The Ice Princess

5

The accusations, the harsh words, the insults all ran off him like water. What were several hours of insults compared with years of guilt? What were several hours of insults compared with life without his ice princess?

He laughed at the pathetic attempts to make him accept the blame. He saw no reason to do that. As long as he saw no reason to do so, they would not be successful.

But perhaps she had been right. Perhaps the day of reckoning was finally here. Unlike her, he knew that the judgement would not be clothed in human flesh. The only thing that could pass judgement on him was something that was greater than humanity, greater than the flesh, but equal to the soul. The only thing that can judge me is the one who can see my soul, he thought.

It was strange the way completely opposite emotions could be combined into a whole new feeling. Love and hate became indifference. Vengeance and forgiveness became decisiveness. Tenderness and bitterness became sorrow, so great that it could crush a man. For him she had always been a remarkable mixture of light and darkness. A Janus face that alternately judged and understood. Sometimes she covered him with hot kisses despite his repulsiveness. Sometimes she reviled and hated him for the same reason. There was no rest or peace to be found in opposites.

The last time he saw her was the time he loved her most. Finally she was completely his. Finally she belonged to him totally, to do with as he pleased. To be loved or hated. Without the chance of once again countering his love with her indifference.

Before it had been like loving a veil. An elusive, transparent, seductive veil. The last time he saw her the veil had lost its mystique and all that remained was the flesh. But that made her accessible. For the first time he thought that he could know who she was. He had touched her stiff, frozen limbs and felt the soul that was still thrashing inside its frozen prison. Never had he loved her as much as he did then. Now it was time to meet his fate, eye to eye. He hoped that fate would prove to be forgiving. But he didn’t believe it would.

The telephone woke her. To think that people couldn’t ring at a sensible hour.

‘Erica Falck.’

‘Hi, it’s Anna.’ Her tone was wary. With good reason, Erica thought.

‘Hi.’ Erica didn’t intend to let her off easily.

‘How’s it going?’ Anna was treading softly on a minefield.

‘Fine, thanks. How about you?’

‘Thanks, things are going fine. How’s the book coming?’

‘It’s a little up and down. But it’s progressing, at least. Everything all right with the kids?’ Erica decided to throw her a sop, at least.

‘Emma has a bad cold, but Adrian’s colic seems to be improving. So now I get to sleep an hour a night anyway.’

Anna laughed but Erica thought she heard an undertone of bitterness.

There was a moment of silence.

‘You know, we have to talk about this thing with the house.’

‘Yes, I think so too.’ Now it was Erica’s turn to sound bitter.

‘We have to sell it, Erica. If you can’t buy us out then we’ll have to sell it.’

When Erica didn’t reply, Anna babbled on nervously. ‘Lucas has talked to the estate agent, and he thinks we should set the asking price at three million. Three million, Erica, can you imagine that? With a million and a half as your share you could write in peace and quiet without having to worry about finances. It can’t be easy for you to make a living as a writer. What sort of printings do you have for each book? Two thousand? Three thousand? And you probably don’t make too many kronor per book, do you? Don’t you understand, Erica, this is your big chance too. You’ve always talked about wanting to write a novel. With this money you can take the time. The agent thinks we should wait to show the house until at least April or May to get the most interest, but once we list it the house should sell in a couple of weeks. You understand that we have to do this, don’t you?’

Anna’s voice sounded imploring, but Erica wasn’t in a sympathetic mood. Her discovery from the day before had kept her awake and worrying half the night. She felt betrayed and grumpy in general.

‘No, I don’t understand it, Anna. This is our parents’ home. We grew up here. Mamma and Pappa bought this house when they were newlyweds. They loved this house. And I do too, Anna. You can’t do this.’

‘But the money-’

‘I don’t give a shit about the money! I’ve managed fine so far, and I intend to continue doing so.’ Erica was so angry now that her voice was shaking.

‘But Erica, you must understand that you can’t make me keep the house if I don’t want to. Half of it is mine, after all.’

‘If you were the one who wanted to do this, I’d think it was very, very sad, but I would accept your point of view. The problem is that I know that it’s somebody else’s opinions I’m hearing. Lucas is the one who wants to do this, not you. The question is whether you even know what you want. Do you?’

Erica didn’t bother waiting for Anna’s reply. ‘And I refuse to let my life be controlled by Lucas Maxwell. Your husband is a big fucking shithead! And you bloody well ought to come over here and help me go through Mamma and Pappa’s things. I’ve been at it for weeks, trying to organize everything, and I’m only halfway done. It’s not fair that I have to do it all by myself! If you’re so tied to the stove that you aren’t even allowed to help with your parents’ estate, then you ought to give serious thought to whether this is how you want to live the rest of your life.’

Erica slammed down the phone so hard that it almost flew off the nightstand. She was so furious she was shaking.

In Stockholm Anna was sitting on the floor with the phone in her hand. Lucas was at work and the children were asleep, so she had taken the opportunity to ring Erica now that she had some time to herself. It was a conversation she’d been putting off for several days, but Lucas had been nagging her to ring Erica about the house. Finally she gave in.

Anna felt torn into a thousand pieces, all being pulled in different directions. She loved Erica and she also loved the house in Fjällbacka. What Erica didn’t understand was that she had to put her own family first. There was nothing she was not prepared to do or sacrifice for her children, and if that meant keeping Lucas happy at the cost of her relationship with her big sister, then so be it. Emma and Adrian were the only reason she got up in the morning, the only reason to continue living in this world. If she could only make Lucas happy, everything would work out. She knew that. It was because she was so difficult and didn’t do what he wanted that he was forced to be so hard on her. If she could give him this gift, sacrifice her parents’ home for him, then he would understand how much she was prepared to do for him and her family. And everything would be good again.

But somewhere deep inside her a voice was saying something entirely different. Anna hung her head and wept, and with her tears she drowned out that faint voice. She left the phone lying on the floor.

Erica kicked off the covers in annoyance and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She regretted her hard words to Anna, but she was already in a bad mood, and lack of sleep had made her lose her head completely. She tried ringing Anna back to try and patch things up, but got a busy signal.

‘Shit!’

She gave the stool in front of the vanity table an undeserved kick, but instead of feeling better Erica stubbed her toe so badly that she hopped about howling on one foot, holding her sore toe. She was very doubtful that even childbirth could be this painful. When the pain finally ebbed away she got onto the scale against her better judgement.

She knew that she shouldn’t, but the masochist inside her forced her to find out for sure. She took off the T-shirt she slept in. It always added a few extra ounces, and she even wondered whether her knickers would make any difference. Probably not. She stepped on with her right foot first but kept some of her weight on the left foot that was still on the floor. Gradually she transferred her weight to the right foot, and when the needle reached sixty kilos she wished she could let it stay there. But no. When she finally put all her weight on the scale, it mercilessly read seventy-three. Okay. As she had feared, over one kilo worse. She had guessed about one, but the scale showed over two kilos more than the last time she weighed herself, which was on the morning she found Alex.

Since then, she had felt it was very, very unnecessary to weigh herself. Not because she hadn’t noticed from her waistband that she had gained weight, but up until the moment when she saw it in black and white, denial was a welcome companion. Dampness in the closet or shrinkage due to excessive washing temperature had served her well as excuses countless times in the past. Right now it merely felt hopeless, and she had a good mind to cancel dinner that evening with Patrik. When she saw him she wanted to feel sexy and pretty and thin, not bloated and fat. She gloomily looked at her stomach and tried sucking it in as far as she could. Useless. She looked at herself in profile in the full-length mirror and tried instead to pooch out her stomach as much as she could. There, that’s the image that matched how she felt right now.

With a sigh, she pulled on a pair of loose jogging trousers with a forgiving stretch waistband and put on the same T-shirt she’d slept in. She promised herself that on Monday, she’d do something about her weight again. Starting now was no good, she’d already planned to serve a three-course dinner tonight and she had to admit: if you want to dazzle a man with your cooking, then cream and butter are essential ingredients. Besides, Monday was a good day to start a new life. For the hundred-thousandth time she made a solemn promise to herself that on Monday she would start exercising and stay on her Weight Watchers diet. But not today.

A bigger problem was the reason why she’d almost worried herself sick since yesterday. She had turned over all the options, pondering what she should do, but without coming up with any solution. She suddenly knew something that she sincerely wished she had never found out.

The coffee began to smell good from the coffeemaker, and life seemed a shade brighter. Amazing what a little of that hot beverage could do. She poured a cup and drank it black with great enjoyment as she stood by the kitchen worktop. She had never been much for breakfast; that would save her a few calories for this evening.

When the doorbell rang she was so startled that she spilled a little coffee on her T-shirt. She swore out loud, wondering who it could be at this hour of the morning. She glanced at the kitchen clock. Eight-thirty. She set down the cup and opened the door. There on the porch stood Julia Carlgren slapping her arms to keep warm.

‘Hi.’ Erica’s voice was inquisitive.

‘Hi.’ Then silence from Julia.

Erica wondered what Alex’s little sister was doing on her front porch so early on a Tuesday morning, but her good breeding asserted itself and she asked Julia to come in.

Julia tramped briskly inside, hung up her coat and scarf, and preceded Erica into the living room.

‘Do you think I could have a cup of that wonderful coffee I smell?’

‘Oh, sure, I’ll get you one.’

Safely out of Julia’s sight in the kitchen, Erica poured a cup of coffee and rolled her eyes. Something wasn’t quite right with that girl.

Erica handed the cup to Julia and asked her to have a seat on the wicker sofa on the veranda. They drank their coffee in silence. Erica decided to wait her out. Julia was going to have to broach the subject herself and explain why she was here. It took a couple of tense minutes before Julia spoke.

‘Are you living here now?’

‘No, actually. I live in Stockholm but I’m here straightening out everything with the house.’

‘Yes, I heard. I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you. My condolences to you too.’

Julia gave an odd little laugh that Erica found surprising and misplaced. She recalled the document she had found in the wastebasket at Nelly Lorentz’s house and wondered how the pieces fit together.

‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here.’ Julia looked at Erica with her strange, steady gaze. She blinked very seldom.

It struck Erica again how diametrically opposite she was to her big sister. Julia’s skin was pitted with acne scars, and her hair looked as if she’d cut it herself with nail scissors. Without a mirror. There was something unhealthy about the way she looked. A sickly pallor had settled like a dirty grey film over her skin. Nor did she appear to share Alex’s interest in clothes. Her outfits looked as though they had been bought in shops catering to little old retired ladies. Her clothes were as far from the style of the day as they could get without crossing the line to become masquerade costumes.

‘Do you have any photos of Alex?’

‘Excuse me?’ Erica was startled by the direct question. ‘Photos? Yes, I suppose I do. Quite a few, even. Pappa loved taking pictures, and he took a lot of us when we were kids. Alex was over here so often that she’s probably in a lot of the pictures.’

‘Could I see them?’ Julia gave Erica a reproachful look, as if admonishing her for not going to fetch the photos already. Grateful for any excuse to escape Julia’s penetrating gaze for a moment, Erica went to get the photo albums.

The albums were in a chest up in the attic. She hadn’t had a chance to clean there yet, but she knew exactly where the chest was. All the family photographs were stored inside; she had shuddered at the thought of sitting down to go through them. A large part of the photos were in unsorted piles, but she knew that the ones she was looking for had been carefully put into albums. She paged through them systematically, starting at the top of the stack. In the third album she found what she was looking for. The fourth album also had pictures of Alex, and clutching both albums she cautiously climbed down the attic stairs.

Julia was sitting in exactly the same position as before. Erica wondered whether she had moved at all while she was gone.

‘Here’s something that should interest you.’

Erica was out of breath. She dropped the thick photo albums on the coffee table so hard that dust flew.

Julia eagerly began looking through the first album while Erica sat down next to her on the sofa to describe what was in the pictures.

‘When was this one taken?’

Julia was pointing at the first photo she found of Alex, two pages into the album.

‘Let me see. This must be…1974. Yes, I think that’s right. We were about nine then, I think.’

Erica ran a finger over the photo and felt a strong sense of melancholy in her stomach. It was so long ago. She and Alex stood naked in the garden on a warm summer day. If she remembered correctly they had been naked because they were running back and forth through the water spraying from the garden hose. What seemed a bit odd about the picture was that Alex was wearing winter mittens.

‘Why does she have mittens on? This looks like it’s in July or something.’ Julia turned an astonished face to Erica, who laughed at the memory.

‘Your sister loved those mittens and insisted on wearing them, not only all winter long but also for large parts of the summer. She was as stubborn as a mule, and nobody could convince her to put away those darn disgusting mittens.’

‘She knew what she wanted, didn’t she?’

Julia looked at the picture in the album with an almost tender expression. The next second it was gone, and she impatiently moved on to the next page.

The photos felt like relics from another lifetime for Erica. It was so long ago, and so much had happened since then. Sometimes it felt as if the childhood years with Alex were only a dream.

‘We were more like sisters than friends. We spent all our waking hours together, and we often slept over at each other’s house too. Every day we used to compare notes on what was for dinner and then we picked the house with the best food.’

‘In other words, you often ate here.’ For the first time a smile crept onto Julia’s lips.

‘Yes, say what you will about your mother, she could never have made a living on her cooking.’

One particular photo caught Erica’s eye. She touched it gently. It was an incredibly lovely photograph. Alex was sitting in the stern of Tore’s boat, laughing boisterously. Her blonde hair was flying round her face, and the silhouette of all of Fjällbacka was spread out behind her. They must have been on their way out for a day of sunshine and swimming on the skerries. There had been many such days. Her mother had not come along, as usual. She had always blamed a host of small matters she had to attend to, and chose to stay home. That’s how it always was. Erica could easily count on the fingers of one hand the excursions that had included her mother Elsy. She chuckled when she saw a picture of Anna from the same boat trip. As usual, she was playing monkey; in this picture she was hanging daringly outside the railing and making faces at the camera.

‘Your sister?’

‘Yes, my little sister Anna.’

Erica’s tone was curt, indicating that she didn’t want to discuss that subject any further. Julia got the message and kept paging through the album with her short fat fingers. Her nails were bitten to the quick. On some of her fingers she had bitten the nail so much that sores formed around the edges. Erica forced her gaze away from Julia’s wounded fingers and looked instead at the pictures flipping past in her hands.

Towards the end of the second album Alex was suddenly no longer included in the pictures. It was quite a sharp contrast. Before she was on every page; now there were no more pictures of her. Julia carefully stacked the albums on the coffee table and leaned back in the corner of the sofa with her coffee cup in her hands.

‘Would you like some fresh coffee? That must be cold by now.’

Julia looked at her cup and saw that Erica was right. ‘Yes, if there’s more I’ll take some, thanks.’

She handed over her cup to Erica, who was happy for a chance to stretch her legs a bit. The wicker sofa was lovely to look at, but after sitting on it a while both her back and her bottom were protesting. Julia’s back seemed to share this opinion, since she got up and followed Erica into the kitchen.

‘It was a nice funeral. Lots of friends for the reception at your place as well.’

Erica stood with her back to Julia and poured fresh coffee into their cups. A noncommittal murmur was the only reply she got. She decided to be a little nosy.

‘It looked as though you and Nelly Lorentz were quite well acquainted. How do you happen to know each other?’

Erica held her breath. The paper she had found in the wastebasket at Nelly’s house made her very curious about Julia’s answer.

‘Pappa worked for her.’ The reply came reluctantly from Julia. She put a finger in her mouth without even seeming to be conscious of it and began gnawing at it frantically.

‘Yes, but that must have been long before you were born,’ said Erica. She was still fishing for information.

‘I had a summer job at the cannery when I was younger,’ said Julia.

Her replies still came like pulling teeth. She stopped biting her nails only long enough to answer.

‘You looked like you were getting along well.’

‘Well, I suppose that Nelly sees something in me that nobody else does.’ Her smile was bitter and introspective. All at once Erica felt great sympathy for Julia. Life as the ugly duckling must have been hard. She said nothing, and after a while the silence forced Julia to go on.

‘We were here every summer, after all. The summer after tenth grade Nelly rang Pappa and asked if I’d like to earn a little extra and work in the office. I could hardly turn it down, so after that I worked there every summer until I started at the teachers’ college.’

Erica understood that this answer left a good deal unsaid. But it would have to do. She also understood that she wouldn’t get much more out of Julia about her relationship with Nelly. They sat down on the sofa on the veranda again and drank a few sips of coffee in silence. Both of them gazed blankly out across the ice that stretched towards the horizon.

‘It must have been hard for you when Mamma and Pappa and Alex moved away.’ It was Julia who spoke first.

‘Yes and no. We were no longer playing with each other by then, so of course it was sad, but it wasn’t as dramatic as if we’d still been best friends.’

‘What happened? Why did you stop hanging out together?’

‘If I only knew.’

Erica was astonished that the memory could still hurt so much. That she could still feel the loss of Alex so strongly. So many years had passed since then, and it was probably the rule rather than the exception that childhood best friends often slipped away from each other. Maybe it was because there had never been any natural ending and above all no explanation. They didn’t have a disagreement, Alex didn’t find a new best friend; none of the reasons why a friendship usually dies. She simply withdrew behind a wall of indifference and vanished without saying a word.

‘Did you have a fight about something?’

‘No, not that I know of. Alex just lost interest somehow. She stopped ringing me and stopped asking if we should think up something to do together. If I asked her to do something she wouldn’t say no, but I could tell that she was utterly uninterested. So finally I stopped asking.’

‘Did she have new friends she hung around with?’

Erica wondered why Julia was asking all these questions about her and Alex, but she had nothing against reviving old memories. She might be able to use them in the book.

‘I never saw her with anyone else. At school she always kept to herself. And yet…’

‘What?’ Julia leaned forward eagerly.

‘I still had a feeling that there was someone. But I could be wrong. It was just a feeling.’

Julia nodded thoughtfully. Erica had the feeling that she had merely confirmed something that Julia already knew.

‘Excuse me for asking, but why do you want to know so much about when Alex and I were kids?’

Julia avoided looking her in the eye. Her answer was evasive.

‘She was so much older than I was, and she’d already left the country by the time I was born. Besides, we were really different. I don’t think I ever really got to know her. And now it’s too late. I looked for pictures of her at home, but we have hardly any. So I thought of you.’

Erica felt that Julia’s reply contained so little truth as to qualify as a lie, but she reluctantly accepted it.

‘Well, I have to get going now. Thanks for the coffee.’

Julia got up abruptly and went to the kitchen to put her coffee cup in the dish tub. She was suddenly in a big hurry to leave. Erica walked her to the door.

‘Thanks for letting me see the pictures. It meant a lot to me.’

Then she was gone.

Erica stood in the doorway a long time watching her walk away. A grey and shapeless figure who hurried down the street with her arms held tight to her body as protection from the biting cold. Erica slowly closed the door and went back inside where it was warm.

It was a long time since Patrik had felt so nervous. The feeling he had in the pit of his stomach was wonderful and frightening at the same time.

The pile of clothes on the bed grew as he tried on yet another outfit. All the clothes he put on felt too old-fashioned, too sloppy, too dressy, too square, or simply too ugly. Besides, most of the trousers were uncomfortably tight around the waist. With a sigh he tossed another pair of trousers on the pile and sat down in his shorts on the edge of the bed. He immediately lost all sense of anticipation for the evening and instead got a serious touch of good old anxiety. Maybe it would be better if he rang and cancelled.

Patrik lay back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. He still owned the double bed that he and Karin had shared, and now he stroked his hand over her side of the bed in a fit of sentimentality. It was not until recently that he had begun rolling over onto her side in his sleep. Actually, he should have bought a new bed as soon as she moved out, but he hadn’t been able to face it.

Despite all the sadness he felt when Karin left him, he’d sometimes wondered if it really was Karin he was missing, or whether he missed the illusion he’d had of marriage as an institution. His father had left his mother for another woman when he was ten years old. The divorce that followed had been heart-rending, exploiting him and his little sister Lotta as the primary weapons. He had promised himself that he would never be unfaithful, but above all that he would never ever get a divorce. If he got married it would be for life. So when he and Karin got married five years ago in Tanumshede Church, he didn’t doubt for a second that it would last forever. But life seldom turns out the way one thinks it will. She and Leif had been meeting behind his back for over a year before he caught them. So fucking classic.

He had come home early from work one day because he wasn’t feeling well, and there they were in the bedroom. In the bed he was lying in right now. Maybe there was a masochist somewhere inside of him. How else could he explain why he hadn’t got rid of the bed long ago? Although now it was all in the past. It no longer mattered.

He heaved himself up out of bed, still unsure if he wanted to go over to Erica’s house tonight or not. He wanted to. And he didn’t want to. With one blow an attack of low self-esteem had swept away the sense of anticipation he’d been feeling all day, even all week. But it was too late to decline, so he didn’t have much choice.

When he finally found a pair of chinos that fit well around the waist and put on a freshly ironed blue shirt, he felt all at once a little better. And he began looking forward to the evening again. A touch of gel made his hair look suitably dishevelled, and after giving his reflection in the mirror a good-luck wave, he felt ready to go.

It was pitch-black out although it was only seven-thirty, and a light snowfall made visibility poor as he drove back to Fjällbacka. He had left in good time and didn’t need to hurry. His thoughts of Erica were briefly pushed aside by the events of recent days at work. Mellberg hadn’t been pleased when Patrik could do no better than substantiate that the witness, Anders’s neighbour Jenny, seemed positive about what she had seen. Anders actually did seem to have an alibi for the critical time period. This may not have provoked the same degree of anger in Patrik as it had in Mellberg, but he couldn’t deny that he felt a certain hopelessness. Two weeks had passed since they had found Alex’s body, and they didn’t feel any closer to a solution than they were then.

What was important now was not to lose heart completely. They had to regroup and start over from the beginning. Every lead, every bit of testimony had to be gone over with new eyes. Patrik made a list in his head of what he needed to work on tomorrow. The top priority was to find out who was the father of the child Alex was expecting. There must be someone in Fjällbacka who had seen or heard something about who she was meeting on weekends. Not that it could be ruled out that Henrik might be the father, and Anders was always a possible candidate too. Although somehow Patrik didn’t think that Anders was someone Alex would consider a suitable candidate to father her child. He thought that what Francine had told Erica was much closer to the truth. There was someone in her life who was very, very important. Someone who was important enough that she would be happy to have a child with him-something that she could not, or would not, want with her husband.

Her sexual relationship with Anders was also something he wanted to find out more about. What did a society woman from Göteborg have in common with a down-and-out drunk? Something told him that if he discovered how their paths had crossed, he would find many of the answers he was seeking. Then there was the article about Nils Lorentz’s disappearance. Alex had been a child back then. Why was she saving a twenty-five-year-old newspaper clipping hidden in a bureau drawer? There were so many threads that were so tangled together. He felt as if he were staring at one of those pictures where everything looks like incoherent dots, until you relax your eyes in just the right way and a shape suddenly emerges with unexpected clarity. The only thing was, he couldn’t find that perfect position to make the dots form a pattern. In his weaker moments he sometimes wondered if he was a good enough cop to find it. Perhaps a murderer would escape because he wasn’t competent enough.

A deer bounded out in front of the car and Patrik was yanked abruptly out of his gloomy thoughts. He hit the brake and managed to miss the deer’s rump by an inch or so. The car skidded on the slick road and didn’t stop for a couple of long, terrifying seconds. Then he leaned his head on his hands, which were still gripping the steering wheel, and let his pulse return to normal. He sat like that for a couple of minutes. Then he drove on towards Fjällbacka, but it took a mile or two at a creeping pace before he dared speed up.

When he drove up the sanded hill in Sälvik towards Erica’s house, he was five minutes late. He parked the car behind hers in the driveway and grabbed the bottle of wine he had brought as a gift. A deep breath and a last check of his hair in the rear-view mirror and he was ready.

The pile of clothes on Erica’s bed was about as big as Patrik’s, maybe even a bit bigger. Her wardrobe was beginning to look empty, and hangers were rattling on the rod. She gave a deep sigh. Nothing fitted quite right. The extra weight that had sneaked up on her in the past week meant that no garment sat the way she would have liked. Weighing herself that morning was something she still cursed and regretted bitterly. Erica gave herself a critical look in the full-length mirror.

The first dilemma had arisen after her shower when, like her favourite literary heroine Bridget Jones, she was faced with the decision of which knickers to choose. Should she wear a beautiful, lace-trimmed thong, for the slim eventuality that she and Patrik ended up in bed? Or should she put on the substantial and terribly ugly knickers with the extra support for tummy and backside, which would increase her chances that they might end up in bed at all? A hard choice, but considering the extent of her belly’s bulge she decided after much deliberation on the support variety. Over them she would wear pantyhose with a tummy-flattening panel. In other words, the heavy artillery.

