'OK.' The admission was casual, as if the fact was self-evident. 'I have.'

'Why?'

'I thought you might be meeting Karsten.' There was a brittleness in his voice Eusden felt sure he recognized. 'I'm Henning Norvig, Mr Eusden. We talked earlier. And now we need to talk again.'

TWENTY.

The river bus moved away from the jetty through a slush of half-formed ice and headed south. Eusden and Norvig stood watching it go, Eusden's mind racing to calculate what he should or should not admit. Norvig smiled at him, as if sensing his indecision.

'For fanden, jeg fryser.'

'What?'

'You don't speak Danish, Mr Eusden?'

'No.'

'I said I'm fucking freezing. Why don't we talk over a drink?'

The Nyhavn canal was lined with bars and restaurants a colourful, crowded scene in summer, as Eusden well recalled, with diners and drinkers massed at outdoor tables, admiring the elegant yachts tied up along the quay. A cold late afternoon in February provided a different, bleaker scene, relieved only by the reds and yellows of the house fronts and the enticingly twinkling lights of those bars that were open for business. They went into the first one they came to after leaving the jetty.

'This morning, Karsten was supposed to be here in Copenhagen, but wasn't, and you weren't supposed to be in rhus, but you were,' Norvig opened up as they settled at a table. 'Now he's still not here. But you've arrived instead. What am I supposed to make of that?'

'How did you know who I was?' Eusden countered, aware that this was to be a game of who could learn more from the other.

'Karsten said he had to meet a woman at the Phoenix this morning before coming on to meet me. When I still hadn't heard from him this afternoon, I went there to see if they knew anything. The name Burgaard meant zip to them. But Eusden? That was different. You left while I was standing at reception. The guy on the desk pointed you out to me.' Norvig lit a cigarette, proffering the pack to Eusden, who waved it away. 'So, I've answered your question. How about answering mine?'

'Well, like you say, Karsten's gone missing. I'm... trying to track him down.'

'Because...'

'He's a friend.'

'Yeah. Right.' The barman approached. Norvig ordered a beer. Eusden nodded his assent and he made it two. 'How'd you meet him?'

'Economics conference... at Cambridge... last year.'

'Uhuh. And since then you've become... an item?'

'An item?' Belatedly, Eusden caught Norvig's drift. 'No. I-'

'Karsten's bsse, Richard. Gay. I'm surprised you didn't know that. As a friend of his.'

'How do you know?' It was the best retort Eusden could manage.

'We've met a few times. It was obvious.'

'Maybe you're just his type and I'm not.'

'Stop fucking me about, Richard. Where's Karsten?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, that makes two of us, doesn't it?'

'Yes. It does.'

The arrival of the beers imposed a brief truce, which Norvig extended by sitting back in his chair to savour his first swallow and following it with a thoughtful pull on his cigarette. 'What do you do for a living, Richard?'

'I'm a civil servant. I work at the Foreign Office in London.'

'The Foreign Office?'

'That's right. What about you?'

'Freelance journalist.'

'Were you meeting Karsten... about a story?'

'Yes. I was.'

'Did it involve... Tolmar Aksden?'

Norvig smiled. 'There it is. That name. Tolmar Aksden. The Invisible Man. Yup. He was on the agenda, all right. Are you interested in him... officially?'

'Officially? No. I'm on leave.'

'Which you're spending with your not very close friend Karsten Burgaard in rhus. In the middle of winter. That's great. That's so likely.'

Eusden did not react. He was beginning to feel he might actually win out in the trading of points. 'Have you written about Aksden before?'

'Most Danish journalists have. Tell me, Richard, do you ride?'

'What?'

'Do you ride? Horses, I mean.'

'No.'

