The Chosen

CONCLUSION: FRAGMENT VI

The case has been like an octopus, with each tentacle representing a separate lead. The inspector remembers every single one of them. The leads that took them to Lovön. To Israel. And now to the home of a colleague.

He knows that it is over now.

That the Paper Boy has claimed his last victim.

All that remains is to understand what has happened.

And that will be impossible, because too many people are keeping quiet. Sheltering behind rules he knew nothing about.

During the past few days they have trampled on secrets they didn’t even know existed. Upset people they have never met, without being able to apologise. Because how can you say sorry when you don’t know what you’ve done?

As he stands in the apartment where a family has been smashed to pieces, he has a horrible feeling. A horrible feeling that he has missed something.

Something vital.

Something staring him in the face.

It was something I saw, something that didn’t feel right.

He walks around the apartment once more. It is beautiful. Turn of the century. Stylishly renovated, perfectly in keeping with the period.

As he stands in the hallway, it suddenly strikes him. The bloodstains. They don’t make sense.

He calls one of the CSIs over.

‘You think the man died here in the hallway,’ he says.

‘It looks that way. Check out the concentration of the blood; it’s all over the floor, from one side right across to the other.’

From one side right across to the other.

‘But why are there no bloodstains linking the scene of the murder and the bedroom?’

The CSI has no answer to that question.

‘The witness claims the man was shot in the doorway,’ he says. ‘Maybe he didn’t die right away. Maybe he managed to get to the bedroom before he lost consciousness.’

But the inspector doesn’t think so. Because there is blood in the hallway, where the first silenced shot was allegedly fired.

Then he realises what he saw.

His gaze returns to the wedding photograph. To the man’s face.

His brain stops working.

It can’t be true.

But it is.

He shouts to everyone else in the apartment.

‘Listen to me – there’s a man missing here!’

He looks at the wedding photograph again. The man smiling into the camera is not the same man who was lying on the bed with the children. He is not the children’s father. And he is not married to the woman who was standing here a few minutes ago, saying goodbye to her children.