something away.

‘… would we marry.’

A short burst of laughter.

‘But some things you can’t control. Doesn’t matter how hard you try.’

More wine. He looked as if he could drink the whole bottle.

‘It must have been difficult.’

‘It was. If I hadn’t had this job… I don’t know…’

Hartmann fell silent.

‘Don’t know what?’

‘Sometimes life falls to pieces. You do something idiotic. Something that’s not you. Never was. And still…’ The wine was back in his hand. ‘It’s there.’

‘Like calling yourself Faust on a dating site?’

‘Quite.’ His phone rang. ‘If I’d been thinking straight I’d have called myself Donald Duck instead. Excuse me.’

‘Troels? Where are you?’

It was Morten Weber.

‘I’m at home.’

‘They know your alibi’s bogus.’

Hartmann smiled at Sarah Lund. Got up from the table, walked out into the hall.

‘What do you mean?’

A long pause, then Weber said, ‘Rie’s on her way back from police headquarters. They really turned the screws on her.’

‘Tell me, Morten.’

‘They worked out she’d tried to call you when you were supposed to be together.’

‘How long have they known?’

‘A while. They took in Rie a couple of hours ago. Troels? It’s important you don’t talk to them. Come in here. Let’s get the lawyer. We need to think this through.’

Lund was alone at the table. Same black and white sweater. She’d got make-up on for once, had done something to her hair. She looked good. Had prepared for this.

He felt a fool.

‘Troels?’

Hartmann walked back into the kitchen.

‘What are we going to do, Troels?’

He cut the call and put the phone in his jacket.

‘Where were we?’

‘You were telling me about yourself.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t you have to go?’

‘Not yet. We can talk for a while.’

He gulped at the wine. It spilled down the front of his blue shirt. Lund passed him a napkin.

‘I’ve got a press conference soon. Will anyone notice?’

She laughed.

‘I think so.’

‘I’d better… sorry.’

Then he went upstairs and left her alone.

Alone.

He’d gone up two floors from the sound of it.

Lund got to her feet. Strode back into the study. Found the diary she’d been looking through before. Skipped to the end of the previous month.

One entry.

Miss you. Lonely. Can’t sleep.

More pages. Blank.

Then two, covered in an anxious scrawl. Nothing tangible, just disjointed thoughts and cries. Someone in torture shrieking at himself.

‘Shall I turn the lights on?’ Hartmann said just inches from her neck.

Lund jumped, mumbled something, turned.

Saw him in the shirt with the wine stain down the front.

He wasn’t that clumsy and she should have realized.

She didn’t speak.

‘What was this?’ Hartmann asked in a calm, cold voice. ‘Were we supposed to drink all night until we became best friends? Then what? I confess? Is that it?’

His hard blue eyes wouldn’t leave her.

‘Is there really nothing you wouldn’t do?’

He pointed upstairs.

‘Do we go up to the bedroom and I tell you everything after?’

‘You don’t have an alibi. You lied to us. Rie Skovgaard…’

‘So what? Does that give you the right to talk your way in here and read my diary behind my back?’

She watched, wondered what he’d do.

‘Let me understand this,’ Hartmann said. ‘I take my own campaign car and drive to the party flat. Where I rape a nineteen-yearold girl, then kill her. Then drive the body out to the woods and ditch the car and the girl in the water. Is that right?’

‘You lied to us. All that fine talk. About Poul Bremer. About politics—’

‘What I do in public and what I do in private are two different things.’

‘Not to me. Let’s talk about this back at headquarters.’

‘No. We talk about it here. So I do all this and I never think of covering my tracks. Why?’

‘You did. You took the surveillance tape from reception.’

‘I don’t know a damned thing about that.’

‘She went to your flat. The emails. Maybe…’

He came close, was getting mad.

‘Maybe, maybe, maybe. I didn’t do it. Can’t you even consider that a possibility?’

‘I’d be happy to. If you told me where you were that weekend.’

He was so close she could smell his cologne and the wine on his breath. Eyes blazing, Hartmann glared at her. Lund didn’t move.

There was a rap at the door. A familiar voice crying, ‘Police!’

‘That’s all you have to do,’ Lund said.

‘Troels Hartmann!’ someone yelled.

Meyer’s voice.

‘This is the police. Open the door.’

Outside, Meyer and Svendsen were getting impatient. They could see the lights. They knew from Skovgaard he’d be here, got the arrest cleared by Brix after a fight.

‘Dammit,’ Meyer said. ‘I’ll take a look round the back. Call up for help. We’ll break down the door if he doesn’t come out in a minute.’

Sounds of footsteps. A light came on above them.

The door opened. Lund walked out, pulling her bag around her shoulder. She walked past him, down the steps, Hartmann following, stern-faced and silent.

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Meyer stood beneath the outside light, mouth open, staring, as did Svendsen.

Lund clapped her hands.

‘Let’s go,’ she repeated.

The reporter came with a cameraman. They set up their equipment amidst the dust and chaos of the garage. Theis Birk Larsen stayed upstairs.

Pernille had written what she wanted to say on a single sheet of paper.

‘That’s fine,’ he said when he read it.

‘Will it do any good?’

‘Sure it will. When we’re done here we’ll go up to the flat—’

‘We’re not going to the flat.’

The reporter looked ready for an argument. It was his job. Getting the story he wanted. She should have known that.

‘We want to do the best we can, Pernille.’

‘We’re not going to the flat.’

A floodlight came on. It made the place look even grubbier.

‘Very well.’ He didn’t look pleased. ‘What about your husband?’

‘What about him?’

‘It looks better if you speak as a couple.’

‘I decide how we do this. Not you. Not Theis.’

No answer.

‘Take it or leave it,’ she added.

Pernille waited.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Just you.’

Upstairs Theis Birk Larsen was finishing the boys’ supper. Ice cream from the supermarket, on their special plates, beneath the Murano chandelier.

Nanna’s face still stared at them from the table.

‘Isn’t Mum having pudding?’ Anton asked.

‘She has to talk to somebody.’

‘We’re going to the woods tomorrow,’ Emil said.

‘No, we’re not,’ Anton butted in.

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Shut up.’

The boys glared at each other.

‘Why aren’t you going to the woods?’ Birk Larsen asked.

Anton toyed with his ice cream.

‘Mum doesn’t feel well.’

‘Of course you’re going to the woods. Mum thinks so too.’

Pernille came in from the stairs.

‘They’re offering a reward,’ she said. ‘The TV people. There was a neighbourhood collection too.’

Birk Larsen gave the boys more ice cream.

‘Anton and Emil want to go to the woods tomorrow.’

‘I know. I said I’d go with them.’

He couldn’t stop looking at the photos pasted into the tabletop all those years ago. Nanna… what, sixteen? The boys as toddlers. A piece of their life, trapped in time.

It was a table. If she had her way it would stay with them for ever.

‘When we went to counselling,’ Birk Larsen said, ‘they told us to think about what we have.’

She scowled at him.

‘I know what I’m doing, thank you.’

His face was hard, his mood was black.

‘So why aren’t you here with us? Instead of talking to that guy downstairs?’

A long silence. Pernille smiled at Anton and Emil.

‘Come on boys. Time for bed.’

They hadn’t finished their ice cream but they didn’t argue.

Birk Larsen threw his spoon on the plate as he watched her usher them out of the room.

Dirty cutlery and dishes. Bills and appointments. Burdens and cares.

All these things swept around him constantly, like a ceaseless tide of trouble.

He walked to the fridge, got a bottle of beer, sat in a chair and began to drink.

In the interview room at headquarters the lawyer looked as if nothing in the world had changed.

‘My client admits his alibi was fabricated,’ she said confidently. ‘He wasn’t with Rie Skovgaard.’

Hartmann sat next to her as she spoke. Lund and Meyer opposite. Lennart Brix listening at the end of the table.

‘Any particular reason he lied to us?’ Meyer wanted to know.

‘Everyone has a right to privacy. Especially a politician during an election.’

‘Irrelevant,’ Meyer said. ‘What were you doing that Friday, Hartmann?’

He stayed silent. The lawyer answered instead.

‘As we’ve emphasized throughout, my client maintains his innocence. He never knew or had any dealings with Nanna Birk Larsen. He went elsewhere because he needed some peace. He asked Skovgaard to cover for him.’

‘Not good enough—’

‘He takes full responsibility for his fabricated alibi. It was necessary because he was in the public eye.’

Meyer was getting mad.

‘Let me get this straight. You claim you were drinking yourself stupid all weekend because of your dead wife?’

‘My client—’

‘I’m not finished. Where were you, Hartmann?’

‘My client doesn’t want to comment. His private life is his own.’