She glanced at the clock and realized that it was time to decide. After another look at the pile on the bed she pulled out from the bottom the first outfit she had tried on. Black was slimming, and the classic, knee-length dress in a Jackie Kennedy style was flattering to the figure. A pair of pearl earrings and her wristwatch would be her only jewellery, and she let her hair fall loosely over her shoulders. She looked at her profile again in the mirror and held in her stomach as a test. All right-with the combined help of support knickers, pantyhose, and slightly restricted breathing she looked downright acceptable. The extra kilos were not altogether a bad thing, she had to admit. She would have preferred to do without the ones that ended up on her belly, but the one distributed in her breasts made a not entirely uneven cleavage stand out in her décolletage. With a little help from a padded push-up bra, of course, but such aids were virtually universal nowadays. And the bra she was wearing was of the very latest technology, with gel in the cups, which gave her bust a true-to-life movement. Splendid testimony to the advancement of science in the service of humanity.

Trying on all those clothes along with the emotional stress had made her sweat, and with a deep sigh she washed under her arms again. Her make-up took almost twenty minutes to perfect. By the time she was ready, she realized all the primping had taken a bit too long and that she ought to have started cooking long ago. She quickly tidied up the bedroom. It would have taken far too much time to hang up all the clothes, so she simply picked up the whole pile, dumped it on the floor of the wardrobe and shut the door. Just in case, she made the bed and looked round the room to make sure that no unused knickers lay about the floor. A pair of dirty everyday knickers from Sloggi could dampen any man’s desire.

Out of breath she rushed down to the kitchen. All the stress made her feel utterly at a loss. She didn’t have any idea where to start.

Erica forced herself to stand still and take a deep breath. There were two recipes lying on the table in front of her, and she tried to plan the time needed for each of them. She was no master chef, but a fairly decent cook, and she had found the recipes after digging through back issues of Elle Gourmet. The appetizer would be potato pancakes with crème fraiche, lumpfish caviar and finely chopped red onions. For the entree she had planned fillet of pork baked in puff pastry with a port wine sauce and mashed potatoes, and for dessert Gino with vanilla ice cream. Thankfully she’d already prepared it that afternoon, so she could cross that off her list. She decided to start by putting the potatoes on to boil. Then she would grate raw potatoes for the appetizer.

She concentrated on her work for an hour and a half and jumped when the doorbell rang. The time had gone a little too fast, and she hoped that Patrik wasn’t roaring hungry since the food would take a while before it was ready.

Erica was halfway to the door when she noticed that she still had her apron on. The bell rang again as she struggled to undo the granny knot she had tied at her back. She finally got it undone, pulled the apron over her head, and tossed it on a chair in the hall. She ran her hand over her hair, reminded herself to hold in her stomach, and took a deep breath before she opened the door with a smile.

‘Hi, Patrik. Welcome! Come in.’

They hugged briefly and Patrik handed her a bottle of wine wrapped in aluminium foil.

‘Oh, thank you, how nice!’

‘Yes, they recommended this one at the State Liquor Store. Chilean wine. Robust and round with a trace of red berries and a hint of chocolate, supposedly. I’m no wine connoisseur, but they usually know what they’re talking about.’

‘I’m sure it’s excellent.’ Erica gave a warm laugh and put down the bottle on the old hall bureau for a moment so she could help Patrik off with his jacket.

‘Come in. I hope you’re not starving. As usual, my planning was much too optimistic, so it’ll be a while before dinner is ready.’

‘No problem, I’m fine.’

Patrik followed Erica into the kitchen with the wine.

‘Can I help with anything?’

‘Yes, you can take a corkscrew from the top drawer and open a bottle of wine for us. Perhaps we could start by tasting the wine you brought?’

He obeyed willingly. Erica set two large wine glasses for them on the worktop and then began stirring pots and checking the progress of what was in the oven. The fillet of pork had a good way to go, and when she poked the potatoes they were still only half cooked. Patrik handed her one of the wine glasses, now full of deep-red wine. She swirled the glass lightly to release the wine’s aroma, stuck her nose deep into the glass and then inhaled with her mouth closed. The warm oak fragrance of the wine was sucked in through her nostrils and seemed to propagate all the way down to her toes. Delightful. She tasted it cautiously, letting the wine roll round as she sucked in a little air through her mouth. The taste was just as pleasant as the aroma, and she could tell that Patrik had spent a significant sum on this bottle.

Patrik gave her an expectant look.

‘Fantastic!’

‘Yes, I realized last time that you knew about these things. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell the difference between a wine in a box for fifty kronor and a wine that cost thousands.’

‘Sure you could. But it’s all a matter of habit as well. And you have to take the time to really taste a wine instead of guzzling it down.’

Shamefaced, Patrik looked at the glass of wine he had in his hand. A third of it was already gone. He carefully tried to imitate Erica’s method of tasting the wine when she turned her back to check something on the stove. It did seem to taste like a whole new wine. He let a sip of wine roll round in his mouth the same way he had seen Erica do it, and suddenly distinctly different tastes appeared. He even thought he could sense a faint hint of chocolate, dark chocolate, and a rather strong taste of red berries, red grapes perhaps, mixed with a little strawberry. Incredible.

‘How’s it going with the investigation?’ Erica made an effort to ask the question casually, but she waited anxiously for the reply.

‘I think we’re back at square one, so to speak. Anders has an alibi for the time of the murder, and we don’t have a lot else to go on right now. Unfortunately we may have made a classic mistake. We allowed ourselves to feel too certain that we had the right person and stopped investigating other possibilities. Although I have to agree with the superintendent that Anders is perfect in the role of Alex’s killer. A drunk who for some inexplicable reason is having a sexual relationship with a woman who, according to all the rules, should be far, far out of reach of a wino like Anders. A crime of jealousy with the inevitable outcome, when his improbable luck finally runs out. His fingerprints are all over the body and in the bathroom. We even found his footprint in the pool of blood on the floor.’

‘But isn’t that proof enough?’

Patrik swirled his wine and looked thoughtfully down into the red eddies that formed in the glass.

‘If he hadn’t had an alibi it might have been enough. But now he does have one for what we think is the probable time of the murder. And as I said before, it doesn’t prove anything except that he was in the bathroom after the murder. A small but important difference if we want an indictment that will hold up.’

The aroma spreading through the kitchen was wonderful. Erica took the potato pancakes she had sautéed a while ago out of the fridge and put them in the oven to warm up. She set out two appetizer plates, opened the refrigerator again and took out a container of crème fraiche and a jar of lumpfish caviar. The onions were chopped and ready in a bowl on the worktop. She was intensely aware of how close Patrik was standing.

‘So, Erica, have you heard anything more about the house?’

‘Yes, unfortunately. The estate agent rang yesterday and proposed that we show the house during the Easter holiday. He said that Anna and Lucas apparently thought that was a brilliant idea.’

‘It’s still a couple of months until Easter. A lot can happen before that.’

‘Yes, I can always hope that Lucas has a heart attack or something. No, pardon me, I didn’t say that. It’s just that it makes me so mad!’ She closed the oven door a bit too hard.

‘Oi, be kind to the appliances.’

‘I’m probably just going to have to get used to the fact and start planning what to do with all the money I make from the sale. Although I have to admit, I always thought I’d feel happier if I became a millionaire.’

‘You don’t have to worry about becoming a millionaire. With the taxes in this country, you’ll probably have to spend the majority of your profit on financing terrible schools and ever worse health care. Not to mention the incredibly, fantastically, totally underpaid police force. We’ll probably eat into a good share of your fortune, you’ll see.’

She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Well, that would be wonderful. Then I won’t have to worry about whether to buy a mink or a blue fox coat. Patrik, believe it or not, the appetizer is ready now.’

She took a plate in each hand and led Patrik into the dining room. She had pondered whether they should sit in the kitchen or in the dining room, and she finally decided on the dining room with its lovely wooden drop-leaf table, which looked even lovelier by candlelight. And she hadn’t skimped on the candles. Nothing was more flattering to a woman’s appearance than candles, she’d read somewhere.

The table was set with silverware and linen serviettes, as well as Rörstrand plates for the entree. It was her mother’s finest, the white Rörstrand china with the blue trim. She remembered how careful her mother had always been with those plates. They were only taken out on very special occasions. Which did not include the children’s birthdays or anything else that had to do with them, Erica thought bitterly. The ordinary china at the kitchen table was good enough for them. But when the pastor and his wife, or the vicar, or the deacon came to dinner, then there was no end to all the fuss. Erica forced herself back to the present and set the appetizer plates across from each other on the table.

‘It looks delicious.’ Patrik sliced off a piece of potato pancake, added a healthy dollop of onions, crème fraiche and caviar on his fork, and managed to lift it halfway to his mouth before he noticed that Erica was sitting there with her wine glass raised along with one eyebrow. Shamefaced, he put down the fork and switched to his wine glass.

‘Skål and welcome.’

‘Skål.’

Erica smiled at his faux pas. It was refreshing in comparison with the men she’d dated in Stockholm, who were all so well brought up and knowledgeable about etiquette that they could have been clones. Compared to them Patrik felt like the real deal, and as far as she was concerned he could eat with his fingers if he wanted to; it wouldn’t bother her. Besides, he looked terribly cute when he blushed.

‘I had an unexpected visitor today.’

‘Oh? Who was that?’

‘Julia.’

Patrik gave Erica a surprised look. She was pleased to see that he seemed to have a hard time tearing himself away from the food.

‘I had no idea you knew each other,’ he said.

‘We don’t, really. Alex’s funeral was actually the first time we met. But this morning she was standing at my door.’

‘What did she want?’

Patrik scraped his plate clean so eagerly that it looked like he was trying to scrape the colour off the porcelain.

‘She asked me to show her pictures from when Alex and I were kids. The family apparently don’t have many photographs, according to Julia, and she took a chance that I might have more. Which I do. Then she asked me a lot of questions about when we were kids and things like that. The people I’ve talked to said that the sisters weren’t very close, which is not so odd considering the age difference, and now she wants to find out more about Alex. Get to know her. Anyway, that’s the impression I got. Have you met Julia, by the way?’

‘No, I haven’t yet. But from what I heard they aren’t, or weren’t, very similar,’ said Patrik.

‘No, God no. They’re more like complete opposites, at least in appearance. They seem to be both introverts, even though Julia has a sullenness that I don’t think Alex had. Alex seemed more, how should I put it…indifferent, based on what I heard from the people I talked to. If anything, Julia seems angry. Or maybe even furious. I get the impression that there’s rage bubbling and fizzing just below the surface. Rather volcanic. A dormant volcano. Does that sound stupid?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I imagine that as an author you have to have a feeling for people. A knowledge of human nature.’

‘Oh, don’t call me an author. I don’t think I’ve earned that title yet.’

‘Four books published and you don’t consider yourself an author?’

Patrik looked downright uncomprehending and Erica tried to explain what she meant.

‘Well, four biographies, working on the fifth. I don’t mean to denigrate it, but for me an author is someone who writes something from her own heart and her own brain, and doesn’t just describe someone else’s life. The day I write something that comes from me, then I can call myself an author.’

She was suddenly struck by the fact that this wasn’t the whole truth. Looked at superficially, according to that definition there was no difference between the biographies she’d written about historical personalities and the book that she was writing about Alex. It was also about another person’s life. And yet somehow it was different. First, Alex’s life had run at a tangent to her own in a quite obvious way, and second, she could express some of her own views in this book. Within the framework of actual events she could even steer the book’s soul. But she couldn’t explain that to Patrik. Nobody could know that she was writing a book about Alex.

‘So Julia came here and asked a bunch of questions about Alex. Did you have a chance to ask her about Nelly Lorentz?’

Erica waged an intense battle with herself and finally decided that she couldn’t in good conscience withhold this information from Patrik. Maybe he’d be able to draw conclusions from it that she couldn’t. It was the one small but vital piece of the puzzle she had chosen not to reveal when she went to dinner at his place. But since she hadn’t got much further with it, she saw no reason to keep quiet any longer. But first she had to serve the entree.

She bent over to take his plate, making sure to lean forward a bit more than usual. She intended to make the most of the trump cards she had. Judging by Patrik’s face she had just shown herself to be holding three aces. So far her Wonderbra had proved to be worth the 500 kronor she had invested. Even though it had left a sizeable dent in her pocketbook.

‘Let me get that.’ Patrik took the plates from her and followed her into the kitchen. She drained the water from the potatoes and put him to work mashing them up. She reheated the gravy one last time and tasted it. A splash of port and a generous dollop of butter and it was ready to be served. No light cream in this dish! Then all that was left was to take the baked pork fillet out of the oven and slice it. It looked perfect. Light pink in the middle, but without the red juice that signalled the meat was underdone. For the vegetable dish she had selected steamed sugar peas, which she put in the same Rörstrand bowl with the mashed potatoes. They both helped carry in the food. She let Patrik serve himself before she dropped the bomb.

‘Julia is the sole heir to Nelly Lorentz’s fortune.’

Patrik was just taking a sip of wine and apparently it went down the wrong way, because he coughed and grabbed his chest. Tears sprang to his eyes from the discomfort.

‘Excuse me, what did you say?’ Patrik asked in a strained voice.

‘I said that Julia is the sole heir to Nelly’s fortune. It’s in Nelly’s will,’ Erica said calmly, pouring Patrik some water to calm his cough.

‘Do I dare ask how you know this?’

‘Because I snooped in Nelly’s wastebasket when she invited me over for tea.’

Patrik had another coughing fit and gave Erica an incredulous look. As he drained his entire water glass in one gulp, Erica went on.

‘There was a copy of her will in the wastebasket. It clearly and explicitly stated that Julia Carlgren would inherit Nelly Lorentz’s fortune. Yes, Jan gets a share, but Julia gets all the rest.’

‘Does Jan know this?’

‘I have no idea. But I would guess he does-no, he probably doesn’t know.’

Erica continued as she ate.

‘I actually asked Julia when she was here how she happened to know Nelly Lorentz so well. Naturally I got a nonsense answer. Something about her having a summer job at the cannery for a couple of years. I don’t doubt that the part about her working there is true, but she left out the rest of the truth. It was quite obviously a subject that she really didn’t want to talk about.’

Patrik looked pensive. ‘Do you realize that makes two very ill-matched pairs in this story? I would even call them improbable pairs. Alex and Anders, and Julia and Nelly. What is the lowest common denominator? If we find the link I think we’ll find the solution to everything.’

‘Alex. Isn’t Alex the lowest common denominator?’

‘No,’ said Patrik, ‘I think that’s a little too simple. It’s something else. Something we can’t see, or that we don’t understand.’

He waved his fork excitedly. ‘And then we have Nils Lorentz. Or to be more precise, his disappearance. You were living in Fjällbacka then, what do you remember about it?’

‘I wasn’t very old then, and nobody tells a kid anything. But what I do remember is that it was all very hush-hush.’

‘Hush-hush?’

‘Yes, you know, conversations that stopped when I came into the room. Grown-ups talking in low voices. “Shh, don’t let the children hear” and comments like that. In other words all I know is that there was a lot of talk at the time about Nils’s disappearance. But I was too young. I wasn’t told anything.’

‘Hmm, I’m going to have to dig a little deeper into this. It’s going on my list of things to do tomorrow. But right now I’m having dinner with a woman who’s not only beautiful but also a fantastically good cook. A skål to the hostess.’

He raised his glass and Erica felt all warm inside from the compliment. Not so much because of what he said about the meal but because he’d called her beautiful. Imagine how much easier everything would be if we could read each other’s minds, she thought. This whole charade would be unnecessary. Instead she sat here hoping that he would give her the slightest little hint that he was interested. It was fine to throw yourself out there and take a chance when you were a teenager, but with the years it felt as if her heart had grown less and less elastic. The efforts required were greater and the damage to one’s self-confidence bigger each time.

After Patrik had helped himself to three more servings and they had long since stopped talking about sudden death and switched to discussing dreams, life and various world problems, they moved to the veranda to give their stomachs a break before dessert. They sat at opposite ends of the sofa and sipped their wine. Bottle number two was almost empty, and both of them could feel the effect. Their limbs were heavy and warm and their heads felt as if they were wrapped in lovely soft cotton. The night outside the windows was pitch-black with not a single star to light up the sky. The dense darkness outside made them feel as though they were wrapped in a big cocoon, completing the illusion that they were the only people on earth. Erica couldn’t recall ever feeling so content, so at home in her own existence. She made a sweeping gesture with the hand holding her wine glass, managing to encompass not only the whole veranda but the whole house.

‘Can you believe that Anna would want to sell all this? It’s not just that this is the most beautiful house in the whole world, there’s history in these walls. And I don’t mean only Anna’s and my history, but the histories of those who lived here before us. Did you know that a sea captain had this house built for his family in 1889? Captain Wilhelm Jansson. The story is actually very sad, like so many other stories in this town. He built the house for himself and his young wife Ida. They had five children in five years, but during the sixth childbirth Ida died. In those days single fathers were unheard of, so Captain Jansson’s unmarried older sister moved in and took charge of the children while he sailed the Seven Seas. His sister Hilda was not the best choice for foster mother. She was the most religious woman for several counties around, and that’s saying a lot considering how religious everyone was here. The children could hardly move without being accused of sinning, and the beatings they received from Hilda were administered with a God-fearing and stern hand. Today she would probably be called a sadist, but in those days it was totally acceptable to hide such propensities under the guise of religion.

‘Captain Jansson wasn’t home often enough to see how badly the children were faring, even though he must have had his suspicions. But like most men he considered child-rearing to be women’s work, and he felt that he was fulfilling his fatherly duties by seeing to it that they had a roof over their heads and food on the table. Until he came home one day, and discovered that the youngest girl, Märta, had gone for a week with a broken arm. Then Hilda was given the boot and the captain, who was a man of action, searched among the unmarried women of the area for a suitable new foster mother for his children. He made a good choice. Within two months he had married a solid daughter of peasant stock, Lina Månsdotter, and she took the children to her heart as if they were her own. She and the captain also had seven more together, so it must have been awfully crowded here. If you look carefully you can see traces of those kids. Little nicks and dents and worn spots. All over the house.’

‘So how did your father come to buy the house?’

‘Over the years the Jansson siblings were scattered with the wind. Captain Jansson and his Lina, who had grown very fond of each other, passed away. The only one left in the house was the eldest son, Allan. He never married and when he grew old he couldn’t keep up the house by himself, so he decided to sell. Pappa had just married Mamma, and they were looking for a home. Pappa told us that he fell in love with the house on the spot. He didn’t hesitate for a second.

‘When Allan sold the house to Pappa, he also passed on the story to him. The history of the house and his own family. It was important to him, he said, that Pappa knew whose feet had worn the old wooden floors. He also left some documents behind. Letters that Captain Jansson had sent from every corner of the world, first to his wife Ida, then to Lina. He also left the horsewhip that Hilda had used to punish the children. It still hangs down in the cellar. Anna and I used to go down there and touch it sometimes when we were small. We had heard the story about Hilda, and we used to try to imagine how the rough straws of the whip would feel on our bare skin. We felt sorry for the little children who were treated so badly.’

Erica looked at Patrik. She went on, ‘Now you understand why my heart breaks at the thought of selling this house. If we sell this house we’ll never ever get it back again. It’s irrevocable. It makes me sick to think that some rich Stockholmer would stomp in here and start sanding the floors and put up new wallpaper with little shells on it, not to mention the panoramic window that would go up here in the veranda faster than I can say “tasteless”. Who would care about preserving the pencil marks that are left on the inside of the pantry doors, where Lina each year marked how tall the children had grown? Who would care about reading the letters in which Captain Jansson tried to describe how it looked in the South Seas for his two wives who had hardly been out of the parish? Their history would be erased and then this house would be only…a house. Any old house. Charming, but without a soul.’

She could hear that she was babbling, but for some reason it was important to her that Patrik understood. She looked at him. He was watching her intently and she flushed under his gaze. Something happened. An instant of absolute understanding, and before she knew what was happening Patrik was sitting next to her, and after a second of hesitation he pressed his lips to hers. At first she only sensed the taste of wine on both their lips, but then she sensed the taste of Patrik. She cautiously opened her mouth and felt the tip of his tongue seeking hers. Her whole body felt electric.

After a while it became unbearable, and Erica got up, took him by the hand, and without a word led him up to the bedroom. They lay down on the bed and kissed and caressed each other. After a while Patrik gave her a questioning look and then began unbuttoning the back of her dress. She gave her silent assent by starting to unbutton his shirt. She realized at once that the undergarments she’d chosen were not the ones she wanted to show to Patrik the first time. God only knew that the pantyhose she had on weren’t the world’s sexiest undergarment. The question was how she could get out of them and the support knickers without Patrik seeing them. Erica sat up abruptly.

‘Excuse me, I just have to go to the toilet.’

She rushed to the bathroom and looked around feverishly. She was in luck. There was a pile of clean wash in the laundry basket that she hadn’t had time to put away. She laboriously wriggled out of the tight pantyhose and put them and the old-lady knickers in the laundry basket. Then she pulled on a pair of thin white lace knickers that would go well with her bra. She pulled her dress down over her backside and carefully checked herself in the mirror. Her hair was dishevelled and curly and her eyes had a feverish look. Her mouth was redder than normal and slightly swollen from all the kissing. She actually looked rather sexy, she thought. Although without the support knickers her belly didn’t look as flat as she liked. She sucked it in and instead thrust out her bust as she went in to Patrik, who was still lying on the bed just as she had left him.

Their clothes began disappearing, with more and more of them landing in a pile on the floor. The first time wasn’t as fantastic as it always is in romance novels; it was more of a mixture of strong feelings and embarrassing awareness. At the same time that their bodies reacted explosively to each other’s touch, they were acutely aware of their nakedness, conscious of little imperfections, worried that embarrassing sounds might arise. They were clumsy and unsure of what the other person might like and dislike. Not sure enough of each other yet that they dared put their thoughts into words. Instead they used small guttural sounds to indicate what worked and what might need to be adjusted. But the second time it was better. The third time it was quite acceptable. The fourth time was very good and the fifth time was fantastic. They fell asleep, curved around each other like spoons. The last thing Erica noticed before she fell asleep was Patrik’s arm safely round her breast and his fingers laced in hers. She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.

Patrik’s head was splitting into bits. His mouth was so dry that his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but at some time there must have been saliva in it, because against his cheek he felt a wet spot of drool on the pillow. It felt like someone was holding down his eyelids and fighting his attempts to open his eyes. After a couple of strenuous attempts he finally got them open.

He saw a vision before him. Erica was lying on her side, turned towards him, with her blonde hair curled around her face. She seemed to be dreaming, because her eyelashes were fluttering and her eyelids were twitching. Patrik thought he could lie here like this and look at her forever, without ever tiring of what he saw. His whole life if need be. Erica gave a start in her sleep but returned quickly to her steady breathing. It was true that this was like riding a bike. And by that he didn’t mean only the sex act, but also the feeling of loving a woman. During the dark, gloomy days and the nights he had thought it impossible that he would ever feel like this again. Now it felt impossible not to feel like this.

Erica stirred restlessly and he saw that she was about to resurface. She too struggled to get her eyelids open. But when she did, he was astonished all over again at how blue her eyes were.

‘Good morning, sleepyhead.’

‘Good morning.’

The smile that spread across her face made him feel like a millionaire.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Erica said.

Patrik looked at the alarm clock’s glowing numerals. ‘Yes, the two hours I slept were wonderful. Although the waking hours before that were probably even more wonderful.’

Erica merely smiled in reply.

Patrik suspected that his breath smelled like a viper’s, but he still couldn’t resist leaning forward and kissing her. The kiss became deeper and an hour raced by. Afterwards Erica lay on his left arm drawing circles with her finger on his chest. She looked up at him.

‘Did you think when you came over that we’d end up in bed?’

He thought about it a moment before he answered, and put his right hand behind his head while he was thinking.

‘No-o-o, I can’t say that I thought it would happen. But I hoped it would.’

‘Me too. Hoped, I mean, not thought.’

Patrik deliberated for a moment about how bold he should be, but with Erica in his arms he felt he could dare anything.

‘The difference is that you started hoping quite recently, didn’t you? Do you know how long I’ve been hoping this would happen?’

She gave him a puzzled look. ‘No, how long?’

Patrik paused for effect. ‘As long as I can remember. I’ve been in love with you as long as I can remember.’ Now that he’d said it out loud, he heard how true it sounded.

Erica stared at him wide-eyed. ‘You’re kidding! And here I’ve gone around worrying whether you were even the slightest bit interested in me! And now you tell me that you were mine for the taking.’

Her tone was light hearted, but he saw that she was a bit shaken by what he’d said.

‘Well, it’s not as if I’ve been celibate or living in an emotional desert my whole life. Of course I’ve been in love with other women too, Karin for example. But you’ve always been special. I always felt something here every time I saw you.’ He pressed his hand to a spot above his heart. Erica took his hand, kissed it, and put it against her cheek. That gesture told him everything.

They spent the morning getting to know each other. When Erica asked Patrik how he liked to spend his free time, his reply elicited a frustrated groan.

‘No-o-o-o-o! Not another sports fan! Why oh why can’t I find a guy who’s smart enough to realize that it’s an entirely normal pastime to chase a ball across a lawn-if you’re five! Or at least a guy who might question what use it is to humanity if someone can jump two metres in the air over a crossbar.’

