RUTHLESS

A dementia patient dying of cancer in a nursing home holds the key to the third case for Copenhagen DS Erik Schäfer and Demokratisk Dagblad reporter Heloise Kaldan.

Heloise, who’s been visiting Jan Fischhof repeatedly for an article about a charitable group called Vigil, is spooked when, called to his bedside by a volunteer convinced that he’s at death’s door, she hears him mutter something about “Mads Orek” and his fear that he’ll be held accountable for his wrongdoings. Jan’s feeble attempts at backtracking the next time she sees him convinces Heloise that she needs to dive into the case of small-time criminal Tom Mázoreck, who drowned when his boat caught fire back in 1998. Confronted by Mogens Bøttner, a former colleague turned supervisor who forbids her to work the story further, she abruptly announces that she’s taking a week off. Schäfer meanwhile is challenged by superstar forensic scientist Jakob Sandahl, who blithely maintains that has-been jazz great Lester Wilkins’ bloody death was due to natural causes. So unlike virtually every other police officer in Denmark, he’s ready to work intermittently with Heloise, who links Mázoreck’s death to the vanishing a year or two earlier of Mia Sark, 19, and Nina Dalsfort, 17. Both disappearances are also connected to gang leader Jes Decker, whose pit bull met a condign fate soon after he attacked Mázoreck. Jes has mostly settled into a managerial role, but his son, René, makes no secret of his desire for Heloise to let sleeping dogs lie. As the investigation moves forward, there seems to be less and less room for surprises, but Hancock saves a whopper for the deceptively quiet climax.

A model of the police/reporter partnership that’s especially effective in managing the counterpoint between its two leads.