Jeppe kicked at a clod of dirt on the uneven lawn of National Hospital’s inner courtyard. The winter had been hard on the grass, or maybe it was the steady stream of kids running back and forth to the castle-shaped play structure, which prevented the young grass from growing. He watched Mosbæk and Anette, who were busy scanning the courtyard’s few benches looking for available places to sit, and wondered if it would be wrong to light a cigarette.

“Addled—did you really call him that?” Mosbæk stuck his hands in his pockets and appeared to give up on the benches. “I don’t think I’ve heard that term since 1955.”

“What the heck do you call a boy who sails off onto the ocean to die? Stressed?”

Mosbæk tutted with a little smile. He was used to being ribbed by his police coworkers, but actually a profound respect prevailed between the detectives and the psychologists they worked with, any mutual distrust from the past having long ago been resolved.

“He may well be experiencing some type of anterograde amnesia delayed reaction.”

“Come again?” Anette made a show of putting one hand behind her ear. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

Mosbæk laughed and shook his head.

“PTSD, a delayed shock reaction to a traumatic experience with subsequent memory loss. Unless of course he’s pretending that he can’t remember because he has something to hide. I need to spend more time with him to be sure.”

A little boy with blond curls, a bandage on his forehead, and a diapered butt toddled between them and looked up their unfamiliar grown-up legs in confusion. Once he had determined that none of them was his mother, he toddled on toward the play structure. Jeppe watched the child head for a woman, his arms raised in the air, clearly expecting to be picked up into the safety of a hug. Ah, how we’re born to trust our parents.

“Was Malthe’s death the traumatic experience?” Jeppe asked, turning back to the other two.

“The boy could easily be in shock over his teacher’s death, possibly even over his own involvement in the death.” Mosbæk stroked his full beard, shaping it into a point. “But it’s hard to know as long as he doesn’t tell us more. Do you know if they were more than just teacher and student to each other?”

“They appear to have been confidants, but we don’t know to what extent,” Jeppe said with a shrug.

“It’s awfully convenient for him to not be able to remember anything,” Anette interjected. “But you can’t convince me that a boy who sails a boat out to a fort, sinks his boat, and ODs on Tylenol is up to anything other than suicide.”