‘I spoke to the doctor in charge at Thysted earlier this morning,’ Björken continues. ‘And it looks like we’re going to be able to talk to Anita Kollbar today. I’m heading over as soon as we’re done here and I’m taking Eiken. Anita may not want a man in the room. If that’s the case, you’ll have to handle it by yourself,’ he adds in Karen’s direction.

She nods and glances over at Astrid Nielsen. Before today, she would have been the obvious choice to go with Karl. But Astrid shows no sign of being disappointed at not being present for the first conversation with their latest victim. If anything, she looks slightly relieved. Cornelis Loots, who is sitting next to her, seems to relax once the last picture of the bloody Budweiser bottle and tattered knickers have disappeared from the screen, and the colour is returning to his face.

‘Anita Kollbar sustained serious injuries to her nether regions and has already undergone two surgeries. Is there anything you’d like to add, Kneought?’

The coroner shakes his head.

‘Nothing that will help you catch that bastard. I assume you can imagine the kind of injuries a broken bottle can cause. And if you can’t, I can only congratulate you.’

They can’t.

They can.

‘Budweiser,’ Karen says, breaking the heavy silence. ‘The same type of bottle he used on Loa Marklund, right?’

‘What are you getting at?’ Evald Johannisen asks. ‘Are you implying the bloke has poor taste in beer?’

No one laughs. Johannisen tries again.

‘I for one don’t see how it’s significant. Didn’t he use a bottle of Groth’s whiskey on the first victim and a half-bottle of gin on the third? What does your woman’s intuition have to say about that kind of cocktail?’

‘It was just a thought,’ Karen snaps, glaring at Johannisen. ‘I, for one, find thinking more constructive than making bad jokes during an active invest—’

‘And as you know, we found blood on this beer bottle that doesn’t belong to Anita Kollbar,’ Karl Björken intervenes quickly. ‘In other words, we are likely finally in possession of the perpetrator’s DNA.’

He turns to the head of forensics. Sören Larsen draws himself up in his chair to make the most of his five feet and five inches.

‘Not surprisingly, we’ve been able to establish that it’s DNA from a man. No hits in any of the databases, though. And we’re not allowed to use Horvath’s method of age determination, so unless we sample every guy in town, you’re going to have to find the son of a bitch some other way.’

‘We could take the profile as our starting point and offer all men between twenty-five and forty a free swab?’ Astrid Nielsen says without conviction. ‘It would at least exclude some people,’ she adds.