“Whoa.” Jeppe made a show of grabbing the driver’s seat. “Larsen and Saidani are contacting Sæther’s colleagues at Zahles School. Since we haven’t found his phone, we need to start there and then get the names of his friends from his girlfriend.”

“According to the school, he’s been employed for two years. He moved to Copenhagen when he got the teaching job at Zahles.” Anette reached over to rummage around in the glove compartment without slowing down whatsoever.

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know,” she snapped, slamming it closed again. “Gum, licorice, cocaine. Anything that will take away this damned urge to smoke.”

Jeppe shook his head at her and exhaled audibly.

“Why do you think he was wearing makeup?”

“Maybe the guy just liked to wear makeup,” Anette suggested, and turned left on yellow, ignoring the resulting concert of honks.

“Would a young teacher really wear makeup? Not many men do. What would his students say?”

“Maybe he only wore it when he wasn’t working. Who knows? We’ll have to find out.”

A pedestrian appeared on the crosswalk in front of the car, and Anette slammed on the brakes and honked aggressively.

“She had the right of way,” Jeppe pointed out.

“Yeah, but she still should have looked!”

They waited in silence for the light to change. The traffic signal clicked like a metronome, a countdown. Jeppe realized that he was drumming along on the dashboard.

“What do you think happened, Werner? If you had to guess, just between us, without needing to back it up in any way. It stays with me.”

“I’m not a big fan of guesswork, Jepsen. You know that. If your gut is telling you something, it’s usually just that you’re hungry.”

Jeppe couldn’t help but laugh.

“But if you insist,” she continued, while starting to drive again, “I think Oscar killed his teacher and then took off. I don’t know why he did it, but it seems like the most obvious explanation to me. His parents know, and they’re protecting him. That’s why they’re behaving the way they are. There you go… logic. In other words, no emotional claptrap from me.”

“A talented fifteen-year-old from a wealthy family kills his teacher, writes a mysterious goodbye letter, and sails away? That’s what you call logic?”

Anette slammed on the brakes yet again, flinging Jeppe into his seat belt.

“You are assuming that he’s happy and talented, because they have money and because that’s what they’re telling you? What happened to your critical eye, Jepsen?” she asked.

“Aren’t you the one sensing things now?”

“I’m just connecting the dots where the distance is the shortest.”