Silenced

SATURDAY 1 MARCH 2008

STOCKHOLM

The realisation that age was creeping up on him came with the night and woke him early. He had never been pursued by thoughts like that before, so he had no idea how to deal with them. It started when his wife pointed out that the lines on his brow had deepened into furrows. And that his grey hairs were getting whiter. A glance in the mirror confirmed her judgement. The ageing process was accelerating. And ageing was accompanied by fear.

He had always been very sure of himself. Sure about everything. First about where his studies were leading him. Then his choice of career. And then his choice of wife. Or had she chosen him? They still bickered about it good-naturedly when things were going well between them. But that was increasingly rarely.

Thinking about his wife temporarily banished his worry about getting old. Maybe that said something about the scale of his anxiety about their marital problems. They had met around midsummer, just before they both turned twenty. Two young, ambitious people with their lives ahead of them, imagining they shared everything. His interests were hers, and her values were his. They had a solid platform to stand on. He reminded himself of that over the years, when he could not think of a single rational reason for his choice of companion in life.

Although their relationship had hit the rocks, they still occasionally laughed out loud together. But the boundary between laughter and tears was a fragile one and sent them into silence again. And then they were back to square one.

The problems first started around the time he got to know his father-in-law. Or maybe it was only then that he really got to know his own wife properly. Either way, the conclusion was the same: he should never have accepted that blessed loan. Never.

For although in their youth they felt they had so much in common, there were naturally some things on which they could not agree. And very often, as in this case, it was to do with money. Or his lack of it, and his wife’s demand to live in accordance with her station in life and be provided for by her husband, even though she planned to go out to work. Money was something he’d never had, or indeed missed. Not when he was a child growing up, nor as a young man. But then it seemed as though lack of money was going to be his misfortune and the woman he thought he loved would choose someone else.

Father-in-law, however, was well aware both of his daughter’s sense of priorities and of his son-in-law’s financial embarrassment and proposed a simple solution to a major dilemma: his son-in-law could borrow money to buy a house and that would sort everything out.

It sounded a great idea. The money was discreetly transferred to his account, and, equally unobtrusively, a repayment schedule drawn up. Not a word was said to the bride. It turned out that in signing the promissory note, he was also mortgaging his whole life. The promissory note was accompanied by a strict prenuptual agreement. When love faded and the first crisis was a reality, his father-in-law had a very serious conversation with him. There could be no question of divorce. If there were, he would immediately have to repay his loan, and would also not be entitled to his share of the property afterwards. When he said he was prepared to accept that, his father-in-law fired the salvo he turned out to have had ready from the outset.

‘I know your secret,’ he said.

‘I haven’t any.’

A single word:

‘Josefine.’

And that was the end of the discussion.

He gave a deep inward sigh. Why did all these wretched thoughts occur to him in the night? At the hour when any human creature had to let slip poorly hidden thoughts if they were to sleep soundly.

He looked at the woman asleep at his side, as if she were his wife. But she was not. Not while he still clung to his old fears. But she was carrying his child, and for that reason he would do everything right. Or at least as right as he could. Love was already there and it almost choked him to think of how much he loved her, and for how long he had done so, yet how rarely he had let her know it. As if he had been afraid it would all shatter if he expressed how much she meant to him. And if they had not met and things had not gone the way they did, he would never have endured it. That much was perfectly plain to him.

But the future? Impossible to say. Impossible.

Someone once said there was nothing so lonely as being in a couple with the wrong person. Few people knew that better than the man robbed of his night-time repose. With his head and his soul burdened by the dark thoughts of the night, he lay by the side of the woman he saw as the great love of his life and delicately kissed her shoulder.

There was some light in Spencer Lagergren’s life after all. And love. Her name was Fredrika Bergman.

A memory from another time and place found its way to the surface. The obligatory session with a psychologist when he applied to work abroad.

Psychologist: What’s the very worst thing that could happen to you today?

Alex: Today?

Psychologist: Today.

Alex: [Silence.]

Psychologist: Don’t think so much, give me something spontaneous.

Alex: Losing my wife Lena, that would definitely be the worst thing.

Psychologist: I see from your form that you’ve got two children aged fourteen and twelve.

Alex: That’s right, and I don’t want to lose them, either.

Psychologist: But it wasn’t them who came spontaneously to mind when I asked my question.

Alex: No, it wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love my kids. Just that I love them in a different way.

Psychologist: Try to explain.

Alex: Children are something you borrow. You know that from the word go. They’re never intended to stay at home with you for ever. The whole aim of my presence in their lives is to get them ready to manage on their own. But it’s not like that with Lena. She’s ‘mine’ in an entirely different way. And I’m hers. We shall always be together.

Psychologist: Always? Is that the way you feel today?

Alex (forcefully): That’s the way I’ve always felt. For as long as I’ve known her. We shall always be together.

Psychologist: Does the thought of that make you feel secure or stressed?

Alex: Secure. If I woke up tomorrow and she wasn’t there, I wouldn’t be able to go on. She’s my best friend and the only woman I’ve loved unconditionally.

Alex swallowed hard. Why the hell was it so hard to work out what was wrong? It had been the same story yesterday. She turned away when he tried to look her in the eye, and flinched when he touched her. Gave that loud, joyless laugh and went to bed incomprehensibly early.

He hoped a few hours’ work might distract his thoughts.

A deserted corridor met his eye as he stepped out of the lift on their floor. He plodded to his office and sank down in the desk chair. Rifled aimlessly through the piles of paper.

The case had popped up on the first newspaper website the day before, and he noted that the news had spread this morning to all the major daily papers. Damn all these leaks from within the force. It made no difference how closed a circle you worked in; there was always someone who happened to hear something not intended for his or her ears.

Matters were not helped by the prosecutor’s decision the previous evening that they had to let Tony Svensson go, in view of what Ronny Berg had told Peder about the background to the Jakob Ahlbin affair.

‘There’s no technical evidence, no motive and scarcely enough to prosecute him for unlawful menace either,’ summarised the weary prosecutor. ‘Unless you can come up with confirmation that he sent the messages from the other computers, too.’

‘Could it not just simply be that he sent them from different computers so he could claim they weren’t from him? That he gave those last emails a different tone because he knew he would get away with it?’

‘That may well be the case, but the onus is still on you to prove it. And you haven’t done that.’

Alex read the prosecutor’s statement and felt frustrated. No, they had not been able to prove anything. But it made no difference, there was still something very fishy going on here. The only question was: what?

There’s something about this right-wing extremist lead that takes us right into the Ahlbins’ deaths, thought Alex. It’s just that I don’t know exactly what.

