Authors: David Hewson
‘Finally,’ the man with the gun said. ‘We’ve unlocked that memory, haven’t we? A little late I guess . . .’
He took out his phone, called the Politigården, got through to what sounded like a party.
‘Brix? Are you drinking?’
A caustic answer.
‘Well, you can stop,’ Arild said. ‘I got a call from Raben asking me to meet him at Mindelunden. He said one of your cops was trying to kill him.’
Arild let that sink in.
‘Raben’s got a weapon from somewhere. He’s shot them both. The lunatic’s loose here.’ A pause. ‘I think he wants me next.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Brix ordered.
He snapped the phone shut, looked at the trembling man on the ground. Raised the gun.
There was a noise from somewhere.
A dog maybe. An urban fox.
A train went past, lights flashing. Arild raised the gun. Then something hit.
She hurt.
Hurt more when she crashed the police handgun hard into Jan Arild’s head, sent him grunting to the floor, his weapon scuttling into the grass.
Lund coughed.
Looked at the still, sad, familiar shape lying there.
No movement. No breathing. That was clear in the bright moonlight.
It felt as if a horse had kicked her in the chest. Sick of the thing, she undid her jacket, stripped off the body armour she’d taken out of her locker for the first time that night, on the
way to the car with Strange, fixing in her mind what she’d say.
It isn’t magic.
She wondered when his gentle, inquisitive voice would leave her head.
Stopped when the man in the heavy military coat in front of her came to on the ground, began laughing, looking.
He had the face of a fox. Long sharp nose. Beady eyes. On her now.
‘Raben,’ she said quickly. ‘Find the bastard’s gun, will you?
Raben?
’
The figure in the blue prison suit was hunched up, a mess, drawn in on himself. Broken, maybe for ever.
Lund had heard every word of the exchange between these two, felt the fog clearing in her head as she did so. Strange was a special forces soldier. Capable of anything, provided duty and an
officer above him called for it. But he didn’t kill kids for fun. Only the enemy. And anyone who merited the name
stikke
, a curse that was too close to home.
Still no movement.
‘Raben! There’s a gun here somewhere. I’m on my own. I’m not . . .’ What was the word? Her pained head hunted for it. ‘I’m not good at this.
You’ve got to help—’
‘He can’t, you stupid bitch,’ Arild laughed back at her from the grass.
His fingers were probing the wound in his ginger hair. Blood, black in the moonlight. Not a lot.
‘Thanks for that,’ he said in his cruel, laughing voice. ‘It all adds to the story.’
His head was off the ground. Arild was looking round. Right hand out, grasping.
Raben’s moans were starting to get to her. The man was gone. Back in that room in Helmand, killing a kid because he felt like it, starting a bloodbath that would never leave him.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ Lund said. She held the gun in both hands. Kept it on him, not steady. That wasn’t possible. ‘Stay where you are.’
Arild grinned at her.
‘This is nothing. I’ve buried better before. Better than you.’ He wasn’t afraid. Not for a moment. ‘Who do you think you are? What? You’re like him . .
.’ Arild nodded at Raben, rocking back and forth, eyes full of tears. ‘One more pawn getting shoved round a chessboard you can’t even see. I . . .’
He was on his knees, looking around him.
‘I push you. Like I pushed Strange. And somewhere else . . . someone I can’t see pushes me.’
A black shape glittered in the grass back towards the stakes. Within his reach. They both saw it. Arild watched her, head to one side.
‘Your fingers are unsteady, Lund. Your arms are shaking. You don’t even hold the gun right. You’re a disaster, woman. You have been from the very start.’
‘If you don’t stay where you are I swear . . .’
But he was on his way already, quick as a wild animal on the hunt, rolling towards the black gun, the talisman he owned.
Now she saw it, felt it. The red roar rising in her head until there was nothing there except fury and hate, savage and raw.
The first bullet caught him in the shoulder. Arild bellowed with pain, skewed to one side, lay back on the grass, clutching the wound, staring at her, furious.
The second hit him in the chest and Lund didn’t even know she’d pulled the trigger.
On the ground. Blood pumping from his gaping mouth.
She didn’t count the rest. Lund fired and fired until the gun clicked on empty. Listened to Raben’s howls then threw the hot, spent weapon into the damp thick grass.
