“We all are. But no one is saying you’re any closer to death now than you were a month ago. Or than I am, for that matter.” She spoke with a conviction she didn’t actually feel, and even to herself it sounded hollow.

Gregers looked down at the empty hat sitting in front of him.

“The thing about dying… I always thought I would be healthy and happy and then—boom—someone would pull the plug. But now I’m not so sure anymore. It’s looking more like one long, grim slide”—Gregers closed his eyes—“into the dark.”

THE EVENING RUSH hour traffic was thinning out when Anette pulled up in front of Vendersgade 19, parking the car illegally next to a full bicycle rack. She had texted Svend to ask if she should bring dinner home, but he hadn’t replied. Could he read her unfaithful thoughts? When you’ve been with someone as long as they had, you could sense things like that, could simply smell it. They knew each other so well. Even so, Anette had the strange sense that they were beginning to know each other less well. Everyday life was creating ripples of distance around them and pushing them out into deeper waters. They’d been together for twenty-five years, since they were in school—were they still swimming in the same direction?

She slammed the car door shut and walked to the front door of Malthe Sæther’s building, inserted the key with the crime scene technicians’ cardboard tag into the lock and jogged up the stairs to the fifth floor, where she unlocked the door and ducked under the crime scene tape. The techs had long since removed all technology, taken fingerprints, and gathered hair and toothbrushes. Jeppe had gone over the place himself with a fine-tooth comb. There was no reason to believe Anette would be able to find anything new, but if she were the type to let reservations like that hold her back, she would never have found Oscar.

Saidani had finished going through Malthe’s emails, calendar, and search history, and had noted in POLSAS that she had found nothing unusual. But everyone has secrets, Anette thought. Something had pulled this young teacher out of his harmonious everyday life to end up naked and suffocated in that giant claw at the incineration plant. And the answer could be here in the apartment somewhere.