‘Two forty-five.’

‘What do you mean, two forty-five?’ said Erica in a voice that showed she wouldn’t be very interested in the answer.

‘The guy who jumps the highest in the world, Sotomayor, jumps two point forty-five metres. Women jump around two metres.’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ She gave him a suspicious look. ‘Do you get the Eurosport channel?’

‘Yep.’

‘Canal+, not for the films but for the sports?’

‘Yep.’

‘TV 1000, same reason?’

‘Yep. Although to be accurate, I get TV 1000 for another reason besides sports.’

Erica gave him a playful swat on the chest. ‘Have I forgotten anything?’

‘Yep, TV3 has a lot of sports.’

‘My sport-fool radar is really well-developed, I have to say. I spent an incredibly boring evening at my friend Dan’s house last week, watching Olympic hockey. I just don’t understand how anyone can think it’s interesting to see guys in gigantic padding chase around after a little black thingumabob.’

‘In any case it’s a lot more fun and more productive than spending a whole day running from one clothing boutique to another.’

In reply to this blatant attack on her greatest vice in life, Erica wrinkled her nose and made a face at Patrik. Then she saw how his eyes suddenly took on a glazed look.

‘Damn.’ He sat up straight in bed.

‘Pardon me?’

‘Damn, shit, bloody hell.’

Erica looked at him wide-eyed.

‘How the hell could I miss something like that?’ He struck his forehead several times with his hand.

‘Hello, Earth to Patrik! Would you please tell me what you’re talking about?’

Erica waved her hands in front of him. Patrik lost his focus for a moment when he saw how the gesture made her naked breasts jiggle. Then he hopped briskly out of bed, naked as a newborn, and rushed downstairs. He came back up with a couple of newspapers in his hand, sat down on the bed, and started leafing through them frantically. By this time Erica had given up trying to get any answers and merely watched him with interest.

‘Aha!’ Patrik shouted in triumph. ‘What luck that you didn’t toss your old TV listings.’

He waved the paper in front of Erica. ‘Sweden vs. Canada!’

Still silent, Erica made do with raising a very puzzled eyebrow.

Impatient, Patrik tried to explain. ‘Sweden beat Canada in an Olympic match. On Friday, January twenty-second. On TV4.’

She still looked at him without expression. Patrik sighed.

‘All ordinary programmes were cancelled because of the match. Anders couldn’t have come home at the same time as Separate Worlds that Friday, because it was cancelled. Do you understand?’

Slowly, it dawned on Erica what he was saying. Anders no longer had an alibi. Even though it was tenuous, the police would still have a hard time getting past it. Now they could bring Anders in again, based on the evidence they already had. Patrik nodded with satisfaction when he saw that Erica understood.

‘But you don’t think that Anders is the killer, do you?’ said Erica.

‘No, of course not. But for one thing, sometimes I can be wrong, even though I know you have a hard time believing that.’ He winked at her. ‘And for another thing, if I’m not mistaken, I’ll bet that Anders knows considerably more than he’s told us. Now we have a chance to press him a lot harder.’

Patrik began hunting round the bedroom for his clothes. They were strewn here and there, but most alarming was that he discovered he still had his socks on. He quickly pulled on his trousers and hoped that in the heat of passion Erica hadn’t noticed the socks. It was hard to look like a sex god with white tube socks embroidered with ‘Tanumshede IF’.

Suddenly it felt like there was no time to lose, and he dressed with fumbling fingers. On his first attempt to button his shirt he got it wrong, and he swore when he had to undo all the buttons and start over. Patrik realized all at once how his rash behaviour must look, and he sat down on the edge of the bed, took Erica’s hands in his, and gazed steadily into her eyes.

‘I’m sorry to rush off like this, but I have to. I just want you to know that this has been the most wonderful night of my life and I can hardly wait until the next time we see each other. Do you want to see me again?’

What they had shared still felt fragile and delicate, and he held his breath waiting for her reply. She nodded.

‘Then I can come back here when I finish work?’

Erica nodded again. He leaned forward and kissed her.

When he left she was sitting on the bed with her knees pulled up and the covers wrapped loosely round her body. The sun was shining in through the little round window, creating the illusion of a halo round her blonde head. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

The snow was wet and stubbornly seeped through Bengt Larsson’s thin loafers. His shoes were more suited to summer weather, but alcohol was an effective way to deaden the cold. And faced with the choice between buying a pair of winter shoes or a whole litre of schnapps, the decision was easy.

The air was so clear and clean and the light so delicate on this early Wednesday morning that Bengt had a feeling in his breast that he hadn’t had in a long time. It was alarmingly like a sense of peace, and he wondered what it was about a normal Wednesday morning that could call forth such a peculiar sensation. He stopped and breathed in the morning air with his eyes closed. Imagine if his life could be full of mornings like this.

It was clear to him when he had come to the fork in the road. He knew precisely what day his life had taken its unhappy turn. He could even tell you what time it was. Actually he’d had all the usual excuses. There was no abuse to blame it on. No poverty, hunger or emotional deficiencies either. The only thing he had to blame was his own stupidity and an excessive faith in himself. Naturally there was a girl involved too.

He was seventeen years old, and back then there was nothing he did that didn’t involve a girl. But this girl was special. Maud, with her exuberant blondeness and feigned modesty, who played on his ego like a well-tuned violin. ‘Dear Bengt, I just have to have…’ ‘Dear Bengt, couldn’t you get me a…’ She had held the leash and he had obediently let himself be led by the nose. Nothing was ever enough for her. He saved all the money he earned and bought her fine clothes, perfumes, everything she wanted. But as soon as she got whatever it was she’d been so eagerly begging for, she tossed it aside and begged for something else, which was the only thing that could make her happy.

Maud had been like a fever in his blood. Without noticing it the wheels had gradually begun to turn faster and faster until he no longer knew what was up or down. When he turned eighteen, Maud had decided that she wanted to ride around with him in no less than a Cadillac convertible. It cost more than he made in a whole year, and he lay awake night after night as he wracked his brain, trying to figure out how to get the money. While he was going through this agony Maud would pout and hint in more and more obvious terms that if he didn’t get the car, there were certainly other guys who could treat her the way she deserved to be treated. Then jealousy was added to the torment of those sleepless, anxious nights, and finally he couldn’t stand it any longer.

On 10 September 1954, at precisely two o’clock in the afternoon, he went into the bank in Tanumshede, armed with an old army pistol his father had kept at home for years, and wearing a nylon stocking over his head. Nothing had gone right. The bank tellers had tossed banknotes into the bag he brought with him, but not nearly as much as he had hoped. Then one of the customers, the father of a classmate of his, recognized Bengt despite the nylon stocking. Within an hour the police were at his parents’ flat and found the bag of money under the bed in his room. Bengt never forgot the expression on his mother’s face. She had been dead now for many years, but her eyes still haunted him whenever the alcoholic gloom kicked in.

Three years in prison had killed all hope of a future. When he got out Maud was long gone. He didn’t know where, and he didn’t care. All his old friends had gone on to secure jobs and family life and didn’t want anything to do with him. His father had been killed in an accident while Bengt was inside, so he moved in with his mother. With cap in hand he tried to find work, but was met by rejection everywhere he went. No one wanted to hire him. What finally drove him to seek his future in the bottom of a bottle were all the looks that kept following him.

For someone who had grown up in the close-knit confines of a small town where everyone says hello to each other on the street, the feeling of being frozen out was just as painful as physical torture. He had thought about moving away from Fjällbacka, but where would he go? It was easier to stay and let himself sink into a blissful alcoholic torpor.

He and Anders had found each other at once. Two poor fucks, they used to say, laughing bitterly. Bengt harboured an almost fatherly affection for Anders and felt greater sorrow over his fate than over his own. He often wished that he could have done something to turn Anders’s life in a different direction. But because he also knew the seductive siren song of alcohol, he knew how impossible it was to tear yourself away from the demanding lover that booze had become over the years. She demanded everything and gave nothing back. All he and Anders could do was give each other a little consolation and companionship.

The path up to the front door of Anders’s building had been carefully sanded. So Bengt didn’t have to tread cautiously because of the bottle in his inside pocket, as he had done many times during the hard winter just past, when the ice lay shiny and slick all the way to the stairs.

The two flights up to Anders’s flat were always a challenge. There was no lift. Several times he had to stop to catch his breath, and twice he made sure to take a bracing swig from the bottle in his inside pocket. When he finally stood outside the door to Anders’s flat he was panting hard. He leaned against the door jamb for a moment before he opened the door, which he knew Anders never locked.

It was quiet in the flat. Maybe Anders wasn’t home. If he was sleeping it off, his deep breathing and snuffling snores could usually be heard all the way out in the hall. Bengt looked in the kitchen. Nobody there, except for the normal colonies of bacteria. The bathroom door stood wide open, and there too it was empty. When he turned the corner he had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. The sight in the living room made Bengt stop short. The bottle he was holding in his hand fell to the floor with a heavy clunk, but it didn’t break.

The first thing he saw was the feet dangling freely a bit above the floor. The naked feet swung slightly, swaying back and forth. Anders had trousers on but nothing on his upper body. His head hung at an odd angle. His face was swollen and discoloured, and his tongue looked too big for his mouth as it stuck out between his lips. It was the saddest sight Bengt had ever seen. He turned and quietly left the flat, but not before he picked up the bottle from the floor. He tried to find something inside himself to grab hold of, but found only emptiness. Instead he grasped at the only lifeline he knew. He sat down on the threshold of Anders’s flat, put the bottle to his mouth, and cried.

It was doubtful whether he had a legal blood alcohol content, but Patrik wasn’t worrying about that right now. He drove a little slower than usual for safety’s sake, but since he was dialling numbers on his mobile and talking on the phone, it was debatable how much help that was to traffic safety.

His first call was to TV4, which confirmed that Separate Worlds had been cancelled on Friday the twenty-second because of the hockey match. Then he rang Mellberg, who not unexpectedly was overjoyed to hear the news. He demanded that Anders immediately be brought back in. With his third call, Patrik got the backup he requested and drove straight towards the residential complex where Anders lived. Jenny Rosén must have simply mixed up the days. Not an uncommon occurrence among witnesses.

Despite his excitement at a possible break in the case, Patrik couldn’t really focus on the task. His thoughts kept returning to Erica and the night they had just spent together. He caught himself grinning like a fool from ear to ear, and his hands involuntarily drummed little rhythms on the steering wheel. He turned on the radio to an oldies station and got Aretha Franklin with ‘Respect’. The upbeat Atlantic sound fit his mood perfectly and he turned up the volume. At the refrain he sang along at the top of his lungs and danced as best he could from a sitting position. He thought he sounded damned good, at least until the radio cut out and he heard only his own voice roaring ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T’. His eardrums reverberated, but not in a good way.

The entire past night felt like an intoxicated dream, and it wasn’t only because of the amount of wine they had drunk. It was as though a veil or hazy curtain of emotion, love, and sex had settled over those night-time hours.

He was reluctantly forced to put aside his thoughts of yesterday as he turned into the car park at the residential complex. The backup patrol cars had arrived unusually fast. They must have been in the vicinity. He saw two cars with blue lights flashing and frowned slightly. Typical that they would misconstrue the instructions. He’d asked for one car, not two. As he approached he saw that there was an ambulance behind the police cars. Something wasn’t right.

He recognized Lena, the blonde policewoman from Uddevalla, and went over to her. She was talking on a mobile phone, but as he approached she signed off. He heard ‘Bye’ and she stuffed the phone into a holder she wore on her belt.

‘Hi, Patrik.’

‘Hi, Lena. What’s going on?’

‘One of the winos found Anders Nilssori hanged in his flat.’ She nodded in the direction of the main door. Patrik got an ice-cold feeling in his stomach.

‘You haven’t touched anything?’

‘No, what do you think we are? I just talked to dispatch in Uddevalla and they’re sending over a team to examine the crime scene. We also talked to Mellberg so I assumed you came because he rang you.’

‘No, I was on the way over here anyway to bring Anders in for more questioning.’

‘But I heard he had an alibi?’

‘Yes, that’s what we thought, but it just fell apart so we were going to bring him back in.’

‘Well, this is fucking bad luck then. What the hell do you think it means? I mean, the probability that there would suddenly be two murderers here in Fjällbacka must be almost zero. He must have been killed by the same person who killed Alex Wijkner. Do you have any other suspects besides Anders?’

Patrik pulled himself together. It was true that this changed everything, but he still wasn’t ready to draw the same conclusions as Lena, that Anders had been killed by the same person who murdered Alex. Of course it was almost statistically impossible. There hadn’t been a murder here in decades, and suddenly two separate killers were on the loose. But he wasn’t prepared to rule out the impossible either.

‘Well, let’s go up so I can have a look. Then you can tell me what you’ve found out so far. How did the call come in, for instance?’

Lena led the way, entering the stairwell ahead of him.

‘Well, as I said it was one of Anders’s alky pals who found him, Bengt Larsson. He came over this morning so they could start drinking and get a head start on the day. He usually just walks right in, and that’s what he did today. When he entered the flat he found Anders hanging by a rope tied to the hook for the ceiling lamp in the living room.’

‘Did he call it in right away?’

‘Actually no. He sat on the threshold of the flat and drowned his sorrows in a bottle of Explorer vodka. But then a neighbour happened to come out of his flat and in passing asked Bengt how things were going. That’s when he blurted out what he had seen. Then the neighbour rang us. Bengt Larsson is too drunk to be questioned in more detail, so I just sent him off to your drunk tank.’

Patrik silently wondered why Mellberg hadn’t rung to tell him about all the action, but resigned himself to the fact that the ways of the superintendent were most often utterly inscrutable.

Patrik took the stairs two at a time and passed Lena. When they reached the second floor the door was wide open and he saw people moving about inside the flat. Jenny was standing in the doorway to her flat with Max in her arms. When Patrik went over to them, Max waved his chubby little hands in delight and showed his gap-toothed smile.

‘What’s going on?’ Jenny took a firmer grip on Max, who was doing his best to wriggle out of her arms.

‘We’re not sure yet. Anders Nilsson is dead, but we don’t know much more. Did you see or hear anything unusual?’

‘No, I can’t recall anything special. The first I heard was when my next-door neighbour started talking to somebody here in the stairwell. After a while the police cars arrived and an ambulance, and there was a hell of a commotion out here.’

‘But nothing special earlier today, or last night?’ Patrik was still fishing.

‘No, not a thing.’

Patrik let it drop for the time being. ‘Okay, thanks for your help, Jenny.’

He smiled at Max and let him grab hold of his finger, something that was apparently hysterically funny because Max laughed so hard he looked like he might choke. Reluctantly Patrik tore himself loose and backed slowly in the direction of Anders’s flat while he kept waving at Max and saying bye-bye.

Lena stood in the doorway of the flat with a mocking smile on her lips. ‘Need one of your own, don’t you?’

To his dismay Patrik felt himself blush, something that only made Lena smile even more. He muttered something unintelligible in reply.

She preceded him into the flat, saying over her shoulder, ‘Well, you know, all you have to do is ask. I’m free and single and I’ve got a biological clock ticking so loud I can hardly sleep at night.’

Patrik knew she was joking, that was Lena’s usual flirty banter, but he still couldn’t help blushing even more. He didn’t reply, and when they entered the living room they both lost any urge to smile.

Someone had cut Anders’s body down from the rope it had been hanging from, and now he lay on the living-room floor. Right above him hung the stub of the rope, sliced off about four inches from the hook. The rest of the rope was around Anders’s neck in a noose, and Patrik could see the deep, angry red wound on his neck where the rope had bit into the skin. What always bothered him the most about dead people was the unnatural facial colour. Strangulation caused a nasty bluish-purple hue which gave the victim a very odd look. Patrik also recognized the thick, swollen tongue sticking out between Anders’s lips as normal for victims who were strangled or suffocated. Even though his experience with murder victims was limited, to say the least, the police got their share of suicides each year, and he’d helped cut down three of them during his career.

But when Patrik looked around the living room there was one thing that quite clearly distinguished this scene from the suicides by hanging that he’d seen. There was no possibility that Anders could have climbed up and put his head through the noose tied to the ceiling. No chairs or tables were anywhere near. Anders had swung freely in the middle of the room like a macabre human mobile.

Unused to homicide scenes as he was, Patrik cautiously moved in a wide circle around the body. Anders’s eyes were open, staring rigidly into space. Patrik couldn’t help leaning forward and closing the dead man’s eyes. He knew that he shouldn’t have any sort of contact with the body before the M.E. arrived-actually the body shouldn’t even have been cut down-but something in those staring eyes set all his nerves on edge. It felt as though the eyes were following him round the room.

The room seemed unusually desolate. Then he noticed that all the paintings had been taken down from the walls. Only big ugly marks were left where the paintings had once hung. Otherwise the room was just as shabby as he remembered it from the last time he was here, but then the paintings had somehow lighted up the room. They had given Anders’s home a certain air of decadence by combining filth with beauty. Now the place just looked dirty and disgusting.

Lena was talking non-stop on her mobile. After one conversation in which Patrik only heard her swearing in single syllables, she slapped shut the lid of her little Ericsson phone and turned to him.

‘We’re getting reinforcements from Forensic Medicine for crime scene investigation. They’re leaving Göteborg now. We can’t touch anything. I suggest we wait outside for safety’s sake.’

They went out on the landing and Lena carefully closed and locked the door. The cold was piercing when they stepped outside the main door; Lena and Patrik stamped their feet in place.

‘Where’s Janne right now?’ Patrik was asking about Lena’s partner, who should have been with her in the car.

‘He’s TCC’ing today.’

‘TCC’ing?’ Patrik looked quizzical.

‘Taking care of a sick child. TCC. Thanks to all the cutbacks there was nobody who could step in on short notice, so I had to come alone when we got the call.’

Patrik nodded, not really paying attention. He was inclined to side with Lena. There was a lot to suggest that it was one and the same killer they were searching for. Drawing hasty conclusions was definitely one of the riskiest things a cop could do, but the odds of there being two different murderers in this little town were infinitesimally low. Add to that the fact that there were strong connections between the two victims and the odds were even lower.

Lena and Patrik knew that the trip from Göteborg would take at least an hour and a half, maybe two, so they sat in his car and turned on the heat. They also turned on the radio, and for a long time they sat listening to happy-go-lucky pop music. It was a welcome distraction from the reason for their long wait. After an hour and forty minutes they saw two police cars drive into the car park, and they got out to meet their reinforcements.

‘Please, Jan, can’t we get our own house? I saw that one of the houses at Badholmen is for sale. Couldn’t we drive down and take a look at it? It has the most fantastic view, and there’s a little boathouse too. Please?’

Lisa’s whining voice made his sense of irritation grow. Her voice almost always did these days. Being married to her would be a lot more pleasant if she had the sense to shut up and just look pretty. Lately not even her big, firm breasts and round arse had managed to convince him that she was worth all the trouble. Her babbling had only accelerated, and in moments like this he bitterly regretted giving in to her nagging about getting married.

Lisa was working as a waitress at Röde Orm in Grebbestad when he first laid eyes on her. All his friends had practically drooled when they saw her plunging neckline and long legs, and he decided on the spot that he had to have her. He usually got what he wanted, and Lisa proved to be no exception. He wasn’t bad-looking, but what usually nailed the final decision was when he introduced himself as Jan Lorentz. Mentioning his last name normally brought a gleam to a woman’s eyes, and from then on it was all systems go.

He had been obsessed with Lisa’s body in the beginning. He couldn’t get enough of her, and he effectively closed his ears to all the stupid comments she kept making in her shrill voice. The envious looks from other men when he showed up with Lisa on his arm also increased her attractiveness in his eyes. At first her little hints that he should make an honest woman out of her fell on deaf ears. To be quite frank, her stupidity had begun to chip away at her appeal. But what finally clinched his decision to make her his wife was Nelly’s vehement opposition to the whole idea. She loathed Lisa from the first moment she saw her and never missed an opportunity to make her views known. A childish wish to rebel had put Jan in his present predicament, and he cursed his own stupidity.

Lisa was pouting as she lay on her stomach on their big double bed. She was naked and doing her best to look seductive, but he was no longer interested. He knew that she was waiting for an answer.

‘You know we can’t move away from Mamma. She isn’t well, and she could never take care of this big house by herself.’

He turned his back to Lisa, knotting his tie in front of the big mirror on her dressing-table. In the mirror he saw Lisa frown in annoyance. It wasn’t a very becoming look.

‘Why doesn’t the old bitch have enough sense to move into some nice old folks’ home instead of being a burden on her family? Doesn’t she understand that we have a right to our own lives? Instead, we have to take care of her day in and day out. And what enjoyment does she get from sitting on all that money? I bet you she loves watching us demean ourselves, crawling after the little crumbs that roll off her table. Doesn’t she understand how much you do for her? You slave away at that company and spend the rest of the time baby-sitting her. The old hag won’t even let us have the best rooms in the house as thanks for our help. We have to live in the cellar while she lolls about in the drawing rooms.’

Jan turned and gave his wife a cold look. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to talk about my mother that way?’

‘Your mother.’ Lisa snorted. ‘You can’t think that she really looks on you as a son, Jan. You’ll never be more than a charity case for her. If her darling Nils hadn’t disappeared, you would probably have been tossed out on your ear sooner or later. You’re nothing more than a temporary stand-in, Jan. Who else would slave away practically twenty-four hours a day for her for nothing? The only thing you have is a promise that when she croaks, you get all the money. First of all, the bitch will probably live to be at least a hundred, and second, I bet she’s willed the money to a home for abandoned dogs and is laughing her head off at us behind our backs. Sometimes you’re just so fucking dumb, Jan.’

Lisa rolled over onto her back and studied her well-manicured nails. With ice-cold calm Jan took a step towards Lisa where she lay on the bed. He squatted down, wound the long blonde hair hanging off the edge of the bed round his hand, and began pulling slowly, harder and harder, until she grimaced in pain. He put his face right up to hers, so close that he could feel her breath on his face, and snarled in a low voice: ‘Don’t you ever, ever call me dumb, you hear me? And believe me, the money will be mine some day. The only question is, whether you’ll be around long enough to enjoy it.’

With satisfaction he saw a spark of fear ignite in her eyes. He watched her stupid but primitively sly brain process the information and conclude that it was time to change tactics. She stretched out on the bed, pouting and cupping her hands round her breasts. She circled her finger round her nipples until they hardened and then purred, ‘Forgive me, that was stupid of me, Jan. You know how I am. I talk without thinking sometimes. Is there any way I can make it up to you?’

She sucked suggestively on her index finger and then slipped her hand down to her crotch.

Jan reluctantly felt his body respond and decided that at least there was one thing he could use her for. He undid his tie.

Mellberg scratched his crotch meditatively without noticing the expression of disgust that this gesture aroused in the faces of the people who sat gathered before him. In honour of the day he had put on a suit, even though it was a bit too tight, but he blamed that on the dry-cleaners, who must have screwed up and run it at too high a temperature. He didn’t have to weigh himself to know that he’d put on an ounce or two since he was a young recruit, but he thought that buying a new suit was a waste of money. Good quality was timeless. He couldn’t help it if the idiots at the dry-cleaners couldn’t do their job properly.

He cleared his throat to get everyone’s full attention. The chatter and scraping of chairs ceased, and all eyes turned towards him as he sat behind his desk. Chairs had been gathered and arranged in a semicircle in front of him. Mellberg looked at everyone in silence with a solemn expression. This was a moment he intended to milk as much as possible. He noticed with a frown that Patrik looked exhausted. Naturally the staff did what they liked in their free time, but considering it was the middle of the work week one ought to expect that they observe moderation in the form of partying and alcohol. Mellberg effectively repressed the memory of the half-bottle he himself had downed yesterday evening. He made a mental note to have a talk with Patrik in private about the station’s alcohol policy.

‘As you all know, at this time another murder has occurred in Fjällbacka. The probability that there are two killers is very low, so I think we can proceed from the assumption that the same person who murdered Alexandra Wijkner also murdered Anders Nilsson.’

He enjoyed the sound of his own voice and the zeal and interest he saw in the faces before him. He was in his true element. He was born to do this.

Mellberg went on. ‘Anders Nilsson was found this morning by Bengt Larsson, one of the victim’s drinking buddies. He had been hanged, and according to preliminary information from Göteborg, he’d been there at least since yesterday. Until we have more precise information this will be the hypothesis from which we’ll be working.’

He liked the feel of the word ‘hypothesis’ rolling off his tongue. The group before him was not particularly large, but in his mind it was many times bigger and the interest was impossible to misconstrue. It was his words and orders they were all waiting for. He looked about with pleasure. Annika was typing eagerly on a laptop computer, with a pair of reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Her ample feminine curves were clothed in a well-tailored yellow jacket with matching skirt; he gave her a wink. That would have to do. Best not to scare her off. Next to her sat Patrik, who looked as if he were going to fall apart at any moment. His eyelids were heavy and his eyes clearly bloodshot. Mellberg decided he would really have to have a talk with him at the earliest opportunity. After all, one had the right to demand a certain semblance of professionalism from one’s subordinates.