Stood there, close to Strange’s body and Arild’s shattered, torn corpse. Sweat going cold beneath her jumper. Two bruises gathering where the bullets had smashed hard into
Kevlar.
Sirens from somewhere. Blue lights on the distant road.
She walked towards them, eyes on the path. Out of Mindelunden not looking at the graves and the long lists of names. Or the mother with the dead son in her arms.
A shape ahead and she barely looked. Brix was there. Madsen too. Strange ought to be with them, face calm, eyes concerned, telling her to get in the car. To go home. To sleep. To forget.
To forget.
‘Lund,’ Brix said as she walked past, eyes on nothing but the night. ‘
Lund?
’
Torsten Jarnvig ignored Arild’s final order and was welcoming troops for the next dispatch. Watching them stand to attention outside the Ryvangen barracks hall. Drilling
into them the rules and rigours of the army.
In a warm and comfortable family apartment at Horserød open prison, Louise Raben sat on a sofa, Jonas half asleep on her lap, wondering when her husband would get there. Stroking the
child’s soft fair hair. Smiling at the thought of the future that lay ahead of them.
By the long line of marble slabs that listed the distant dead, Raben slumped in his grubby prison suit, mind gone, turned in on itself, capable only of tears, too afraid to go near the
truth.
And on Absalon’s island of Slotsholmen Thomas Buch stood in front of an open room, Gert Grue Eriksen beckoning to him. Birgitte Agger too. Krabbe, Kahn and all the others. The king and all
his princes, friend and foe, half-smiling, arms open with only Karina’s soft insistent fingers to hold him back.
He didn’t look at her as he removed her hand from his jacket. Didn’t look at her as Grue Eriksen closed the long black doors and led him into the crowd where glasses chinked, small
talk ruled and no one spoke of a past that would soon be buried and forgotten.
There was nowhere else to go and now he knew it.
Coming soon . . .
The final novel featuring Sara Lund
ISBN 978-1-4472-4623-7
Maja Zeuthen had never liked Drekar. Before Robert’s father died they lived in a former workman’s cottage in the grounds, had the joy of
bringing two beautiful children into the world in a small, tidy home meant for a lucky gardener.
There they’d loved one another deeply.
Then the weight of the company fell on his shoulders, and with it a growing sense of crisis. Not just Zeeland’s. The world’s. They moved into Drekar. Lived beneath the dragon. Got
lost in its sprawling floors and cavernous, empty rooms.
Being the Zeuthen who ran Zeeland was a burden too heavy for him to share. She’d offered. Lost the battle. With that defeat love waned. The arguments began. As she drifted away he spent
longer and longer in the black glass offices down at the harbour.
And when he was home they rowed. Two little faces watching from the door sometimes.
It was almost eight. The servants had put dinner on the table. She’d eaten with Emilie and Carl, trying to make small talk. Noticing the way they went quiet whenever she tried to introduce
Carsten into the conversation.
He was younger. Struggling a little with his medical career. As Robert said they weren’t his kids either and sometimes that showed in an uncharacteristic coldness and ill temper.
They cleared away the dishes themselves. Told Reinhardt to go home. He had a wife. Grown-up children. A house near the Zeeland offices by the waterside. But still he stayed around the mansion,
watching, worrying. Robert almost saw him as an uncle, a fixture in the house when he was a boy.
Emilie and Carl went upstairs. To play. To watch TV. Mess with their gadgets.
She sat alone on the gigantic sofa, staring at the huge painting on the wall: a grey, miserable canvas of the ocean in a deadly gale. When they were splitting up Emilie said she hated it. The
thing made her think of where grandpa had gone. Had Maja stayed it would have vanished before long.
Emilie came down, dressed in her blue raincoat, pink wellies and a small rucksack with childish pony designs on it.
‘Where are you going?’
She didn’t blink, looked straight at her mother.
‘To feed the hedgehog.’
‘The hedgehog? Now?’
‘Dad says it’s all right.’
‘Dad’s not here.’
‘I won’t be long.’
‘I’ll go and get Carl,’ Maja said. ‘He can come with us.’
Emilie sat down on the stairs. She was gone by the time Maja was back with her brother.
‘Emilie!’
