Seventh month? Eighth?

Not now.

‘Are you Karen?’ Renate Hall asks and extends her hand. ‘You don’t have to sign in,’ she adds quickly without waiting for a reply and gives the receptionist a brief nod.

She doesn’t want anyone to know the police were here, Karen realises. And as soon as they’ve stepped into an adjacent room and shut the door behind them, Renate Hall says, as though she were a mind reader, ‘With Anita away, I should really have cleared this with someone higher up before letting you in.’

‘We’re investigating a series of very serious crimes. I don’t mind going through the proper channels if—’

‘I know. But that would take time. Especially today – all the managers are attending a big conference. Anita asked me to see to this personally. And if there’s any way I can help you catch that swine—’

She breaks off with a look that expresses both rage and disgust.

‘I appreciate it,’ Karen says. ‘And I’ll be as quick and discreet as I can.’

‘It’s good timing. The building is more or less empty, since everyone is at that conference.’

‘Everyone except the receptionist and customer service?’

Renate laughs.

‘Of course. They’re going to talk about values and client-oriented approaches, so it wouldn’t make sense to let me come.’

The bitterness of the words belies her tone. Probably the result of many years of learning to always sound professional, regardless of the message, Karen thinks and sits down in the chair she is pointed to, in front of a desk with a desktop computer and a large screen.

Renate Hall pulls up another chair and sits down next to her. Reaches for the mouse, closes the email program and a few documents.

Then she clicks an icon in the bottom right corner and New Builds’ logo and the words ‘Customer service and casework’ flash on the screen before it fills with headers, rows, columns and arrows with scroll-down menus.

‘It’s a pretty basic system but let me just explain a few things before you get started.’

*

‘Basic, but bloody efficient,’ Karen concludes thirty minutes later. The list of every property managed by New Builds Ltd can be sorted according to address, flat number, property number, square footage, and at least ten other parameters, and the tenants can be listed according to name, gender, age, contact number, or length of contract. And case number.

‘Strictly financial cases and rent transactions are handled in a different system,’ Renate Hall had explained. ‘But everything else should be in here.’

After asking Karen a few questions, she had excluded all properties in Ravenby, Grunder, and Gaarda. leaving only the 1,449 flats in Moerbeck and their residents.

‘I need to be available to take calls now, but I’m just in the next room, so knock if you have any questions,’ she’d said and shuffled out with one hand pressed against her lower back.