When she threw her head back and spat in his eyes, he lurched backwards, shock etched into his face. He glanced down at his coat, furious, and levelled his gaze at her again. She knew he was dangerous now. There was no shortage of assaults on Skelbækgade. The Tamil handing out free newspapers up at the next corner was unlikely to intervene.

So she got to her feet and smashed the bottle down on the man’s skull. Shards of glass slid across the street to a buckled post box. A delta of blood spread from his ear and dripped down the collar of his coat. As the man stared at the jagged bottle aimed at him, his mind was no doubt racing. How would he explain this to his wife, his children, his colleagues? He began running towards the central station, presumably aware that he’d need a doctor’s attention and a new coat in order to return to normal.

‘I’ve seen that cocksucker before,’ Tine snuffled at Kimmie’s side, as she stared at the beer stain spreading on the pavement. ‘Bloody hell, Kimmie. Now I need to go to Aldi for another one, don’t I? Poor fucking beer. Why did that idiot have to come wading by when we’re sitting here, having a good time?’

Kimmie relaxed her gaze and her grip on the bottleneck as the man disappeared down the street. Then she stuck her fingers in her trousers, fished out a chamois-leather neck purse and opened it. The newspaper clippings were very new. On occasion she exchanged them with fresh ones so that she could stay updated on how the others looked. She unfolded the clippings and held them in front of Tine’s face.

‘Was this guy one of the men asking about me?’ She put her finger on the press photo. At the bottom it read: ‘Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen, director of the stock market research firm UDJ, rejects partnership with conservative think tank.’

Ulrik had gradually become a big man, in both the physical and figurative meaning of the word.

Tine studied the clipping through a blue-white cloud of cigarette smoke and shook her head. ‘They weren’t that fat.’

‘How about this one?’ It was from a women’s magazine she’d found in a rubbish bin on Øster Farimagsgade. With his long hair and shiny skin, Torsten Florin came across as a queer, but he wasn’t. She could confirm that.

‘I’ve seen that one before, on TV-Denmark or something. He does something in fashion, right?’

‘Was it him, Tine?’

Tine giggled as if it were a game. So it wasn’t Torsten, either.

When she’d also rejected the Ditlev Pram clipping, Kimmie packed them all up and stuffed them back in her trousers. ‘What did the men say about me?’

‘They just said they were looking for you, sweetie.’

‘If we went down there to find them someday, would you recognize them?’

She shrugged. ‘They’re not there every day, Kimmie.’

Kimmie gnawed at her lip. She had to be careful now. They were getting close. ‘You tell me if you see them again, got it? Pay close attention to what they look like. Write it down so you can remember.’ She rested her hand on Tine’s knee, which protruded like the edge of a knife under her threadbare jeans. ‘If you have information, stick it under the yellow sign over there.’ She pointed at the sign that read CAR RENTAL – DISCOUNT.

Tine coughed and nodded simultaneously.

‘Every time you give me solid information I’ll give you a thousand kroner for your rat. What do you say to that, Tine? You can get it a new cage. You still have it up in your bedsit, don’t you?

She stood for five minutes by the parking sign in front of the landmark C. E. Bast Tallow Refinery until she was certain that Tine wasn’t watching her.

No one knew where she lived, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Crossing the street, angling towards the wrought-iron door, she felt a headache emerging along with a prickling sensation under her skin. Anger and frustration at the same time. The demons inside her hated it.

Sitting on her narrow bed, holding the bottle of whisky and peering through the small room’s faint light, a sense of calm washed over her. This was her real world. Where she felt safe, where she could find everything she needed. The chest containing her most precious treasure lay under the bench, the poster depicting children playing tacked on the inside of the door, the photograph of the little girl, the newspapers she’d attached to the wall for insulation. The stack of clothes, the piss bucket on the floor, the pile of newspapers in the back, two battery-driven mini-fluorescent tubes and a pair of extra shoes on the shelf. She could do whatever she pleased with all this, and if she wanted something new, she had plenty of money.

When the whisky began to take effect, she laughed and inspected the nooks behind the three loose bricks in the wall. She checked these spaces nearly every time she returned to her house, starting with the one containing her credit cards and last ATM receipts, then moving on to the one where she kept the cash.

Each day she tallied up how much was left. For eleven years she’d lived on the street, and there were still 1,344,000 kroner left. If she continued as before, she would never use it up. Her daily needs, including her clothes, were met more or less through her thievery. She didn’t eat much, and thanks to the so-called health-conscious government, alcohol cost next to nothing. A person could now drink himself to death at half-price. What a terrific society Denmark had become. She snorted, removed the hand grenade from her bag and set it in the third nook with the others. Then she replaced the brick so carefully that it was nearly impossible to see the cracks.

Her anxiety came without warning this time, which was unusual. Normally, internal images alerted her. Hands poised to strike, sometimes blood and mutilated bodies. Other times she caught fleeting glimpses of carefree moments from long, long ago. Promises whispered that were later broken. This time, however, the voices failed to notify her.

She began to shake. Cramps in her pelvis squeezed her insides. Like tears, nausea was an unavoidable side effect. Previously she’d tried drowning her emotional distress with alcohol, but it only made her pain worse.

At moments like these she just had to wait for the hours to pass, until darkness returned.

When her head was clear, she would get up and go to Dybbølsbro Station. She would take the lift down to Platform 3 and wait at the far end until one of the trains rushed by. She’d stand on the edge, stretch out her arms, and shout: ‘You won’t get away with this, you bastards.’

After that she would let the voices decide.

8

Carl had hardly settled in his office before the clear-plastic folder resting squarely on his desk caught his eye.

What the hell, he thought, and called for Assad.

When Assad was at the door, Carl pointed at the folder. ‘Do you know where that came from?’ Assad shook his head. ‘Don’t touch it, OK? There may be fingerprints.’

They stared at the topmost sheet. ‘Boarding-School Gang Attacks’, read the heading in laser print.

Underneath was a list of violent crimes with times, places and names of victims. The attacks seemed to have been committed over a long period of time – all the way up to 1992. A young man on a beach near Nyborg. Twin brothers on a football pitch in broad daylight. A husband and wife on the island of Langeland. There were at least twenty recorded attacks. It wasn’t unusual for pupils to be in school until they were twenty back in the eighties, Carl thought, but the later attacks must’ve been carried out after they’d graduated.

‘We’ve got to find out who’s putting these files here, Assad. Call the crime-scene techs. If someone here at the station is doing this, then matching fingerprints will be an easy matter.’