Now that she was logged in, the images could be enlarged without difficulty. She hesitated for a moment with her finger over the trackpad, then opened one, a white mask. Under the picture it read FOR SALE, followed by a longer text about the item and a link. Harmless enough.

The next picture was anything but harmless. What Esther had thought was a doll turned out to be a child of about seven or eight lying on a red velour carpet. A little girl with her face palely made up and rouge on her cheeks. She was naked. Several images of the same sort followed.

Esther de Laurenti had inadvertently stumbled onto a pedophile ring.

Sara took a deep breath. She had encountered this kind of thing before but had not yet grown immune to the human perversion it represented. And she knew how hard it was to unravel these networks. She had to inform her colleagues in NC3, the National Cyber Crime Centre, immediately.

All of a sudden she wished Amina were far away, safely distanced from the evil the computer was channeling into the living room. Sara clicked through the archive and saw more of the same, artifacts and naked children. One picture made her pause. She zoomed in. Yet another young face, maybe age eight or nine. A layer of white powder accentuated the black hair and resulted in a beautiful Snow White effect.

Sara zoomed in even more and felt a chill run down her spine, an omen of apprehension. The child was several years younger than now, but there was no doubt. She was looking at Oscar Dreyer-Hoff.

AT QUARTER PAST two in the afternoon, a young girl turned up at the police station inside Copenhagen Central Station asking to speak to Sara Saidani from the Violent Crimes Department. When it turned out that Saidani was home with a sick child, she accepted seeing Jeppe Kørner instead, who in turn promised he would be there within the half hour. The girl seemed calm and composed, aside from the detail that she was wearing no shoes. She was shown a soft chair in the waiting room and given a soda, which she let sit, and a sandwich, from which she removed the ham and then ate in small bites.

That’s how Jeppe found her when he hurried through the door twenty minutes later.

“Iben?”

She nodded distantly.

“I’m Jeppe Kørner. My partner and I were at you and your dad’s place a few days ago, on Saturday.”

“I’m not senile,” Iben said, setting what was left of the sandwich down on the table. “I remember you. You were looking for Oscar.”

He sat down on the only other chair in the waiting room.

“Now we’re looking for your dad.”

She folded her arms protectively across her chest, but her T-shirt didn’t cover the red marks and bruises on her skinny upper arms.