Heloise took a deep breath and started from the beginning. She told them about the letters and about her very first phone call to Ulrich from the restaurant in Kongens Nytorv. About the message she had left on his answering machine and about how he had turned up unannounced on the street in front of the newspaper’s offices.

Schäfer and Augustin listened without interrupting while she repeated all of Ulrich’s speculations about Johannes Mossing. Schäfer didn’t say anything until she had finished telling the story about the man with the gun.

“Did he describe the guy’s appearance in any way?”

“Dark hair, tough guy,” Heloise said with a shrug.

“Ethnicity?”

“I don’t know. Caucasian, I think.”

“When did Ulrich say this took place?”

“A couple of months after Christoffer Mossing’s murder, I think.”

“Why didn’t he report it to the police?”

“He said he was scared.”

“Huh,” Schäfer said, chewing on his lower lip.

“He really was scared,” Heloise repeated. “He also looked totally different from how I remembered him when we worked together at the paper, and he seemed really paranoid.”

“And it didn’t occur to you that he might be suicidal?” Augustin asked.

Heloise glanced over at her. She didn’t care for the insinuation.

“I thought he seemed a little crazy, but no. It didn’t occur to me that he would go home and kill himself.”

“He wasn’t crazy,” Schäfer said.

Heloise looked at him.

“And we’re not so sure that he killed himself either,” he continued. “There’s nothing in what he told you about Johannes Mossing that we haven’t heard before.”

“Well, then …” Heloise began, looking from one to the other. “Why is the guy still walking around?”

“Because for all the years of rumors about Mossing, we haven’t obtained a single piece of evidence that there’s anything to it.”

“What about up at the racetrack? Ulrich said he had talked to—”

“We have examined and turned over every stone,” Schäfer said, calmly. “We’ve dragged Johannes Mossing in for questioning once a year since the early 2000s, up until a few years ago when his lawyer put an end to the ‘police harassment,’ as he called it. The fact is that Johannes Mossing is a successful businessman who runs a legitimate business and who, in his spare time, likes betting on horse racing. He has a reputable social circle, a delightful wife, several beautiful homes, and a dead son.” Schäfer flung up his arms. “There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“Until proven otherwise, right?”

Schäfer nodded and said, “Exactly.”