‘You’ll go on TV and tell us how we’re supposed to run this city. But you won’t tell us one small thing to help out a murder inquiry?’

‘Hartmann,’ Lennart Brix broke in. ‘Forty-eight hours ago you told me you had an alibi. Now you don’t. If you won’t make a statement there’s only one thing I can do.’

He waited. Hartmann didn’t say a word.

‘Press charges and arrest you.’

‘There are no grounds for that,’ the lawyer cried. ‘You don’t have any evidence whatsoever to suggest Hartmann was involved with this girl. He’s tried to cooperate as much as he feels able.’

Her voice got louder. She looked at Lund.

‘At every turn he’s been harassed by your officers while they stumble about their business. Harassed at home, where his house was searched without a warrant. In secret. Under the pretext of a personal conversation.’

She turned to Brix.

‘Don’t threaten us. Illegal entry. Illegal search. I could throw you all to the wolves now if I felt like it. Find the man who used Hartmann’s email. The car, the flat…’

Meyer ran a finger along his notes.

‘Olav Christensen has an alibi. A real one. We checked. If Hartmann would care to tell us the truth about his whereabouts we’ll check his too.’

‘Christensen’s involved in this,’ Hartmann said, breaking his silence. ‘If you look at him…’

‘Why won’t you tell us where you were?’ Lund asked, gazing at him across the table. The same way she had in the house when they were alone together, drinking wine, picking at the pizza.

Hartmann looked away.

‘Christensen’s in the clear,’ Meyer insisted again. ‘The administration backs it up.’

‘Of course they back it up!’ Hartmann bawled. ‘They all belong to Bremer. They’re the ones Olav must…’

He stopped, seemed to think of something.

‘Must what?’ Lund asked.

‘I’ve got nothing more to say. If that’s all I’d like to leave now.’

‘No,’ Brix said. ‘You had your chance. You should have taken it.’

The three of them went to Lund’s office. Brix wanted to draw up charges and put them in front of a prosecutor straight away.

Lund sat on the edge of her desk trying to think.

‘The prosecutor’s going to want blood, saliva and semen for that. We don’t have it. I think we should wait. Let’s see if we can find more. There’s nothing to be gained from arresting him. It’s not as if he’s going to flee.’

‘We can shove him in Vestre jail,’ Brix said. ‘That should get him talking.’

‘No. This is wrong,’ Lund insisted. ‘When I talked to him he thought the girl had been killed in the flat.’

‘So?’

‘She wasn’t. She was chased through the woods, two days later. She drowned in the car. Whoever did it must have heard her screaming. He tied her up. Put her in the boot.’

‘That’s just Hartmann being clever,’ Meyer said.

‘We need to think of the press,’ Lund added.

Meyer picked up the phone and asked for the prosecutor.

‘We can’t make another mistake, Brix. Think of the teacher. You heard what the lawyer said. If we get this wrong she’ll tear us apart.’

She paused, made sure this went in.

‘It won’t be just Buchard packing his bags.’

Back in the interview room.

‘We’re getting search warrants for your house,’ Meyer said. ‘If there’s anything there we’ll find it. We want access to your office and car. Your phone records. Your bank accounts. Your email.’

He grinned.

‘You can’t go back home. Maybe you should try sleeping on the street. Get closer to the voters, huh?’

‘Very funny,’ Hartmann muttered.

‘There’s a cellar and a summer house in the garden,’ Meyer went on. ‘I want the keys to those or we’ll break down the doors. And I want your passport.’

‘I take it from all this Troels is free to go,’ the lawyer said.

‘He can walk, can’t he?’

Hartmann reached into his jacket, threw a key ring on the table.

‘You’ll have my passport in half an hour.’

Lund looked at the keys.

‘It must be very important.’

‘What?’

‘Whatever it is that warrants all…’ She picked up the keys and shook them. ‘All this.’

‘It’s my life. Not yours. Not anyone else’s. Mine.’

Then he left with the lawyer and Brix.

Lund pulled out the file for the party flat.

‘I’m going back to Store Kongensgade. Do you have the caretaker’s number?’

She was alone with Meyer for the first time that evening.

‘What the hell happened at Hartmann’s place?’ he asked. ‘Jesus, Lund. What did you think you were doing?’

She started going through the files, looking for the number herself.

‘All you talk about is Hartmann. How screwed-up he is. Then after five minutes you let him off the hook.’

Lund found the number.

‘What the hell are you up to? What aren’t you telling me?’

She put the file in her bag and left.

‘The press know you were questioned again,’ Weber said.

‘Holck and the alliance?’ Hartmann asked.

‘They’re discussing it,’ Skovgaard told him.

Hartmann took off his coat.

‘Bremer wants to know if we should cancel the debate tomorrow. What do you want me to say?’

‘We’re not cancelling anything.’

He still wore the shirt with the wine stain.

‘Rie?’

She didn’t meet his eyes.

‘Do I have a clean shirt? Can anyone get me a clean shirt?’

She didn’t move.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t keep quiet, Troels. They got my phone records somehow. I couldn’t…’

He tried to read her face. Sorrow? Embarrassment? Anger that he’d asked her to cover in the first place?

‘You don’t have to apologize. It’s my fault. I’ll make sure they understand. This is my problem, not yours.’

Weber got a shirt from somewhere. Hartmann walked into his office to change. Skovgaard followed.

‘Besides,’ she said. ‘It won’t matter. Now the police know where you were they’ll shut up. Maybe we should have—’

‘They won’t shut up. I didn’t tell them. They’re going to search the house.’

Weber came in to listen.

‘They’ll be all over me,’ Hartmann added. ‘All over this place too. We’ve got to check out Olav again. They don’t want to.’

‘I got as far as I could,’ Weber said.

‘What if Olav didn’t use the flat himself? Maybe he lent the key to someone?’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you think? Who benefits? Who wins from all of this?’

Weber stared at him, astonished.

‘Bremer? Poul Bremer’s an old man. Him and a nineteen-year-old girl. I can’t—’

‘Bremer, Olav. Olav, Bremer.’ Skovgaard looked furious. ‘You’re a murder suspect, Troels. And all you talk about is those two.’

‘See who benefits—’

‘You have to tell the police!’ she cried.

‘I don’t owe those bastards a thing.’

‘What does it matter that you went on a drinking binge? This is an election. We need to put this crap behind us.’

He was dragging on the clean shirt. There was a knock on the door.

Two men there, dark suits.

‘Police,’ the first said. ‘We need you out of this office.’

Four more came behind carrying metal cases, two of them in blue overalls.

‘All yours,’ Hartmann said.

He went next door into the main office. Skovgaard followed.

‘You told me you went drinking on your own. The date. Your wife—’

‘Yes! That’s right.’

‘So why not tell them where you were!’

He closed his eyes, exasperated.

‘Because it’s none of their damned business.’

She put a hand to his chest to stop him leaving.

‘It’s mine, Troels. Where were you?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this under control.’

Downstairs in the elegant arched basement that was the canteen Jens Holck was eating on his own. Reading the paper. Watching the TV news.

Hartmann found him.

‘How’s the food, Jens?’

‘The usual.’

Hartmann pulled up a chair, sat opposite him, smiled, watching Holck’s eyes, his face, his movements.

‘So what’s a man to think?’ he asked. ‘Did Troels Hartmann do it or not? They’re saying now he doesn’t even have an alibi. What’s next?’

Holck cut into his meat.

‘Good question. What is next?’

‘What’s next is finding the bastard who’s responsible.’

Holck kept eating.

‘Jens. Don’t walk away now. When they clear me you’ll regret it.’

He didn’t look impressed.

‘Will I, Troels? Does it matter? You promised this was the end of it. Now… it looks as if it’ll never stop.’

‘It’s a misunderstanding.’

Holck shook his head.

‘Jens. Trust me. Have I ever let you down?’

The news came on. Hartmann heard the girl’s name. Everyone in the canteen stopped what they were doing, turned to the TV, saw Pernille Birk Larsen’s interview. Blue checked shirt, notes in her hand, pale, taut face staring at the camera. Not frightened. Determined.

She began to read.

‘I hope that someone saw something. Someone must know something. We need help. We need to hear. It’s as if the police… I don’t know what they’re doing. Maybe they’re not taking it seriously.’

The reporter asked, ‘How do you feel about Troels Hartmann being a suspect?’

Eyes wide open, staring into the camera.

‘I don’t know about that. But if someone saw something I hope they’ll come forward. Anything might be relevant. Please…’

‘I won’t distance the party from you yet,’ Jens Holck said.

Hartmann nodded gratefully.

‘But I can’t be seen with you any more. I’m sorry, Troels.’

Holck picked up his tray and headed for the stairs.

Back in Store Kongensgade Lund waited in the living room of the Liberal Party flat. She looked at the broken glass again. The shattered table.

