The Killing (Forbrydelsen) – S1 E17+18

Over the course of the last nine weeks, The Killing has become one of my favourite TV shows – not just of the year but of all time. It’s as good as State of Play or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – but where those shows spun out perfection over six episodes, The Killing has managed to do it over an astonishing 20 hour-long instalments; and there hasn’t been an episode, a scene, a line that hasn’t been brilliantly done. It’s a quite astounding achievement, and I can’t remember the last time that I was so keen for a TV show to come around that I was literally counting down the hours till the next episode, and so emotionally involved while it was actually on that it hurt. While other shows can lose momentum and struggle to run to full length, this show hasn’t put a foot wrong and has sustained the mystery, intrigue and tension through a longer time than even most full length American TV seasons. The only disappointment is that it all comes to an end in a little under seven days, and Saturday nights are going to feel very odd and empty afterwards.

The show’s various individual strands – the anguished drama of a bereaved family, the political machinations of a campaign, the dark conspiracy arcs – are powerful in their own right and would fuel many a British TV series on their own, but here of course they’re all bound together by and in support of the whodunnit aspect which hones the series into a ruthlessly efficient and compelling mystery. If there were any justice in the world then “Who killed Nanna Birk Larsen” would be every bit as much a seminal television question as “Who shot JR?” and “Who killed Laura Palmer?”

Spoiler crime scene tape

The rest of this longer-than-usual post focuses on that question, as this penultimate week is my last chance to muse on some theories in public. Of course it can only do that by talking openly about the events to date right up to the end of episode 18, so if you’re not up to date with the series then look away now and read no further. (I have no spoilers from the final two episodes or any internet gossip to share, so you’re safe in that respect if you’re on the BBC4 schedule.)

Final chance! Look away now!

Right, still with us? Then let us begin.

Once again the series threw us some almighty curve-balls in these two episodes, which totally transformed the substance and nature of the investigation. The series has done it before (when car fuel logs suddenly focussed suspicion on city hall; then when a cold case and a belated video tape from Nanna transferred the focus back to Birk Larsen’s haulage company.) Now, as the series enters its end game, the producers seem determined to flip us into chaos once again – by making literally everything and everyone a suspect, and by resurrecting doubt in characters we long ago thought ‘cleared’. The key drivers in this final turn in the show have proved to be:

1. Nanna’s passport was found in the basement of her family’s new home, putting suspicion back on the family. Since the passport was the object Nanna went to the principle crime scene to pick up, and because it has blood on it, this is the biggest piece of “first-degree” direct evidence that’s emerged. At the time of the murder, Nanna didn’t even know about the new house.
2. Another body (from 15 years ago) has been found in the canal, seemingly confirming that Nanna’s murder is one of a series. Mette Hauge’s corpse was wrapped in a removal sheet from the defunct company Merkur, but is this purely circumstantial and a red herring? A search for the decedent’s possessions takes the police on a fatal visit to a derelict storage warehouse.
3. A journalist has been asking some awfully good questions of politician Troels Hartmann: was the package containing a key piece of evidence sent from Hartmann’s office? If so, by whom? And why was his party’s flat – the main crime scene – not used for two weeks afterwards in a frantically busy pre-election period and able to stand untouched, soaked in blood? (I admit, I thought this “two weeks undiscovered” was the series script’s one poor lapse/oversight but instead it’s transformed into possibly the vital clue.)

What new light do these latest developments and other events from E17 and 18 shed on the suspects in the case? Many of them could be red herrings and are circumstantial at best, so we have to start with with the one incontrovertible bit of direct evidence – the passport. It could only have been put in the basement of the new house after Nanna’s death, and almost certainly by the killer.

That seems to cast suspicion back on the family, and it’s interesting how the father, Theis Birk Larsen, is now being filmed and acted in a markedly more sinister way in these episodes; the way his impassive face looms at the back of shot, the way his calm demeanour only grows agitated when he finds police inside the house (and moreover in the basement) for the first time, and demanded they leave; the way he shut the door on the basement at the end of E18 … Guilty signs, or just a man pushed beyond his limit? Even his wife Pernille Birk Larsen, whose anguish over her daughter’s death has been so strikingly portrayed, is suddenly unnaturally calm and distanced. The scene where she and Theis faced down their previously trusted live-in friend, employee and lodger Vagn was actually quite chilling and cold blooded. But can either of them really be suspects? We saw their reactions in the first episode when Nanna was missing and they seemed totally genuine – the mounting panic and grief as worst nightmares were confirmed. Theis’ search for Nanna, his rage and his bid for violent revenge against the then-prime suspect teacher are hard to reconcile with being guilty of his daughter’s murder; and surely both have alibis, being at a country cottage on the key weekend? That it’s one or both of them is not quite entirely impossible – the grief could have been guilt over a tragic situation that got out of hand, for example – but it feels a stretch.

