At this moment he cared only about the brown and pink questions.

He flipped the cards over and looked at the answers.

He felt as though he’d just taken a giant leap, causing him to heave a deep sigh. ‘Here. I’ve got something, Assad.’ he said as quietly and as composedly as he possibly could. ‘Have a look.’

With Christmas heart in hand, Assad rose and peered over Carl’s shoulder at the cards.

‘What?’

‘A pink and a brown wedge were missing, right?’ He gave one card to Assad, then the other. ‘Look at what’s been written over the pink answer on this card and the brown answer on this one. What do they say?’

‘It says “Arne Jacobsen” on the one card and “Johan Jacobsen” on the other.’

They stared at one another a moment.

‘Arne? The same name as the police officer who took the file from Holbæk and gave it to Martha Jørgensen. What was his surname? Do you recall?’

Assad’s eyebrows shot up. He lifted his notebook from his breast pocket and skimmed his notes until he found the conversation with Martha Jørgensen.

Then he whispered a few unintelligible words and glanced up.

‘No, she didn’t give a surname.’

He whispered a few more words in Arabic and looked down at the game. ‘If Arne Jacobsen is a policeman, who is the other one then?’

Carl got his mobile out and phoned Holbæk Station.

‘Arne Jacobsen?’ the duty officer said. No, he’d better talk to one of their older colleagues. It took him a moment to transfer the call.

After that, only three minutes passed.

Then Carl clapped his mobile shut.

11

It often happens the day a man turns forty. Or the day he earns his first million. Or, at the very least, when the day comes where his father retires to a life of crossword puzzles. On that day, most men will know what it’s like to finally be free of patriarchal condescension, overbearing comments and critical glares.

But that’s not how things had gone for Torsten Florin.

He had more money than his father and had distanced himself from his four younger siblings, who, unlike him, hadn’t managed to make anything significant of themselves. He had even been on television and in the newspapers more often than his father. All of Denmark knew him. He was admired, especially by the women his father had always hankered after.

Yet whenever he heard his father’s voice on the telephone, he still felt awful. Like a difficult child, inferior and scorned. It gave him this indefinable knot in his stomach that would only disappear if he slammed the phone down.

But Torsten didn’t slam the phone down. Never when it was his father.

And after such a conversation, no matter how short, it was nearly impossible for Torsten to drive the anger and frustration from his body.

‘The eldest child’s lot,’ was how the only decent teacher at boarding school had once put it, and Torsten had hated him for it. For if it were true, how could a man change anything? The question had occupied his thoughts day after day. Ulrik and Kristian had felt the same way.

This painful, shared hatred of their fathers had united them. And when Torsten helped beat their blameless victims to a pulp or twisted the necks of his teacher’s carrier pigeons – or later in life, when he gazed into a competitor’s horrified eyes just as they realized he’d created another new, unsurpassed collection – his thoughts turned towards his father.

‘Bloody arsehole,’ he said, trembling, when his father hung up. ‘Bloody arsehole,’ he hissed to his diplomas and the myriad hunting trophies mounted on the walls. Had it not been for the designers, his chief purchaser and four-fifths of the firm’s best clients and competitors in the adjacent room, he would have bellowed out his rage. Instead, he grabbed the old yardstick he’d been given on the fifth anniversary of the firm’s founding and smashed it into the mounted head of a chamois.

‘Arsehole, arsehole, arsehole!’ he whispered fiercely, hacking the small goat-antelope trophy again and again.

When he noticed the sweat gathering at the nape of his neck, he stopped and tried to think clearly. His father’s voice and what he’d told him filled his mind more than was healthy.

Torsten looked up. Outside, where the forest met the garden, a few hungry magpies flitted about. They cawed cheerfully while pecking at the carcasses of birds that earlier had felt his wrath.

Fucking birds, he thought, and knew that now he was growing calmer. He lifted his bow from the wall hook, grabbed a few arrows from the quiver behind his desk, opened the terrace door and shot at the birds.

By the time their chattering had quieted, the rush of anger burning inside his head had vanished. It worked every time.

He walked across the lawn, pulled the arrows from the birds, kicked the cadavers into the forest with the others, went back to his office, listened in on his guests’ ceaseless jabber, hung his bow back on its hook and tossed the arrows back in the quiver. Only then did he phone Ditlev.

‘The police were up in Rørvig talking to my father,’ was the first thing he said when Ditlev answered.

There was a moment of silence on the other end. ‘OK,’ Ditlev replied, emphasizing the last syllable. ‘What did they want?’

Torsten breathed deeply. ‘They wanted to know about the brother and sister up at Dybesø. Nothing specific. If the old fool understood correctly, someone contacted the police and sowed doubt on Bjarne’s guilt.’

‘Kimmie?’

‘I don’t know, Ditlev. As I recall, they didn’t say who.’

‘Warn Bjarne, OK? Immediately. What else?’

‘Dad suggested the police contact Krum.’

The laughter on the other end of the line was classic Ditlev: totally ice-cold. ‘Krum? They won’t get anything out of him,’ he said.

‘No. But apparently they’ve begun some sort of investigation, and that’s bad enough.’

‘Were they from Holbæk Police?’ Ditlev asked.

‘I don’t think so. The old man thought they were from Copenhagen’s Homicide Division.’

‘Jesus Christ. Did your father get their names?’

‘No. As usual, the arrogant bastard wasn’t listening. But Krum will get them.’

‘Forget it. I’ll phone Aalbæk. He knows a couple of blokes at police headquarters.’

After the conversation, Torsten sat staring blankly into space for a while as his breathing grew deeper. His brain was permeated with images of terrified people begging for mercy, screaming for help. Memories of blood, and the laughter of the others in the gang. Them all talking about it afterwards. Kristian’s photo collection that brought them together night after night, smoking until they were high or pumped up with amphetamines. In such moments he recalled everything and he both revelled in it and hated himself for doing so.

He opened his eyes wide to sink back into reality. Typically it took a few minutes for him to get the frenzy of rage out of his bloodstream, but the erotic arousal always remained.

He put his hand to his crotch. His cock was hard again.

Shit! Why couldn’t he control these feelings? Why did it continue, on and on?

He locked the door to the adjacent suites, from which the voices of half of Denmark’s fashion barons and baronesses could be heard.

He inhaled sharply and sank slowly to his knees.

Then he folded his hands and let his head fall forward. Sometimes it simply felt necessary. ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ he whispered a couple of times. ‘Forgive me. For I cannot help myself.’