An argument? An accident? The smallest of fights?

Thought about the bedroom again.

Finally the caretaker arrived. He managed several buildings in the area and lived close by.

‘You’ve seen Hartmann here before?’ Lund asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘With women?’

He grimaced.

‘I’m a caretaker. You see lots of things.’

‘Do you remember seeing this woman?’

She showed him the photo of Nanna.

He was looking round at the damage. Calculating.

‘I’ve seen some ladies ringing the bell. I’ve seen him come in with them.’

‘But not her?’ she asked, showing him the photo again.

‘No. I think she must have had her own key. She used to let herself into the flat and wait for him.’

Lund wanted this clear.

‘She was with Hartmann?’

‘That’s what I said. A couple of months ago. I was changing a washer next door. I saw her outside. I heard him talking.’

‘You didn’t see him?’

‘Who else could it have been?’

She put the photo back in her bag.

‘When do I hear?’ the caretaker asked.

‘Hear what?’

‘I saw it on the news. There’s a reward. Fifty thousand kroner. When do I hear?’

She took a deep breath and sighed.

‘It was him,’ the man insisted. ‘I swear it.’

Twenty-five minutes later she was at the door of the apartment, talking to Pernille Birk Larsen.

‘I need you to waive the reward.’

The woman wouldn’t let her in.

‘We didn’t offer it.’

‘If you talk to the TV people they’ll do as you say, Pernille. I know how hard it is—’

‘No you don’t. You’ve no idea.’

The husband was lurking in the background, listening.

‘You’re not surrounded by her things. You don’t keep getting her post. People don’t look at you in the street as if this was all somehow your fault—’

‘All that will happen is lots of people who want that money will contact us with useless information. Because they’ve done that we’ll have to take every one of them seriously.’

‘Good.’

‘We don’t have the officers. Things that matter will suffer.’

‘What things?’

‘I can’t tell you. I know you feel we should be more open with you. But we can’t be.’ She glanced at the man in the background. ‘We’ve said too much already. I thought you’d appreciate that.’

Pernille walked back into the living room. Theis Birk Larsen stood where he was, staring balefully at Lund.

‘You have to make Pernille understand this is wrong, Theis. Please.’

He walked to the door and closed it in her face.

Meyer phoned when she was just out of the shower. Straight away he began complaining about the flood of calls coming in after the appeal and the reward.

‘I talked to the parents,’ Lund told him. ‘They won’t help. I’m sorry. We’re going to have to deal with all of them.’

‘Wonderful. Anything else?’

‘I want more on Olav Christensen.’

‘Get someone else to deal with that, Lund. Not me.’

Mark walked in looking for breakfast.

‘You’re up early,’ she said.

He slunk off to the table in silence.

‘I’m bringing in Morten Weber again,’ Meyer told her. ‘See you.’

Mark poured himself some cornflakes.

‘How was dinner round at your father’s?’

A long pause then, ‘OK.’

‘And his girls? Are they nice?’

Lund had broken out a new jumper from its wrapping from the stock she’d bought by mail order. Thick wool, dark brown, black and white lozenges.

Mark was staring at it.

‘They’ve got a lot of different clothes,’ he said.

The milk ran out when he tried to pour it. He held up the carton.

Lund sighed, came and sat down at the table, tried to take his hand until he snatched it away.

‘Listen. I know everything’s a mess. Bengt’s coming back to Copenhagen soon. He has to teach. We’ll talk. We’ll work it out.’

He picked at the half-dry cornflakes.

‘At least now you can go to the Christmas concert at school.’

Mark played with the earring for a second then gave up on the cereal.

‘Do we have any more milk?’

She went to the fridge.

‘No. Grandma has gone shopping. She’ll be back soon.’

He sat in front of his food, head on hand, miserable.

Lund tied up her hair, got ready to go.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes?’

Mark looked awkward.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘You don’t need to wait for Grandma to get back. If you’ve got to go…’

She smiled at him, touched his arm.

‘You’re so sweet.’

He was looking at her in a way she didn’t recognize.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Go to work.’

Meyer had Morten Weber in the office.

‘So you don’t know what Hartmann was doing that weekend either? And you’re his what?’

‘Campaign manager. Not his nanny.’

Meyer didn’t like this man. He seemed slippery.

‘He looks to me like a guy who needs one.’

Weber groaned.

‘How many times do I have to tell you this. You’ve searched our office. You’ve confiscated our computers. I told you already. We are having them checked.’

‘Forget computers. Who visited Hartmann at his home on Sunday morning?’

No answer.

‘Don’t know? Someone who looks like you, Morten. You went into his house.’

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘Why?’

‘I was worried. I hadn’t heard from him. So I went over there.’

Meyer’s wife had sent him off to work with two apples and a strict order to eat both. He started peeling the first with a knife, munching on the pieces.

‘What did you do there?’

Weber folded his arms and said, ‘I looked for Troels. I’ve got a spare key. Why not?’

‘And after that you went to the dry cleaners.’

‘So what?’

‘The cleaner confirmed you brought his clothes in on Monday. The ones he wore on Friday. Why get them cleaned?’

‘They were in the house. He wears them a lot in public—’

‘Why did they need cleaning?’

‘Because they were dirty?’

Meyer finished half of the apple.

‘So you’re not his nanny. You’re his maid.’

‘I went to his house because I was worried. That’s all there is to it.’ He got up from the table. ‘I’m leaving now. We’ve got an election to fight.’

‘Why didn’t you phone him, Morten? If you were so bothered?’

‘Hartmann had nothing to do with the girl. You’re wasting your time. And ours.’

‘Rie Skovgaard called Hartmann that weekend. Over and over again. I’ve got your phone records. You didn’t try once.’

Weber shrugged.

‘Maybe I had other things to do.’

‘No you don’t. You’re a bachelor. You live for the party. Always have. Always will.’

Meyer grinned.

‘I’ve got your number. You knew where Troels Hartmann was all along. You knew what he was doing. Just the two of you. It’s your little secret. And when I find out…’

Morten Weber laughed in his face.

‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving now.’

In the office in City Hall Skovgaard and Hartmann were going over the day ahead.

‘There has to be a link between Bremer and Olav,’ he said. ‘A conference? Something…’

‘We haven’t found one. Cancel the debate.’

‘Not a chance. People will think I’m in jail.’

‘If you told the truth we wouldn’t be in this situation.’

He didn’t respond.

‘You have to cancel the debate. Some of the assembly members are talking. They’re saying you might not be fit for office. They can block your nomination.’

‘They wouldn’t dare.’

‘It’s Bremer’s call. He can do it, Troels. If he wants rid of you…’

Hartmann’s eyes lit up.

‘If? What do you mean if?’

Weber came in, grumbling about the police.

‘Olav?’ Hartmann asked.

‘People say Bremer doesn’t know him.’

‘What do you expect them to say?’

‘I’ll keep checking. But really it doesn’t feel right.’

‘Wonderful,’ Hartmann moaned. ‘I’m starving.’

He walked back into the main office to get a pastry.

Weber looked at Rie Skovgaard.

‘The police still suspect him,’ he said.

‘Of course they do. He won’t tell them where he was. Here…’ She passed him a slip of paper. ‘The computer people who found that thing on the network. It’s a sniffer. Logs every keystroke on every account. I told them to keep it there. It didn’t just trap our passwords. It got Olav’s too. He changed it last night. That’s the new one.’

‘What the hell am I supposed to do with…?’

Hartmann marched back in, dropping pieces of croissant everywhere.

‘I’ve got a meeting with the committee clerks,’ he said. ‘Call if you hear anything.’

Downstairs in a corner of the echoing lobby Olav Christensen was sweating. He’d called six times that morning. Never got through.

‘No, no. I need to talk to him personally. When’s he going to be free?’

He listened. From the dark recess he could see the policewoman Lund walk into the building. Christensen fell further into the shadows.

‘This is important,’ he said. ‘Tell him he has to call me as soon as possible. This is urgent. OK?’

She was walking towards him. Christensen started to head down the stairs towards the basement. The canteen. The security office. Out the back way to the car park, anywhere.

‘Olav?’ she called.

Too late.

He stopped. Tried to smile.

‘Spare a minute?’

Lund got the civil servant to find them a spare desk in the library. He sat there in front of the morning paper, phone on the desk, massaging his temples.

A worried man.

She took the chair opposite and smiled.

‘What’s this about?’ he said. ‘I’ve talked to you.’

‘Just a few more questions.’

‘I’d really like to help. But it’s supposed to be my day off.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I came in for a meeting. It starts in a few minutes.’

‘What kind of meeting?’

‘Just a meeting.’

‘It’s cancelled,’ she said and took out her pad, looked at the notes, looked at him.

