Suddenly, there was screaming, so loud it hurt her ears. It took her a moment to realize the scream was coming from her. It was instinctive and seemed never to want to end. At the same time, the fog was returning, making her reflection increasingly indistinct.

Even so, she could still clearly see that a large chunk of her fringe had been cut off.

2

It’s your fault…

The sound of the bullet, like an arrow whizzing through the air. A rushing sound preceded not by a bang but rather a vacuum that had been equalized. An innocuous, barely noticeable whoosh, like when you open a new tube of tennis balls.

All of this…

Matilda, his own daughter, only thirteen years old, who had clapped her hands to her stomach and stared at the dark red stain growing bigger and bigger on her top. Her uncomprehending eyes and ever stickier hands as she collapsed on the white rug.

Yours and no one else’s…

Everything had happened so horribly fast, yet Fabian Risk could still play the entire course of events frame by frame.

His hands, which had finally been able to hold the gun, aim and pull the trigger. The blood that had pumped out through the hole in the perpetrator’s forehead, along with the realization that it was all over. Too late. And finally, the words from his own son, which would haunt him forever.

That it was all his fault. His and no one else’s.

Nothing could have been more true.

The bullet that had taken Matilda’s life had come as a complete surprise, despite all the warnings. He had managed to miss them all and pushed on with his investigation into the identify-theft killers.

Now he was sitting here, in the first row, with Theodor on one side and Sonja on the other, dressed in the dark suit he hadn’t worn since a young Danish murder victim, Mette Louise Risgaard, was buried in Lellinge Church two years earlier. This time, it was his own daughter trapped under all the flowers in the coffin that looked too short.

But the guilt was the same.

His.

Next to him, Sonja was crying, and on the other side he could hear Theodor fighting back tears. He, for his part, felt nothing. It was as though the roller coaster of hope and despair he had been on over the past four weeks, sitting by Matilda’s bedside with Sonja, had used up all his feelings.

His daughter had been murdered right in front of him, but the only thing he could feel was the stress of not feeling anything. He couldn’t even hear what the priest was saying. The words stubbornly bounced around, blending together despite microphone and speakers.

‘You do know this is your fault, don’t you?’

The voice was so quiet it was impossible to pinpoint its origin. He turned to Theodor. ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’