‘I do not have her name on my door. Why would I? The fact is that there’s no name at all on my door right now, and that’s none other than Kim Sleizner’s fault.’ The man, who was at least two heads shorter than Sleizner, was now standing very close to him, jabbing his index finger into his chest. ‘Because if you hadn’t come bumbling in here, babbling nonsense, it would have been up by now.’ He walked over to the hallway table, pulled a brass sign from a small plastic bag and held it up in front of Sleizner.

Qiang Who, it read, and Sleizner could only nod. ‘All right, but on the entry phone downstairs, it does say Dunja Hougaard, that much I know.’

‘And how is that my fault? I’ve been on to the landlord about it more times than there’s letters in the word elephant.’

‘Okay, okay, okay,’ said Sleizner, who’d had enough of the bickering. ‘So you don’t know anything about Dunja Hougaard?’

‘Only that she seems to have a habit of handing my keys out to any passing stranger.’ The man ripped the keys out of Sleizner’s hand.

‘Well, that’s that, then.’ Sleizner was about to take a step back. But he couldn’t bring himself to back down from a short fucking elephant Chinese guy. He just couldn’t. ‘Then the keys have found their way home at least. That’s good to know.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said the Chinese man, who insisted on standing so close to Sleizner he could smell his foetid breath, despite the height difference. ‘I prefer “Bye, not at all nice to meet you. See you never.”’

This idiot was worse than a goddamn mutt whose brain was too small to work out that instead of barking, it should run away as fast as it could.

There was very likely no one else in the flat, and he would have no problem surprising and incapacitating the pudgy little Chink with a forceful kick to the shins. But he wasn’t quite there yet, though he was already looking forward to accidentally using slightly too much force when he locked the Chinaman’s arms behind his back and hearing the crunch of a shoulder dislocating.

‘Absolutely, no need to worry. Of course I’m leaving,’ he said, surprised at his own patience. ‘But before I do, I just want to ask you something. We can think of it as you returning the favour since I brought you your keys. Would it be all right if I looked around? Just for a bit, five, six minutes, no more.’

The man looked up at Sleizner, picked his nose, rolled his findings into a small ball between his thumb and forefinger and flicked it away. ‘You’re slower than a retarded elephant. What part of “goodbye” don’t you understand?’