The Beast

II

Fredrik caught the two o'clock ferry. The ferries, in their moss-green and sun-yellow livery, set out every hour on the hour. Crossing the strait between Okö and Arnö took only four or five minutes, but marked the divide between mainland and island. For him, it symbolised a shift from time that raced to time that lingered. He had bought an old cottage on the island a month or so before Marie was born, when writing at home had looked like becoming impossible. The cottage had been half ruined, and surrounded by a jungle, but it was only fifteen minutes away by car. During the first couple of summers Agnes had helped him recreate a house and a garden from this ruin in the wilderness. Eventually a novel trilogy had emerged from it, books that had sold rather well and were now being translated into German, which really pleased his publishers, only too aware that the market for foreign publication rights was tough.

Fredrik knew he wouldn't be able to write anything today, but had made up his mind to pretend to himself he might. He went through the routine, settled down in front of the little square screen with his pile of untidy notes at hand. Quarter of an hour passed, half an hour, three quarters of an hour. He turned on the television in the room next door, it was companionable to have it mumbling away at low volume. It joined the commercial radio station that was playing worn pop tunes, too familiar to attract any attention.

After a while he decided to take a short walk. He went down to the water's edge and observed people messing about in boats, a simple but pleasing show that was always on.

Still nothing written, not a word. He must stay until he had one phrase that looked worth keeping on paper.

The telephone rang.

These days it was always Agnes. Everybody else had stopped trying. Knowing what a rude bastard he was when someone disturbed him in mid-sentence, it was amazing that he hadn't realised sooner that people had been scared off. It was only when the writer's block had tightened its grip and the screen stayed forever blank that he discovered how emptiness had crept up on him. He didn't know what to think about it, his isolation seemed both beautiful and ugly.

'Yes?'

'No need to sound so cross.'

'I'm writing.'

'What are you writing?'

'Well. It's a bit slow at the moment.'

'That'd mean nothing, then.'

It was no good lying to Agnes. They had seen each other naked too often.

'Yes, roughly. I'm sorry. What do you want?'

'We've got a daughter, remember? I'd like to know how she is. We do phone each other at times and it's always about her, you know that. I tried earlier, but you made Marie put the phone down so I didn't get to hear anything. Now I want some answers.'

'Marie is fine. Really, she is, all the time. For one thing, she's one of those rare people who don't suffer when it's as hot as it is now. She gets that from you.'

He had a vision of Agnes' tanned body, imagined what she looked like now, curled up in her office chair, wearing a thin dress. He had longed for her every morning, every day, every night until he learned to control it by shutting her image away, learned to be brisk and no-nonsense and free.

'What about school? What happens when you leave her there now?'

Aha, Micaela, you want to know about Micaela. Good! Agnes must be troubled by his relationship with a woman much younger than either of them. Never mind that it wouldn't make Agnes come back to him, she wouldn't crawl just because he loved someone who was as beautiful as that, but he felt good about it. Childish maybe, but enjoyable.

'It's much better now. This morning it took maybe ten minutes and then she was off, playing Indians with David.'

'Indians?'

'Yes, that's what they're up to now.'

He started to wander about holding the phone, left the small kitchen with the table where he worked and went into the even smaller sitting room to sit down in an armchair. Her timing had been perfect, he couldn't have endured staring at the blank computer screen for much longer.

He was just about to ask her about her life in Stockholm, how she was getting on, although this was something he hardly ever did because he feared what she might say, maybe that she loved her new life and had found somebody special to share it with, but then his mind suddenly fixed on an image on the mumbling television set in the middle of the room.

'Agnes, wait. Hold it.'

The black-and-white still showed a smiling man with short darkish hair. Fredrik recognised the face. He had seen it recently. He had seen it today: it was the man on the seat by the school gate, the father waiting outside The Dove. They had nodded to each other. Now a new image, still of the father, but this time in colour. The photo had been taken inside a prison; there was a wall behind the man and he was flanked by two prison guards. He was waving to the camera, or at least that was what it looked like.

Fredrik turned the sound up. The excitable voice of a reporter came on; they were all taught to sound like that, to rattle off words with the same emphasis on every one, neutral voices without personality.

The voice said that the father on the bench, the man in the pictures, was Bernt Lund, a thirty-six-year-old who had been convicted in 1991 of several violent rapes of underage girls, then convicted again in 1997 for more rapes of children, and finally found guilty of the so-called Skarpholm cellar murders, two nine-year-old girls who had been sadistically abused and killed. He had been held in one of the secure units for sex offenders at Aspsås prison, but today, in the early hours, he had escaped from a hospital transport.

Fredrik sat there, silently. He couldn't hear, raised the volume but still couldn't hear.

That man in the picture. Fredrik had nodded to him.

A man from the prison had a microphone shoved in his face; he was sweating profusely and stammered when he spoke.

An older, grim-faced policeman said he had no comment and added a plea for the public to communicate any information about sightings.

He had nodded to that man, twice. The man had been sitting there all the time; Fredrik had nodded on the way into the school, and again on the way out.

Fredrik had turned rigid, but now he could hear Agnes shouting in the phone; her sharp voice hurt his ears. Let her jabber.

He shouldn't have nodded. Shouldn't have.

'Agnes,' he finally said into the receiver. 'I can't talk any more. I must phone somewhere. I'll put the phone down now.'

He pushed the button and waited for a signal. She was still there.

'Agnes! Fuck's sake! Get off the line!' He threw the phone on the floor, ran into the kitchen, grabbed his mobile and rang Micaela, rang the school.

Lars Ågestam scanned the courtroom. What a drab, disappointing lot.

The magistrates, political appointees to a man and woman, watched the proceedings with bored, ignorant eyes. Judge von Balvas had begun the trial with a totally unprofessional statement to the effect that she was prejudiced against any person charged with sexual crimes. Håkan Axelsson, the accused paedophile, had given up and was unable even to pretend an understanding of what his acts might have done to the children. The guards behind the accused tried to stare neutrally into mid-distance, while the seven journalists, who seemed agitated and were taking notes furiously, would make mistakes about the most straightforward events in their facts boxes. At least two faces in the public gallery belonged to familiars, women who turned up to enjoy the performance and justified it by chattering about their civic rights. And there was the group of law students, seated at the back as he himself had once been, busily making over the despair of violated children into a piece of useful coursework, hoping for a good z:i at least.

He felt like insisting that the court should be cleared, or screaming at the lot of them to keep a very, very low profile, or else. He didn't, of course. Lars Ågestam was a nicely brought-up young man, a newly appointed prosecutor ambitious for better cases; he wanted to go up in the world, up up up, and was smart enough to keep his opinions to himself, to stick to his last and prepare his prosecutions so carefully that he knew more than anyone else around. Only an outstandingly good lawyer for the defence would have a chance of getting the better of him.

Kristina Björnsson was an outstandingly good lawyer, bloody well excellent.

She was the only one in the room who did not fit in with the overwhelming mediocrity. She was experienced, even wise. So far he had never come across anyone else from the defence side who still believed that even the worst, most moronic of clients was more worthwhile than the size of their fee. Consequently, she was also one of the few who had the clients' full confidence.

Kristina Björnsson had figured in one of the first anecdotes he had been told when he started attending trials as a student. She was a well-known coin collector and her collection, allegedly one of the best in private hands, had been stolen ten-odd years ago. The news started off an almighty fuss inside all the prisons in the land. An unprecedented, strictly underground search order went out and within the week two heavies with long ponytails turned up at Björnsson's front door with her collection, accompanied by an apologetic letter and a bouquet of flowers. Every single coin was in place. The letter had been laboriously scripted by three pros in the art and antiques racket, who wanted Kristina to know they were truly sorry. They wouldn't have traded for the collection if they had known whose it was, and should she ever fail to acquire a coin legally, she need only ask and they would see what could be done.

Lars Ågestam reflected that if he ever needed a lawyer, Björnsson would be his choice. She was good this time too. Håkan Axelsson was yet another unfeeling swine, who deserved nothing better than a very long spell inside, and the prosecutor should have had a cast-iron case, given that his primary evidence was a stack of CDs containing digitised images of humiliation and violence. There were corroborating statements too; some members of Axelsson's paedophile ring had talked. But still it looked as if this particular sicko would escape with a couple of years, because Kristina Björnsson had patiently countered every point the prosecutor made, arguing grave psychological disturbance and hence her client's need for care in a secure psychiatric unit. She wouldn't get her care order, of course, but somehow she had persuaded the magistrates of what had seemed impossible at first: namely that there were other options, compromise solutions. The magistrates approved, that much was obvious, and one of them seemed to feel that the exploitation thing had been pushed too hard, since in his view one of the children had been provocatively dressed.

Lars Ågestam raged inwardly. That local council jobsworth, straight from some political backwater, had been droning on about children's clothes nowadays, mixing in stuff about human encounters and shared responsibilities; he was asking for a bloodied nose. Ågestam was very close to telling him and all his moronic colleagues to go to hell. His career plans would have gone the same way, of course, ruined in one unsmart move.

He had followed the trials of other porn ring members; so far three out of the seven had been convicted and sentenced to appropriately long terms in prison. Axelsson was just as guilty, but Björnsson and her tame band of old fools had reached some unholy agreement, so if Bernt Lund hadn't done a runner that very morning they might even have doled out a suspended sentence, a serious loss of face for any aspiring prosecutor. The fact that Lund was on the loose had got the journalists all excited and they showed more interest in Axelsson than they had so far, knowing that by now whatever they wrote would shift from page 11 to page 7 or better. Any link between Axelsson and Sweden's most wanted, most hated man would turn into many column inches. If only to avoid a nasty public row, Axelsson would surely get at least one year in prison.

Once this was over, Ågestam did not want any more sex crimes. Not for a long while.

These cases sapped your strength somehow, no matter if the criminal and the victim were no more than names on pieces of paper, because he still invariably lost his professional detachment, his calm bureaucrat's distance. Trouble was, emotional involvement in a prosecutor was worse than useless.

So with any luck, he'd get bank robberies, murder, maybe a little fraud. Please. Less exciting crimes, less opinionated chatter from everyone. He had tried hard to understand the child porn fanatics, read all there was to read, attended a professional course, but nothing fundamental had changed. He wanted no more of this. Above all, he did not want anything to do with putting Bernt Lund back inside. Too much emotion, crimes too appalling to think and write about.

When they caught Lund he would keep his head well down.

He ran out to the car, leaving the front door unlocked, no time to find his keys.

Marie.

He was crying. Tore open the car door. There were his keys, on the same ring as the ignition key. He reversed the car at speed through the narrow gate.

She had not been in the school.

Micaela had listened to his urgent flood of questions and statements, put the receiver down and gone off to look for Marie. First inside, then outside. The girl was nowhere. He had screamed. Micaela had asked him to please speak more calmly; he had pulled himself together, then lost control of his voice so that it rose to a shout again. He always came back to the father on the seat outside and the TV news and the father who was in the photo taken in front of a prison wall. Then he put the receiver down and ran for his car.

He drove along the winding country roads in a panic, crying and screaming.

The father waiting outside the school was the man in the photos, he was sure of it. He let go of the wheel with one hand to phone the emergency number, stating his message at screaming pitch. Within a minute he was connected to the duty officer. He explained that he had seen Lund outside a nursery school in Strängnäs, his daughter's school, and that she had disappeared.

Three kilometres from the house to the ferry station. He drove on, past the charming square and the thirteenth- century church, past the cemetery where people were tending graves in the still heat of late afternoon, but for all his urgency he missed the ferry. He checked the time, barely four minutes late, pushed the car horn, blinked with his headlights, all pointless of course. Then he phoned the ferry. It was quieter than usual and the ferryman heard it ring. Fredrik managed to explain enough and was promised that they would come straight back for him.

Why had he taken Marie to that fucking school?

Why hadn't they simply stayed at home? It had been half past one already.

Fredrik watched as the ferry reached the other side of the narrow straits, looked at the time that kept moving on unbearably. Marie had not been there, not inside the school and not outside either, and he thought of his little daughter, who had grown into a human being while he had been with her; maybe she'd grown too fast. Once Agnes had left, it was Marie who received all his deepest love; he offered up all the old feeling for Agnes, for everyone, to Marie and she alone had to cope with that concentrated love, and she stored it and also somehow returned it. More than once he'd thought it wasn't fair; no one should be made to represent other people and forced to hold more love than there was room for; a five-year-old is not very big after all.

He phoned Micaela again. No reply. And the same again. Her telephone must be switched off. The signals rang out and then a tinny voice asked him to leave a message.

He hadn't cried for a long time, not even when Agnes moved out. There had been times he'd actually tried but it was impossible; it was as if his reservoir of tears had dried up. Thinking back he realised that as an adult he had never wept; the flow had been turned off. Until now.

Perhaps that was why he still hadn't quite taken in what was happening to him, the gut-wrenching fear that wouldn't let go and the damnable tears streaming down his cheeks. He had imagined that weeping might be a relief, but it was not, only something that poured out uncontrollably, leaving a huge empty space inside him.

The yellow-and-green ferry came chugging back empty, making a thumping noise as it hit the two rusty steel cables which served as mobile rails in the water. The closer it came, the louder the noise. He waved towards the cabin, he always greeted the ferryman, and drove on board. The water spread out all around him as the ferry moved placidly along its set route.

The images kept passing through in his mind. Lund in black and white, a kind of smile on his face. Then Lund standing in front of the prison wall, between the guards; he had been waving. That smiling, waving creature raped children. Fredrik remembered enough about the girls-in-the- cellar case. Lund had mutilated, torn and beaten his victims until they were like worn-out, rejected dolls. Fredrik, like the rest of the public, had been outraged and at the same time unable to cope with what he read about the case, and somehow it was still as if all that could not have happened, as if the news story could not be true. The media had been watching every move in the trial for weeks, but he still didn't fucking well understand.

The ferryman was the older of the two, a semi-retired stand-in for the younger one. He had seen enough to grasp Fredrik's desperation and wisely kept off the usual chit-chat to pass the time. Fredrik would thank him one day, much later, for his understanding.

They reached the other side, where the ferryman's dog had been tied up. The dog barked with pleasure at seeing his master again. Fredrik raced off the ferry the moment it hit land.

He was so intensely afraid. Terrified.

She would never go away without telling someone. She knew Micaela was there and she knew she must not go anywhere outside the fence without letting her know.

That man. Cap on his head, quite short and quite thin. He had nodded to him.