Dissatisfied, he ploughed on. The murder weapon was a matter of interest. It was part of the collection of firearms Jakob Ahlbin kept in the holiday home that had been transferred into the ownership of his daughters some years before. There was no reason to suppose the hunting pistol had been separated from the rest of the collection, so it must have been fetched from the house at some juncture. Either by Jakob Ahlbin himself or by whoever shot him. Jakob was the only one in the Ahlbin family with a gun licence. And the only gun cabinet was the one in the holiday house.

Perhaps Jakob had retrieved the weapon because he felt threatened? Alex did not think so. No one seemed to have taken Tony Svensson’s threats very seriously. But there were still things that needed explaining. Alex pulled out a set of photographs they had taken outside the Ekerö house.

No damage to the property. No marks in the snow, either shoeprints or tyre tracks.

Alex felt his pulse accelerate. The pristine snow. It was now almost two weeks since it started snowing. The snow had been lying on the ground ever since; it had stayed very cold. And when he and Joar were there on the Thursday it was unmarked. Admittedly there had been further falls of snow on the days in between, but not enough to hide shoe-prints or tyre tracks. So the weapon must have been fetched before Jakob Ahlbin heard the news of his daughter’s death, before he had reason to take his own life. Which meant? Alex hesitated. If they assumed the hunting pistol had been brought from Ekerö to kill Jakob and his wife, was it not logical to conclude that it was not Jakob himself who went to get it?

But in that case, the person who did must have had access to a set of keys, since there was nothing to indicate any kind of break-in. Or the person was so experienced a burglar that he had the sense to lock the doors when he left. Which took him back to Tony Svensson’s associates.

And then there was the daughter Johanna. Who dumped tragic news on her father and then scarpered off abroad. Who vanished like a ghost from all the family photos in the Ekerö house. And who did not answer her emails or her phone.

Noises out in the corridor roused Alex from his musing. Peder suddenly appeared in the doorway.

‘Hi,’ said Alex, surprised.

‘Hi,’ said Peder. ‘I didn’t think there would be anybody here.’

‘Nor did I,’ said Alex drily. ‘I’m just running through all the Ahlbin stuff again.’

Peder sighed.

‘I thought I might do the same thing,’ he said, avoiding Alex’s eye. ‘Ylva’s got the kids, so…’

Alex nodded. So many troubled people in this workplace. So often not enough energy for both family and work. And so often men and women chose to prioritise the latter.

He cleared his throat.

‘I really think we need to see Ragnar Vinterman again,’ he said. ‘Want to come along?’

Peder gave an eager nod.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘And what about the Ljungs, who found the bodies on Tuesday?’

‘What about them?’

‘We should talk to them again, too. Ask about that difference of opinion that made them cool off towards each other.’

Alex felt a sense of relief. There would be plenty to keep him busy for the whole of Saturday.

‘Have we got hold of Jakob Ahlbin’s doctor yet, by the way?’ Peder asked as Alex got up to put his coat back on.

The question jogged Alex’s memory: there had been a message the evening before and he had managed to forget about it.

‘Heck, yes,’ he said. ‘He rang in yesterday, quite late. He’d been away and had just got back. But he was apparently going to have the medical records faxed over to us to start with.’

Peder went to check the fax machine in Ellen’s office. He came back with a small pile of paper.

‘Sorry I have not been available. Please contact me immediately on the mobile number below. I am keen to speak to the police as soon as possible about this matter. Sincerely, Erik Sundelius.’

Peder was looking overheated in his outdoor things.

‘Let’s go down to the car,’ said Alex. ‘I’ll ring him on the way.’

Erik Sundelius picked up the phone at the second ring. For the sake of politeness, Alex apologised for ringing so early. It was scarcely ten and it was quite likely some people would not be up yet.

Erik Sundelius sounded very relieved at being able to speak to the police.

‘At last,’ he exclaimed. ‘I tried to get hold of you as soon as I got home and saw the headlines. I hope we can meet in person to discuss the things that need to be gone through. But there’s one thing I want to tell you right now.’

Alex waited.

‘I have been in charge of Jakob Ahlbin’s treatment for over twelve years,’ Erik Sundelius said, and took a deep breath. ‘And I can say in all honesty that there isn’t a chance in hell he would have done what the papers say he did. He would never shoot himself or his wife. You have my word as a professional on that.’

For the first time in months, Fredrika Bergman felt rested when she woke. The night had not brought a single bad dream. She woke early, around seven. Spencer was asleep at her side. And the violin lay in its case on the floor. It was in tune now. It was a morning that felt blessed in many ways.

He was very attractive, lying there. Even lying down he looked unusually tall. The grey hair, usually combed into perfect style, was tousled.

She snuggled down under the quilt, pressing herself to his warm body. Her stomach knotted as she thought of the approaching dinner with her parents. Spencer had agreed to come along.

‘It’s going be a testing occasion,’ he mumbled just before he fell asleep.

As if it were Job’s lot he had been asked to shoulder.

Fredrika’s train of thought was interrupted as her thoughts involuntarily turned to work. To the Ahlbin case and the very last email Jakob had received before he died.

Don’t forget how it all ended for Job; there’s always time to change your mind and do the right thing. Stop looking.

Glad that work-related matters had dispersed her misgivings about dinner with her parents, she slipped cautiously out of bed. Heavily pregnant or not, she had litheness in her blood.

The baby stretched, a silent protest at its mother’s unanticipated movements.

The Bible was in the middle of the bookshelf, easy to spot with its red spine and gold lettering. Surprised at how heavily it weighed in her hand, she sat down and began to leaf through it. Job, the man with his very own book of the Bible.

The text proved quite demanding. Long, and written in a style that called for constant interpretation of what the words actually meant. The story was simple enough. The Devil had challenged God, who considered Job to be the most upright person in the world. Hardly surprising that Job was upright, said the Devil, when God gave him such an easy time. God gave the Devil the right to rob Job of his riches, his health and all ten of his children, so he could show that Job would still be loyal.

Good grief. The Old Testament was full of unaccountably sadistic stories.

Job came through his tribulations pretty well, it turned out. He did allow himself to feel the merest hint of doubt about the reason for God’s ill deeds, but he apologised afterwards. And was paid back handsomely. God gave him twice as many cattle as he had had to start with, and a total of twenty new children to replace the ten he had let the Devil take from him.

All’s well that ends well, Fredrika thought caustically.

And once again repeated to herself the message Jakob had received.

… there’s always time to change your mind and do the right thing.

She racked her brains as to what that could mean in terms of what she had just learned of Job’s fate.

Jakob Ahlbin wasn’t like me, she thought. He didn’t need to look in the Bible to understand what the sender was trying to say. And the sender knew that, too.

She stood up and started pacing the room. The question was how familiar the sender was with the Bible. If you read the email carefully enough, you could interpret it as an offer to negotiate. A chance to change his mind. To do the right thing. Job doubted, but then he said sorry. And was repaid.

Fredrika stopped in mid-step.

They were leaving the option of a settlement open even in that very last message. And Jakob Ahlbin turned them down. He refused to heed their warning to stop looking.

