If the OP were behind the thefts, it would have involved a lot more than a few thousand marks a month. Gabriel must have done it on his own initiative and pocketed the profit, as she’d suspected. And then he’d used the OP brand to keep Jens from going to the police. It was probably true that he did odd jobs for the OP, but they didn’t have anything to do with stealing whiskey.

Jens Groth doesn’t seem to have come to the same conclusion.

‘It adds up to quite a lot of money over the course of a year,’ he says. ‘But the threats were the worst part. Gabriel was very clear about what they would do if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. What the fuck do you think is going to happen to me now? I assume the police can’t do anything, as usual.’

‘I don’t think you need to worry about the OP,’ Karen tells him. ‘I’m pretty sure Gabriel was acting on his own.’

And maybe you knew that all along, she ponders, studying the man on the other side of the desk. Maybe that’s why you did have the guts to slit his throat.

‘Can you think of anyone who would want to see Gabriel dead? Or his grandfather?’ she adds, her eyes fixed on Jens Groth’s face.

The revelation that Fredrik’s death wasn’t an accident is met with a complete absence of surprise. In fact, Jens shows no reaction at all, just shrugs his shoulders.

‘How the fuck am I supposed to know? Ask Gabriel’s wife,’ he says harshly. ‘I hardly think it’s a coincidence she left him. But I certainly have no idea who would have wanted the old man dead.’

‘It almost seems like you already knew Fredrik Stuub was murdered.’

Jens Groth leans forward with a sigh, puts both his hands on his computer monitor and turns it so she can see.

‘People are talking. And I know how to read,’ he says as she stares at the screen:

KVELLSPOSTEN REVEALS: DOUBLE MURDER ON NOORÖ

GRANDFATHER AND GRANDSON VICTIMS OF THE SAME KILLER?

NO WORD FROM THE POLICE

Karen curses furiously under her breath all the way back up to the main building. Not because of the Kvellsposten headline – she’d been expecting that since the moment Thorstein Byle called to tell her there had been another murder – but because of her meeting with Odd. Because of what she’d seen in her cousin’s face the moment after the initial surprise – a split second of disbelief and then a glint of something else, something strange she’d never seen in her cousin’s eyes before. That was the moment Odd realised Gabriel had been using the OP’s name for his own gain. And just a few days later, Gabriel was found with his throat cut.