Across Arnö Island, nine kilometres of winding gravel. Then Road 55, eight kilometres of accident-prone tarmac. Not many cars around at this time of day. He increased his speed.

Face to face. It was him. He knew it was him.

Now, five cars ahead, driving slowly, a small red car hauling an enormous caravan that tilted dangerously on the bends and made the next car keep a respectful distance. Fredrik kept trying to overtake, but was forced back by the curves in the road.

A slip-road, a right turn, then the bridge and central Strängnäs.

He spotted the crowd from far away.

People were clustering at the gate, in the playground and in the street outside The Dove. Five nursery school teachers, two catering assistants from the kitchen, four policemen with dogs, some parents he recognised and some he didn't.

One of them, carrying a small child, was pointing towards the wood. A policeman with a dog went off in that direction, then two more followed.

Fredrik stopped outside the gate and stayed in the car for a while.

When he got out, Micaela came towards him. She hadn't been outside, but had been waiting for him inside the school.

His coffee was black. No messing about with effing milk, especially no latte or cappuccino or any of that fashionable crap, just no-frills, real Swedish black coffee, filtered to get rid of the dregs. Ewert Grens contemplated the coffee machine; he wouldn't pay a penny extra to get a dollop of evil-tasting emulsified muck in his mug, but Sven had to have his dose of the glop, he was prepared to pay good money to get this pale-brown chemical-flavoured stuff in his cup. Ewert kept the plastic cups well apart in case Sven's was toxic and limped gingerly back along the shiny corridor floor to his room. Sven was slumped in the visitor's chair. He looked exhausted.

'Your poison. Here.'

Sven roused himself enough to take his cup.

'Thanks.'

Ewert stopped in front of him; there was something new in Sven's eyes.

'What's up with you? It can't be that fucking bad to work on your fortieth.'

'No.'

'So what's wrong?'

'Jonas called me. While you were struggling with the coffee machine.'

'And?'

'He asked why I hadn't come home. I'd told him I would. He said grown-ups lie all the time.'

'What did he mean, lie?'

'It seems he saw the TV news about Lund. So he asked why grown-ups lie, like they tell a child they'll show it a dead squirrel or a nice doll, but all the grown-up wants is to do bad things to the child with his willy and then hit the child. That's word for word what Jonas said to me.'

Sven sank back in his chair and sipped his coffee in silence. Absently, he started swivelling the chair, left, then right, back again. Ewert was rooting among his tapes.

'So how do you reply? Daddy lies, all grown-ups lie, some of them lie and poke at you with their willy and hit you. I can't stand this, Ewert. It's too bloody awful.'

Siw was singing now. ' Seven Great Guys', with Harry Arnold's Radio Band, 1959.

They listened. My first friend was slender, built like an arrow, My second was blonde and I loved him so much

The song was bland and silly, but offered a kind of escape because it was so pointless. Ewert closed his eyes, wagging his head to the beat. For a few minutes he was in another, more peaceful time.

There was a knock on the door.

They exchanged glances. Ewert shook his head irritably, but there was another, firmer knock.

'Yes!'

It was Ågestam. Ewert recognised the neatly combed fringe and the ingratiating face in the doorway; he had no time for busy little boys and especially none for the busy boys who pretended to be public prosecutors but couldn't wait to get on and up in the world.

'What are you after?'

Ågestam was visibly taken aback, though it wasn't clear what bothered him most, Ewert's bad temper or the room resounding with Siw's voice.

'It's about Lund.'

Ewert put his coffee cup to the side.

'What about him?'

'He has turned up.'

Ågestam explained that the duty officer had just concluded a telephone conversation with someone who'd reported a sighting outside a nursery school in Strängnäs, just a few hours ago. The father of one of the children had called on his mobile; he had sounded sane and articulate, but very frightened, after realising that he had recognised the man wearing a baseball cap who had been sitting on a bench outside the school gate. He had seen this man when he delivered his daughter to the school, and now the girl had disappeared.

Ewert scrunched up the plastic mug, threw it in the bin.

'Christ bloody fucking almighty.'

Those interrogations came back to him. The worst ever, the ugliest.

The man in front of him, there was something about him that wasn't human. Those eyes that evaded his own.

Grens, you must fucking listen to me.

Lund, I want you to look at me.

Grensie, they're sluts, you should know that.

I'm interrogating you, Lund. And I want you to look at me.

Sluts. Little ones, really small horny sluts, needing it.

Look at me now. Or else I'll suspend the interrogation immediately.

You want to know this. About their tight tiny cunts. I knew you would.

Why not look at me? Don't you dare?

The cunts want cock inside. Hard cock.

Good. Now we're looking at each other.

Small, very small cunts. They want plenty of seeing to.

How do you feel now, when you're looking me in the eye?

And you've got to teach them, you know. They mustn't think of fucking all the time.

You can't stand it much longer now. Your eyes look shifty. Cowardly.

The smallest cunts are the worst, they're the horniest. That's why you've got to be firm, teach them a lesson.

You want me to switch the tape recorder off and have a go at you. You want me to lose control.

Grens, have you ever tasted cunt on a nine-year-old?

He turned the music off. Removed the cassette gently, put it away in the proper plastic box.

'So he's allowed himself to be seen before he's got hold of a kid. If he's that desperate the risk is that all his inhibitions have gone west.'

He took his jacket from its hook by the door.

'I was in charge of interrogating Lund. I know how his mind works. And I've read the forensic psychiatrist's report. It just confirmed what I knew already. Lund has got pronounced sadistic tendencies.'

Actually, he had not only read the psych report, he had gone through it word by word because he was determined to understand any fucking ghastly thing there was to be understood. Nobody and nothing had affected him like the sessions with Lund; during the interrogations and afterwards, the man evoked hatred and fear and more.

Ewert would willingly admit that his years in the police had made him rather cold, even hard and difficult; allowing himself to have feelings would have made most days pretty hellish. But Lund's crimes and total alienation had made him want to give up, crawl away, sensing for the first time that his job might be of no use. He had talked to the psychiatrist who wrote the report, discussed Lund and his sadistic rapes and the anger that drove his sexuality, fusing lust with inflicting pain, pleasure with forcing submission. Ewert had asked if Lund had some kind of insight into what he was doing; did he have any understanding of the feelings and reactions of the child and its parents and others who got involved? Cautiously, the psychiatrist had shaken his head and gone on to speak about Lund's childhood, how he'd been abused from an early age and how, in order to stand it, he had shut out other people.

Still holding the jacket, Ewert turned and pointed at Sven, then at Ågestam.

'But what was the final conclusion? Minor psychological disorder. Do you get that? He rapes little girls, but the diagnosis is minor psychological disorder.'

'I remember, I was a law student at the time.' Ågestam sighed. 'We were amazed and furious.'

Ewert pulled on his jacket and commanded Sven to get the car.

'Off we go. Strängnäs. And keep your foot down.'

Ågestam had stayed where he was, obstructing the doorway.

'I'll join you.'

Ewert disapproved of the young prosecutor; he had shown it before and did so again.

'What's your angle exactly? Chief interrogator?'

'Of course not.'

'Then you'd better move over.'

The sun was sinking slowly, but it was still as hot as ever. The strong light stung their eyes as they drove south-westwards along the E4. They left the centre behind, then the inner suburbs, then the commuter towns. At last, the E20 to Strängnäs. Sven relaxed a little and breathed more easily. Ewert stopped urging him to go faster and moaning about the sun-visors. The quieter road and change of direction, away from the sun, meant that Sven could increase his speed.

They didn't talk much. There wasn't much to say, apart from the fact that Lund had been seen outside a nursery school and that a five-year-old girl was missing. In their minds, they mulled over what was known and what events might have followed, every scenario ending with the hope that the child had been found in a forgotten play-room and that the father who raised the alarm had allowed his terror to fuel his imagination, as so often was the case.

They made it in record time. The moment they were within sight of the school it became obvious that nothing had sorted itself out. It had not been a false alarm. Something had happened, and it could be the worst. People were milling around; some must be teachers and nursery nurses, some parents of the children who were running, jumping, playing everywhere. There were uniformed men and impatient dogs standing near two patrol cars, and seen from a distance everything about the people round the playground fence told them of confusion, of questions and fears and perhaps, because of all this, a sense of community.

Sven stopped the car a little way away, to give Ewert and himself another minute, a moment of stillness before pandemonium broke loose, a little silence before the bombardment of questions started up. From inside their metal shell, he observed the restless crowd. Worried people keep on the move. He watched them; they kept tramping about and, framed by the car window, they looked like extras in a play. He glanced at Ewert, realising that he too was watching and analysing, trying to become part of the talk out there without having to leave the car.

'What do you think has happened?'

'What I can see has happened.'

'What's that, then?'

'Things couldn't be worse. Up shit creek.'

They got out and two of the policemen immediately came towards them to shake hands. First was a large young man with crew-cut dark hair. Like others of his age, maybe just over thirty, his bearing had a self-aware confidence, a kind of brittle invulnerability.

'Hi. Leo Lauritzen. From Eskilstuna, the nearest station. We got here twenty minutes ago.'

'I see. Sven Sundkvist. And this is Ewert Grens.'

Lauritzen smiled, surprised, and held Ewert's hand a fraction too long.

'Great! I've heard of you.'

'Is that so?'

'It's like, you know, meeting a celebrity. But you're shorter than I imagined. No offence.'

'People imagine too much. Have you got anything sensible on your mind as well? What's the situation here, for instance? Or are you as thick as you look?'

Lauritzen's colleague, who'd been hanging back a little, now took a few steps forward. She didn't bother with any greetings. Her blonde hair was glued to her temples; she was sweating copiously after working hard in the oppressive heat.

'We got the first message about an hour ago. The Stockholm duty officer rang to say that one of the kids in this nursery had gone missing. A few minutes later more info came through. Bernt Lund had been seen in connection with the school and at the time of the disappearance. That was enough for us; a major alert went out. We mobilised members from the local Working Dog Owners' club to search the woodland between the school and Enköping. Two helicopter crews are scanning the Lake Mälaren beaches near here. A team is lined up for a detailed area search. They'll get going soon, but we're holding off for the moment. The dogs need to check out the scents, before half Strängnäs starts combing the place.'

She apologised and went off to speak to the dog owners next, a group set apart by having the club emblem sewn on to their anoraks.

Sven and Ewert looked at each other; both held back from starting work, both reluctant to enter into the waiting darkness. Then Ewert cleared his throat and turned to Lauritzen.

'The parents of the missing child. Where are they?'

Lauritzen pointed at a man wearing a brown corduroy suit and with his long hair gathered in a ponytail, who was seated near the end of a bench by the school gate. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head in his hands, staring at the gate or maybe at a shrub just behind it. A woman was sitting next to him, her arm round his shoulders, now and then stroking his cheek.

'That's the girl's father, the man who phoned to say he'd seen Lund. Seen him twice, in fact, with some fifteen to twenty minutes between the sightings. Lund sat on that seat, in full view.'

'His name is?'

'Fredrik Steffansson. Divorced. Agnes Steffansson, the girl's mother, lives in Stockholm. She's got a flat in Vasastan, I believe.'

'And who's the woman?'

'Micaela Zwarts. She works here in the school, and lives with Mr Steffansson. The missing girl, Marie, sometimes stays with one parent, sometimes with the other, officially half-and-half, but during the last year or so she has apparently preferred to have her main home here in Strängnäs, with Zwarts and Steffansson. She goes to her mother over most weekends. The parents have agreed to this, the girl's welfare matters most to them. I must say I wish there was more of that attitude about. I mean, I'm divorced myself and…'

Ewert was not interested.

'Leave it. I'll have a word with Steffansson.'

The man on the bench was still leaning forward, his empty eyes gazing blindly ahead. He looked drained, as if the wound inside him had allowed all his strength to leach away and any residual joy of living drip into the grass, creating an ugly stain.

Ewert Grens did not have any children and had never wanted any. He realised that he would never understand fully what the man in front of him was feeling. But he didn't need to understand, not now.

What his eyes told him was enough.

Rune Lantz would be sixty-six on his next birthday. His first year in retirement had almost passed. In July, a year ago, late one afternoon, he had emptied the big container of the apple juice mixer for the last time. He had done the usual, turned the switch to off, washed the drum out, waited for the night shift and for the mixer guy to put on earmuffs and hairnet. The hard bit of the job was adding the right amount of sugar. 'Right' depended on where the juice was going. The least sweetened juice went to Germany, a sweeter mix to Great Britain, an unbelievably sweet one to Italy and an undrinkably sticky concoction to Greece.

By now he had had the time to discover that his workmates of thirty-four years' standing were nothing but tea-break friends, bad-mouthing-the-boss friends, doing-the- pools-in-the-lunch-break friends. None of them had been in touch since he had left, but then he hadn't sought them out either, and he wasn't sure that he missed any of them. It's odd, he reflected, how you can pass a lifetime in the company of folk you care so little for and need no more than you need the sitting-room telly on. They're around because they're around, become habit. Being with them is almost like a ritual, it covers up emptiness and silence. It reassures you that you exist for them, but they really mean sweet FA. And vice versa, of course. You leave, but nothing changes; they carry on mixing juice and doing the pools and chaffing away over their tea-mugs.

He held her hand harder.

He saw her much more clearly now.

His Margareta was still at work in the factory on the site next to his. She had two years left before retirement, two more years of leaving the house every weekday. He had never realised until now how much he needed her; their time together meant life and the courage to grow old.

Walking close together and never too far away from home, they followed more or less the same route over the bridge and into the woodland and then back; it was their daily stroll late in the afternoon after she had come home from work. He would wait for her with his outdoor clothes on; the last hour alone was the worst because he longed for her so very much, longed to walk together, stepping out a little and breathing in a shared rhythm. During the dark months of the year they'd follow one of the set tracks marked by little posts with coloured signs, but between late spring and early autumn, when the evenings were light, they strayed, walking on mats of blueberry plants between the tall spruce trees. Life was fading for them both, but it was still fun to try and find new ways on your own.

They had done just that this afternoon. Holding hands, they left the proper path and set out across the bone-dry, rustling forest floor. The summer had been too hot, for too long. This year would be terribly poor for mushrooming.

They didn't talk much, there was no need to after forty- three years of marriage. But they watched. A roe deer. A couple of hares. Birds, one looked like a hawk of some kind. One of them would point, both stopped and waited until the animal moved on. They weren't in a hurry. Then the ground changed, became hillier, and they breathed more vigorously, enjoying the sense of oxygen-rich blood flowing faster in their veins. They were scrambling up a hillside cluttered with large scree when the air filled with noise.

