“Thank you, Scowl, that’s quite enough!” He practically spat out the words. “Miss Kaldan’s personal life has nothing to do with this.”

Karen Aagaard closed the door to her office and turned to Heloise.

“What. On earth. Was that?”

“Are you referring to that odd staccato way you’re speaking?” Heloise produced a packet of chewing gum from her pocket. “I don’t know, but perhaps you should get it checked out. It sounds serious.”

Aagaard flopped down in the leather armchair in the corner. She threw up her hands in resignation. “Oh, you think this is funny, do you?” Her tone was astounded rather than angry.

“Not in the least,” Heloise said, taking a seat opposite her editor. “But what do you want me to say? I screwed up, I’ve admitted it, and it won’t happen again. So now you have to decide whether to give me a new assignment or to send me home.”

She popped two pieces of chewing gum into her mouth and held out the packet to Aagaard, who took it tentatively.

“Hmm. It just feels like there’s something going on between you and Mikkelsen that I should know about?”

“There isn’t.”

“Is there something going on between you and Mikkelsen that I shouldn’t know about?”

“… No.”

“Kaldan!”

“Nothing is going on!” Heloise held up her hands to shut her up.

“Okay. I’ll pretend to believe that.” Karen Aagaard drummed her fingers on the coffee table in front of her while she looked pensively at Heloise, trying to decide what to do with her.

Heloise beamed a smile at her, which Aagaard waved away in halfhearted irritation.

“Stop it! I know exactly what you’re doing,” she said. “Okay, well, do you have something you can get started on right away, or do we have to summon the troops for an editorial meeting?”

Heloise instinctively moved her hand to the inside pocket of her leather jacket where she had put the letter. “It just so happens that I’ve received something I want to look into.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure yet. I need to investigate it further before I can tell you whether or not there’s a story there.”

“Right, then get to work. And make sure to keep me posted.”

When Heloise returned to the investigative section, Mogens Bøttger was nowhere in sight, but several reporters from the other sections had arrived at their desks in the open-plan office, and Heloise could feel them staring at her and sense the questions they were silently asking themselves and each other:

What’s she doing here? I thought she’d been suspended.

She sank deeply into her office chair so that their faces disappeared behind the low partition wall and entered the number of the research department. She let the phone ring until it was picked up by her favorite colleague, the morbidly obese and permanently sweating Morten Munk.