Piet Hoffmann sat up on one of Ewert Grens’s elegant sofas. He hadn’t slept long, but heavy, which was rare for him. And here—of all places. At the home of the police officer who once gave the command to shoot him in the head. Life seemed so straightforward when he looked into Luiza’s eyes, but in its other guises it was quite bizarre.

He’d pressed the number the first time just after three when Grens had disappeared onto the balcony. But changed his mind before anyone answered. He tried again just before five and she managed to answer just before he hung up in confusion. But this time he let the signal go through while opening that place in his heart where only Zofia’s voice was allowed.

“Did I wake you up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t relax here. But the kids are asleep, all of them. How . . . Where are you?”

He was there. That’s what it felt like.

“Close.”

With her, pressed against her warm skin, lying next to each other and listening to Hugo tossing and turning and Rasmus’s quiet snoring and Luiza’s stable breathing.

“A few more days. Then this will be over. But you have to stay in the apartment. You can’t go out. The boys can’t go out. Don’t even open a window. Promise me. And Zo—please hug Hugo and Rasmus and Luiza extra hard for me.”

Piet Hoffmann smoothed the pillows and rugs and the velvety sofa fabric, then wandered out into the rest of the apartment, which seemed never ending—it was still so impossible to imagine that blunt detective in this palace. As he approached the library he started to slow. He remembered something he saw yesterday evening when he was sitting in that armchair, flipping through a newspaper and waiting for Grens to come back. On the wall, which was otherwise floor-to-ceiling books, there hung a tapestry embroidered with the words merry christmas, yellow letters on a red background, next to a black-and-white photograph—a very young man and a very young woman in crisp new police uniforms. And this crocheted tapestry and those two portraits constituted the center, not just of this room, but also of the whole palatial apartment.

He placed his next call from Grens’s enormous kitchen with a cup of coffee, a piece of crispbread he’d found at the back of the pantry, and a hardboiled egg that was lying in the compartment next to the milk in an otherwise empty refrigerator. It was to his employee at Hoffmann Security, who was sitting in a narrow studio apartment in a high-rise building, watching monitors that conveyed images of four guarded apartments.

“Up a little earlier than usual, boss?”

“A sofa that wasn’t as comfortable as it looked. How are we today?”