A pretty hooded crow lay on the workbench, ready for resurrection. Not for stuffing. Mads hated that term, stuffing. On the contrary, his goal was to create the illusion of life, a flying bird.

He turned the crow over onto its back and made an incision up the center of its abdomen with the scalpel. He loosened the skin with the plumage attached until it was secured to the body only at the beak and then turned it inside out. Eyeing it affectionately he started scraping the flesh off the bones. After he had washed and dried it, the skin lay sleek and ready between his hands. He took out an appropriate-size foam dummy that he thought would work for the crow’s body, and stroked the creature’s glossy feathers.

Anette. He could almost feel her skin under his fingers as he turned the bird over and cut a piece of thin steel wire. The thought of her skin made him dizzy. He wanted to hold down her arms and kiss her neck, stomach, breasts, until she yielded to him. Hold her neck as he penetrated her, and look into her eyes as they neared their climax.

Mads pushed the thin wire in, through the bones of the first wing, and then the second. He wrapped cotton wool around a new piece of wire until he achieved the volume of a bird’s neck. With his ice pick, he cut a hole in the foam filler for the head, secured it to the neck, and moved it into place inside the coat of feathers, so that it filled out and became a body again. At this point he had to let go of the bird and touch himself. Anette gasped for air beneath him, beaded in sweat and beautiful, and he soon followed, ejaculating and collapsing breathlessly over her. His thoughts swam while the secretions dried into a shameful muck on his fingers.

He lifted himself up from the workbench, removed a stray feather from his cheek, and walked over to the sink to turn on the water. His body was pleasantly drained, but his head teemed with self-recrimination. He had lost all desire to work on the bird.

ANETTE PUSHED THE top button in the elevator and glanced at her partner. He looked worn out, but maybe that was just the fluorescent lighting. Ye gods, he could be annoying sometimes. Although, to be fair, some of her annoyance was probably due to the fluctuations in her own life these last several days.

“Why would Malthe Sæther’s coworker kill herself?” Jeppe even sounded strained. “Can you explain that to me? A friendly older woman gets off work, walks down to the subway station, and jumps out in front of a train without warning? I talked to her yesterday morning, and, Lord knows, she didn’t seem suicidal. You tell me, how does that make sense?”

“It must have been an accident,” Anette said, shaking her head.