‘You told us you didn’t know about the key to the party’s flat.’

He had his hand to his face, trying to look confident.

‘That’s right.’

‘But you booked it for people. Lots of times. We’ve got the details from the book in Morten Weber’s drawer.’ Another brief smile. ‘The same drawer where the key’s kept. You did know about the flat. And the key.’

‘I never touched the key.’

She looked around the library. Shelves and shelves of old books. Empty desks and chairs.

‘Must be hard getting on in a place like this. Waiting to fill dead men’s shoes. And Hartmann doesn’t give you the job you want.’

‘Is ambition a crime?’

‘Do you make enough money?’

He grinned.

‘Do you?’

‘You are a smart puppy,’ Lund said.

An ironic smile.

‘Thanks.’

‘No. I meant I ought to feel guilty when I kick you. I don’t. But I ought to.’

She reached into her bag, pulled something out. He looked at it.

On the polished walnut table Lund spread out Olav Christensen’s last payslip.

‘You get an extra five thousand kroner every month on top of your basic for consulting services.’ Lund watched him. ‘What services?’

He sniffed, went quiet for a moment.

‘I do some things for the environmental people. In my own time.’

‘A busy puppy too. But you work for the Education Department, don’t you?’

Christensen laughed, shook his head, muttered, ‘I don’t believe this.’

Lund pushed the payslip under his nose.

‘What don’t you believe? It’s all here. Except who gives you this money.’

He picked up the piece of paper, said nothing.

‘There must be some documentation for the amount and why you get it.’

‘Ask payroll.’

‘I did. They’d no idea.’

She took the slip from him and put it back in her bag.

‘They’re getting back to me today. They promised they’d find out. It seemed a puzzle to them too.’

She let that hang.

‘Public money, Olav. One thing you can say about a place like this…’ She looked at the rows and rows of books again. ‘There’s going to be a record somewhere.’

He nodded.

‘So why not tell me now?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I did some work. I got paid.’

‘You can do better than that.’

‘I’m busy right now.’

He got up, walked to the end of the room, out into the corridor.

Lund put her away her notebook, watched him from the door. Christensen was in the shadows of an arch along the way. On his phone already. And shaking.

Vagn Skærbæk was fielding calls again. Theis Birk Larsen wouldn’t come to the phone.

‘For the love of God,’ Skærbæk grunted when the last one finished. ‘The weirdos we get.’

‘Pull out the lead,’ Birk Larsen said.

‘What if it’s a customer?’

The big man walked over, yanked the wire from the wall.

‘Two vans to Valby, and you’ll drive one of them.’

Pernille came down. They’d barely spoken that morning.

‘I can’t go on the cub trip,’ she said.

‘Why not?’ Birk Larsen asked.

‘The funeral director called. I have to see the headstone. Make sure it’s ready.’

Birk Larsen closed his eyes, said nothing.

‘I don’t know how long—’ she began.

‘The boys really want to go—’

‘I can’t do it!’

He glanced at Skærbæk.

‘I can cover, Theis. No problem.’

‘Yeah,’ Birk Larsen said. ‘I’ll take the boys. Of course.’

He handed over the keys of the truck.

‘Find someone, Vagn. Pay double if you have to. Pernille?’

He looked round the garage. She was already walking out of the door.

It was frosty in the playground where the cub trips met. No one on the tyre swings. No kids playing on the slides.

Just one woman he barely knew standing alone, smiling at the boys as they ran up in their blue uniforms, excited, ready to go.

They leapt onto the tyres and started to play.

Birk Larsen walked up to her, looked around.

‘We’re late. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right. I’ve been trying to call. There was no answer.’

Birk Larsen scanned the deserted playground.

‘This is where we’re supposed to meet, right?’

‘Yes, but…’

He’d seen this look before. Was beginning to recognize it. At school. In the shops. It was a distanced, embarrassed kind of sympathy.

‘You didn’t get my message?’

She had something she didn’t want to say. She wanted to run, to be anywhere but here, with him and the boys.

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘The trip was cancelled this morning.’

‘Cancelled?’

‘I tried to go through with it.’

He stood there in his black hat and black jacket, feeling stupid and slow. The boys were shouting, starting to argue.

‘Why was it cancelled?’

She struggled for an answer.

‘Too many people pulled out.’

He waited.

‘A lot of them saw the TV last night. They didn’t think it was the best thing to do.’

Birk Larsen watched them on the tyre swings, barked at Anton to be more careful.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What did we do?’

‘I’m really sorry,’ the woman said. ‘Everyone feels for you. They just—’

‘The boys have been looking forward to this trip.’

She looked guilty. He felt miserable for making her feel this way. At least she’d had the courage to come and tell him.

‘I know. And we’ll do it in the end. I promise.’

‘When?’

‘A couple of weeks. I don’t know. When things—’

‘Boys!’ he shouted. ‘Anton! Emil!’

They stopped what they were doing and looked at him from the tyres.

‘We’re going. Come on.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

Anton ran up, always the first to talk.

‘When are the other kids coming, Dad?’

‘The trip’s cancelled,’ Birk Larsen told him. ‘Grandma and Grandpa want to see you. Let’s go.’

He left them with Pernille’s parents and went back home. Vagn Skærbæk had called in some help. The business was like that. There was always someone who’d come in to pick up a day’s work when it was going. Birk Larsen didn’t like using drifters. He preferred men he knew. Sometimes there was no choice.

Skærbæk was still in the depot loading cases.

Pernille wasn’t back.

‘What happened to the trip to the woods?’

‘Got cancelled,’ Birk Larsen said. ‘The boys are at their grandparents.’

He was thinking. Wondering how long Pernille would be gone.

‘Can you give me a hand, Vagn?’

‘Sure. With what?’

Birk Larsen got some of the flat-packed cardboard boxes they used for crating smaller things.

‘Let’s go upstairs.’

Nanna’s bedroom. The police marks he ignored. All he saw was the mess. The books. The pens. The pot plants, the perfumed candles. The cosmetics and creams.

And the bed with its reindeer-skin cover, the coloured sheets, the patterned pillows.

These things seemed to have been here for ever. A part of him — a stupid part he knew — once believed they’d never disappear.

He went to her corkboard, cast his eyes over the photos there. A decade or more of a life cut short. With the boys, with her parents. With friends and teachers.

Nanna smiling, always. Nanna the kid. Nanna, lately, the teenager looking to shrug off childhood and march straight into an adult world she craved, not knowing what lurked there. What the cost might be.

‘Everything goes. Everything.’

‘Theis—’

‘Everything. The clothes go in plastic bags. Just as usual.’

‘Did you talk to Pernille about this?’

‘Be careful not to break anything. OK?’

Skærbæk stepped into the bedroom, stopped by his side.

‘If that’s what you want.’

He popped open one of the cardboard cases.

Birk Larsen didn’t move. Stood in his dead daughter’s bedroom, staring at what remained.

‘No.’ He took the box. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

Morten Weber found an empty office in the education department. One man there tapping idly at a computer.

‘I need some statistics for Hartmann,’ he said. ‘I can do it myself…’

‘Take a seat. Everyone’s gone to lunch and I’m joining them.’

Then he was on his own.

Weber chose the desk furthest away from the door. Typed in the username and password Rie Skovgaard gave him. One second and he was in.

Same email system the campaign office used, different linked network. Olav Christensen’s email account stared at him. He scanned the messages.

Got partway through when Christensen walked in carrying a set of folders.

Weber tried to think.

‘Can I help?’ Christensen asked. ‘We don’t normally see political people in here. Just us.’

‘No, no need.’ He was floundering. ‘Someone told me there was a virus.’

Weber got up quickly from the desk and realized straight off he hadn’t logged out of Christensen’s account.

The young civil servant was on him immediately.

‘You’re tech support now, Morten?’

He looked at the screen, swore, logged himself out.

Bunched up a fist, jabbed Weber hard in the chest, pushed him against the desks.

‘They sent you to make me the scapegoat, did they?’

Christensen’s phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen.

‘Did Hartmann put you up to this?’

‘It’s a virus,’ Weber said and tried to push back.

Got another punch in the ribs, a kick in the shins. Christensen had him by the lapels, shoving him into the shadows by the wall.

Weber looked at the door.

No one.

‘Don’t give me that shit!’ Christensen barked at him.

Footsteps down the corridor.

Weber fought free, stumbled for the door, got out into the light. Half-walked, half-ran.

Behind he heard the phone again and Olav Christensen’s low, frightened voice as he answered it.

Morten Weber stopped. He’d taken a file into the office as a pretext. It was important. Confidential. He’d left it there.

And Christensen was an arrogant, pushy kid.

A playground bully. Someone else’s puppet.