A more likely family suspect is the aforementioned Vagn Skaerbaek. Right now he’s the prime suspect: he had access to the house, it’s unclear where he was or what he was doing at the weekend, the police did a lengthy job of demolishing his alibi and proving he had opportunity, and he worked for the old Merkur company. As an employee of Birk Larsen’s haulage company he could also be the person Nanna’s boyfriend Amir thought had overheard them making their plans to elope, a critical aspect with regard to the opportunity to commit the crime (as well as a possible motive, if the killer had a sexual fixation on Nanna and was feeling betrayed by her plans to leave.) The smart money right now has to be on Vagn, and the fact that at the moment people are behaving as if Vagn’s been cleared with everyone apologising for ever unfairly suspecting him almost adds to the sense of sleight-of-hand and misdirection. Vagn’s no longer in the crosshairs only because the police have been distracted by the emergence of Leon Frevert, a co-worker of Vagn’s who also worked at Merkur and had the same access, opportunity and haziness of motive. Leon was also moonlighting as a taxi driver and had previously been questioned as the last known man to see Nanna alive; he has sold off his furniture, got tickets for a flight to Vietnam, and has a creepy serial killer-esque collection of press clippings of the murder case stuck to his wall. In real life this is exactly the sort of person who would be revealed as the killer. Short of a big neon arrow saying “I’m the killer” pointing at his head, he couldn’t be making it any more obvious for them – which is why he’s surely a red herring? Perhaps most significantly of all is why he phoned the detective (the wonderful Sarah Lund, played by the incomparable Sofie Gråbøl) and told her, when asked why he had kept his connection to Nanna a secret: “You have no idea”. That seems a tantalising link to an altogether different conspiracy mystery rather than an admission from a killer. He’s running to Vietnam because he’s scared.

If not the family, and with the school friends and teachers not seen since episode 10, we have to look elsewhere for people who have been in that house. What about the police for example? Lund herself is beyond suspicion – the show wouldn’t work if there was any chance of it being her, or any doubt about her. I confess I was keeping an eye on her rude and arrogant partner Jan Meyer – the murder happened just days after he had arrived in town after all, and where was he 15 years ago? Being a cop is a great cover. But even paying close attention to him there seemed nothing untoward, and with his relationship with Lund developing as it did it seemed less and less likely that he was under any suspicion. Instead, I’d rather come to fear that he wouldn’t be getting out of the show alive – I just didn’t expect it to happen in episode 18 as it did.

Their superior, Lennart Brix, is an obvious dark and evil suspect – almost laughably so in a pantomime-villain way, which is why I tend not to think it’ll be him. He’s the front man for some conspiracy no doubt, just not murder – not least because he only came into the series midway through and has had no detail given to his character. He seems to be there mainly to be an obstacle for Lund’s work, this week by pulling her off a crucial raid that gives the prime suspect the chance to escape or, more likely, be inconveniently shot dead in the raid by Brix’s more trusted personnel. He is too obvious, too underdeveloped for it to be him as the killer, but he’s clearly playing a major role in some grand plot.

Which leaves us with the political strand, and here we’re overflowing with suspects – the problem is that none of them have a connection to the Birk Larsen basement. They do have access to the party flat/crime scene, however, and a major question right now is why that flat was untouched for two weeks. Mayoral candidate Troels Hartmann was a prime suspect for several episodes and even arrested and charged, having admitted being in the flat just minutes before Nanna was known to have arrived and been assaulted there. Charges against Troels were dropped when suspicion fell on one of Troels’ opposing party leaders, Jens Holck, who looked and acted incredibly guilty and ended up being shot dead by Meyer but who has been posthumously cleared by airport CCTV footage. Does that mean the investigation of Troels was distracted and derailed but that he’s still the guilty man? He had all the access he needed, and he’s been pressing the police very hard for updates about the investigation to allow him to stay one step ahead. His ‘alibi’, that he went to a country cottage and tried to kill himself, could well have been remorse at what he had done; and his loyal campaign manager Morten Weber could have been an accomplice, clearing up after him (and been the “shorter” man at the flat window that an eyewitness saw.) In fact, Morten could be the killer in his own right – he has the aura of being a man who has been exonerated from the investigation, but in actuality that was because he was reinstated after being briefly fired having been unjustly framed as a political “mole”. Despite the off-hand revelation that he has driven the car in which the body was found, and some increasingly suspicious snooping round the office and being busy casting doubt on others, Morten has oddly escaped any serious suspicion for the entire series …

Troels’ assistant and lover Rie Skovgaard has also not been suspected of the crime, although Morten’s suggestions in response to a journalist’s enquiries about who sent the key piece of evidence from the office and who cancelled a toilet repair at the flat that would have caused the crime scene to be discovered immediately, seem designed to make her emerge as a suspect now (while they could just as equally apply to Morten – or to Troels.) Rie appears cunning and opportunistic, her affair with Troels suddenly back on after a frosty couple of days while simultaneously suspicions fly around that she’s been getting her valuable secret intel by sleeping with the mayor’s top aide Phillip Dessau who was briefly presented as a possible suspect in the murder itself. And yet despite them being nasty, double-dealing, two-faced political operatives, it’s hard to really see either of them resorting to murder. Rie might kill Nanna if she mistook her for a rival for Troels’ affections or a threat to the campaign, but murder – and in the party flat – seem grossly ill judged and unsubtle, totally out of character for her, while in other ways she’s too obviously hard and nasty to give us the ‘jolt’ we need when the murderer is unmasked.

