‘You’re not happy to see her. She looks pretty good,’ Carl said. ‘Don’t you think?’

Bjarne nodded slowly, his Adam’s apple gliding visibly up and down. ‘It’s just strange,’ he said.

He tried to smile as though he were feeling sad. But it wasn’t sadness.

‘How can you have a picture of her if you don’t know where she is?’

In and of itself the question was reasonable enough, but his hands shook. His words came slowly. His eyes darted back and forth again.

He was afraid. That’s what it was.

Simply put, Kimmie scared him to death.

‘You have to go and see the homicide chief,’ the duty officer said, as Carl and Assad passed his cage at headquarters. ‘The police chief is there, too,’ he added.

Carl took the stairs, formulating his arguments with each step. He was damn well going to give as good as he got. They all knew the police chief. And what did she amount to other than a run-of-the-mill solicitor who’d simply stumbled on the path to a judgeship?

‘Uh-ohhh,’ Mrs Sørensen muttered encouragingly from behind the front desk. He’d return her ‘uh-ohhh’ right back some other time.

‘Good that you’ve come, Carl. We’ve just been discussing everything,’ the homicide chief said, pointing at an empty seat. ‘It doesn’t look good, you know.’

Carl frowned, wondering if Marcus had laid it on a little too thick. He nodded at the police chief, who was sitting in full regalia and sharing a pot of tea with Lars Bjørn. Tea, for God’s sake.

‘You’re probably aware of what this is about,’ Marcus said. ‘I’m just a little surprised you didn’t mention it yourself when we met this morning.’

‘What are you talking about? That I’m still investigating the Rørvig murders? Isn’t that what I’ve been asked to do? To choose the cases I wish to work on? What about letting me run my own show?’

‘Damn it, Carl. Be a man and stop evading the point.’ Lars Bjørn straightened his slender frame in his chair, so that the police chief’s imposing corpus didn’t overshadow him. ‘We’re talking about Finn Aalbæk, the proprietor of Detecto, who you assaulted on Gammel Kongevej yesterday. We have his solicitor’s breakdown of the incident, so you can read for yourself what the matter is.’

The incident? What were they talking about? Carl grabbed the piece of paper and glanced at it. What the hell was Aalbæk up to? In black and white it said Carl had assaulted him. Did they really believe that dumb piece of shit?

‘Sjölund & Virksund’ he read on the letterhead. Quite a proper bunch of bloody high-society bandits, to polish and cleanse the tall tales of such a loser.

The time frame was good enough. Exactly when Carl startled Aalbæk at the bus stop. The dialogue, too, was relatively accurate, but the thump on the back had been turned into repeated hard blows to Aalbæk’s face with his fist and the shredding of his clothes. There were photos of his injuries. Aalbæk sure as hell didn’t look too good.

‘That meathead is being paid by Pram, Dybbøl Jensen and Florin,’ he said in self-defence. ‘They’ve made him let someone beat him up in order to get me away from the case, no doubt about it.’

‘That may well be your view, Mørck, but we must address this, nevertheless. You know the procedure whenever there’s a report of violence committed on duty.’ The police chief looked at him with the same pair of eyes that had helped her rise to that stratum where there was really something to see. He, too, was neutralized by them for a moment.

‘We won’t suspend you, Carl,’ she continued. ‘You’ve never previously abused anyone, now, have you? But earlier this year you suffered both traumatic and sad events. Maybe it’s all affected you more than you think. Don’t get the impression we’re not sympathetic.’

Carl gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Never previously abused anyone,’ she’d said. It was good that she believed that.

The homicide chief looked at him thoughtfully. ‘There will be an investigation, of course, and during the investigation we’ll use the opportunity to let you go on an intensive treatment programme so you can get to the bottom of what you’ve been through these past few months. In the meantime you will not be allowed to do anything here but administrative tasks. You can come and go as you please, but naturally – and I’m sorry about this – we’ll have to ask you to turn in your badge and your pistol during this period.’ He extended his hand. It was a suspension, pure and simple.

‘You’ll find the pistol up in the weapons depot,’ Carl said, handing over his badge. As if not having it would keep him from doing anything he wanted. They ought to know that. But perhaps it was exactly that they wanted him to do – be reckless and stupid. Get caught in dereliction of duty. Was that it? Did they want him to do something dumb so they could get rid of him?

‘Aalbæk’s solicitor Tim Virksund and I know each other,’ the police chief said, ‘and I will explain to him that you’re no longer on the case, Mørck. That will satisfy him, I suspect. He’s well aware of his client’s provocative style, and nobody will benefit if this ends up in court. It also solves the problem of your difficulty in following orders, doesn’t it?’ She pointed her finger at him. ‘Because this time you’ll have to. And in the future, Mørck, I’ll have you know I won’t accept any disruptions in the chain of command. I hope you understand. The Rørvig case ended with a conviction, and you’ve been told we want you to work on other cases. How clearly and how often do we need to tell you?’

He nodded and glanced out of the window. He hated this kind of shitty explanation. For all he cared, the three of them could clear off right now and stuff it.

‘Is it unreasonable to ask the real reason why this investigation has to be halted?’ he asked. ‘Who gave the order? Politicians? On what grounds? As far as I know there’s a principle of equality before the law in this country. I presume that also goes for people under suspicion of a crime. Or am I misunderstanding something?’

They all gazed sternly at him, as if they were Inquisition judges.

What would they do next? Toss him in the harbour to see if he would float like the Antichrist?

‘You’ll never guess what I have for you, Carl,’ Rose said excitedly. He peered down the basement corridor. It wasn’t that the height-adjustable tables had been assembled, in any case.

‘Your resignation, I hope,’ he said drily, planting himself on his chair in his office.

That statement seemed to make her mascara look even heavier. ‘I have two chairs for your office,’ she said. He cast a glance at the other side of his desk, wondering how in the world five square inches of space could suddenly house two chairs instead of one.

‘We’ll wait on them,’ he said. ‘What else?’

‘And I’ve got a few photos from Gossip and Her Life,’ she said in an even tone of voice, but tossed the clippings down a little more brutally than she ordinarily would have.

Carl glanced at them disinterestedly. Now that the case had been taken from him, what did he care about the clippings? In reality he should be asking her to pack away the whole mess and find some guileless soul to assemble her bloody tables in exchange for a kind word and a pat on the cheek.

Then he picked up the copies of the articles.

One of them dated back to around Kimmie’s childhood. Her Life had drawn a portrait of the Lassen family, and the title read: ‘No Success without the Security of Home’. It was a paean to Willy K. Lassen’s beautiful wife, Kassandra Lassen, but the photograph showed something else. The father in a grey suit with tapered legs and the stepmother in bold colours and severe late-seventies make-up. Well-groomed people in their mid-thirties. Self-confident, with stern faces. That little Kirsten-Marie stood clamped between them didn’t seem to register for them in the slightest. But it clearly affected Kimmie. With her large, frightened eyes, she was a girl who was simply there in body, not in spirit.