But what had he been looking for? And how had they known that he did not want to bargain? Investigations had shown that Jakob Ahlbin had not answered any of those emails he received.

They must have contacted him by some other means as well.

Fredrika thought hard. And remembered that they had found Tony Svensson’s fingerprints on the front door.

Alex decided they would go and see Erik Sundelius first and then go on to Ragnar Vinterman’s.

Erik Sundelius, senior psychiatric consultant at Danderyd Hospital in Stockholm, saw them in his office. It was a small room but arranged so as to maximise space. Compact shelves along one wall were packed tight with books. On the wall behind the desk there was an enlarged photograph in brownish shades of dense traffic at a crossroads, cars queuing at a red light.

‘Mexico City,’ clarified the consultant, following Alex’s gaze. ‘Took it myself, a few years ago.’

‘Very nice,’ said Alex with an appreciative nod.

He wondered if this was the room where Sundelius saw his patients.

‘This is my office. My consulting room’s on the other side of the corridor,’ the doctor said, answering his unspoken question.

He sank into a chair.

‘But I have to admit my level of patient contact has been limited in recent years. Unfortunately.’

Alex took a look at him. His own experience of psychologists and psychiatrists was sporadic, and his perceptions of the way such a person should look were largely the result of his own bias, but in many respects Erik Sundelius did not look at all as he had expected. He looked more like a GP, with neatly combed hair and a side parting.

‘Jakob Ahlbin,’ Alex said gravely. ‘What can you tell us about him?’

The face of the man on the other side of the desk fell, and he looked first at Alex, then at Peder.

‘That he was the healthiest ill person I’ve ever met.’

Erik Sundelius leant forward and clasped his hands on his desk, apparently wondering how to continue.

‘He did have his bad spells,’ he said. ‘Very bad, in fact. Severe enough for him to be admitted for ECT treatment.’

Peder squirmed at the mention of the electric shock treatment, but to Alex’s relief he made no comment.

‘Over the past three years I thought I could detect a change,’ the consultant went on. ‘A weight seemed to have been taken off him, somehow. He was always very concerned about the plight of refugees, but I think the increasing demand for his lectures gave him a new way of doing his bit for the cause that meant so much to him. I went to hear him speak once. He was brilliant. He chose his battles carefully, and won those he had to.’

A slight smile crept over Alex’s face beneath that creased forehead.

‘Could you give me an example of one of those battles? I’m afraid this is an area in which we’re very short of information in the case.’

Erik Sundelius sighed.

‘Well, where shall I start? It goes without saying that his radical stance on migrant issues got him on the wrong side of some factions in society. But it also had repercussions for his family and professional relationships.’

Peder, who was making notes, raised his eyes from his pad.

Sven Ljung, Alex thought automatically. The man who found Jakob shot in the head.

‘The most worrying aspect, of course, was the impact his work had on his relationship with his younger daughter,’ said Erik Sundelius.

‘Johanna?’ Alex asked, surprised.

A tired nod from the psychiatrist.

‘Jakob took it very badly, not being able to get that relationship back on track.’

The photos in the Ekerö house. The younger daughter disappearing from the sequence of family pictures.

‘Johanna Ahlbin turned her back on her father when he took those refugees into his church?’ Alex asked.

‘No, before that, as I understand it. She didn’t share her father’s opinions on the subject at all, which inevitably led to conflict.’

‘Our information also indicates that Johanna distanced herself from her family because she wasn’t religious like they were,’ said Peder.

‘Yes, that was another problem,’ Erik Sundelius confirmed. ‘It made Jakob all the more glad that his elder daughter Karolina was a wholehearted supporter of the campaign to help refugees, and shared her parents’ faith, even if she wasn’t quite such a devotee as they were. Jakob often mentioned it in our sessions, the pleasure he took in how Karolina had turned out.’

Alex raised his eyebrows and was aware of Peder tensing up.

‘But I assume relations with Karolina must still have been rather a burden to someone with Jakob Ahlbin’s condition?’ he said.

The consultant frowned.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean her serious drug addiction.’

For a moment, Erik Sundelius looked as though he were about to burst out laughing, but then his face darkened.

‘Drug addict? Karolina?’

He shook his head.

‘Impossible.’

‘Unfortunately not,’ said Alex. ‘We’ve seen the autopsy report and the death certificate. The body bore all the signs of long-term narcotic abuse.’

Erik Sundelius looked from Alex to Peder, staring.

‘Sorry, do you mean she’s dead?’

The consultant clearly had not read the newspaper articles very thoroughly. Alex decided to take him through the case. He told him how the couple had been found, and about the suicide note supposedly written by Jakob Ahlbin, and the news of his daughter’s death that had apparently pushed him to kill his wife and himself.

Erik Sundelius listened in silence. When he did speak, his voice was strained, as though from anger or grief. Once again he looked as if he were about to burst out laughing.

‘Okay,’ he said, putting his hands on the desk. ‘Let me go through this bit by bit. First of all, can you let me see a copy of the note Jakob left?’

Alex nodded, taking the sheet of paper out of his bag.

Erik Sundelius read the typewritten message and looked at the handwritten signature. Then he pushed the note away as though it had burned him.

‘The signature’s Jakob’s. But as for the rest…’

Alex opened his mouth to say something, but the consultant held up his hand.

‘Let me finish,’ he said. ‘Jakob was my patient for many years. Believe me – this letter was not written by him. Nothing about it is right, neither the tone nor the content. Even if he took it into his head to do what the letter indicates, he wouldn’t express it like this. Who is it intended for? It’s not addressed to anyone. Johanna, say, or a good friend. Just empty words directed at anyone and everyone.’

He paused for breath.

‘As I said before, you have to believe me when I say this is not something Jakob has done. You’re making a terrible mistake to think so.’

‘You don’t think he could have done it even after hearing his daughter had died?’

Then Erik Sundelius could contain himself no longer. The laughter that had been showing itself in his face came bursting out.

‘Absurd,’ he guffawed. ‘The whole thing.’

He grabbed the letter again, and appeared to be trying to control himself.

‘If, and I mean if, Jakob had had news of Karolina’s death broken to him, there’s no way he would have kept it from his wife. And he would have come to me – he always did when anything happened to disturb his mental state. Always. I’d go so far as to say that his trust in me was infinite in that respect.’

‘You’re talking as though there’s every reason to question whether he heard the news of the death at all,’ commented Alex.

The consultant tossed the sheet of paper onto the desk.

‘That’s exactly what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘Karolina was here sometimes, with her father. And so was her mother.’

‘As a patient?’ said Alex, nonplussed.

‘No, no, no,’ said Erik Sundelius, glaring at him. ‘Absolutely not. Simply to support her father. She always kept herself informed about how he was and what treatment he was currently having. It seems unthinkable to me that I could have missed the fact she was on drugs over a period of ten years.’

