Mossing looked nonchalantly down the barrel of the firearm, which was aimed right at his nose.

“Here is the deal,” he said. “You stay away from me and my wife, then I’ll stop bothering you and yours.” Mossing’s voice was calm, almost friendly. “But if you don’t stop knocking on my door, then both you and your plantation wife in there will end up on the bottom of the ocean. Got it?”

Schäfer grabbed the collar of Mossing’s blazer with one hand while he pushed the gun’s muzzle hard against the underside of his chin with the other.

“Oh, yeah? I think I’d rather just shoot you right here and now.”

“Well, you could.” Mossing smiled. “But you won’t. We both know that.”

“I know what you did, and I’m going to make sure you get put away for it. It’s only a matter of time. Then you’re going down for this.”

“It’s not about what you know, Schäfer. It’s about what you can prove.”

“You won’t get away with what you did to those children.”

Mossing yanked himself free from Schäfer’s hold and started walking toward the gate at the end of the gravel path.

“Do you hear what I’m saying, asshole?” Schäfer yelled after him. “You won’t get away with what you did to those children.”

Mossing turned and looked at Schäfer with a smug expression.

“That’s what you don’t seem to get, Schäfer,” he said as he opened the gate. “I’ve already gotten away with it.”

CHAPTER

47

HELOISE SAT AT the coffee table and stared at the screen in front of her. The cursor sat there on the blank page, blinking.

She had asked Karen Aagaard for a day off when she had caught her on her cell phone that morning. A little alone time. Just today, and then she would be back at work tomorrow.

Her story about the Lullaby Club had broken three weeks ago. The public prosecutor’s office had indicted the eleven men in the case, and the other media had jumped on the story like slavering wolfhounds. The tabloids were still running daily extras about the men, attracting readers with special supplements and feature stories including gruesome pictures and details from the evidence that were way, way too explicit. Things that Demokratisk Dagblad—and any other media outlet with any self-respect—would never dream of reproducing in such graphic horror.

By now, more victims had come forward: seven women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-seven. They had recognized several of the accused men, but there still wasn’t anything new on Mossing. No one had pointed an accusatory finger in his direction. No evidence or witness statements had connected him to the case.