The Killing - 01 - The Killing Read Free Page A

could help it.
    We need no more secrets, Theis , she thought.
    Beneath Absalon’s golden statue, beneath the bell-tower turret and castellated roofline, against the red-brick, turreted fortress that was the Rådhus, Copenhagen City Hall, stood three posters.
    Kirsten Eller, Troels Hartmann, Poul Bremer. Smiling as only politicians can.
    Eller, the woman, thin lips tight together in something close to a smirk. The Centre Party, forever stuck in a philosophical no man’s land, hoping to cling to one side or the other then catch the crumbs that slip from the master’s table.
    Below her Poul Bremer beamed out at the city he owned. Lord Mayor of Copenhagen for twelve years, a plump and comfortable statesman, close to the Parliamentarians who held the purse strings, attuned to the fickle opinions of his shiftless party troops, familiar with the scattered network of backers and supporters who followed his every word. Black jacket, white shirt, subtle grey silk tie, businesslike black spectacles, Bremer at sixty-five wore the friendly disposition of everyone’s favourite uncle, the generous bringer of gifts and favours, the clever relative with all the secrets, all the knowledge.
    Then Troels Hartmann.
    The young one. The handsome one. The politician women looked at and secretly admired.
    He wore the Liberal colours. Blue suit, blue shirt, open at the neck. Hartmann, forty-two, boyish with his Nordic good looks, though in his clear cobalt eyes a hint of pain escaped the photographer’s lens. A good man, the picture said. A new generation vigorously chasing out the old, bringing with it fresh ideas, the promise of change. Part way there since, thanks to the voting system, he ran with energy and vision the city’s Education Department. Mayor already, if only of its schools and colleges.
    Three politicians about to fight each other for the crown of Copenhagen, the capital city, a sprawling metropolis where more than a fifth of Denmark’s five and a half million natives lived and worked, bickered and fought. Young and old, Danish-born and recent, sometimes half-welcome, immigrant. Honest and diligent, idle and corrupt. A city like any other.
    Eller the outsider whose only chance was to cut the best deal she could. Hartmann young, idealistic. Naive his foes would say, bravely hoping to knock Poul Bremer, the grandee of city politics, from the perch the old man called his own.
    In the chill November afternoon their faces beamed at the camera, for the press, for the people in the street. Past the smoke-stained ornamental windows of the red-brick castle called the Rådhus, in the galleried corridors and cell-like chambers where politicians gathered to whisper and plot, life was different.
    Behind the fixed and artificial smiles a war was under way.
    Shining wood. Long slender leaded windows. Leather furniture. Gilt and mosaics and paintings. The smell of polished mahogany.
    Posters of Hartmann stood everywhere, leaning against walls, ready to go out to the city. On the desk, in a wooden frame, a portrait of his wife on her hospital bed, placid, brave and beautiful a month before she died. Next to it a photograph of John F. Kennedy and a doe-eyed Jackie in the White House. A band played in the background admiring them. She was smiling in a beautiful silk evening dress. Kennedy was talking to her, saying something private in her ear.
    The White House, days before Dallas.
    In his private office Troels Hartmann looked at the photos, then the desk calendar.
    Monday morning. Three of the longest weeks of his political life ahead. The first of an endless succession of meetings.
    Hartmann’s two closest aides sat on the other side of the desk, laptops before them, going through the day’s agenda. Morten Weber, campaign manager, friend since college. Committed, quiet, solitary, intense. Forty-four, unruly curly hair beneath a growing bald patch, a kind, intense and neglected face, roving eyes behind cheap gold-rimmed glasses. Never knew what