Alex and Peder exchanged looks.

‘But,’ said Peder, ‘we’re afraid to say there aren’t really any grounds for disputing it. I mean, the girl’s verifiably dead. And there’s the autopsy report, signed by a doctor who one of our colleagues has been in contact with.’

‘Who identified her?’ asked Erik Sundelius, screwing up his eyes.

‘Her sister Johanna,’ replied Alex. ‘She found Karolina unconscious and rang for an ambulance. We really need to get hold of her, incidentally.’

Erik Sundelius was shaking his head again.

‘The whole thing’s baffling,’ he said. ‘You’re saying Johanna went round to Karolina’s…?’

He shook his head some more.

‘In all the years Jakob was seeing me here, Johanna only ever came with him once. And she was so young then that she had no choice, so to speak. She was here because she had to be. I could see it in her, straight away. And to go by what Jakob said, the sisters weren’t very close to each other, either. Which was also a source of great sadness to him.’

He hesitated.

‘I don’t know what sort of picture you’ve formed of Johanna, but the impression I got from what Jakob told me was that things weren’t quite right with her.’

There was a pause. Alex’s brain was working overtime on processing all this new information.

‘Did she suffer from depression, too?’

Erik Sundelius compressed his lips and looked as though the question had put him on the spot.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not depression. But I must stress that I only ever met Johanna once or twice in person. She wasn’t just standoffish, according to Jakob. She was full of anger and contempt that she openly showed to her family. The things he told me made her sound sick, disturbed.’

‘Maybe she had good reason for it?’ said Alex. ‘Her anger, I mean.’

Erik Sundelius shrugged.

‘Well if she did, then that reason wasn’t clear, even to Jakob. Anyway, the only thing I can say for sure is that his daughter’s lack of peace of mind troubled him deeply.’

Alex decided it was time to wind up the interview.

‘So to summarise, what you’re saying is…’

‘That I don’t for a moment subscribe to the theory that Jakob Ahlbin murdered his wife and then shot himself. Of course I can’t claim a person who is dead is really alive, but I can tell you straight off that she was not a drug addict.’

‘You sound very sure of all that,’ said Alex.

‘I am,’ Erik Sundelius said deliberately. ‘The question is, how sure are you of your conclusions?’

As he spoke, he turned his head and looked out of the window. Almost as if expecting to see Jakob Ahlbin coming along through the slushy snow.

Winter had chosen to arrive in several bursts. When the first snow came, early in the new year, he had assumed that was that. But it never was, of course.

He sighed, suddenly feeling very tired.

It was a matter of concern that Jakob had not understood the full extent of his problem until it was too late, but it was to some degree typical of him. He had sometimes felt the man had made a positive choice to live his life according to the meaning of his Christian name: Jakob, a controversial name of Hebrew origin, which some claimed to mean ‘may he protect’. It was an irony of fate that when he himself really needed help, nobody came to his rescue.

They had always hoped a solution could be found before the situation got out of hand. They had relied on him acting rationally, but he had not. Jakob was an emotional, impulsive person and once he realised he was onto something, he refused to deviate from his chosen course. As if by the Lord’s blessing they had found out about the threats directed at him by the organisation Sons of the People and had decided to build on that, to scare him off. But Jakob had scented out his quarry and would not be put off.

So then it ended the way it had to, he told himself afterwards. With a disaster that would have been all the greater if Jakob had been allowed to delve more deeply into what had come to his attention, which had initially pleased him so much.

‘This is a turning point. I’ve heard fantastic news!’ he had said, convinced he was talking to a friend.

But the friend was shaken and demanded to know more. Unfortunately Jakob had clammed up, possibly starting to sense that his friend was double-dealing. So the identity of his original source remained unknown to the circle. The only problem still left to deal with.

Then the telephone rang.

‘I’ve got a name,’ said the voice.

‘At last,’ he said, feeling a greater sense of relief than he cared to admit.

The voice at the other end said nothing for a few moments.

‘There’s a man in Skärholmen the police have been to see. He could be the one we’re looking for.’

He made a careful note of the few details the voice was able to supply. Said thank you and hung up.

So the wheels were rolling, most of them. The next day, another daisy would make his payment, and on Monday the main protagonist in the unfolding drama was expected back. Her arrival was warmly anticipated.

He shook his head. Sometimes the very thought of her generated naked fear. What sort of person was she? Someone who was willing to sacrifice so much – and so many – for a single aim needed careful handling. Normal people did not do what she had done. And then the anguish gripped him again, his sense that everything could have been different returned. If only things had not happened so damned quickly. If only everyone had obeyed the rules.

If only they had been able to rely on each other.

Peder Rydh rang Ragnar Vinterman to let him know they were on their way, just as Fredrika rang Alex on his mobile.

‘I’m in the office,’ she said with an eagerness in her voice that Alex had not heard for months.

‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’ was all he could think of saying, concerned as he was for her health.

‘Something occurred to me, so I came in to do some thinking in peace. It’s those threats Jakob received.’

Alex listened attentively to Fredrika’s conclusions about the emails and their content.

‘So you’re convinced it wasn’t Tony Svensson that sent the ones from other computers?’ Alex said doubtfully.

‘Yes, definitely,’ replied Fredrika. ‘On the other hand, I’m not so sure he didn’t know there were other people trying to put pressure on Ahlbin. I think we ought to interview him again, get to the bottom of why he went round to Jakob’s flat, looking for him. He could have been a messenger, willing or unwilling.’

‘Messenger sent by someone who didn’t want to reveal himself, you mean?’

‘Exactly. And that might also explain why Tony Svensson paid his visit to Jakob Ahlbin when Ronny Berg was already in custody. We missed it at the meeting yesterday – Tony Svensson must have been lying about his reason for going round there.’

Alex swallowed. Almost from the outset, Fredrika had proved how swiftly she could switch between theories and draw reliable conclusions. If she had been a trained police officer Alex would have said she had a feeling for the job. But she wasn’t, so he did not really have a term for her, or her gift. Intuition, maybe?

His silence left her the space to go on.

‘So I checked Tony Svensson’s phone lists again to see if anything odd showed up. And found he’d rung Viggo Tuvesson twice.’

‘Uhuh?’ Alex said quizzically, seeing with relief that Peder was finally off his mobile. ‘And who’s he?’

‘A police colleague of ours.’

Alex braked sharply at a red light.

‘And how do we know that? I mean, are you sure?’

‘I’m sure,’ said Fredrika, and Alex could hear that she was smiling. ‘Tony rang his work mobile, you see. I came across the number in our internal phone directory.’

A car honked its horn behind them and Peder gave Alex a startled look.

‘It’s green,’ he said, as if he thought the fact might have passed his superior by.

Alex hastily shifted his foot from the brake to the accelerator. Automatics were a gift to the human race, even if they weren’t good for the environment.

