It was time to slough her skin.

In the centre of the train station, a placard displayed the day’s newspaper headlines in front of the railway kiosk, making life bitter for both the hurried and the blind. She’d seen the poster several times on her way through the city, and it filled her with disgust.

‘Pig,’ she mumbled when she passed the sign, gazing steadfastly ahead. Still she turned her head and caught a glimpse of the face on Berlingske Tidende’s placard.

The mere sight of the man made her tremble.

Under the PR photo it read: ‘Ditlev Pram buys private hospitals in Poland for 12 billion kroner.’ She spat on the tile floor and paused until her body grew calmer. She hated Ditlev Pram. Him and Torsten and Ulrik. But one day they’d get what they deserved. One day she’d take care of them. She would.

She laughed out loud, making a passer-by smile. Yet another naive idiot who thought he knew what went on inside other people’s heads.

Then she stopped abruptly.

Rat-Tine stood at her usual spot a little further ahead. Crouched over and rocking slightly, with dirty hands, drooping eyelids and a hand outstretched in mind-blown faith that at least one person in the swarming anthill would slip her a ten-krone coin. Only drug addicts could stand like that hour after hour. Miserable wretches.

Kimmie tried to sneak past her, heading directly for the stairwell to Reventlowsgade, but Tine had spotted her.

‘Hi, Kimmie. Hey, wait up, damn it,’ she managed in a sniffling moment of lucidity, but Kimmie didn’t respond. Rat-Tine wasn’t good in open spaces. Only when she sat on her bench did her brain function reasonably.

She was, however, the only person Kimmie could tolerate.

The wind whipping through the streets that day was inexplicably cold, so people wanted to get home quickly. For that reason, five black Mercedes idled in the taxi queue by the train station’s Istedgade entrance. She thought there’d be at least one remaining when she needed it. That was all she wanted to know.

She dragged the suitcase across the street to the basement Thai shop and left it next to the window. Only once before had a suitcase been stolen when she’d put it there. She felt certain it wouldn’t happen in this weather, when even thieves stayed indoors. It didn’t matter anyway. There was nothing of any value in the suitcase.

She waited only about ten minutes at the main entrance to the station before she got a bite. A fabulously beautiful woman in a mink coat, with a lithe body not much larger than a size 8, was leaving a taxi with a suitcase on hard rubber wheels. In the past Kimmie had always looked for women who wore a size 10, but that was many years ago. Living on the street didn’t make anyone fat.

While the woman concentrated on the ticket machine in the front entrance, Kimmie stole the suitcase. Then she made off towards the back exit and in no time was down among the taxis on Reventlowsgade.

Practice makes perfect.

There she loaded her stolen suitcase into the boot of the first taxi in the queue and asked the driver to take her for a short ride.

From her coat pocket she pulled out a fat bundle of hundred-krone bills. ‘I’ll give you a few hundred more if you do as I say,’ she told him, ignoring his suspicious glance and quivering nostrils.

In about an hour they would return and pick up her old suitcase. By then she would be wearing new clothes and another woman’s scent.

No doubt the taxi driver’s nostrils would quiver for an entirely different reason then.

2

Ditlev Pram was a handsome man, and he knew it. When flying business class, there were any number of women who had no objections to hearing about his Lamborghini and how fast it could drive to his domicile in the fashionable suburb of Rungsted.

This time he’d set his sights on a woman with soft hair gathered at the nape of her neck and glasses with heavy black frames that made her look unapproachable.

It aroused him.

He’d tried speaking to her, with no luck. Offered her his copy of The Economist, the cover of which featured a backlit nuclear reactor, only to be met with a dismissive wave. He ordered her a drink that she didn’t touch.

By the time the plane from Stettin landed on the dot at Kastrup Airport, the entire ninety valuable minutes had been wasted.

It was the kind of thing that made him aggressive.

He headed down the glass corridors in Terminal 3 and upon reaching the moving walkway he saw his victim. A man with a bad gait, headed determinedly in the same direction.

Ditlev picked up his pace and arrived just as the old man put one leg on the walkway. Ditlev could imagine it clearly: a carefully placed foot would make the bony figure trip hard against the Plexiglas, so that his face – glasses askew – would slide along the side as the old man desperately tried to regain his feet.

He would have gladly carried out this fantasy in reality. That was the kind of person he was. He and the others in the gang had all been raised that way. It was neither invigorating nor shameful. If he’d actually done it, in a way it would have been that bitch’s fault. She could have just gone home with him. Within an hour they could have been in bed.

It was her bloody fault.

His mobile rang as the Strandmølle Inn appeared in the rear-view mirror and the sea rose once again, blindingly, in front of him. ‘Yes,’ he said, glancing at the display. It was Ulrik.

‘I know someone who saw her a few days ago,’ he said. ‘At the pedestrian crossing outside the central train station on Bernstoffsgade.’

Ditlev turned off his MP3 Player. ‘OK. When exactly?’

‘Last Monday. The 10th of September. Around 9 p.m.’

‘What have you done about it?’

‘Torsten and I had a look around. We didn’t find her.’

‘Torsten was with you?’

‘Yes. But you know how he is. He wasn’t any help.’

‘Who did you give the assignment to?’

‘Aalbæk.’

‘Good. How did she look?’

‘She was dressed all right, from what I’m told. Thinner than she used to be. But she reeked.’

‘She reeked?’

‘Right. Of sweat and piss.’

Ditlev nodded. That was the worst thing about Kimmie. Not only could she disappear for months or years, but you never really knew who she was. Invisible, and then suddenly alarmingly visible. She was the most dangerous element in their lives. The only one who could truly threaten them.

‘We’ve got to get her this time, do you hear me, Ulrik?’

‘Why the hell do you think I phoned?’

3

Not until he stood outside Department Q’s darkened offices in the basement of police headquarters did Carl Mørck fully realize his holiday and summer were definitively over. He snapped on the light, letting his gaze fall on his desk, the top of which was covered in swollen stacks of case files; the urge to close the door and get the hell out of there was powerful. It didn’t help that, in the midst of all this, Assad had planted a bunch of gladioli big enough to obstruct a medium-sized street.

‘Welcome back, boss!’ said a voice behind him.

He turned and looked directly into Assad’s lively, shiny, brown eyes. His thin, black hair flared in all directions in a sort of welcoming way. Assad was ready for another round at the police station’s altar, worst luck for him.

‘Well, now!’ Assad said, seeing his boss’s blank look. ‘A person would never know you’ve just returned from your holiday, Carl.’

Carl shook his head. ‘Have I?’