Besides Patrik and Annika, there were another three employees from the Tanumshede police station. Gösta Flygare was the eldest at the station. He devoted all his energy to doing as little as possible until retirement, which was now only a couple of years off. After that he would devote all his time to his grand passion-golf. He had started playing ten years ago when his wife died of cancer, and weekends suddenly felt much too long and desolate. Sport had soon become like a poison in his blood. He now regarded his job, in which he had never been terribly interested in the first place, only as a disruptive element that prevented him from being out on the golf course.

Despite the fact that his salary was meagre, he had managed to save enough to buy a flat on the Costa del Sol in Spain. Soon he’d be able to devote the summer months to playing golf in Sweden and the rest of the year he could spend on the courses in Spain. Although, he had to admit, these murders had succeeded in arousing his interest for the first time in ages. But not so much that he wouldn’t rather play eighteen holes right now if the season had permitted it.

Next to him sat the station’s youngest member. Martin Molin elicited varying degrees of parental instincts in all of them. They took turns acting as invisible crutches for him at work, although they were careful that he never notice anything. They only gave him assignments that a child could do, and they went over and corrected everything he wrote before his reports reached Mellberg’s desk.

He had graduated from the Police Academy no more than a year ago. Everyone was astonished that he’d been able, first of all, to immerse himself in the difficult booking procedures and second, complete his training and pass the exam. But Martin was pleasant and good-natured, and despite his naïveté, which made him totally unsuitable for police work, they all reckoned that he couldn’t do any great damage here in Tanumshede. So they gladly helped him over all obstacles. Annika in particular had taken him under her wing and sometimes, to everyone’s great amusement, she showed her feelings by spontaneously pressing him to her large bosom in a bear hug.

On those occasions Martin’s fiery red hair, which always stood on end, and his equally red freckles competed with the colour of his face. But he worshipped Annika and had spent many evenings visiting her and her husband when he needed to ask advice about being unlucky in love-which he always was. His innocence and amiability seemed to make him an irresistible magnet for women who ate men for breakfast and then spat out the remains. But Annika was always there to listen, patch up the shreds of his self-confidence, and then send him back out into the world, in the hope that one day he would find a woman who could appreciate this gem of a man, hiding beneath the freckled exterior.

The last member of the group was also the least popular. Ernst Lundgren was a big-time arse-kisser who never missed a chance to promote himself, preferably at the expense of others. No one was surprised that he was still single. He was a far from attractive man. Even though uglier men than he had found a partner thanks to a helpfully pleasant personality, Ernst lacked this attribute completely. That’s why he was now living with his old mother on a farm six miles south of Tanumshede. Rumour had it that his father, who was notorious in the area as an alcoholic and highly aggressive man, had received a helping hand from his wife when he fell from the hayloft and landed on a pitchfork. That was many years ago now, but the rumour was revived whenever people had nothing more exciting to talk about. In any case, it was true that only a mother could love Ernst, since his buck teeth, straggly hair and big ears were accompanied by a choleric disposition and a self-promoting manner. Right now he was hanging on Mellberg’s every syllable as though his words were pearls, and he took every opportunity to shush the others testily if they dared make the slightest noise to distract attention from Mellberg’s speech. He eagerly raised his hand like a schoolboy to ask a question.

‘How do we know that Anders wasn’t murdered by the drunk, who later merely pretended to discover him this morning?’

Mellberg gave Lundgren an appreciative nod.

‘A very good question, Ernst, very good. But as I said, we’re going on the assumption that it’s the same person who killed Alex Wijkner. Just to be safe, though, we’ll check out Bengt Larsson’s alibi for yesterday.’

Mellberg pointed with his pen to Lundgren as he scanned the rest of the group.

‘This is the sort of alert thinking we need to solve this case. I hope you will all listen and learn from Ernst. You have a long way to go before you reach his level.’

Ernst modestly lowered his eyes, but as soon as Mellberg turned his attention elsewhere, he couldn’t resist casting a triumphant look at his colleagues. Annika snorted loudly and stared back without blinking in response to the angry look Lundgren gave her.

‘Now where was I?’

Mellberg hooked his thumbs under the braces he was wearing under his jacket and spun round on his chair. He ended up facing the whiteboard that had been set up on the wall behind him to track the case of Alex Wijkner. A similar whiteboard had now been put up next to it, but the only thing on it was a Polaroid photo taken of Anders before the ambulance attendants cut down his body.

‘So, what do we know so far? The body of Anders Nilsson was found this morning, and according to the preliminary report, he’d been dead since sometime yesterday. He was hanged by one or more persons unknown, presumably more than one because it would take considerable strength to lift up a full-grown man high enough to hang him from the ceiling. What we don’t know is how they went about it. There are no signs of a struggle, either in the flat or on Anders’s body. No bruises to indicate rough handling of the body, either before or after death occurred. These are only preliminary data, as I said, but we expect confirmation as soon as the autopsy is complete.’

Patrik waved his pen. ‘How soon do we expect to get the autopsy results?’

‘Apparently they have a whole pile of bodies waiting, so unfortunately I haven’t been able to get any information as to when the report will be ready.’

Nobody looked surprised.

‘We also know that there’s a clear connection between Anders Nilsson and our first murder victim, Alexandra Wijkner.’

Now Mellberg stood up and pointed at the photo of Alexandra that was in the middle of the first whiteboard. They had received the picture from her mother, and once again they were all struck by how beautiful she had been in life. It made the picture next to it, of Alexandra in the bathtub with a bluish, pale face and frost in her hair and eyelashes, look even more horrible.

‘This ill-matched pair had a sexual relationship. Anders himself admitted it and we also have certain evidence, as you know, to support his claim. What we don’t know is how long it lasted, how they got involved with each other, and above all why a beautiful society woman would choose as her bed partner a filthy and generally repulsive alcoholic. Something is fishy here, I can smell it.’

Mellberg tapped his index finger a couple of times on the side of his bulbous red nose.

‘Martin, you’re assigned to dig deeper into this. Above all you need to press Henrik Wijkner a lot harder than we’ve done so far. That guy knows more than he’s admitting, I’m sure of it.’

Martin nodded eagerly, taking notes for dear life. Annika gave him a tender, motherly look over the tops of her reading glasses.

‘Unfortunately, this brings us back to square one as far as suspects in the first murder are concerned. Anders seemed very promising in that role, but now the case has taken a whole different turn. Patrik, you’ll have to review all the material that we have on the Wijkner murder. Check and double-check every detail. Somewhere in that material there’s a lead we missed.’

Mellberg had heard that line on a TV cop show and memorized it for future use.

Gösta was now the only one who hadn’t been given an assignment. Mellberg looked at his list and thought for a moment.

‘Gösta, you go and talk with Alex Wijkner’s family. Maybe they know something else they haven’t told us about. Ask them about her friends and enemies, her childhood, her personality, everything. Whatever you can think of. Talk to both parents and the sister, but make sure you talk to them one at a time. You get the most out of people that way, in my experience. Just co-ordinate with Molin, who’ll be talking to the husband.’

Gösta winced under the burden of a concrete assignment and sighed in resignation. Not because it would take time away from golf in the middle of this bitter cold winter, but in the past few years he’d almost got used to not needing to do any real work. He had perfected the art of looking busy while he played solitaire on his computer to kill time. The burden of having to produce some concrete results weighed on him. His peace and quiet were over. He probably wouldn’t even be paid overtime. He’d be happy if he even got reimbursed for the petrol back and forth to Göteborg.

Mellberg clapped his hands and shooed them off.

‘All right, let’s get going. We can’t sit on our backsides if we want to solve this thing. I reckon you’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked before, and as far as days off are concerned, you can forget about that until this is over. Until then your time belongs to me. Get moving.’

If any of them had anything against being shooed off like little children, nobody said a word. They got up, took the chairs they’d been sitting on in one hand and their notebooks and pens in the other. Only Ernst Lundgren stayed behind, but Mellberg uncharacteristically was in no mood for flattery, so he shooed him off as well.

It had been a very productive day. Certainly it was a big disappointment that his prime suspect for the Wijkner murder had turned out to be a blind alley. But at least one plus one was considerably more than two. One murder was an event, two murders were a sensation for such a small district. If before he was reasonably sure of getting a one-way ticket to the centre of the action when he solved the Wijkner case, he was now dead certain that if he wrapped up both murders in a neat package, they would beg and plead for him to come back to Göteborg.

With these bright prospects within reach, Bertil Mellberg leaned back in his chair, stuck his hand into the third drawer, took out a Mums-Mums chocolate-dipped meringue biscuit and popped the whole thing blissfully into his mouth. Then he clasped his hands behind his head, closed his eyes and decided to take a little nap. After all, it was almost lunchtime.

After Patrik left, Erica had tried to sleep for a couple of hours without success. All the feelings jostling inside her made her toss back and forth in bed. A smile kept sneaking over her lips. There ought to be a law against being this happy. The feeling of well-being was so strong that she hardly knew what to do with herself. She lay on her side and rested her right cheek on her hands.

Everything felt brighter today. Everything felt easier to deal with. Alex’s murder, the book that her publisher was impatiently waiting for and that wasn’t really flowing properly, her grief for her parents, and not least the sale of her childhood home. All felt easier to bear today. The problems hadn’t gone away, but for the first time she felt truly convinced that her world wasn’t about to collapse and that she could handle any difficulties that came her way.

Imagine what a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours. Yesterday at this time she had woken up with a weight on her chest. Woken to a loneliness she couldn’t manage to look beyond. Now it seemed as though she could still physically feel Patrik’s caresses against her skin. Physically was actually the wrong word, or too limited a word.

With her entire being she felt that her loneliness had been replaced by a sense of being two. The silence in the bedroom was now peaceful where it had felt threatening and unending before. Of course she already missed him, but she was secure in the knowledge that wherever he was, he was thinking of her.

Erica felt as if she had taken a mental broom and resolutely swept away all the old cobwebs in the corners and all the dust that had accumulated in her mind. But this new clarity also made her realize that she could no longer flee from what had been occupying her thoughts the past few days.

Ever since the true identity of the father of Alex’s child had appeared like blazing letters in the sky for Erica, she had dreaded the confrontation. She was still not looking forward to it. But the new strength that she felt inside made it possible to come to grips with the dilemma, instead of pushing it aside. She knew what she had to do.

She took a long shower in scalding hot water. Everything felt like a new beginning this morning, and she wanted to meet it completely clean. After the shower and a glance at the outdoor thermometer, she dressed warmly and said a prayer that she could get the car started. She was in luck. It started on the first try.

During the drive Erica thought about how she should bring up the subject. She practised a few opening lines but each sounded lamer than the last, so she decided to ad lib. She didn’t have that much to go on, but her gut told her that she was right. For a fraction of a second she considered ringing Patrik and telling him about her suspicions, but she quickly vetoed that idea, deciding that she had to check it out herself first. There was too much at stake.

The road to her destination was short, but it felt as if it took an eternity. When she turned into the car park below the Badhotel, Dan waved happily from the boat. She had guessed that he would be here. Erica waved but didn’t smile back. She locked the car and with her hands in the pockets of her light-brown duffel coat, she sauntered over towards Dan and the boat. The day was hazy and grey, but the air smelled fresh. She took a couple of deep breaths to try and dispel the last traces of haze in her head, caused by last night’s copious wine intake.

‘Hi, Erica.’

‘Hi.’

Dan kept working on his boat but looked happy to have company. Erica glanced around a little nervously for Pernilla; she was still worried about the look Dan’s wife had given them last time. But in light of what she now knew, she suddenly understood it much better.

For the first time Erica saw how beautiful the worn old fishing boat was. Dan had taken it over after his father, and he had cared for it with real tenderness. Fishing was in his blood, and it was his great sorrow in life that this occupation could no longer feed a family. Naturally he got on well in his role as teacher at Tanum School, but fishing was his true calling in life. He couldn’t help smiling whenever he worked on the boat. The hard work didn’t bother him, and he kept the winter cold at bay by wearing layers of clothing. He hoisted a heavy roll of line onto his shoulder and turned towards Erica.

‘What the hell is this? No treats today? I hope you don’t intend to make a habit of it.’

A lock of his blond hair hung down from under the knit cap. He looked big and strong, standing in front of her like a massive pillar. He radiated strength and happiness, and it pained her that she would have to puncture that joy. But if she didn’t do it, someone else would. The police, in the worst case. She convinced herself that she was doing him a favour, but she knew she was entering an emotional grey zone. The main reason was that she personally wanted to know. She had to find out.

Dan went up to the bow with the roll of line, tossed it onto the deck and came back to Erica, who was leaning against the railing in the stern.

Erica gazed unseeing out at the horizon. ‘I purchased my love for money, for me there was naught else to have.’

Dan laughed and finished the verse: ‘Sing lovely you soft burring strings, sing lovely of my only love.’

Erica wasn’t smiling.

‘Is Fröding still your favourite poet?’

‘Always has been, always will be. The kids at school claim they’re going to puke if they read any more Fröding, but in my opinion it’s impossible to read too much of his poetry.’

‘Yes, I still have that collection of his that you gave me when we were together.’

She was speaking to his back now, because Dan had turned round to move some crates of nets that were lying against the opposite railing. She continued relentlessly.

‘Do you always give that book to your girlfriends?’

He stopped short with his chores and turned to Erica with a shocked expression.

‘What do you mean? You got one and yes, Pernilla got one, although I doubt that she ever bothered to read it.’

Erica saw an uneasy expression on his face. She gripped the railing she was leaning against a little harder with her mitten-clad hands and looked him straight in the eye.

‘And Alex? Did she get a copy too?’

Dan’s face turned the same colour as the snow on the icy bay behind him, but she also saw an expression of relief quickly slide over it.

‘What do you mean? Alex?’

He was not yet ready to capitulate.

‘I told you last time that I was in Alex’s house one evening last week. What I didn’t tell you was that someone came into the house while I was there. Someone who came straight up to the bedroom and took something away. At first I couldn’t think of what it was, but then I checked the last call that Alex made from home. It was to your mobile, and that’s when I remembered what was missing from the room. I have the exact same book at home.’

Dan didn’t say a word, so she continued. ‘It wasn’t hard to work out why someone would take the trouble to go into Alex’s house and then steal something as simple as a poetry book. There’s a dedication in it, isn’t there? A dedication that would point straight to the man who was her lover?’

‘“With all my love I surrender my passion-Dan.”’

He declaimed it in a voice full of emotion. Now it was his turn to stare vacantly at the water. He sat down abruptly on a crate on deck and tore off his cap. His hair stuck out in all directions. He pulled off his gloves and ran his hands through his hair. Then he looked straight at Erica.

‘I couldn’t let it get out. What we had together was madness. An intense and all-consuming madness. Not something that we could let collide with our real lives. We both knew that it had to end.’

‘Were you supposed to meet on the Friday she died?’

A muscle twitched in Dan’s face at the reminder. After Alex died he must have pondered countless times what would have happened if he had actually shown up. Whether she still would have been alive.

‘Yes, we were supposed to meet that Friday evening. Pernilla was going to visit her sister in Munkedal with the kids. I thought up some excuse about feeling out of sorts and preferring to stay at home.’

‘But Pernilla didn’t go, did she?’

There was a long silence.

‘Yes, Pernilla went but I stayed at home. I turned off my mobile, and I knew she’d never dare ring the phone at the house. I stayed away because I was afraid. I didn’t dare look her in the eye and tell her it was over. Even though I knew she realized that it would have to happen sooner or later, I was afraid to be the one who took that step. I thought that if I could slowly start backing away, she’d get tired of things and break it off with me. Very manly, don’t you think?’

Erica knew that the hardest part was yet to come, but she had to go on. Better that he heard it from her.

‘But Dan, she didn’t understand that it had to end. She envisaged a future with you. A future where you left your family and she left Henrik and the two of you lived happily ever after.’

He seemed to shrink with each word, and the worst was yet to come.

‘Dan, she was pregnant. With your child. Apparently, she had intended to tell you about it that Friday night. She’d prepared a feast and put champagne on ice.’

Dan couldn’t look at her. He tried to fix his gaze out in the distance, but tears began to flow, making everything run together in a mist. Grief welled up from somewhere deep inside him, and tears started running down his cheeks. He began to sob, and he kept having to wipe his nose with his gloves to stop the snot from running down. Finally, he put his head in his hands and gave up all attempts to wipe off his face.

Erica squatted down next to him and put her arms around him to console him. But Dan shook her off. She knew that he’d have to get himself out of the hell he was in on his own. So she waited him out with her arms crossed until the tears came more slowly and he seemed to be able to breathe again.

‘How do you know she was pregnant?’ The words came in a stammer.

‘I was with Birgit and Henrik at the police when they told us.’

‘Do they know it wasn’t Henrik’s child?’

‘I’m sure Henrik knows, but Birgit doesn’t; she thinks Henrik is the father.’

Dan nodded. It seemed to console him a little that her parents didn’t know.

‘How did you meet?’

Erica wanted to turn away his thoughts from his unborn child, if only for a moment, to give him a little breathing space.

He smiled bitterly. ‘Really classic. Where do people meet each other in Fjällbacka at our age? Having a beer at Galären, of course. We saw each other across the room and it was like being kicked in the stomach. I’ve never felt so attracted to a woman before.’

Erica felt a tiny, tiny twinge of jealousy at those words.

Dan went on. ‘We didn’t do anything then, but a couple of weekends later she called on my mobile. I drove over to see her. Then it just sort of snowballed from there. Stolen hours when Pernilla was away somewhere. Not that many nights, in other words; it was usually during the day that we met.’

‘Weren’t you afraid that the neighbours would see you when you went to Alex’s house? You know how fast gossip travels here.’

‘Sure, I did think about that. I used to climb over the fence in the back yard and then go in through the cellar entrance. To be quite honest, that was probably a good part of the excitement between us as well. The danger and the risk.’

‘But didn’t you understand how much you were risking?’

Dan was fidgeting with his cap and kept his eyes fixed on the deck as he talked.

‘Of course I did. On one level. But on another I felt invulnerable. Other people might get caught, but not me. Isn’t that how it always is?’

‘Does Pernilla know?’

‘No. Not in so many words, anyway. But I think she suspects something. You saw how she reacted when she saw us here. That’s how she’s been the past few months-jealous and watchful. I’m sure she senses that something is going on.’

‘You know you have to tell her about it now.’

Dan shook his head vehemently. Tears welled up in his eyes again.

‘That won’t work, Erica. I can’t do it. It wasn’t until this thing with Alex that I really understood how much Pernilla means to me. Alex was a passion, but Pernilla and the kids are my life. I can’t do it!’

Erica leaned forward and put her hand over Dan’s. Her voice was calm and clear and showed nothing of the agitation she felt inside.

‘Dan, you have to. The police need to be informed, and you have a chance now to tell Pernilla about it in your own way. Sooner or later the police will figure it out by themselves, and then you won’t have a chance to explain to Pernilla the way you want to. Then you’ll no longer have any choice. And you said yourself that she probably knows or at least suspects something. Maybe it would even be a relief for both of you if you talked about it. Clear the air.’

She saw that Dan was listening and taking in what she said. She could also feel that he was shaking.

‘But what if she leaves me? What if she takes the kids and leaves me, Erica? Where will I go then? I’m nothing without them.’

A tiny, tiny voice inside Erica whispered cruelly that he should have thought of that earlier, but stronger voices drowned it out and said that the time for recriminations was past. There were more important matters to take care of right now. She leaned forward, put her arms around him and ran her hands over his back to comfort him. At first his sobs intensified, then ebbed away. When he freed himself from her embrace and wiped away the tears she saw that he had decided not to postpone the inevitable.

As she drove away from the wharf she looked at him in the rear-view mirror, standing motionless on his beloved boat with his eyes fixed on the horizon. She crossed her fingers that he would find the right words. It wasn’t going to be easy.

The yawn felt like it came all the way from his toes and spread through his whole body. Patrik had never been so tired in his life. Nor had he ever been so happy.

It was difficult to focus on the huge piles of paperwork lying in front of him. A homicide generated incredible amounts of documents, and his job now was to go through everything in detail to find that one tiny piece of the puzzle that could propel the investigation forward. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath to gather energy for the task.

Every ten minutes, he had to get up from his chair to stretch, get some coffee, hop a little in place, or whatever would make him stay awake and focused for a little while longer. Several times his hand had strayed towards the telephone to ring Erica, but he checked himself. If she was as tired as he was, she was probably still in bed asleep. He hoped she was. He intended to keep her awake as long as possible tonight too, if he had anything to say about it.

One stack of papers had grown since he last went through them-the documents containing information on the Lorentz family. Annika, assiduous as always, had apparently kept digging for old articles and items mentioning the family, and then placed the papers neatly in the stack on Patrik’s desk. He worked methodically, refreshing his memory by turning over the stack and working up from the bottom so that he first read the articles he’d read before. Two hours later, there was nothing that had set his imagination in motion. Despite a strong feeling that he was missing something, it still seemed to elude him.

The first really interesting new information came a good way down in the pile. Annika had inserted an article about a case of arson in Bullaren, about thirty miles from Fjällbacka. The article was dated 1975 and had been given almost a whole page in Bohusläningen. The house had burned down the night of the sixth of July 1975 in an explosion-like event. When the fire was extinguished there was almost nothing left of the house except ashes, but the remains of two human bodies had been found. The bodies turned out to be Stig and Elisabeth Norin, the couple who owned the house. Miraculously their ten-year-old son had managed to escape the fire. He was discovered in one of the outbuildings. The circumstances surrounding the fire were considered suspicious according to Bohusläningen, and the police called it arson.

The article was fastened with a paper-clip to a folder, and inside Patrik found the police report. He was still perplexed at what the article had to do with the Lorentz family until he opened the folder and saw the name of the Norins’ ten-year-old son. The boy was named Jan. The folder also contained a report from social services in which his foster-home placement with the Lorentz family was mentioned. Patrik gave a low whistle. It was still uncertain what this might have to do with Alex’s death, or with the murder of Anders for that matter, but something began to stir at the edges of Patrik’s consciousness. Shadows which faded and dissolved as soon as he tried to focus on them, but which indicated that he was on the right track. He made a mental note about this and then continued his laborious scrutiny of the material on his desk.

His notebook was slowly filling up. His handwriting was so sprawling that Karin always teased him that he should have been a teacher instead, but he could read it all right, and that was the main thing. Some to-do items took shape, but most dominant among the notes were all the questions that the material had generated, marked with big black question marks. Who was Alex waiting for when she made the fancy dinner? Who was the man she was meeting in secret? And whose child was she expecting? Could it be Anders’s, even though he had denied it? Or was there someone they hadn’t yet managed to identify? Why would a woman like Alex, with her looks, class and money, have an affair with someone like Anders? Why had Alex saved an article about Nils Lorentz’s disappearance in a bureau drawer?

The list of questions grew longer and longer. Patrik was on the third page before he got into the matter of Anders’s death. The stack of paper on Anders was much smaller so far. But the documents would start piling up soon enough. For the moment there were only about ten documents, including the one confiscated during the search of Anders’s flat. The biggest question concerning Anders was the way he had died. Patrik underlined this question several times with furious black strokes. How did the killer or killers lift Anders up to the hook in the ceiling? The autopsy would provide more answers, but from what Patrik had seen there were no marks of a struggle on the body, precisely as Mellberg had pointed out at this morning’s run-through. Someone who is unconscious feels incredibly heavy, and Anders would have had to be lifted up a good distance for someone to fasten the rope to the hook.

He was actually leaning towards the possibility that Mellberg might be right for once-that more than one person had been on the scene. Although that didn’t seem to agree with what happened when Alex was killed. Yet Patrik could swear that it was the same killer they were looking for. After his initial doubt he was now more and more certain that this was true.

He looked at the papers they’d found in Anders’s flat and fanned them out in front of him on the desk. Stuck between his teeth he had a pencil that he had chewed beyond recognition. His mouth felt full of yellow flakes from the pencil. He spat out a few and tried to pick the rest of the flakes from his tongue. It was no use. Now they were stuck to his fingers instead. He flicked them a couple of times to try to dislodge them but gave up and turned his attention back to the papers fanned out on his desk. None of the pages seemed to arouse his interest, so he picked up Telia’s telephone bill as a starting point. Anders made very few calls, but with all the fixed charges the total was still rather high. The details were still attached to the phone bill, and Patrik sighed when he realized that now he would have to do a little old-fashioned legwork. Even though he didn’t think this was the right day for boring, routine tasks.

He systematically rang one number after another on the list. He soon saw that Anders only called very few numbers. But one number stood out. It didn’t appear at all near the top of the list, but after it popped up the first time, it was the most frequently occurring number. Patrik dialled the number and let it ring.

He was just about to hang up after eight rings when he heard an answering machine switch on. The name at the other end made him sit bolt upright in his chair, which made his thigh muscles stretch painfully because he had propped his legs on his desk. He swung his legs to the floor and massaged a tight muscle on the inside of his right thigh.