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he muttered. ‘But there could be a logical reason for the contact, you know. I mean it hasn’t necessarily got anything to do with our case. I’ve never heard of this Viggo Tuvesson.’

Peder raised an eyebrow and followed Alex’s side of the conversation with interest.

‘He’s with the Norrmalm district,’ Fredrika told him. ‘He and another officer were the first on the scene after the Ljungs found the bodies and called emergency services.’

Alex felt his mouth go dry, and he glanced at Peder who looked as though he was dying to know what information Fredrika had just imparted.

‘Okay,’ he said into the phone. ‘We’ll get to work on this first thing on Monday. Before you go home, would you mind writing a summary of all this crap – if you’ll forgive a tired DCI his choice of words – and putting it on my desk?’

In case you’re not in on Monday, he thought of saying.

‘Done,’ said Fredrika. ‘In case I’m not in on Monday.’

He gave a smile.

As they drove on towards Bromma, Alex put Peder in the picture.

‘She’s as sharp as a knife sometimes,’ Peder said spontaneously.

‘She certainly is,’ Alex concurred.

As if he had never called her competence into question, though in fact he had done little else in her first few months with the group.

This time, Ragnar Vinterman was not standing on the front steps to welcome his guests. They had to knock loud and long at the front door of the vicarage before he finally opened up.

They had discussed how they would conduct the interview in the car on the way. Of all the people they had spoken to, Ragnar Vinterman stood out as the only one who still thought it likely that Jakob Ahlbin had killed himself. He was also the one most convinced that Karolina Ahlbin had a drug problem. This was causing them some concern, because he had been too close to Jakob Ahlbin for his impressions and opinions to be ignored.

‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to spare you very long this time,’ he said, the moment he showed his guests into the library where the interview was apparently to take place. ‘I’ve had a call from a parishioner whose husband has been ill for a long time, and he’s just died. She’s expecting me shortly.’

Alex nodded.

‘We hope we won’t need to take up too much of your time,’ he assured the clergyman. ‘But some new questions have come up and I’d just like to try them out on you.’

It was Ragnar Vinterman’s turn to nod.

Alex observed him. Straight-backed, with his hands resting on the arms of his chair. A hunter, ready for action. Armed to the teeth. The situation felt familiar, like something out of a film Alex had seen.

The Godfather, he thought, and almost laughed out loud. As if this were some Italian sit-down where the first thing you all do is put your gats on the negotiating table.

Alex was baffled by the clergyman’s change of attitude. But he was in no mood for compromise, either; he wanted proper answers to his questions. He was sure that Peder, a silent presence at his side, sensed the mood as well.

‘Last time we met we were talking about Karolina Ahlbin’s drug habit,’ Alex began, leaning back on the sofa. ‘Could you hazard a guess as to when she got into all that?’

Ragnar Vinterman leaned back, too. He had an almost impudent look on his face.

‘As I think I made plain to you last time,’ he said, ‘virtually everything I know, I heard from Jakob. So it’s hard for me to be precise on that.’

He looked at Alex to make sure he was listening and understanding. Which he was.

‘But at a cautious estimate I’d say her problems started in her late teens.’

‘She went straight onto hard drugs?’

‘That I can’t say.’

He’s backing off, thought Alex. Realises what he told us has been contradicted.

‘So did Jakob talk to you about this on a regular basis?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Ragnar Vinterman said firmly. ‘He did.’

‘How many years did Jakob spend hiding illegal migrants out at Ekerö?’ asked Alex, as if it were a natural extension of the conversation about his daughter’s drug use.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know that either,’ the clergyman said, crossing his legs.

‘But you know he did it?’

‘Everybody knew that,’ he said drily.

‘But you decided not to mention it last time we were here?’

‘I assumed it wasn’t relevant to the case as a whole. And I really didn’t want to blacken Jakob’s memory in front of the police.’

Alex smiled.

‘How noble of you,’ he said before he could stop himself.

Ragnar Vinterman’s face darkened, and Alex went on.

‘Were you involved in his activities yourself?’

‘Never.’

‘Was anyone else in the parish?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

Alex felt his frustration growing. He glanced at Peder.

‘Now you’ve had a few days to think about it,’ said Peder, ‘are you still convinced Jakob took his own life?’

The clergyman went very quiet. His bearing and expression changed, as though a sudden shadow had passed over him.

‘Yes,’ he said clearly. ‘Yes, I am.’

With ill-concealed eagerness, Alex leaned forward.

‘Tell us how you see it.’

Ragnar Vinterman, mimicking Alex’s body language again, leaned forward, too.

‘I can’t say Jakob and I had a particularly close personal relationship. But as colleagues we were as close as it was possible to be. We exchanged confidences on a daily basis and had the same views on a great many questions of faith. So I think I can say I really did know Jakob. And believe me – he wasn’t in good shape. Not at all.’

‘His psychiatrist thinks otherwise,’ Alex said matter-of-factly.

Ragnar Vinterman gave a snort.

‘Erik Sundelius? I lost confidence in him at a pretty early stage. Marja and I both begged Jakob to change doctor. But he was so damned stubborn, you know.’

‘And why did the two of you want him to change doctor?’

‘The man was irresponsible,’ replied the clergyman. ‘He would never adapt his methods, even though Jakob wasn’t responding to the treatment. I freely admit I was so concerned that I decided to check up on him.’

That’s all we need, a vicar playing private investigator, Alex thought wearily.

‘What did you find out?’ asked Peder.

‘That my judgement was correct. He’s had two misconduct warnings from the Medical Council for – how shall I put it – “hazardous methods” used on high-risk patients; in each case, the patient ended up committing suicide. And he was prosecuted for the murder of his wife’s lover.’

Seeing the expressions of surprise on Peder and Alex’s faces, he leant back in his seat with an air of great satisfaction.

‘But the police already knew all about that, of course,’ he said mildly.

No, Alex thought, his jaw set doggedly. We didn’t.

‘Damn,’ Alex said in exasperation once he had started the car and backed rather too fast out of the vicar’s drive. ‘How the hell could we have missed that?’

‘We didn’t have any particular reason to check it out, did we?’ Peder said, and was interrupted by the ring of his mobile.

Ylva. It was rarely good news when she rang.

‘Peder, Isak’s running a really high temperature,’ she said anxiously. ‘And he’s got a rash on his tummy. I’m taking him to the hospital, but I wanted to ask if you could look after David while we’re gone.’

Fear caught Peder unawares. His son was ill and he wasn’t there. His permanently guilty conscience reared its head again.

‘I’ll be right there,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m in the car with Alex. He can drop me off on the way back to HQ.’

Alex looked at him as he rang off.

‘One of the boys is ill,’ he said. ‘Can you let me off at Ylva’s? If Fredrika’s in after all, maybe she could go to the Ljungs with you?’

