‘You insist on taking the dog along, Hjorth? OK, then,’ Ditlev said, avoiding Hjorth’s wife’s stare.

He didn’t care to argue with the bitch. This was exclusively between him and Thelma.

When they reached the clearing at the top of the hill, the smell of humus from the undergrowth decreased. Fifty yards below was a little fog-enshrouded grove, and behind it a thicket extended all the way to a dense forest, which lay like a wide sea before them. It was a magnificent sight.

‘Everyone spread out a little,’ Ditlev said, and nodded with satisfaction when there were seven or eight yards between each of them.

The noise of the beaters in the grove wasn’t loud enough yet. Just a few of the released pheasants had taken flight before softly gliding back into the undergrowth. The footfalls of the hunters near Ditlev were muted but expectant. Some of the men were thoroughly addicted to the kick they got out there in the morning fog. Squeezing the trigger could satisfy them for days. They earned millions, but it was the killing that made them feel alive.

Young Saxenholdt, pale with agitation, walked at Ditlev’s side. His father had been the same, back when he was a regular participant in the hunts. The son walked cautiously, his sights set on the grove, the thicket behind it, and the forest a few hundred yards further ahead, knowing full well that a good shot could reward him with a love nest his parents would have no control over.

Ditlev held up his hand, and everyone stopped. Hjorth’s bird dog whined and spun round with excitement while its dolt of a master tried to shush it. Just as he’d expected.

Then the first birds flapped up from the grove and there was a volley of gunfire followed by the thud of dead fowl hitting the ground. Hjorth could no longer manage his dog. When the man beside him shouted ‘Fetch!’ to his hound, Hjorth’s ran off, tongue lolling from its mouth. At that moment hundreds of birds flew up at once, and the hunting party ran amok. The gunfire, and the echo it made in the thicket, was deafening.

This was what Ditlev loved: ceaseless gunfire, ceaseless killing, flapping specks in the sky terminated in an orgy of colour. The slow drizzle of birds’ bodies falling from above. The eagerness of the men to reload their weapons. He detected Saxenholdt’s frustration at not being able to shoot along with those who carried shotguns. His glance shifted from the grove, to the edge of the forest, and then across the flat, thicket-overgrown terrain. Where would his quarry come from? He didn’t know. The more bloodthirsty the hunters became, the tighter he held his rifle.

Hjorth’s dog suddenly leaped for the throat of another dog, which let go of its quarry and retreated, whining. Everyone except Hjorth noticed. Having yet to score a kill, he continued to reload and fire, reload and fire.

When Hjorth’s hound returned with a third bird and again snapped its jaws at the other dogs, Ditlev nodded to Torsten, who was already watching. The combination of its muscle, instinct and lousy training were terrible traits in a hunting dog.

Everything happened just as Ditlev had predicted. The other dogs had caught on and no longer let Hjorth’s dog retrieve the birds falling in the clearing, and so it disappeared into the forest to ferret out what it could.

‘Take care now,’ Ditlev called to the two riflemen. ‘Remember, there’s a fully furnished flat in Berlin at stake.’ Laughing, he discharged both chambers at a new flock that soared from the hedgerow. ‘The best shot wins the big prize.’

At that point, Hjorth’s hound was just trotting out of the dark underbrush with another bird. A single shot from Torsten’s rifle felled the animal before it reached the open. Probably only Ditlev and Torsten had seen what happened, because the hunters’ only reaction to the blast was Saxenholdt’s gulping for breath, followed by a chorus of laughter – with Hjorth leading the way – when they thought the rifle shot had missed its mark.

But in a little while, when Hjorth found his dog with a hole in its cranium, the laughter would come to an end, and hopefully he’d have learned his lesson. There would be no poorly trained dogs on their hunts when Ditlev Pram said so.

Ditlev caught Krum shaking his head at the same moment they heard new sounds emerging from the thicket behind the grove. So he, too, must have seen Torsten kill the dog.

‘Don’t shoot until you’re certain, understand?’ he quietly told the men at his side. ‘The beaters cover the entire area behind the grove, so I imagine the animal will come out of the thicket down there.’ He pointed at some towering junipers. ‘Aim a yard or so above the ground, directly at the target’s mid-section. In that way a missed shot will hit the ground.’

‘What is that?’ whispered Saxenholdt, nodding at a cluster of overgrown trees that had suddenly begun to shake. There was the sound of crackling twigs, faint at first, then stronger, and the beaters’ shouts behind the creature grew more and more shrill.

And then it jumped.

Saxenholdt and Torsten fired simultaneously, and the dark silhouette stumbled a little to one side before bounding clumsily forward. Not until it was out in the open could they see what it was. Everyone cheered as Saxenholdt and Torsten sighted their weapons for another round.

‘Stop!’ Ditlev shouted, as the ostrich halted and glanced around, disoriented. It was about a hundred yards away. ‘Shoot it in the head this time,’ he said. ‘One shot at a time. You go first, Saxenholdt.’

The hunters stood still as the lad, holding his breath, raised his rifle and fired. The shot was a little low, so the animal’s neck was torn off at once and its head disappeared backwards. But the crowd roared its approval, including Torsten. What use did he have for a three-bedroom flat in Berlin, anyway?

Ditlev smiled. He had expected the animal to drop to the ground, but for a few seconds it ran about, headless, until the uneven terrain made the dead body topple. There it lay, twitching momentarily before its head sank to the ground. All in all, it was quite a sight.

‘Bloody hell!’ the young man groaned, as the group fired a few salvos at the remaining pheasants. ‘An ostrich, I’ve shot a fucking ostrich! I’m getting some pussy tonight at Victor’s Bar. And I know exactly whose.’

The three of them met at the inn and were given the drink Ditlev had ordered. It was clear that Torsten needed it.

‘What’s wrong, Torsten? You look like shit,’ Ulrik said, swallowing the Jägermeister in one gulp. ‘Are you angry that you didn’t win? You’ve shot ostriches before, for Christ’s sake.’

Torsten spun his glass a few times. ‘It’s Kimmie. It’s serious now.’ Then he drank.

Ulrik poured another round and toasted them. ‘Aalbæk is on the case. We’ll get her soon. Relax, Torsten.’

Torsten Florin pulled a box of matches from his pocket and lit a candle that was on the table. There’s nothing sadder than a candle without flame, as he often said. ‘I hope you’re not assuming that Kimmie is just some silly little woman walking around in dirty old rags, waiting for your daft private detective to find her. He won’t, Ulrik. For God’s sake, it’s Kimmie we’re talking about. You know her. They won’t find her, and it’s a problem that’ll cost us dearly. Do you understand that?’

Ditlev set his glass down and glanced up at the inn’s rafters. ‘What do you mean?’ He hated Torsten when he was like that.

‘She attacked one of our models in front of the fashion house yesterday. She’d waited for hours. There were eighteen cigarette butts stamped out on the pavement. Who do you think she was waiting for?’

‘What do you mean by “attacked”?’ Ulrik seemed worried.

Torsten shook his head. ‘Take it easy, Ulrik. It wasn’t all that bad, just a single punch. The police weren’t called in. I gave the girl a week off and a pair of tickets to Kraków.’