Carl looked around for a bench that could give his leaden head and legs a little tour in the land of rest.

‘I’ll show you the way. I’m heading in the same direction. I saw how you were feeling in the plane,’ a friendly soul said in perfect Danish, and Carl directed his gaze towards a man of obvious Asian ethnicity. ‘My name is Vincent,’ he said, shuffling off with his luggage rolling behind.

This wasn’t exactly how he’d envisioned a peaceful Sunday as he laid himself ponderously under his duvet only a few hours earlier.

After a smooth, half-unconscious rumbling along on the Metro he emerged from the labyrinthine corridors of Callao Station and stood eyeing Gran Via’s iceberg-like, monumental structures. Neo-impressionistic, functionalistic, classicistic colossi, if anyone were to ask him to describe them. He had never seen anything like it: the noises, the scents, the heat and the incredible bustle of busy, dark-haired people. There was only one person he saw who he could identify with. An almost toothless beggar sitting on the pavement right in front of him with a cornucopia of coloured plastic lids before him, each of which was open for donations. There were coins and bills in every single one. Currencies from around the globe. Carl couldn’t understand half of what was going on, but there was self-irony lurking in the man’s flashing eyes. Your choice, his eyes said. Will you donate beer, wine, spirits or fags?

The people milling around him smiled. One pulled out a camera and asked if he could snap his picture. The beggar grinned broadly and toothlessly while hefting a sign into view.

It read: PHOTOS, 280 EUROS.

It worked. Not only on the assembled crowd, but also on Carl’s wilted state of mind and atrophied funny bone. His eruption of laughter came as a strikingly welcome surprise. This was self-irony at its finest. The beggar even handed him a business card listing his website, www.lazybeggars.com. Chortling, Carl shook his head and reached into his pocket in spite of his general aversion to people who begged on the street.

It was at this moment that Carl snapped back to reality, his whole being inflamed with the desire to kick a certain female colleague in Department Q clear off the playing field.

Here he was, feeling like shit in a country he didn’t know. Dosed up on pills that muddled his brain. His immune response mechanisms were causing every joint in his body to ache. And now his pocket was gapingly empty as well. He’d always smiled whenever he heard about incautious tourists, and now he – the deputy detective superintendent who spotted danger and suspicious characters everywhere – was one of them. How stupid could a person be? And on a Sunday.

Status quo: no wallet. Not even any lint in his pocket. The price of spending twenty minutes packed into an overfilled Metro. No credit cards, no provisional passport, no driver’s licence, no crisp banknotes, no Metro tickets, no telephone list, no health-insurance card, no plane tickets.

A person couldn’t sink any lower.

They gave him a cup of coffee in a waiting room at KB Construcciones, SA, and let him fall asleep facing dusty windows. A quarter of an hour earlier a desk clerk had stopped him in the foyer of Gran Via 31 and refused to have his appointment verified for several minutes since he was unable to present any form of identification. The guy couldn’t stop running his mouth off and his words were incomprehensible. Finally Carl shook his head angrily, found the hardest tongue-twister for foreigners to say in Danish, and yelled: ‘Rødgrød med fløde!’ (‘Strawberries with cream!’)

That helped.

‘Kyle Basset,’ said a voice miles away, after he had dozed off again.

Carl opened his eyes cautiously, afraid he’d wound up in purgatory, his head and body throbbed so much.

He was handed another cup of coffee in front of the gigantic barred windows in Basset’s office, and now with a relatively clear head he saw a face in its mid-thirties that knew very well what it stood for. Wealth, power and immoderate self-confidence.

‘Your colleague briefed me,’ Basset said. ‘You’re investigating a series of murders that may be connected to the people who assaulted me at my boarding school. Is that correct?’

He spoke Danish with an accent. Carl looked around. It was an enormous office. Down on Gran Via people were storming out of shops with names like Sfera and Lefties. In these surroundings it was practically a miracle that the man still understood Danish at all.

‘It could be a series of murders, we don’t know yet.’ Carl drank the coffee greedily. A very dark roast. Not exactly something that helped his fermenting intestines. ‘You say outright that they were the ones who assaulted you. Why didn’t you say so back when there was a case against them?’

He laughed. ‘I did, and much earlier. To the relevant party.’

‘And that was?’

‘My dad, who was an old boarding-school mate of Kimmie’s father.’

‘I see. And what came out of that?’

He shrugged and opened a chased silver cigarette case. Such things apparently still existed. He offered Carl a cigarette. ‘How long do you have?’

‘My flight leaves at 4.20.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Oops, then we don’t have very long. You’re taking a taxi, I assume?’

Carl inhaled the smoke deeply. That helped. ‘I’ve got a little problem,’ he said a bit sheepishly.

He explained how he had been pickpocketed on the Metro. No money, no provisional passport, no plane ticket.

Kyle Basset pushed a button on the intercom. His commands didn’t sound friendly. More like the kind he’d say to people he held in contempt.

‘I’ll give you the short version then.’ Basset gazed at the white building across the street. Maybe there were painful reminiscences showing in his eyes, but it was hard to tell, petrified and hard as they were.

‘My father and Kimmie’s father agreed that when the time came, however long that took, she would be punished. I was OK with that. I knew her father well. Willy K. Lassen, yes, and for that matter, I still know him. He owns a flat just two minutes from mine in Monaco and is quite an uncompromising person. Not someone you’d want to provoke, I would say. Not back then, in any case. He’s gravely ill now. Not much life left in him.’ He smiled. It seemed a rather odd reaction.

Carl pursed his lips. So Kimmie’s father was seriously ill, as he’d tried to convince Tine. Well, how about that? As he’d learned over the course of time, reality and fantasy have a tendency to blend together.

‘Why Kimmie?’ he said. ‘You only name her. Weren’t the others equally guilty? Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen, Bjarne Thøgersen, Kristian Wolf, Ditlev Pram, Torsten Florin? Weren’t they all there?’

Basset folded his hands as the burning cigarette dangled from his lips. ‘Are you saying you think they consciously selected me as their victim?’

‘I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know much about the incident.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you then. I was a completely random victim, I’m convinced of that. And how it turned out was just as random.’ He put his hand on his chest and leaned forward slightly. ‘Three of my ribs were broken, the rest were separated from my collarbone. I peed blood for days afterwards. They could’ve easily killed me. The fact they didn’t was also totally accidental, I can assure you.’

‘Uh huh, but where are you going with this? It doesn’t explain why your revenge should only be exacted on Kimmie Lassen.’

‘You know what, Mørck? They taught me something the day they attacked me, those bastards. Actually, in a way I’m grateful.’ With each word of his next sentence he tapped on his desk. ‘I learned that when opportunity presents itself, you take it, whether it’s random or not. Without considering fairness or another person’s guilt or innocence. That’s the business world’s alpha and omega, you understand? Sharpen your weapons and use them constantly. Just go for it. In this case my weapon was being able to influence Kimmie’s father.’