Eusden was woken the following morning by the insistent ringing of the telephone. His first thought was that the caller must be Gemma. Then he remembered he had not told her where they were. By that time, he had picked up the receiver.

'Hello?'

'Mr Eusden. Reception here. Will you take a call from a Mr Burgaard?'

He was too fuddled by sleep to consider refusing. 'OK. Put him through.' Burgaard? Who the hell was he?

'Mr Eusden?'

'Yeah.'

'My name's Karsten Burgaard.' His English had less of an American accent than Michael Aksden's, though he did not sound much older. 'Can you meet me?'

'What?'

'Now, I mean. I'm in the Baresso coffee bar. By the bridge in Sankt Clemens Torv.'

'Where?'

'Ask at the desk. It's not far.'

'But... who are you?'

'I overheard your... conversation with Michael Aksden... last night. Then I... followed you back to your hotel.'

'You followed us?'

'Yes. But come alone, hey? Your friend is... rather loud.'

'I don't understand. What d'you want?'

'Come and find out.'

'Hold on. I-' But Burgaard had not held on. The line was dead.

Eusden struggled to order his thoughts as he washed and dressed. Marty would insist on going along if he alerted him to what had happened. And Burgaard had a point. He could be loud. Eusden was still irritated by how blithely Marty had provoked Michael Aksden. Perhaps the time had come to demonstrate the merits of diplomacy and restraint. He headed out as instructed alone.

rhusers were making their way to work in scarfed and muffled silence, exhaled breath pluming around them in the frigid dawn air. Eusden hurried the short distance to the Baresso Kaffebar and spotted Burgaard before he even entered, watching him through the window as he approached.

Burgaard was one of only two customers. The other was buying latte and a muffin to go. Several others had arrived, with the same to-go look about them, by the time Eusden had bought his coffee and joined Burgaard by the window.

'Thanks for coming, Mr Eusden,' said Burgaard, smiling nervously. He was a thin, slightly built, prematurely balding young man with a round, boyish face and a skittering, uncertain gaze. His fingernails, Eusden noticed, were chewed to the quick. He was dressed anonymously in shades of brown and grey.

'Well, like you said, it wasn't far.'

'No. It's a small city.' Burgaard seemed to be scanning the queue at the counter over Eusden's shoulder. 'Too small, maybe.'

'Your home town?'

'No. I'm from Falster. I came here... to study. At the University.'

'What's your subject?'

'Economics.' As if to prove the point, Burgaard had a pink business paper folded open at his elbow.

'Uh-huh.'

'You probably don't remember seeing me last night.'

'You're right. I don't.'

'People generally... don't notice me.'

'How well d'you know Michael Aksden?'

'Better than he'd like.'

'What's his subject?'

'Economics also. Michael and I... started together. But I have my degree. I'm studying for a doctorate. Michael is... drifting.' Burgaard shrugged. 'It doesn't matter how long you take for a degree or if you ever get one when your father is Tolmar Aksden.' He swivelled the paper round and tapped a headline. Eusden noticed the word Mjollnir. 'It says "Mjollnir shares break through new barrier".'

'Own any?'

'Some. But not enough. Anyway, I'm not interested in Mjollnir for investment, though maybe I should be. I'm interested in finding out why they do so well.'

'The secret of their success?'

'Exactly.' Burgaard lowered his voice. 'The secret.'

'Why don't you ask Michael?'

'I have. He tells me nothing. I think he knows nothing. I ask him to arrange for me to meet his father. No. I ask him to arrange for me to meet someone who works with his father. Again, no. This is for my thesis, Mr Eusden. I have worked on this nearly two years. Mjollnir is... a phenomenon. But no one understands it. I have tried. But, you see, they do not want anyone to understand. Tolmar Aksden does not give interviews. He does not... give anything.'

'Perhaps he's just a gifted entrepreneur.'

'His sort of entrepreneur normally likes to tell everyone how gifted he is. Not Tolmar Aksden. This paper calls him Den Usynlige Mand: the Invisible Man. Everyone admires him. But also everyone... distrusts him.'

'Do they?'

'Oh, yes, Mr Eusden. Just like you and your friend. What was that about last night? Mr Hewitson mentioned his grandfather... and Lars Aksden's arrest in Roskilde. You and Mr Hewitson... know something. And I...' Burgaard's head twitched in a slight but palpable nervous convulsion. This was clearly the stage of their encounter he had been steeling himself for. 'I would be grateful if you told me what it is.'

Eusden took a sip of coffee to camouflage a tactical pause, then smiled and said, 'Why would I do that?'

'Because I know things you don't.'

'Maybe we know it all.'

'No. If you did, you wouldn't have challenged Michael. And also... you wouldn't have agreed to meet me this morning.'

'Is that right?'

'Yes. I think it is.' Burgaard's calculations were sound, even though he projected little confidence in them. 'I propose... a trade.'

Another pause; another sip. 'Propose away.'

'I guess you've come to rhus because Lars is here. Near here, I mean. He has been ever since the... incident... in Roskilde. You've come to see him, haven't you?'

'Maybe.'

'I want to be with you when you do.'

'And you propose to buy your ringside seat with... information.'