Slowly, quietly, Weber walked back to the education office and slipped through the door, listening.

Christensen had retreated into a corner, his back to the door. He sounded scared.

‘We’ve got to talk. For Christ’s sake! What am I supposed to say?’

Weber edged forward, hearing every word.

‘They’re checking my payslips. They want to know where the money comes from. You’ve got to do something.’

The folder was still on the desk. Weber realized he could get out without being seen.

‘Fuck it!’ Christensen screeched. ‘I need some help. No, no. Either I talk to him in person or I’m spilling the beans. I’m not going down for this. I’m not going down for him.’

Morten Weber picked up the folder and stood where he was. Olav Christensen turned, saw him, fell silent.

Put the phone in his pocket.

Weber wondered if he’d ever seen anyone this scared in the grandiose surroundings of City Hall.

‘Who were you talking to?’

Christensen looked dumbstruck.

‘Olav. If you’ve done something wrong…’

Christensen picked up his briefcase. He was in a daze.

‘We can help you,’ Weber said. ‘Come on…’

The civil servant was scouring the office, unlocking filing cabinets, taking documents.

As he headed for the door Weber stood in front of him.

‘Talk to me and I can do something.’

‘No,’ Olav Christensen said. ‘You can’t.’

Lund was back at Hartmann’s house watching Meyer, Svendsen and three other officers go through it room by room.

She’d got a call from headquarters about the payslip.

‘Someone in City Hall has to know who ordered that money to be paid,’ she told the officer handling the inquiry. ‘Check Christensen’s records. Check the audit trail. It’s important. Who, when and how.’

When she was off the phone Svendsen stuck his head round from the kitchen and said with some sly amusement, ‘The Swedish guy… your ex, has been trying to get you.’

She ignored him.

‘The diary’s interesting,’ Meyer said.

It was the one Lund saw, but briefly.

Meyer flicked through the pages.

‘He’s been keeping it ever since his wife died. Then that Friday he stopped. Why?’

‘What do you think?’

Meyer licked his fingers and turned more pages.

‘Something happened and he’s not proud of it. Or he did something he didn’t want to write down. Listen to this.’

He read out from the page.

‘“I’m beside myself. I have to let this go before it kills me.” ’

‘This is a waste of time,’ she said.

‘Lund!’

It was Svendsen again, phone in hand.

‘No,’ Meyer cut in. ‘She doesn’t want to talk to her ex.’

‘You need to call Morten Weber. He caught Olav Christensen talking to someone about his payslips. Then the guy took off from City Hall.’

‘I want Olav Christensen taken into custody. I want those payslips explained.’

‘Now we’re wasting our time,’ Meyer grumbled.

‘Olav Christensen knows who was using the flat on the side. He’s been doing someone a few favours.’

Meyer folded his arms and sighed.

‘Says who?’

‘Morten Weber by the sound of it. Put a trace on Christensen’s phone.’

She picked up her bag and headed for the door.

‘There’s no point in looking here.’

‘We haven’t finished, Lund!’

It was cold outside and dry. Lund popped in a Nicotinell and drove back to the centre.

Theis Birk Larsen sat at the kitchen table, tapping the truck keys, waiting for her footsteps on the stairs.

He hadn’t changed out of his work clothes. He didn’t feel right. Feel settled. The flat, their home was changing, and they were changing with it.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Pernille said when she came through the door. ‘Did anyone call for me?’

‘No.’

She had that animated expression that came from thinking about Nanna. The only time she looked alive. He was starting to hate it.

‘I’m glad I went. They were using the wrong lettering. It wouldn’t look right.’ She listened. ‘Where are the boys?’

‘At your parents’.’

‘Why?’

Birk Larsen glanced at the faces frozen into the table.

‘We’ve got to talk about this. Pernille. We’ve got to…’

She wasn’t listening. Eyes wide she was staring past him, at the open door to Nanna’s room. She walked towards it, went in.

Bare walls, bare cupboards. No desk, no carpet. No photos. No clothes. Just the single bed stripped of everything but a mattress. Not a thing in the window. Not even a plant.

He stayed at the table, back to her.

‘Where are her things?’ she asked in a cold, bleak voice.

‘Anton’s pissed the bed three nights running. Emil says crazy things. If you listened to the boys you’d understand.’

She marched back to the table, said again, ‘Where are her things?’

‘In the van. I’m putting them in storage in Valby tonight. We’ll keep everything. We just don’t need it here.’

With a sudden violent movement she went for the truck keys on the table.

Birk Larsen’s hand closed over them.

‘Give me them.’

‘No. We can’t go on this way. Stuck like this. I’m not allowing it.’

There was a look on her face he didn’t recognize for a moment. Then he put a word to it: hatred.

‘You’re not allowing it?’

She flew through the door, down to the garage. Was at the spare key rack in the office by the time he caught up with her.

‘Listen to me, Pernille.’

She kept scrabbling through the nests of rings.

‘Listen to me! The cubs cancelled the trip because of that shit on TV. Do you understand what’s happening?’

She pushed past him without a word, went to the parked van, tried the doors.

‘Take it out on me. Not the boys. They don’t deserve it—’

‘Just open it, will you?’

Birk Larsen hesitated.

‘Don’t talk to me like that. I don’t deserve it.’

‘Open it!’

He pulled out the keys, hit the remote. She scrabbled at the back of the van, dragged the door open.

All the photos and the furniture. Everything that was left of Nanna’s life stared back at her from the grubby rear of a scarlet removals truck.

‘I’ll take it to the warehouse. It won’t be damaged. Nothing’s going to get lost.’

She got on the step and climbed inside.

Birk Larsen rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands.

‘Pernille…’

She got hold of the photos first. Then with her spare hand the bedside lamp. Climbed down from the back of the van and looked at him.

‘I’m going to take this upstairs. Then I’m going to pick up the boys.’

‘Pernille—’

‘Am I just a face here?’ she asked. ‘Someone to sleep with? A servant to do your washing and look after your kids? Not to talk to. Not ask about… about…’

The words wouldn’t come, for either of them this time. The social people had told them to put Nanna’s death behind them. Clearing her room made sense to him. It was doing what he was told, and ever since he’d married, that, he thought, was what people wanted. The new, obedient Theis. Not the one from before.

‘When I come back…’ she said, face hard set and furious.

A long moment. One in which he felt his heart stop. They never argued outright like this. Never talked much sometimes. There wasn’t the need. Now, trapped in this dread limbo, everything had changed. Thoughts that went unspoken now burst into the air alive and thrashing, demanding to be heard.

‘When I come back I want you to be gone,’ she said and that was that.

He stood there stiff and still as a pillar, struggling with his ravelled thoughts. Wondering if there could ever have been another way. A different set of actions. Another fork in the road.

Thought of only one thing to say.

‘OK,’ Birk Larsen murmured and watched her walk away.

Lund was at the wheel of her car, Lennart Brix in her ear.

‘What in God’s name are you doing now?’

‘I tried Olav’s home. He’s not there. I’ve got an address for his sister.’

‘Why are we looking for him?’

‘Because he’s involved. Have we traced his mobile yet?’

‘No, Lund. I called off the search.’

She took her foot off the pedal. Let the car coast for a moment.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘We’ve got a witness who saw Hartmann with bloody clothes on Saturday morning.’

‘Since that idiotic reward we’ve got fifty people claiming they saw everything.’

‘I want you to concentrate on them.’

‘If they knew something why didn’t they come forward until there was money on the table? Christensen knows who was with Nanna.’

A long sigh down the phone.

‘I really don’t have time for this. You’ve got your orders.’

‘Olav was taking bribes to give someone access to the flat. Every month he gets a fixed sum straight out of City Hall. Brix? Brix?’

She thought he’d gone. Then he said, ‘Who ordered the payment?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. I need his phone traced. He’s in a panic. He’s calling someone. Get me a name.’

Another silence.

‘He made a call in Vester Voldgade about half an hour ago.’

The long street that ran past City Hall. Not far away.

‘Thank you for that,’ she said. ‘Who to?’

‘An airline.’

Skovgaard came off the phone.

‘Bremer’s moving on the selection. He’s called the group chairs together. There’s going to be a meeting tonight.’

‘They’ll get Olav before that. Call Lund and find out.’

Weber watched her go into the adjoining office.

‘Troels. If they don’t find him you’re going to have to tell the truth. You know that, don’t you?’

‘We’ve already been through this.’

‘Bremer’s going to declare you unfit to be elected. There’s no comeback from that. No grubby deals. No alliances. You’re finished. For good. You’ll have to quit the party. Forget about politics. It’s over.’

‘They’ll find him!’

