She thought about it for a second.

“Fine,” she said, and hung up.

CHAPTER

10

HELOISE STOOD AT the kitchen sink, scrubbing black ink off her fingers with a hard nail brush. The guy from the National Forensics Center had asked for her fingerprints before he left. “Just for elimination,” he’d said. With nearly clean fingers, she got a bunch of tomatoes and two peaches out of a bowl on the windowsill and took a big ball of buffalo mozzarella out of the fridge.

“I’ve had virtually nothing to eat all day, and if this lasts much longer, I’m going to die hungry,” she told Schäfer.

Without taking his eyes off the letters on the table in front of him, he waved his hand to signal Knock yourself out.

Heloise watched him on the sly as she rinsed the tomatoes and peaches and cut them up. There was something about his overwhelmingly masculine presence that made her feel like Tony Soprano was sitting in her kitchen. She almost expected him to switch from speaking Danish to speaking English with a Jersey accent. He seemed at once violently authoritarian, potentially fear inspiring, and—most of all—extremely charming.

“What about you? Are you hungry?” she asked. “Can I offer you a bit of an early dinner?”

She set a bunch of basil and a handful of mint leaves onto the big wooden cutting board in front of her and started chopping up the herbs.

Schäfer glanced at the food she had set out on the kitchen table and shook his head regretfully. “I’d love to, but my doctor told me I should be thinking a little more about what I eat.”

“And let me guess.” Heloise looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Your thoughts mostly revolve around big, juicy steaks?”

“Bingo!”

Heloise nodded.

His gut and ruddy skin suggested eating habits that were anything but healthy. And he smoked. She could smell the nicotine from all the way across the kitchen.

“But I’ll bet you could drink one of these.” She opened a cold Heineken and handed it to him.

“Well, since it’s already open,” he said, accepting it.

Heloise arranged all the ingredients on a plate. She drizzled cold-pressed virgin olive oil on them, ground a little salt and pepper over the plate, and sprinkled the finely chopped herbs on top. Then she sat down across from Schäfer and started eating it right out of the serving dish.

“What’s your theory about Christoffer Mossing?” she asked. “Everything in his life seemed like it was all sunshine and vintage wine until Anna Kiel took it all away from him. Do you believe the glamour-shot version, or do you think there’s more to it than that?”