Alex nodded.

‘Fine by me.’

In the short drive to what had once been Ylva and Peder’s shared home, Peder reviewed his situation in life for the hundredth time. The news that Pia Nordh was moving in with the repulsive Joar paled into insignificance. ‘Can you let me off at Ylva’s?’ he had said to Alex. As if it was an address like any other.

There had been a time when he felt as if his heart was about to blow to smithereens in his chest. It was a bloody long time since he’d loved anybody like that.

His mobile rang again. His brother this time.

‘Hiii,’ said Jimmy in his usual, rather slow way.

‘Hi,’ said Peder, and heard his brother laugh.

It was sometimes a real blessing that Jimmy was so easy to entertain, so easy to make happy.

‘Something’s happened,’ Jimmy said excitedly.

Peder laughed. ‘Something happening’ could mean anything from a royal visit to a new lampshade in his room.

‘I’ve got a girlfriend.’

The words struck Peder dumb.

‘What?’ he said dopily.

‘A girlfriend. A proper one.’

Peder gave an involuntary guffaw.

‘Are you happy?’ Jimmy asked expectantly.

A warm feeling spread inside him and smoothed out some of the knots that had multiplied there.

‘Yes,’ said Peder. ‘What do you know, I am glad, in spite of everything.’

A short time later, Fredrika and Alex parked outside the Ljungs’ flat on Vanadisplan. The Vasastan area had always appealed to Alex, he told Fredrika in an unusual moment of candour. He and Lena had agreed that the day they grew old they would get themselves a pied à terre in just this part of town, for overnight stays, to avoid simply mouldering away in their house out at Vaxholm. Fredrika felt uneasy as Alex’s expression shifted from open to pained in the course of talking about himself and his wife.

That’s what it is, she thought. He’s worried about his wife.

Alex took the lead as they went up the same staircase Fredrika and Joar had taken a few days before.

They found the Ljungs’ door ajar when they got to the floor where their flat was.

Alex gave an authoritative knock and Elsie Ljung came out to greet them.

‘We left the door open so we’d hear you coming,’ she said.

They went with her into the living room, where her husband was waiting. They both looked tired and unhappy.

‘Let me assure you we won’t stay any longer than strictly necessary,’ said Alex, taking a seat in one of the armchairs round the coffee table.

‘We do want to help,’ sighed Sven Ljung, dramatically flinging his arms wide. ‘And it’s all over the media now, as well. Have you found Johanna?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Alex. ‘But we have to hope she’ll get in touch when she sees the news.’

The elderly couple looked at each other and nodded. Yes, she was bound to get in touch, they seemed to be saying.

‘We’ve got a few more questions about your relationship with the Ahlbins,’ Alex said in a voice that was soft but unmistakably firm. ‘So we’d like to ask you those. Separately.’

Neither Elsie nor Sven replied, so Alex went on.

‘If I talk to Sven here, then maybe Fredrika can talk to Elsie in one of the other rooms. Then we won’t have to bother messing around at the police station.’

He was smiling, but the message was crystal clear. The couple looked confused and anxious, and he tried to reassure them by saying it was perfectly routine in the circumstances.

Fredrika went with Elsie into the kitchen, closing the door behind them, and sat down at the little dining table. The baby was lying still, for now.

You must be asleep, she thought, trying and failing to suppress a smile.

‘Your first?’ asked Elsie, nodding in the direction of Fredrika’s stomach.

The smile turned to a grimace. She preferred not to talk about the baby to strangers at all.

But she answered with a ‘Yes’ to avoid seeming rude.

For a minute she feared the older woman was going to start talking about when she was pregnant herself, but luckily she did not have to listen to any stories of that kind.

‘Jakob and Marja Ahlbin,’ Fredrika said in a more demanding voice than she intended, to show that further enquiries about her unborn child were not welcome.

Her interviewee looked tense and doubtful.

‘So how were things between the four of you recently?’

Elsie seemed at a loss.

‘Much as they’d been for quite a while, I suppose,’ she said eventually. ‘Not as good as they had been, but still good enough for us to get together now and then.’

‘And why was that?’ asked Fredrika. ‘Things not being as warm between you, I mean.’

Elsie looked uncomfortable.

‘Sven can really tell you more about that than I can,’ she said. ‘He and Jakob were the ones who had the disagreement.’

‘What did they disagree about?’

The older woman said nothing.

Fredrika softened.

‘You needn’t be afraid of telling me things that seem sensitive,’ she said, putting a hand on Elsie’s arm. ‘I promise to be as discreet as I possibly can.’

Elsie still did not speak. The kitchen tap was dripping into the sink. Fredrika had to stop herself getting up and turning it off properly.

‘They fell out, some years ago,’ Elsie said in a feeble voice.

‘It was over Jacob’s… activities.’

Fredrika waited.

‘The fact that he was hiding refugees,’ Elsie clarified. ‘Or planning to.’

‘And Sven objected to that?’

‘Hmm, it wasn’t that simple. It was more that Sven… well, he’s quite practical in his way of thinking, and I think he reckoned Jakob was taking far too great a risk. And not getting anything in return.’

Fredrika frowned.

‘Surely there’s never been any money in hiding illegal migrants?’

‘No, and that was exactly what Sven felt was so unfair,’ Elsie said, her voice stronger now. ‘That Jakob intended opening house and home to people on the run without earning a penny for it himself. Sven reckoned a lot of the people who ended up here had significant resources. After all, it costs a fortune to escape to Sweden these days. And so Sven thought that, if they had that much, they probably had a little bit more. Jakob was livid. He called Sven selfish, and a fool.’

With every justification, thought Fredrika. But she kept her mouth shut.

‘Then it was a year before we spoke to each other again,’ Elsie said, and had to clear her throat. ‘But we live so close and, I mean, you can’t help bumping into each other occasionally. Once we’d met like that a few times, we gradually started seeing each other again. It all felt fine. Not like before, but fine.’

The kitchen was cold and a shiver ran through Fredrika’s body. She looked through her notes and one thing leapt out at her.

‘You said Jakob “intended opening house and home”?’ she enquired.

‘Yes.’

‘But that was surely something he was already doing, not intending to do?’

Elsie looked nonplussed for a moment, but then shook her head firmly.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Neither of those things. It was something he had done in the past, and was thinking of starting again.’

‘I don’t quite follow.’

‘Jakob and Marja had a lot to do with refugee groups in the ’70s and ’80s, and were involved in a network that gave shelter to people in need. One of the things they did was to hide people in the basement of their house out in Ekerö. They carried on with that into the ’90s, until 1992 I think. Then they decided to take a more hands-off approach. Until Jakob started thinking along new lines a few years ago. But it never came to anything.’

Fredrika wondered if Elsie knew more than she was letting on. It was a bit suspicious that she kept saying ‘I think’, only to deliver some very concrete bit of information like a date.

