“There is something that you don’t seem to get, missy.” Mikkelsen shook his head in annoyance. “What each of us believes is irrelevant. The only thing I’m interested in is what you can prove. Find the evidence against Mossing! Document that he had something to do with this sickening Lullaby Club, and then we’ll go to town. Then we’ll clear the front page and lynch the bastard. But I’m not printing an article that will destroy a person’s life just based on this.” He pointed at the draft article Heloise had brought to the meeting. “Not a chance!”

“Say something!” Heloise said, glancing over at Karen Aagaard in frustration.

“I’m sorry, Heloise, but he’s right,” Aagaard said.

Heloise closed her eyes and sighed.

“What do the police say? What’s the status of the case?” Aagaard asked.

Heloise shook her head slightly as she looked resignedly down at the table. “They have arrested eleven men in the case, raided their homes, confiscated their computers. There is a twelfth person on the arrest warrant—a high school teacher from the Aarhus area—but he’s disappeared.”

“Skipped town?” Aagaard asked.

“No one knows,” Heloise said with a shrug. “He disappeared a little over a month ago, and up until recently the police were treating it as a criminal case. In the beginning they thought the man had been the victim of a crime. But now they think maybe he ran off instead.”

“Then I simply can’t understand why you’re sulking,” Mikkelsen said grumpily, and stood up. “There’s plenty of material for you to dig into. Eleven men have been accused of taking part in this filth, and a twelfth might’ve managed to flee the sinking ship. I mean, good grief, woman, that’s huge! Go home and write that story!”

Mikkelsen left the room, and Heloise and Aagaard could hear him cursing as his heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway of the editorial department.

Detective Sergeant Erik Schäfer had had a busy week full of raids and interrogations. The chief superintendent had assembled an investigative team of eighteen men, who had been working on the case around the clock since Schäfer and Heloise had returned from Paris. Schäfer was in charge of the team, and this case was the highest priority of the Violent Crimes Unit.