Patrik replaced the receiver before the beep ended, indicating that one could leave a message. He drew a circle round one of the notes on his notepad, and after thinking for a moment he placed another call. One task he wanted to deal with himself, but the other he could leave for Annika. With his notes in hand he went into her office. She was typing intently on her keyboard, with her computer glasses perched on the end of her nose. She gave him a questioning look.

‘You’re coming to offer your help, to lighten my unreasonably heavy workload, right?’

‘Well, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’ Patrik grinned.

‘No, I didn’t think so.’ Annika gave Patrik a feigned look of exasperation. ‘So, what does this have to do with my incipient ulcer?’

‘Just one very tiny request.’ Patrik indicated how small it was by measuring a millimetre between his thumb and forefinger.

‘All right, let’s hear it.’

Patrik pulled up a chair and sat down at Annika’s desk. Her office, despite being extremely small, was without exception the most pleasant at the station. She had brought in lots of plants that seemed to be healthy and thriving. That ought to qualify as a minor miracle, since the only light in the room came through the window facing the foyer. The cold concrete walls were covered with pictures of Annika and her husband Lennart’s two grand passions, their dogs and drag racing. They had two black Labradors that were allowed to go along when Annika and Lennart drove around Sweden on weekends to wherever there happened to be drag races. Lennart was the one who actually competed, but Annika was always there to cheer him on and provide a bag lunch and a thermos of coffee. Basically, it was always the same people they met at the races, and over the years they had formed a tightly knit group. They all considered each other the closest of friends. At least two weekends each month there were races, and persuading Annika to work on those days was hopeless.

He looked down at his notes.

‘Well, I was wondering if you could help me do a little inventory of Alexandra Wijkner’s life. Starting with her death and double-checking the chronology backwards in all the data we received. How long she was married to Henrik. How long she had lived in Sweden. Check her information about the schools in France and Switzerland, et cetera, et cetera. Do you understand what I’m looking for?’

Annika had taken notes on a pad as he talked and now looked up with an affirmative glance. He felt quite sure that she would find out everything worth knowing. Above all, she would find out if some of the information he had received wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Because there had to be something that didn’t add up, he was absolutely sure of that.

‘Thanks for the help, Annika. You’re a gem.’

Patrik began to get up from the chair, but a brusque ‘Sit!’ from Annika made him freeze and sink back onto the chair cushion. He understood at once why her Labradors were so well trained.

She leaned back with a pleased smile and he understood that his first mistake had been to go into her office in person instead of simply leaving her a note. He should have known that she always saw right through him. Besides, her nose for romances was utterly preternatural. He might as well raise the white flag and capitulate, so he leaned back and waited for the barrage of questions that was undoubtedly in the offing. She began softly and insidiously.

‘You certainly were exhausted today.’

‘Mmm…’

Not that he wasn’t going to make her work a little for the information.

‘Was there a party last night?’ Annika kept fishing as she probed with Machiavellian guile for cracks in his armour.

‘Well, I suppose you could call it a party. It probably depends on one’s point of view. How would you define “party” anyway?’ He threw out his arms and opened his eyes wide in innocence.

‘Oh, skip the bullshit, Patrik. Just tell me. Who is she?’

He said nothing, tormenting her with his silence. After a few seconds he saw a light go on in Annika’s eyes.

‘Aha!’ Her exclamation resounded triumphantly as Annika waved her finger in the air, certain of victory.

‘It’s that woman, what’s her name, what’s her name…’ She snapped her fingers as she feverishly searched her memory. ‘Erica! Erica Falck!’

Relieved, she leaned back in her chair again. ‘So-o-o, Patrik…how long has this been going on…?’

He never ceased to be amazed at the unerring precision with which she always hit the target. It was no good denying it, either. He could feel a blush spreading all the way from his head to his toes, and it spoke more clearly than anything he might say. Then he couldn’t help the broad smile that spread across his face, and that was the last nail in the coffin as far as Annika was concerned.

After a five-minute interrogation Patrik finally managed to drag himself out of Annika’s office. He felt as if he’d been run through the wringer. But it hadn’t been unpleasant to talk about Erica, and it was with difficulty that he returned to the task he had given himself to deal with immediately. He put on his coat, told Annika he was off and headed out into the winter weather, where big snowflakes had begun falling lightly to the ground.

Outside the window Erica saw the snow fluttering down. She was sitting at her computer but had turned it off and was now staring at a black screen. Despite a pounding headache she had forced herself to write ten pages about Selma Lagerlof. She no longer felt any enthusiasm for the biography, but she was bound by her contract, and in a few months it had to be done. The conversation with Dan had put a dampener on her good mood, and she wondered whether he was telling Pernilla everything at this very moment. She decided to make use of her worry about Dan for something creative and rebooted her computer.

The draft of the book about Alex was on the computer desktop, and she opened the file, which now held a good hundred pages. Methodically she read through the pages from beginning to end. It was good. It was even very good. What worried her was how all the people in Alex’s circle of friends and family would react if the book were published. Naturally Erica had disguised the story a bit, changing the names of people and places, and allowing herself some flights of imagination. But the core of the book was unmistakably based on Alex’s life, as seen through Erica’s eyes. The section about Dan in particular was giving Erica a real headache. How could she leave out him and his family? At the same time she felt that she had to write this story. For the first time an idea for a book had really filled her with enthusiasm. There were so many other ideas that hadn’t panned out and that she’d rejected over the years; she couldn’t afford to lose this one. First she intended to concentrate on finishing the book, then she would deal with the problem of how to handle the feelings of those involved.

Almost an hour of energetic writing had passed when the doorbell rang. At first she was annoyed at being disturbed now that she had finally got going, but then she thought maybe it was Patrik and leapt out of her chair. She did a quick check of her appearance in the mirror before she bounded down the stairs to the front door. The smile on her lips faded instantly when she saw who was standing outside. Pernilla looked terrible. She appeared to have aged ten years since Erica saw her last. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying, her hair was uncombed, and she seemed to have forgotten her coat in her haste; she was shivering in a thin cardigan. Erica let her into the warm house. With an impulsive gesture she put her arms round Pernilla and hugged her as she stroked her back the same way she’d stroked Dan’s only a couple of hours before. It robbed Pernilla of what little self-control she had left, and she wept with long wrenching sobs on Erica’s shoulder. After a while she raised her head. Her mascara had smeared even more, giving her an almost comical, clown-like look.

‘I’m sorry.’ Pernilla looked through her haze of tears at Erica’s shoulder, where the white jumper she was wearing had been coloured black by the mascara.

‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. Come in.’

Erica put one arm round Pernilla’s shoulders and led her into the living room. She could feel Pernilla shaking all over, and she didn’t think it was only because of the cold. For a second, she wondered why Pernilla had chosen her to go to. Erica had always been Dan’s friend much more than Pernilla’s. She thought it was a little odd that Pernilla hadn’t gone to one of her own girlfriends, or her sister. But now she was here, at any rate, and Erica had to do everything she could to help her.

‘I’ve got a pot of coffee on. Would you like a cup? It’s been on for about an hour, but it’s probably fairly drinkable.’

‘Yes, thanks.’

Pernilla sat down on the sofa and hugged her arms to her chest, as if she were afraid of falling apart and wanted to hold herself together. In a way this was probably true.

Erica came back with two cups of coffee. She placed one on the coffee table in front of Pernilla and the other in front of herself, sitting down in the big wing chair so that she was facing Pernilla on the sofa. She waited for Pernilla to begin.

‘Did you know?’

Erica hesitated. ‘Yes, but not until very recently.’ She hesitated again. ‘I urged Dan to tell you.’

Pernilla nodded. ‘What should I do?’

The question was rhetorical, so Erica let it go unanswered.

Pernilla went on. ‘I knew that from the start I was just a way for Dan to get over you.’

Erica began to protest, but Pernilla stopped her with a wave of her hand.

‘I knew that was true, but I thought things changed with time and that we really loved each other. We get on well and I trusted him completely.’

‘Dan loves you, Pernilla. I know he does.’

Pernilla didn’t seem to be listening to her; she kept talking while she gazed into her coffee cup. Erica saw that she was gripping the cup so hard that her knuckles were white.

‘I could live with it if he was having an affair and blame it on an early mid-life crisis or something. But I can never forgive him for getting that woman pregnant.’

The fury in Pernilla’s voice was so strong that Erica had to fight an impulse to move back. When Pernilla raised her head and looked at Erica, the hatred in her eyes was so fierce that Erica felt an icy premonition. She had never before seen such a white-hot, intense fury. For a brief moment she wondered how long Pernilla had actually known about Dan’s relationship with Alex. And how far she would be prepared to go to exact revenge. Then she rejected the idea as quickly as it had appeared. This was Pernilla, a housewife with three children, married to Dan for many years, not a raging fury-acting as an avenging angel against her husband’s lover. But there was still a cold ferocity in Pernilla’s eyes that scared Erica.

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. I just had to get out of the house. That was the only thought I had in my head. I couldn’t even look at him.’

Erica sent a sympathetic thought to Dan. He was surely in his own private hell right now. It would have felt more natural if it were Dan who had come to her for comfort. Then she would have known what to say, which words would reassure him. She didn’t know Pernilla well enough to know how to help. Perhaps it was enough just to listen.

‘Why do you think he did it? What wasn’t he getting from me that he got from her?’

Now Erica understood why Pernilla had to come to her instead of going to one of her many close friends. She believed that Erica possessed answers about Dan. That she would be able to give Pernilla the key to why he’d acted the way he had. Unfortunately, Erica would have to disappoint her. She had always known Dan as honesty incarnate; it had never even occurred to her that he might be unfaithful. She was never as shocked as when she rang the last number called on Alex’s telephone and heard Dan’s voice on his voicemail. If she were really honest, she would admit to feeling a great disappointment at that moment-the disappointment of discovering that someone she was close to was not the person she had always thought he was. That’s why she understood that Pernilla, besides feeling betrayed and deceived, had also begun asking questions about who Dan really was-this man she had lived with all these years.

‘I don’t know, Pernilla. I was actually terribly shocked. It wasn’t like the Dan I know.’

Pernilla nodded. It seemed to console her a bit that she wasn’t the only one who’d been fooled. She nervously picked at invisible threads on her baggy cardigan. Her long, dark-brown hair with traces of a permanent had been hastily pulled back in a knot, giving her an unkempt look. Erica had always been a bit scornful about the way Pernilla looked; she should have been able to do a lot more with her appearance. She kept getting her hair permed even though permanents went out of fashion at about the same time mid-length men’s jackets did. And she always bought her clothes from cheap mail-order department stores, with low prices and a fashion sense to match. But Erica had never seen her look this shabby.

‘Pernilla, I know it’s incredibly hard just now, but you’re a family, you and Dan. You have three wonderful girls and you’ve had fifteen good years together. You shouldn’t do anything hasty. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone anything he’s done. Perhaps you can’t stay together after this. Maybe it’s impossible to forgive him. But wait to make any decisions until it’s sunk in a little. Think carefully before you do anything. I know that Dan loves you; he told me that as recently as today. I also know that he deeply regrets what he did. He told me that he wanted to break it off with her and I believe him.’

‘I don’t know what to believe anymore, Erica. Nothing of what I believed before was true, so what should I believe now?’

There was no answer to that, and the silence settled heavily between them.

‘What was she like?’

Once again Erica saw a cold fire burning far back in Pernilla’s eyes. She didn’t have to ask who she meant.

‘It was so long ago. I didn’t know her anymore.’

‘She was beautiful. I saw her here in the summertime. She was just like I wanted to be. Beautiful, elegant, sophisticated. She made me feel like a peasant. I would have given anything to be like her. In a way I can understand Dan. Put me and Alex next to each other and it’s obvious who would win.’

Pernilla tugged in frustration at her practical but unfashionable clothes as if to demonstrate what she meant.

‘I’ve always been envious of you too. The great love of his youth who moved to the big city and left him behind to pine away. The author from Stockholm who really made something of her life and who came back here and boasted to us normal mortals once in a while. Dan always looked forward to your visits for weeks beforehand.’

The bitterness in Pernilla’s voice dismayed Erica. For the first time she really felt ashamed of her patronizing attitude towards Pernilla. How little she had understood. On closer examination, she had to admit that she’d found a certain satisfaction in noticing the difference between herself and Pernilla. Between her 500-kronor visits to a hair salon on Stureplan and Pernilla’s home perms. Between her designer clothes purchased on Biblioteksgatan and Pernilla’s off-the-rack blouses and long skirts. But what difference had it made? Why had she in her weaker moments been happy about that difference? She was the one who had left Dan. Was it only to satisfy her own ego, or had she actually been envious that Pernilla and Dan had so much more than she did? Deep inside had she envied them their family life and perhaps even regretted that she hadn’t stayed in Fjällbacka? That she wasn’t the one who had the family that Pernilla now had? Had she consciously tried to make Pernilla feel small because she was actually jealous of her? The thought was disgusting, but she couldn’t push it away. It made her feel ashamed to the bottom of her soul. At the same time she wondered how far she would have gone to protect what Pernilla had. How far had Pernilla been prepared to go? Erica gave her a thoughtful look.

‘What are the children going to say?’ It looked as though this was the first time it had occurred to Pernilla that she and Dan weren’t the only ones who would be affected. ‘It has to come out, don’t you think? That she was pregnant, I mean? What will the girls say?’

The thought seemed to panic Pernilla, and Erica did her best to calm her.

‘The police will have to be told that it was Dan who was seeing Alex, but it doesn’t mean that everyone will find out. The two of you can choose what you want to tell the girls. You’re still in control, Pernilla.’

This seemed to reassure Pernilla, and she took a couple of gulps of coffee. It must have been cold by then, but that didn’t seem to bother her. For the first time Erica felt truly angry with Dan. It surprised her that she hadn’t felt that way earlier, but now she could feel the fury building up inside her. Was he crazy? How could he throw away everything he had, attraction or no attraction? Didn’t he realize how good his life was? She clasped her hands in her lap and tried to convey her sympathy to Pernilla, sitting across the table. Whether Pernilla could take it in or not, she had no idea.

‘Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it.’

Their eyes met. Less than an hour had passed since Pernilla rang the doorbell, but Erica felt that she had learned a lot in that time, especially about herself.

‘Can you manage? Do you have anywhere to go?’

‘I’m going home.’ Pernilla’s voice was clear and firm. ‘She’s not going to drive me away from my home and my family. I won’t give her that satisfaction. I’m going home to my husband, and we’re going to work this out. But not without demands. Things will have to be done differently from now on.’

Erica couldn’t help smiling in the midst of all the misery. Dan was going to have a good deal to wrestle with, that much was clear. But it was nothing he didn’t deserve.

They embraced awkwardly at the door. With all her heart Erica wished Pernilla and Dan only the best as she watched Pernilla get into her car and drive down the road. At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling a gnawing uneasiness. The image of Pernilla’s hate-filled eyes still lingered in her mind. In those eyes there was no mercy.

All the photos lay spread out on the kitchen table in front of her. All Vera had left of Anders now were pictures. Most of them were old and yellowed. It was many years since there had been any reason to take pictures of him. His baby pictures were in black-and-white, and then there were faded colour photos when he grew older. He had been a happy child. A little wild, but always happy. Considerate and polite. He had gravely assumed his role as the man of the house. Sometimes a bit too seriously perhaps, but she had let him have his way. Right or wrong. It was so hard to know. Perhaps there was much she should have done differently, perhaps it hadn’t mattered? Who could tell?

Vera smiled when she saw one of her favourite photos. Anders was sitting on his bicycle, proud as a peacock. She had worked a lot of extra evenings and weekends to buy him that bike. It was dark-blue and had a seat that was called a banana seat. According to Anders, it was the only thing he would ever want in his whole life. He had longed for that bike more than anything, and she would never forget the expression on his face when he finally got it on his eighth birthday. He spent every free moment riding around on that bike, and in this picture she had managed to catch him in motion. His hair was long and curly, hanging below the collar of his shiny, tight Adidas jacket with the stripes on the sleeves. This was the way she would always remember him. Before everything began to go wrong.

She had been waiting a long time for this day. Every telephone call, every knock on the door had brought the fear. Maybe this particular call, or this knock, would bring the news that she had dreaded for so long. Until now she had hoped that this day would never come. It was unnatural for a child to die before his parent, and that was probably why it was so hard to imagine the possibility. Hope was the last thing to die, and she had continued to believe that things would work out somehow. Even if it took a miracle. But there was no miracle. And there was no hope. The only thing left now was hopelessness, and a pile of old yellowed photographs.

The kitchen clock was ticking in the silence. For the first time, she saw how shabby her home looked. For all these years, she had done nothing to the house, and it was obvious. She had held the dirt at bay, but she couldn’t clean away the indifference that clung to the walls and ceiling. Everything was grey and lifeless. Wasted. That was what depressed her the most. Everything that had been wasted and squandered.

Anders’s happy face mocked her from the pictures. It spoke more clearly than anything else of how she had failed. It had been her task to keep him smiling, to give him faith, hope, and above all love to face the future. Instead she had mutely watched as everything was stripped away from him. She had neglected her job as a mother, and she would never be able to rid herself of the shame.

It occurred to her how little evidence there was that Anders had ever lived. The paintings were gone, the few pieces of furniture he’d had in the flat would soon be discarded if no one wanted them. In her home, none of his things remained. He had either sold them or destroyed them over the years. The only thing that proved that he had really existed was a handful of photos lying on the table in front of her. And her memories. Of course, he would exist in the memories of others as well, but as a drunken wino, not someone to be missed or mourned over. She was the only one who had happy memories of him. Sometimes it had been hard to summon them up, but they were still there. On a day like today they were the only memories of him that surfaced. Nothing else was allowed.

The minutes turned to hours, and Vera sat at her kitchen table with the photographs in front of her. Her joints grew stiff. Her eyes began to have a hard time distinguishing the details of the photos as the winter darkness slowly strangled the light. But it didn’t matter. She was now completely, mercilessly alone.

The doorbell echoed through the house. It took such a long time before he heard anyone inside that he was about to turn round and go back to the car. But after waiting a while he heard someone cautiously coming to the door. The door opened slowly inward and he saw Nelly Lorentz giving him a puzzled look. He was surprised that she answered the door herself. He had envisioned a stiff butler in livery who would graciously invite him in. But maybe nobody had butlers anymore.

‘My name is Patrik Hedström, and I’m from the police in Tanumshede. I’m looking for your son Jan.’

He had rung the office first but was told that Jan was working at home today.

The old lady didn’t raise an eyebrow but merely stepped aside and let him in.

‘I’ll call Jan, just a minute.’

Slowly but elegantly, Nelly walked in the direction of a door that opened onto a staircase to the floor below. Patrik had heard that Jan had the cellar flat in the luxurious house.

‘Jan, you have a visitor. The police.’

Patrik doubted that Nelly’s frail old voice could really be heard downstairs, but footsteps on the stairs proved him wrong. A look filled with hidden meanings passed between mother and son when Jan came up the stairs into the front hall. Nelly nodded to Patrik and went into her room, and Jan came towards Patrik with outstretched hand and a smile showing a lot of teeth. Patrik had the sudden image of an alligator in his mind. A smiling alligator.

‘Hello. Patrik Hedström, Tanumshede police station.’

‘Jan Lorentz. Pleased to meet you.’

‘I’m investigating the murder of Alex Wijkner, and I have a few questions I’d like to ask you, if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course. I don’t know how I can help, but that’s your job to decide, not mine, isn’t it?’

The alligator grin again. Patrik felt his fingers itching; he wanted nothing better than to wipe that smile off his face. There was something about it that drove him crazy.

‘We can go down to my flat, then we won’t disturb Mother up here.’

‘Certainly, that would be fine.’

Patrik had to say that the living arrangements seemed a bit strange. First of all, he had a hard time understanding grown men who still lived at home with their mothers. And second, he couldn’t comprehend why Jan put up with being banished to a cellar while the old lady lived upstairs in extravagant luxury in a house of at least two thousand square feet. Jan wouldn’t be human if the thought hadn’t crossed his mind that Nils would certainly not have been banished to the cellar if he were here today.

Patrik followed Jan down the stairs. He had to admit that for a cellar flat it wasn’t half bad. No expense had been spared. The flat had been furnished by someone who believed in an ostentatious display of prosperity. There was a lot of gold fringe, velvet and brocade-no doubt furniture of the finest brands, but unfortunately the decor didn’t show itself to best advantage without daylight. The effect was instead a bit like a bordello. Patrik knew that Jan had a wife and wondered which of them had insisted on the decor. Based on his own experience, he would guess the wife.

Jan showed him into a small office. Besides a desk and computer there was also a sofa. They sat down at opposite ends and Patrik took a notebook out of his bag. He had decided to wait to mention Anders Nilsson’s death; he didn’t want to say anything to Jan about it before he had to. Strategy and timing were important if he hoped to get anything useful out of Jan Lorentz.

He scrutinized the man facing him. He looked too perfect. There wasn’t a wrinkle in his shirt or suit. His tie was perfectly tied and he was freshly shaven. Not a hair was out of place, and he radiated calm and self-confidence. Too much calm and self-confidence. Patrik’s experience told him that everyone who was questioned by the police behaved nervously, more or less, even if they had nothing to hide. A totally calm exterior indicated that the person in question did have something to hide-that was Patrik’s very own home-grown theory. It had proven to be right a remarkable number of times.

‘Nice place you have here.’ It never hurt to be polite.

‘Yes, it was Lisa, my wife, who did the decorating. I think she did rather a good job.’

Patrik looked round the dark little office, which was sumptuously decorated with shiny marble and pillows with gold tassels. An excellent example of what too little taste in combination with too much money could buy.

‘Have you come any closer to a solution?’

‘We’ve uncovered a good bit of information and are beginning to get a sense of what might have happened.’

Not entirely true, but it was worth a try to shake him up a bit.

‘Did you know Alex Wijkner?’ Patrik asked. ‘I heard for instance that your mother went to the funeral reception.’

‘No, I can’t say that I knew her. Naturally I knew who she was, and in Fjällbacka everyone knows everyone, more or less. But her family moved away many years ago. We used to say hello on the street if we met, but never more than that. As far as Mother is concerned, I can’t answer for her actions. You’ll have to ask her.’

‘One of the things that has come out during the investigation is that Alex Wijkner had a, what should I call it…relationship with Anders Nilsson. You know him, I assume?’

Jan smiled. A crooked, condescending smile.

‘Yes, in this town nobody could avoid knowing who Anders is. He’s infamous rather than famous, I would say. He and Alex had an affair, you say? You have to excuse me, but I have a hard time imagining that. A rather odd couple, to put it mildly. I can understand what he would see in her, but I find it very difficult to see why she would want to have anything to do with him. Are you sure you haven’t got hold of the wrong end of the stick?’

‘We’re sure that they did have a relationship. What about Anders? Do you know him?’

Once again he saw a superior smile on Jan’s lips, but this time it was even broader. He shook his head in amusement.

‘You know what? One could safely say that we don’t exactly move in the same circles. I see him down at the square sometimes with the other alkies, but do I know him? No, actually I don’t.’

His tone clearly revealed how absurd he thought the question was.

‘We associate with people of a quite different social class, and winos aren’t normally included,’ he went on.

Jan waved off Patrik’s question as if it were a joke, but Patrik thought he saw a flash of uneasiness in his eyes. It vanished as soon as it appeared, but Patrik was sure he’d seen something. Jan was bothered by questions about Anders. Good, then Patrik knew he was on the right track.

He permitted himself to enjoy his next question even before he asked it, pausing for effect and then asking with feigned surprise: ‘But if that’s true, why did Anders recently place a large number of calls to your number?’

To his great satisfaction, Patrik saw the smile vanish from Jan’s lips. The question apparently made him lose his train of thought, and for a moment Patrik could see behind the dandy image that Jan so assiduously cultivated. Behind the artifice, he now saw unalloyed terror. As Jan collected himself, he tried to buy time by lighting a cigar with great care while he avoided looking Patrik in the eye.

‘Will you pardon me for smoking?’ He didn’t wait for a reply, nor did Patrik give him one.

‘If Anders rang here I certainly don’t understand why. I haven’t spoken with him, and I don’t think my wife has either. No, that’s truly odd.’

He sucked on his cigar and leaned back against the sofa with his arm nonchalantly stretched out along the sofa pillows.

Patrik said nothing. In his experience, the best way to get people to say more than they intended to was simply to keep quiet. They would feel a need to fill in the silence if it lasted too long. This was a game that Patrik had mastered. He waited.

‘Come to think of it, I think I know what happened.’ Jan leaned forward and waved his cigar.

‘Someone called our answering machine and didn’t say anything. All we heard was breathing on the tape. And several times when I answered the phone there was nobody on the other end. It must have been Anders who somehow got hold of our number.’

‘Why would he call you?’

‘How should I know?’ Jan threw out his arms. ‘Envy perhaps. We have plenty of money and that grates on some people. People like Anders are always ready to blame their misfortune on others, especially on people who have actually managed to make something of their lives.’