It was a helicopter, staying low and circling among the tops of the trees. Then another one. Both carried police markings.

Rune and Margareta watched, staring without knowing why they did, nor why both of them felt a surge of unease and anxiety. It had something to do with the machines' intrusiveness and intense engine noise. The police were after something in a hurry, looking for it right here.

Margareta stood very still, her eyes following the helicopters until they disappeared from the sky above them.

'I don't like them,' she said.

'Neither do I.'

'Let's not walk on.'

'Not until they're well and truly gone.'

'Not even then.'

She had held her husband's hand but now she pulled at his arm until it was round her waist; that was where she wanted it to be. He kissed her cheek lightly. The two of them stood together against the world with its helicopters and uniforms and noise. But she wanted to leave at once, and in her anxiety she needed him to hold her close. He looked at her full of concern, because she was never usually afraid. She was the more courageous of the two of them, he thought.

Then, far away where the trees were thinning, he saw them, a policeman and his dog. They were moving slowly, the dog was looking for something, leading the man westwards, in the same direction as the helicopters had flown.

'Goodness. One of those as well.'

'It mightn't be about the same thing.'

'Come on, it's got to be.'

Now they were convinced that something had happened, here in their wood, during their private break from the outside world.

They hurried down the slope and through the dense shrubs at its base, their measured pace and breathing rhythm broken; all that was gone now. They wanted to get out of the way of someone else's hunt, someone else's misery.

It was Margareta who saw it first.

A bright red thing.

A small shoe. A little girl's.

A red, shiny leather shoe, with an eye-catching metal buckle.

They had been walking as fast as they could. She ignored the shooting pains in her knee joints, and when Rune asked if she was all right, she just shook her head, pointing ahead to the fastest short cut, never mind if the going was harder. Better than having time to think about the gathering darkness around them, better than dealing with Rune's worries about her. They had covered almost a kilometre. Not far to the metalled lane and the houses now.

To pass a huge fir they let go of each other, walking round the tree on opposite sides.

She spotted something under the fir's sweeping branches and thought at first that it was a toadstool, prodded it with her foot, lifted it up. Twisting it round in her hands, she understood what it meant and looked around: where is she? Is she still here? The girl?

She didn't scream, only called out; it was no surprise to her after all. She held the red shoe gently and handed it to Rune when he came up to her.

One more morning with the lie lurking in the back of his mind. He had been lying close to her, his hand touching her breasts, belly, thighs, he had kissed the back of her neck, whispered good morning into her ear, all the time doing his best to avoid having to face his betrayal.

Now Lennart Oscarsson was in his office, watching through the window as the prison woke to a new day. Another lovely sunny day, as hot as yesterday, as every day last week. He sighed.

Ever since he had fallen in love with Karin he had been haunted by fantasies about the day when she would ask him to accept that she'd met someone else, and that she was leaving him. Instead it was he whose love of another would break up their shared life. Who'd have believed it? She was beautiful, his looks were quite ordinary. She was outgoing, he was withdrawn. Her personality glittered, his never would. And yet it was he who had put their closeness at risk.

He had to go down to Lund's unit. On the way he nodded to two faces from the groups of trainees, people who wished they'd been placed anywhere but in a sex offender unit for their half-year of learning on the job. They despised their charges, not that he didn't feel the same; they all did, the staff spat at the perverts all the time.

The unit was silent and empty, an abandoned corridor, closed doors. The inmates were in the workshop; all were on work assignments, which is to say they did wood-turning, rings and building bricks to make educational toys, for a couple of kronor per hour. And whatever else was wrong with sex offenders, you had to admit that they trotted off to produce whatever rubbish was demanded of them without a murmur, no pissing about on the whole, unlike the so-called normals, drug-crazed would-be lifers, guys inside for robbery and violence and fraud, non-stop trouble the lot of them, either going on strike or doing a sickie.

He stopped outside cell 11, Bernt Lund's empty cell, let himself in. Lund was still on the loose, halfway through day two. They mostly couldn't cope for long; it took concentration to keep out of sight, always stay watchful, do without sleep, and it also required strength and money. Chased by dozens of policemen, trailed by the public on the alert, the hiding places grew fewer with every breath.

The room with its orderly rows of objects looked the same, except for the pile on the floor. He remembered how Grens, the old maniac, had knocked a lot of stuff off with his diary. The thin bloke, whose fortieth birthday had been ruined, had looked nervously at his colleague and then sighed when Grens aimed and did it again.

The bedspread with its blotchy stripes was already ruffled and Lennart sat down on the bed, then lay down to see what Lund had seen, night after night. What had it been like for him? Had he been wanking with closed eyes, fantasising about little girls? Or had he thought up plans, how to rule and control a child, destroying its naivety the moment he set to work on it? Had he ever tried to empathise with the child's fear and humiliation? What had it been like, living with his guilt in an eight-metre-square cell, alone with it evening, night, morning; it must have threatened to suffocate him until all he could do was run from it, beating two screws senseless to get away.

Someone knocked. Who? The door opened and Bertolsson, the governor, stepped inside.

'Lennart? What on earth are you up to?'

He sat up, tried to smooth his unruly hair.

'I can't really tell. I came here and… I wanted to know what it was like.'

'And?'

'Nothing. None the wiser.'

Bertolsson looked around the cell.

'Christ. What a complete nutter.'

'I think that's it. My new insight. Lund didn't understand a thing. No remorse. He's incapable of seeing any point of view other than his own.'

Bertolsson kicked the piled-up objects on the floor. It didn't fit. Chaos on the floor, total conformity and order everywhere else. Lennart couldn't be bothered explaining.

'Too bad. I've been looking for you because I need to talk to you about another madman. One of Lund's colleagues, as it were. One of the seven in the child porn ring.'

'Who's that?'

'Name of Axelsson. Håkan. Couple of minor past convictions. Sentenced tomorrow in the child pornography case. He'll have to do time, but probably won't get as long a spell as he deserves. Enough to miss out on both Christmas and Easter, though.'

'Where do I come in?'

'He's at Kronoberg now, which means transfer to here, but you haven't got any vacancies.'

Lennart yawned, a big, long yawn, thought for a minute and lay down again.

'I'm sorry. These characters make me tired.'

Bertolsson ignored him.

'That is to say, this cell is empty, but won't be for long. Lund should be back pronto.'

'There you are. Sex crime is quite the fashion. Perverts are queuing up.'

Bertolsson straightened the slats in the blind to let in the bright sunlight. A day was happening out there. It was easy to forget. Inside the institution, specific days did not stand out, one from the other; instead everything congealed into lumps of months, years, into waiting.

'We'll have to place him in one of our normal units. Just for a couple of days, a week at most. Until we find a cell somewhere more appropriate.'

Lennart started to sit up, got halfway, leaned on his elbow and turned towards his boss.

'Arne, what are you saying now?'

'He's not allowed to bring the indictment into the unit anyway.'

'It doesn't fucking well matter. The others will find out and you know what will happen next.'

'Just a few days. No more. Then he'll be transferred.'

Lennart sat up straight.

'Hold it. I know you know. If he is finally transferred anywhere from a normal unit, it will be in an ambulance. No other option.'

It wouldn't smell; he had been here before and he knew that. It didn't help to know. Already on the stairs, his nose, his brain instinctively registered the stench of death.

Sven, as a detective inspector based in Stockholm, had of course visited the Institute of Forensic Medicine more times than he could remember, it was part of his job. He knew he had to turn up, but he also knew that he would never, ever stop hating it, that he would never, ever learn to watch the dead man or woman, human beings who had been breathing, talking and laughing not long before, being opened up and sawn into chunks by a man – almost always a man – in a white coat. The stranger's hands would root around inside the corpse, examine the torn-out innards under bright lights, throw the whole lot back inside the carcass and roughly stitch it together. To cover up what they had done, the corpse on its trolley would be decorously draped, so as not to offend the bereaved who came to inspect it and declare that this was indeed the person they had been living next to, when they had all been full of hope.

Ewert was standing next to him while they waited for someone to open the security lock from the inside. Sven thought of how differently his colleague reacted to the dead the mortuary. Ewert didn't seem to sense the presence of death. To him, the dead were just things. Before leaving, he would often lift the cloth, pinch some accessible body part and say something vaguely funny, as if to prove it beyond insult.

The medic had arrived at the other side of the glass door and was looking for his key-card. It was Ludvig Errfors, one of the most experienced guys here. Sven had time to tell himself that he was pleased that Errfors had been picked, because after all an autopsy on a child must be the hardest to do; they'd be less used to dissecting children. If any one of them was likely to have come across enough little bodies for the procedure to become routine, then this was the man.

Errfors found his card and the lock clicked open.

After the greetings, the pathologist asked about Lund. They told him there was no news. He shook his head and started speaking about the autopsies of the two dead girls in the Skarpholm cellar. It had been his case and he kept commenting on it, while he briskly led the way downstairs.

He was saying that he had never before seen such extreme violence towards children.

Then he stopped in mid-step, turning a very serious face up at them.

'That is, not until today.'

'Explain.'

'I recognise the type of violence. Lund's trademark.'

Bottom of the stairs, then a short corridor, first room on the right. That was where Errfors usually worked.

The dreaded trolley was there, right in the middle of the room. And now there was a smell, though not strong. The ventilation system hummed, steadily shifting volumes of air. If it hadn't been a mortuary, Sven would not have known that the smell came from a dead body.

They didn't have to put on sterile green gowns; Errfors was too experienced not to know when rules could be broken. He switched off all the lamps apart from the one over the trolley, its bright cone of light illuminating the stage in the darkened space.

'This is how I prefer it. No reflections from shiny surfaces to disturb the examination.'

They saw a child's face, looking peaceful, as if asleep; recognised Marie from her parents' photos.

Errfors was rummaging in a plastic case. He produced a pair of big black-rimmed glasses with magnifying lenses, and a couple of A4 sheets of paper.

'Now. She is less serene-looking under the cover.'

The room was silent, well sound-insulated; the rustling of bits of paper invaded their aural space.

'Traces of semen were found in her vagina and anus, and on her body. The perpetrator ejaculated over the body, before and also after death.'

He lifted the cover. Sven turned his face away. He could not bear to look.

'A hard object with a sharp point has been forcibly introduced into her vagina and caused severe internal haemorrhaging.'

As he listened carefully, Ewert observed the exposed body of the little girl. He sighed.

'He did exactly that last time.'

'The acts were more brutal then, but yes, you're right. The MO was the same.'

'Seems he used a curtain rail then.'

'Could be, but I haven't been able to identify the object. Only that it was hard and pointed.'

The pathologist produced the next sheet of paper.

'I have established the cause of death. A powerful blow, probably the edge of the criminal's hand, directed against the larynx.'

Ewert noted the big bruise across her throat. He turned to Sven, who was still looking away.

'Hold on, you.'

'I can't stand it.'

'No need. I'm doing the looking.'

'Thanks.'

'Still, you should note that we've got him.'

'We've got fuck all.'

'Not once we pick him up. He has ejaculated all over her. Just like last time, there's semen all over the place. And we've kept samples from last time. One DNA test will do the trick.'

She had been lying in the wood. In his mind, Sven saw Margareta and Rune Lantz, an elderly couple still in love, sitting together and holding hands while the tears trickled from their eyes, right through the interrogation. Hers had been worst, a silent flow every time she was forced to describe what she had seen.

Let's sit down here. This stone.

Yes.

I want to ask you questions here, with the place in view. Can you cope with that?

Yes.

I want to know what happened, right from the start.

May Rune stay with me?

Of course.

I don't know…

Please try.

I mean, I don't know if I can do this.

Try, for the sake of the little girl.

We take a walk, every evening. If it doesn't rain too much.

Here?

Yes.

Always the same way?

Often a little different. The way. To make a change.

What about this way?

It was the first time, I think. Isn't that right, Rune?

Let's keep this between the two of us now. Just you and me.

Well, I didn't remember it from before.

And why did you walk just here?

It happened because we heard the helicopter.

What about the helicopter?

I didn't like it. Unpleasant, it was. And then that policeman with his dog. We started to hurry and it seemed like a short cut.

What happened when you got here?

Do you have a paper tissue? Or a hanky?

I'm sorry. No.

Forgive me for bothering you.

Please, don't apologise.

We had been walking hand in hand. Then, by that fir tree, we let go.

Why?

It was big, blocking our way. We had to walk round it, on opposite sides.

What happened next?

I thought it was a toadstool. A bright red thing. I kicked it, not hard.

What was it?

A shoe. I realised once I'd kicked it that it was a shoe.

What did you do?

I waited until Rune came along. I just knew something was wrong.

How do you mean that you just knew?

Sometimes you feel things. This time everything was upsetting. The helicopters, the policeman and the dog. And then a shoe.

Tell me what you did. Exactly.

I took the shoe and showed it to Rune. I wanted him to see.

And then?

Then she was lying there.

Where?

On the ground. Under the tree. And I could see that she was destroyed.

Destroyed?

That she wasn't whole. I saw it and Rune did too. She had been destroyed.

She was lying on the ground, you say. Did you touch her?

Why should we? She was dead.

I have to ask you these things.

I can't cope any more now.

Just a few more questions.

I can't.

Did you see anyone here?

The girl. She was lying there, looking at me. All destroyed.

I meant someone else. Someone except you and Rune?

No. We had seen that policeman. And his dog.

No one else?

I can't any more. Rune, tell him I can't.

The pathologist was looking in his plastic folder for a third sheet of paper, but couldn't find it. He left the trolley to search for it on a shelf.

'Here,' he said. 'I've got something else for you that links this case with the past.'

He came back, pulled the cover into place and Sven could look again.

'We noted straight away that the soles of her feet were perfectly clean. The rest of her body was torn and bloody and dirty. We investigated and found traces of-'

'Of saliva? Am I right?'

Errfors nodded.

'Yes, you are. Saliva, just like last time.'

Ewert looked at her face. She wasn't there. Her body was, but she wasn't.

'That's Lund's idea of foreplay. Licking their feet. And their shoes.'

'Not this time.'

'But you just said…'

'Not foreplay, that is. He licked the soles of this girl's feet after death.'