‘And if they don’t?’ Morten Weber looked around the small office. At the posters of Hartmann smiling. ‘All this gets pissed away just because you don’t have the guts to…’

Hartmann was on his feet, furious.

‘They’ll find him,’ he bellowed.

Poul Bremer walked through the City Hall parking garage, briefcase in hand, aide by his side.

In the shadows Olav Christensen lurked, silent, thinking.

‘The press have to be told something,’ Bremer said. ‘I haven’t heard a word from Hartmann or the police. I’ve called an emergency meeting of the group chairs. We need to decide on Hartmann’s eligibility. This scandal damages us all. The matter’s a slur on the political class.’

The woman was nodding.

‘I’m assuming we’ll decide Hartmann is unfit,’ Bremer added. ‘It seems inevitable. But it’s important we’re all agreed on this. Unanimous. If there’s dissent the problem will only fester.’

Christensen marched out of the darkness, straight up to Bremer.

‘We need to talk,’ he said.

‘And who the hell are you? Press? Not now.’

Christensen’s eyes flared with fury.

‘You know who I am! I’m Olav. I’ve been trying to reach you.’

Bremer kept walking.

‘Olav?’

‘Yes. Christensen. In Hartmann’s division.’

Bremer shook his grey head.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what this is about and I’m too busy. I don’t know you.’

‘Yes!’

Christensen’s shriek echoed round the garage.

‘I’m the one who helped you. Remember? Without me you’re screwed, man.’

Bremer stopped and looked at him. He told the aide to walk on.

‘Helped me do what?’

‘You know perfectly well.’

‘No. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You needed the flat.’

‘The flat? What flat?’

‘I fixed the keys for you. When you wanted them—’

‘No, no, no. Calm down. I didn’t ask for any keys.’

Christensen stood in the chilly garage, open-mouthed.

‘Who asked you to do this?’ Bremer repeated. ‘Was it Hartmann?’

‘You mean he didn’t even mention me?’

Bremer closed his eyes for a moment.

‘For the last time. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. If you know something we should call the police.’

He pulled out his phone.

‘What did you say your name was again?’

Bremer fumbled with the buttons on the phone.

When he looked up he was on his own.

Two minutes from City Hall Lund got a call from Meyer.

‘I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you,’ he said.

‘I don’t have time.’

‘Tell him yourself.’

A voice she had to place said, ‘It’s Carsten.’

‘I’m going to have to call you back.’

‘It’s about Mark.’

‘He said you had a nice time.’

‘Mark hasn’t been to school all week. I talked to his teacher. They thought he’d already moved to Sweden.’

‘I’ll have a word with him,’ Lund said.

‘We’re past that, Sarah. When you can find the time to discuss your family phone me. Don’t take too long. I’m not having my son screwed up by you.’

Silence.

Then Meyer was back on.

‘You still there, Lund?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We’ve found Olav.’

Mark and Carsten disappeared from her thoughts.

‘Where?’

‘If you’re near City Hall you should be able to see him. Just look for the blue lights.’

Three ambulances, two squad cars. A gurney on the ground. Blood on the shiny black street.

The uniform officer she spoke to said Christensen was crossing the street when he was hit by a fast car that drove off. No one saw the driver. No one got a registration number.

Lund walked towards the ambulances. Olav Christensen was in the office suit he always wore. Head a mess. Neck broken she guessed. Blood streaming from his mouth and nose.

Eyes still open. All the arrogance gone. Just fear now, sharp and real.

He was looking at her as she bent over him.

‘Take nice slow breaths,’ the ambulance man said.

‘What is it, Olav?’ Lund asked.

He was convulsing in tortured rhythmic throes. Gouts of gore came with each breath. No words.

‘Olav. Tell me.’

Someone called for oxygen.

‘Olav…’

In one moment his eyes glazed over then closed. The tension in his neck relaxed. The clinical mask went on. His head turned to one side.

‘Olav?’

The medics pushed her away. She watched the familiar dance around a dying man. Walked to the side of the road. Begged a cigarette from one of the uniforms. Smoked it in the shadow of the Rådhus, beneath the golden statue of Absalon.

There were lights on inside. It always seemed that way. But no one walked out to see Olav Christensen die on the black wet cobblestones of Vester Voldgade. They were all too busy with themselves.

The car that killed Olav Christensen was a white estate. They knew no more than that. Lund put out a bulletin straight away. The savage injuries to Christensen indicated it had been travelling at speed when it hit him. There had to be damage.

The best witness she had, an off-duty parking attendant from the City Hall garage, was adamant the collision was deliberate. Christensen had been crossing the empty road when the car pulled out of the side and went straight for him.

Meyer was there with Svendsen and some night men.

‘I want Christensen’s computer taken into forensics,’ she said. ‘I want his office searched and everyone in his department questioned. See if anyone close to him drives a white estate car.’

Svendsen went off to City Hall.

‘You’re sure this was deliberate?’ Meyer asked.

‘Where are the skid marks? He was accelerating straight at Christensen. He wanted to kill him.’

Lund looked at the Rådhus.

‘The parking attendant was finishing work. He said he saw Christensen before. He was in the garage. He spoke to Poul Bremer.’

Meyer stopped in the street.

‘Bremer?’

‘Bremer,’ Lund said. ‘Come on. Let’s talk to the Lord Mayor.’

City Hall was abuzz with rumour. Skovgaard had confirmed what she could to the police. On the way to the meeting she briefed Hartmann.

‘He died in the street.’

‘They’re sure it was him?’

‘Absolutely. Lund was there. She tried to talk to him.’

She put a hand to his arm.

‘You have to tell them where you were.’

They were at the top of the main staircase. Lund and Meyer were walking up.

Hartmann pounced.

‘Not now,’ Lund said. ‘I don’t have the time.’

‘Is he dead?’

Lund kept walking.

‘Yes.’

‘Morten overheard a conversation. Olav was talking to someone about the money.’

‘I know, I know.’

Down the long corridor, beneath the tiles and mosaics.

‘Stop this!’ Hartmann barked at her. ‘You know I’m not involved. Why not say it?’

Lund and Meyer walked a touch more quickly.

‘We don’t have time,’ Meyer said.

Skovgaard’s temper was fighting its short rein.

‘Troels could lose his seat because of this crap!’

Meyer stopped and stared at both of them.

‘You lied to us, Hartmann. And you…’ He stabbed a finger in Skovgaard’s face. ‘You gave him a fake alibi. Don’t pretend we owe you a damned thing.’

‘Am I above suspicion?’ Hartman pressed him. ‘You’re investigating Olav. Not me. That’s all I need to know.’

Lund started walking again. Meyer stayed for a moment.

‘You know what? I’ve worked out what you guys do here. You talk and talk and talk. But never listen.’

Then he walked on.

The two cops were disappearing down the corridor, towards Bremer’s department.

‘I’ll remember this,’ Hartmann shouted after them.

Poul Bremer looked relaxed, confident. Baffled.

‘You had a meeting with Olav Christensen before his accident?’ Lund asked.

‘I’ve never met the man as far as I know. He hung around the garage and just leapt out and started haranguing me.’

Meyer had his feet up on the polished coffee table, making notes.

‘You say this was unplanned?’

Bremer’s grey eyes fixed her.

‘I’m the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen. I don’t hold meetings in car parks. I told you. I’ve never spoken to him before.’

‘What did he say?’ Meyer asked.

‘He started talking rubbish. He said he’d been helping me.’

‘With what?’

‘I didn’t understand. He was talking about the key to a flat.’

‘What flat?’

‘I’ve no idea. I assumed he’d confused me with someone else.’

‘You’re the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen,’ Lund said.

‘I didn’t know this man. I didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. Phillip…’

A tall, bearded figure had walked into the room. City Hall suit and tie.

‘This is my private secretary, Phillip Bressau,’ Bremer said. ‘Since you seem to think this is important I’d like him to listen.’

Bremer shook his head.

‘I don’t understand. Why all these questions about a traffic accident?’

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Bressau said. ‘You two are working on the Nanna case, right?’

‘Is this true? He was killed?’

‘We’re looking into it,’ Lund said.

‘Dammit. I won’t take that kind of evasive nonsense from my staff. I won’t take it from you. What’s going on here?’

‘When Christensen spoke to you did he mention any names?’

‘No! He realized he’d made a mistake. Then he walked off.’

Lund waited. Nothing more.

‘Every month,’ she said, ‘five thousand kroner were paid into his wages. Above his salary.’

Bremer turned to Bressau, perplexed.

‘No one can tell me what the money was for,’ Lund went on.

‘The mayor has nothing to do with this civil servant,’ Bressau broke in. ‘He worked for education—’

‘Someone gave him the impression he was doing you favours, Bremer. To do with the flat in Store Kongensgade and the girl.’

‘What?’