Patrik thought that sounded a bit far-fetched. It would be difficult to refute what Jan was saying, but he didn’t believe him for a minute.

‘I assume that you don’t still have those calls you mentioned on the answering machine tape.’

‘Unfortunately, no.’ Jan frowned in an attempt to look regretful. ‘Other messages were recorded over them. I’m sorry, I wish I could help you. But if he rings again I’ll make sure to save the tape.’

‘You can rest assured that Anders won’t be ringing your home again.’

‘Oh? And why is that?’

Patrik couldn’t tell whether his puzzled expression was genuine or phoney.

‘Because Anders has been murdered.’

A trail of ashes dribbled onto Jan’s lap from the cigar. ‘Anders was murdered?’

‘Yes, his body was found this morning.’

Patrik studied Jan closely. If only he could hear what was going on in Jan’s head right now, it would all be so much easier. Was his surprise genuine, or was he just an excellent actor?

‘Is the perpetrator the same person who murdered Alex?’

‘It’s too early to say.’ He didn’t want to let Jan off the hook just yet. ‘So you’re quite sure that you don’t know either Alexandra Wijkner or Anders Nilsson?’

‘I’m actually quite aware of the people I associate with and those I don’t. I knew them both by sight, but no more than that.’ Jan was again back to his smiling, calm self.

Patrik decided to try another line of questioning.

‘In Alex Wijkner’s home we found an article that she had clipped out of Bohusläningen about your brother’s disappearance. Do you know why she might have been interested in saving that article?’

Once again, Jan threw out his arms and opened his eyes wide as if to say that he had absolutely no idea. ‘It was the big topic of conversation here in Fjällbacka many years ago. Perhaps she saved the article as a curiosity.’

‘Perhaps. What’s your view about your brother’s disappearance? There are a number of different theories.’

‘Well, I think that Nils is having the time of his life in some nice hot country. Mother, on the other hand, is completely convinced that he met with an accident.’

‘Were you very close?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that. Nils was quite a bit older, and he wasn’t entirely enchanted to have a foster brother to share his Mamma’s attention. But we weren’t mortal enemies either. I think we were mostly indifferent to each other.’

‘It was after Nils disappeared that you were adopted by Nelly, isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, that’s true. About a year later.’

‘And with it came half the kingdom.’

‘Yes, one could perhaps say that.’

There was only a bit left of the cigar, and it was threatening to burn Jan’s fingers. He stubbed it out brusquely in a gaudy ashtray.

‘It’s not exactly pleasant that it happened at the expense of someone else, but I can honestly say that I’ve paid my dues over the years. When I took over the management of the cannery it was going downhill. I restructured the whole company from the ground up, and now we export canned fish and seafood all over the world-to the United States, Australia, South America…’

‘Why do you think that Nils fled abroad?’

‘I really shouldn’t be talking about this, but a large sum of money disappeared from the factory right after Nils vanished. In addition, some of his clothes, a suitcase and his passport were all missing.’

‘Why wasn’t the missing money ever reported to the police?’

‘Mother refused. She claimed that it had to be a mistake, that Nils would never have done anything like that. You know how mothers are. It’s their job to believe only the best about their children.’

He lit another cigar. Patrik thought it was starting to get rather smoky in the little room but said nothing.

‘Would you like one, by the way? They’re Cuban. Hand-rolled.’

‘No thanks, I don’t smoke.’

‘That’s a shame. You don’t know what you’re missing.’ Jan studied his cigar with pleasure.

‘I read in our archives about the fire that killed your parents. That must have been terrible. How old were you? Nine, ten?’

‘I was ten. And you’re right, it was terrible. But I was lucky. Most orphans aren’t taken in hand by a family like the Lorentzes.’

Patrik thought it a bit tasteless to talk about luck in that context.

‘From what I understand, arson was suspected. Was anything else ever discovered?’

‘No, you’ve read the reports. The police never got any further with the case. Personally, I think my father was smoking in bed as usual and fell asleep.’ For the first time during the conversation he showed his impatience. ‘May I ask what this has to do with the murders? I’ve already said that I didn’t know either of the victims, and I can’t really see how my difficult childhood comes into this.’

‘We’re investigating even the smallest leads just now. The telephone calls from Anders to your home made me want to check it out. But it doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. I beg your pardon for taking up your time unnecessarily.’

Patrik stood up and held out his hand. Jan also stood and put down the cigar in the ashtray before he shook Patrik’s outstretched hand.

‘No problem, no problem at all. It was nice to meet you.’

Ingratiating as hell, thought Patrik. He followed Jan up the stairs, close on his heels. The contrast was sharp when he reached the extremely tasteful furnishings of the main floor. Too bad that Jan’s wife never got the number of Nelly’s interior decorator.

He thanked Jan and left the house with a feeling of having strained gnats and swallowed camels. For one thing, he felt as though he’d caught a glimpse of something in Jan that he should have been able to decipher, something that didn’t fit in with that lavishly decorated flat. For another, there was something not quite right about Jan Lorentz. Patrik returned to his previous thoughts. The guy was just too perfect.

It was almost seven o’clock and the snowstorm had gathered force by the time Patrik finally stood on her doorstep. Erica was surprised at how strong her emotion was when she saw him and how natural it was to throw her arms around his neck. He set down two grocery bags from ICA on the floor in the hall and returned her embrace, holding her close for a long time.

‘I’ve missed you.’

‘Me too.’

They kissed tenderly. After a while Patrik’s stomach began to growl. They took that as a signal to take the bags into the kitchen. He had bought far too much food, but Erica put the extra things in the fridge. As if by tacit agreement, they didn’t talk about what had happened that day while they fixed dinner. Not until they had satisfied their hunger and were sitting facing each other at the table did Patrik begin to tell her what had happened.

‘Anders Nilsson is dead. His body was found in his flat this morning.’

‘Were you the one who found him?’

‘No, but I got there soon afterwards.’

‘How did he die?’

Patrik hesitated. ‘He’d been hanged.’

‘Been hanged? You mean he was murdered?’ Erica couldn’t conceal her agitation. ‘Was it the same person who killed Alex?’

Patrik wondered how many times today he’d heard that question. But it was undeniably key to the case.

‘We think so.’

‘Do you have any more leads? Did anyone see anything? Did you find any concrete evidence tying the murders together?’

‘Hold your horses.’ Patrik held up his hands. ‘I can’t tell you any more. We could talk about something more pleasant, you know. How was your day, for instance?’

Erica gave him a crooked smile. If only he knew how unpleasant her day had been too. But she couldn’t tell him about it. She had to let Dan tell the story himself.

‘I slept fairly late and then I wrote most of the day. Considerably less exciting than your day.’

Their hands sought each other across the table. Their fingers intertwined. It felt so lovely and safe to sit there together as the darkness enveloped the house. Huge snowflakes kept floating down like tiny falling stars against the black night sky.

‘I spent some time thinking about Anna and the house as well. I really let her have it on the phone the other day, and I’ve felt bad about my outburst ever since. Maybe I was being selfish. I was only thinking about how it would affect me if the house were sold, about my loss. But thing aren’t easy for Anna right now either. She’s trying to make the best of her situation, and even though I think she’s doing the wrong thing, she’s not doing it to be mean. Sure, she can be both thoughtless and naive sometimes, but she’s generally a considerate and generous person, and I’ve been venting my sorrow and disappointment on her lately. Maybe it would be best to sell the house after all. Start over. I could even buy a new, though much smaller house for the money. Maybe I’m being too sentimental. It’s time to move on, to stop regretting what could have been and instead take a look at what I actually have.’

Patrik understood that she was no longer talking about the house.

‘I’m sorry I have to ask this, but how did the accident happen?’

‘That’s all right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘My parents had been in Strömstad visiting my father’s sister. It was dark and rainy, and the cold had formed black ice on the roadway Pappa always used to drive carefully, but they think an animal jumped out in front of the car. He turned hard, went into a skid, and the car slammed right into a tree by the side of the road. They probably died instantly. At least that’s what Anna and I were told. There’s no way to know whether it was true.’

A solitary tear trickled down Erica’s cheek, and Patrik leaned forward and brushed it away. He took hold of her chin and made her look straight at him.

‘They wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. I’m sure they didn’t suffer, Erica. Completely sure.’

She nodded mutely. She trusted what he said, and it felt as if a huge burden was lifted from her chest. The car had caught fire, and she had spent many sleepless nights, wondering in horror whether her parents might have lived long enough to feel the fire burning them. Patrik’s words quelled her anxiety, and for the first time she felt a kind of peace when she thought about the accident that had killed both her parents. The grief was still there, but the anxiety was gone. With his thumb Patrik wiped away some more tears that rolled down her cheek.

‘Poor Erica. Poor, poor Erica.’

She took his hand and held it against her cheek.

‘There’s no reason to feel sorry for me, Patrik. I’ve actually never been as happy as I am right now, at this moment. It’s strange, but I feel so unbelievably safe with you. I don’t feel any of that uncertainty I usually feel when I’ve just slept with someone. Why do you think that is?’

‘I think it’s because we’re meant for each other.’

Erica blushed at the magnitude of his words. But she couldn’t get away from the fact that she felt the same way. It was like finding her way home.

As if on cue, they got up from the table, left the dishes where they were, and went up to the bedroom arm in arm. Outside a full-blown snowstorm was under way.

It felt strange to be staying in her old room again. Especially since her taste had changed over the years, but the room was still the same. A lot of pink and lace was not really her style any longer.

Julia lay on her back on her narrow childhood bed and stared at the ceiling with her hands clasped on her stomach. Everything was about to disintegrate. Her whole life was falling apart all around her and piling up in a drift of shattered fragments. It was as though she had lived her whole life in a funhouse, with trick mirrors in which nothing was what it seemed. She had no idea how things would go with her studies. All enthusiasm had been drained out of her with one blow, and now the school term was going on without her. Not that she thought anyone would notice that she was gone. She had never had an easy time making friends.

As far as Julia was concerned, she might just as well lie here in her pink room and stare at the ceiling until she got old and grey. Birgit and Karl-Erik wouldn’t dare do anything but let her have her way. She could live off them for the rest of her life if need be. A guilty conscience would keep their wallets open forever.

It felt as if she were moving through water. All her movements were heavy and difficult and all sounds reached her as if through a filter. At first it hadn’t been like this. She’d been full of righteous indignation and a hatred so strong that it scared her. She still felt that hatred, but mixed with resignation instead of energy. She was so used to despising herself that on a purely physical level she could feel how the hatred had changed direction. Instead of being directed outwards it had now turned inwards and was eating huge holes in her chest. Old habits were hard to break. Hating herself was an art form she had learned to practise to perfection.

She turned over on her side. On the desk stood a photo of her with Alex; she reminded herself to throw it out. As soon as she could get up she would tear it into a thousand pieces and get rid of it. The look of adoration she saw in her eyes in the picture made her wince. Alex was cool and beautiful as usual, while the ugly duckling beside her turned her round face towards her with a worshipful expression. In her eyes, Alex could never have done any wrong; Julia had always harboured a secret hope deep inside that one day she would hatch from her cocoon and climb out looking just as lovely and self-confident as Alex. She scoffed at her own naïveté. What a joke. And the joke had always been at her expense. She wondered whether they were talking about it behind her back. Whether they were laughing at stupid, stupid, ugly Julia.

A discreet knock on the door made Julia curl up in the foetal position. She knew who it was.

‘Julia, we’re worried about you. Won’t you come downstairs for a while?’

She didn’t answer Birgit. Instead she studied with the utmost concentration a lock of her own hair.

‘Please, Julia, please.’

Birgit came in and sat down on the chair by the desk, facing Julia.

‘I understand that you’re angry and that you also probably hate us, but you must believe me, we had no intention of harming you.’

Julia felt a sense of satisfaction that Birgit looked so worn-out and harried. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in several nights. Which she probably hadn’t. New wrinkles had formed as crow’s feet around her eyes, and Julia thought maliciously that the facelift she was planning to give herself next year for her sixty-fifth birthday might have to be done earlier than planned. Birgit moved the chair a little closer and put her hand on Julia’s shoulder. She shook it off at once and Birgit recoiled, hurt.

‘Darling, we all love you. You know that.’

The fuck she did. What good was this whole charade? They were all quite aware of where they stood with each other. Love? Birgit didn’t even know what that was. The only one she had ever loved was Alex. Always Alex.

‘We have to talk about this, Julia. We have to support each other now.’

Birgit’s voice was quivering. Julia wondered how many times Birgit wished that it had been her, Julia, who had died instead of Alex. She saw Birgit give up and how her hand shook when she put back the chair. Before she closed the door on her way out, Birgit gave Julia one last entreating glance. Julia made a point of turning over so that she faced the wall instead. The door closed silently behind Birgit.

Mornings weren’t usually Patrik’s favourite time of the day, and this one was turning out to be particularly miserable. First of all, he’d been forced to get up from Erica’s warm bed and leave her there to go to work. Second, he’d had to shovel for half an hour to dig out his car. And third, the bloody car wouldn’t start after he’d dug it out. After repeated attempts he had to give up and go back inside to ask Erica if he could borrow her car instead. That was fine, and luckily it started on the first try.

He dashed into the office a half hour late. The shovelling had soaked him to the skin with sweat, and he tugged at his shirt a few times to try to fan himself. The coffeemaker was a necessary first stop before he could start work. Not until he was seated at his desk with coffee cup in hand did he feel his pulse begin to slow down. He allowed himself to daydream for a moment, sinking into the feeling of reckless, senseless love. The night before had been just as wonderful as the first. They had even managed to muster a tiny bit of good sense and made sure they got a few hours’ sleep. To say that he was rested would have been an exaggeration, but at least he wasn’t in a coma like the day before.

The first thing he dealt with were the notes from his meeting with Jan the day before. It hadn’t produced any new details that aroused his interest, yet he didn’t consider the interview wasted time. It was just as important for the investigation that he get a feeling for the people who were, or could be, involved. ‘Homicide investigations are about people,’ one of his instructors at the Police Academy had often said, and those words of wisdom had stuck in Patrik’s mind. Besides, he thought he was a good judge of people. During interviews with witnesses and suspects he always tried to disconnect from the cold facts for a while and concentrate on soaking up impressions from the person facing him. Jan had generated no directly positive feelings in Patrik. Unreliable, slippery, and hedonistic were words that popped up in his head when he tried to gather his impressions of Jan’s personality. It was quite obvious that the man was hiding more than he revealed. Once again, Patrik picked up the stack of papers dealing with the Lorentz family. He still could show no concrete link between them and the two homicides, except for the phone calls from Anders to Jan. But he couldn’t prove that Jan’s story about wrong numbers coming to his answering machine was not correct. Patrik picked up the folder on the death of Jan’s parents. Something in the tone of Jan’s voice when he spoke about the incident bothered Patrik. There was something that rang false. He had an idea. Patrik picked up the phone and dialled a number he knew by heart.

‘Hi, Vicky, how’s it going?’

The person on the other end of the line affirmed that it was going well. After the introductory pleasantries Patrik got down to business.

‘Vicky, I wonder if you could do me a favour. I’m checking on a guy who must have entered the rolls at social services in about 1975. Ten years old, called Jan Norin back then. You think you might have anything on the case? Okay, I’ll hang on.’

He drummed impatiently with his fingers on the desktop as Vicky Lind at the social services office checked her computer records. After a while he heard her come back on the line.

‘You have the data there? Fantastic. Can you see who the social worker was on the case? Siv Persson. That’s great. Do you have her phone number?’

Patrik quickly wrote down the number on a Post-It note and hung up after promising to take Vicky to lunch one day. He punched in the number she’d given him and instantly heard a brisk voice on the line. It turned out that Siv did remember the case of Jan Norin, and it was fine if he came over right away.

Patrik grabbed his jacket from the coat rack with such eagerness that he managed to tip over the whole rack in the process. Even worse, on its way to the floor the rack had pulled down both a picture from the wall and a vase of flowers from the bookshelf, all of which created a tremendous crash. For the time being Patrik left everything where it landed. When he got to the corridor he saw heads poking out of every doorway. He just waved and ran out the front door as curious pairs of eyes stared after him.

The social service office was no more than a couple of hundred yards from the police station. Patrik trudged through the snow down the main street. At the end of the street he turned left at Tanumshede Inn and continued halfway down the block. The office was in the same building as the community administration, and he took the stairs. He was shown into Siv’s office after cheerfully greeting the receptionist, a girl from his class in high school. Siv Persson didn’t bother to get up to shake hands when he came in. Their paths had crossed many times during Patrik’s years as a cop, and they respected each other’s professional expertise even though they didn’t always share the same opinion on how best to handle a case. Part of the reason was that Siv was one of the nicest people he knew, but social workers couldn’t always get by with seeing only the best in people. At the same time he admired her for being able to retain her basically positive view of human nature despite all examples to the contrary that she had encountered over the years. Patrik felt that he seemed to have gone in the opposite direction.

‘Hi, Patrik. So you managed to make it here in spite of all the snow.’

Patrik reacted instinctively to the unnatural cheerfulness of her voice.

‘Yes, but a snowmobile would have helped.’

She raised her eyeglasses dangling on a cord around her neck and set them on the tip of her nose. Siv loved bright colours, and today her red glasses matched her clothing. She’d had the same hairdo as long as he’d known her. A page-boy style cut straight as an arrow that reached to her jawline, and a short fringe cut just above the eyebrows. Her hair was a shiny copper-red, and the bright colours made Patrik feel more lively just by looking at her.

‘It was one of my old cases you wanted to look at, you said? Jan Norin?’

Her voice was still sounding strained. She had already fetched the material before he arrived, and a thick folder lay on the desk.

‘Well, we have a good deal of material on this individual, as you see,’ she went on. ‘Both parents were addicts, and if they hadn’t died in an accident we would have had to intervene sooner or later. They let the boy run wild, and he basically had to raise himself. He showed up at school in dirty, ragged clothes and was bullied by his schoolmates because he smelled bad. Apparently, he had to sleep in the old stable and then go to school in the same clothes he slept in.’

She looked at Patrik over the top of her glasses.

‘I assume you’re not coming here to abuse my trust, but to procure the requisite authorization, if only after the fact, so that you can acquire the data on Jan?’

Patrik merely nodded. He knew that it was important to follow regulations, but sometimes investigations required a certain efficiency, and then the wheels of bureaucracy would have to turn after the fact instead. Siv and he had always had a good, pragmatic working relationship, but he knew she had to ask that question.

‘Why didn’t you step in earlier?’ Patrik asked. ‘How could the situation have been allowed to get so bad? It sounds as if Jan had been neglected since birth, and yet he was ten years old when his parents died.’

Siv gave a deep sigh. ‘Yes, I know what you mean, and believe me, I’ve had the same thought many times. But times were different when I started working here, no more than a few months before the fire actually. It took extreme circumstances before the state would step in and restrict the right of parents to raise their children as they saw fit. Many people were advocating a liberal form of child-rearing as well, and unfortunately it was children like Jan who suffered. There were never any traces of physical abuse found on him. To be crass, perhaps the best thing would have been if he were beaten, so that he could have gone to the hospital. Then at least we would have started to keep an eye on the family situation. But either he was abused so that it was never outwardly visible, or else his parents “simply” neglected him.’ Siv wiggled her fingers to indicate quotation marks around the word ‘simply’.

Patrik felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the boy Jan. How the hell could somebody be a normal human being after growing up under such circumstances?

‘But you haven’t heard the worst of it. We never had any proof, but there were indications that his parents let men abuse Jan in return for money, or narcotics.’

Patrik felt his jaw drop. This was much worse than he could ever have imagined.

‘As I said, we could never prove anything, but today we can see that Jan followed the standard pattern that we now know is associated with children who have been sexually abused. For one thing, he had big disciplinary problems at school. The other children may have bullied him, but they were also afraid of him.’

Siv opened the folder and leafed through the papers until she found what she was looking for.

‘Here it is. In the fourth grade he brought a knife to school and used it to threaten one of the worst bullies. He actually cut him in the face, but the school administration hushed the whole thing up. As far as I can see, he wasn’t punished. Several such incidents followed when Jan displayed excessive aggression towards his classmates, but the incident with the knife was the most serious. He was also reported to the principal on several occasions because he had acted inappropriately towards the girls in the class. For such a young boy, he showed a knowledge of extremely advanced sexual behaviour and allusions. The reports never resulted in any actions either. No one knew quite what to do with a child with such disturbing ways of relating to the people around him. Today, we would definitely react to such blatant signals and take action of some sort, but you must remember that this was in the early Seventies. It was a whole different world back then.’

Patrik felt nearly faint with sympathy and rage. How could anyone treat a child that way?

‘After the fire…were there other incidents like this?’ he asked.

‘No, that’s the strange thing. After the fire he was placed immediately with the Lorentz family, and after that we had no reports that Jan ever had a problem again. I drove over to their house a few times to follow up on the situation, and I found a completely different boy. He sat there in his suit with his hair slicked down and stared at me without blinking as he replied politely to all my questions. It was quite horrible, actually. A person doesn’t change overnight like that.’

Patrik gave a start. It was the first time he’d ever heard Siv hint at anything negative regarding one of her cases. He understood there was something worth digging into further. There was something she wanted to say, but he would have to ask the right question.

‘With regard to the fire…’

He let the words dangle in the air a moment and saw that Siv sat up straighter in her chair. That meant he was on the right track.

‘I heard certain rumours about the fire.’ He gave Siv a questioning look.

‘I can’t be responsible for rumours. What was it you heard?’

‘That the fire was arson. In our investigation it’s even listed as “probable arson”, but no trace of the perpetrator was ever found. The fire started on the ground floor of the house. The parents were asleep in a room upstairs and never had a chance. Did you ever hear anything about who might have hated the Norins enough to do something like that?’

‘Yes.’ Her reply was monosyllabic and so quiet that he wasn’t sure he’d really heard it.

She repeated in a louder voice, ‘Yes, I know who hated the Norins enough to want to set fire to them.’

Patrik sat silently and let her continue at her own pace.

‘I accompanied the police out to the house. The fire department were the first on the scene. One of the fire-fighters had gone to examine the site, to check whether any sparks had blown away from the house and might be smouldering somewhere else. The fireman found Jan in the stable. When the boy refused to leave, they contacted us here at social services. I was a new social worker, and in retrospect I have to admit that I thought it was very exciting. Jan was sitting in the stall, all the way at the back, leaning against the wall, under the watchful eye of a fireman, who was extremely relieved to see us arrive. I shooed off the police and went in to try to console Jan, as I thought I should, and then take him out of there. His hands kept moving in the dark where he was sitting, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. When I got closer I saw that he was sitting there fidgeting with something in his lap. It was a box of matches. With undisguised glee he was sorting the matches: burned black ones in one half of the box and new red ones in the other half. The expression on his face was sheer joy. He actually seemed to be glowing from within. It was the most horrid thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Patrik. I can still see that face before me sometimes when I go to bed at night. I went over to him and carefully took the box of matches away. Then he looked up at me and said, “Are they dead now?” That was all. “Are they dead now?” Then he giggled and willingly let me lead him out of the old stable. The last thing I saw as we left was a blanket, a pocket torch and a pile of clothes in a corner of the barn. That’s when I understood that we were complicit in his parents’ death. We should have taken action many, many years earlier.’

‘Have you ever told anyone about this?’

‘No, what would I say? That I thought he murdered his parents because he was playing with matches? No, I’ve never said anything until you came and asked me just now. But I’ve always suspected that he would have a run-in with the police sooner or later. What is he mixed up in?’

‘I can’t say anything yet, but I promise to tell you as soon as I can. I’m incredibly grateful that you told me all this, and I’ll get busy with the paperwork so that you won’t have any problems.’

He waved and left.

After he was gone Siv stayed at her desk. Her red glasses hung on their cord round her neck, and she rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger as she closed her eyes.

At the same moment that Patrik stepped out into the snowdrifts on the pavement, his mobile phone rang. His fingers had already grown stiff in the bitter cold, and he had a hard time getting the little lid of his mobile open. He hoped it was Erica but was disappointed when he saw that it was the station’s dispatch number blinking on the display.

‘Patrik Hedström. Hi, Annika. No, I’m right outside social services. Okay, but give me a minute or two and I’ll be back at the station.’

He snapped the lid shut. Annika had done it again. She had found something that didn’t add up in Alex’s CV.

The snow squeaked under his feet as Patrik jogged in the direction of the station. The snowplough had passed by while he was visiting Siv, and the return wasn’t the same struggle as before. Few brave souls were venturing out in the cold weather, and the main street was deserted except for an occasional passer-by hurrying along with collar turned up and cap pulled down as protection from the cold.

Inside the door of the station Patrik stamped off the snow that had collected on his shoes. He made a note that snow in combination with street shoes made socks unpleasantly wet. He should have been able to figure that out in advance.

He went straight to Annika’s office. She was clearly waiting for him, and from the pleased expression on her face he could see that what she’d found was good, really good.

‘Are all your clothes in the wash, or what?’

