“Yeah, hi. It’s me. I’m standing here watching—”

“I’m busy. What do you want?”

“It’s about the woman, the reporter.”

“What about her?”

“The police were at her apartment last night.”

Nothing.

“A couple of officers arrived first—nothing special,” Stefan continued. “But then Schäfer turned up too. He wasn’t there very long, but he was there.”

“Where’s the woman now?”

“I just saw her leave the newspaper. She got into a car and drove away. She was with Ulrich Andersson.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. Then: “Goddamned journalists.”

“Right. Him.”

“Find out what he told her.”

“Should I do anything else?” Stefan made a fist with his right hand, one finger at a time, and closed his eyes as the pain sliced upward through his arm.

With the exception of heavy, accelerated breathing, the line went silent again. And then: “I was under the impression that you had already had a serious talk with him?”

“I did.”

“Hmm. It doesn’t quite appear to have had the desired effect.”

“Clearly not.”

“That’s a real shame.”

“Yes,” Stefan said. He had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. “A real shame.”

Heloise unbuckled her seat belt and turned to Ulrich Andersson.

“Ulrich, honestly, you look like shit. What is going on here? Are you on drugs?”

She had parked the car on a deserted street down by the water at the easternmost point on Refshale Island, where they were surrounded by nothing but gravel, trees, and the gray-black sea. Ulrich had directed her there with succinct, breathless driving directions.

Take a right, go straight, turn here.

Those were the only things he had said the whole way there.

He now peered tiredly through the windshield. “You said she had written a letter to you.”

“Anna Kiel?” Heloise asked. “Yes, two letters, actually.”

“How do you know it’s her?”

“I guess I don’t,” Heloise said with a shrug. “Not yet, anyway. The police have the letters and are examining them for fingerprints and DNA. But they were signed with her name and they referred to the murder case from Taarbæk.”

“What did she say?”

“Ulrich, what’s going on with you? Are you okay?”

“Just tell me what she wrote.” He turned and looked at Heloise, his eyes vacant.

“Not a whole lot,” she replied. “Mostly just incoherent nonsense, riddles, something about flowers and lucky numbers. She says that we’re connected and that I need to write her story.”

“Did she write anything about Mossing?”

“Just that he bled to death and that she had enjoyed watching it happen.”

“No, not Christoffer Mossing. I’m talking about the father—Johannes. Did she write anything about him?”

“No,” Heloise said, puzzled. “Why would she write about him?”