JEPPE’S OLD OMEGA Seamaster showed three o’clock when he and Anette let themselves into their office on Teglholmen. The streamlined corridors of the Violent Crimes Department were deserted, and not just because it was Saturday afternoon. Last year all investigative units had been moved from the historic police headquarters downtown to this new so-called super police HQ on the newly built Teglholmen, south of the city. But the move hadn’t been so straightforward to implement. The new facilities were inadequate from the start, and despite their modern appearance investigators were finding that conditions at the new location weren’t really conducive to either getting their work done or thriving while doing so. Plus, it had no soul. Even though the old headquarters had been run down after more than a hundred years of use, a spirit inhabited the old walls and the vaulted ceilings that no new construction could replace.

Jeppe’s office chair hissed efficiently beneath him as he sat down at the desk and turned on his new computer with a nostalgic sigh. Twelve years he had worked within the dark wooden paneling of the old headquarters. Teglholmen’s bland glass and brick was going to take some getting used to.

He placed the picture of Oscar Dreyer-Hoff that Malin had found for him on his desk. A skinny boy with dark hair, brown eyes, and skin that looked like he didn’t get enough fresh air. A face that was still caught in the teenage span between baby fat and finished features. He had intelligent eyes, if deducing that kind of thing from a photo made any sense. It had been taken in the sunlight, possibly out on the water, and the reflections made the boy squint. He looked skeptical.

Jeppe opened POLSAS and made a report with the day’s notes about the missing boy. Anette, who sat across from him, had started calling neighbors and classmates one by one, drawing a line through their names on a list as she went. They had already gotten hold of most of them, but no one knew where Oscar was. Victor’s classmate Joakim, who thought he had seen Oscar talking to the driver of a black car by the Botanical Gardens, hadn’t noticed the make or license plate of the car, and after some consideration he wasn’t sure whether it had happened on Friday or maybe Thursday.

Jeppe sent a brief email to Detective Thomas Larsen and asked him to run a background check on the Dreyer-Hoff family, focusing on the threatening letters they had reported and the family’s business affairs and finances. If someone had taken Oscar, the reason was likely to be related to either the family’s money or its history.