“I don’t get it, Grens. I hardly knew places like this existed. It’s enormous! I’ve been wandering around forever. Do you really live here? Is this your home? I mean, on a cop’s salary, how can, how did you . . . how the fuck can you afford it? And why? What are you gonna do with all this? My whole family could live here, and we’d never even bump into each other. All my relatives, come to think of it.”

“We were two. Back then. About to be more. When we filled these rooms with furniture. It was another time—people were moving out of the inner city, not into it.”

“We? Your wife?”

“Anni.”

“And more? So she was . . .”

“Yes.”

“But that’s been . . . well, a pretty long time if I understand correctly?”

“Thirty-five years. Since she was injured and moved into a facility. She died just ten years ago.”

Piet Hoffmann leaned back in the comfortably worn reading chair. He could have fallen asleep in it.

“So—what you’re saying, Grens, is that for over thirty years you’ve walked through this world on your own? That seems, sorry to say it—kind of sad. Like the man who owns this place wasn’t living, just existing.”

Hoffmann observed the detective superintendent. He didn’t mean to be cruel. But he realized it came out that way. Grens’s wounded expression showed he was trying to make sense of this half-life he’d lived in a place that made him feel like a stranger.

“I don’t spend much time here. I prefer my office. Quite a bit more, if I’m being honest.”

“Now you’re making it even easier to understand why you’d choose to live here. In solitude.”

Or—Hoffmann looked at Grens again—maybe that wasn’t pain in his expression? Maybe, on the contrary, the detective had something in his face that seemed more like gratitude? Because his guest had interpreted his situation, his state of mind, so precisely? Had the courage to say it?

“It’s . . . well, I’ve thought about it sometimes.”

“Yes?”

“Moving, I mean. Somewhere else.”

“But . . . ?”

“Well, I’m just not that good at it. I don’t know, really.”

And suddenly the older man resembled his own apartment.

“How does a person do it?”

Desolate. Empty. Even a little sad.

“How do they leave something?”

The two of them observed each other. Not long, but long enough to note that Piet Hoffmann had taken another step further into Ewert Grens’s life, into a space where almost no one was welcome.

“Let’s go to the kitchen. It’s easier to work there. Besides—if we’re gonna spend the rest of the night on this, I’d better brew up something hot for us.”