Night fell as I drove toward Risskov.

The asphalt shone like oil in the setting sun. The weather forecasters had given the farmers until evening to get the harvest in, the bit there was, but there was already something hostile in the shaky wind and dark sky. Bale processors, tractors, hay trailers and trailers of dull, gray corn tops filled the small roads, heavy and stinking of diesel, long tails of glittering dust trailing behind them.

The radio hoarsely came and went on a channel where the host and guest were discussing life on other planets. Wormholes and the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. We were all time travelers, moving forward in time at the same speed. Onward and onward, with no known way back.

My phone was silent when I turned onto the road with the many splendid villas and parked a distance from the overgrown driveway. No news about Anders, and nothing from the hospital. I sat smoking for a little while, windows rolled down, as I tried to prepare for what was about to happen. Laughter and muted music reached me from the beach, and I could see yachts between the trees, rocking with slacked sails on the mercury-glazed water.

“He’s not home.”

It was hard to tell whether Karsten’s son recognized me. He seemed completely indifferent. The phone was still stuck to his right hand; he wore canvas shorts and flip-flops. There was also a half smile—the kind rich kids were raised to share with servants and ordinary people.

“Do you know when he’ll be home?”

He shrugged and waved at a couple of other teenagers trudging through the hall, and farther on into the kitchen behind him.

“I don’t know, he’s at work. Or in Copenhagen or something. I haven’t seen him today,” he said.

“Do you think your mom knows?”

“No, she’s on a shopping trip in London. I think. But I can give you Dad’s cell number if you don’t already have it.”

“Thank you, that’d be great.”

I handed him my phone so he could enter it in with his firm young fingers. Someone called him from the kitchen, and he gave it back to me with an impatient jerk of his head. Eyed me up and down with a cold teenage appraisal, and I could tell all too clearly what he saw. An old man with a potbelly hanging out over a pair of slightly too youthful designer jeans.

“Well—”

“The bathroom,” I said. “Perhaps I could use your bathroom for a moment?”

He glared at me, the corners of his mouth turned discreetly downward. Probably an unwelcome snapshot of me on the john. Teenagers were delicate souls. But he nodded and let me come in, pointing to a hall on the left.

“Second door on the right,” he said, smiling cautiously. He had apparently already forgotten about me as I plodded down the hall and found the beautiful guest bathroom. Cream-colored tiles, freshly polished brass faucets, and one of those completely flat hand-washing basins that couldn’t hold water. Karsten’s wife must have gotten her clutches on one of the more puffed-up interior designers. I squeezed out a few drops, waited a few minutes before wiping myself and washing my hands, and pulled out my phone again. Called the number the boy had entered for me.

It went directly to voice mail. No rings.

I cursed softly, walked into the living room and turned off the light, sitting down on the voluptuously padded eight-seater sofa.

The French doors to the garden and water were wide open, so the wind ran through the now-almost-empty house, and I might have slept a little. I probably did. Time had, at any rate, disintegrated somewhere after ten o’clock; it was now dazzling one-thirty in white digital numbers as I straightened up to listen to the darkness.

Someone put their shoes away in the hall and moved in stocking feet across the creaking parquet floor, perhaps already on their way up the stairs to disappear into the huge house.

Disoriented, I got up and groped toward the door in the darkness, hitting my shinbone on a low table that gave off the unmistakable aura of being an expensive art piece. Something crashed to the floor, and I stumbled and fell, knocking teeth and nose on the hard arm of the sofa. I felt a snow-white pain when the bridge of my nose gave with a wet crunch. The steps in the hall came to a stop, replaced first by silence, and then by a shining light as the door opened.

“What the hell? What’s going on?”

Karsten Villadsen looked relatively calm, standing there in his office attire.

I struggled to get up, knocked over something behind me and almost stumbled again. Something had happened to my shoulder in the fall, and when I breathed, my mouth filled with warm, velvety blood.