But curiosity got the upper hand and she pushed away the idea that something might be wrong.

‘Why did nothing come of his plans?’

‘I don’t know,’ Elsie said evasively. ‘But I think his ideas caused some division in the family. Marja wasn’t at all as committed to it as Jakob. And then we heard the Ekerö house had been transferred to their daughters’ names. Neither of them were involved in their dad’s activities as far as I know. Particularly not Johanna.’

‘No,’ said Fredrika. ‘We understand she didn’t really share her father’s view on the issue.’

Elsie lowered her voice.

‘Sven doesn’t really want me to say anything about this, he thinks things like that should be kept within the family, but I’ll tell you anyway, since the Ahlbin family scarcely exists any more. We were round at Jakob and Marja’s for dinner once, at about the time Jakob was talking about getting back into his old activities, and their daughters were there. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife when we started talking about asylum seekers and their plight.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Johanna got very, very worked up. I don’t remember exactly what sparked it off, probably a combination of things. She started crying and left the table. Jakob seemed shaken, too, but he was better at keeping things inside.’

‘And you got no sense of what the conflict was really about?’

‘No, not at all. It sounded like something from years before; I mean, Johanna only saw the family on rare occasions. I remember she shouted something like, “So you’re going to destroy everything again?” but I’ve no idea what she meant by it. How could I?’

Elsie gave a strained laugh.

‘Anyway, that was when Sven fell out with Jakob,’ she said in conclusion.

Fredrika crossed her legs, shifting her weight on the chair. It was going to be so nice the day the baby was born and her body was her own again.

Then her eyes fell on Elsie’s hand, which was gripping a water glass. The hand was shaking and Elsie’s eye was twitching.

She wants to tell me something, Fredrika realised, and decided to bide her time.

Elsie did not speak, however, so Fredrika decided to help things along.

‘Are you sure you don’t know any more?’ she asked under her breath.

Elsie pursed her lips and shook her head. Her hand stopped trembling.

‘What about their other daughter, Karolina?’ Fredrika asked, resigning herself.

Elsie’s eyes were swimming.

‘I still say what we said before. It’s impossible that she died of an overdose.’

And yet she did, Fredrika thought. What the hell are we overlooking about her death?

‘But you weren’t that close in recent years,’ she ventured. ‘Maybe you missed the signs.’

Elsie shook her head.

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘We didn’t. You see, Karolina was going out with our younger son Måns for some years.’

‘But…’

‘I know,’ Elsie said, ‘we didn’t tell you last time you were here. Mainly because it’s such a sensitive subject, and because we both had such high hopes of the relationship. And everything was so topsy-turvy that day you were here…’

‘I understand,’ said Fredrika, trying not to sound annoyed.

The urge people had to be the ones to decide what was worth telling the police or not often caused far more havoc than they ever realised.

‘They weren’t together any more, your son and Karolina?’

Elsie shook her head and began to weep.

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘Karolina found it too much in the end, what with all his problems, and we could understand that only too well. But it was our dearest wish that she would turn out to be the solution for him. That she would be able to give him the strength to break free.’

‘Free from what?’

‘His addiction,’ Elsie sobbed. ‘That’s how I know Karolina wasn’t going through the same thing. But she carried all Måns’ problems like a cross through her life. Until the day it all got too much. Then she left him, moved out and got a flat of her own. I miss her as if she were my own child. We both do.’

‘And Måns?’

‘When it started getting serious between him and Karolina, he was much better, started work and stuck to the straight and narrow. But… once a man’s had that damned poison in his blood it’s as if he can never really be rid of it. He went downhill again, and today he’s just a shadow of who he was in those early days with Karolina. Unrecognisable.’

Fredrika thought carefully, weighing her words.

‘Elsie,’ she said finally. ‘Whichever way we look at it, Karolina’s dead. Her own sister identified her.’

‘Well in that case you’d better think of her as Lazarus in the Bible, the one Jesus brought back to life,’ Elsie declared, fishing a handkerchief out of her pocket. ‘Because I know in my heart and soul that that girl can’t have died of an overdose.’

Fredrika looked mistrustfully at Elsie. Felt doubtful, and tried to muster her thoughts. Elsie was keeping something else back, she felt it in every fibre of her being. And as if Job were not enough, the police now had a Lazarus to contend with.

The little white tablet was disturbing him as badly as a fly in the night. He glared at it angrily and almost wished it would dissolve before his eyes.

‘You must take it tonight before you go to sleep,’ the man who spoke Arabic had said before he left. ‘Otherwise you’ll be too tired to carry out your task tomorrow.’

They had left him in the new flat the evening before and then come back this afternoon to go through the next day’s schedule one more time. Somewhere in the midst of all his misery, he felt a great sense of relief. His journey was nearing its end and he would soon be a man without debts who could be reunited with his wife and even get in touch with the rest of his family to tell them he was all right. And with his friend, waiting for him in Uppsala.

The knowledge that his friend was out there somewhere, worrying about where he had got to, made him uneasy. They had said he was not on any account to inform any friends or family members where he was going. And he had broken their rule. Made a promise and not kept it. Please let his friend not start trying to find him. It would be a disaster if someone suddenly started asking questions and gave away his hidden presence in the country. The punishment would be severe if they found out he had let them down, he knew that.

His heart was pounding, keeping time with his growing anxiety. It was still only late afternoon; how would he hold out until tomorrow? He would have much preferred the project to be over and done with today, so tonight would be a night of liberation. But thoughts of that kind were unrealistic, he knew that now.

They would come and drag him out at nine the next morning. He would be introduced to his accomplice, who would drive the get-away car. The two of them would go to the place where the robbery was to be committed. He read the note they had left on the coffee table. It said: ‘Västerås’, which meant nothing at all in Arabic. He wondered what it meant in Swedish.

Once he had done the robbery, he and the driver would come back to Stockholm and meet up with the others not far from the giant golf ball he had seen from the other car. The Globe. Once he had handed over his haul, he would be a free man.

‘You’re doing this for your countrymen’s sake,’ they had told him. ‘Without this money, we wouldn’t be able to finance our work. The Swedish state doesn’t want to pay for our activities, so we take money from people who already have lots of it.’

It was familiar, well-worn logic. You took from the rich and gave to the poor. When he was growing up he had kept hearing stories like that. Most of all from his grandfather, the only one in the family who had ever been to the USA. He told them incredible stories of how much money people had there and what they did with it. He told them about cars as wide as the Tigris and houses the size of Saddam’s palace, where ordinary people lived. About the university, which was open to all but cost a vast amount of money. And about huge oilfields not owned by the state.

Grandfather should have seen me now, thought Ali. In a land almost as rich as America. Just a bit colder.

