‘I will try,’ he said. He would do everything she asked of him. He wasn’t that busy.

‘You assaulted a man yesterday. Can you explain why?’

He protested, as was to be expected. Proclaimed his innocence. Still, she looked at him as if he were lying.

‘We probably won’t get anywhere unless we go backwards a little in the sequence of events. It may make you uncomfortable, but it’s what we need to do.’

‘Shoot,’ he said, eyes squinting just enough so he could watch what her breathing did to her breasts.

‘You were involved in a shooting in Amager in January. We discussed it before. Do you remember the exact date?’

‘It was the 26th of January.’

She nodded as if it were an especially good date. ‘You managed to get off relatively unharmed, but one of your colleagues, Anker, died, and another is currently lying paralysed in the hospital. How are you coping with all this now, Carl, eight months later?’

He stared at the ceiling. How was he coping? He really had no idea. It just never should have happened.

‘Of course I’m sorry it happened.’ He pictured Hardy at the spinal clinic. Sad, silent eyes. Two hundred and sixty-four pounds of dead weight.

‘Does it upset you?’

‘Yeah, a little.’ He tried to smile, but she was looking down at her papers.

‘Hardy told me he suspects that whoever shot the three of you had been waiting for you in Amager. Did he tell you that?’

Carl confirmed that he had.

‘Did he also tell you that he thinks it was either you or Anker who alerted them?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

Now she was sizing him up. In his mind, her eyes flashed with eroticism. Carl wondered if she was aware of this, and how wildly distracting it was.

‘Maybe he’s right,’ he replied.

‘Of course it wasn’t you, I can see that by looking at you. Am I right?’

If it had been him, could she expect any response other than a denial? How dumb did she think people were? How well did she think she could read a face?

‘No, it wasn’t me. Of course not.’

‘But if it was Anker, then something must’ve gone horribly wrong in his life, wouldn’t you say?’

I may have the hots for you, Carl thought, but if I’m going to continue with this, ask me some proper questions, damn it.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, hearing his own voice like a whisper. ‘Hardy and I will have to consider that possibility. Once I’m through being the victim of a little, snot-nosed private detective’s lies, and once the powers that be stop putting obstacles in my path, we’ll see what we can find out.’

‘At police headquarters they call it the “nail-gun case” because of the murder weapon. The victim was shot in the head, was he not? It looked like an execution.’

‘Possibly. Given the situation, I didn’t manage to see much. I’ve not been involved in the case since. It also had an offshoot, but you probably already know that. Two young men were killed in Sorø the same way. It is believed that the perpetrators are one and the same.’

She nodded. Of course she knew. ‘The case plagues you, doesn’t it, Carl?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say it plagues me.’

‘What plagues you then, Carl?’

He clutched the side of the leather sofa. Now was his chance. ‘What plagues me is how every time I try to invite you out, you say no. That plagues me, damn it.’

He left Mona Ibsen’s office feeling buoyant. Granted, she had reprimanded him and then forced him to run the gauntlet of a series of questions oozing with doubts and accusations. Many times he’d had the desire to spring angrily from the sofa and demand that she believe him. But Carl stayed put and answered politely, and the end result was that she – without affection but with a harried smile – agreed they could go out to dinner when she was finished with him as a client.

Maybe she thought that making this vague promise protected her. That he would forever live with the suspicion that his treatment had not been completed. But Carl knew better. He would have that promise realized.

He glanced down Jægersborg Allé and through Charlottenlund’s mangled city centre. All it took was a five-minute walk to the S-train and a half-hour ride later he’d again find himself passively sitting in his adjustable office chair in his corner of the basement. Not exactly the best setting for his newly won optimism.

He needed something to happen, and at headquarters there was simply nada.

When he reached the start of Lindegårdsvej, he looked up the street. He was well aware that at the opposite end the city name changed to Ordrup, and that it would make sense to take that walk now.

He punched in Assad’s number on his mobile and glanced automatically at the battery’s power level. He’d just charged it, and yet it was already half-dead. Irritating.

Assad sounded surprised. Were they allowed to talk?

‘Rubbish, Assad. We just shouldn’t parade it around that we’re still in business. Listen, could you do a little research and find people we can speak with at the boarding school? There’s an old yearbook in the big folder. In it you can see who was in their class. Either that, or find one of the teachers who was there during the years 1985 to 1987.’

‘I’ve already checked it out,’ he said. Hell, of course he had. ‘I have a few names then, but will go further, boss.’

‘Good. Transfer me to Rose, would you?’

A minute passed, then he heard her breathless voice. ‘Yes!’ There was not a hint of him being addressed as ‘boss’ in her rhetoric.

‘You’re putting tables together, I gather?’

‘Yes!’ If such a short word could express frustration, accusation, iciness and tremendous annoyance at being interrupted in the midst of more important objectives, then Rose Knudsen really had the touch.

‘I need Kimmie Lassen’s stepmother’s address. I know you gave me a note, but I don’t have it with me. Just give me the address, OK? Don’t ask me lots of questions, please!’

He was standing right outside Danske Bank, where well-preserved men and women patiently waited in long queues. Just as they did in working-class suburbs like Brøndby and Tåstrup on paydays like today, but that made more sense. Why in the world would people with deep pockets like those who lived in Charlottenlund queue up in front of a bank? Didn’t they have people to pay their bills for them? Didn’t they use Internet banking? Or was there something he didn’t know about wealthy people’s habits? Perhaps they purchased stocks with all their payday pocket change, just as the vagrants in Vesterbro bought fags and beer?

Well, everyone does what they can with what they’ve got, he thought. He glanced over at the chemist shop’s facade and noticed Bent Krum’s sign in the window of the building: BARRISTER WITH AUDIENCE BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. This right to higher audience might definitely come in handy with clients such as Pram, Dybbøl Jensen and Florin.

He sighed.

To walk past Krum’s office would be like ignoring every temptation in the Bible. It was almost as though he could hear the Devil laughing. If he rang the doorbell, walked up and interviewed Bent Krum, not ten minutes would pass before he would have the police chief on the line, and that would mean the end of Department Q and Carl Mørck.

He stood a moment trying to decide between involuntary retirement and postponement of the confrontation until a better occasion presented itself.

It would be best to just walk on by, he thought, but his finger had a will of its own and pressed the doorbell in as far as it could go. He’d be damned if anyone was going to stop his investigation. Bent Krum was going to end up in the hot seat. Better sooner than later.

He shook his head and took his finger off the doorbell. He was right where he’d been a thousand times before: once more the curse of his youth had caught up with him. If anyone was going to decide anything, it was going to be him, and only him, damn it.