A few, quick, futile inhalations through her nose caused further panic in Kassandra’s body, which now flailed with all its limbs to get free. Kimmie held tight and closed off every opportunity for life-giving oxygen to get in, and Kassandra went into convulsions as her chest heaved frantically, drowning her whining.

And then she became still.

Kimmie allowed her to fall right where the battle had been fought, letting the smashed port glass, the coffee table that had been knocked out of place, and the regurgitation that flowed from the woman’s mouth speak for itself.

Kassandra Lassen had always enjoyed the good things in life, and now they had taken that life from her.

An accident, some would say. Predictable, others would add.

Those were precisely the words one of Kristian Wolf’s old hunting mates had been quoted as saying when they found him with a severed femoral artery down at his Lolland estate. An accident, yes, but predictable. Kristian was known for being careless with his shotgun. One day something was bound to go wrong, the hunting buddy said.

But it was no accident.

Kristian had controlled Kimmie from the day he first laid eyes on her. He had coerced her and the others to participate in his games, and he had used her body. He had pushed her into relationships and pulled her out again. He had gotten her to lure Kåre Bruno to Bellahøj with promises of them getting back together. He had goaded her into shouting for Kristian to shove Kåre over the edge. He had raped her and beaten her, once, then a second time, so the baby didn’t survive. He’d transformed her life on multiple occasions, each time for the worse.

After she’d been living on the streets for six weeks, she saw him on the front page of a tabloid. He was smiling, had made some terrific business deals and was about to leave for a few days of relaxation on his Lolland estate. ‘No animal on my grounds should feel safe,’ he had said. ‘My aim is excellent.’

She stole her first suitcase, put on impeccable clothes and took the train to Søllested, where she got off and walked the last three miles in the twilight until she reached the estate.

She spent the night in the bushes, listening as Kristian’s constant yelling inside finally forced his young wife to flee upstairs. He slept in the living room and after a few hours was more than ready to take out his personal shortcomings and general frustrations on vulnerable pheasants and any other living creature within range.

The night had been ice-cold, but not for Kimmie. The thought of Kristian’s blood, which would soon be spilled for his sins, felt like a summer heat wave. It was life-giving and inspiring.

Ever since boarding school she had known that Kristian’s restless soul drove him out of bed long before anyone else. A couple of hours before a hunt, he would stroll round the hunting grounds to get a feel for the terrain and to ensure the best cooperation between beaters and hunters. Several years after he’d been murdered, she could still clearly recall the moment when she finally spotted him walking through the gates of his estate and out to the fields. Fully equipped in the manner the upper classes considered fitting for a killer to look: squeaky clean, foppish, and with shiny, laced-up boots. But what did they know about real killers?

Moving swiftly, she had followed him at a distance through the windbreaks, sometimes fearing that the noise of crackling leaves and twigs would alert him. If he saw her he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. An accident, he would call it. A misunderstanding. A false assumption that he’d seen a deer or some wild animal.

But Kristian didn’t hear her. Not until the moment she leaped out at him and jammed the knife into his sex organs.

He fell forward and thrashed about, eyes wide open in recognition that the face above him would be the last thing he’d see.

She pulled his shotgun over towards her, and let him bleed to death. It didn’t take long at all.

Then she turned him around, tucked her hands inside her sleeves and wiped off the weapon, stuck it in the corpse’s hand, aimed the barrel at his groin and fired.

The police report concluded that it was an accidental shooting and the cause of death was given as exsanguination following the severing of a major artery. It was the most talked-about hunting accident of the year.

Yes, it was labelled an accident, but not for Kimmie, and a rare peace settled over her.

Unlike the other gang members. She had vanished without a trace, and they all knew that Kristian would never have died in such a way without assistance.

Inexplicable, people called Kristian’s death.

But Kimmie’s old friends didn’t buy it.

It was at this point that Bjarne turned himself in.

Maybe he knew he would be next. Maybe he’d made a pact with the others. It didn’t matter.

She read about the case in the newspapers. About how Bjarne accepted the blame for the Rørvig murders, and thus she could now live in peace with the past.

She called Ditlev Pram and told him that if he, Ulrik and Torsten wanted to live in peace, too, they’d have to pay her a certain amount of money.

The procedure was agreed upon and they kept their word.

That was smart. At least it bought them a few years before their fates caught up with them.

For a moment she looked at Kassandra’s body, wondering why she didn’t feel a greater sense of satisfaction.

It’s because you’re not finished yet, said one of the voices. No one can feel happiness halfway to paradise, said another.

The third voice was silent.

She nodded and removed the bundle from her bag, then slowly made her way up to her rooms, explaining to the little one how she’d once played on those stairs, sliding down the banister when no one was watching. How she’d always hummed the same song over and over when Kassandra and her father couldn’t hear her.

Small moments in a child’s life.

‘You can stay here while Mummy finds Teddy for you, my love,’ she said, laying the bundle carefully on the pillow.

Her bedroom was exactly as she’d left it. It was here she’d lain for a few months, feeling her belly growing. Now this would be her final visit.

She opened the balcony door and felt her way in the fading light towards the loose tile. There it was, right where she remembered it. The tile moved surprisingly easily, which she hadn’t been expecting at all. It was like opening a door that had just been oiled. Dark forebodings came over her, making her skin grow cold. Then, when she put her hand in the hollow space and found it empty, the cold became a warm, burning sensation.

Her eyes feverishly scanned the tiles surrounding the loose one, but she knew it was in vain.

Because it was the right tile, the right hollow. And the box was gone.

Now all the nasty K’s in her life lined up before her as the voices howled inside her, laughing hysterically as they gave her a scolding. Kyle, Willy K., Kassandra, Kåre, Kristian, Klavs and all the others who’d crossed her path. Who had crossed it this time and removed the box? Was it the very ones whose throats she’d planned to stuff the evidence down? Was it the survivors, Ditlev, Ulrik and Torsten? Could they really have found the box?

Trembling, she noticed how the voices had gathered into one. How they made the veins in the back of her hand throb visibly.

This hadn’t happened in years. The voices concurring.

The three men had to die. For once the voices were in total agreement.

Exhausted, she lay down on the bed next to the little parcel, brimming with past humiliations and subjugations. Her father’s first, hard punch. The alcohol breath behind her mother’s fiery red lipstick. The sharp fingernails. The pinches. The yanking of Kimmie’s fine hair.

After they’d given her a thrashing she would sit in the corner, her shaking hands hugging little Teddy. It was someone she could talk to and be consoled by. Small as he was, Teddy spoke with authority. ‘Take it easy, Kimmie,’ the stuffed animal had said. ‘They’re just evil people. They will disappear one day. Suddenly they’ll be gone.’