“Right. Well, as he follows his route to pick up the trash, he opens the lid of each trash can to see if it needs to be emptied. If there was a body in one of them, well, first of all, it must have been a pretty good-size container, maybe a six-hundred-liter or even a commercial dumpster, otherwise there wouldn’t be room. Second, the body must have been wrapped or covered somehow. The driver might have been surprised at how heavy the container was, but the cart lifter on the truck would have done the actual lifting, so it probably wasn’t something he gave too much thought to. Right, then the compactor crushes the trash and it gets driven out here to the incineration plant.”

Jeppe hurriedly jotted down the key words in sloppy all caps only he would be able to decipher later on.

“Is it possible to trace where in the city the body was thrown into the garbage? How big is a six-hundred-liter container? Are they common or only found in certain locations?”

Michael smiled wryly.

“They’re used all over the city for regular old municipal waste. I couldn’t really say how many there are, but if I had to take a guess, I’d wager we’re talking thousands.”

“Okay. So the trash that was emptied at the plant this morning, what part of the city did it come from?”

Michael shrugged his shoulders.

“You’d have to ask the different waste management companies to find out exactly, but Monday morning is a big trash day. Municipal waste comes in from all over downtown and the suburbs.”

“So you’re saying that it’ll be hard to track where the body came from?” Jeppe asked, looking up from his notepad.

“No, I’m saying it will be impossible to trace a specific item back to a specific trash can. The claw grabs from the top layer of trash, and since the body was picked up on a Monday morning, it’s pretty likely that it was dumped in the silo today. But you can’t even know that for sure.” Michael nodded down toward the trench. “If you want to get rid of something, this is the right place. Everything disappears.”

In the cafeteria, Michael pointed to a shape lying on a sofa, his face to the wall. Two employees, a man and a woman, were standing over him looking concerned.

“That’s Kasper,” Michael whispered to them. “It doesn’t seem like he’s feeling better.”

The female employee looked at them and sighed.

“He’s out cold,” she said. “I think we might have to take him to the hospital.”

Jeppe walked over. The man had a big birthmark on his temple, and it took him but a minute to remember where he’d seen him before. He and Anette exchanged looks.

“Kasper, this is the Copenhagen Police talking. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”