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right.
    She sat down in front of him, trying to catch his eye. ‘Hey there, mister, are you sitting here watching TV and mooning over that cute newscaster Trine Sick?’
    He scrunched up his face so his crow’s feet reached his hairline, but his eyes never left the screen.
    ‘You’re a real rascal, you know that?’ Then she took his hand. It was warm and soft, as always. ‘But you like Lotte Mejlhede better. Do you think I haven’t noticed?’
    Now she saw his lips slowly widen into a grin. Contact was established. Oh yes, Uffe was still inside there. And Uffe knew full well what he wanted in life.
    She turned to look at the TV screen and listened to the last two reports on the evening news. The first had to do with the Nutrition Council’s appeal to institute a ban on industrially manufactured trans-fatty acids; the second was about the hopeless marketing campaign conducted by the Danish Poultry Association with government financing. She was only too familiar with the issues. They had resulted in two long nights of intense work.
    She turned to Uffe and ruffled his hair so that the big scar on his scalp became visible. ‘Come on, lazybones, let’s see about getting ourselves some dinner.’ With her free hand she grabbed one of the sofa cushions and slapped it against the back of his neck until he started shrieking with joy and flailing his arms and legs. Then she let go of his hair, leaped like a mountain goat over the sofa, through the living room and out to the stairwell. It never failed. Hooting and chuckling with glee and stifled energy, Uffe followed close on her heels. Like a couple of train carriages connected by spring steel, they raced upstairs, down again, outside to the front of the garage, back to the living room, and finally out to the kitchen. Soon they would sit down in front of the TV to eat the food that the home help had cooked for them. Yesterday they had watched Mr Bean . The day before it was Chaplin. Today it would be Mr Bean again. The video collection that Merete and Uffe owned included only what Uffe enjoyed watching. He usually lasted half an hour before he fell asleep. Then she would spread a blanket over him and let him sleep on the sofa. Later in the night he would find his own way upstairs to the bedroom. There he would take her hand and grunt a bit before falling asleep beside her in the double bed. When he was finally sound asleep, making soft whistling noises, she would turn on the light and start getting ready for the next day.
    That was how the evenings and nights unfolded. Because that was how Uffe loved things to be – her sweet, innocent little brother. Sweet, silent Uffe.

6
    2007
    It was true that a brass plate on the door was engraved with the words ‘Department Q’, but the door itself had been lifted off its hinges and was now leaning against a bunch of hot-water pipes that stretched all the way down the long basement corridor. Ten buckets, half filled and giving off paint fumes, still stood inside the room that was supposed to be his office. From the ceiling hung four fluorescent lights, the type that after a while would provoke a splitting headache. But the walls were fine – except for the colour. It was hard not to make a comparison with hospitals in Eastern Europe.
    ‘Viva Marcus Jacobsen,’ grumbled Carl, trying to get a grip on the situation.
    For the last hundred yards along the basement corridor he hadn’t seen a soul. In his end of the basement there were no people, there was no daylight, air, or anything else that might distinguish the place from the Gulag Archipelago. Nothing was more natural than to compare his domain with the fourth circle of hell.
    He looked down at his two spanking-new computers and the bundle of wires attached to them. Apparently the information superhighway had been split up so that the intranet was linked to one computer and the rest of the world to the other. He patted computer number two. Here he could sit for hours and surf the