“Get up so we can search your cell!”

Sneered. That’s what Zaravic did. While Grens and Mariana and Sven turned over what little there was to turn in that cell.

“Did you lose something, Detectives?”

“Undress.”

“Mmm . . . that I did not see coming. You and me, Detective?”

“The sweater, pants, underwear, socks, slippers. You shake them while I watch, then drop them into a nice little pile on the floor.”

The sneering smile turned into a sneering laugh as Zaravic exposed his pale, naked body, and posed with exaggerated coyness for his three visitors.

“Do you like it? What about you, beautiful police lady? And you, my silent stranger? Or maybe the old cop, maybe you . . .”

“Grab your fucking buttocks, bend forward, and spread until I’m satisfied. Okay?”

Zaravic had been detained and imprisoned before. He shrugged, turned around, and did as he was asked.

“Like this?”

“Get dressed.”

“You seem disappointed, Superintendent. Were you looking for something? Because if there were anything, I mean, like a phone or maybe some paper, you know, the kind of thing you could end up with in a cell, well, if that were the case then I guess I would have pretended I needed to go to the bathroom not that long ago, and flushed all that shit. I mean, if I were to have it.”

Grens didn’t say a word as he pushed Sven and Mariana aside, threw open the cell door, and rushed across the hallway toward the toilets. He pulled on the plastic gloves he always kept in the inner pocket of his jacket and knelt down with aching legs and hips in front of one toilet bowl at a time. But no matter how far he dug or how far he pushed his hand into the pipe, he met only water. The phone was gone. And with it the possibility of tracing where the call came from.

He was furious.

But he’d never let that smiling bastard see it.

He commanded Sven and Mariana to leave the cell and slammed the door without so much as a glance at the still-naked Zaravic, then hurried to the guards’ glass cage.

“Do you have a spare cell?”

“What?”

“A cell. Unoccupied.”

The young guard seemed to think he hadn’t heard right.

“An empty cell?”

“Yes?”

“What are you gonna do with that?”

“Is there one or not?”

The third cell on the opposite side of the hall from Zaravic was until just a few hours ago home to a suicidal junkie. It wasn’t particularly clean. But Grens didn’t notice that or the pungent odor as he ordered Sven and Mariana to come inside and close the door behind them.

“Which one of you?”

Sven and Mariana looked at their boss, then at each other.

“Which one what, Ewert?”

“Goddamnit—who! Who leaked the information about Hoffmann so fresh, so unique that it only could have come from one of very few I trust, someone close to me. Really. Fucking. Close. There’s no other explanation. And I’ve had enough!”