The file came in like all the others—dusty, anonymous, forgotten. A 1997 disappearance: one girl, one forest, no suspects. It was the kind of case Department Q was built for. But Carl Mørck knew better than to trust paperwork. The girl’s name was Silje, fifteen at the time, vanished on a school trip outside Silkeborg. The official story was simple: runaway, presumed dead. But someone had gone to great lengths to make the file disappear until now. Assad stood beside him, flipping through the pages with practiced calm, but Carl saw the glint in his eye. This case was different. Not colder. Deeper.
As they dug, the lies began to tangle. A teacher who left the country days after the girl vanished. A father with a sealed record. A school principal who died in a fire the following year. The timeline didn’t crack—it shattered. And every answer they found bled into something older, something systemic. Whispers of a private reform program. Unofficial. Government-adjacent. Girls sent to “adjust their behavior,” only to disappear from records altogether. “We’re not chasing a killer,” Assad said one night, under the flicker of basement lights. “We’re chasing a system.” Carl didn’t respond. He was already three steps ahead—and two steps too deep.
But Department Q was never just about justice. It was about damage. And the closer they came to the truth, the more the case began to mirror their own scars. Carl’s nightmares returned, this time with Silje’s face. Assad’s past, usually sealed tight, bled into his methods—unorthodox, aggressive. There was a name that kept resurfacing in interviews, in files, in whispered threats: Greve. A politician turned philanthropist, untouchable for decades. Every clue pointed to him. Every door slammed shut in their faces. But they had been locked out before. This time, they kicked their way in.
In the end, they didn’t find Silje. Not alive. Her body surfaced in a peat bog, wrapped in school linens, her wrists bound with the same ribbon worn by girls in the reform program. The evidence led to arrests. Headlines. Outrage. But not peace. Carl stood at her grave in the rain, his coat heavy with more than just water. Assad remained at the car, watching. Some justice had been done. But some ghosts didn’t want closure—they wanted to haunt. Back in the basement office, the next case file waited. Another life. Another secret. Another war to wage from behind desks and cracked windows. And still, they opened it.
