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He was flush with cash, using large-denomination notes to pay at petrol stations and toll bridges, always looking away from the cameras, always keeping his distance if anything untoward seemed to be in the air.
    This time, his hunting ground was mid-Jutland, a region in which the concentration of religious sects was high. A couple of years had passed since he had last struck there. Whatever else one might say, he spread death with the utmost care and attention.
    For some time he had conducted observations, though as a rule only for a couple of days at a time. On the first occasion, he had stayed with a woman in Haderslev, then with another in a small place called Lønne. The risk of being recognized in the Viborg area, so far away, was minuscule.
    His choice was among five families. Two were Jehovah’s Witnesses, one was Evangelist, one was with the Guardians of Morality, and the fifth with the Mother Church. As things stood, he inclined toward the latter.
    He arrived in Viborg at about eight in the evening, too early by half for what he was intending, especially in a town of this size, but it was better to err on the side of caution.
    His criteria for selecting the bars in which he found the women who would put him up were always the same. The place mustn’t be too small. It mustn’t lie in an area in which everyone knew one another. It mustn’t have too many regulars. And it mustn’t be such a dive that no single woman of a certain standard between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five would go there.
    The first place on his tour, Julle’s Bar, was too cramped and gloomy, all wooden kitsch and one-armed bandits. The next place was better. There was a small dance floor, and the clientele were a decent mix, with the exception of a gay patron who immediately planted himself on the adjacent bar stool at a distance measurable only in millimeters. If he found a woman there, the guy would almost certainly remember him, despite his polite rejection.
    He found what he was looking for at the fifth attempt. The signs above the bar counter seemed to confirm it:
The quiet ones are the wild ones, The Terminal—your home from home
, and perhaps in particular
Best boobs in town are here
all struck the right tone.
    The Terminal, tucked away in the street called Gravene, closed early at eleven o’clock, but people were well in the mood on Hancock Høker ale and local rock music. He felt sure he’d get off with someone before closing.
    He picked out a woman, not exactly young, sitting near the slot machines. She had been dancing on her own when he came in, her arms floatingfree at her sides on the tiny dance floor. She was quite pretty, certainly no easy prey. A serious fisher in these waters. A woman who wanted a man she could trust, someone worth waking up next to for the rest of her life, not someone she reckoned on finding here. She was obviously just out with some girlfriends from work after a hard day’s slog.
    Two of her giggly, well-proportioned colleagues stood swaying to the music in the smoking cabin; the rest had taken possession of a number of the establishment’s mismatched tables. Most likely the girls had been partying for some time already. At any rate, he felt fairly certain none of the others would be able to describe him in any detail in a couple of hours’ time.
    He made eye contact with her, and after five minutes he asked her to dance. She was tipsy, not drunk. It was a good sign.
    “You’re not from round here,” she said. “What are you doing in Viborg?”
    Her scent was pleasant, her gaze steady and firm. It was easy to see what she wanted him to say. That he visited Viborg often. That he was fond of the place. That he was educated and single. So that’s what he said. Casually, without making an issue of it. He would say anything as long as it worked.
    Two hours later, they were lying in her bed. She was satisfied and he was safe in the knowledge that he could stay with her for a couple of weeks