He hadn't seen her for months. They had talked practically every day, but on the phone and only about Marie, things like what time she got up that morning, what she had for breakfast and what new words she had used. Had she played something different, had she cried, laughed, lived? Every moment of her growth was stolen from the parent Marie wasn't with and they compensated as best they could by talking about her. Marie, and only Marie, brought them together without bitterness or accusations or regret about love lost.

Agnes' beautiful face, he knew it, and he also knew what it looked like when she cried; it swelled until her features blurred. He put his hand on her cheek; she smiled, held him more tightly.

A policeman came to the door to let them in. It was one of the senior ones who had come to The Dove, an older man with a slight limp.

'How do you do? I'm Detective Chief Inspector Ewert Grens. We met yesterday.'

'Hello. Fredrik Steffansson. I recognise you. This is Agnes Steffansson, Marie's mother.'

They went down a flight of stairs and along a short hospital-type corridor. The other policeman, the one who'd led the interrogations yesterday, was waiting in a doorway, and behind him, a white-coated doctor with tired eyes.

'Good afternoon. We didn't get introduced yesterday. I'm Sven Sundkvist, Detective Inspector. And this is Dr Ludvig Errfors from the Forensic Science Service. He is responsible for Marie's autopsy. '

Marie's autopsy.

The phrase was a howled obscenity. It cut to the quick, was hateful, final.

The last twenty-four hours ached inside them, hours of hell hope hell hope hell. Yesterday, sometime after midday, Fredrik had said goodbye to the human being that they both lived and breathed for. Now, in a sterile forensic mortuary, they were to look at her destroyed body and admit it was hers. They clung to each other.

Sometimes people cling to each other until they break.

Summer was at a standstill.

The stagnant air was too heavy to breathe, but Sven didn't notice.

He was crying.

He had concentrated on hanging on; soon it would be over, soon air, soon life, soon soon soon, he mustn't break down now as the two people in front of him had done, two parents who had held on tightly to each other as they stood by the mortuary trolley, nodding confirmation when they were shown her face. The father had kissed his little girl's cheek and the mother had leaned over the child's body and collapsed, her head resting on the cover, then they had both wailed, screams that were unlike anything he had ever heard; these two had died in front of his eyes. He had tried to fix his gaze somewhere else, on the wall somewhere; soon he'd get away from here, from the trolley and this whole fucking awful place, soon he'd be running upstairs towards air that was not heavy with death.

They had been clutching each other when they left.

He had been running, corridor, stairs, door, crying as if he would never stop.

Ewert left too. Walking past Sven, he patted the younger man's shoulder.

'I'll be in the car. Take your time, take all the time you need.'

How much time had passed? Ten minutes? Twenty? He had no idea. He had wept until he felt empty, until no more tears came. He wept with them and for them, as if they did not have enough room for the grief, as if their sadness had to be shared out.

When he climbed into the car Ewert touched his cheek lightly.

'I've been sitting here listening to the piss-poor radio. News on every fucking channel and they're pumping out stuff about Bernt Lund and the murder of Marie. They've got what they needed, a summer murder, and from now on they'll be snapping at our heels all day long.'

Sven had put his hands on the steering wheel. Now he gestured at it, then at Ewert.

'What about you driving?'

'Nope.'

'Only just now, for a while. I don't feel up to it.'

'I'll wait until you're ready to start the engine. We're in no more hurry than that.'

Sven sat back. A minute or two passed. The radio changed from one pop hit that sounded identical to all the rest of them, and started on another one just the same.

Sven turned to look at the rear window shelf.

'Do you fancy some cake?'

He reached for his bags, first the birthday gateau, then the wine, and put the would-be feast in his lap.

'Princess Gateau. Jonas said it was his favourite. Two roses on top, one for me and one for him.'

He opened the box and sniffed tentatively.

'Christ, it's off. Twenty-four hours in this heat. It's far gone.'

Ewert shuddered at the sudden wave of rancid smell, made a disgusted face and pushed the whole carton as far away as possible. Then he started fiddling with the radio dial. The mantra was the same, in newscast after newscast.

Little Girl Murdered. Escaped Sex Killer. Bernt Lund. Aspsås Prison. Police Hunt. The Grief. The Fear.

'I can't bear listening to this shit any more. Can't stand having it shoved down my throat. Turn it off, please, Ewert.'

Sven checked the label on one of the bottles, nodded and unscrewed the top.

'I reckon I need some.'

He swallowed a mouthful. Another one. And another.

'Ewert, listen. Yesterday was my fortieth birthday. Celebration time. So I drive to Strängnäs to interview an elderly lady who's found the body of a murdered little girl under a tree. Then, as a follow-up, I come here to look at the girl and to be told that she's got semen in her anus and a sharp object jammed into her vagina. I watch her parents go to pieces as they see their daughter for the last time. Now I can't get my mind round this. Not any of it. I want to go home.'

'Time to get going.'

Ewert took the bottle, then reached out for the top. Sven handed it to him and he screwed it on.

'Sven, you're not the only one. We all feel it. Frustration, alienation. But what's the point of that? We've got to get him. That's what we're meant to do. Get him, before he strikes again.'

Sven started the engine and reversed gingerly out of the parking lot. The forensic building was next to Karolinska, the main Stockholm hospital, and everyone had parked capital- city-style, cramming the cars as tightly as they would go.

'I know what he's like,' Ewert went on. 'I've interrogated him. I've read his stash of reports. Every single fucking line that the forensic psychos have penned. He'll do it again; the only question is when. And where. He's beyond any kind of control. He'll go on until we get him or he kills himself.'

Dickybird was looking for shade. There were no trees in the exercise yard, no walls or fences, nothing to hide behind to get the sun off his back; sweat was pouring off him. The large expanse of gravel had become a huge dust cloud contained within the grey stone of the perimeter wall. They had tried a game of football, five-a-side, with five thousand in the pot, but had to stop, their shoulders red and burning, every breath hurting. The two teams had collapsed on the ground behind the goals. Reps from each team had met in the centre circle to negotiate, both arguing the same case, saying that their boys were ready for more, but it was obvious that the opposition was dead beat, so the bet was off for now, surely?

Skåne had been their rep. When he returned, he sat down between Dickybird and Hilding.

'They came round. They're clapped out. The Russian couldn't fucking breathe.'

'Good.'

'We'll go for it on Monday, play the second half. And I raised the stake. Double. That lot can't kick a fucking ball. No way.'

Hilding stirred, looking anxiously at Dickybird, scratching the sore near his nostril. Bekir was silent, Dragan was silent.

Dickybird spat into the gravel.

'Did you so? Doubled the stake. And who pays if we screw up?'

'Shit, Dickybird, we won't screw up. Fuck's sake, they haven't even got a proper goalie.'

Dickybird lifted his head to examine the other team; everyone was still lying down as if the sun had sapped their collective strength.

'Skåne, you're full of shit. Your brain's stoned senseless. Like, haven't you seen the boys play? Have you been here at all? We've had crap luck, that's a fact. But fine, fine. OK, shithead. OK. We'll go for it, double the fucking pot. But your dosh is on the line if we lose. You'll pay up, I'll see to that. And if we win, we share and share alike. That's fair. Two grand each.'

Skåne shook his head, he didn't give a monkey's. He moved a few metres away, went down on his belly in the dust and started doing press-ups. He counted aloud to let them hear, ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty. His shaved skull and thick neck were gleaming with sweat, it dripped on the ground; he groaned and pushed, emptying himself of frustration and summer and having four years to go.

Dickybird closed his eyes. He stared wide-eyed at the sun for as long as he could stand it, letting in the blinding rays. When he lowered his eyelids there were patterns of rhythmic light, dots and colours and wavy bands; this was a trick he'd played since childhood, closing your eyes made you vanish.

'What news about the big boy? The hitman?'

Hilding realised what he was after, but didn't want to know.

'How do you mean, what news?'

'Like, where is he? I haven't seen him today.'

'How should I fucking know?'

'Make it your fucking job, that's how. Jochum Lang and Håkan Axelsson, the new guys, it's up to you to keep tabs. And let 'em know what's fucking what.'

'Like you did with Jochum?'

'Shut it.'

A breeze was blowing, the first wind for days. It started suddenly, fanning their faces gently so that they forgot about arguing for a while. Dickybird sat up to suck strength from what was no longer unyielding heat. Turning his head towards the wall he saw the man on the running path circling the endless concrete. He had reddish-blond hair and a beard, one of the two new guys; this was the one who had arrived in the morning. Dickybird's eyes followed him, step by step, while he pulled a half-smoked fag out of his packet, one of the many fag-ends inside it. He became agitated and started waving his arms about, his eyes still glued to the stranger.

'Look, there he goes. Axelsson. Not a fucking peep about who he is. He says he's in for GBH. Fuck's sake, the prissy cunt isn't up to pissing against the wind. He's a beast, I can smell it. I fucking sniff these perverts out.'

The cooler air had alerted Hilding. He sat up to watch Axelsson's slow progress.

'I listened to the screws earlier on, and they were on about him, that bugger over there. Like, this place is full up. Every single cell set aside for beasts has someone in it. And that's why he's here, because there was no room anywhere else.'

Dickybird kicked irritably at the gravel and a white cloud of dust rose against the blue sky. He threw the fag-end at the whiteness and it glowed for a while before going out.

'Skåne.'

'Yes, what?'

'You've got a mission.'

'What fucking mission?'

'You've got a six-hour leave coming up. Right?'

'Right.'

'No supervision?' 'Right.'

'You know what you've got to do, then. Like, check out Axelsson's sentence.'

'That's not on. I've got business to see to. Like, I've got a bird, and only six shitty hours.'

Dickybird laughed.

'Forget the bird. Shitheads who double the pool after a drawn first half shouldn't push their luck.'

He pointed at them, first Skåne, then Hilding, then Skåne again.

'Wildboy, you get Axelsson's ID number somehow and tell Skåne. He'll clutch it in his shaky junkie hands and use his leave tomorrow to get the boys at Stockholm registry office to hand over the beast's indictment. And then we'll fucking see. Oh, yeah.'

Hilding scratched his sore until he bled. Then he cleared his throat, for too long. Dickybird interrupted before his lackey could speak.

'Don't even think of arguing. Just do it.'

Lennart Oscarsson stood by the window in his room. It looked out over the exercise yard and football pitch. He observed grown men, offenders who had threatened, beaten up and killed other men, lying on the ground behind the goals, gasping for air. He watched Dickybird and his harem, noted that they stared and pointed at Axelsson, who was walking along the jogging track. It made him gulp with anxiety; he had warned Bertolsson that to place someone with a child porn sentence among the normals could only end one way. In bloodshed. He had seen it before, and only someone unfamiliar with his strange reality could imagine anything different.

He was dying. Another small death with every moment that passed.

His two lives did not mean that he lived more, but that he lived less. Somehow his separate worlds cancelled each other out, consumed each other, so that loving two people, being embraced by two lovers, did not make him feel richer, but as if he'd lost out twice over.

Now Nils was sitting opposite him. They had been holding each other, had agreed that they needed each other. And then Nils had stated his ultimatum.

Lennart understood why. It wasn't that he did not see how living alone, just being somebody's second best, someone who didn't really exist for those who knew them both, would lead up to a point, like now, when they faced each other with an ugly either-or dividing them.

He turned back toward the window, scanning the row of uniform villas just beyond the wall. He lived in one of them. His whole life was in one of those houses, and his wife, whom he had always loved.

The man who stood close behind him now offered him a new life. He could grow old with Nils.

He did not have the strength to keep carrying the lie.

He knew that.

Tomorrow must be the day when he stopped lying.

The whore had been screaming when he pulled off her red shoes. He'd pushed her down then, into the grass, little whores should scream, that was part of it, but there were too many outdoor types about, joggers and strolling OAPs. She hadn't liked it when he kissed the shiny red leather and the metal buckles, she'd screamed a lot, louder than the rest, true, but put it this way, she'd screamed real beautiful. He had to kiss her feet afterwards, maybe he was a bit rough then, more than he needed to be, he had pushed her face into the dry ground for a bit too long. It's hard to handle the little whores, if you're nice to them they just want more cock. This one was just the same.

She'd had lovely feet. Pale pale skin, tiny toes. He had almost forgotten how it was to be with little whores. Four years it had been, how he'd longed for it, wanking wanking wanking, but now there was no need, he'd got at them again.

They acted bad later on. When they had got what they wanted, cock, a hard seeing-to. And when they were silent.

He had hidden this one. A big fir tree, its bottom branches reached the ground and she fitted in underneath. She'd been too mucky, shame to push her down so hard, but he had licked her feet clean. They had tasted of earth.

He had been sitting here for three hours. A useful seat this, not too near but with a good view of everybody who was going in and out. This seemed a proper nursery, he had checked it out before and the children always looked happy.

True, there were the guards. Ordinary baby cops, but always in the way. He'd have to work round them. Same types, in pairs, parked outside every place he'd tried in Strängnäs. But this was Enköping, thirty kilometres down the road, still, here they fucking well were.

Little tiny whores.

He had seen lots already.

Lots with white-blonde hair, that's what he liked best, the pale ones because they were always so soft, their soft pale skin had blood vessels showing through and when he pressed hard with his fingers it left kind of reddish spots.

It was a beautiful church. White, proud and imposing, it dominated the small town, towering so demandingly over it that Fredrik often asked himself if it could ever have been suited to the congregation, or if it was a standard model in the long-ago days when Christianity was law and human beings walked taller.

He liked it very much, regardless of his having left the Swedish Church long ago, because nothing that he couldn't see with his own eyes truly existed for him, and one of the things he could never see was whatever existence was supposed to follow death. Just this church, and just this cemetery, was important to him. It stood for life, for his childhood. Summer after summer, Fredrik had tagged along with his grandad, the church warden, admiring everything he did: digging deep graves, endlessly mowing the grass, arranging the golden numbers on the black board to tell people which hymns to sing. He liked to help. Grandad had allowed him to press the button that started the church bells tolling and, after the service, collect up the bibles on a little trolley with rusty wheels. The tall white altar candles in their heavy brass candlesticks were special and he had to look carefully to make sure that they were properly lined up.

Maybe this was pure, overdecorated nostalgia, but never mind. What mattered was that he'd been very happy, so happy that his grandad had replaced George Best as his idol. He still loved the old man, now a silver-haired ninety-four- year-old, pottering around on his sore legs, sipping black coffee at all times of the day. Fredrik sometimes felt that this part of his past was his only future.