At first Patrik didn’t understand the question, but judging from her teasing smile it was a joke at his expense. The penny dropped a second later and he looked down at what he was wearing. Damn, he hadn’t changed clothes since the day before yesterday. He wondered if he smelled a bit, or if he smelled a lot.

He muttered something in reply to Annika’s comment and tried to glare at her as evilly as he could. She found this even more amusing.

‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’ Patrik said. ‘Now get to the point. Speak up, woman!’

He slammed his fist onto her desk in feigned rage. A vase of flowers responded instantly by toppling over and spilling water all over.

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. I’m so damn clumsy…’

He searched for something to wipe up the water, but Annika was a step ahead of him as usual and produced a roll of paper towels from somewhere behind the desk. She calmly began wiping off her desk as she gave a now-familiar command to Patrik.

‘Sit!’

He obeyed at once, thinking it rather unfair that she didn’t throw him a sweet as reward for being so clever.

‘Shall we begin?’ Annika didn’t wait for Patrik’s answer but began to read from her computer screen.

‘Now let’s see. I started with the time of her death and worked backwards. Everything seems to add up for the time she lived in Göteborg. She started the art gallery with her friend in 1989. Before that she went to university for five years in France, majoring in art history. I received her transcript by fax today, and she took her exams on time and passed them. She attended high school at Hvitfeldtska in Göteborg. I also got her grades from there. She was no brilliant student, but no slouch either. She consistently stayed in the middle.’

Annika paused and looked at Patrik, who was leaning over and trying to read ahead on her screen. She turned it away from him a little so he couldn’t read her discovery prematurely.

‘Before that it was a boarding school in Switzerland. She went to an international school, L’École de Chevalier, which costs a fortune.’ Annika put great emphasis on the last phrase.

‘According to the information I got when I rang them, it costs about a hundred thousand kronor per semester, not counting room, board, clothes and books. And I checked-the prices were just as high when Alexandra Wijkner attended.’

Her words were absorbed thoughtfully by Patrik, who was thinking out loud. ‘So the question is, how the Carlgren family could afford to send Alex to that school. From what I understood, Birgit has always been a housewife, and it would be impossible for Karl-Erik to earn enough money to cover such expenses. Did you check-’

Annika interrupted him. ‘Yes, I asked who was responsible for Alexandra’s tuition, but they don’t give out that sort of information. The only thing that could make them more forthcoming would be an order from the Swiss police, but with that bureaucracy it would take us at least six months to get it. I began at the other end instead and started checking the Carlgren family’s finances over the years. Perhaps they inherited some money, who knows? I’m waiting for a report from the bank, but it will take a couple of days before we have it. But…’ another rhetorical pause, ‘that’s not even the most interesting thing. According to the Carlgren family’s statements, Alex started boarding school during the spring semester of 1977. According to the school’s register she didn’t start until spring 1978.’

Annika leaned back in her chair triumphantly and crossed her arms.

‘Are you sure?’ Patrik could hardly control his excitement.

‘I checked and double-checked and even triple-checked. The year from spring of ’77 to spring of ’78 is missing from Alex’s life. We have no idea where she was. The family moved away from here in March 1977 and then there’s nothing, not a single shred of information until Alex starts at the school in Switzerland. At the same time, her parents show up in Göteborg. They buy a house, and Karl-Erik starts his new job as CEO of a medium-sized company in the wholesale trade.’

‘So we also don’t know where the parents were during this period?’

‘No, not yet. But I’m continuing to search. The only thing we know is that there wasn’t any data to indicate that they were in Sweden during that year.’

Patrik counted on his fingers. ‘Alex was born in 1967, so she was, let’s see, ten years old in 1977.’

Annika checked the screen again. ‘She was born on January 3, so that’s right, she was ten when they moved.’

Patrik nodded thoughtfully. It was valuable information that Annika had managed to dig up, but right now it only gave rise to more questions. Where was the Carlgren family from 1977 to 1978? A whole family couldn’t just disappear. They must have left some sort of trail; it was simply a matter of finding it. At the same time there had to be something more. The information that Alex had had a child earlier still baffled him.

‘Didn’t you find any other gap in her history? For example, couldn’t somebody have taken the tests in her name at the university? Or couldn’t her partner at the gallery have run it by herself for a period? It’s not that I don’t trust what you found out, but maybe you should double-check the facts again. And check the hospital records to see if any Alexandra Carlgren or Wijkner gave birth to a child. Start at the Göteborg hospitals, and if you don’t find anything there, then work your way out into the countryside. There must be some record of the birth somewhere. A child can’t simply go up in smoke.’

‘Couldn’t she have had the baby abroad? During her time at the boarding school, for instance? Or in France?’

‘Of course, why didn’t I think of that? See if it’s possible to get anything through international channels. And see if you can find any way to trace where the Carlgrens went. Passports, visas, embassies. Somewhere there must be a record of where they went.’

Annika was taking notes for dear life.

‘By the way, have any of the others found anything worthwhile yet?’

‘Ernst has checked Bengt Larsson’s alibi, and it holds up, so we can cross him off. Martin talked to Henrik Wijkner by phone but could get nothing else on the connection between Anders and Alex. He intends to keep questioning Anders’s wino buddies about whether Anders might have said anything to them about it. And Gösta…Gösta’s sitting in his office feeling sorry for himself, trying to work up the energy to go to Göteborg and interview the Carlgrens. I’m betting he won’t leave until Monday at the earliest.’

Patrik sighed. If they were going to solve this case, it would probably be best if he didn’t rely on his colleagues. He’d have to do the legwork himself.

‘You didn’t think about asking the Carlgrens directly?’ Annika said. ‘There might not be anything suspicious about it. Maybe there’s some reasonable explanation.’

‘They’re the ones who gave us the information about Alex. For some reason they tried to conceal what they were doing between ’77 and ’78. I’ll talk with them, but first I want to have a little more to go on. I don’t want them to have a chance to wriggle out of this.’

Annika leaned back and smiled slyly. ‘So when are we going to hear those wedding bells ringing?’

Patrik saw that she had no intention of dropping this juicy subject anytime soon. He would have to resign himself to being the station’s source of entertainment for a while.

‘Well, it might be a bit early for that. We should probably be together for at least a week before we book a church.’

‘So-o-o-o, you’re together, are you?’

He realized that he’d fallen right into that trap feet-first with eyes wide open.

‘No, er yes, maybe we are…I don’t know, we get along so far, but it’s all awfully new and maybe she’s going back to Stockholm soon…oh, I don’t know. You’ll have to be satisfied with that for the time being.’ Patrik was squirming like a worm in his chair.

‘Okay then, but I want to be kept up to date on what’s happening, do you hear me?’ Annika wagged her finger at him.

He nodded in resignation. ‘All right, I’ll keep you posted. I promise. Satisfied?’

‘Well, that will have to do for now, I suppose.’

She got up, came round the desk, and before he knew it he was caught in an exuberant bear-hug, crushed against Annika’s ample bosom.

‘I’m so glad for your sake. Don’t mess it up, Patrik, promise me.’ She gave him an extra squeeze that made his ribs protest. Since he didn’t have access to any air at the moment he couldn’t reply, but she apparently took his silence as acquiescence and released him, but not until she topped it all off with a firm pinch on the cheek.

‘Go home and change your clothes now, you hear? You stink!’

And with that comment Patrik found himself sent back out to the corridor, with a sore cheek and ribs. He felt his rib-cage cautiously. He liked Annika a lot, but sometimes he wished that she would be a bit more careful with a poor thirty-five-year-old guy whose physique was on a downhill slope.

Badholmen, the bathing island, looked deserted and forsaken. In the summer it was packed full of happy bathers and noisy children, but now the wind howled desolately across the snow that had fallen like a thick blanket overnight. Erica stepped carefully through the snow covering the rocks. She had felt a great need to get a little fresh air, and here from Badholmen she had an uninterrupted view of the islands and the seemingly endless white ice. Cars could be heard in the distance, but otherwise it was mercifully silent; she could almost hear herself think. The diving tower loomed next to her. Not as high as she had thought it was when she was little-then it seemed to reach all the way to heaven-but still high enough that she would never dare jump from the top platform on a warm summer’s day.

She could have stood there forever. Wrapped up in furs she felt the cold trying in vain to penetrate her clothes. Inside herself, she felt the ice thawing. She hadn’t realized how lonely she had been until the loneliness was gone. But what would happen with her and Patrik if she had to move back to Stockholm? It was many miles away, and she felt much too old for a long-distance relationship.

If she was forced to go along with selling the house, was there any possibility that she would stay here? She didn’t want to move in with Patrik before their relationship had been properly tested over a period of time. So the only alternative was to find some other place to live in Fjällbacka.

The problem was that nowhere else appealed to her. If they sold the house she would rather cut all ties to Fjällbacka than come here and watch strangers tramping about in her childhood home. Nor could she really imagine renting a flat here; that would feel very strange. She felt her happiness slipping away as she piled all these negative thoughts on top of each other. Of course, it would be possible to solve this dilemma, but she had to admit that even if she wasn’t exactly ancient, so many years of living alone with only herself to think of had taken their toll, and she didn’t feel very flexible anymore. After much deliberation she had decided that she was ready to leave her life in Stockholm, but only if she could keep living in the familiar setting of her childhood home. Otherwise, it would simply be too much change in her universe all at once. She wouldn’t be able to face it, no matter how much in love she was.

Perhaps her parents’ death had also made her less inclined to make big changes. That change was enough for many years to come. Right now, she wanted to sink into a safe, secure and predictable life. Previously, she had been afraid to commit herself to a relationship. Now she wanted nothing more than to include Patrik in that secure and predictable life. She wanted to be able to plan for all the usual stages: living together, engagement, marriage, children, and then many ordinary days, one after another, until one day they could look at each other and discover that they had grown old together. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.

For the first time Erica felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of Alex. It was as if she only now grasped that Alex’s life was irrevocably over. Even though their paths had not crossed for many years, she had still thought of her from time to time. And she had always known that Alex’s life was running parallel to her own. Now she was the only one who had a future, who would get to experience all the sorrows and joys that the years ahead would bring. Every time she thought about Alex now, and for the rest of her life, the image that would appear to her would be that of Alex’s pale corpse in the bathtub. The blood on the tiles and her hair that looked like a frozen halo. Maybe that was why she had decided to start writing the book about her. It was a way to relive the years when they were so close to each other, and at the same time get to know the woman Alex had become after they parted ways.

What had worried Erica the past few days was that the material felt a little too flat. It was as if she were looking at a three-dimensional model from only one side. The other sides were equally important if she was going to get an idea of how the figure looked, but she hadn’t yet been allowed to see them. What she decided was that she needed to start looking more at the people around Alex, not only the main actors, but all the bit players who had been part of her life. Then Erica’s thoughts had gravitated primarily to what she had sensed and intuited as a child but had never clearly understood.

Something had happened the year before Alex moved away, and nobody had ever bothered to tell Erica what it was. The whispering had always stopped as soon as she came near; she had been shielded from something that she now desperately needed to understand. The problem was that she didn’t know where to start. The only thing she remembered from her attempts to eavesdrop on conversations that were conducted in whispers by the adults, was that she heard the word ‘school’ mentioned more than once. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all she had. Erica knew that the teacher she and Alex had had in middle school was still living in Fjällbacka. That was probably as good a place to start as any.

The wind had picked up and despite her thick layers of clothing the cold began to creep in. Erica felt that it was time to start moving. She glanced one last time at Fjällbacka nestled in its protected position with the mountain towering behind. In the summer it was usually bathed in golden light, but now it was grey and bare; yet Erica thought it was even lovelier like this. In the summertime the area was more reminiscent of an anthill with its constant activity. Now a quiet peace had settled over the little town, and she could almost imagine it hibernating. At the same time she knew that the peace was illusory. Under the surface there was just as much evil as anywhere else inhabited by human beings. Erica had seen a good deal of that in Stockholm, but she believed that it was even more sinister here. Hatred, envy, greed and revenge, all of it concealed underneath a huge lid that was created by sentiments such as: ‘what would people say?’ All the evil, pettiness and malice was quietly allowed to ferment beneath a surface that always had to look so neat and clean. Now that Erica was standing on the rocks of Badholmen and looking back at the snow-covered little town, she wondered in silence what secrets it was guarding.

She gave a shiver, stuck her hands deep in her pockets and headed back towards town.

Life had become more and more threatening with each year that passed. Axel Wennerström was always discovering new dangers. It had started when he became acutely aware of all the billions and trillions of bacilli and bacteria swirling around him. Having to touch anything became a challenge; if he was forced to do so, he saw armies of bacteria rushing over him, threatening to bring along a myriad of known and unknown diseases that would surely cause him a long and painful death. Then his very surroundings became a threat. Big surfaces presented certain dangers, small surfaces presented others. Ending up in a crowd of people made sweat seep from all the pores on his body, and his breathing would get fast and shallow. The only environment Axel could even partially control was his own home. He quickly realized that he could actually live his life without ever having to set foot outside his door again.

The last time Axel went outside was eight years ago. He had so effectively repressed all possible desire to venture out that he no longer knew whether the rest of the world was there or not. He was content with his life and saw no reason to change a thing.

Axel Wennerström spent his days following a routine that was well practised by now. Each day followed the same schedule, and today was no different. He got up at seven o’clock and ate breakfast. Then he cleaned the whole kitchen with strong cleaning solutions in order to eradicate any possible bacteria that the food he’d eaten for breakfast might have spread after it was taken out of the refrigerator. He spent the next few hours dusting, wiping off and putting in order the rest of the house. Not until one o’clock could he grant himself a break and sit down with his newspaper on the veranda. According to a special arrangement with Signe, the letter-carrier, he got his newspaper in a plastic bag each morning. That allowed him to repress at least partially the image of all the filthy human hands that had handled the paper before it landed in his letter-box.

A knock on the door made his adrenaline skyrocket. Nobody was supposed to come at this time of day. The person who delivered his food normally came early on Friday mornings. That was the only visitor he usually had. Laboriously, Axel made his way inch by inch towards the door. The knocks came again, insistently. He reached out a shaky hand towards the top lock and unfastened it. He wished he had a peephole, the kind usually found in the doors of more modern flats, but in his old building there wasn’t even a window in the door through which he could view the intruder. He also unlocked the bottom bolt and with a pounding heart he opened the door. He had to check a desire to close his eyes to shut out whatever appalling, nameless creature awaited him out there.

‘Axel? Axel Wennerström?’

He relaxed. Women were less threatening than men. For safety’s sake he kept the security chain on.

‘Yes, what is it?’

He tried to sound as discouraging as possible. He just wanted this person, whoever she was, to go away and leave him in peace.

‘Hello, Axel. I don’t know if you remember me, but I was in your class at school. Erica Falck?’

He searched his memory. That was so many years ago, and there had been so many pupils. Faintly, the image of a little blonde girl began to appear. That was it, Tore’s girl.

‘I wonder whether I could have a word with you.’

She gave him an urgent look through the crack in the door. Axel sighed deeply, unhooked the door chain and let her in. He tried not to think of how many unknown organisms she was bringing with her into his clean home. He pointed to a shoe rack to indicate that she should take off her shoes. She obeyed politely and also hung up her coat and scarf. To avoid getting her dirt in the rest of the house he showed her to the wicker furniture on the veranda. She sat down on the sofa, and he made a mental note to wash the cushions as soon as she left.

‘It’s certainly been a long time.’

‘Yes, it must be twenty-five years since you were in my class, if I’m figuring correctly.’

‘Yes, that’s right. The years go by so fast.’

Axel found small talk frustrating, but reluctantly resigned himself to it. He wished that she would get to the point and tell him why she came here. Then she would leave and he could have his home to himself again. For the life of him he couldn’t comprehend what she wanted from him. Old pupils had come and gone by the hundreds over the years; until now, he had been spared actually seeing any of them in person. But now Erica Falck was sitting here before him. He felt on pins and needles as he sat on the wicker armchair facing her. He was so eager to get rid of her. His eyes kept looking at the cushion underneath her, and he could literally see all the bacteria she had brought in creeping and crawling and spreading down from the sofa across the floor. It probably wouldn’t be enough to wash the cushion; he would have to clean and disinfect the entire house after she left.

‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here.’

He merely nodded in reply.

‘You must have heard that Alexandra Wijkner was murdered.’

He had heard about it, and it had stirred up things that he had spent a good part of his life trying to repress. Now he wished even more that Erica Falck would get up and walk out the door. But she was still sitting there, and he had to fight a childish impulse to put his hands over his ears and hum loudly to shut out all the words he knew were going to come.

‘I have my own reasons for investigating a number of things associated with Alex and her death, and I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.’

Axel closed his eyes. He had known that this day would come eventually.

‘All right. That will be fine.’

He didn’t want to ask what her reasons were for asking about Alex. She could keep them to herself, if she wanted to; he wasn’t interested. She could ask her questions, but there was nothing forcing him to answer them. At the same time he felt to his astonishment a strong urge to tell everything to the blonde woman sitting across from him. To unload onto someone, anyone, everything he had been holding on to for twenty-five years. It had poisoned his life. It had grown like seeds deep inside his conscience and then slowly spread like a poison through his body and his mind. In his more lucid moments, he knew that this was at the root of his mania for cleanliness and his increasing terror of anything that might endanger the control he had over his surroundings. Erica Falck could ask what she liked, but he would do his utmost to check every impulse to answer. He knew that if he started to lose his grip, dams would burst and threaten to eradicate the shield he had so carefully constructed. That must not happen.

‘Do you remember Alexandra from school?’

He smiled bitterly to himself. Most of the children he’d had in school had only left behind faint, shadowy memories, but Alexandra was just as distinct to him today as she was twenty-five years ago. Although he could hardly say that out loud.

‘Yes, I remember Alexandra. Although as Alexandra Carlgren, not Wijkner, of course.’

‘Yes, that’s obvious. What do you remember of her in school?’

‘She was quiet, a little withdrawn, acted much older than her age.’

He saw that Erica was frustrated at his curt reply, but he was making a conscious attempt to say as little as possible, as if the words might take over and begin to flow on their own if he let out too many of them.

‘Was she good in school?’

‘Well, not especially. She wasn’t one of the most ambitious pupils I can recall, but she was intelligent in a quiet way. She was probably about in the middle of the class.’

Erica hesitated a moment and Axel realized that now they were approaching the questions that she really wanted to ask. The questions up till now had just been warm-ups for her.

‘But her family moved away in the middle of the term. Do you recall what reasons Alex’s parents gave for moving?’

He pretended to ponder the question, putting his fingertips together and resting his chin on them in a feigned gesture of trying to remember. He saw that Erica moved forward a little on the sofa, showing her eagerness to hear the answer to her question. He was going to have to disappoint her. The only thing he could tell her was the truth.

‘Yes, I think her father got a job in another town. To be honest I don’t remember exactly, but I vaguely recall it was something like that.’

Erica couldn’t hide her disappointment. Once again, Axel felt the urge to rip open his chest and reveal what had been hiding there for all these years. To clear his conscience by pouring out the entire naked truth. But he took a deep breath and pushed back what was threatening to spill out.

Erica continued stubbornly. ‘But the decision came a bit suddenly, from what I understood. Had you heard anything about it earlier, had Alex made any mention that they were going to move?’

‘Well, I don’t think it was so strange. Of course it did come up rather suddenly, as you say, if I remember correctly. But these things can happen quickly. Perhaps her father received an offer with short notice, how do I know?’

He threw out his arms in a gesture that said Erica’s guess was as good as his, and the frown between her eyebrows deepened. This wasn’t the answer she wanted. But she would have to make do with it.

‘Yes, but later there was something else,’ Erica went on. ‘I recall vaguely from those days that people were talking about something in connection with Alex. I also remember that I heard the grown-ups mention something about the school. Do you know what that might have been? I only have vague memories, as I said, but it was something that was hushed up in front of us children.’

Axel felt all the joints in his body turn rigid. He hoped that his consternation was not as obvious as it felt. Of course he knew that there must have been rumours, there always were. It was impossible to keep anything secret, yet he believed that the damage had been limited. He had even helped to limit it; that was part of what was still eating at him from inside. Erica was waiting for a reply.

‘No, I can’t think of what that might have been. But there’s always so much talk, you know how people are. There isn’t any substance to most rumours. I wouldn’t attach any importance to it if I were you.’

Disappointment was written all over her face. She hadn’t found out anything of what she had come here for, he understood that much. But he had no choice. It was like a pressure-cooker. If he opened the lid just a crack, the whole thing would explode. At the same time, something was still insisting on getting out. He felt as if someone had taken over his body. He felt his mouth open and his tongue start to shape the words, words that should not be spoken. To his relief Erica stood up and the moment passed. She put on her coat and boots and held out her hand. He looked at her hand and swallowed a couple of times before he took it. He had to check an impulse to grimace. Contact with another person’s skin disgusted him beyond all description. She finally walked out the door, but turned just as he was about to close it.

‘Oh, by the way, did Nils Lorentz have any connection with Alex, or with the school for that matter, that you know of?’

Axel hesitated but then made a decision. She would find out about it sooner or later, if not from him then from someone else.

‘Don’t you remember? He was a substitute teacher at the middle school for one term.’

Then Axel shut the door, locked the double lock, put on the chain, leaned his back against the door and closed his eyes.

He quickly got out the cleaning supplies and wiped away all traces of the unwelcome visitor. Only then did his world feel safe again.

The evening was off to a bad start. Lucas was in a foul mood when he came home, and she kept trying to stay a step ahead so as not to give him any additional reason to be annoyed. Anna knew that in this situation, when he came home in a bad mood, he would search for any excuse to vent his rage.

She took extra care preparing dinner. She made his favourite dish and laid the table so it looked perfect. She had to keep the kids away by putting The Lion King on the video in Emma’s room and feeding Adrian from the bottle so he’d go to sleep. She put on Lucas’s favourite CD, Chet Baker, and finally she dressed up a bit and put more effort into fixing her hair and make-up. But she soon realized that tonight it wouldn’t matter what she did. Lucas had clearly had a really bad day at work, and the rage that was building up inside him had to come out. Anna saw the flash in his eye; it was like walking about waiting for a bomb to go off.

The first blow came with no warning. A slap from the right that made her head ring. She held her cheek and looked up at Lucas as if she still hoped that something inside him would relent at the sight of the marks he had left on her. Instead, it aroused a desire in him to do her even more harm. It had taken her the longest time to understand and accept that he actually enjoyed hurting her. For many years she had believed his assurances that hitting her hurt him as much as it did her, but no longer. She had seen the monster in him before; by now it was quite familiar.

She curled up instinctively to protect herself from the blows she knew would come. When they began raining down on her she tried to focus on a point inside herself, a place that Lucas couldn’t reach. It was something she had got better and better at doing. Even though she was aware of the pain, she could distance herself from it most of the time. It was as if she were floating on the ceiling and looking down on herself as she lay curled up on the floor while Lucas vented his wrath on her.

A sound made her quickly return to reality and slip inside her own body again. Emma was standing in the doorway with her thumb in her mouth and her blanket in her arms. Anna had got her to stop sucking her thumb over a year ago, but now she was sucking it hard to comfort herself. Lucas hadn’t noticed her yet as he stood with his back to Emma’s room, but he turned round when he saw that Anna’s eyes were fixed on something behind him.

Swiftly, before Anna could stop him, he went over to his daughter, roughly lifted her up and shook her so hard that Anna could hear her teeth rattling against each other. Anna started to get up from the floor, but everything felt as though it were happening in slow-motion. She knew that she would always be able to play back this scene in her mind’s eye-Lucas shaking Emma who looked with big, uncomprehending eyes at her dear Pappa who had suddenly been transformed into a terrifying stranger.

Anna threw herself forward at Lucas to protect Emma. But before she reached him she watched in terror as Lucas slammed the little child’s body against the wall. Anna heard a terrible crunching noise and knew that her life had now been irretrievably changed. Lucas’s eyes were covered by a shiny film. He seemed almost uncomprehending as he looked at the child in his hands before he carefully and tenderly set her down on the floor. Then he lifted her up in his arms again, like a little baby this time, and looked at Anna with shining, robot-like eyes.

‘She has to go to the hospital. She fell down the stairs and hurt herself. We have to explain that to them. She fell down the stairs.’

He was talking incoherently and heading for the front door without looking to see if Anna was coming along. She was in a state of shock and vaguely followed after him. She seemed to be moving in a dream, but she could wake up from it at any moment.

Lucas kept repeating, ‘She fell down the stairs. They have to believe us, as long as we tell the same story, Anna. Because we’re going to tell the same story, Anna. She fell down the stairs, didn’t she?’

Lucas rambled on, but all Anna could do was nod. She wanted to tear Emma, who was now crying hysterically in pain and confusion, out of Lucas’s arms, but she didn’t dare. At the last second, when they were already in the stairwell, she awoke from her haze and remembered that Adrian was still back in the flat. She hurried inside to get him and rocked him protectively in her arms the whole way to the emergency room, as the knot in her stomach kept growing bigger and bigger.

