Gabriel Mørk stopped in front of the newspaper stand outside the kiosk on the corner of Mariboesgate and thought back to the very first time he had come here, six months ago, worried about starting his job with the police. Back then, the young hacker had had no real police experience – in fact, no job experience at all. The police had got his name from MI6. He had solved an extremely difficult code which the British security service had uploaded on the Internet: can you crack it? It had turned out to be a recruitment campaign, and he was informed that his solution was correct, but in order to get the job he had to be a British citizen. Gabriel had promptly forgotten all about it until, one day, he got a call from Holger Munch. How could he turn down a proper job with a baby on the way? His girlfriend would never have forgiven him.
Gabriel found his card and swiped himself inside the yellow building. A teenage girl. Found naked in the woods in Hurum. He shuddered at the thought of the pictures he had seen. They had not had a case like this since the little girls who had been found hanged from the trees, and he had almost thrown up then. His first thought was that he had made a big mistake taking this job, but, luckily, they had solved the case.
And he had contributed.
Afterwards Munch had called him into his office and thanked him, said, ‘We couldn’t have done it without you, Gabriel.’ And he had felt proud; part of something important.
Gabriel held up his card to the lift panel and was about to press the button for the second floor when he heard a familiar voice behind him.
‘Wait for me.’
Gabriel turned around and was both surprised and delighted when he saw Mia running towards him.
‘Thanks,’ she panted as the lift doors closed.
Mia Krüger.
‘Are you back?’ Gabriel said, aware that he was blushing a little, but hoping that she would not notice.
‘So it would seem. I should have told them to go to hell, shouldn’t I?’
‘Possibly,’ Gabriel smiled.
‘Have you got hold of the records?’
‘Eh?’
‘Her phone records? The victim?’
‘No,’ Gabriel said. ‘Things like that take time, but it’s in progress. Red tape and so on – you know what it’s like.’
‘Why don’t you just hack their system and get it yourself?’
‘Munch likes doing things by the book.’ Gabriel smiled, a little embarrassed.
Mia laughed.
She walked in front of him down the corridor, ran her card through the reader, held open the door for him and closed it behind them, just as Munch appeared.
‘I thought we said eleven? Eleven means eleven, not quarter past,’ Munch barked, and disappeared into the office.
‘He’s in a foul mood at the moment,’ Gabriel said, somewhat apologetically.
‘Clearly,’ Mia said, but she did not look as if it bothered her all that much.
‘Eleven means eleven. Seriously, people, let’s show some professionalism, shall we? Where are we? Where is everyone?’ Munch was now shouting from the incident room, his voice growling and deep like a bear someone had roused from hibernation.
Mia Krüger.
Gabriel was glad that she was back.