He looked across to Agnes. She was wearing something light-coloured, as they had agreed. She looked worn. In her forties, she had still appeared to be in her early twenties. Now, after three days, the years had caught up with her. As they do. He wanted to hold her, wanted her to hold him. They needed each other now for a little while longer. They would die together. Then without Marie there would be nothing left for them to share.

It was a very quiet funeral, unadvertised. No mourners apart from Fredrik, Agnes and Micaela. No one else, except the two detectives in charge of the investigation, who had asked to be present for technical reasons. After some hesitation he had said yes, they could do what they liked, as long as they kept a low profile and sat at the back.

He walked alone across the grass between the graves. Some were visited and had flower tributes, some were not; stones covered in moss and lichen that made the inscriptions unreadable. When he was a child he had walked here, peering at all the names and dates, calculated the ages of the dead and wondered at lives that were sometimes so short while others could be so long, at babies who never learned to walk, and at grown-ups who had been given a chance to choose what lives to lead.

Soon his daughter would be buried under this lawn. She was only five years old.

'Fredrik?'

She stood behind him, cautiously touching his shoulder. He wheeled round.

'I didn't hear you.'

She smiled a little.

'How are you? Forget that, I'd never understand. But I want you to know that I've thought of you every second since I heard.'

She was one of the good people. He had known her for as long as he could remember; Grandad had liked her, despite his reservations about female ministers. He was an elderly man by then, but he had supported her from the start, done everything to help the young woman in a world of men. Later on, Fredrik had realised that she had been very young back then, although he had seen her as a grown-up among all the others. Now that they were adults together, he felt they were contemporaries.

'Rebecca,' he said. 'I'm so glad it's you.'

'I've been in this job for thirty years now. This is my worst fucking awful day ever.'

Fredrik was taken aback. Her swear word hit him, hit the gravestones, her faith. He had always seen her as security personified, but when he looked up her face was no longer gentle and calm; it had turned tense and brittle, it seemed fractured.

Fredrik stared at the coffin in front of him. Wooden boards, flowers. He held on to Agnes, she to him. They were standing in the front pew. Every movement set up an echo in the empty church.

There was a child in that coffin. His child. He could not grasp the fact, he felt it was just a very short time since she had been there and they had talked and laughed and hugged. Agnes shook with weeping. He held her tighter still. He seemed to have no tears left. The grief had invaded him, stolen everything. All that was left was that gaping wound inside him.

She is no more.

She is no more.

She is no more.

Maybe he should have sung along. The organist had played something.

They left the echoing space together. Rebecca had cast some earth on the coffin and uttered the old words. Afterwards she hugged them, but seemed unable to think of anything comforting to say. Her own mixed feelings, grief and anger and vulnerability, made her pull away abruptly, look at them, hug them once more and then walk away.

They stood in silence on the gravel path in the sunshine. Again the past came back to him; it was like the long summers when he had walked here with Grandad.

Now she was in a hole in the ground, like everybody else.

'Please accept our condolences.'

The two policemen had come up behind them. Both were in black suits; maybe it was police etiquette, maybe their own sense of decorum.

'I have no children, but I have lost people close to me. I can at least try to understand how you feel.'

The older, limping policeman, Grens, had sounded awkward, almost harsh, but Fredrik realised that it was seriously meant and had taken an effort.

'Thank you.'

They reached out, shook hands. Sundkvist said something inaudible to Agnes.

'I don't know if it makes any difference to you,' Grens said. 'Still, I'd like you to know that we'll have him locked up soon. A big team is chasing him.'

Fredrik shrugged.

'True, you don't know if it matters to us. It doesn't. It won't bring our daughter back.'

'I can see that, and I'm sure I would've felt the same. But it's our job to find him, bring him to justice so he can be punished and, above all, stopped from committing more of these crimes.'

Fredrik had just taken Agnes' hand, half turning round to walk away. He wanted to be alone with her, share his grief with her. But these words made him look back at the policemen.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, since Tuesday we have kept every nursery and primary school under surveillance.'

'Is that the kind of place where you expect to catch him?'

'Yes.'

Fredrik let go of Agnes' hand, examined her face. She seemed passive, waiting. She would have to wait a little longer.

'What schools, how many?'

'In this town, and around it. Lots of places, it's a large area.'

'And you watch out in this way because you think there's a chance he'll do it again?'

'More than a chance. We're quite certain he'll strike again.'

'How can you be certain?'

'His past history. And the very clear psychiatric profile. Every specialist in the country has examined him; he has probably been probed and prodded more than any other prisoner in the land. The message is the same every time. He'll do it again, and again. His only other option is to kill himself.'

'And you believe this to be true?'

'Well, take just the fact that he let you see him before… before this happened. It is significant. Our psycho-experts think so, anyway. It means that he has thrown off the last restraints and now there is nothing else left in him except lust to destroy, and self-hatred.'

He took her hand again.

The churchyard seemed very large. He was alone. She was alone.

They would carry on living, he perhaps with Micaela, Agnes with someone, not him. But they would always be alone.

He drove Micaela home first, to their home together, and held her for a long time. Then he and Agnes went out for a meal, just the two of them.

They found a place where they could sit outside, it was a cramped backyard, but it meant that they were on their own. A light breeze was blowing, which helped against the heat. Afterwards he drove Agnes to the train, but just as she was about to buy her ticket he offered to take her to Stockholm and she accepted. It meant that they didn't have to say goodbye there and then. Instead they could sit together for another hour. They needed the space, even if it was just to drive a hundred-odd kilometres on busy roads; it would at least afford them the time to try to understand and accept that, by losing their child, they had also lost their relationship with each other, that they were two grown-ups with nothing but their grief in common.

They said little, because there was nothing much to say. She didn't want to go straight back to her empty flat and said she preferred to be dropped off outside a shop. They hugged, she kissed his cheek lightly and he stayed watching until she had disappeared round a corner.

Afterwards he drove aimlessly round central Stockholm, which was strangely empty apart from stray tourists, maps in hand, now that the heat had made most of the people leave. He stopped twice, once to eat an ice-cream on a bench, once to buy mineral water from a bored cafe owner, and drifted on through the gathering dusk as the city went through its evening routines. The night never became properly dark, it was a Nordic summer's night, and anyway the artificial big-city lights shattered the darkness. In the end he parked in a leafy lane on Djurgården Island and fell asleep, still in the driver's seat, his head leaning against the side window.

His clothes were sticking to him, his light suit crumpled. He had woken early, unwashed and sore after five hours' sleep. Outside, the clucking of bright-eyed ducks mingled with shouting from drunken teenagers going home after an all- night session somewhere.

He started the car and drove unhesitatingly to the Television Centre.

It was three years since he had last seen Vincent Carlsson. He had just moved from newspaper journalism to the national newsdesk of the Rapport and Aktuellt programmes when Fredrik had come to see him. Vincent's place had been at the back of a huge room, where he spent most of his time distributing e-mails and short news items to the buzzing hive of reporters. About a year ago, he had moved to the morning news. As he described it, his new job consisted of carving up events and make news soup from the pieces. He had been made a functional unit in the big news factory, and what with having acquired a wife and children, the regular routine suited him just fine.

After a stroppy porter had made Fredrik wait for the statutory ten minutes, Vincent came down to meet him.

Through the glass window into the corridor Fredrik could see that his old friend hadn't changed; he was tall and dark and kind, with a personal charisma that made him the type of man that women smiled at. They had been to journalism college together, often gone out for drinks in the evening, at which point Vincent would eye up the most delicious bird around and announce that he had to have her. He always got his way; he'd go up to her, chat and smile and laugh and touch her arm and her shoulders and then they'd suddenly leave together. He was like that; it was easy to become fond of him and impossible to tell him to go jump even when he deserved it.

Vincent made the porter open up.

'Fredrik, what are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?'

'Five o'clock.'

'Quarter past, actually.'

They were walking along a corridor without an end in sight. Blue lino, chalk-white walls.

'I'd thought I'd get in touch,' Vincent went on. 'Not as a journalist, of course. But I was afraid to… disturb you. I couldn't think what I could say, without it sounding… wrong.'

'We buried Marie yesterday.'

Fredrik realised that he wasn't making it any easier for his old friend, that he was helpless in the face of something he would never grasp.

'Listen, you don't have to say anything. I know you've thought about it and I appreciate that. But honestly, just give it a miss. It's not what I need now.'

The endless corridor became another corridor.

'What do you need then? You know I'm always happy to see you, whatever the reason, but you're looking so fucking grim. And why just now, early in the morning the day after Marie's funeral?'

They went upstairs, then past the big newsroom.

'I need your help with something. You can do it, I know. And it's the only help I need now.'

Vincent led the way into a room with desks in three of its corners.

'The newsroom is no good. You'd hate it. We broadcast stuff about Lund and you and Marie and policemen all day long. They'd get frantically interested to see you walk in. This is better and nobody comes here before eight o'clock.'

He wandered off to get them both a mug of coffee.

'Here. Drink this, you look like you need it.'

They drank some coffee in silence; a minute or so passed while they avoided each other's eyes.

'Listen, we've plenty of time. I've asked the other editor to take over my bit for a while. She is terrific, much better than me. All the viewer will notice is a clear programming improvement.'

Fredrik reached out to pull a cigarette from a packet on another desk.

'All right if I take a fag?'

'I thought you stopped smoking ages ago.'

'I've just started again.' He extracted a cigarette, no filter, a foreign brand that he didn't recognise.

For a moment they sat in a white mist of smoke.

'Vincent, do you remember the last time you helped me out?'

'Sure do. You were worried about Agnes.'

'I thought she was shagging that bloody awful economist. I was wrong. But it was thanks to you that I got to know what kind of bloke he was.'

'So, what next?' Vincent waved a little irritably at the tobacco-smelling cloud and Fredrik stubbed his cigarette out in his coffee mug.

'More of the same, please.'

'Same what?'

'Personal data. Absolutely anything you can find.'

'And who am I supposed to check?'

Fredrik pulled out a note from the inside pocket of his jacket.

'640517-0350.'

'Really? And who's that?'

'It's Bernt Lund's ID number.'

They had argued afterwards. Their voices rose, the arguments crossed each other, but it was a confrontation in which compassion won out. Now they were close to an agreement.

'It's not that I'm breaking the law, because strictly speaking I'm not. But I am trampling on what I believed our friendship to be, breaking its rules.'

'Not at all.'

'How can you say that? If I help you find personal data on the man who killed your child, then I'm doing the one thing for you that I shouldn't.'

'Only this. It's all I need.'

'You're on a slippery slope, very much so.'

'Stop debating issues, for Christ's sake. Just help me.'

Vincent stood for a moment, to signal what he'd prefer to do. Then he sat down again and switched on the nearest computer.

'Now what?'

'What?'

'What's the fucking data you want?'

'I want everything. Everything you can find.'

Incoming e-mails were stacking on the screen, on top of the morning schedules. Vincent moved the lot, found the right dialogue box, keyed in a name and a password, and the database homepage flickered into life. A list of links to other databases. Company Register, Trade and Trade Associations Register, Swedish Business Information Service, Automobile Register, Address Register, Property Register.

'The number. You had it, his ID number.'

'640517-0350.'

The screen flickered. It was a hit.

'Let's go. You want to know where he has stayed?'

The morning sun had reached the glazed wall of the office. The still air grew warm.

'Is it OK to open the window? It's getting hard to breathe.'

'Go ahead.'

Fredrik rose and opened two of the windows wide. He hadn't realised how the light-coloured suit had made him sweat. He breathed in deeply, once, twice. Vincent's arm went up in the air.

'Bernt Asmodeus Lund. The last entry is a care-of address.'

'And?'

'Care of Håkan Axelsson, Skeppar Street 12. Somewhere in Östermalm. But it's from quite a few years ago; presumably Lund has been kept locked up since then. Otherwise, nothing. Skeppar Street is the last on record.'

Fredrik stood behind Vincent now, his back still aching from sleeping jammed into the car. The fresh air felt good, though.

'What about earlier addresses?'

'There are two. First, going back in time, Kung Street 3, in Enköping, and before that, Nelson Lane, Piteå.'

'Is that all?'

'Everything that's recorded here. If you want older addresses still, you've got to contact the tax office in Piteå.'

'Fine, that's enough for now. But there must be more facts. I want all the facts.'

Fredrik kept his place behind Vincent for nearly an hour, making notes on the flimsy in-house stationery. He had found a pad on the desk with the packet of cigarettes.

Bernt Lund had been registered as the owner of a property in Vetlanda, a block of flats in a remarkably high taxation band at an address in the outskirts of the small town.

The business transaction data included a long list of unpaid debts. His Inland Revenue account was in the red and he had failed to pay his state education loans. Several attempts to recover his assets had been made and failed.

His driving licence had been suspended.

He was a partner in two sleeping limited companies trading in trust holdings.

He had held four posts on sports clubs' steering committees.

On the whole, Lund's life outside was hard to follow, because he had moved around a lot, always trailing financial complications. Now and then he had obviously attempted to organise relationships with others. As Fredrik took notes, he sought to understand what it was he needed, tried to read the reality he could not reach.

Vincent turned and looked at his old friend.

'I wish you'd skip this.'

Fredrik didn't answer, just clenched his jaw tight and stared back.

'Fine. Glare away. It doesn't change what I think.'

Vincent rose, took the two mugs and wandered off to the machine in the corridor outside. Fredrik looked at his disappearing back for a moment. Then he picked up one of the two phones and dialled her number.

'Hi. It's me.'

He had woken her.

'Fredrik?'

'Yes.'

'Not now. I took a sleeping tablet, I'm still too weary.'

'Just one thing, a question. When we cleared your dad's flat there were two sacks full of stuff. Where did they go?'

' What's this about? '

'I simply want to know.'

'I don't have them. The sacks were left in the attic, back in Strängnäs.'

Vincent came back carrying the refilled mugs. Fredrik put the receiver down.

'Agnes – it wasn't easy.'

'How is she?'

'Terrible.'

Vincent nodded, handed Fredrik a mug, drank some coffee himself.

'Let's do whatever has to be done; it's hotting up out there. A plane has come down near Moscow.'

He started searching the Trade Register, essentially listings of small and medium-sized businesses. Again the ID number was the magic key opening all locks to a stranger's life.

'B. Lund Taxis.'

'What?' Fredrik had heard, but asked anyway.

'It's a cab firm, registered as B. Lund Taxis. It hasn't been deregistered.'

Fredrik came over to read for himself.

'Look. It was set up in 1994.'

Fredrik laughed, just a short bark.

'Now what?'

'Nothing.'

