Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows

'But I think he's miscalculated, Jon. It may well turn out that he made exactly the right decision, but for all the wrong reasons. Your demand to have Katherina participate in the investigation has convinced us that you're the right person for the job.' She smiled, this time in a friendly and accommodating way, as if exonerating him.

'Thanks for your trust,' said Jon. 'But I've never been accused of being a puppet before. I think you're mistaken about Kortmann. It seems to me that he wants to get to the bottom of this, and that he'd like to see the Bibliophile Society reunited.'

'I hope you're right,' said Clara.

'It's possible that he did campaign for a split back then,' Jon went on. 'But I sense that today he regrets it, or at least he has come to doubt it was the right solution.' He shrugged. 'Maybe he has just become more mellow over the years.'

'Which brings us back to the starting point,' said Clara. 'What's happening now is damaging to all of us, so how can we help you, Jon? What are you going to do?'

No one said a word, and Jon felt as if a blinding spotlight had been directed at him, ready to show his slightest movement. He noticed that his palms grew warm, and he suppressed an urge to shift position in his chair.

'Weare going to start by studying the individual incidents,' Katherina broke in. 'It's important to find out for sure whether what's been happening was planned or just coincidence. If there's a connection, we have to ask: who might gain by doing this? And in that case, what would they get out of it?'

Jon nodded, sending her a grateful smile.

'I agree completely,' he said and then paused. 'I'm convinced that there's a connection between the events of today and what happened twenty years ago. That fact alone – a gap of twenty years – limits who might be involved.'

After the meeting Jon drove Katherina to her flat in the Nordvest district. They said very little during the drive. Jon was going over the meeting in his mind, but he had a hard time coming to any conclusion. In reality he ought to have been insulted to be called Kortmann's lapdog, yet he felt they did support him, even though he had come to Kortmann's defence. He sensed that the receivers expected even more from him than the transmitters did. They had hopes for what he might do – at the same time they had secrets they wouldn't voluntarily disclose, which he was going to have to dig up on his own.

'This is it,' said Katherina, pointing to a dull yellow building with green aluminium balconies. The exhaust from the traffic had turned the yellow brick almost grey in patches. Holes in the asphalt and the broken pavement bore witness to years of poor maintenance.

Katherina opened the car door but hesitated before getting out.

'I'm going to visit Iversen tomorrow,' she said. 'Would you like to come along?'

Jon nodded, prompting a warm smile to appear on her face.

'See you,' she said, putting her hand on top of his and giving it a squeeze. 'You did good today.'

She got out and closed the door behind her.

If time hadn't been on Katherina's side that day, they would have arrived too late to save Iversen.

It wasn't often that Katherina felt that time was particularly kind to her. She had often pondered what her life would have been like if circumstances had delayed her enough that certain events never took place or had turned out differently. If she'd been a little faster getting dressed on that morning when she went out with her parents in the car, or if she had insisted on changing clothes one more time, the accident never would have happened. The truck would have passed them by, either before or after that hill where her father was overtaking the tractor in front of them, and it would have left them uninjured and unaware of the family's alternative fate.

On those occasions when chance and timing coincided to her advantage, she didn't always recognize it as such. Yet she had given a lot of thought to what might have happened if she hadn't gone past Libri di Luca at just the right moment on that day when Luca was reading aloud fromThe Stranger. Katherina was convinced that if she had walked past either before or after Luca gave the reading, she never would have met Luca or Iversen or the receivers, and as a freelance she might have even gone insane or taken her own life.

That was why, afterwards, she appreciated the fact that Jon picked her up when he did, and not ten minutes later.

They met at the bookshop, where the glazier had just finished installing the new windows. After having so little daylight inside the shop, everything seemed transformed when the afternoon sun found its way through the new panes of glass. Columns of illuminated dust motes fell across the floor, and the letters of the shop's sign cast sharply delineated shadows on the exposed floorboards.

It was mid-afternoon, and Jon told her he'd decided to take a couple of days off, which had not been well received at the office. Even though the lawyers were entitled to do so, it was apparently frowned upon if they took time off in lieu of overtime pay. Extra hours were not regarded as time they could actually draw on; rather they were considered a status symbol, useful only for bragging rights or to substantiate their martyrdom.

Katherina listened in silence to Jon's description of the law office environment as they drove out to the State University Hospital. He talked non-stop until they reached the hospital, but he seemed to sink back in his seat the moment he turned off the engine and stopped his complaints. He looked as if he'd just awakened from a dream and needed time to figure out where he was before he could continue. They sat in the car for a moment, staring through the windscreen at the grey hospital building, before Katherina got out and Jon followed.

'He's been moved to a private room,' explained the nurse behind the counter.

'Is he all right?' asked Katherina in alarm.

'Yes, yes,' the nurse assured them. 'He's fine. We just thought it was better for him to have his own room, considering his condition. He's had quite a shock, but he's getting better, especially after that young man brought some books for him.' She smiled.

'Pau?' asked Katherina.

'I didn't get his name. He was here yesterday, a young man, he was bald, and wearing those baggy trousers that seem to be in style these days.'

Katherina nodded.

'You'll find Svend Iversen in room five-twelve,' the nurse said, pointing down the hall to her left. 'He's alone now.'

They thanked her and walked down the corridor she'd indicated.

'How thoughtful of him,' said Jon in a low voice.

'Yes, it's not like Pau,' replied Katherina.

They stopped at the door to room 5-12, and Jon knocked. There was no response, so Jon knocked again, this time louder. Katherina thought she heard a rhythmic banging from inside the room, like two pieces of metal being slammed together.

'Iversen?' said Jon, pushing open the door. 'It's us, Katherina and…'

From the doorway they both had a full view of the small private room, which had space enough for only the hospital bed and a couple of visitors' chairs. The curtains were open and light was streaming in through the window and onto the white bedclothes, almost blinding them.

Iversen was sitting in the bed, his back erect and his right hand gripping the bed rail, which was rattling frantically because his whole body was shaking so violently. He was foaming at the mouth, and a disturbing hissing sound was escaping from his lips as saliva sprayed out with each spasmodic breath. Even scarier were his eyes, which were open wide and staring down at the duvet in front of him without seeing a thing.

'Iversen!' shouted Katherina and ran over to the bed, followed by Jon.

When they got closer, they could see that a book lay open in Iversen's lap. His left hand was holding the volume, gripping it tightly in spite of all the shaking. Jon reached for the book, but Iversen had such a grip on it that he couldn't wrest it from him. His body shook even harder, and Jon had to let go. He promptly grabbed the pillow from behind Iversen's back and pressed it down over the book, hiding the pages from the man's wild eyes.