Now the homicide chief’s forehead, too, was beginning to display a frown.

‘You see,’ Carl said, directly addressing the Norwegians, who were knocking back their cups of coffee as if they had sat through a sixty-hour flight without food or drink, or at the very least came from a country that hadn’t seen a coffee bean since the German invasion, ‘as you know through your and Kripo’s generally fabulous work in Oslo, such lucky coincidences often throw light on other crimes that were never solved, or even reveal other cases not previously classified as crimes.’

At this point one of the Norwegians raised his hand and asked a question in his sing-song dialect that Carl needed to have repeated a couple of times before a liaison officer came to his rescue.

‘What Superintendent Trønnes would like to know is whether a list has been drawn up of the possible crimes that could be linked to the Rørvig murders,’ came the translation.

Carl nodded politely. How the hell could the man find so much coherent meaning in all that chirping?

He pulled Johan Jacobsen’s list from his briefcase and fastened it to the whiteboard. ‘The homicide chief assisted in this part of the investigation.’ He glanced appreciatively at Marcus, who in return smiled politely around at the others, while simultaneously resembling a bundle of question marks.

‘Our homicide chief has placed a civil employee’s personal investigative work at Department Q’s disposal. Without fine colleagues like him and his team, and without cross-disciplinary collaboration, it would be impossible to get so far in an investigation in such a short period of time. We must remember that this case, which is more than twenty years old, has been the object of our interest for two weeks only. So thank you, Marcus.’

He raised an imaginary glass to Jacobsen, knowing that all this would boomerang on him sooner or later.

Despite attempts – Lars Bjørn’s being especially eager – at redirecting Carl’s agenda, it was very easy to hustle the Norwegians down to the basement.

The liaison officer made an effort to keep Carl abreast of their Norwegian brothers’ commentary. They apparently admired Danish thrift and considered that results should always take precedence over daily demands for resources and fringe benefits. That interpretation would most likely be met with a certain amount of irritation when it made the rounds upstairs.

‘There’s a guy here who’s asking me questions all the time I can’t understand a word of. Do you speak Norwegian?’ he whispered to Rose, as Assad heaped praises and medals on the Danish Police’s policy for integrating foreigners and also explained his present slave labour with surprising skill and comprehensiveness.

In the most intelligible and perhaps most attractive-sounding Norwegian Carl had yet to lend an ear to, Rose said, ‘Here we have the key to our work process,’ and proceeded to go through a stack of papers she had systematized during the early hours of the morning.

As much as he hated to admit it, the presentation was rather impressive.

When they reached Carl’s office, the large-screen TV was displaying a sunny, guided tour of the Holmekollen ski resort. Assad had put in a DVD promoting the wonders of Oslo that he’d purchased around the corner at Politiken’s Bookshop ten minutes earlier, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The justice minister would be flashing his teeth in an ecstatic smile when they gathered for lunch in another hour.

The Norwegian who’d been asking all the questions, who by now had mumbled his name and was apparently the senior officer, invited Carl over to Oslo with a heartfelt discourse on brotherhood. If he couldn’t get Carl to Oslo, then at the very least he would have to join him for lunch, and if he didn’t have time for that either, then, if nothing else, there had to be time for a warm handshake, because he’d earned it.

After they’d gone, Carl looked at his two assistants with something that for a fleeting moment could be construed as warmth and gratefulness. Not because the Norwegians had been shepherded so smoothly through the department, but because he predicted that he would soon be called up to the third floor to continue his brief on the case and have his badge returned. If he got it back, that meant his suspension was a thing of the past, almost before it had started. And if it was a thing of the past, then he wouldn’t have to attend psychotherapy sessions with Mona Ibsen. And if he didn’t have to do that, then they had a dinner date. And if they had a dinner date, then anything was possible.

He needed to offer some nice words of thanks to Assad and Rose, which, while not praising them to the stars, would at least express a promise that in honour of the occasion they could go home an hour early.

The next phone call changed that plan.

The message Assad had left with Rødovre High School had resulted in a return call from one of its senior teachers, a certain Klavs Jeppesen.

He’d agreed to meet with Carl, and, yes, he had indeed taught at that boarding school in the mid-eighties. He remembered the time well.

They hadn’t been the best days of his life.

24

She found Tine huddled under the stairwell of a building on Dybbølsgade, close to Enghave Plads. Filthy, bruised and dying for a fix. She’d been there for almost an entire day and refused to budge, one of the resident vagrants had said.

She was sitting as far back in the stairwell as she could. Totally obscured by darkness.

She lurched in surprise when Kimmie stuck her head in.

‘God, is it you, Kimmie, love?’ she called out, relieved, and threw herself into Kimmie’s arms. ‘Hi, Kimmie. Hey, hey, you’re just the person I wanted to see.’ She shook like a fluttering leaf. Her teeth chattered.

‘What happened?’ Kimmie asked. ‘Why are you sitting here? Why do you look like that?’ She stroked Tine’s swollen cheek. ‘Who beat you up, Tine?’

‘You got my message, didn’t you, Kimmie?’ She pulled away and looked at Kimmie with yellow, bloodshot eyes.

‘Yes, I saw it. Well done, Tine.’

‘Do I get the thousand kroner then?’

Kimmie nodded, drying sweat from her friend’s forehead. Her face was terribly battered. One eye was nearly closed, her mouth was crooked, and there were haematomas and bluish-yellow bruises everywhere.

‘You can’t go to the places you used to, Kimmie.’ She crossed her shaking arms over her breast to calm her body. It didn’t work. ‘The men were at my place. It wasn’t too good. But now I’ll stay here, won’t I, Kimmie?’

Kimmie was just about to ask again what had happened when she heard the front door creak open. It was one of the tenants, coming home with the day’s trophies clinking in a plastic grocery bag. Not one of those who’d taken over the neighbourhood recently. Lots of home-made tattoos covered both his forearms.

‘You can’t stay here,’ he said nastily. ‘Sod off, you dirty whores.’

Kimmie stood up.

‘I think you should go up to your room and leave us alone,’ she said, moving a few paces towards him.

‘Because otherwise … ?’ He set the bag between his feet.

‘Because otherwise I’ll beat the shit out of you.’

He loved hearing that, evidently. ‘Hello, bitch, you sound pretty tasty. Either you can sod off and take your disgusting junkie whore with you, or you can come up to my place. What do you say? For all I care that sow can rot wherever she likes, if you come with me.’

He was trying to get his hands on her when his bloated beer belly received her hard fist. Then she punched him again, deforming his surprised expression. There was a crash on the stairway.

‘Argh,’ he groaned, forehead on the floor, as Kimmie returned to the stairwell.