Jeppe went out into the street and let the door fall shut behind him. He was at a loss for words. The combination of Sara’s frosty tone and the talk of pedophilia zeroed out his vocabulary.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

She inhaled as if she were about to say something but didn’t.

“Sara?”

“The pictures are on their way. Talk to you later!”

She hung up. Jeppe stood for a second in the echoes of their conversation. Politely, with no audible undertones, their love had been put on pause.

He crossed the street to Østre Anlæg. Twilight had fallen over the park, and the trees’ contours melted together into odd shapes, trolls’ arms and bottomless pits. A sweet, melancholy scent of evening blooms hung in the air.

His phone vibrated. Jeppe opened the texts from Sara, ten screenshots in all, with the Ninth Circle logo in the top left corner. The circle for traitors in Dante’s hell.

The pictures were hard to look at. Stagings of naked children with powdered white cheeks and red lips left no doubt about their underlying intent. They were explicitly sexual, but at the same time had a clear style, dark, almost Gothic, which made them even more perverse. The pictures of Oscar had been taken in front of a white photo studio background and atop a featureless black carpet. Naked, he’d been photographed sitting, standing, lying down, posing childishly as if someone had instructed him to look extra innocent. The makeup reinforced his childish features. He looked almost like a doll.

Naked photos of Oscar, Malthe murdered, and Henrik deeply involved in fraud. And Essie hadn’t come home from school yet.

Jeppe called Malin Dreyer-Hoff, but the phone just kept ringing in his ear. He hung up and immediately made another call. Right now there was only one person in the world he needed.

She picked up right away.

“What the hell, Kørner? Are you still at work? Isn’t there some cooking show on TV you need to watch from your couch?”

“Hey, Werner. Where are you?”

At the sound of his tone she grew instantly serious.

“On my way home.”

“Can you come meet me in front of the American embassy? I need to discuss something important with you.”

She didn’t hesitate for a second, didn’t even ask any further details.

“I’m close by, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Jeppe took out a cigarette and lit it without taking his eyes off his phone. As the old proverb put it, you need to have fire in your mouth when you’re dealing with the devil. Or maybe that was just something his father had come up with to justify his daily pack of Lucky Strikes.