The Killing 3 by David Hewson Read Free Book Online Page B

and an anxious demeanour. And a woman, plain, long dark hair tied back behind her head. Sad, shining eyes that seemed to be
looking everywhere as she walked towards them.
    She pulled out an ID card. A white car with
Politi
on the side swung to a halt nearby, then another. He could hear the relentless slash of an unseen helicopter, its blades tearing the
night to pieces.
    ‘Police. Sarah Lund,’ she said. ‘Where’s your daughter?’
    Robert Zeuthen turned towards the dense forest, trying to find the words.
    That was where she always went of late, for no good reason. He should have noticed.
    Through the dark wood where the dead trees gave no shelter Lund walked on and on. She’d set a sweeping path of officers to spread out into the dense, dark areas round the
mansion. Left Juncker there to liaise with the rest of the crews arriving from the Politigården. The Zeuthens were no ordinary family. A threat to them was a challenge to the state
itself.
    She’d tried to tell Robert Zeuthen what to do. It was no use. The man was beyond her, ranting and running, dashing his torch beam everywhere.
    Lund followed, dragged Zeuthen out of a low ditch he called the brook when he stumbled into it. Trying to talk. To reason. To see.
    After a while they reached a tall, heavy fence. Open rough ground on the far side. There was a hole cut at the base, big enough for a child to crawl through.
    He jerked at the wire, made the gap bigger.
    ‘What is this, Robert?’ she asked. ‘You need to tell me.’
    ‘She did whatever she wanted.’
    ‘I need to know!’
    It came out then. How someone had seen her here feeding a cat. How the surveillance system had gone down, not that it would have caught a hole like this in the first place.
    Then he was on his hands and knees, scrambling through the gap, muddy suit, filthy smart office shoes, grubby hands.
    Lund followed. Somewhere behind she could hear a familiar deep voice calling on her to stop, to wait.
    Beyond the wire lay a saucer in the long grass next to a carton of milk.
    She didn’t bother trying to talk to Zeuthen any more. The bare trees, the cold dark night. The empty, indifferent countryside. None of this was new.
    After a while he stopped, let out a shriek of shock and pain. Catching up she saw what was in his hands: a single pink wellington boot, the kind a young girl would wear.
    ‘Please,’ Lund said. ‘Put it down. Don’t touch anything.’
    She didn’t need to ask the obvious question: was this Emilie’s?
    More lights now. Brix still barking at her to stop, to wait.
    Watching Zeuthen blunder on she wondered how often she’d heard that. How many times to come.
    ‘You have to let us do this,’ Lund said.
    It’s our job, she thought. It’s all we do.
    The helicopter was close above. She glanced back. A long line of officers, torches out, coming towards them. A tall figure that could only be Brix in front, bellowing.
    Then she bumped into something, was confused for a moment.
    It was Zeuthen. He’d stopped in front of a low thorn bush, torch on the naked branches. A child’s rucksack, ponies patterned on the side, sat in the branches. He reached for it.
    Enough. She ordered him to get back, elbowed him out of the way when he didn’t, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, reached out and extracted the thing from the branches.
    That took a while. It had been thrown there, deliberately. By the time she got it out Brix was with them.
    ‘Do you have any idea where the girl is?’ he asked.
    Zeuthen couldn’t talk. His wife turned up breathless, struggling to speak.
    Then Juncker. He said they’d found tyre tracks down a rough lane a short way across the field.
    ‘And this . . .’ He held out an evidence bag, shone his torch on the contents. A small silver bracelet. ‘It’s got her name on it.’
    Maja Zeuthen said nothing. Her husband could only stare at the tiny object in the young cop’s hands.
    A dog barked.
    Brix went to the Zeuthens.
    ‘I’ve got the army