“Oh, there’s something else… a bit odd.”

The tone of his voice made Anette prick up her ears.

“Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but I definitely don’t see this very often here in the department.” He pointed to the deceased. “His face is covered with a type of light face powder. He’s wearing makeup.”

THE FARTHER NORTH of Copenhagen one goes, the taller the trees. Around Hellerup the crowns of beeches and oaks begin to seriously dominate the skyline. Even in people’s yards, the tree trunks stand like Grecian columns casting shadows as well as glamour over the neighborhood. A sign of prosperity, Sara thought, looking out the passenger’s-side window at the lucid green colors flickering by. Just like obesity used to be, until the Industrial Revolution changed the ideal body. In the subsidized housing in Helsingør where she had lived with Mido and the girls until their divorce, the trees had come up to only about fence height. Big enough to climb, but too small to block out the light. Here in the affluence belt, the trees obviously couldn’t get tall enough.

“I’ll have a place out here in the next three years, either in Hellerup or Charlottenlund, possibly Ordrup in a pinch,” Thomas Larsen said, naming some of the suburbs close to where they were driving, along the eastern coast north of Copenhagen. “A big, fat box of a house with a patio, a carport, and a trampoline in the yard.”

Larsen slowed down and rolled north on Bernstorffsvej, his nose pressed to the windshield, as if he were actually house hunting for his new place right now. Clad in a plaid blazer and a tasteful white shirt, he almost looked like a caricature of the kind of person who would live in these parts.

“I thought you liked living in posh old Frederiksberg,” Sara said, glancing at his cuff links.

“Well, now that we’re going to be parents… children need a yard to play in, a safe environment.”

“And you can’t get that in the city? Like, say, in Christianshavn?”

“We all have our own way of doing things,” he said, smiling placatingly. “Why don’t we just leave it at that?”

“Only your way is better than mine?”

“Let it go, Saidani! It’s your own choice to interpret my attitude as looking down on your way of life. I just want to give my family a green, quiet home.”