“But I had no choice, did I? Jonna, that crazy bitch, drove us into the ground. I had to work seven different jobs to make ends meet, and then that offer from Greenland came, and in the beginning I sent money home, but …” The arteries in his neck throbbed violently as his face turned from gray to purple. “At some point I’d had enough of her bullshit. So don’t fucking blame me for leaving. Anyone would have with that bitch gambling away all our money.”

Heloise felt a tingling sensation spread through her chest. She took a couple of steps back toward the bar.

“What did you say?”

“I said that you can’t blame me for leaving,” he sniveled. “You weren’t married to her, so who are you to judge me?”

“No, you’re right,” Heloise said. She put a soothing hand on his shoulder. “What was it you said about her gambling away all your money?”

“Every month we were a week farther behind. We were broke. We never had enough money. Fucking compulsive gambler, man.”

“What did she play?”

“Everything.”

“Like what?” Heloise asked, sitting down next to him.

“The lottery and card games. She would sit in there all day playing on one of those damned slot machines at the Lantern back when her dad owned it.”

“What about horses?”

He leaned his head back and inhaled through the ice cubes to get the last drops before he set the empty glass down.

“Yes.”

“Horse racing?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you, man. It wasn’t my fucking fault that she couldn’t control herself.”

Heloise took her notebook out of her purse and opened it. “Frank, do you know if Jonna ever went to the racetrack at Klampenborg?”

He looked at the ballpoint pen she was holding at the ready over the page of her book and hesitated for a moment. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and smiled briefly.

“You gave five hundred kroner to Jonna, right?”

Heloise sighed and opened her wallet. “I only have a hundred and twenty kroner left in cash.”

“Okay,” he said, holding out his hand.

Heloise handed him the money.

“Did Jonna ever go to the racetrack?” she asked.

“If by ever you mean all the time, then yes.”

The stripper on the stage behind the bar eyed the money and moved in closer. She performed a clumsy pirouette and opened the clasp of her purple lace bra and let her two heavy breasts fall out.

Frank looked up at her and smiled but didn’t let go of the hundred-kroner note in his hand.

Heloise ignored the stripper and continued, “Did Jonna win money at the track?”

“Sometimes. But mostly she lost.”

“What kind of amounts are we talking about here?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes she lost five thousand kroner, ten thousand kroner. Other times more, a lot more.”

“How much more?”