‘Hi, Carl! Rose has just given me her dictaphone. It looks so nice. And then she wants to talk to you.’

There was some shouting and loud, echoing footsteps, and then she was on the line. ‘I’ve found a nurse from Bispebjerg for you,’ she said drily.

‘OK. Super.’

That didn’t warrant a response.

‘She works at a private hospital up near Arresø,’ Rose continued, giving him the address. ‘She was easy to track down once I found her name. It’s a really peculiar one, too.’

‘Found it where?’

‘At Bispebjerg Hospital, of course. I scoured their old archive filing cabinets. She was working in the gynaecological ward when Kimmie was hospitalized. I called her and she remembered the case. Everyone who worked there back then would remember Kimmie, she said.’

‘Denmark’s most beautiful hospital’ – as Rose had quoted from the website.

Carl looked down at the snow-white buildings and concurred. Everything was exquisitely well maintained. Even this late into autumn, the manicured lawns were worthy of Wimbledon. Absolutely magnificent surroundings. The royal couple had enjoyed the sight only a few months earlier.

Their palace at Fredensborg had nothing on this place.

Head nurse Irmgard Dufner was rather a contrast. Smiling and as big as a vessel putting in to port, she cruised out to greet him. People around her stepped quietly to the side as she passed them. A pudding-basin haircut with a fringe, legs like two-by-fours, and shoes that pounded heavily on the floor.

‘Mr Mørck, I presume!’ She grinned and shook his hand as if she were trying to empty his pockets of their contents.

Luckily for him, her enormous outward appearance was matched by the size of her memory. A police officer’s dream.

She had been senior clinical nurse on Kimmie’s ward at Bispebjerg, and even though she’d been off duty when the patient disappeared, the events had been so strange and tragic that she’d never forgotten them, she explained.

‘When the woman arrived she was quite beaten up, so we expected her to lose the child, but she actually did all right. She just wanted that child so badly. When she’d been at the hospital for a week, we were almost ready to discharge her.’

She chewed her lip. ‘But then one morning when I’d been on night shift, she miscarried suddenly and severely. The doctor said it seemed as though she had provoked it herself. I found that hard to believe, given how much she’d been looking forward to having the baby. At any rate, there were large blue bruises on her abdomen. But it’s impossible to know about these things. There are a lot of mixed feelings involved when a woman faces raising an unplanned child on her own.’

‘What could she have used to cause the bruising? Do you recall?’

‘Some said it could have been the chair in her room. That she had pulled it on to her bed and pounded it against her abdomen. In any case, it was lying on the floor when the doctors came in and found her unconscious, with the foetus lying in a pool of blood between her legs.’

Carl tried to imagine it. A sad sight.

‘And the foetus was big enough for you to see it?’

‘Oh yes. At eighteen weeks a foetus resembles a little human being, around five or six inches long.’

‘Arms and legs?’

‘Everything. The lungs haven’t fully developed, nor have the eyes. But just about everything else has.’

‘And it lay between her legs?’

‘She had given birth to the child and the placenta in the normal way, yes.’

‘You mention the placenta. Wasn’t there something abnormal about it?’

‘It’s one of the things everyone remembers. That, and the fact that she stole the foetus. My colleagues had placed it under a sheet while they staunched her bleeding. When they returned after a short break, the patient and the foetus were gone. The placenta, on the other hand, was still there. That was when one of our doctors noticed it had ruptured. Been torn in two, so to speak.’

‘Couldn’t that have happened during the miscarriage itself?’

‘Sometimes that happens, but very seldom. Maybe the violence inflicted on her abdomen had something to do with it. Either way, it’s quite a serious situation if the woman is not curetted.’

‘You’re referring to potential infections?’

‘Yes, in the past, especially, this was a big concern.’

‘And if this isn’t done, what then?’

‘Well, the patient risks dying.’

‘I see. But I can assure you that she didn’t. She’s still alive. Not in the best condition, since she now lives on the street, but she is alive.’

She folded her sizeable hands in her lap. ‘I’m relieved to hear that, but it’s a shame she’s living on the street. Many women never get over that kind of experience.’

‘You mean the trauma of losing a child might be enough to make her withdraw from society?’

‘Ah, you know what? Anything’s possible in a situation like that. It happens time and again. They can enter a state of mental derangement and are quite often overwhelmed by self-recrimination.’

‘I think I’ll try to give a brief summary of the case. What do you say to that, friends?’ He looked at Assad and Rose, knowing that they both had things they wanted to get off their minds. It would have to wait.

‘We have a group of youths comprised of very strong-minded individuals, which is to say that they always carry out whatever they plan to do. Five guys, each with his own personal attributes, and a girl who appears to be the pivotal figure.

‘She’s brash and beautiful and initiates a short relationship with one of the top students at the school, Kåre Bruno – who I have a strong hunch dies with a fair amount of assistance from the gang. One of the objects in Kimmie Lassen’s hidden metal box points in that direction, in any case. Maybe it was jealousy, maybe a scuffle, but of course it could also have been a simple accident, in which case the rubber band she stashed away might just be a kind of trophy. At any rate, the rubber band in itself doesn’t tell us anything definite about the question of guilt, even if it arouses suspicion.

‘The gang sticks together, despite the fact that Kimmie leaves the school, and their association results directly or indirectly in the murder of two, probably randomly chosen, youths in Rørvig. Bjarne Thøgersen confesses, albeit nine years later, but presumably to cover for one or more of the others. Everything suggests that in this connection he was promised a large sum of money. He came from a relatively poor family and his sexual relationship with Kimmie was over, so it could have been a reasonable solution in his particular situation. In any event, we now know that someone in the gang was involved, since we’ve found effects with the victims’ fingerprints in Kimmie’s box.

‘We in Department Q are drawn into this case following a private citizen’s suspicion that Thøgersen’s conviction was erroneous. Perhaps the most important element to note in this connection is that Johan Jacobsen supplied us with a list of assaults and disappearances the gang may have been involved in. Furthermore, with this list we can confirm that during the years Kimmie lived in Switzerland there were reports only of physical assaults – not homicides or disappearances. The list is admittedly somewhat speculative, but Johan’s general approach seems sound.

‘It has come to the attention of the gang that I’m investigating the case. I don’t know how, but probably through Aalbæk, and an attempt is currently being made to obstruct the investigation.’

At this point Assad raised a finger. ‘Obstruct? Is that what you said?’

‘Yes. Trying to block the investigation, Assad. “Obstruct” means “block”. And that tells me the case has more to it than just a few rich men’s normal concern for their reputations.’

They both nodded.

‘As a result, I’ve been threatened in my home, in my car and, most recently, at my work, and in all probability people from this gang are behind these threats. They have used old boarding-school chums as go-betweens to get us removed from the case, but now this chain has been broken.’