Free The Killing 2 by David Hewson

Monberg’s file.
    Anne Dragsholm. Buch had learned one politician’s trick. He was now good at names. He would not forget this one easily.
    The veterans’ club was in Christianshavn, not far from the former military area that had turned into the hippie free state of Christiania. Strange drove, looking grumpy
all the way.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ Lund asked as they passed Slotsholmen, still lit, and then the Knippelsbro bridge.
    ‘You.’
    He was nothing like Meyer. No sense of jocularity around this man. He seemed decent, quiet, responsible. She liked that, up to a point.
    ‘I’m sorry if the work’s getting in the way of your social life.’
    He looked at her, frowned. Maybe there was a note of humour in there somewhere.
    ‘It was a joke, Strange.’
    ‘I don’t live and breathe the police. I’ve got things to do. Haven’t you?’
    She didn’t answer.
    ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘you came back to Copenhagen to see your mother. Not stick your nose in a murder case.’
    ‘Brix asked me.’
    ‘To read the files.’
    ‘Which I did.’
    ‘And here we are. Out on a call.’
    He had an unusual face. Very alert, younger than his years yet mature in its intensity. Good-looking but careworn.
    ‘You don’t have any authority here, Lund.’
    ‘Brix asked me . . .’
    ‘When we get there you stay in the car unless I call for you.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
    He didn’t like that. Strange checked the traffic, pulled into the side of the road, cut the engine.
    ‘You stay here until I say otherwise,’ he repeated. ‘Agree to that or you can get out now and find your own way home. Which is where you should be by the way. Not out here in
the pissing rain with me.’
    He folded his arms, waited.
    ‘You’ll come and get me?’ she asked.
    ‘When I’m happy it’s safe.’
    ‘I’m not a child, Strange! I had your rank once.’
    ‘Once.’ His acute eyes looked straight into hers. ‘And then what happened?’
    He waited. She wasn’t going to rise to that bait. Not with a stranger. Not with anyone.
    ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Strange said quite gently. ‘People talk. What do you expect?’
    ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
    ‘Want to tell me?’
    The silence again.
    ‘Good. Because I don’t want to hear.’ He started the car. ‘I’m the cop here. Not you.’
    Without waiting for an answer Strange started the car, pulled out, back into the evening traffic.
    The rain was coming down in vertical stripes as he drove into the empty car park behind a derelict block next to one of the pedestrian lanes leading into Christiania.
    ‘I checked the club. It’s got ten, eleven thousand members all over Denmark. The secretary’s called Allan Myg Poulsen. He’s got a room near the office. Number
twenty-six.’
    ‘He’s still a soldier?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Served in Afghanistan?’
    Strange didn’t answer.
    ‘Dragsholm was giving these people money. Every month,’ Lund said. ‘You have to find out why.’
    ‘I’ll ask.’ Strange turned off the engine, took the keys, opened the driver’s door. ‘Wait here until I get back.’ He turned and looked into her face.
‘Is that understood?’
    Lund saluted and pulled the most severe face she could muster.
    Watched him get out of the car, walk along the line of doors, find the communal entrance to the building and go in.
    Swore and said something caustic and deeply unfair.
    He’d get kicked for bringing along a civilian. Maybe. Or perhaps he was just making a point. Jan Meyer always felt challenged around her, which she never fully understood. He was a good
cop, bright and imaginative. He learned quickly too. From her mostly.
    She watched a light go on in the building ahead.
    Strange was different. A lot more sure of himself for one thing. She wanted to hear him talk to someone. Judge how he threw questions at people.
    Most of all she wanted to do that herself. There was a smell, a feel, a taste to a murder inquiry. Lost in Gedser, looking for