Later he told the others how that slap had been the first real rush of his life.

‘Me, too,’ Ulrik grinned, shuffling towards the shocked boy. Ulrik was the biggest of them all, and his clenched fist put an ugly mark on the boy’s cheek.

Kimmie protested weakly, but was neutralized by a fit of laughter that flushed all the birds from the underbrush.

They carried the boy back to school and watched as the ambulance came to pick him up. Some of the gang were concerned the boy would rat on them, but he never did. In fact, he never returned. According to rumour, his father took him back to Hong Kong, but that might not have been true.

A few days later, they attacked a dog in the forest, beating it to death.

After that there was no turning back.

5

On the wall above the three panorama windows was inscribed the word ‘Caracas’. The manor had been constructed using vast sums earned in the coffee trade.

Ditlev Pram had instantly recognized the building’s potential. A few pillars here and there, walls of icy, green glass elevated yards in the air. Straight rows of water basins trickling water and manicured lawns with futuristic sculptures stretching towards the Sound were all that was required to create the newest private hospital on the Rungsted coast. Dental and plastic surgery were the specialties here. It wasn’t an original idea, but it was incredibly lucrative for Ditlev and his Indian and Eastern European staff of doctors and dentists.

After his older brother and two younger sisters inherited the enormous fortune their father had accumulated through stock speculation and a series of hostile takeovers in the eighties, Ditlev managed his money craftily. By now his empire had expanded to include sixteen hospitals, with four new ones on the drawing board. He was making good progress towards realizing his ambition to channel fifteen per cent of the profits from all of northern Europe’s breast-implant operations and facelifts into his account. It was hard to find one wealthy woman north of the Black Forest who hadn’t had nature’s caprices adjusted on one of Ditlev Pram’s steel tables.

In short, life was good.

His only concern was Kimmie. Eleven years with her rudimentary existence in the back of his mind was long enough.

He straightened his Mont Blanc fountain pen, which was slightly askew on his desk, and glanced at his Breitling watch again.

There was plenty of time. Aalbæk would arrive in twenty minutes. Five minutes after that Ulrik would pay him a visit, and maybe Torsten, too, but who knew?

He rose and made his way down ebony-clad corridors, past the hospital wing and the operating rooms. He nodded agreeably to everyone who knew he was the unchallenged man at the top, and pushed through the swing doors into the kitchen on the lowest level, with its fine view of the ice-blue sky over the Sound.

He shook the cook’s hand and praised him until he blushed, patted his assistants on the shoulder and then disappeared into the laundry.

After many calculations, he knew that Berendsen Textile Service could deliver the bed sheets faster and cheaper, but that wasn’t the point of having your own on-site laundry facility. It was handy, of course, but so was having easy access to the six Philippine girls he’d hired to do the work. What did money matter?

He noted how the young, dark-skinned women recoiled at the sight of him, and, as always, it amused him. So he grabbed the nearest one and dragged her into the linen cupboard. She looked frightened, but she’d been through it before. She had the narrowest hips and the smallest breasts, but she was also the most experienced. Manila’s brothels had given her a solid training and whatever he did to her now was nothing by comparison.

She pulled his trousers down and, without being told, latched on to his cock. While she rubbed his belly with one hand and masturbated him in her mouth with the other, he punched her shoulders and arms.

With this one he never came; his orgasm settled into his tissue in another way. His adrenalin was pumping fast as he landed his blows, and after a few minutes his tank was full.

He stepped back, hoisted her up by the hair and rammed his tongue deep in her mouth, yanking her underwear down and forcing a pair of fingers into her vagina. By the time he thrust her back on the floor, they’d both had more than enough.

Then he straightened his clothes, shoved a thousand-krone bill in her mouth and departed the laundry, giving a friendly nod to all. They seemed relieved, but they shouldn’t have been. He was going to be at the Caracas clinic for the whole of the following week. The girls would come to know who was boss.

The private detective looked like shit that morning, in stark contrast to Ditlev’s shiny office. It was all too clear that the scrawny man had spent the entire night on the streets of Copenhagen. Yet wasn’t that what they paid him for?

‘What’s the word, Aalbæk?’ Ulrik grunted next to Ditlev, while stretching his legs under the conference table. ‘Any news in the case of the missing Kirsten-Marie Lassen?’ Ulrik always opened his conversations with Aalbæk that way, Ditlev thought, as he stared with annoyance at the dark grey waves beyond the panorama windows.

He wished to hell this would all be over soon, so that Kimmie wouldn’t be gnawing at his memory all the time. When they got hold of her, they would make her vanish for ever. He was sure he would figure out a way.

The private detective craned his neck and suppressed a yawn. ‘The locksmith at the central train station has seen Kimmie a few times. She goes around dragging a suitcase, and last time he saw her she was wearing a tartan skirt. The same outfit she wore when the woman near Tivoli spotted her. But as far as I’m aware, Kimmie isn’t a regular at the train station. In fact, there’s nothing about her that’s regular. I’ve asked everyone in the station. Security, police, homeless people, shopkeepers. A few of them know of her, but they don’t know where she lives or even who she is.’

‘You’ll have to set up a team to observe the station day and night until she turns up again.’ Ulrik rose from his seat. He was a large man but seemed smaller when they were discussing Kimmie. Maybe he was the only one among them who’d seriously been in love with her. Perhaps it still pained Ulrik that he’d been the only one who’d never had her, thought Ditlev for the thousandth time, and laughed to himself.

‘Round-the-clock surveillance? That will cost you an arm and a leg,’ Aalbæk said. He was about to pluck a pocket calculator from his ridiculous little shoulder bag, but he didn’t get that far.

‘Stop that,’ Ditlev barked. He considered throwing something at him, then leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t discuss money as though it’s something you know anything about, you got that? What are we talking about here, Aalbæk? A few hundred thousand kroner? How much do you think Ulrik, Torsten and I have made while we’ve been sitting here discussing your pathetic hourly wages?’ Then he picked up his fountain pen anyway and threw it at him. He aimed for the man’s eyes, but missed.

After Aalbæk’s thin corpus had closed the door behind him, Ulrik picked up the Mont Blanc and put it in his pocket.

‘Finders keepers,’ he said, laughing.

Ditlev said nothing. Ulrik had better think twice before doing that again.

‘Have you heard from Torsten today?’ he asked.

At this, the energy drained from Ulrik’s face. ‘Yes, he went up to his country estate in Gribskov this morning.’

‘Doesn’t he care at all about what’s going on here?’

Ulrik shrugged his shoulders, which were beefier than ever. That’s what happened when you hired a chef specializing in foie gras.