She tried not to sound too cross.
Then Robert phoned.
‘Emilie’s gone off somewhere. She said to feed a baby hedgehog.’
He laughed and she liked that sound.
‘She’s been doing that every night lately. We’ve got to work out what kind of pet to give her. I don’t think she’ll settle for a stick insect.’
‘No.’
Did he realize he’d made her laugh too? Did she mind?
‘Reinhardt found out about the cat,’ she said. ‘The gardener said he’d seen one outside the fence. Near a brook somewhere. Emilie was hanging around there one
time.’
‘Outside the fence?’
There was a brittle tension back in his voice then.
‘That’s what he thought. It’s no big deal, Robert. Carsten said if we keep using the cream she’ll be fine in a few days. I’m sorry I flew off the handle.’
‘She shouldn’t go out like that. We’ve got security for a reason.’
A short silence. Then he said, ‘I’m coming home.’
Maja walked to the front door and wondered how long she’d have to wait this time. It was a tall, elegant reception area. The only ugly thing was the block of blue flashing lights and small
TV screens for the security system that ran round the house and out into the grounds.
Eight monitors in all, mostly looking out onto trees moving in the winter wind, bare branches shifting restlessly.
As she watched one screen went blank except for a blue no-signal message. Then the next. Then, in a rush, the rest.
Photographs. Dozens. On the walls. On the floors.
Monochrome faces Lund didn’t know. A Canon SLR camera with a telephoto lens. Documents on ship movements. What seemed to be a graphic description of the Zeeland security network, covering
multiple locations. Industrial units, offices. Private premises too.
‘I don’t get it,’ Juncker said, shining his beam on the camera. ‘Why would someone hole up here, kill three sailors, all to take a pop at a politician?’
Lund was barely listening. On a desk in the corner she’d found a set of fresh colour prints, straight out of the inkjet there. Some were aerial shots off the web. Lawns and trees. A
satellite view of what looked like a grand mansion.
An ordinary-looking man next to a shiny Range Rover. About forty, in a suit. He seemed deeply miserable.
‘That’s Robert Zeuthen,’ Juncker said. ‘The Zeeland bloke.’
She flipped over the print, looked at the next one. Zeuthen going to his car, two small shapes inside. There was a date stamp on the print. Four thirty that very afternoon.
‘I don’t get it . . .’
‘So you said, Asbjørn.’
He went quiet after that.
Lund looked at the printer. A red light was flashing. Out of paper, mid-job. She picked some sheets off the desk and fed them into the tray.
The thing rattled and whirred. Then started printing again.
Out they came. Shot after shot.
Every one of them was a girl in blue jeans and denim jacket. Blonde hair. Not smiling much except when she saw her father and seemed to think he needed that.
Then the last one. Up close. This wasn’t from a long lens. She was there, laughing for whoever held the camera. A kitten in her arms.
‘This isn’t about Hartmann at all,’ Lund said, and got back on the phone.
Zeuthen slewed the big car on the gravel, left the door open as he ran into the house. The front door was open. Maja was there shivering in her green parka.
Wide-eyed, scared, hurt, she said, ‘The police called. They said we had to stay inside. They were sending—’
‘Where are the kids?’
‘Carl’s upstairs. Emilie . . .’
Her face said it all.
Zeuthen ran inside, got a torch, walked out into the grounds, flashing the beam around.
She came and joined him.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘She said she was going to feed the hedgehog. You’d told her it was all right.’
‘How long?’ he repeated.
‘Forty minutes. An hour.’
Drekar was surrounded by a sprawling estate of ornate gardens, ponds, a lake, a tennis court, a croquet lawn, a picnic area. Then woods, stretching back to the coast.
A high security fence ran round everything, part of the extended surveillance network connected to the Zeeland offices by the docks.
A thought.
He marched back into the entrance hall, stared at the dead screens on the wall.
Then out to the drive. One of the garden staff was nearby, wondering what was going on. Zeuthen grabbed him, asked about the hole in the fence, near the brook. Which brook? There were
several.
The man had no good answers. Zeuthen was getting desperate. A nine-year-old girl, lost in the vast gardens and forest around her home. It was like a fairy tale gone bad. Except most fairy tales
went that way, for a while at least.