‘Have you caught up to where it says who the suspects were?’

From beneath his eyebrows, Carl glanced up at Assad. That ought to be enough of an answer, but Assad wouldn’t give up.

‘Yes, of course you have. And the report also suggests that their fathers were all the kind who earned lots of money. Didn’t many do that in the gold-eighties, or whatever it was called?’

Carl nodded. He’d now reached that part of the report.

Yes, Assad had it right. Their fathers were all well known, even today.

He skimmed the group’s names a few times. It was enough to produce beads of sweat on his brow, because it wasn’t just their fathers who’d earned enormous sums and become well-known figures. Years later some of their offspring had become famous, too. Born with a silver spoon in their mouths, they now held the golden spoon. They were Ditlev Pram, founder of numerous exclusive private hospitals, Torsten Florin, internationally recognized designer, and stock market analyst Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen. All stood on the top rung of Denmark’s ladder of success, as had the now deceased shipping magnate Kristian Wolf. The final two members of the gang stood out from the rest. Kirsten-Marie Lassen had also been a part of the jet set, but no one knew where she was today. Bjarne Thøgersen, the one who’d pleaded guilty to killing the siblings and now sat in prison, came from more modest means.

When Carl was done reading, he tossed the file on the table.

‘Right. So I don’t understand how this case got down to us,’ Assad said. Normally he would have smiled at this point, but he didn’t.

Carl shook his head. ‘I don’t, either. A man is in prison for the crime. He confessed, got a life sentence and is now behind bars. As a matter of fact, he turned himself in, so why the doubts? Case closed!’ He clapped the file shut.

‘Except …’ Assad bit his lip. ‘He didn’t turn himself in until nine years later.’

‘So what? He did turn himself in. When he committed the murders he was only eighteen years old. Maybe he realized, as he grew older, that a bad conscience never fades.’

‘Fades?’

Carl sighed. ‘Yes, fades. Withers, dies. A bad conscience doesn’t go away with time, Assad. On the contrary.’

Assad was clearly puzzled about something. ‘The Nykøbing Sjælland and Holbæk police worked on the case together. And the Mobile Investigation Unit, too. But, who sent it to us, I can’t tell. Can you?’

Carl lowered his eyes to the file’s cover. ‘No, it doesn’t say anywhere. Very peculiar.’ If one of those three units hadn’t sent them the file, who had? And if the case had ended in a conviction, why bother reopening it at all?

‘Could it have something to do with this?’ Assad asked. He riffled through the file until he found a document from Revenue and Customs, and handed it to Carl. ‘Annual Report’, it said at the top. It was addressed to Bjarne Thøgersen, residing in Albertslund County in Vridløselille State Prison. The man who had killed the two youths.

‘Look!’ Assad was pointing at the gigantic figure in the stock revenue line. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think he comes from a wealthy family, and now he’s got enough time to play with his money. Apparently he’s done pretty well with it. Where are you going with this?’

‘I’ll have you know, Carl, that he doesn’t come from a wealthy family. He was the only member of the boarding-school gang who attended on a scholarship. You can see that he was quite different from the others. Take a look.’ He turned the pages back.

Carl propped up his head with one hand.

That was the thing about holidays.

They came to an end.

4. Autumn 1986

Although they were six very different people, the fifth-form students had something in common. When classes were over, they would meet in the forest or on the nature paths and light their hash pipes, even if rain was bucketing down. They kept the paraphernalia within reach in the hollow of a tree trunk; Bjarne made sure of that. Cecil fags, matches, tinfoil and the finest dope money could buy on the square in Næstved. Standing in a cluster, they would mix fresh air with a few quick drags, careful not to get so stoned that their pupils would give them away.

Because it wasn’t about getting high. It was about being their own masters and defying the authorities in the biggest way possible. And smoking hash right next to the boarding school was pretty much the worst you could do.

So they passed the pipe around and mocked the teachers, trying to outdo each other imagining what they would do to them if they could.

And that’s how they spent most of the autumn until the day Kristian and Torsten were nearly caught with hash on their breath, which not even ten cloves of garlic could hide. After that they decided to eat it, because then there was no scent.

It was shortly afterwards that everything began in earnest.

When they were caught in the act, they were standing beside a thicket close to the stream, high as kites and acting silly, while melting frost dripped from the leaves.

One of the younger boys suddenly appeared from behind a bush, staring straight at them. He was a blond, ambitious little shit, an irritating goody-two-shoes on the prowl for a beetle he could display in biology class.

Instead, what he found was Kristian busily shoving the whole works back into the hollow of the tree, while Torsten, Ulrik and Bjarne giggled like idiots and Ditlev’s hands rummaged inside Kimmie’s shirt. She, too, was laughing like a lunatic. This shit was some of the best they’d ever had.

‘I’m telling the headmaster!’ the boy screamed at them, noticing too late how quickly the older students’ laughter fell silent. A sprightly boy who was used to taunting others, he could have easily outrun them, given how loaded they were. But the thicket was overgrown and the danger he’d put them in too great for them to let that happen.

Bjarne had the most to lose if he were kicked out, so once they got hold of the little twit, he was the one Kristian pushed forward. And it was he who landed the first blow.

‘You know my father can crush your father’s business, if he wants to,’ the boy shouted, ‘so bugger off, Bjarne, you pile of shit! Otherwise it’ll be worst for you. Let go of me, you idiot.’

They hesitated. The boy had made life terribly difficult for many of his classmates. His father, uncle and big sister had been pupils at the school before him, and were regular contributors to the school fund. Giving the kind of donations Bjarne was dependent on.

Then Kristian stepped forward. He didn’t have the same financial concerns. ‘We’ll give you twenty thousand kroner to keep your mouth shut,’ he said, meaning it.

‘Twenty thousand kroner!’ the boy snorted mockingly. ‘All I have to do is phone my father once, and he’ll send me double that amount.’ Then he spat in Kristian’s face.

‘Damn you, you little shit,’ Kristian said, punching him. ‘If you say anything, we’ll kill you.’ The boy fell backwards against a tree trunk, breaking a pair of ribs with an audible crack.

For a moment he lay there, gasping in pain, but his eyes remained defiant. Then Ditlev came forward.

‘We can choke you right now, no problem. Or we can hold you under water in the stream. Or we can let you go and give you the twenty thousand kroner to keep your mouth shut. If you go back now and tell everyone you fell, they’ll believe you. What do you say, you little shit?’

The boy didn’t respond.

Ditlev went and stood right over him, curious, searching. The little bastard’s reaction fascinated him. With a sudden movement he raised his hand as if to strike, but the boy still didn’t react, so he whacked him hard on the head. When the boy crumpled in fright, Ditlev struck again, smiling. It was a tremendous feeling.