'You're laughing at fucking nothing, are you? Remember who I am?'

'Absolutely nothing.' Fredrik laughed again.

'Come off it. You turn up here, just twenty-four hours after you buried your daughter, still wearing your funeral suit, and you stand around having a giggle. At nothing. Excuse me for asking. And shut up.'

'Calm down.'

'Calm down? That's so fucking great. Fantastic. Now what do you want? Business data?'

'That's enough.'

'Collaterals? Registration numbers?'

'Nothing more. It's fine.'

It was raining.

The last three weeks had been dry, but now, suddenly, he felt drops hit his forehead. He took shelter in the car and started the windscreen wipers, but after a little while the shower was over. Getting out of town was easy this early on a Saturday morning and he drove quickly across the Liljeholm Bridge and on towards Strängnäs.

He had put his notes on the dashboard and kept stealing cautious glances at them as he drove. A provincial block of flats. An address in the far north, then in Enköping, which was near Strängnäs, then in central Stockholm. All that seemed irrelevant. But B. Lund Taxis, that was something else, a company of several years' standing.

Stockholm's dull outskirts made him want to listen to music, and he started rooting around in the box under the driver's seat. He would put on Creedence and 'Proud Mary'. He would sing aloud and forget that his grief was refusing to join in.

When he arrived in Strängnäs it was pouring with rain. The water was washing off a dull membrane that had grown to cover buildings and people and all other life-forms. Everyone seemed to feel released and joyous. Despite the downpour he had seen no umbrellas anywhere in the town and no one running for shelter. Now, after parking the car, he observed the man just in front of him and the woman walking a bit further away, saw both slowing their pace and letting their clothes get soaked through as they turned their smiling faces upwards. His own wet suit came away from his body and he stepped out lightly, breathing in the damp, oxygen-rich air. He walked slowly towards his house, wanting the rain to wash away three weeks of heat and dust.

When he opened the front door, she was there, waiting for him in the hall, holding a couple of masks, one with the grin of the Big Bad Wolf, the other one with a Little Pig's snout. She called to him, Daddy! Come and play, hurry, please, Daddy, eager as all five-year-olds are.

He went to the fridge, took a carton of orange juice and sat down on a kitchen chair, drank three large glasses, listening to the silence of the house. It seemed to demand something of him.

He moved the chair to get closer to the phone. Micaela would be back soon, so he had to get on with it. Just two calls, that was all.

First the number. It was in the Yellow Pages; he recognised the big company logo from calls he had made before. A woman answered.

'Enköping Taxis.'

'Hello. My name is Sven Sundkvist. Could you please put me through to your personnel department?'

'One moment.'

Fredrik waited. A woman introduced herself as Liv Steen.

'Good afternoon. I am Sven Sundkvist, detective inspector with the Stockholm City Police, violent crime squad.'

'What can I do for you?'

'I'm looking for information about one of the local firms you sometimes use. The owner is a Mr Bernt Lund, ID 640517-0350. His company is called B. Lund Taxis.'

'I still don't quite understand what you want.'

'I need information quickly. Specifically, which routes did you have him booked for?'

'Look, this was several years ago.'

'Very well. Could you just check any bookings to primary schools or day nurseries?'

'I see… well. Look, we usually don't provide this kind of information just for the asking.'

Fredrik hesitated. This woman was doing the right thing. He was unused to lying and didn't like it; it was so complicated to work out where the limit went and if he had passed it.

'Ms Steen, this is a murder case.'

'Is that supposed to make a difference?'

'It has been covered in the media recently. A sex crime, the victim was a little girl.'

It was very hard to say. He couldn't stand much more of this. The woman hesitated.

'Detective Inspector… Sundkvist, is that right?'

'Yes.'

'Is it OK for me to phone you back?'

'Of course. If it makes you feel better.'

A long pause.

'I don't want to cause any trouble. I'll deal with it now.'

'Thank you.'

He heard her looking through files, heard the clicking sounds as metal ring-bindings opened and snapped shut. His wet suit was sticking to him again and he had started to sweat.

'Sorry to keep you waiting. Here we are. Eight bookings to day nurseries, four in Strängnäs, and four in Enköping.'

'And the addresses, please.'

She turned more pages in her files, then read them out to him.

He recognised all four in Strängnäs; one of them was The Dove. Lund knew it well after driving there for almost a year. After escaping he had returned to a familiar place, where he knew how the children came and went, where the exits and entrances were.

Fredrik thanked Liv Steen for her help. Now his second call.

'Agnes, it's me again.'

'I don't feel any better now.'

'I know. Don't worry. Just one thing. The key to that attic. Do you know where it is?'

'There is no key because there's no lock. I never bothered.

Somehow it was Dad's things and had nothing to do with me.'

'Good. Thanks.'

He wanted the call to end there, now that he knew all he needed to know.

'Why do you ask?'

'He had some things of Marie's. Things she made at school and gave him. I want to take care of them.'

'Why?'

'I just do. Must I argue the case for everything?'

He was thirsty and drank most of a second carton of juice. Then he wrote a note, just a few lines to explain he'd be away for a while but would come back home as soon as he could. He stuck it on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a ladybird.

It was still raining, but less hard.

He walked across the street to the block of flats opposite and took the lift to the attic floor.

He got up from the seat.

It was hard, made from thick wooden planks covered in graffiti. He had been sitting there all morning, for four hours by now, and he felt uncomfortable, stiff all over.

He had watched the little sluts come and go, knew how they moved, what they looked like when they chatted. Good-looking whores, like that other one; they didn't have any tits to speak about, but long, slender legs and knowing eyes that had seen cock before.

He liked the two blondes best. Always happy, they were. He knew their names, they spoke so loudly, and he had a few photos. He had looked so long at their images that he felt he knew the girls well.

They were quite grown up, in a way.

Both were the kind of whore who knows what she wants. When their parents brought them to school, they hardly waved goodbye. He had often thought of little bitches like that, who felt they were in charge, thought of what he would say to them and what he would do to them.

He felt lonely now. Having watched and waited for so long, it was time they got together, the three of them. The parents would be late, their sort always were.

He checked the time. Five past eleven. Almost six hours to go.

In the afternoon. Like with the other one.

Whores like to be outside in the afternoon. It had been too hot earlier, but now after the rain they would be out in the grounds for a long time, that's what they liked to do. It would be crowded, what with all the kids around, and the local fuzz wouldn't notice a thing. He knew just what he would do.

It was dark. Fredrik had been in the attic only once before, when he and Agnes had come here to store what little was worth keeping from Birger's flat. Agnes' father had simply stopped living, between one breath and the next, apparently having made an instant change-over from being alive to being dead. They had found him naked in bed, propped up to read a magazine, Boating News, which he was still holding; the reading lamp was lit and on the bedside table his diary lay open at the day's date, with a completed note about the midday temperature and extent of rainfall, as well as recording his trip to the corner grocer's to hand in his pools coupon at the tobacco counter and then get something for his supper. Below this entry he had added a few lines about feeling oddly tired and the beginnings of a headache, for no reason he could think of, and that he had taken a couple of aspirin.

Fredrik had never got to know him. Birger had been hard to reach, a big, burly, aggressive man, who was so completely unlike his daughter in every way that it was just about impossible to believe them to be related at all.

He went into the storage pen that belonged to Birger's old flat. Vaguely familiar things were stacked against the walls, boxes of clothes, a standard lamp, two armchairs, four fishing rods, a bicycle trailer. Getting ready to squeeze between the chairs, he heard the attic door open and held still in mid-movement.

He listened and waited in the murky light. At least two of them; they were whispering.

Then a high young voice, a boy's.

'Hello-oo!'

Silence, then more whispering.

'Hello there, we're all coming in! Lots of us.'

He recognised the voice, smiled, and was just about to call out when the other one, so far silent, spoke up, sounding a little older and tougher.

'See? It works every time, I know that.'

Two boys, who slowly found their way down the central aisle, on the look-out. He could hear their tense breathing, and spotted them when they were just a few pens away. He didn't want to scare them.

'Hi, David!'

Too late. The sudden voice had obviously alarmed them.

'Look over here, it's me. Fredrik.'

Now they were looking the right way and made him out where he stood among the boxes and chairs.

The dark-haired, shorter one was David, but his mate was a new face, red hair and freckled skin. He was taller, more strongly built than David. The boys looked at each other with the disappointment ghost-busters feel when the awful spectral being they have been chasing turns out to be somebody's dad in the wrong place.

David pointed at Fredrik.

'Hey, that's just Marie's dad.'

David had been Marie's best friend, they had been there for each other since way back, since their first efforts to walk. They had gone off to the same playground and the same nursery school, had supper and stayed the night in each other's homes, woken together in the morning before everybody else, making up for the brothers and sisters neither had.

David fell silent again immediately. He felt very bad about saying Marie's name like that, because it must upset Fredrik now that Marie had become dead and would never come back, or so he had been told. He turned away, pulling at his mate's arm to make him come along.

'Don't go. You stay, boys.'

David looked back. He was crying now.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I forgot.'

While Fredrik manoeuvred himself to get out from the store, he wondered how young children might construe death. Could they grasp that the dead were not with them and never would be, that dead people don't breathe, or see, or hear or come out to play ever again? He didn't think they could, and neither could he, not really.

'David, come here. You too. What's your name?'

'Lukas.'

'OK. You too, Lukas.'

Fredrik sat down on the dusty floor of reddish-brown pitted bricks, pointing to show that he wanted the boys to come and sit next to him, one on either side.

'Sit here, and I'll tell you something.'

They did as he asked. He put his arms round their shoulders.

'David.'

'Yes.'

'Do you remember what we played in our house the last time you came?'

'You were the Big Bad Wolf,' David said and smiled. 'We were the Little Pigs. We won. We always won!'

'Sure, you won, as usual. Was it fun, do you think?'

'Yes it was! It was great fun. Marie is good at playing.'

She was standing in front of him. She was smiling, insisting that they must play now, just one more time. He sighed, the way he always did; she laughed and they played again.

'She was good at playing. Great fun to play with. And she laughed a lot. You know all that, don't you, David?'

'Oh yes. I know that.'

'Good. So it's important to know too that you mustn't ever feel worried about saying Marie's name. It's fine, with me and with everybody.'

David looked fixedly at the brick floor for a while. He was trying to understand. Then he spoke, first to Lukas, then to Fredrik.

'Marie is fun to play with and I'm friends with her. But she has become dead.'

'Yes, she has.'

'But you won't get sad if I say her name?'

'No, I promise I won't.'

They stayed there for a good half-hour, while Fredrik told them about Marie being dead. He described her funeral, how the vicar had put spoonfuls of earth on her coffin before it was lowered into a hole in the ground. David and Lukas kept asking questions. Why do people have blood in their stomachs? How come a child can die before the grown-ups? How can it be that you talk to somebody one day and the next day you can't ever again?

He hugged them both before they left, realising that this was the first time he had articulated the fact of Marie's death. The boys had made him. They had listened to his explanations and asked more questions when they weren't satisfied, forcing him to try harder. He had even spoken of his grief, admitting that he had not cried once. This shocked them and they wanted to know why. He said truthfully that he didn't know the answer, but it must have to do with the way sadness could build up inside a person who somehow couldn't let it out.

Then the attic door closed behind them and he was left alone in total silence. He pulled himself together, pushed his way back in among the objects in the store, where he found the two sacks tucked away behind everything else. He turned them upside down. Lots of stuff inside, books, clothes, crockery. He found what he was looking for in the second sack.

The rifle was so large it stuck in the rough weave.

It was a first-class hunting rifle, he had Birger's word for that. Hunting anything, elk, deer, hare, had become an absorbing pastime of his later years. He had been proud of his rifle and cared for it meticulously. One of the images Fredrik retained was of the old man seated at the kitchen table, laboriously taking the gun apart, cleaning every piece and then putting it together again. Afterwards he would sit there pointing it at anybody or anything that came to mind.

Fredrik wrapped the rifle in one of the sacks and left with the package under his arm.

Siw's voice was booming, loud enough to make the walls tremble. 'You've Just Been Playing With Me', originally called 'Foolin' Around' in 1961. As the sound bounced around the room, it amplified itself, became louder still and more insistent.

You've just been playing with me, so Here's your ring back and off you go Ewert Grens had snubbed his visitors, told them that as far as he was concerned three was a crowd, but that they could hang around if they stayed put and shut up. This was the third track from the tape he had picked, turning the volume up a little for each new tune. Sven Sundkvist and Lars Ågestam looked at each other. Ågestam was baffled. Sven shrugged dismissively: nothing doing, this is how it goes. All they could do was wait until Siw had sung her way through the programme. Ewert had produced the special photo of her that he had snapped himself in the Kristianstad Palais back in 1972 and was singing along. He knew every word and become louder each time the refrain came round.

At one point the singing stopped, the crunching sound of the needle on the long-playing record took over, and Ågestam was just opening his mouth to speak when the intro to the next item started up. Ewert waved irritably in his general direction, shut your face, and turned the volume up a bit more.

It's clear you're going to leave me, all they say about you is true

Ågestam had heard enough of Siw. He was in a hurry and, besides, he was in charge.

He was fed up to the teeth with sex maniacs, rapists, flashers, paedophiles. Not another pervert, he wanted something else, something better, to advance advance advance.

And then they handed him this brief. A sex crime. But also his ticket to advancement.

He had found it hard to stop himself from laughing wildly when he learned that he was to be the head of the pre-trial investigation of Bernt Lund, while the chase was still on. Every newscast, every front page was devoted to it, the whole country had ground to a halt; the murder of a five-year-old girl by an escaped convict, a known sex killer, this demanded every ounce of spare media capacity. So, this was his big chance. His breakthrough. For the duration, the nation's interest was focused on his case and, therefore, on him.

I'm in love with you but it cannot be

You won't get a single thing more from me

That's it. No more crap like this, not one more daft line.

He rose, walked over to the bookshelf, had a look at the awkward tape recorder, found the off button and pressed it.

Silence.

The room was totally silent. Sven stared at the floor. Ewert was trembling with rage and his face had gone bright red.

Ågestam knew he had just broken the oldest unwritten rule in the building. Actually, he didn't give a shit.

'Grens, I'm sorry, but I've had enough. No more pathetic rhymes for today.'

'Fuck off then!' Ewert shouted. 'Out of my room, you little arselicking creep!'

Ågestam had made up his mind.

'You sit here listening to folk-pop from the nineteenth century instead of doing your job. Of course I had to shut off this bloody tosh!'

