“Yeah, it turns out that something really suspicious has been going on in the ministry lately, something that could potentially bring down the secretary of commerce, or at least knock his sunburned number two off his high horse.”

“Oh?” Bøttger’s expression revealed a growing interest in the story.

“That’s why it occurred to me that—since I’m busy on a case that would normally fall under your area of expertise—maybe you could be convinced to take on one of my stories?”

Bøttger closed one eye and zoomed in on her with the other.

“What is this about, exactly?”

Heloise looked over her shoulder before answering, “The Skriver case.”

In the lobby, Heloise was given a key to one of the company cars. She had left Martin in a room with Mogens Bøttger, a pot of coffee, and a Dictaphone. She knew Bøttger well enough to know they wouldn’t come back out again until he had vacuumed every conceivable speck of thought or detail about the case out of the remotest corners of Martin’s mind.

Heloise left the paper and walked over toward St. Ann’s Square, where the Ford was parked. She had tried to reach Anna Kiel’s mother by phone, to no avail. Now she wanted to see if she could catch her at her pub in Herlev.

It was still pretty early, but Store Strandstræde was already buzzing with life. The café across from the paper was teeming with young guys, who sat in the sun drinking hipster juice while admiring each other’s tattooed toothpick arms and unruly beards. Heloise didn’t understand how that kind of exaggerated facial hairiness could have become popular among men in their twenties. To her it was the equivalent of shaving out a bald spot or emphasizing the age lines on your face with a Sharpie.

She walked quickly down the street and didn’t notice Ulrich Andersson until he came right up beside her and grabbed her by the arm.

“Keep walking,” he said, guiding her firmly down Store Strandstræde.

Heloise instinctively looked over her shoulder but kept going without resisting. “Ulrich? What’s wrong?”

She had almost forgotten about her call to him the other day. She hadn’t seen him since he’d quit the paper and hadn’t had much to do with him when they did work together. But she remembered him as a headstrong macho guy, the type who didn’t give a shit about the newspaper’s smoking rules or ethical guidelines and basically did as he pleased.

Now he seemed more like a draft beer that had been sitting out in the sun for too long. His reddish-blond hair was gathered together at the nape of his neck in a loose ponytail under a faded blue New York Yankees baseball cap, which covered his balding head, and his clothes hung, threadbare and far too big, off his bony body.