“I don’t know, but there’s something there,” he mumbled, shaking his head in confusion. He seemed lost for a moment, and Heloise noticed that his shirt collar had grown dark blue with sweat.

“You mean that stuff about him having his own people looking for her?” she asked, leaning toward him.

Ulrich Andersson looked up. “Heloise, I need you to listen to me.” He took a firm hold of her shoulder. “Stay far away from those people. Stay away from that case!”

Heloise twisted away from his grasp. “You’re going to have to use a few more words here, Ulrich,” she said, annoyed. “You’re not making any sense.”

A motorcycle appeared out of nowhere and roared past the parked car.

Ulrich jumped an inch or two off the Ford’s dark-gray polyester seat, and he peered around, panic-stricken.

“Whoa, Ulrich, relax.” Heloise tried speaking to him in a soothing voice. It was like approaching a startled horse at the far end of a paddock. His eyes seemed feverish and disoriented, and every muscle in his body looked tense, ready to flee.

“Calm down, man. It’s just you and me here,” she said. “It’s just the two of us—there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I don’t know what it is, but something is going on.” He almost seemed to be talking to himself. “I was on the case back then, and I just followed the clues.”

“What clues?”

“He might be getting old now, but there was a time when he was calling all the shots.”

“Who?”

“Mossing, dammit! It’s Mossing, don’t you get it?”

“Johannes Mossing?”

“He loaned them money, and when they couldn’t pay …” He started laughing—a nervous, borderline-hysterical laughter. “It was like something straight out of The Godfather, Heloise. Pure fucking Godfather.”

“Who did he loan money to?”

“Players, gamblers, at the track.”

“Horse racing?” Heloise knew nothing about that sort of thing.

“Yes, in Klampenborg. He loaned people money in exchange for a percentage of the winnings—with interest, of course—and we’re talking large sums, Heloise, not just chump change. And when people couldn’t pay what they owed …” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Then they disappeared.”

“What do you mean?”

“People disappeared,” he repeated. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Heloise sat silently in her seat.

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“I received a tip one day at the paper, while I was writing about the son’s murder.”

“A tip from who?”

“I don’t know. It was an anonymous call, just a few catchwords: Check out the racetrack, ask about Mossing, you’ll see. I went out there and asked around a little, but no one knew anything. At least no one who would talk.”

“What did you do then?”

“I knew one of the old jockeys from Andy’s Bar—you know the five o’clock dive on Gothersgade?”