If you lie on your arm for too long, it falls asleep. Sensation returns only slowly and painfully, it tingles and prickles as the blood palpably battles the numbness for control. Life hurts when it starts rolling again.

The boy lay for a long time listening to his own breathing. What is a breath? A wheeze, a sign of life. He felt fabric between his fingers. Fabric. He must be lying in a bed. Or a coffin.

He opened his eyes and closed them again, caught a glimpse of a clear plastic tube going into his left arm. Breathing, fabric, tube… he had to be in the hospital. That meant he was alive. He felt both disappointment and relief, though he didn’t understand how that could be. He tried to move but couldn’t. His body was humming. Maybe his bones and muscles had dissolved into a warm liquid that would pour out if someone poked a hole in him.

The light was overwhelming. He had adjusted to the darkness in the fort so much that he had forgotten how demanding light could feel. Vibrant colors stood out against metal and plastic outlines. Clean and frightening.

There was something in his nose bothering him. He tried to lift his hand up to get rid of it but was stopped.

“He’s awake!”

The yell pierced his eardrums. Couldn’t he just die in peace?

CHAPTER 24

On Wednesday morning Jeppe sat down at his office desk with a sense of moving through water. Slow and heavy. He ran a hand over the laminate surface and inspected it. Not a mote of dust. In a strangely backward way it made him miss the old police headquarters even more. Or to be more precise: he didn’t so much wish himself back in his old workspace as he wanted to flee this generic office building in Sydhavn. He had spent the night in his own apartment in Nyhavn for the first time in months, but he hadn’t gotten much sleep. As he drank his vending machine coffee with gravel in his eyes, he thought: They call it a broken heart, but it feels more like having no heart at all. Empty.

On the far side of their double desk, Anette sat looking expectantly at him, and at the door, Thomas Larsen was leaning against the frame, his arms folded over his chest. Today he had jazzed up an expensive-looking chocolate-colored blazer with a handkerchief poking out of the chest pocket. Its green curlicues somehow contributed to Jeppe’s displeasure.