The old man sat on his comfy leather chair, rigid, astonished.

‘Is this an accusation?’ Bressau asked.

Meyer was swearing, his head in his hands.

‘It’s a question,’ Lund said. ‘I’m trying to find a connection here. We need your help…’

Poul Bremer was thinking.

‘Did he mention a name?’ Lund asked again.

‘Is this about us or Troels Hartmann?’

Meyer leaned back in his chair and let out a long howl.

That shut them up.

‘It’s about murder,’ Meyer cried. ‘It’s about a nineteen-year-old girl who was raped and then dumped inside a car and left to drown.’

Bremer and his civil servant stayed silent.

‘It’s about finding out what happened while all you fine and important people…’ Meyer’s hand waved around the grand office. ‘… do nothing but protect your backs.’

‘Help us,’ Lund pleaded.

Meyer pulled out a cigarette, lit it in the face of Bremer’s furious complaints.

Then he blew smoke up towards the mosaics and gilt of the ceiling.

‘Do what Lund says,’ he added. ‘Or I stay here all night.’

Poul Bremer wasn’t like his election photos. He seemed older. Skin more florid. Eyes more tired.

‘Tell Bressau what you want and he’ll look into it,’ he said. ‘Keep me informed on a regular basis. I require that.’

They didn’t move.

‘Is that enough?’ he asked.

Meyer took his feet off the table, stuck the cigarette between his lips, stood up.

‘We’ll see.’

On her own in the kitchen Pernille Birk Larsen listened to the radio news, keeping it quiet so that the boys in their bedroom couldn’t hear.

‘After the mother’s appeal several witnesses have come forward in the Nanna case. The police have searched the Liberals’ office and Troels Hartmann’s home. Hartmann himself has been questioned.’

Lotte came through the door with some takeaway food from round the corner.

Pernille watched her start to open the boxes. She didn’t want her sister in the house really. Not after the deceit over the club. But Theis was gone. She couldn’t bear to ask another favour of her parents, who’d never liked him and would wear that told-you-so look for ever.

‘Tomorrow we meet the cemetery manager at the grave,’ she said in a whisper.

‘OK.’

Lotte got some plates, forks and spoons.

‘What about Mum and Dad?’

‘It’ll be just us.’

‘Us?’

‘You and me. And the boys.’

‘What about Theis?’

She didn’t answer.

‘I know you’re mad at him, Pernille. But you have to talk. You can’t shut him out.’

Nothing.

‘Maybe he shouldn’t have packed her things without asking. But for God’s sake—’

‘This is none of your business.’

‘He didn’t do it to upset you! He did it because he wanted to help.’

‘To help?’

‘You’ve got to get past this. Don’t you see? If you let it destroy more than it has already—’

‘It…’

‘I mean—’

‘Someone killed Nanna!’ Pernille said as loudly as she dared. ‘It didn’t happen yesterday. Last week. Last year.’

She stabbed her head with her finger.

‘It happens now. Every day. You don’t…’

She didn’t feel hungry, didn’t want any food.

Lotte said, ‘I know they have to find him. But that’s not more important than you and Theis and the boys.’

Pernille felt the fury rising inside her and realized she was growing to like it.

She glared at her sister. Lotte was still beautiful. Lotte never had kids, never had those kinds of cares. Never had a husband or anyone who stayed for long.

‘Who are you to lecture me?’ Pernille asked her. ‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’

Lotte was starting to cry and it didn’t matter.

‘I’m your sister—’

‘Nothing’s more important. Not me. Not Theis. Not the boys. Not you—’

‘Pernille.’

‘If you’d told me what Nanna was up to I could have stopped her!’

Lotte sat at the table, hunched and tearful, silent, eyes downcast.

‘I don’t trust you any more than I trust him. How can I?’

Giggles from the bedroom. She wondered if Anton would finally have a dry night.

‘Anton! Emil!’ Pernille called. ‘We’ve got dinner!’

The boys yelled gleefully.

‘They shouldn’t see you crying, Lotte,’ she said. ‘Either stop it or go.’

Lotte went to the bathroom, dried her eyes. Wondered about the coke in her handbag. Hated herself for even thinking of it.

Then she went back and picked at the food, listened to the boys laughing, watched Pernille glued to the TV.

At eight thirty she walked downstairs to the garage. Vagn Skærbæk was there, calling round anxiously.

He hadn’t located Theis. Had no idea where he might be.

‘Who did you phone?’

‘As many as I trusted. I told them not to start any rumours. We don’t want it all over Vesterbro.’

He and Theis were like brothers. Theis always dominant, but the two of them close. If anyone could find him…

‘I’ll take a drive round,’ Skærbæk said. ‘I can think of a few places—’

‘What did he say when he came round your place?’

Skærbæk pulled on his jacket. Black, like Theis’s, but cheaper.

‘Nothing.’

‘He must have said something—’

‘He said nothing! I was at home watching TV and he rang the doorbell. He mumbled something about it all being his fault.’

‘And you let him go?’

‘What do you want me to do? Slap him round the head? Would you try that?’

‘Vagn—’

‘I didn’t know she’d bitten his balls off. I went to get him a beer and he was gone.’

It was cold in the garage. Lotte was in the skimpy top she wore to the Heartbreak. She hugged herself and shivered.

‘Does he know the urn’s being buried tomorrow?’

‘Yes. I guess. If Pernille told him.’

She was out of ideas.

Vagn Skærbæk took out his car keys.

‘I’ll drive around. I’ll find him.’

Then a bleak aside, to himself more than her.

‘I mean… it’s not like it’s the first time.’

Poul Bremer sat in front of the group leaders, the holders of the keys to City Hall, arguing for a formal investigation of Hartmann the following evening.

‘I’ve always admired Troels as a hard-working and clever politician. But the evidence is against him and he seems unable to give a credible explanation. This is a sad occasion…’

Bremer looked at each of them, Jens Holck more than the others.

‘We’ve no choice. We have to vote for his appearance before the Electoral Commission. He needs to explain himself.’

‘Hartmann’s not been charged,’ Holck broke in. ‘Why not leave this to the police?’

‘We all know Troels. We all like him…’

‘The whole council could have been sued if he’d pilloried the teacher the way you wanted,’ Holck added. ‘Should we risk doing the same to him?’

‘I’ve known Troels longer than any of you. I understand how you feel.’

The statesman’s smile.

‘Especially since you were about to enter into an alliance with him.’

He came round and patted Holck on the back.

‘Right, Jens? But parties aside, it’s our duty to maintain the public’s confidence in the political system. We have to ask ourselves how long our own credibility can withstand such a prominent member of our assembly being questioned daily as a suspect in a murder case. If we’re to—’

The doors broke open. Hartmann stormed in.

‘I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?’

‘You weren’t invited, Troels.’

‘No,’ Hartmann snarled. ‘I wouldn’t be. Have you told everyone the police are now investigating the case here? In the Rådhus? Did you tell them they’re looking at the civil servants? That they interviewed you?’

Bremer stood his ground.

‘This is a private meeting. You were the subject. That is why you weren’t invited.’

Hartmann looked at the group around the table.

‘If you’ve got questions ask them! Don’t listen to this devious old bastard. Ask me!’

Bremer laughed.

‘If that’s what people wish. Have your say. While you can…’

Hartmann walked in front of them.

‘I know you’re worried about the damage. Reporting me to the Electoral Commission doesn’t solve a thing. I’ve nothing to do with this case…’

‘You’ll find that out soon enough,’ said Bremer.

Bremer’s phone rang. He walked away to answer it, then went to the fax machine in the corner of the office.

‘Someone bought Olav’s services and his silence,’ Hartmann went on. ‘With the help of funds paid for by City Hall. Don’t ask me how. The police are investigating.’

Bremer was coming back with a sheet of paper from the machine. He was reading it carefully.

Hartmann was in his stride.

‘The Lord Mayor neglected to mention any of this information even though he knew of it. He wants to get rid of me to help his own campaign.’

‘Oh, Troels,’ Bremer said. ‘You’re so full of accusations for others, and silent when it comes to answering for yourself.’

‘I will not—’

‘We’ve traced the money Olav Christensen was receiving.’

He brandished the paper.

‘Phillip Bressau came across it hidden in the accounts. He’s given the records to the police. They’re on their way. There. Are you happy with my recounting of the facts now?’

He passed the paper round the table.

‘It’s true the money came from the pay office,’ he added. ‘It was in connection with environmental reports, supposedly. Reports made for the schools service. Money for so-called consultation, paid for directly from the Mayor of Education’s budget.’

Hartmann snatched the sheet as Jens Holck read it.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know every damned person who’s on my payroll! Any more than you do. This is one more piece of nonsense.’ Hartmann was floundering. ‘It’s a mistake. The police can clear it up.’