He shivered and huddled up on the sofa. Not that he had seen any huge cars or palaces. But that made no difference, because like everybody else he knew, he was totally convinced: Sweden was the best possible country for making a new start.

He glowered at the tablet and knew he would have to take it. He would never get to sleep otherwise. A good night’s sleep was a prerequisite for performing well the next day.

For the sake of his wife and children. And his father and grandfather.

As they left the flat to go to her parents’, Fredrika Bergman seriously considered cancelling the whole arrangement. But Spencer, well aware of her reluctance, took her gently by the arm and led her out onto the pavement and over to his car.

And with that, their relationship entered a new phase.

It had always been just the two of them. Alone in a glass bubble with no dinner parties or family lunches. Their mutual breathing space where they recharged themselves and refreshed their appetite for life. A breathing space that now had to accommodate both an unborn child and some parents-in-law. The latter was bizarre, of course, since Spencer, unlike Fredrika, already had a set of parents-in-law.

‘So when do I get to meet your parents, then?’ she asked as Spencer pulled up outside her childhood home.

‘Preferably never, if that’s all right with you,’ he replied casually, opening the car door.

His arrogance made Fredrika roar with laughter.

‘You’re not getting hysterical now, are you?’ Spencer said anxiously.

He walked round to open the door on her side. Fredrika beat him to it and pushed the door open just as he was coming round the bonnet.

‘Look,’ she said in mock triumph. ‘I can get out of the car all by myself.’

‘That’s hardly the point,’ muttered Spencer, who saw it as a matter of principle for a man to open the door for his female companion.

Let him open the door for his other woman, Fredrika thought waspishly, but kept her mouth shut.

She could see her mother through the kitchen window, which looked out on the road. The two of them were often told they were very alike. Fredrika waved. Her mother waved back, but to judge by her expression she was – despite having doubtless prepared herself – shocked to see her heavily pregnant daughter with a man the age of her own husband.

‘Okay?’ asked Fredrika, slipping her hand into Spencer’s.

‘I suppose so,’ he answered, holding her hand in a warm clasp. ‘Can hardly be any worse than other things I’ve experienced in this context.’

Fredrika had no idea what he meant.

Things got off to a bad start when she made the mistake of accepting a glass of wine she had not been offered.

‘Fredrika,’ her mother exclaimed in dismay. ‘You’re not drinking while you’re pregnant?’

‘Good grief, Mum,’ said Fredrika. ‘On the Continent, pregnant women have been drinking for millennia. The public health body in Britain has just changed its recommendations and says they can drink two glasses a week with no ill effects.’

This did nothing to reassure her mother, who had little time for the British findings and looked at her daughter as if she were insane when she raised the glass to her lips and took a gulp.

‘Mmm,’ she said, with an appreciative smile at her father, who also looked extremely quizzical.

‘Being in the police hasn’t turned you into an alcoholic, has it, Fredrika?’ he asked with a troubled look.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she cried, not knowing whether to laugh or weep.

Her parents gave her long stares, but said no more.

The seating arrangement reminded Fredrika of the way she used to set out her dolls when she was playing with her doll’s house as a child. Mummy and Daddy on one side of the table and Guests on the other.

I’m a guest, she thought with fascination. In my own parents’ home.

She tried to think when she had last introduced anyone to her parents. A long time ago, she realised. Ten years, to be precise. And the man in question had been called Elvis, which had amused her mother no end.

‘I understand you work at Uppsala University,’ she heard her father say.

‘That’s right,’ said Spencer. ‘It sounds absurd to admit it, but I’ve been teaching there for thirty-five years now.’

He laughed loudly, not noticing the way Fredrika’s parents stiffened.

They ought to have lots in common, really, thought Fredrika. Spencer’s only five years younger than Dad, after all.

Again she felt the same desire to burst out laughing that had come over her in the car. She coughed discreetly. She asked her mother if she could pass the gravy, which went so well with this delicious roast. Complimented her father on his choice of wine, but then realised it was a mistake to draw attention back to the fact that she was drinking at all. Her father asked how work was going and she said it was all right. Her mother wanted to know if she was sleeping any better now and she said sometimes, but mostly not.

‘I hope you don’t have to sleep alone every night,’ her mother said with a meaningful glance at Spencer.

‘Sometimes I do,’ Fredrika said non-committally.

‘Oh?’ said her mother.

‘Ah,’ said her father.

And then they lapsed into silence. Absence of sound can be a blessing, or a curse, depending on the context. In this case there was absolutely no doubt: this wordless dinner was going to be a disaster.

Fredrika could not help feeling exasperated. What had her parents expected? They knew Spencer was married, knew she often slept alone, knew she would be bringing up the child at least partially as a single mother. An unorthodox arrangement, admittedly, but hardly the only lapse from orthodoxy in their family history. Fredrika’s uncle, for example, had been bold enough to come out as a homosexual back in the 1960s. And the family had always welcomed him on the same terms as everybody else.

Then Spencer asked a few polite questions about Fredrika’s mother’s interest in music, and the mood round the table grew a bit more cordial. Her father went to the kitchen for more potatoes and her mother put on an LP she had picked up in a second-hand shop a few days before.

‘Vinyl,’ she said. ‘You can’t beat it.’

‘I agree with you there,’ said Spencer, and snorted. ‘You wouldn’t catch me buying a CD.’

Fredrika’s mother smiled, and this time the smile even reached her eyes. Fredrika started to relax a little. They had broken the ice and the temperature was rising. Her father, seemingly still a bit wary of this son-in-law of his own age, cleared his throat and said: ‘More wine, anybody?’

It sounded almost like a plea.

They carried on chatting, the words coming more easily for everyone at the table, even her father.

Fredrika wished she could have drunk more wine. Somewhere out there, a murderer was on the loose. And they had no sense at all of whether he thought he had finished the job now, or whether the murders of Jakob and Marja Ahlbin were part of something bigger.

Her thoughts went to their daughter Johanna, who must have found out about their deaths on the internet by now. And then to Karolina, the one Elsie Ljung called Lazarus.

A day of rest tomorrow, thought Fredrika. But on Monday that’s the very first thing I shall tackle. If Karolina Ahlbin is alive, why on earth hasn’t she been in touch?

A thought flashed through her mind. Two sisters. One certifies the other’s death and then leaves the country. But neither has actually died.

A bloody good alibi for both of them.

Could the simple, woeful case be that Karolina and Johanna were the murderers the police were looking for? Was it the daughters pulling all the strings and choreographing developments with such precision?

The thought made Fredrika feel light-headed and it hit her that drastic measures would be required if there was to be any hope of getting off to sleep that night and not lying awake thinking about those murders.

Maybe she should get her violin out again? Playing for a while ought to bring some peace of mind. Just for a while. Any more than that would be a waste of time.

She quietly drained her wine glass.

Time’s running out for us, she thought. We need a new line of investigation. And we’ve got to find Johanna, double quick.