‘What the hell did you buy us, Carl?’ asked his tenant, Morten Holland, as he unpacked the groceries. He’d had a difficult day, too, he said. Two hours of political science at the university followed by three hours at the video-rental store. Yes, these were indeed hard times, Carl could plainly see.

‘I thought you might make chilli con carne,’ Carl said, ignoring Morten’s reply that it would’ve been cool if he had bought a little beans and meat.

Leaving him scratching his head at the kitchen table, Carl went upstairs where the nostalgia renaissance was about to blow Jesper’s door out on to the stairwell.

He was in the midst of a Led Zeppelin orgy while splattering soldiers on his Nintendo, as his zombie girlfriend sat on the bed, texting her hunger for contact to the rest of the world.

Carl sighed and thought about how much more adventurous he’d been with Belinda in his bedroom loft in Brønderslev. Long live electronics. As long as he didn’t have to have anything to do with it.

Then he tumbled into his own room and stared blankly at his bed. If Morten didn’t call him down to dinner within twenty minutes, the bed would have already won the round.

He lay down, put his hands behind his neck, and gazed at the ceiling, imagining Mona Ibsen stretching her naked body under the duvet. If he didn’t pull himself together soon, his goddam nuts would shrivel up. Either Mona Ibsen or a few quick fishing trips at the bodegas, otherwise he might as well just sign up for the police corps in Afghanistan. Better to have one hard ball in his skull than two limp ones in his drawers.

An unusually dreadful cross between gangsta rap and an entire town of collapsing corrugated metal houses thundered through the wall from Jesper’s room. Should he go in and complain, or close his ears, or what?

He continued lying where he was, his pillow stuffed against his head. Maybe that was why he came to think of Hardy.

Hardy, who couldn’t move. Hardy, who couldn’t even scratch his forehead when it itched. Hardy, who could do absolutely nothing else except think. If Carl were in his position, he would’ve lost his mind ages ago.

He looked at the picture on the wall of Hardy, Anker and himself, standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Three damn fine policemen, Carl thought. Why had Hardy thought otherwise when Carl last visited him? What had he meant when he said someone had been waiting for them at the building in Amager?

He studied Anker’s face. Though he’d been the smallest of the three, he’d had the strongest gaze. Dead now for almost two thirds of a year, and yet Carl could still see these eyes so clearly. Did Hardy truly think that either he or Anker could have had anything to do with the people who killed him?

Carl shook his head. It was hard to believe. Then his eyes panned across a framed photo of him and Vigga, back when she still fancied putting her fingers in his belly-button, then to the picture of the farm in Brønderslev, and finally the photograph Vigga had taken of him the day he’d returned wearing his first, real parade uniform.

He squinted his eyes. It was dark in the corner where the photograph hung, but still he could tell that something about it was not as it should be.

He let the pillow drop and stood up just as Jesper started a new horror orgy of sound on the other side of the wall. Then he slowly approached the photograph. At first the stains appeared to be shadows, but when he drew closer he saw what they were.

Fresh blood like that was hard to mistake. Only now did he see how it streamed down the wall in thin streaks. How the hell had he not seen it before? And what the hell was it doing there?

He shouted for Morten, then went and yanked Jesper from his stupor in front of the flat-screen TV, and showed them the blood spots while they gave him looks of disgust and indignation, respectively.

No, Morten had nothing to do with this revolting mess.

And no, damn it, Jesper had nothing to do with it, either. Nor did his girlfriend, if that was what Carl was thinking. Was he going soft in the head?

Carl glanced at the blood again and nodded.

With the right equipment it would take at most three minutes to break into the house, find an object Carl was sure to see fairly often, rub on a little animal blood and then hightail it out. Wouldn’t it be easy to find three unobserved minutes, given that Magnolievangen – in fact all of Rønneholtparken– was as good as deserted from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon?

If someone thought such shenanigans would make him give up the investigation, then they weren’t just unbelievably stupid.

The bastards, in one way or another, were also culpable.

15

The only time she could dream good dreams was after she’d been drinking. Which was one of the reasons she did it.

If she didn’t take a couple of generous swigs from the whisky bottle, then the outcome was assured. After dozing for hours with the voices whispering in her head, her gaze would fall from the poster hanging on her door – the one with the children playing – and she’d glide into dark nightmares. Those damn images were always cued up when she drifted off. Memories of a mother’s soft hair and a face rigid as stone, of a little girl trying to become invisible in the nooks and crannies of the family mansion. Horrible moments. Faded glimpses of a mother who simply left her. Ice-cold embraces from the women who succeeded her.

And when she awoke with sweat on her forehead and the rest of her body shaking with cold, the dreams had usually reached the point in her life where she turned her back on the bourgeoisie’s insatiable expectations and false niceness. She wanted to forget all of that. That, and the time that followed.

The previous evening she had drunk steadily, so the morning was relatively uncomplicated. She could easily handle the cold, the coughing and the splitting headache. As long as her thoughts and the voices were at rest.

She stretched, put her hand under the bed, and pulled out the cardboard box. It was her pantry, and the procedure was simple. The food on the right side of the box always had to be consumed first. When that side was emptied, she rotated the box 180 degrees and again ate what was on the right. Then she could fill the empty left side with new goods from Aldi. Always the same procedure, and never more than two or three days at a time in the box. Otherwise the food spoiled, especially when the sun was baking the roof.

She gobbled up yoghurt without any real pleasure. It had been years since food had meant anything to her.

She shoved the box back under the bed, fumbled around until she found the coffin, caressed it a moment, and whispered: ‘Mommy has to go into town now, my precious. I’ll be home soon.’

Then she sniffed her underarms and decided that it was time to take a shower. She used to do it in the central train station once in a while, but not any more; not after Tine had warned her about the men searching for her. If she absolutely had to go back there, she needed to take special precautions.

She licked her spoon and tossed the plastic cup in the rubbish sack beneath her, considering her next steps.

She had been to Ditlev’s house the evening before. For one hour she’d waited outside on Strandvejen, watching through the mosaic of luminous mansion windows before her voices gave the green light. It was an elegant house, but clinical and emotionless, like Ditlev himself. What else would one expect? She’d smashed a window and had a good look around before a woman in a negligee suddenly appeared. She had stared anxiously as Kimmie drew her pistol, but her expression became more subdued as soon as she discovered her husband was the target.