“I had a couple more questions for you.”

He looked mildly surprised.

“Wait a moment.” He dug into his breast pocket and, with a gentlemanly flourish, conjured a handkerchief, which he handed to me. “You’re bleeding all over my antique carpet. Whiskey?”

He went over to a cupboard and retrieved a bottle and two glasses. Walked past me into the living room and turned on a table lamp that I hadn’t yet knocked to the floor. He sat down, rubbing his face with a bony hand.

“I’m too old for nighttime meetings,” he said. “Actually, I’m probably too old for most things now. If there’s something you’re aching to get off your chest, then do it fast. I’m so fucking tired.”

“Ellen. Where is she?”

He stared at me, disoriented. He did look genuinely tired and not the least bit guarded.

“I’ve already told you, I don’t know. I have literally no idea. Look, everything that happened back then—I’ve tried to move on, just like you obviously did. I looked you up online. An architect with your own company, a wife and children. What the hell more do you want? Jesus Christ, I was about to get my gun and shoot your head off just a minute ago.”

“You were an adult back then. You could have stopped it.”

“Hey.” He threw both hands in the air, then got up and went over to close the door to the garden. “You’re going on my confession alone here. I was an idiot. I was chronically stoned on something or other during those years. But I have no idea where Ellen is, and now I really need to sleep.”

He brushed past me. His body radiated cognac and cologne and an arrogance that made me furious. I came up on my legs and pushed him with a flat hand toward the built-in shelves. Clinton’s smiling face on the back of his biography was right at eye level. I weighed at least forty pounds more than Karsten, and it wasn’t all just fat. I could feel him shove against me with all his might, but I was in control now.

“Give it a rest! Stop.” He was slightly out of breath now. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Did you do something to her?”

He panted angrily against my shoulder in short jerks that slowly ebbed. His breath was tropically warm on my neck. The intimacy was nauseating, just like the blood still flowing into my throat.

I let him go, taking a step back, and he stood staring at me, his lips curled in as he breathed quickly through his nose.

“Of course I didn’t do anything to Ellen!” he said. “I was fucked up, but not that bad. Believe it or not, Ellen and I loved each other. I stopped drinking after that. Stopped the drugs, cleaned up my shit. It is actually possible to become a decent person over time.” He grinned and gave half a laugh as he wiped his forehead. “Fuck it,” he said. “I did. Get on with your life and let me sleep. I’m an old man.”

I drained my glass.

“And Lise? I spoke to Nikolaj. He saw you two together.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“Ballin? He never mentioned that to me. But okay. Lise and I screwed for a pretty short time, but we kept it a secret. Ellen was in Berlin, and I was unhappy and wanted her back, so I made Lise promise not to tell anyone. Which wasn’t particularly nice; I think she was in love with me. But otherwise, I was nice to her. Always walked her home and waited until she’d turned on the light in her room. The night she disappeared, too.”

Something cold swam at the back of my consciousness. Something I’d refused to think about all these years.

“You saw her go up to her room?”

He nodded.

“Maybe she went out again later. Maybe she was seeing someone else. It wasn’t me, at least.”

I took out the picture I had in my back pocket. One of the torn little snapshots from the commune. Ellen side by side with a light-haired girl I was almost sure I knew. I could feel the sweat run in drops down over my chest and stomach when I leaned forward.

“Who’s that girl there?”

Karsten accepted the picture that I handed him and looked at it in the light of the table lamp.

“I remember her,” he said. “Lise’s friend, right? Funny girl. Tall. Ellen was mad about her. She also made sure Ellen got some shifts at some factory every so often, but we didn’t see her that much. She couldn’t stand our toilet out in the stable.”

“And you know nothing about what happened to Ellen?”

He looked at me with tired indulgence over the edge of his whiskey glass.

“Hell no. That’s what I keep saying. And I could just as easily ask you. As far as I remember, you weren’t exactly an angel yourself.”