And then there was what Kristian and Torsten and the others did to her. The ones she’d put her faith in.

Yes, she knew the feeling of defilement, and she craved it. Life had made her dependent on it. It was the way forward. It enabled her to act.

‘Get up,’ she said, opening the balcony door.

It was a quiet, humid evening. Loud voices in a foreign language emanated from the terraced houses across the street and resounded like a pulsating echo in the concrete landscape.

‘Get up.’ She waved the pistol and watched the smile broaden on his swollen face.

‘I thought you said it was a toy?’ he asked, moving slowly towards her while zipping up his trousers.

She turned to the figurine on the floor and shot it once. It was surprising how quiet a sound the bullet made as it bored into the wood.

Surprising, too, for Aalbæk.

He shrank back, but again she waved the gun, this time towards the balcony.

‘What do you want?’ he asked when he was outside, now with a very different degree of seriousness and a good grip on the railing.

She looked out over the edge. The darkness beneath them was like an abyss that could swallow everything. Aalbæk knew it, and he began to shake.

‘Tell me everything,’ she said, retreating to the shadows by the wall.

He did as she asked. It came out slowly, but in the right order. A professional’s neatly chronicled observations. Because what was there to hide when it came down to it? It was only a job, after all. But now much more was at stake.

As Aalbæk talked to save his life, Kimmie was picturing her old friends. Ditlev, Torsten and Ulrik. It’s said that powerful men reign over mankind’s impotence. As well as their own. History proved it time and again.

And when the man in front of her had nothing more to say, she spoke coldly:

‘You have two choices. Jump, or be shot. We’re five storeys up. You have a good chance of surviving if you jump. There are bushes down there, you know. Isn’t that why they’re planted so close to the building?’

He shook his head. If something couldn’t be happening, this was it. He had seen a lot in his time. But this kind of thing just didn’t happen.

He managed a pathetic smile. ‘There aren’t any bushes down there. Just concrete and grass.’

‘Are you expecting mercy from me? Did you show Tine any?’

He didn’t respond, but stood stock-still with furrowed brow, trying to convince himself she didn’t mean it. After all, she had just made love to him. Or something that resembled it, in any case.

‘Jump, or I’ll shoot you in the crotch. You won’t survive that, I promise you.’

He moved a step closer and followed the pistol with terrified eyes as she levelled it at him and her finger curled round the trigger.

It probably would have ended with a bullet, had it not been for the alcohol pulsing heavily through his veins. Instead he vaulted over the railing, trying to cling to it at the same time, and might have succeeded in slinging himself on to the balcony below if she hadn’t slammed the stock of her weapon on his finger joints until they cracked.

There was a dull thud when he landed on the ground. No scream.

Afterwards she turned to the balcony door and stared briefly at the broken wooden figurine that lay grinning on the rug. She returned its smile, bent over, gathered up the empty shell casing and put it in her bag.

When she slammed the door behind her after an hour of carefully cleaning glasses and bottles and everything else, she was content. The figurine stood quietly, propped up against the radiator with a tea towel wrapped attractively around its midsection.

Like a chef ready to receive his establishment’s next guests.

30

Carl heard thunderous crashings and deep rumbling coming from the living room, as if all the elephants in the world were chewing on his long-suffering IKEA furniture.

So Jesper was throwing a party again.

Carl rubbed his temples and prepared his scolding.

When he opened the door he was met with deafening noise, the light of a flickering television and Morten and Jesper at each end of the sofa.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he shouted, confused by the omnipresent sound and the room’s relative emptiness.

‘Surround sound,’ Morten reported with a certain degree of pride, after he’d lowered the volume a bit with the remote control.

Jesper pointed around at the array of loudspeakers hidden behind easy chairs and the bookshelf. Cool, huh? his glance said.

Peace was truly a thing of the past for the Mørck family.

They handed him a tepid Tuborg and tried to smooth out his dark mien by informing him that the stereo was a gift from one of Morten’s friend’s parents who couldn’t use it.

Wise people.

It was at that moment Carl felt the urge to give them a surprise of their own.

‘I have some information for you, Morten! Hardy has asked if you’d like to take care of him here, in the house. For pay, I mean. His bed would stand right where your groovy bass speaker is right now. We can always move it behind the bed. That way there’s a place to lay his urine bag.’

He took a sip, looking forward to their reaction when the information settled into their Saturday-heavy brains.

‘For pay?’ said Morten.

‘Hardy is going to live here?’ Jesper put in, pouting. ‘Yeah, well, whatever. I couldn’t care less. If I can’t get a youth residence down on Gammel Amtsvej asap I’ll move in with Mum at her allotment.’

He would have to see it to believe it.

‘How much do you think it pays?’ Morten continued.

Right then Carl’s head began pounding again.

Two and a half hours later he awoke staring at his clock radio that said SUNDAY 01:39:09, his head filled with images of earrings made of amethyst and silver and names such as Kyle Basset, Kåre Bruno and Klavs Jeppesen.

In Jesper’s room the gangsta rappers’ New York had been resurrected and Carl was feeling as if he’d inhaled a large dose of mutated influenza virus. Dry sinuses, crispy eye sockets and an overwhelming weariness in his body and limbs.

He lay there struggling for quite some time before he finally hefted his legs over the side of the bed and considered whether a steaming hot shower could scorch off some of the demons.

Instead, he turned to the clock radio and listened to the news report that yet another woman had been found beaten up and half dead in a rubbish container. This time on Store Søndervoldsstræde, but the particulars were exactly the same as on Store Kannikestræde.

It was a strange coincidence of two-part street names, he thought, both beginning with ‘Store’ and ending with ‘stræde.’ He tried to recall whether there were other street names like them in Department A’s district.

That was mainly why he was already awake when Lars Bjørn called.

‘I think it would be a good idea if you got dressed and came out here to Rødovre,’ he said.

Carl wanted to say something hard-hitting, like how Rødovre wasn’t their jurisdiction or something about infections and epidemic diseases, but Bjørn stopped him cold when he reported that private detective Finn Aalbæk had been found dead on the grass, five storeys below his balcony.

‘His head looks like his, but his body is quite a few inches shorter. He must have landed square on his feet. His spinal column is shoved halfway into his cranium,’ he said, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Somehow this helped Carl’s headache. In any case, he forgot about it.

Carl found Bjørn in front of the high-rise with graffiti behind him as tall as a man. Kill your Mother and rape your fucking dog! didn’t exactly make him appear more cheerful. Nor was he trying to hide the fact that the area west of Valby Bakke wasn’t his turf at all; he was just trying to redeem himself.