'Yes.' Burgaard nodded. 'A lot of information.'

Tolmar Aksden was born at the family farm, Aksdenhj, in 1939. He trained as an engineer, but worked on the farm for some years before setting up Mjollnir in the early 1970s. Mjollnir's ostensible business was plant hire, but from the very start, according to Burgaard, it seemed to be more of a general investment vehicle. Aksden began buying up disused industrial land in the rhus area and regenerating it as housing complexes and high-tech business parks. He was always one step ahead of the economic trend. By the 1980s he had taken over a shipyard and an electronics factory, which both appeared defunct but were transformed under Mjollnir into leaders in the fields of containerization and micro-processing. In the 1990s came the big leap for the company: acquisition of a Swedish hotel chain, a large Norwegian fish-farming operation and a Finnish timber producer. Mjollnir's headquarters moved to Copenhagen and its reign as a pan-Scandinavian economic powerhouse began. Burgaard emphasized the shock element in this development. Aksden kept such a low profile that his competitors never saw him coming. His far-sightedness was envied, his ruthlessness feared. He was considered by many to be positively un-Danish in this regard, although ignorance of his true personality and the rarity of his sightings in public ensured criticism gave way to awe at his achievements and a certain mystique that attached itself to the Invisible Man of the Nordic business world.

His family life was similarly low-key. He married Pernille Madsen, a Mjollnir employee nineteen years his junior, when he was forty-two. Their only child, Michael, was born in 1983. They had subsequently divorced. His sister, Elsa, married a neighbouring landowner in Jutland, and seldom stirred from rural obscurity. His brother, Lars, was the odd one out, cultivating a larger-than-life image as an artist, womanizer and dabbler in politics. As a young man, he had participated in the establishment of the Christiania hippy commune in Copenhagen and had sedulously maintained his anti-Establishment credentials ever since. About the only thing he had in common with Tolmar was that they were both divorced.

In Norse mythology, Mjollnir was Thor's magical hammer, an instrument of destruction and creation. Tolmar Aksden had chosen the name for his company well. He had specialized in eliminating competitors and turning their failures into his successes. Nor was he finished yet. At sixty-eight, he gave no sign of slowing down. The consensus was that he had a strategy for further expansion, though where, and into what, was, as ever with the man, an open question. And it would remain so, until he chose to reveal the answer.

'What did you tell the guy?' Marty demanded as soon as Eusden had finished relaying what he had learnt from Burgaard about the life and times of Tolmar Aksden. They were in the hotel restaurant, where Eusden had found Marty having breakfast when he returned from the coffee bar.

'I told him I was helping you research your grandfather's mysterious dealings with Aksden's great-uncle, Hakon Nydahl. That was it. I said nothing about Anastasia or Clem's attache case.'

'How did he react?'

'I think he suspected I wasn't giving him the full story. But I think he also sensed I suspected the same of him.'

'What's he after?'

'Something to spice up his analysis of Mjollnir's success.'

'Which he reckons we can deliver?'

'He's betting on it. And I'm happy to let him. He knows where Lars is hanging out and he's willing to take us to see him. Today.'

'Mmm.' Marty frowned sceptically. 'How can we be sure he's not getting more out of us than we're getting out of him?'

'We can't. You think I should've turned him down?'

'I'm not saying that.'

'What are you saying, then?'

'Why did he insist on meeting you alone?'

'He's the shy, retiring type. He described you as "rather loud".'

'Bloody nerve.'

'I promised him you'd be on your best behaviour when we went to see Lars.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'It means don't pick a fight with the man.'

'As if I would.'

'As if.'

'All right, all right. I'll be nice. But don't forget' Marty pointed his fork at Eusden for emphasis 'I'm in charge.'

FOURTEEN.

Burgaard called for them at eleven o'clock, as agreed. He was clearly wary of Marty and the feeling was just as clearly mutual. They set off in Burgaard's battered old Skoda and little was said until they had left the city and were driving south through a snow-veiled landscape of farms and forests and empty roads.

'How many generations of Aksdens have farmed here?' Eusden asked, as much to break the silence as out of genuine curiosity.

'Many, I guess,' Burgaard replied. 'But Aksdenhj was never a rich farm. Hj means hill. The ones with names ending in dal valley are where the best land is. So, we know why Tolmar did not stay on the farm.'

'But his sister stuck with it,' said Marty.

'Not exactly. She married Henrik Stvring. He owns Marskedal, one of the largest manor farms in east Jutland.'

'So, what's happened to Aksdenhj?'

'They say Tolmar stays there occasionally. And Lars uses it as a studio.'

'Is that where we're going, then?'

'Yes. With luck, we'll find Lars there.'

After about ten miles on a main road, they turned off on to a narrower, winding side road. The going was rougher over compacted ice, the snowbanks at the fields' edges higher as they entered rolling, hillier countryside. Off to one side, down a tree-lined drive, a large, half-timbered, terracotta-roofed manor house came into view.

'Marskedal,' Burgaard announced. 'Nice, yes?'

'Looks like Elsa Aksden married money,' said Marty.

'Or Henrik Stvring did. They say Tolmar's pumped a lot of cash into the estate.'

'What do they farm?'