“We would still like to ask you a couple of questions.” Jeppe pointed to two empty chairs at the next desk over. “Would it be all right…?”

Gitte apparently couldn’t think of any plausible reason to say no, and Jim was of no assistance.

“As a matter of fact we came to talk to Kasper. But he’s not in?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know where he is? He’s not answering his phone.”

The two coworkers exchanged a glance and then mumbled simultaneously, “No.”

“Well, maybe you can help us.” Jeppe smiled disarmingly. “We’ll keep it quick.”

Larsen pulled the purchase order out of his bag and set it on the desk.

“Do either of you recognize this order?” Larsen asked.

Gitte picked up the piece of paper and looked at him in bewilderment.

“I’ll explain in a minute. Could you just please tell us if you ordered that equipment?”

“But,” she said, shaking her head, confused, “we don’t even use that kind of ESP here at ARC.”

Jim finally lifted his head and stared at his coworker. “We might as well tell them,” he said.

Gitte didn’t respond.

“If something’s wrong, it’s going to come out eventually,” Jim persisted, leaning awkwardly down over his keyboard.

“Do you really think we need yet another scandal?” Gitte hissed. “Is that it?”

“It’s not my fault that the numbers don’t match.…”

“What’s going on?” Jeppe looked from the one engineer to the other.

“After Monday, when the body was found in the silo…” Jim began, ignoring his coworker’s eye roll. “Kasper has been acting weird. Not just in the way you would expect after something like that, but… strange, coming and going as it suited him. He’s emptied out his drawers and shredded bunches of papers. He doesn’t respond when we speak to him. At first I thought it was just the shock…”

Jim shot Jeppe a questioning look, as if to make sure that he really wanted to hear all this.

“You see, measuring CO2 is a complex process, which is broken up into many different stages, and includes calculating and recording the average readings, which are sent to the plant’s database hourly. It would seem unmanageable to all who don’t know exactly how to read the numbers. But something’s not right. The measurement readings from the monitoring facility are significantly higher than the ones reported to the Danish Energy Authority, and Kasper’s the only one who could have altered them.”

Gitte looked like she was going to protest, but then seemed to resign herself with a sigh.

“We discovered the discrepancy late yesterday,” she said, “and we’re not sure what to do about it. Kasper isn’t answering his phone, and it seems really drastic to go straight to management.”

“What does he gain from reporting wrong numbers?” Jeppe asked, eyeing them skeptically.