She looked at the time. It was almost two. She could probably be gone for another half hour without pissing her mother off. Sara sent her a text saying that she was on her way, slid the computer into her bag, and headed for her parked bicycle.

Vendersgade was a only few minutes away, practically on her way home.

Oh, Copenhagen, you wonderful, village-size capital!

She pulled her bike out into traffic and rode down Nørregade toward Nørreport. Six minutes later she stood in front of the teacher’s building, breathing hard. The facade had been freshly plastered in a delicate pale yellow shade, which probably wouldn’t stay clean for very long in the middle of the Nørreport area’s heavy traffic. A sign that read SÆTHER in blue ballpoint pen sat next to the buzzer. She pushed it and waited. No answer. Looking up the front of the building she saw one of the top windows open in what must be his apartment. She pressed the doorbell again and waited.

“Who are you looking for?”

Sara turned around and saw a woman of indeterminate age, sitting with a cigarette on the top step of the cellar boutique next to the door. Her mouse-brown hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, and she was wearing a loose-fitting African-print bodysuit.

“Malthe Sæther, up on the fifth floor.”

“He’s not home.”

“Do you know where he is?”

The woman seemed to size Sara up and apparently concluded that she was harmless, because she said, “Probably at his girlfriend’s place. She lives in Odense, two hours away. He spends most of his weekends there.”

“Oh.” Sara nodded automatically and pulled a folded grocery list out of her pocket. “I just have a note for him that I wanted to poke through his mail slot.”

“I can let you in.” The woman stood up and pulled out a key. “It’d be silly for you to have to come back.”

The woman opened the front door for Sara, who slipped inside with a smile, shaking her head to herself at how gullible people are.

She jogged up the stairs. On the fifth floor she found a white door with a laminated cardboard name sign stuck on it. A child had written Malthe Sæther in a wobbly line with alternating capital and lowercase letters and added a rainbow. Sara knocked and waited. Still nothing. She found his phone number, dialed it, and then put her ear to the door. No ringtone from inside the apartment. She squatted down to the mail slot and sniffed. The apartment smelled faintly of soap-treated wood floors, nothing else.

Sara got back up and checked the time. The magical boundary between late and too late was rapidly approaching. With an exasperated sigh, she jogged down the stairs to her bicycle, the traffic, and her daughters waiting at home in Christianshavn.