‘Any idea who would have forced him over the edge?’ Antonsen asked, when Carl clapped his mobile shut.

He shook his head. Yes, who could it be? Surely someone whose life Aalbæk had ruined with his snooping. Someone who maybe thought he knew too much. But it could also be someone in the group connected to Kimmie. Carl had plenty of ideas, just none that were substantial enough to broadcast.

‘Did you check his office?’ Carl asked. ‘Client files, appointment book, messages on his answering machine, emails?’

‘We’ve sent people over there, and they say it’s nothing but an old, empty shed with a mailbox.’

Carl wrinkled his brow and looked about him. Then he walked over to the desk standing against the wall, picked up one of Aalbæk’s business cards and punched in the number to the detective agency.

Not three seconds passed before a phone rang in the front hall.

‘So! Now we know where his office really is,’ Carl said, glancing around. ‘Right here.’

It was definitely not obvious. No ring binder, no file folder with receipts visible. Nothing of the kind. Only book-club books, some decorative items and loads of Helmut Lotti CDs and others of the same ilk.

‘Turn over every single thing in the flat,’ Antonsen said. That would probably take some time.

He’d been lying in his bed for no more than three minutes with every conceivable flu symptom circulating through his organism when Rose called back. This time her motor mouth was running at full throttle.

‘It is the earring, Carl. The one from Lidelse Cove matches the earring found in Kimmie’s box. Now we can positively link that earring with the two missing persons on Langeland. Isn’t that wonderful?’

It was, of course, but at her tempo it was hard to get a word in edgeways.

‘And that’s not all, Carl. I just got replies from some emails I sent Saturday afternoon. You can talk to Kyle Basset. Isn’t that cool?’

Carl drew his shoulders up to his ears and pushed himself wearily towards the head of the bed. Kyle Basset? The boy they’d teased at boarding school. Yeah, that was … ‘cool’.

‘He can meet you this afternoon. We’re lucky, because he’s normally not in his office, but Sunday afternoon he happens to be there. You’ll meet at two in the afternoon, which just gives you time to get a return flight at 4.20 p.m.’

Carl sat up abruptly in bed, as if a spring in his back had been released. ‘Flight?! What the hell are you talking about, Rose?’

‘It’s in Madrid. He’s got an office in Madrid, you know?’

Carl’s eyes opened wide. ‘Madrid! There’s no fucking way I’m going to Madrid. You can bloody well go yourself.’

‘I’ve already booked the ticket, Carl. You’re flying with SAS at 10.20. We’ll meet at the airport an hour and a half earlier. You’re already checked in.’

‘No, no, no. I will fly absolutely nowhere.’ He tried to swallow a thick clump that had gathered in his throat. ‘Nowhere whatsoever!’

‘Wow, Carl! Are you afraid of flying?’ She laughed. The kind of laughter that made a decent retort impossible.

Because, truth be told, he was afraid of flying. As far as he knew, anyway, because the only time he’d ever tried it, he had flown to a party in Aalborg and, to be on the safe side, had deliberately drunk himself so silly both on the way there and back that Vigga had practically broken her back dragging him around. For the next two weeks he’d clung to her in his sleep. Who the hell could he cling to now?

‘I don’t have a passport, and I won’t do it, Rose. Cancel the ticket.’

She laughed again. A really uncomfortable mixture, this combination of headache, gnawing horror and waves of her laughter in his ears.

‘I’ve fixed the passport issue with the airport police,’ she said. ‘They’ll have a document for you there for pick-up later this morning. Take it easy, Carl, I’ll give you some Frisium. You just need to be at Terminal 3 an hour and a half before the flight. The Metro takes you right there, and you don’t even need to take a toothbrush. But remember your credit card, OK?’

Then she hung up, and Carl was alone in the dark. Incapable of recalling when it had all gone wrong.

31

‘Just take two of these Frisium,’ she had said, before shoving a couple of tiny pills into his maw and two more into his breast pocket with the teddy bear for the return flight.

He’d glanced confusedly around the terminal and ticket desks for an authoritarian soul who might find some kind of fault with him: the wrong clothes, the wrong look. Anything to deliver him from taking the dreaded escalator to perdition.

She had given him a detailed printout of his itinerary, along with Kyle Basset’s business address, a pocket dictionary and strict orders not to swallow the two remaining pills until he was seated in the plane home. All that and a lot more. A few minutes from now he wouldn’t be able to repeat half of it. How could he? He hadn’t slept a wink the entire night, and a swiftly developing, explosive case of diarrhoea was churning in his nether regions.

‘They can make you a little drowsy,’ she said in conclusion, ‘but they work, trust me. You won’t be afraid of anything after taking them. The plane could crash, for that matter, and you wouldn’t even notice.’

He saw that she regretted that last part as she guided him to the escalator with his provisional passport and boarding pass in hand.

Already halfway down the runway sweat began trickling from Carl, so that his shirt grew noticeably darker and his feet began to slide in his shoes. The pills had started doing their job, he’d noticed, but the way his heart was presently thumping in his chest, he might just as well die of a heart attack.

‘Are you all right?’ the woman next to him asked cautiously, extending her hand for him to hold on to.

As the plane climbed thirty thousand feet into the atmosphere he felt as though he were holding his breath. The only thing he sensed was the turbulence and the inexplicable creaking and bumping of the fuselage.

He opened the fresh-air nozzle, then closed it. Leaned his seat back, felt to see if his life vest was under it and said no thank you each time the stewardess approached.

And then he went out like a light.

‘Look, that’s Paris down there,’ the woman beside him said at one point, from far, far away. He opened his eyes and recalled the nightmare, the exhaustion, the influenza aches in all his joints, and finally saw a hand pointing out the shadows of something that the hand’s owner believed was the Eiffel Tower and the Place d’Etoile.

Carl nodded and couldn’t possibly have cared less. As far as he was concerned Paris could kiss a certain place on his person. He just wanted out of the plane.

She could see how he was feeling so she took his hand again and held it until he awoke with a start as the plane hit Barajas Airport’s runway.

‘You were completely out of it,’ she said, pointing at the sign for the Metro.

He patted the little talisman in his breast pocket and then felt his inside pocket where he kept his wallet. For a brief, tired moment he discussed with himself whether his Visa card would be of any use in such a foreign place.

‘It’s easy,’ the woman told him, after he’d explained to her where he needed to go. ‘You buy the Metro card right over there and then you ride the escalator down. Take the train to Nuevos Minesterios, change to the number 6 line and go to Cuatro Caminos, then take the number 2 line to the Opera. After that it’s just one stop on the number 5 line and you’re at Callao. At which point you only have to go about a hundred yards to the place where you have your meeting.’