“Yeah, yeah. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me. It was just a real shock, to see him lying there all of a sudden. Life is not all beer and Skittles.”

“Drink your hot chocolate. It’ll help.”

She drank obediently.

“He’s alive, but only just barely. The doctors can’t say very much yet.” Anette shook her head. “I wonder what he was doing out there. I really hope he makes it.”

“Have they found the boat?”

“Five minutes ago. At the bottom of the harbor by Petroleum Island. With a hole in the hull, presumably made with a sledgehammer that was found in the wreckage.” Anette smiled but still looked enormously sad.

Jeppe gave her a gentle elbow in the side.

“Hey,” he said. “Chin up! You did what the search and rescue crews couldn’t. You found him! Still alive, no less. Pat yourself on the back.”

The door opened, and Henrik and Malin Dreyer-Hoff were shown in by the medical secretary. Malin avoided making eye contact with Jeppe, but considering the mood at their last encounter, maybe that wasn’t surprising.

Henrik walked straight to Anette’s chair and stopped in front of her. His broad, suit-covered shoulders filled the visitors’ room like a pillar of masculine energy.

“Were you the one who found him?” he asked emotionally.

“Yes.”

He leaned over the chair and lifted Anette up in a hug. The tips of her toes only barely touched the floor. She protested meekly, resisting this unexpected closeness with Oscar’s father.

“Thank you.”

“Just part of the job.” Anette patted his arm awkwardly from the trapped position within his embrace, looking like someone who had had enough hugging for one day.

Jeppe looked down to hide an involuntary smile. Whether it was from finding Oscar, or his coworker’s unusual display of sensitivity, he didn’t know, but there in the hospital he experienced an irrational rush of joy. The boy was hovering between life and death and Anette between the floor and ceiling. There was hope.

WHEN THE FRONT door of Fredericiagade 64 finally creaked open, Kasper Skytte was sitting in the dark in the living room, waiting. The armchair’s leather had been warmed by his body and the whiskey bottle by the temperature in the room. In the kitchen the vegetarian hash he had made for dinner sat untouched on the table. He could hear Iben rummaging around with her shoes and coat. Then she came in and eyed him warily.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“It wasn’t dark when I sat down. Why are you so late?” His mouth was dry, and he had to lick his lips before he continued. “Since when have we become the kind of family that doesn’t eat or talk together?”

“I’m going to my room. I have to study,” Iben said, looking down.

“YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”

Kasper heard her gasp and regained his composure.