'Well, I do. And when I was a boy I worked weekends at a stable. It means I know what horseshit smells like. So, stop shovelling it in my direction, OK? Karsten told me two Englishmen had shown up in rhus with access to highly sensitive information about Tolmar Aksden. The sort of stuff that might knock a couple of digits off Mjollnir's share price for starters. I'm guessing you're one of those two Englishmen. Let me finish before you deny it. Karsten's given me titbits about Mjollnir quite a few times. It's his specialty. He made it clear this was something big, something... shattering. He needed to collect some documents from a woman staying at the Phoenix. Then we were to meet. He never showed. Now, I don't know what you had going with him and I don't necessarily care. If you've got the documents, I might be in the market for them, no questions asked. You understand?'

Eusden stared Norvig down as calmly as he could before responding. 'I don't have the documents.'

'Do you know where they are?'

'I-'

A phone began ringing in one of Norvig's pockets. 'Skide,' he said, pulling it out. 'Unskyld. Hallo?' His face was a mask during the conversation that followed, to which he contributed little beyond ja, nej, okay and tak, interspersed with sighs suggesting that something other than unalloyed good news was being conveyed to him. He said nothing at first after ringing off, gazing at a point in the middle distance somewhere over Eusden's shoulder. Then he murmured, 'Karsten's dead.'

'What?'

'He hit the wall of a flyover on the motorway near Skanderborg early this morning. High-speed crash. No other car involved. Apparently.'

The shock was followed for Eusden by the sickening realization that if Burgaard had not decided to go it alone, they would have been together in his car. 'What do you mean "apparently"?'

'It was around four thirty. Empty road. No witnesses.'

'You're suggesting... he was run off the road?'

'Did I say that? Fuck, this is serious.' Norvig contemplated just how serious over several nervous drags on his cigarette. 'No, no. They wouldn't. It must have been just... an accident. Maybe there was ice. Maybe he was... careless.'

'But you don't think so.'

'I don't know.' Norvig grabbed his phone again, as if intending to make a call. Then he thought better of it and clunked it down on the table. 'You got here safely, didn't you?' He glared accusingly at Eusden as he stubbed out his cigarette.

'Look, I know nothing about this. I came by train.'

'Who's the woman at the Phoenix?'

'She's gone.'

'What's her name?'

'It doesn't matter. She doesn't matter.'

'The other Englishman, then. Who's he?'

'Marty Hewitson. He is a friend.'

'Where is he now?'

'rhus. But he'll be here soon. Probably tomorrow.'

'OK, Richard. Let's be cool. Accidents happen. Business is business. You get these... documents. You have them in your hand. They deliver what Karsten promised. Then I'm interested. Anything less any more horseshit forget it.' Norvig scribbled a number on a corner of the front page of Brsen, tore it off and passed it to Eusden. 'Call me. If there's something to talk about. If not, we never met. Understood?'

'Understood.'

They left separately, at Norvig's insistence. Eusden would actually have been glad of his company, rattled as he was by the news of Burgaard's death. An accident was credible enough. He had probably been speeding, his head full of plans to smooth talk Vicky into handing over the case. Or maybe he had just fallen asleep at the wheel. Oh, yes, an accident was the obvious explanation. And yet... And yet.

Eusden walked up Nyhavn to Kongens Nytorv, the broad square at the eastern end of Strget. He was in no hurry to return to his cramped room at the Phoenix. He knew he ought to eat something but had no appetite. His senses were alert, his nerves jangling. He felt exposed and helpless and foolish for feeling so. Marty needed to be told what had happened, but there was no way rhus Kommunehospital was going to put a call through to him at this hour. Eusden was trapped between the urge to act and the certainty that for the moment there was nothing he could do.

He remembered there was a quaint old bar on the square where he had passed a carefree hour one summer's night back in 1989: Hviids Vinstue. He went in, found it reassuringly unaltered and drank several glasses of the house schnapps. Alcohol soon began to take the edge off his anxiety. Burgaard had killed himself in a car crash. That was all there was to it. There was no second car, no van speeding past, then swerving in, causing Burgaard to swerve and skid. It was- A van. Marty had nearly been run over by one before collapsing at the bus stop. Maybe there really was a plot. And maybe the plotters had banked on Eusden being in the car as well. Maybe they had only just or still not learnt that Burgaard had left him behind. His mouth dried as he found himself actually crediting the possibility.