Ewert rose, still shouting at the top of his voice.

'I've listened to this music and worked harder than anyone else while you were still filling your nappies. Now fuck off before I do something I shouldn't!'

Defiantly, Ågestam returned to his chair and sat down.

'No. I want to know where we're at. And when you've told me what you know, I'll let you have a clue that I think you don't know about. If I'm right, I stay. If not, I'll leave. Deal?'

Ewert had just made up his mind to manhandle the little prat, throw him out bodily. He despised the prosecutors, the whole fucking lot of them were academics, career boys, who had never been out there getting hurt. This one would crawl away from here if he had anything to do with it. He was on his way when Sven got up.

'Ewert, cool down. Think. Give him a chance. If he's got a clue he must tell us. If we know about it already he'll go away.'

Ewert hesitated and Ågestam grabbed the opportunity, turning quickly to Sven.

'Fine. Now, where have we got with this case?'

Sven cleared his throat.

'Ah. Well, we've investigated all Lund's past addresses. Nothing so far, but we're keeping an eye on them. And we've checked up on all his paedophile pals. Again, they're under observation.'

'Any hints from the public?'

'Flooding in, we're up to our necks already. What with the news, broadcast and press, people know what's happened and think they see things. Lund has been observed everywhere in the country by now. We're sifting through the tip- offs, checking everything, but so far there's been nothing worth while.'

'What about Lund's possible targets?'

'We're keeping watch on as many as possible. Which also means that we're in regular communication with all nursery and primary schools within a fifty-kilometre radius of his last one.'

'Anything else?'

'Not really, no.'

'In other words, you're stuck?'

'That's right.'

Ågestam waited. Ewert slapped his diary against the desk.

'Get on with it, you little prat,' he said angrily. 'And then leave.'

The young prosecutor got up, walked slowly round the room, from wall to wall.

'I've got a lot of experience of the taxi trade,' he began. 'Driving taxis was how I financed my five years at university. I drove people all over the area. Good money. It was in the days before deregulation. It's different now, with a taxi lurking at every street corner.'

'So bloody what?' Ewert raged.

Ågestam ignored the aggression, the hatred.

'I learned a lot about how the trade works, so much so that I had enough material for a webpage called Taxilnfo. You know the kind of thing, stuff not normally put together, like telephone numbers, business structures, price comparisons. The lot. As a matter of fact, I made myself into some kind of expert. People turned to me, like tourist agencies and so on. The press.'

Ewert was stirring again; it was hard to work out whether he had actually taken in one single thing, he kept thumping on the desk and breathing noisily. Sven had seen him in bad moods before, barking at people or whingeing, but never quite like this, beyond any dignity or control.

'You stuck-up twit, now what?'

'Bernt Lund has been a taxi driver, isn't that so?'

Sven nodded.

'Even set up his own business, B. Lund Taxis or something?'

He had turned to Ewert now, and was waiting quietly for a reply.

Four minutes passed.

That is a long time to wait when a room is out of kilter and thoughts, feeling, bodies all seem out of sync with each other.

'He did,' Ewert hissed. 'A long time ago. We've been all over it, turned that fucking bankruptcy nest inside out.'

Ågestam no longer walked from one wall to the next; he had set his thin legs free and was almost running about, as if in a hurry or a state of jittery nerves. His light- coloured, slightly too long hair flopped, his large glasses misted over and his whole being reverted to a kind of boyishness; he became a rebellious, determined schoolboy once more.

'I understand, you've checked the firm's economic base, found out how it was set up and how big it was. Good. But did you look at what he actually did?'

'He drove a car. Taxied the locals from A to B and trousered the fare.'

'Whom did he drive?'

'There are no fucking records.'

'No, not of individuals, but bookings are recorded if they are made by named organisations, local councils for instance.'

He stopped and stood still between Ewert, seated at his desk, and Sven, in the visitor's chair, continuing to talk and carefully including both of them, turning this way and that to show that they were both being addressed.

'It is problematic for small outfits in the taxi business to manage on occasional fares, from pick-ups and so on. Most of them like to have fixed runs on their books, we call them school runs. Fixed bookings pay less well but you can count on the income. Typically, actual school runs involve young children, who are ferried to nursery or primary school. If you've been in the trade for as long as Lund had, the odds are that you've got several runs of this kind. And, of course, it's especially likely with somebody as sick as he is. In other words, I suggest you trace his regular bookings record. My prediction is that you'll find some for little kids to be taken to places which he'll have got to know well. And fantasised about, and maybe wants to return to.'

Ågestam pulled a comb from a trouser pocket and tidied his short-back-and-sides. His appearance mattered, it was correct, white shirt and discreet tie, grey suit; he liked feeling proper, complete, prepared.

'Will you investigate this?'

Ewert stared ahead in silence, bursting with anger; he had to give vent to it or let it die a death. He had rarely been so provoked. This was his room, his music, his way of working. You either respected it or you could stay outside in the corridor with the rest of the goons. He couldn't fathom the origin of his accumulated rage, or why it had grown so overwhelming, but never mind, that's how he felt, and now when all that time had passed and he had aged in his job, he could just be himself, without having to explain why he was this way or that. True, some people used the word bitterness to describe his mindset. No matter, he wasn't interested in their fucking choice of words and had no urge to be liked by all and sundry. He knew who he was and had learned to put up with it.

He realised that the young prosecutor had pointed out something that should be one of their next tasks, but it went against the grain to admit it.

Sven reacted differently. He sat up straight and looked appreciative.

'This sounds like a good lead. It could well be just as you say, and if so, our catchment area, as it were, could be significantly reduced. We've gone all out on this case, tried to find time and resources, but we're short of both. That's a fact. If you turn out to be right, we'll gain time and we can focus on resource use. And it should bring us closer to him. I'll start checking this at once.'

He left. They heard his swift footsteps disappear down the corridor, but stayed were they were, without speaking. Ewert had no more energy left for shouting and Ågestam realised how drained he felt, and how tense he had been.

An interlude. Stillness, silence. Then Ågestam moved away from the centre of the room, walking past Ewert and over to the bookshelf. He started the tape recorder. 'Throw It Away', originally called 'Lucky Lips' in 1966.

I've heard what they say, you have been aroun'

Squiring pretty girls all about town

Scratchy. Too jolly. Desperate rhymes.

Ågestam went away and closed the door behind him.

It had stopped raining. The last drops were splashing on the ground when he came out on the front steps. The air was clear and easy to breathe. The clouds had thinned, letting the sun through, and soon it would be hot, dry, dusty again.

Fredrik crossed the street quickly, carrying the sack. He put it on the back seat of his car. He was preoccupied; inside his head he was talking to two small boys about death. David and Lukas had been sitting close to him on the hard brick floor, listening to him and understanding, but always throwing his answers back at him, batting new questions his way; at five and seven years of age they were grappling with their wonder about body and soul and the dark that no one can see.

Marie came back to him. He had thought of her every single moment since Tuesday; the image of her still, withdrawn face had blocked every attempt to see anything else. Now he actively tried to recall her as she had been before she died, the little being for whom he lived. What had she thought about death? They had never talked about death and dying, never had a reason to.

Had she understood?

Had she been frightened?

Had she closed her eyes? Fought?

Had she realised, in any sense, that death could happen, just like that, and death meant eternal solitude, inside a flower-decked white coffin underneath a freshly mowed lawn?

He set out to drive through the narrow streets of his hometown. There were four addresses on his list here, and four in Enköping. He was certain of being right. Lund would be sitting outside one of these schools, waiting, as he had done outside The Dove. Fredrik remembered the old policeman and what he had said when they met in the cemetery, how utterly convinced he had been that Lund would violate again and again, until someone stopped him.

First call, The Dove. It was on the list and Lund might as well have returned there as gone elsewhere, like an animal returning to a place where it has once fed. Fredrik had driven this route for almost four years now, and knew every house, every street sign. He hated it. The appearance of safe, contented habit held within it a suffocating grief. He was at home, but it would never be home again.

He parked a few hundred metres away. A Securitas van with truncheon-carrying guards had drawn up near the gate, and a little further away was a police patrol car with two uniformed officers. How strange to sit here again, as he had done six days earlier, when he had left his daughter at the school for a few short hours. Why? They had been so late that day. But Marie had nagged and he had felt guilty because he had stayed in bed all morning. If only he had said no and taken her hand to go for a walk, maybe into town to buy an ice-cream at the harbour, as they often did. If only he had told her that she mustn't go outside in the afternoon heat, but stay in with the other children.

He sat in the car for a little longer and then went into the woodland that began near the gate. He looked everywhere, checking all the surrounding area until he was convinced that Lund wasn't anywhere around, watching the school. Next he went on to The Wood, a nursery school a few kilometres away and closer to the centre of town, listening to the radio news as he drove. The top item was the aeroplane accident near Moscow, one hundred and sixteen fatalities probably due to a technical malfunction in a poorly maintained Russian plane.

After that, most of the time was spent on Marie and the murder hunt. There was an interview with the prosecutor who was leading the investigation, but he had nothing much to add. The older of the two policemen from the cemetery told the reporter rather loudly to get lost. The last part was an interview with a forensic psychiatrist, who had examined Lund several times in the past. He warned of what he called Lund's obsessional need to repeat his behaviours; the man was under constant internal pressure, which could only be relieved by acting out violent fantasies.

Fredrik pulled up near The Wood. Checked, and drove on to The Park and The Stream.

Everywhere, security guards and police cars.

Bernt Lund wasn't at any of these schools. Probably hadn't gone back to any of them.

Fredrik left Strängnäs on Road 55 to Enköping, driving quickly. Four addresses to go.

He glanced at the sack in the back seat.

He felt no hesitation.

Right was right.

At a stroke the treeless exercise yard became bearable. The rain had come sweeping in over Aspsås and for a few hours dozens of the half-naked inmates, wearing only the regulation blue shorts, ran up and down, roaring with joy at not having to narrow their eyes against harsh sunlight, cough in dust-laden air, sweat heavily even with the slightest move.

The second half of the interrupted football match had got under way, stake doubled, ten thousand big ones in the pot. Now it was full time and still a draw. The teams were stretched out behind the goals, now as then, but this time it rained and they turned their faces towards the sky and the coolness.

Dickybird was lying between Hilding and Skåne. Then he got up to lie further away and the others followed him.

'Look, Skåne, you sad fucker, how could you be such a moron? Why go and fucking double, when the team doesn't have the faintest? I mean, right from the start?'

Skåne shifted about, looked at Hilding for support but didn't get any.

'We haven't lost, it's a fucking draw. What's your problem?'

'We haven't lost! You thick cunt! What have we got to show? Zero, that's what. Who's touched the ball this time round?' Dickybird looked at his mates. 'Nobody. True or false, eh? Has any of us done one fucking thing except chasing after the other lot? What's it now? Fucking extra time! Right? So we can carry on chasing and they can carry on kicking the ball between them. You useless motherfucking loser!'

Hilding stared upwards at the falling rain. It was difficult to stay still, to keep his finger off his sore. He was restless because he was miles away; who cared about a shitty football match with a few thousand at stake, he was worrying about worse things. Now and again he glanced at Skåne and tried to catch his attention. So far they were the only ones who knew and also knew Dickybird well enough to believe that he would murder that peddo.

Skåne had been off on his home leave, six hours starting at seven o'clock in the morning. Out in town alone, no screws. First move, off to borrow his brother's car. Next, drive to Täby, and the two-bedroom flat of his own queen of hearts. They had a coffee first and then undressed each other, feeling almost shy after all this time. Afterwards, when he was lying close to her naked body, she had caressed his cheek and told him that she had waited for him, fantasised about him and longed for him, and realised that, the way she felt, she would put up with waiting for another four years. He had stayed with her longer than he had time for and then driven back to the centre much faster than he should have. He'd hit maddening queues where the main route to town joined the inner city streets, so he had parked the car near a hamburger stall and run to catch the bus to Fleming Street, then run again into the court building. The fucking scribbler behind the counter had taken his time, but he had got the indictment and shot away, run all the way to the car, and driven like crazy to Aspsås, where he rang the bell with seventeen minutes to spare.

Of course the indictment contained exactly what he had feared. When he turned up in the unit just before the football was due to start, he promised Dickybird he'd give an account of what he'd found out as soon as the final whistle had blown. Their premonitions were right: Axelsson had been convicted of possession of child pornography and had been one of the seven men in that weird paedophile network.

He had got hold of Hilding for a brief moment during the match and let him know the worst; he had got the drift all right and started scratching his fucking nose. If Dickybird got to know before they had got Axelsson out of the way there would be an execution and neither of them had the stomach for that; anyway, bloody murder was pointless, the only outcome was heightened security, endless hours of bang-up, constant visitations. The screws would be all over the place, turning cells upside down until they finally took on board that nobody would tell them one single useful thing.

Hilding got up and shook off the gravel sticking to his wet skin, irritating Dickybird.

'Fuck's sake, what's your problem? There's a game on.'

'Off to the crappers. No play for a bit yet. I can't fucking well dump out here.'

He walked towards the open door on one gable of the grey lump of a building, then ran to Axelsson's cell. Empty. He checked the toilets, the showers, the kitchen. All empty. He kept scratching, his nose was bleeding now, and ran to the gym. Outside he hung back for a few seconds, glanced around, then went inside and looked first in the weight- training corner.

There he was, on his back on a bench with hands round a barbell raised above his chest. He was doing bench-presses and had just let the bar with eighty kilograms of discs down. Now he started pushing up again. Hilding watched. Axelsson breathed out and lowered the bar. In a few long strides Hilding was there before the bar went up again. He grabbed hold of it and, leaning on it with his whole weight, squashed it down across Axelsson's throat.

'Are you listening? I'm not doing this because I like you.'

Axelsson went red in the face, tried to kick him, but had a hard time drawing breath.

'What are you fucking on about?'

Hilding screamed with anger and pushed the bar downwards.

'Shut the fuck up, creep!'

Axelsson stopped trying to kick or resist, and Hilding reduced the pressure a little.

'I've just heard from Skåne, he's got your indictment! You filthy beast, you fuck little kids!'

Now Axelsson was really frightened. He couldn't speak, but his eyes, Christ, he knew.

'You're a beast, but you're in luck, because I don't want no murders in the unit. Not worth it. Here's your chance. I'll wait for ten minutes before I tell Dickybird. When he gets to know, you'll be bloody lucky if you leave this place in an ambulance.'

