FLESH AND BONE (DICTE 8)

KØD OG BLOD – FLESH AND BONE

by Elsebeth Egholm

Dicte Svendsen is losing her grip on reality. After a rape that same summer, she is controlled by compulsions. She has failing memory, can’t concentrate, and showers incessantly. Now it is November, and a young woman from the Aarhus student community is found dead in a backyard in Mejlgade, close to the freelance office where Dicte works. It is the second university student to be killed in the city, and there are indications that the perpetrator is after vulnerable young women in crisis. He rapes, kills and slits throats, leaving traces that suggest a predator. Dicte is no longer a journalist, but during the research for a book About former rape victims and their perpetrators, a rape victim points out a possible connection to the new murders. In order to find peace with herself, she sets out to find the girls’ killer but at the same time balances on the edge of her own abyss. Her senses won’t go as she wants, and her pregnant daughter, Rose, even threatens to cut her off from her future child if she doesn’t get treatment. At the same time, on Djursland, a young zookeeper trainee at Skandinavisk Zoo receives anonymous letters from a man who calls himself B., and Peter Boutrup’s dog, Kaj, is accused of killing a sheep. When a man in a police uniform kidnaps Kaj from the Grenå Police Station, Peter must find the perpetrator himself. The hunt sheds new light on the two killings in Aarhus, because the wolf has come to Denmark – and the pack’s vulnerable individuals are living on borrowed time.