The Killing - 01 - The Killing by David Hewson Read Free Book Online Page A

mind? Do you—’
    The big man picked him up by his T-shirt, carried the kid back down to the hall, launched him against the front door, balled a massive fist in his face.
    Oliver Schandorff went quiet.
    Birk Larsen thought better of it. Strode up the open-plan stairs two at a time. The place was vast, the kind of mansion he could never dream of owning, however hard he worked, however many scarlet trucks he ran.
    There was deafening rock music coming from a bedroom on the left. The place stank of stale dope and sex.
    A double bed with crumpled sheets, crumpled duvet. Curly blonde hair poked out from beneath the pillows. Face down, naked feet out of the bottom. Stoned. Drunk. Both, or worse.
    He glowered back at Schandorff who was following him, hands in pockets, smirking in a way that made Theis Birk Larsen want to punch him out on the spot.
    Instead he walked to the bed, wondering how to play this, pulled back the duvet and said gently, ‘Nanna. You need to come home. It doesn’t matter what happened. We’re going now . . .’
    The naked woman stared up at him, her hard face a mix of fright and fury. Blonde too. Same shade. Twenty-five if she was a day.
    ‘I did tell you,’ Schandorff said. ‘Nanna was never here. If I could help. . .’
    Theis Birk Larsen walked outside wondering what to do. What to tell Pernille. Where to go next? He didn’t like the police but maybe it was time to talk to them. He wanted to know something, find something. Or make it happen.
    There was a sound overhead. A helicopter, the word POLITI underneath.
    He hadn’t thought much about the location when he came here. Nanna was in Oliver Schandorff ’s house. There was nothing more to know. Now he realized he wasn’t far from the marshland east of the airport.
    Pernille said that was the place where it all began.
    Lund was back on the flat ground of the Kalvebod Fælled where they found the bloodstained top, looking at the map.
    ‘Let’s go home,’ Meyer said, lighting one more cigarette.
    Her phone rang.
    ‘Are you coming to Sweden or what?’ Bengt Rosling asked.
    She had to think for a moment before saying, ‘Shortly.’
    ‘How about a house-warming party on Saturday? We could invite Lasse, Missan, Bosse and Janne.’
    Lund was scanning the fading horizon, wishing she could slow time a little and hold back dusk.
    ‘And my parents,’ Bengt added. ‘And your mother.’
    Lund took one more look at the map, one more sweep of the marsh and the woods.
    ‘Your mother’s going to fix up the guest room,’ Bengt said.
    Three young kids walked past pushing bikes. They were carrying fishing rods.
    Mark never went fishing. No one to take him.
    ‘That would be nice,’ she said, gesturing at Meyer to get his attention.
    ‘I don’t want her sleeping on the sofa,’ Bengt said.
    Lund wasn’t listening by then. The phone hung in her fingers by the side of her blue cagoule.
    ‘What’s over there?’ she asked Meyer.
    ‘More woods,’ he said. ‘And a canal.’
    ‘You did look in the water?’
    He grimaced. Meyer was the kind of man who could look angry in his sleep.
    ‘The girl ran the other way!’
    Lund went back to the phone.
    ‘We’re going to miss the flight.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You catch it. I’ll come tomorrow with Mark.’
    Meyer stood there, arms crossed, pushing crisps into his mouth between puffs on his cigarette.
    ‘Do we have trained divers among the forensic teams? And gear?’ Lund asked.
    ‘We’ve got enough men here to start a small war. How about Sweden? Let’s face it. That’s the only way you’ll get there.’
    The two of them drove over to the canal. Walked up and down. There were tyre marks by a low metal bridge. Going off the edge of the muddy bank towards nothing but black water.
    The bleak terrain mirrored Theis Birk Larsen’s state of mind: a maze of baffling dead ends and pointless turnings. A labyrinth without an exit.
    He drove and drove, into the dying grey sunset, away from it, finding nothing.