Axelsson's red face went paler, almost white, and he was kicking wildly, trying to wrench free.

'Why are you telling me?'

'Pay attention. I don't give a monkey's for you. Just that, I don't want a killing.'

'What can I fucking do? I'm stuck where I am.'

Hilding pushed down again, just once more, and Axelsson coughed, fought for air.

'Now listen. If you want to survive today, listen fucking hard.'

Axelsson nodded.

'When I've left, you take your sick peddo body off to the screws' office. Tell them that you want a transfer to segregation wing. Get that? Voluntary stay in seg. Say we've got your indictment and then they won't argue. And not a fucking peep about who warned you. Is that clear?'

Axelsson nodded, this time eagerly. Hilding stood over him, pushing down on the bar. He laughed suddenly, twisted his face while he sucked saliva into his mouth, then moved until his lips were over Axelsson's face so he could let the blob of spit fall straight down.

Ewert Grens didn't want to go home. Ever since learning that Lund had escaped, he hadn't left his office until late. He always stayed on when something out of the ordinary had happened.

But he felt tired now; the years were catching up with him, that was for sure. Soon he would be sixty, an ageing, greying man. Running for the bus was harder, his body moved less easily, his arms didn't strike as hard, but still that bloody awful compulsion lurked inside him; if anything it was getting stronger, propelling him forward regardless how many fucking months of life it deprived him of. He had to find answers that made sense, were coherent and meaningful. The answer usually meant that some crazed bastard got locked away.

Still a driven pro, but he caught himself speculating now and then about how he would cope with being pensioned off. The odds were that he would die. He was his job. Being respected as Detective Chief Inspector Grens was satisfying, but poor compensation compared to the threatening loneliness soon to come, chiefly self-imposed but all the more ugly because of it. He was nobody's father, or grandad, or even son, not any more.

Instead of going home that evening, he wandered the corridors, played some of Siw's songs and, towards midnight, fell asleep in one of the visitor's chairs. After four or five hours of fitful sleep, the light woke him. He felt fine, ready to push hard again. First, while the air was fresh, he'd go for a short walk in the small park nearby, the park with no name.

He was setting out when someone called his name. Sven came hurrying along, his thin face flushed with tension.

'You look stressed.'

'I am stressed. Something else has turned up.'

Ewert pointed in the general direction of the exit.

'I'm off for a walk, need some fresh air. Come along if you want to tell me something.'

Ewert walked as slowly as usual and Sven impatiently shortened his stride, while he was thinking about the right way to begin his story.

'So there's a problem?'

'Look, I did what we agreed I'd do,' Sven said, hesitating before starting up again. 'I followed up Ågestam's taxi idea. I phoned round and got the answers we need from a company called Enköping Taxis.'

Ewert breathed in deeply. Rarely had city centre air felt so good.

'I'll be buggered. Tell me more.'

'Here's the snag. The woman I spoke to was on the ball, knew everything about the company and so on. Then she said she didn't understand why I'd called again about the same thing. After all, she had replied to my questions that morning.'

They had reached the tiny park round the corner, just a lawn, a few trees and a playground, but tempting with shade and greenery.

'What's this? Had you called?'

'Listen. Ågestam was right. The Enköping woman confirms that Lund had eight school bookings. She gave me the addresses, four in Enköping and four in Strängnäs. The Dove was one of them.'

Ewert stopped.

'Christ almighty!'

'I've been in touch with Securitas and the local stations, and told them to intensify the surveillance at the eight addresses.'

'Anyway, now we know. The sick bastard won't be able to stop himself. He'll be there.'

Ewert started walking again, then stopped in mid-step.

'So what's this about you phoning twice?'

'I didn't. Apparently someone calling himself Sven Sundkvist did call and asked the same questions about Lund's school bookings. Someone who'd worked out the connection and wants to get Lund, but not to hand him over to the lawyers. Presumably.'

They walked on in silence for a bit. Sven was obviously still full of things to tell him, but Ewert wanted his bit of peace first and kept whistling ' Girls in the Back of the Car' loudly and out of tune. He sensed the elements of the case were jelling; Lund must be getting desperate and time was passing and that weakened hunted men, he knew. He had lived with these sick bastards for so long, had met them, known them. He knew so much.

They sat down on the bench by the playground sandpit, where three toddlers were playing.

'OK, Sven. Give me the full story.'

'The media have focused on Ewert Grens. You've done the interviews. I haven't been part of the picture for most people outside the force. A few officials or technicians have met me, but apart from people like that, only Marie Steffansson's friends and relatives fit the bill and they're the only ones with a motive. I started by checking out the father, and stopped with him.'

Ewert nodded and waved his hand impatiently.

'I've spoken to Fredrik Steffansson's partner, Micaela

Zwarts. She hasn't seen Fredrik since the funeral. Naturally she's worried, she knows that he has been in very bad shape and isn't likely to get any better because he hasn't allowed himself to mourn. Just kept himself to himself. She feels no one can reach him. He came home yesterday morning and left a note for her, basically saying "Back soon". That was all.'

He caught his breath. Ewert flapped his hand again.

'Right. OK. Next I phoned Marie's mother, Agnes Steffansson. The call was switched to her mobile, because she was in Strängnäs to collect Marie's things from The Dove. She is distracted with grief, but sensible and quick on the uptake. She confirmed everything Zwarts said. Apparently Fredrik phoned her a couple of times and she thought it was just about trying to stay in touch. My call got her worried. Then she suddenly broke off, saying she had to check something and would call me back. Twenty minutes later she did. She explained that she'd driven across town to her deceased father's old flat. Fredrik had asked her about some of her father's possessions, which had been left bundled up in the attic.'

Sven cleared his throat, he was upset and had a hard time organising what he had to say.

'Her father's hunting rifle had been kept there. It's a biggie – a 30-06 Carl Gustav, powerful enough for elk hunting, good optics, with long-range laser sight. People will keep dangerous weapons in a fucking unlocked storeroom!'

Ewert waited. Sven delayed, as if his silence might stop bad things from happening.

'By then she was very frightened, crying. The rifle had gone.'

Lars Ågestam felt sick. He had left his desk at the Crown Prosecution Service to go and lean over a basin in the toilet. Everything had looked so straightforward, so good. He had got the brief of his dreams. To top it all, his knowledge of the taxi business would help to catch Lund, and at the same time he had scored against that bitter old has-been of a policeman.

One call from Sven Sundkvist had ruined everything. Suddenly he was landed with a case of a father out to avenge the murder of his daughter.

It was only too easy to see what would happen next. For the media, and the public at large, the Marie story was about right versus wrong. The sexual violation and murder of a five-year-old girl had no shades of grey, no areas of doubt. But now there was this new player, a father distracted with grief and equipped with a gun good enough to hit a reasonably still human target at three hundred metres. The image of the mourning parent, that was something else. Ågestam knew that if he ended up prosecuting Marie's father, he'd be regarded as spitting in the face of goodness itself. He would embody the nightmarish state executioner who acts regardless of the ordinary citizen. His big brief had become a noose round his own neck.

The thought made his need to vomit acute. He stuck his fingers down his throat to get it over with. He must be able to think clearly, as he usually did.

He had been sitting in the car watching for half an hour by now. It was getting close to five o'clock. Another hour to go before the nursery school called Freja would close.

Freja's location was pretty, in a valley with low hills rising on every side. When he arrived Fredrik had parked his car in a meadow near the top of the highest hill, which gave him a clear view of the whole site. Just as at the other schools, he began by going off to search the grounds, circling the building systematically.

It was when he returned to his hillside vantage point and was about to open the car door that he had seen him, quite close, crouching down.

They had picked the same sight-line, but he had settled on a slight rise a little further down the slope, some two hundred metres from the two white school buildings. Wearing a green tracksuit and sheltering behind low bushes, with his back protected by the roots of a fallen tree, he was well hidden. He was sitting there motionless, holding a pair of binoculars trained on the school playground, observing the children playing inside the fence. Fredrik had looked him over through his own binoculars. There was no question in his mind. This was the man he had nodded to six days ago, this was Lund.

Everything fitted: his face, his build, something about his posture.

That man had killed his child, taken her away for ever. There he was. Fredrik had tried to stop feeling, to chase the pain into hiding.

Down there, two fed-up police officers were counting the endless dull hours of watching a locked gate. Their patrol car must be blisteringly hot and stuffy. In the last half an hour alone, both officers had got out twice. The smoke of their cigarettes hung in the still air.

Only the odd snatch of birdsong and the distant rumbling from the motorway ruffled the drowsy calm on the hillside. Fredrik got out, paced round the car and kneeled in different places, pretending to aim and checking where he could rest his elbows. His light suit, already crumpled and stained, got greenish patches at the knees. In the end he found a comfortable position.

He was breathing deeply, easily. His body was flexible and willing. He felt alert.

Next, he pulled the heavy rifle from the boot. He hadn't used it for many years, not since he had gone hunting with Birger. That was well before Marie was born, maybe seven or eight years ago. He and his father-in-law had tried hard to find something they could share other than their love of Agnes. Hunting was just about the only thing they could at least pretend to enjoy together.

Fredrik balanced the gun in his hand, rocking it up and down. Then he returned to the place he had located, kneeled and lifted the rifle, his hands steadied by leaning on the hood of the car. He got Lund in his sights and centred the cross hairs on his back.

He waited. He wanted to hit him from in front.

Another quarter of an hour passed and then Lund rose. The roots of the tree and the bushes no longer protected him as he stretched to exercise his stiffened joints.

The laser beam searched him out, moved tremblingly over the breathing body. Fredrik held it for a moment on the target's crotch. Then upwards.

Suddenly Lund discovered the red dot and swatted at it as if at a wasp, pointlessly flapping his arms about.

Fredrik released the trigger. The first shot shattered the silence.

For a moment nothing else existed.

The flapping arms disappeared. Lund had been thrown violently backwards and crashed heavily to the ground.

He tried to get up, slowly.

Fredrik moved the bright dot to the man's forehead, let it rest there for a second.

The sight of an exploding head was somehow unexpected.

Then the silence closed in again.

Fredrik put the gun on the car hood, sagged until he reached the ground, then lay down holding his head, twisting until he was curled up like a foetus.

He wept.

For the first time since Marie had gone his tears came. It hurt; the bloody unbearable grief had grown inside him, out of sight. Now it was pushing its way out and he screamed the way you do when you are about to lose your life.

Chief interrogator Sven Sundkvist (SS): This way, please. Kristina Björnsson, barrister (KB): Right. Thank you.

SS: The interrogation of Fredrik Steffansson is taking place in Kronoberg prison. The time is twenty fifteen. Present with Steffansson are the chief interrogator Sven Sundkvist and Steffansson's legal representative, Kristina Björnsson, solicitor.

Fredrik Steffansson (FS): (inaudible)

SS: Sorry? What did you say?

FS: Please, I'd like some water.

SS: It's just in front of you. Help yourself.

FS: Thank you.

SS: Fredrik, could you please tell us what has happened.

FS: (inaudible)

SS: Speak up.

FS: Bear with me.

KB: Are you all right?

FS: No.

KB: Can you carry on?

FS: Yes.

SS: Let's start again. Please describe what has happened.

FS: You know already.

SS: Describe the events in your own words.

FS: A previously convicted sex killer murdered my daughter.

SS: I would like you to concentrate on what happened in

Enköping today, outside the nursery school Freja. FS: I shot my daughter's murderer and killed him.

KB: Sorry, Fredrik, hold it there.

FS: What now?

KB: I'd better have a few words with you.

FS: Yes?

KB: Are you sure you should describe today's events in those terms?

FS: I don't see what you're driving at.

KB: I get the impression that you're about to describe the events in a particular way.

FS: I simply intend to answer the questions.

KB: You must be aware that a premeditated murder is punishable by a lifetime prison sentence. 'Life' means between sixteen and twenty-five years.

FS: Right you are.

KB: I'm advising you to be careful about how you express things. At least until you and I have had a long talk, face-to-face.

FS: I haven't done anything wrong.

KB: It's your choice.

FS: So it is.

SS: Have you finished?

KB: Yes.

SS: OK, let's start again. Fredrik, what happened today?

FS: It was you who gave me the crucial information.

SS: What information?

FS: After the funeral, in the churchyard. You were there and the other policeman, the one with a limp.

SS: DCI Grens?

FS: That's the one.

SS: And what happened in the churchyard?

FS: One of you two, the guy with the limp I think, said that the risk that Lund would do it again was very great. That's when I made up my mind. No more acts like that. Not another child, not another loss. All right if I get up, move about?

SS: Fine.

FS: I'm assuming that you understand what I'm trying to say. Look, that man was locked up. He escapes. You can't catch him. He tortures and kills Marie. He is still on the run, police chase or no police chase. You know that he'll do it again, to some other child. You know. And you know you can't stop him, you've demonstrated that.

Lars Ågestam (LÅ): May I join you?

SS: Please have a seat.

LÅ: I put it to you that your intention was to take revenge.

FS: If society cannot protect its citizens, they have to do it themselves.

LÅ: You wanted to avenge Marie's death by killing Bernt Lund.

FS: I've saved the life of at least one child. Of that I'm convinced. That's what I did it for. That was my real motive.

LÅ: Do you believe that the death penalty is just, Fredrik?

FS: No.

LÅ: This action of yours suggests that you do.

FS: I believe that taking a life sometimes saves lives.

LÅ: And you're the judge of whose life should be taken and who should be saved?

FS: A child playing outside its school? Or an escaped sex killer, who's planning to violate and then slaughter that very child? And their lives are supposed to be worth the same?

SS: I would like you to say why you weren't prepared to let the police go after him.

FS: I did consider it. But I decided against it.

SS: All you had to do was approach the officers stationed by the school gate, isn't that so?

FS: Lund succeeded in escaping from the prison. Before that, he escaped from a secure mental hospital. If I'd left it to the police, at best he would've been captured and sent to a prison or a mental hospital. What if he had escaped again?

SS: So you decided to be both judge and executioner? FS: I had no choice. It was my only option. My one single thought was how to kill him so that he wouldn't be able to do again what he did to Marie. Under any circumstances whatsoever.

LÅ: Have you finished?

SS: Yes.

LÅ: That's all, then. Fredrik, please listen carefully.

FS: Yes?

LÅ: I must put this to you formally.

FS: Go ahead.

LÅ: Fredrik Steffansson, I have to tell you that you are charged with murder and will be tried in court.