He decided to go back to the Phoenix. Cramped or not, his room promised safety if nothing else. He finished his schnapps and left.

A short distance round the square was Copenhagen's grand hotel, the d'Angleterre, where he and Gemma had taken Holly for tea one afternoon, earning the girl's highest accolade: 'Ace.' Eusden paused to gaze in at the hotel's warmly lit windows. It was to occur to him later in the evening that if he had lingered at Hviids just a little longer or alternatively pressed straight on in that instant, he would not have been standing there when a couple emerged from the d'Angleterre into the chill night air.

The woman was fur-coated and -hatted, amply proportioned in height and girth, dark-skinned and statuesquely poised. She stopped, instantly aware of Eusden's astonished gaze and that the cause of his astonishment was not her, but her companion, a tall, middle-aged man in a dark-green overcoat. 'Do you know this gentleman, Werner?' she asked in a lilting American accent. 'He certainly seems to know you.'

'Oh, yes.' Straub gave Eusden a wintry smile. 'We know each other.'

TWENTY-ONE.

'Richard Eusden. Regina Celeste.' Straub managed the introductions with measured aplomb. Eusden had already guessed that the lady was the moneybags from Virginia Straub had been planning to sell the contents of the case to. What he could not guess was who he planned to say Eusden was. But he did not have to wait long to find out. 'Richard's a friend of Marty Hewitson's.' This was a surprise. Did he propose to continue by explaining how he had treated Marty? No, of course not. 'Is he here with you in Copenhagen, Richard?'

'It would be so convenient if he was,' said Regina as Eusden hesitated over an answer. 'The man's been leading us quite a dance.'

'Has he really?'

'I'm afraid it's the kind of thing I've gotten used to since I became an Anastasian.'

'A what?'

'A true believer in the Grand Duchess. Anastasia Manahan. Maybe you don't call yourself that over here. But I guess you must be one if you're a friend of Mr Hewitson's. So, where's he hiding himself?'

'I... don't really know.'

'What has brought you to Copenhagen, then?' asked Straub.

'The same as you, perhaps.'

'Why don't you join us for dinner, Mr Eusden?' Regina trilled. 'We were on our way to a restaurant. Close by, you said, Werner?'

'Very.'

'We could talk there. And from what Werner tells me, we have plenty to talk about.'

'Indeed,' said Straub. His guarded expression revealed some scanty hints of alarm mixed with determined opportunism. He obviously did not want Eusden to tell Regina what he had done to Marty, though it was equally obvious he would merely utter a horrified and doubtless credible denial. But nor did he want Eusden to melt away into the night. Happenstance had given him the chance to probe his opponent's defences, albeit vicariously. But it was a chance that cut both ways.

'I'd be delighted to join you,' said Eusden.

The Restaurant Els was indeed close by, only a short step away across the square, a candle-lit haven of mirrors and murals presided over by the prominently mounted head of the eponymous elk. Or, as Regina described him, 'My Lord, a moose.'

They were settled at a table and supplied with menus. Aperitifs were declined on the grounds that champagne had already been quaffed at the d'Angleterre. Eusden was happy to go along with this. His head was clear despite the amount he had already drunk, but he needed to keep it that way. He and Straub had embarked on a battle of wits, with Regina as unwitting referee. Predictably, Straub sought to seize the initiative, by creatively refashioning the circumstances of their acquaintance for Regina's benefit.

In this version of events, Eusden had been visiting Marty in Amsterdam after hearing of his friend's illness, and had accompanied him to Hamburg at the time of Marty's initial discussions with Straub about selling his grandfather's archive of Anastasia-related documents. 'I had intended we would both meet you in Frankfurt, Regina,' Straub continued, 'but Marty was too ill to travel. Then came our great surprise, Richard. When we arrived at the Vier Jahreszeiten yesterday, we found you and Marty had left.'