The people around the table were silent, wouldn’t look at him.

‘If I was using this man,’ Hartmann yelled, ‘would I put him on my own payroll? It’s a fabrication…’

Bremer took his seat at the head of the table, watched Hartmann ranting.

‘A fabrication,’ Hartmann repeated more quietly. ‘Like everything else. From the beginning. Jens…’

He took Holck’s arm.

‘You know I wouldn’t do this.’

Holck didn’t budge.

‘Someone’s changing the damned records. Someone in this place—’

The door opened. Meyer was there with his big ears and miserable unshaven face.

They all turned and looked and waited.

‘For God’s sake…’ Hartmann began.

Meyer rapped on the shining wood.

‘Time for walkies, Troels,’ he said.

The melee was there already. Flashing cameras, shrieking reporters. Meyer told a cameraman to piss off. Svendsen got his hand on Hartmann’s head as he thrust him into the back of the squad car parked on the cobbled courtyard beneath the golden statue of Absalon.

Rie Skovgaard and Morten Weber watched from the gates. The pack ran after the blue police car with ‘Politi’ painted on the side in white. Hartmann sat slumped in the back, heading back to headquarters again.

‘This time, Hartmann,’ Meyer said from the front seat, ‘you tell us the truth or you will spend the night sweating in a cell.’

Back in the committee room Bremer walked over to Holck who was on his own, smoking by the window, watching the commotion outside.

‘If you want a life in politics, Jens,’ he whispered, ‘you’ll vote with me.’

Holck looked pale and worried. He chewed on the cigarette. Said nothing.

‘And if you’re smart you’ll get the rest of Hartmann’s lapdogs to do the same. Right now I could cut you all loose if I wanted and rule this place on my own.’

‘Poul—’

‘No, Jens. Don’t talk.’

The old man looked cruel and vengeful. There was an opportunity here and he was determined to take it.

‘He got out of there before,’ Holck said anyway.

‘Not this time. But you choose.’

His voice grew louder. The others looked at him the way they used to do. In meek obedience.

‘All of you,’ Bremer said, ‘must choose. Do it wisely this time.’

From the corridor Lund watched as Svendsen dealt with Hartmann in the detention room.

Standard procedure. Happened every day. But not to a man in a fine business suit, a politician of Hartmann’s stature.

Svendsen counted out his belongings. Seven hundred kroner and some change. Twenty euros. Two credit cards and a phone.

‘Now remove your jacket and put it on the chair.’

A uniformed officer wrote down a tally of the items.

‘Your tie,’ Svendsen said.

They watched.

‘Shoes on the table.’

Hartmann did it.

‘Now lift your arms. I need to search you.’

The uniformed officer got up and twisted the venetian blinds. Lund saw no more.

Back to the office, Brix in a chair, looking at the paperwork.

‘So we can prove Hartmann was behind the payments to the civil servant?’ he asked.

‘It’s a bit complicated,’ Meyer said. ‘But from what the Bressau guy came up with it looks that way.’

‘Has he said anything?’

‘Not a word.’

Brix looked at Lund.

‘We should focus on the hit-and-run driver,’ she said. ‘We know that couldn’t be Hartmann.’

‘I want you on the Nanna case. That’s Hartmann. Not the civil servant.’

Lund picked up the paper from Bremer’s press man.

‘I talked to people in Hartmann’s department. No one’s even heard of this arrangement. Yet Bressau can pull it out of the files in five minutes flat.’

‘So he kept it quiet,’ Meyer said.

‘Hartmann tried to fire Olav! He gave us his name!’

Brix didn’t budge.

‘If he’s innocent why won’t he say so?’

‘I don’t know! But this doesn’t add up.’

‘Then we bring in the prosecutor,’ Brix said. ‘Maybe that’ll loosen his tongue. One way or another that stuck-up bastard’s going to talk.’

She played with Meyer’s toy car, listened to the little siren.

‘Are we here to find Nanna Birk Larsen’s murderer? Or to make some kind of political point for the man who runs City Hall?’

Brix smiled. She hadn’t seen that much before.

‘Just this once I’ll forget you said that, Lund. Perhaps, when it comes to Hartmann, you lack your customary objectivity.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

Brix turned to Meyer for support. Meyer stared at the desk.

‘Thanks,’ Lund threw at him. ‘Great teamwork.’

Then she picked up her bag, walked out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

Brix watched her go.

‘You can do it yourself, Meyer. Get on with it.’ The smile again. ‘Good work.’

‘Maybe we should listen to her, chief.’

‘Why?’

‘When Lund gets an idea…’

Brix waited.

‘There’s usually something in it. Haven’t you noticed?’

Lennart Brix looked at him with sorrowful eyes.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘You were doing so well too.’

‘What?’

‘Two steps forward. One step back. Don’t stumble again. You can’t afford it.’

On her way out Lund stopped to chase the night team.

‘Call any accident repair shops. Tell them to look for a white estate. Damage to the front and left wing. Let me know.’

Morten Weber was waiting in the corridor.

‘You’ve got to listen to me, Lund. This is out of control.’

‘Talk to Jan Meyer. He’s on duty. I’m not.’

‘Hartmann didn’t kill that girl. It’s absurd.’

‘So he should tell us where he was. It’s not hard.’

Weber was struggling with something. This interested her.

‘It is hard.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s a proud man. He needs his dignity. Pathetic I know but there you are. It doesn’t make him a murderer.’

She waited.

‘Troels isn’t as strong or as confident as he seems. You know that, Lund. You can read people.’

‘This isn’t about reading people.’

‘He’s a fool sometimes. I don’t know why I put up with it.’

‘You should tell this to the judge. I don’t think it’ll work. It doesn’t for me.’

She walked towards the exit. Weber followed.

‘Let me talk to him,’ he pleaded.

‘You must be joking.’

‘Jesus, Lund. He’s about to be excluded from the election! It’s the only thing that matters to him.’

She stopped.

‘Is this a joke to you people? A young girl dead. Raped. Murdered. And every time we ask you what’s going on you lie and duck and dodge our questions?’

To his credit Weber looked embarrassed.

‘Well?’ she added. ‘Is it a joke? A kid? Battered then dumped in a car to drown? Do you want to see the photos, Morten?’

She took his arm.

‘Come on. Let’s look at them and laugh.’

Lund was getting angry. It didn’t happen often. She liked the release.

‘We’ve got ones of the autopsy too if you’d like—’

‘Stop this, Lund. It’s beneath you.’

Bright eyes staring, hand on his jacket.

‘Beneath me? Nothing’s beneath me. Not if I can find out who killed Nanna Birk Larsen. If you know where Hartmann was tell me. Or else get out of here. Stop wasting my time.’

Weber did nothing for a moment, then shook his head.

‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Sleep well,’ she said and showed him to the door.

Lund picked up Mark from a party, drove him back to Vibeke’s listening to the radio. Hartmann had been arrested on suspicion of Nanna’s murder. He was going to be reported to the Electoral Commission and stripped of his right to stand for election.

‘Does it have to be so loud?’ Mark asked.

She turned it off.

‘Was the party fun?’

The Birk Larsen case felt hardwired inside her head.

A long, long pause then he said, with a pained drawl, ‘It was OK.’

‘I know you haven’t been at school all week.’

She looked at him for an answer, got none.

‘I know it’s difficult to go back after you’ve said goodbye. I’m sorry. But you can’t skip school. Mark?’

He was gazing out of the window, watching the rainy night pass by.

‘I won’t accept it. Do you understand?’

He thought for a while.

‘Is it OK if I go and stay at Dad’s for a couple of days?’

She stared at the black wet road ahead.

‘When did you talk to Carsten about this?’

‘Is it OK?’

‘No. It’s not OK. When did you talk to him?’

‘What does it matter? I spend all my time with Grandma anyway. Not with you.’

‘You know what your father’s like. He promises something and then… he forgets.’

He sighed and stared at the dashboard.

‘You know how upset you get when that happens. I won’t have it. They only just moved here. They’ve got things to do.’

‘He said it was OK.’

‘When did he talk to you about this? When?’

‘I’m not one of your suspects, Mum.’

‘Where were you all week anyway? What did you do?’

His face was back at the window.

‘Everything’s fine at Dad’s house. They’ve got a room for me.’

‘It’s still not going to happen.’

He thrust his feet deep into the footwell, locked his arms together. Torn between child and teenager.

‘I know it’s been difficult, Mark. But don’t worry. I’ll deal with it. Nothing’s changed. We’re still the same.’

‘It’s not the same. You damn well know it.’

‘Mark—’

‘I don’t want to talk about this.’

‘Mark—’

‘It’s my life!’ he yelled. ‘You don’t own me.’