When it was over, Schäfer said, “Please tell me that you have the documents she talked about.”

He had stood up halfway through the recording, too tense to stay seated. Now he had his hands on his cheeks, like a game show contestant waiting to find out if he had won the jackpot or not.

“I do.” Heloise nodded.

Schäfer squeezed his eyes shut and did a fist pump with his right hand.

Heloise pulled out the folder and handed it to him.

“This is it?” he asked. “These are the documents?”

“Yes. I only had a chance to skim through them, but what I saw was completely insane. There are DVDs of pornography, pictures of assaults, chat conversations, and all sorts of other dreadful stuff. There are a bunch of names of people who participated, their IP addresses, pictures of them. We can nail those assholes, Schäfer, all of them.”

“We?” Schäfer asked, looking up.

“Yeah.”

“No, Heloise. You can’t write about this. Not yet.”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?” She jumped to her feet. “I’m the one who landed this story. It’s mine!”

“Not yet.” He shook his head. “You have to wait until I give you the go-ahead.”

“One of the richest men in Denmark abused children. If I don’t write that story, someone else will—believe me. It’s my story, Schäfer. I’m going to be the one to break it.”

“Yes, of course you will, but not yet. Not until our investigation is squared away. If you write anything before these assholes are locked up, then you’ll just warn them off, and I am not going to let Mossing get away from me again.”

“Well then, what are you suggesting that we do?” Heloise asked, crossing her arms.

Schäfer walked past her, over to the big double doors, and spoke quietly with the officers blocking the entrance to the lounge. Then he closed the doors and locked them so that he and Heloise were alone in the room.

“I suggest that we prepare properly before we proceed with this,” he said, allowing himself to sink back into the armchair. He opened the folder. “Come, have a seat,” he said, nodding to the sofa. “We’ll start at the beginning.”

CHAPTER

45

“YOU’VE GOT TO be fucking kidding me.”

Schäfer flipped through the documents again for a third time as pictures and newspaper clippings skittered across the coffee table and fell onto the long-haired area rug.

“I don’t believe this!”

“I … I don’t understand,” Heloise said.

“There’s nothing here! It doesn’t say anything about Johannes Mossing here.”

“But Anna said it was him. She said there was evidence in the folder that he—”