Free The Killing 3 by David Hewson

and she’s still playing hard to get.’ A pause. ‘Politically anyway.’
    Hartman thought about Morten Weber’s warning: if a coup was to come from inside the palace it would, he said, be led by this woman.
    ‘Ussing’s tricks are putting her under pressure from her own party. She’ll deal with it. Today.’
    Eggert looked at the barren land, not at him.
    ‘Rumour has it you’re listening to more than Rosa’s policies. Is that true?’
    Hartmann glowered at her.
    ‘Did you interrupt our election campaign to ask about my love life?’
    ‘I don’t give a damn about your love life,’ Eggert snapped. ‘I don’t want to see everything we’ve built destroyed for no good reason. Ussing’s not
playing tricks. He’s offered Lebech a deal. Full partnership in government if he wins. A senior ministerial post for her in return.’
    No response.
    ‘So she didn’t tell you?’ Eggert asked with a smile. Hartmann was ostentatiously checking his watch. ‘Do you know the reason politics and love don’t mix,
Troels?’
    ‘I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’
    ‘Sooner or later you find yourself having to choose. One above the other. Which will it be?’
    Hartmann laughed.
    ‘If you have to ask that you really don’t know me at all. How’s the economy, Birgit?’
    ‘It’s shit.’
    ‘Best go and do something about that, don’t you think?’
    The courthouse was in Nytorv square, a grand building fronted by six Ionic columns supporting a classical portico. There was an inscription about justice on the facade and a
flagpole jutting out of the top. As a cadet she’d walked up the staircase behind to see the view from the roof. Of late she’d spent more time in the adjoining jail, reached by a couple
of sealed passageways across a line of grand arches.
    Before she left the Politigården she’d gone through the Ministry of Justice staff database and looked at the deputy prosecutor’s records and ID photograph. Peter Schultz was a
middle-ranking official who’d worked for the ministry for ten years. He was forty, a thin, ascetic man with an artist’s beard.
    Lund rarely got on well with lawyers. They only wanted to talk to the police on their own terms. She had no reason to think Schultz would be any different.
    As luck would have it he was on the courthouse steps, beneath the portico, when she arrived, saying goodbye to another member of the legal team. Lund interrupted, explained that she was the one
who’d been leaving messages for him.
    ‘Busy day,’ Schultz said and eyed his colleague with an amused look. The other man walked into court, tapping his watch.
    ‘Me too. Like I said I need to talk to you about a mate from a Zeeland ship. The
Medea
. He was the one killed down by the docks . . .’
    ‘I got your message.’ He gestured at the building. ‘But I’m due in here and judges don’t wait.’
    ‘This is to do with the kidnapping of Emilie Zeuthen and three murders. I think the judge will understand.’
    ‘You don’t know him.’
    She went and stood in front of the entrance to stop him.
    ‘You met the mate?’
    ‘Briefly.’ He looked a little nervous. ‘I don’t know why. He showed up and demanded to talk to me. He couldn’t speak Danish. His English wasn’t good. He
claimed he was owed money for a court appearance a while back. He was going home and he wanted it.’
    Schultz waved to someone going inside, promised he wouldn’t be long.
    ‘The case in question never came to court. So there was no money.’
    ‘That wasn’t the reason he gave Zeeland. He wasn’t going home either.’
    Schultz’s slight shoulders twitched for a moment.
    ‘That’s what he told me.’
    The lawyer dodged round her and headed for the doors.
    ‘What case?’ she asked.
    ‘Can’t we do this later?’
    ‘You want me to tell the Zeuthen family that?’
    ‘A young girl had run away from home in Jutland somewhere. She committed suicide. The mate and a couple of others found the body in the sea