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as Lily Carstensen, the Danish State Railway’s supplies manager, and arranged to meet the locksmith at the gate. For the occasion she wore a newly pressed blue trouser suit and could have passed for middle management in the state bureaucracy. She had two copies of the keys made and got a bill – which she paid in cash – and now she could come and go as she pleased. If she took precautions, and the demons left her alone, everything would be OK.
    On the bus to Østerport she was mumbling to herself and people were staring. Stop it , Kimmie , she told herself. But her mouth wouldn’t obey.
    Sometimes she listened to herself as if she were someone else talking, and that’s how it was on this day. She smiled at a little girl, and the girl returned the kindness by making a face at her.
    So it must be especially bad.
    With ten thousand eyes drilling into her, she got off a few stops early. That was the last time she would take the bus, she promised herself. People were simply too close. The S-train was better.
    ‘Much better,’ she said aloud, as she made her way along Store Kongensgade. There were almost no people on the street. Almost no cars. Almost no voices in the back of her head.
    Kimmie reached the building at Indiakaj straight after the lunch hour. At Brand Nation she discovered the yawningly empty parking spot that, according to an enamel sign, belonged to Torsten Florin.
    She opened her handbag and glanced inside. She had stolen the handbag in the foyer of the Palace Cinema from a girl who’d been preoccupied with herself and her reflection in the mirror.
    According to her health insurance card, the bimbo’s name was Lise-Maja Petterson. Probably another victim of numerology, she thought, pushing the hand grenade aside and pulling out one of Lise-Maja’s insanely tasty Peter Jackson fags. ‘Smoking Causes Heart Disease’ the packet read.
    Lighting up, she laughed aloud, then inhaled deeply into her lungs. She had been smoking ever since she’d been kicked out of boarding school and her heart still beat just fine. It wouldn’t be a heart attack that would do her in, she knew that much.
    After a couple of hours she’d emptied the pack, smudging the butts all over the flagstones. Then she grabbed one of the young women sashaying in and out of Brand Nation’s glass doors.
    ‘Do you know when Torsten Florin will be back?’ she asked, and was answered with silence and a disapproving glare.
    ‘Do you?’ she said more emphatically, tugging at the girl’s arm.
    ‘Let go!’ the girl shouted, twisting Kimmie’s arm round with both hands.
    Kimmie narrowed her eyes. She hated it when peopletouched her, hated it when they wouldn’t answer and hated their stares. In one fluid movement, she swung her free arm until it struck the girl’s cheekbone.
    The girl dropped like a rag doll. It was a good feeling, and yet it also wasn’t. Kimmie knew this wasn’t how people were supposed to act.
    ‘Tell me,’ she said, leaning over the shocked woman. ‘Do you know when Torsten Florin’s coming back?’
    When the woman stuttered no for the third time, Kimmie turned on her heels, fully aware she couldn’t return for a while.
    She ran into Rat-Tine on the crumbling concrete corner outside of Jacob’s Full House on Skelbækgade. She was standing underneath the proprietor’s sign that read THE SEASON’S MUSHROOMS , with her plastic bag and her make-up long since smeared. The first johns she blew in the alleys had been rewarded with sharply drawn eye make-up and rouged cheeks, but the remaining customers would have to settle for less. Her lipstick was now blotched and it was clear she’d removed semen from her face with her sleeves. Tine’s customers didn’t use condoms. It had been years since she’d been in a position to demand that. Years since she’d been in a position to demand anything at all.
    ‘Hi, Kimmie! Hi, sweetie! Fucking great to see you,’ she snuffled, wobbling towards Kimmie on legs as thin as