“What about the note? Did you write it? As a suicide note?” Jeppe received a warning glance from Mosbæk but pressed on anyway. “Malthe Sæther was going to help one of his students on Friday night. Was it you? Or Iben?”

“Is Iben okay?” Oscar began crying. “Can I see her?”

“Not until you’re stable and healthy again, sweetie,” Malin said, finally getting up.

He put his hands over his face.

“I’ll see you guys out,” Malin ordered.

Jeppe stopped in the doorway and turned around.

“I talked to your sister, Jenny, yesterday. She confided that Oscar has been having problems for some time…”

“How would she know? She never sees him,” Malin said, her expression hardening.

“Why not?”

She stood still, her hand on the handle, ready to close the door between them.

“My sister is… intense. Jenny tends to create drama around herself and then push the blame off onto other people. She borrows money she doesn’t pay back, and I’m afraid she and Henrik don’t see eye to eye. I love my sister, but… we’re very different.”

“My impression from her is that she is very close to you. And to the kids.”

“Maybe.” Malin looked back over her shoulder at her son.

“Malin, what happened in Oscar’s life that could have caused him to run off in a boat and attempt suicide?”

“You think I’m a bad mother, don’t you?” Her face turned red with anger.

The question was so unexpected that Jeppe couldn’t come up with a response.

“You come here with your principles and theories and look down on my family. Disapprove of the way we parent, isn’t that so?”

He held up his hands to stop her, but she would not be stopped.

“You think you know exactly how to handle a boy like Oscar and what he really needs.” She began closing the door, forcing Jeppe to take a step backward. “But you’re wrong. You don’t know shit about having kids.”

CHAPTER 26

The screensaver came on without warning, and Esther de Laurenti had to click the mouse yet again on the green form to fill in her account information. Sitting here in Copenhagen’s main library on Krystalgade fumbling around on a public computer was not her favorite pastime, but since Margrethe Dybris’s scientific articles were stored in the library’s database and not available online, she had to come in person to print them out.

The library’s common area was as noisy as a train station. Even in the middle of the day it was teeming with students and retirees moving in and out of the revolving doors and up and down the escalators of the bright, high-ceilinged hall that was the heart of the library.