Grens used to avoid his building’s tiny ancient elevator—the cables creaked and complained and swayed ominously—but his leg was sore, and so the detective pulled open the elevator door with the same anxious feeling as when he entered an airplane—the one that meant losing the control that held his world together.

He saw it as soon as he stepped out onto the fourth floor and took out his keys.

Someone had tried to get into his home.

He froze, trying to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. Was he so deep inside the case that he’d started living it? Thrown back to another apartment where a little girl hopped around her murdered parents and siblings?

Some of his colleagues left fluorescent wires between their doors and doorframes whenever they left home, and when they came back they used a UV flashlight to find out if anyone had opened the door and broken the thread. Looking for two pieces curled up like snakes on the floor. That was too advanced for an old detective like him. Besides, he didn’t need it. Sometimes the old methods were good enough—for example, always leaving a worn-out door handle perpendicular. Whenever Grens left his home, he would push up the handle slightly and make sure it hung parallel to the floor. And if someone else were to push it down while he was away, well, this is exactly how it would look.

A little off, a little tired, an old handle with an old spring that couldn’t quite manage to stay upright on its own.

Someone had tried to enter his home.

Grens took his service weapon out of his shoulder holster and held it in front of him as he stepped into a darkened hall.

One and a half steps. Then he stopped, listened.

Silence.

No movements, no breathing.

He continued walking, one slow step at a time.

Past the bedroom. The bathroom. His office.

Nothing.

Until he got to the kitchen.

He couldn’t really see or hear anyone inside, but he sensed it.

Somebody was in there.

He held the gun with both hands. A much longer step, maintaining his balance. Then a rapid swing of his upper body around the corner of the wall.

“Hold your hands . . .”

At the kitchen table. A shape in the darkness.

“. . . very fucking still!”

Which suddenly moved.

“I repeat: hands still or I shoot!”

Grens stood at the doorstep of his own kitchen, gun pointed at a shadow sitting on one of his kitchen chairs.

“Grens—it’s me.”

“Hands on the table, nice and easy where I can see them!”

“Goddamnit, Grens, lower your weapon, it’s . . .”

It wasn’t easy to make out in the dark, but Ewert Grens was pretty sure that the figure in front of him was slowly rising from the table, maybe even stretching out a hand.

“Don’t move, you bastard, or I’ll shoot! Last warning!”