‘Yes.’ Assad nodded, tapping his forehead. ‘Well put, Carl. I remember it now. The game was actually presented in the prosecution of Bjarne Thøgersen, so they did take it with them then.’

They both stared at the game.

What was it doing here?

Carl frowned. Then he pulled his mobile from his pocket and called headquarters.

Lis didn’t sound terribly excited. ‘We’ve been expressly notified that we’re no longer at your disposal, Carl. Do you have any idea how busy we are? Have you heard about the police reforms? Or should I jog your memory? And now you’re stealing Rose from us.’

That one they could damned well keep, if it was any help.

‘Hey now, hold on a minute. It’s me! Carl! Take it easy, OK?’

‘You’ve got your own little slave now, so why don’t you talk to her? One moment, please …’

He looked confusedly at his mobile and didn’t return it to his ear until he heard an easily recognizable voice on the other end.

‘How can I help you, boss?’

Carl furrowed his brow again. ‘Oh, who is this? Rose Knudsen?’

Her hoarse laughter could make anyone worry about the future.

He asked her to find out if a blue Genus Edition of Trivial Pursuit was still among the articles taken from the Rørvig murder. And no, he didn’t have a clue where she should search. And yes, possibilities abounded. Whom should she ask first? She would have to figure that out on her own – just as long as she was quick about it.

‘Who was that, Carl?’ Assad asked.

‘It was your competitor, Assad. Be careful she doesn’t nudge you back to wearing green rubber gloves and driving a mop bucket.’

But Assad wasn’t listening. He’d already squatted down to inspect the blood splatter on the game board.

‘Isn’t it strange there isn’t more blood on the board, Carl? After all, she was beaten to death right here,’ he said, pointing at the stain on the rag rug beside him.

Carl pictured the bodies in the crime-scene photographs he’d seen earlier at headquarters. ‘Yes,’ he said, and nodded. ‘You’re absolutely right.’

She’d been struck so many times, and had lost so much blood, yet there was very little of it on the game board. Christ, it was a shame they hadn’t brought the case file with them so they could compare the photographs with the scene of the crime.

‘As I remember, there was a lot of blood on the board in the photos,’ Assad said as he poked the hexagonal mark at the board’s centre.

Carl kneeled beside him, carefully inserted a finger under the board and lifted it. Sure enough, it’d been moved a tad. Contrary to the laws of nature, additional splatters of blood had stained the floor an inch or so in under the board.

‘It’s not the same game, Assad.’

‘No, I don’t think so, also.’

Carl gingerly let the board fall back to the floor and then cast a glance at the box and the light outline of fingerprint powder around it. Twenty years ago it’d been a shiny box. The powder could be just about anything, now that he really saw it. Flour, white lead – anything.

‘I wonder who put that game here then,’ Assad said. ‘Do you know the game, Carl?’

Carl didn’t respond.

He was looking at the shelves bordering the room, just below the ceiling, where Eiffel Towers of nickel and Bavarian steins with pewter lids recalled a time when such objects were typically brought home from travels abroad as trophies. At least a hundred souvenirs bore witness to a family with a caravan and familiarity with the Brenner Pass and the wild forests of Harzen. Carl pictured his father, who would have gone into nostalgia overdrive.

‘What are you looking for, Carl?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘But something tells me we ought to pay close attention. Can you open the windows, Assad? We need more light.’

Carl stood up and once more studied the entire floor surface while his hand searched his breast pocket for his pack of cigarettes and Assad banged on a window frame.

Except for the fact that the bodies were gone, and that someone had tampered with the game, everything was apparently as it had been.

As he lit his fag his mobile rang. It was Rose.

The game was in the archives at Holbæk, she said. The file was gone, but the game was still there.

So she wasn’t completely hopeless after all.

‘Call them again,’ Carl said, inhaling a deep drag of smoke into his lungs. ‘Ask them about the pies and wedges.’

‘Wedges?’

‘Yes, that’s what they call the tiny thingamabobs you get when you answer correctly. You put them in the pies. Just ask them which wedges are in which pie. Note which, pie for pie.’

‘Pies?’

‘Yes, damn it. They’re also called wheels. Wheels or pies, it’s all the same thing. The round pieces that the small triangles fit into. Don’t you know Trivial Pursuit?’

She emitted that ominous laughter again. ‘Trivial Pursuit? Today, in Denmark, it’s called Bezzerwizzer, Gramps!’ Then she hung up.

They would never be best friends.

He took another puff to calm his racing pulse. Maybe he could exchange Rose for Lis. Lis probably wouldn’t mind gearing down to his speed. Punk hair or not, she sure would be a major aesthetic improvement to the basement, next to the photos of Assad’s aunts.

At that moment the extraordinary sound of splintering wood and breaking glass was followed by a few of Assad’s foreign phrases that clearly had nothing to do with afternoon prayers. But the shattered window had quite a stunning effect: light poured into every nook and cranny, leaving no doubt that spiders had lived like kings in this house. Cobwebs hung like festoons from the ceiling; on the long shelves, souvenirs sat in dust so thick that all colours melded into one.

Carl and Assad went through the events they’d read about in the reports.

In the early-afternoon hours someone entered the house via the open kitchen door and killed the boy with a single blow from a hammer, which was later found a few hundred yards away. The boy probably never felt a thing. Both the coroner’s report and the autopsy indicated he died on the scene. His rigid grip on the cognac bottle attested to that.

The girl had certainly tried to get away, but the attackers had got to her first. Then she’d been pummelled to death, exactly where the dark stains were on the rug – which was where they’d also found the remains of the victim’s brain mass, spit, urine and blood.

The investigators had presumed that the killers had removed the young man’s bathing trunks in order to humiliate him. The trunks were never found, but the notion that the siblings had been playing Trivial Pursuit with the girl in her bikini and the boy naked had never been a credible one. An incestuous relationship was absolutely unimaginable. Each had a sweetheart, and each lived a harmonious life.

The brother and sister’s sweethearts had slept over with them in the cottage the night before the assault, but in the morning had driven to Holbæk where they attended school. They were never suspects. They had alibis. Besides, they were completely devastated by the murders.

His mobile rang again. Carl glanced at the number on the display and fortified himself by taking another deep drag from his cigarette.

‘Yes, Rose.’

‘They thought your question about pies and wedges was very strange.’

‘And?’

‘Well, they had to go look, didn’t they?’

‘And?’

‘The pink pie had four wedges. A yellow, a pink, a green and a blue.’

Carl glanced down at the pie. That was what he had at his end, too.

‘The blue, yellow, green and orange pies weren’t used. They were in the box with the rest of the wedges, and they were empty.’

‘OK. What about the brown pie?’

‘The brown pie had a brown and a pink wedge in it. You following me?’

Carl didn’t respond. He just looked down at the empty brown pie sitting on the board. How very odd.