That’s just some of the suspects. With two hours of drama still to go, the show could still pull a suspect “out of plain sight” that we hadn’t considered before just as Leon the taxi driver was. What about Lund’s boyfriend Bengt? Seems unlikely as he was the one who triggered the police to seek out previous cold cases. Maybe her odious ex-husband? Surely too coincidental and contrived. One of the detectives who’ve been handing Lund and Meyer files – or in particular, the detective who ‘searched’ the Birk Larsen’s basement just before the bloody passport was discovered? Talk about opportunity. Hell, I’d even suspect the Birk Larsen’s little boys, one of which – Anton – found Nanna’s bloody passport and then oddly just threw it back where he found it and wandered off without a reaction. If only the boys were old and tall enough to drive a car! Very strange. Let’s put that one down to wooden juvenile acting and an attempt to generate more tension and false leads!

And finally …

But there comes a point where I have to present some idea, some theory about it all, and here it is. It’s not perfect and I’m really not sure about it, but what the hell, right?

From the above analysis I’d have to say that the leading suspects must surely be Vagn (if the political aspects can be explained away by other conspiracies) or Morten (if there’s a convincing reason why he would have ended up in the Birk Larsen basement.) These are the suspects that my head says are the most logical and rational.

But without a doubt, the character I’ve been most irrationally suspicious about since midway through the series has been the incumbent mayor, Poul Bremer – for no good reason, I have to say. Just a feeling. His purpose in the series – as Troel’s scheming political opponent – has been clear, and he’s been overtly lying and deceiving everyone in sight, most recently manufacturing a couple of witnesses to escape a charge of political malfeasance and obstructing the police by withholding evidence because it gave him an electoral advantage. But the closest he’s come to being suspected of involvement with the murder was when a civil servant, Olav Christensen, confronted Bremer and said he’d procured the party flat (the crime scene) for the mayor in the past. Bremer denied it, and minutes later Olav was dead after being run down by Jens Holck.

And while we’re on that: just what was Holck’s involvement in all of this? The investigation into him went cold when he was shot and assumed to be the killer; if he wasn’t, then why did he do what he did and practically confess all to Lund before dying? Holck was suspected because he was on a particular foreign junket some months ago – with Bremer, it was pointed out, although no one attached any significance to this; Holck was also Bremer’s lapdog, and you have to consider whether his apparent affair with Nanna wasn’t actually just him setting up meetings for Bremer all the time instead. Rather than Holck buying her gifts, were they in fact from an even bigger political fish?

Bremer’s certainly got all the information he needs to carry out the crimes – he frequently knows developments before anyone else, even the police: he knew who was paying Olav for access to the party flat months ago, despite his look of bafflement and denial when confronted by Olav. If he’d been having an affair with Nanna months ago and needed to hush it up, then how clever to use the flat to frame Troels and gain unbeatable political advantage out of a potential career-ending scandal over an affair with a schoolgirl?

Bremer being the guilty party would explain much, and would tie up the various strands into one tight cohesive whole in a dramatic context. And yet for all that, there are major problems with the theory of it being Bremer. Can we seriously see the elderly mayor managing to climb through a broken window into the storage warehouse? (Although the slow, deliberate way the killer stepped toward a prostrate Meyer could easily have been someone of Bremer’s age …) Or of outrunning Nanna in the woods by the airport in the opening scenes of the series? Like all those from the political side, how could he have ended up leaving Nanna’s passport in the basement of the Birk Larsen house? Moreover, the detectives seem very convinced that the killer is in his/her 30s-40s and that the link between the killer and his victims is through removal hauliers – are they simply wrong on both counts? The Merkur sheet could certainly be a red herring (it might have simply been to hand when the killer murdered Mette Hauge, who had just employed the company to move house 15 years ago) but the idea that the killer meets his victims and gets to know where they live through this ruse is a compelling one and simply can’t apply to Bremer.

The Killing‘s greatest trick is to present us with such a large cast of realistic, beautifully-drawn characters, all of whom we suspect and yet none of which ultimately make complete sense as the killer. It could well be that we’re talking about at least two different culprits in the end – Bremer perhaps is guilty of something (the mention of Vietnam put the idea of a child paedophile ring in my head from out of nowhere, for example) and his cover-up conspiracy may have massively affected the murder investigation because of some overlapping factor; but the killer might be someone else entirely, such as Vagn or Morten. Or even Troels after all …

Safe to say, I can’t wait till next Saturday to find out. And yet at the same time, I dread finding out because that means the end of this superb show. I suspect that when the end comes, I’ll want to go back and rewatch the series from the start and see whether I can get it right second time around and see all the small signs and clues that I’ve missed that would have made this article so much more accurate if only I’d been paying attention at the time …

If you do comment on this story – and please do! – then speculate to your heart’s content but please don’t put in any known spoilers from E19 and 20 until those stories have aired in the UK on BBC4 on March 26. Thanks!