‘Will you come over and have lunch with me?’

‘Sure, gladly. When should I come?’

‘I can have something ready in an hour or so. Will that work for you?’

‘Yes, that’ll be perfect. Then I’ll have time to clean up a bit. See you in an hour.’ There was a little pause, and then Patrik said hesitantly, ‘Kisses, bye.’

Erica felt herself blush slightly from happiness at this first little but significant endearment used in their relationship. She replied with the same phrase and they hung up.

As she prepared lunch she was a little ashamed at what she had planned. At the same time she felt that she could do nothing else. When the doorbell rang an hour later she took a deep breath and went to open the door. It was Patrik, and he got a passionate reception, which Erica had to interrupt when the egg-timer rang as a signal that the spaghetti was done.

‘What’s for lunch?’ Patrik patted his stomach to show his appetite.

‘Spaghetti bolognese.’

‘Mmmmm, sounds great. You’re every man’s dream woman, did you know that?’

Patrik sneaked up behind Erica, put his arms round her and began nuzzling her neck.

‘You’re sexy, intelligent, fantastic in bed, but above all, most important of all, you’re talented in the kitchen. What more could a man want…?’

The doorbell rang. Patrik gave Erica a questioning look. She avoided his eyes and went to open the door, first wiping her hands on the kitchen towel. Outside stood Dan. He looked harried and the worse for wear. His whole body drooped and his eyes looked dead. Erica was shocked when she saw him but pulled herself together and tried not to show it.

When Dan came into the kitchen, Patrik gave Erica an inquisitive look. She cleared her throat and introduced them to each other.

‘Patrik Hedström-Dan Karlsson. Dan has something he wants to tell you. But let’s sit down first.’

She carried the pot of meat sauce into the dining room. They all sat down to eat but the mood was oppressive. Erica felt heavy-hearted about the situation but knew it was necessary. She had rung Dan that morning and convinced him that he had to tell the police about his relationship with Alex. And she had proposed that he do it at her house, which might make a tough task a bit easier, she hoped.

She ignored Patrik’s puzzled look and started things off.

‘Patrik, Dan is here today because he has something to tell you, in your capacity as a policeman.’

She nodded to Dan, inviting him to begin. Dan was looking down at his plate, and he hadn’t touched his food. After another moment of embarrassed silence, he began to speak.

‘I’m the man Alex was seeing. I’m the father of the child she was expecting.’

There was a clatter as Patrik dropped his fork onto his plate. Erica put her hand on his arm and explained, ‘Dan is one of my oldest and dearest friends, Patrik. I found out that Dan was the man Alex had been seeing here in Fjällbacka. I invited both of you to lunch because I thought it would be easier to talk about it in these surroundings rather than at the police station.’

She could see that Patrik did not appreciate that she had meddled like this, but she would have to deal with that later, Dan was a good friend, and she intended to do everything she could so that the situation didn’t get even worse. When she spoke with him on the phone he had told her that Pernilla had taken the kids and gone to her sister’s in Munkedal. She needed time to think, she’d said. She didn’t know what was going to happen, and she couldn’t promise anything. Dan saw his whole life falling apart around him. In a way it would be a relief to tell the police. The past few weeks had been so difficult. At the same time he’d been forced to grieve for Alex in secret, he had jumped each time the telephone rang or there was a knock on the door, convinced that the police had figured out that he was the man Alex had been meeting. Now that Pernilla knew, Dan was no longer afraid to tell the police. Nothing could be any worse than it already was. He didn’t care what happened to him, just so he didn’t lose his family.

‘Dan has nothing to do with the murder, Patrik. He’ll tell you everything you want to know about himself and Alex, but he swears that he never hurt her in any way, and I believe him. I hope that the police can try to keep this confidential. You know how people talk, and Dan’s family has already suffered enough. Dan too, for that matter. He made a mistake and believe me, he’s paying a very high price for it.’

Patrik still didn’t look particularly pleased, but nodded as a sign that he was listening to what she had to say.

‘I’d like to talk with Dan alone, Erica.’

She didn’t object but got up politely and went out to the kitchen to wash up. From the kitchen she could hear their voices rising and falling. Dan’s dark, deep voice and Patrik’s somewhat lighter one. The discussion occasionally sounded heated, but when they came out to the kitchen after almost half an hour, Dan looked relieved. Patrik still looked stern. Before he left, Dan gave Erica a hug and shook Patrik’s hand.

‘I’ll let you know if we have any more questions,’ said Patrik. ‘You might have to come in and give a written statement as well.’

Dan only nodded mutely and left after a final wave to them both.

The look in Patrik’s eyes did not bode well.

‘Don’t ever, ever do that again, Erica. We’re investigating a murder and we have to do everything the proper way.’

He scrunched up his forehead when he was angry, and she had to check an impulse to kiss away the wrinkles.

‘I know, Patrik. But you had the child’s father high up on the list of suspects. I knew that if Dan came into the station you’d put him in an interrogation room and probably start getting tough with him. Dan wouldn’t be able to stand that right now. His wife has taken the kids and left him, and he doesn’t know if they’re ever coming back. In addition to that, he’s lost someone who meant something to him, no matter how you may look at it. He lost Alex. And he hasn’t been able to show his grief to anyone or talk to anyone about it. That’s why I thought that we could start by talking here, in a neutral environment and without any other police involved. I understand that you have to interrogate him some more, but now the worst is over. Please forgive me for deceiving you, Patrik. Do you think you can ever forgive me?’

She pouted as seductively as she could and snuggled up to him. She took his arms and put them round her waist and then stood on tiptoe so she could reach his lips with hers. She tentatively stuck in the tip of her tongue, and it didn’t take many seconds before she felt a response from him. He pushed her away after a moment and looked steadily into her eyes.

‘You’re forgiven for this time, but don’t ever do it again, do you hear me? Now I think we should heat up the rest of the lunch in the microwave and take care of this rumbling stomach of mine.’

Erica nodded, and arm in arm they went back to the dining room where lunch still lay mostly uneaten on the plates.

When Patrik had to get back to the station and was on his way out the door, Erica remembered what else she had wanted to tell him.

‘You know, I told you that I had a vague memory that there was talk about something in connection with Alex just before her family moved away, and that it had something to do with school. I tried to check up on it, but didn’t find out very much. But I was reminded that there was another connection between Alex and Nils, besides the fact that Karl-Erik worked at the cannery. Nils was a substitute teacher at the middle school for one semester. I never had him as a teacher, but I know that he taught Alex’s class from time to time. I don’t know if this has any significance, but I thought I’d tell you about it anyway.’

‘So-o-o, Alex had Nils as a teacher.’ Patrik stopped to think on the front porch.

‘As you say, maybe it’s of no importance, but right now all connections between Nils Lorentz and Alex are of interest. We don’t have too much else to go on.’ He gave her a serious look. ‘There was one thing Dan said that really stayed with me. He said that towards the end Alex had talked a lot about having to settle up with her past. That it was important to dare take care of things that were difficult, so she could move on. I wonder whether that could have any connection with what you’re saying, Erica.’

He fell silent for a moment but then jerked himself back to the present and said, ‘I can’t rule out Dan as a suspect, I hope you understand that.’

‘Yes, I understand, Patrik. But go easy on him if you can. Are you coming over tonight?’

‘Yes, I just have to go home and get a change of clothes and things. But I’ll be here around seven.’

They kissed good-bye. Patrik went back to his car. Erica stood there on the steps watching him until the car vanished from sight.

Patrik didn’t drive straight back to work. Without actually knowing why, he’d brought along the keys to Anders’s flat as he was leaving the station. He decided to stop there and have a look round in peace and quiet. What he needed now was something, anything, that could give him an opening in the case. It felt as though he was running into blind alleys wherever he turned, and as though they would never find the killer, or killers, whoever it was. Alex’s secret lover, just as Erica had said, had been at the top of the list of suspects, but now Patrik was no longer so sure. He wasn’t prepared to write off Dan completely, but he had to admit that the trail no longer felt as hot.

The mood in Anders’s flat was eerie. In his mind’s eye Patrik still could see the image of Anders slowly swaying back and forth from the rope, even though he had already been cut down by the time Patrik saw him. He didn’t know what he was searching for, but he put on a pair of gloves so as not to disturb any evidence. He stood right underneath the hook in the ceiling where the noose had been fastened and tried to get an impression of how it was done. How had Anders been hoisted up there? It was simply impossible to figure out. The ceiling was high and the noose had been tied directly below the hook. It must have taken considerable strength to raise Anders’s body that high. Of course he had been quite thin, but in view of his height he still must have weighed a good deal. Patrik made a mental note to check Anders’s weight when the autopsy report arrived. The only explanation he could find was that several people had lifted him up there together. But how come there weren’t any marks on Anders’s body? Even if he had been sedated somehow, lifting the body up there should have left some marks. It just didn’t add up.

He went further into the flat and looked closely at everything. Since there wasn’t much furniture besides the mattress in the living room and a table with two chairs in the kitchen, there wasn’t a lot to examine. Patrik noticed that the only things providing storage space were the kitchen cabinets, and he went through them one by one. They had already been gone through once before, but he still wanted to make sure that nothing had been missed.

In the fourth drawer he checked, he found a notepad, which he took out and placed on the kitchen table for closer inspection. He held up the pad at an angle to the window to see whether there were any impressions on it. He saw quite rightly that what had been written on the top page had made an impression on the paper underneath, and he used an old proven trick to try to make out some of the text. Using a pencil he found in the same drawer, he lightly rubbed the side of the pencil lead across the page. He could only make out parts of the text, but it was enough to tell him what the message was about. Patrik gave a low whistle. That was interesting, very interesting. It set all his gears in motion. He carefully put the pad into one of the plastic bags he’d brought along from the car.

He continued his search of the drawers. Most of the contents were sheer junk, but in the last one he went through he did find something interesting. He looked at the piece of leather he was holding between his fingers. It was exactly like the one he had seen at Alex’s house when he and Erica were there. It had lain on her nightstand and he had read precisely the same burned-in inscription that he now read here: ‘T.T.M. 1976’.

When he turned it over he saw that just like the one at Alex’s house, there were some blurry spots of blood on the reverse. The fact that there was a link between Alex and Anders that they didn’t yet understand was nothing new. But what did puzzle him was the gnawing feeling he got when he looked at the piece of leather.

Something in his subconscious was demanding attention. Something was trying to tell him that the little patch was significant in some way. Patrik was obviously missing something here; he just couldn’t see it. But he did know that the patch told him that the connection between Alex and Anders went far back in time. At least until 1976. The year before Alex and her family moved away from Fjällbacka and vanished without a trace for twelve months. A year before Nils Lorentz disappeared for good. Nils, who according to Erica had been a teacher at the school that both Alex and Anders had attended.

Patrik realized that he needed to talk to Alex’s parents. If the suspicions that were beginning to take shape in his mind were correct, they were the ones in possession of the final answers, the answers that could put together the pieces he already thought he could see.

He picked up the notepad and the leather patch in their plastic bags and glanced once more at the living room before he left. Again he saw the image of Anders’s pale, skinny, swaying body in his mind’s eye. He vowed to get to the bottom of this, to find out why Anders had ended his sad life in a noose. If the glimpses he had seen so far were right, it was a tragedy beyond all comprehension. He sincerely hoped that he was wrong.

Patrik found Gösta’s name in the phone book and dialled the number to his extension at the station. He would probably be interrupting him in a game of solitaire.

‘Hi, it’s Patrik.’

‘Hi, Patrik.’ Gösta’s voice sounded as weary as always on the other end. Boredom and despondency had given him both an outer and an inner weariness.

‘Look, have you scheduled a visit to the Carlgrens in Göteborg yet?’

‘No, I haven’t got around to it yet. I’ve had a lot of other things to take care of.’

Gösta sounded defensive. Patrik’s question put him on guard; he was nervous that he would be criticized because he still hadn’t carried out his assignment. He simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. Picking up the phone and placing a call seemed impossible; getting into the car and driving to Göteborg was insurmountable.

‘Would you have any objection if I made the visit in your place?’

Patrik knew that this was simply a rhetorical question. He was well aware that Gösta would be overjoyed to get out of it. As he had thought, Gösta replied with new-found joy in his voice, ‘No, absolutely not! If you feel that you want to take over, be my guest. I have so much else to get done, that I don’t know how I’d be able to fit it in anyway.’

They were both aware that they were playing a game, but their roles had been established years ago and they worked well for both of them. Patrik could do what he wanted to do, and Gösta, secure in the knowledge that the job was being done, could go back to his computer game.

‘If you could find their number for me, I’ll ring them at once.’

‘Yes, of course, I have it right here. Let’s see…’ Gösta read off the number.

Patrik wrote it down on the pad he always had fastened to the dashboard of his car. He thanked Gösta and hung up so he could call the Carlgrens. He crossed his fingers that they would be at home. He was in luck. Karl-Erik answered after the third ring. When Patrik explained his business he sounded hesitant at first, but then agreed that Patrik could come by and ask a few questions. Karl-Erik tried to find out what sort of questions they were, but Patrik said only that there were a few hazy points that he hoped they could clarify for him.

He backed out of the parking space in front of the block of flats and turned first right and then left at the next intersection towards the motorway to Göteborg. The first part was slow, with meandering small roads through the forest, but as soon as he got out onto the motorway things went much faster. He passed Dingle, then Munkedal, and when he came to Uddevalla he knew he was halfway there. As always when he was driving, he played music full blast. He thought there was something very relaxing about driving a car. He sat for a moment outside the big light-blue villa in Kålltorp, gathering his faculties. If his hunch was right, he was about to shatter this family idyll inexorably. But sometimes that was his job.

A car drove up the driveway. She didn’t see it, but she heard the sound on the gravel. Erica opened the front door and peered out. Her mouth fell open in astonishment when she saw who was getting out of the car. Anna waved wearily to her and then opened the back doors to lift the children out of their car seats. Erica slipped on a pair of clogs and went out to help her. Anna hadn’t said a word about driving over, and Erica wondered what was going on.

Anna looked pale in her black coat. She carefully lifted Emma down to the ground, and Erica loosened the belt of Adrian’s child-seat and lifted him up in her arms. She got a big toothless smile in thanks and felt a smile spreading over her own face in reply. Then she gave her sister a questioning look, but Anna just shook her head as if to say, ‘Don’t ask.’ Erica knew her sister well enough to know that Anna would tell her when she was good and ready. Before that it would be impossible to drag anything out of her.

‘Imagine what fine visitors I’m going to have today. Imagine that you’ve all come to see Auntie.’

Erica babbled and smiled at the baby in her arms and then looked down to say hello to Emma too. She had always been a big favourite of Emma’s, but this time she didn’t return her smile. Instead she clutched her mother’s coat tightly and stared suspiciously at Erica.

Erica walked ahead into the house with Adrian. Anna followed close behind, holding Emma by one hand and carrying a small bag in the other. Erica saw to her astonishment that the baggage area of the mini-van was packed full, but she made a supreme effort not to ask any questions.

With clumsy, unpractised hands she took off Adrian’s outer clothing while Anna helped Emma out of her coat, although with considerably more skill. Only then did Erica see that one of Emma’s arms was in a cast up to the elbow. She gave Anna a shocked look. Again her sister almost imperceptibly shook her head. Emma was still looking at Erica with big, serious eyes and staying close to her mother the whole time. She had stuck her thumb in her mouth; that also told Erica that something serious had happened. Anna had announced a year ago that she had finally weaned Emma from sucking her thumb.

With Adrian’s warm baby body solidly anchored in her arms, Erica went into the living room and sat down on the sofa with him on her lap. Adrian looked at her with fascination. Little smiles flitted across his face, as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to laugh or not. He was so sweet that Erica almost thought she could eat him up.

‘Did you have a good trip?’

Erica didn’t know exactly what to say, but small talk would have to do until Anna decided to tell her what was going on.

‘Yes, it’s a fairly long drive. We went through Dalsland. Emma got car-sick on the curvy roads through the forest, so we had to stop several times on the way for her to get some fresh air.’

‘I suppose that wasn’t much fun, Emma, was it?’

Erica made an attempt to establish contact with Emma. The girl shook her head but kept peering out from under her fringe and holding onto her mother.

‘I thought you could take a nap now, Emma,’ said Anna. ‘Do you think that will be all right? You haven’t slept a wink the whole trip, so you must be very tired.’

Emma nodded in agreement and as if on demand she began rubbing her eyes with her good hand.

‘Can I put them to bed upstairs, Erica?’

‘Yes, of course. Put them in Mamma and Pappa’s bedroom. I’m sleeping there now, so the beds are all made up.’

Anna took Adrian from Erica, who to her delight grunted in protest at being lifted out of his nice aunt’s arms.

‘The blankie, Mamma,’ Emma reminded her when they were already halfway up the stairs, and Anna came back down to fetch the bag she’d left in the hall.

‘Would you like some help?’

Erica thought it looked a little difficult for Anna to be balancing Adrian on one arm and carrying the bag in the other, while Emma stubbornly refused to relinquish her hold on her mother.

‘No thanks, it’s okay. I’m used to it.’

Anna gave her a crooked, bitter smile that Erica had a hard time interpreting.

While Anna put the children to bed, Erica busied herself making fresh coffee. She wondered how many pots she had drunk lately. Her stomach was going to start protesting soon. She froze in the middle of holding a scoop of coffee over the filter. Damn. Patrik’s clothes were spread over the entire bedroom, and Anna would have to be an idiot not to put two and two together. Her mocking smile when she came down the stairs a minute later was confirmation enough.

‘So-o-o, Sister. What is it that you haven’t told me? Who’s the man who has such a hard time hanging up his clothes properly?’

Erica felt herself blush.

‘Well, er, it all happened rather fast, you see.’

She could hear herself stammering and Anna was even more amused. The weary lines in her face were briefly smoothed out, and Erica caught glimpses of her sister the way she used to be, before she met Lucas.

‘All right, who is it? Stop mumbling and give your little sister the juicy details. You could start with his name, for instance. Is it somebody I know?’

‘Yes, it is actually. I don’t know if you remember Patrik Hedström?’

Anna hooted and slapped her knee. ‘Patrik! Sure I remember Patrik! He used to follow you around like a little puppy with his tongue hanging out. So he finally got the chance…’

‘Yes, I mean, I knew that he had a slight crush on me when we were younger, but I had no idea how he really felt…’

‘Good Lord, you must have been blind! He was head over heels in love with you. God, how romantic. Here he’s been pining for you all these years, and finally you look deep into his eyes and discover the great love of your life.’

Anna clutched her heart dramatically, and Erica couldn’t help laughing. This was the sister she knew and loved.

‘Well, it wasn’t quite like that. He’s been married in the meantime, but his wife left him a few years ago and now he’s divorced and lives in Tanumshede.’

‘So what does he do? Don’t tell me he’s just a carpenter. I’d be sooo jealous. I’ve always dreamed about hot carpenter sex.’

Erica childishly stuck her tongue out at Anna, who stuck hers out in turn.

‘No, he’s not a carpenter. He’s a cop, if you must know.’

‘A cop, my, my. A man with a truncheon, in other words. Well, that’s not so dumb either…’

Erica had almost forgotten what a tease her sister could be. She simply shook her head as she poured coffee into two cups. Anna made herself at home. She went to the fridge, took out the milk and poured a little in her cup and a little in Erica’s. The teasing smile disappeared from her face, and Erica understood that she would now find out the reason why Anna and her kids had suddenly appeared in Fjällbacka like this.

‘Well, my love story is over. For good. I suppose it really has been for years, but it was only now that I realized it.’

Anna fell silent and gazed sadly into her coffee cup.

‘I know you never liked Lucas, but I really did love him. Somehow I managed to rationalize why he hit me. He always asked forgiveness and swore that he loved me, at least he used to. Somehow I managed to convince myself that it was all my fault. If only I could be a better wife, a better lover, and a better mother, then he wouldn’t have to hit me.’

Anna was answering Erica’s silent questions.

‘Yes, I know how absurd it sounds, but I was incredibly good at fooling myself. Since he was a good father to Emma and Adrian, that excused a lot. I didn’t want to take their Pappa away from them.’

‘But something happened?’

Erica was prodding Anna. She could see how hard it was for her to talk about this. Her pride was hurt, and Anna had always been an incredibly proud person who would only reluctantly admit when she was wrong.

‘Yes, something happened. Last night he went off on me like he usually does. More and more often lately, actually. But yesterday…’

Her voice broke and Anna swallowed a couple of times to stifle her tears.

‘Last night he went off on Emma. He was so furious, and in the middle of everything she came into the room and he couldn’t stop himself.’ Anna swallowed again. ‘We drove to the emergency room, and they confirmed that she had a fracture in her arm.’

‘I assume you reported Lucas to the police?’

Erica felt rage forming a hard knot in her stomach, a knot that was growing bigger and bigger.

‘No.’ The word came almost inaudibly from Anna and the tears started rolling down her pale cheeks. ‘No, we said that she fell down the stairs.’

‘But dear God, did they really believe that?’

Anna gave Erica a crooked smile. ‘You know how charming Lucas can be. He completely turned the heads of the doctor and the nurses, and they felt almost as sorry for him as they did for Emma.’

‘But Anna, you have to report him to the police. Surely you can’t let him get away with this?’

She looked at her weeping sister. Sympathy was competing with fury. Anna was shrinking before her eyes.

‘It will never happen again, I intend to see to that. I pretended that I was listening to his excuses, and then I packed up the car and drove off as soon as he left for work. I never intend to go back to him; Lucas will never have a chance to hurt my children again. If I’d reported him to the police they would have brought in social services, and then maybe they might have taken the children from both of us.’

‘But Lucas is never going to sit still for you taking the children, Anna. Without a police report and an investigation, how are you going to prove that you should have sole custody of the children?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know, Erica. I can’t think about it now, I just had to get away from him. The rest of it will have to be worked out later. Please don’t yell at me!’

Erica set down her cup on the table, got up from her chair and put her arms round her sister. She stroked her hair and murmured consoling words. She let Anna cry on her shoulder and felt her jumper getting wetter and wetter. At the same time her hatred towards Lucas grew. She really wanted to punch that fucker in the mouth.

Birgit looked out at the street, hidden behind her curtain. Karl-Erik could see from her hunched shoulders how tense she was. She had been pacing anxiously up and down ever since the police rang. For the first time in ages, he felt utterly calm inside. Karl-Erik intended to give the police officer all the answers – if he asked the right questions.

The secrets had been burning inside him for so many years. In a way it had been easier for Birgit. Her manner of handling the situation had been to deny that it ever occurred. She refused to talk about it and fluttered on in life as if nothing had happened. But it did happen. Not a day had passed when he hadn’t thought about it, and each time the burden had felt even heavier to bear. He knew that from the outside it looked as if Birgit were the stronger of them. At all social events she glittered like a star while he was the grey, invisible man at her side. She wore her beautiful clothes, her expensive jewellery and her make-up like a suit of armour.

Whenever they came home after yet another glittering, exhilarating evening, and she took off her armour, she seemed to collapse into nothingness. All that was left was a quivering, insecure child who clung to him for support. During their entire marriage he had been torn between conflicting feelings for his wife. Her beauty and fragility aroused tenderness and a protective instinct that made him feel like a man. But her unwillingness to face life’s more difficult aspects sometimes drove him to the brink of madness. What made him most furious was that he knew that she wasn’t stupid, but her upbringing had taught her that a woman must at all costs conceal the fact that she had any sort of intelligence. Instead, she should focus all her energy on being beautiful and helpless. And pleasing others. When they were newlyweds he hadn’t seen this as anything odd; that was the spirit of the times back then. But times had changed, placing whole different demands on both women and men. He had adapted, but his wife never did. So this day was going to be very hard on her. Karl-Erik believed that deep inside she knew what he was intending to do. That was why she had been pacing back and forth across the room for almost two hours. But he also knew that she didn’t intend to let him drag their family secrets out into the open without a fight.

‘Why does Henrik have to be here?’ Birgit turned towards him, anxiously wringing her hands.

‘The police want to talk with the family, and Henrik is part of the family, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, but I think it’s unnecessary to get him mixed up in this. The police will probably just ask some general questions. Do we really have to drag him all the way out here for that? No, I think it seems unnecessary.’

Her voice rose and fell with unspoken questions. He knew her so well.

‘Here he comes.’

Birgit quickly stepped away from the window. It took a moment before the doorbell rang. Karl-Erik took a deep breath and went to open the door, while Birgit retired to the living room where Henrik was already sitting on the sofa, deep in his own thoughts.

‘Hello, I’m Patrik Hedström.’

‘Karl-Erik Carlgren.’

They shook hands politely. Karl-Erik estimated that the police officer was about Alex’s age. He often did this these days: thought about other people in terms of Alex.

‘Come in. I thought we could sit in the living room and talk.’

Patrik looked a bit taken aback when he saw Henrik, but recovered quickly and greeted both Birgit and Henrik politely. They all sat down around the coffee table and there was a long moment of oppressive silence. Finally Patrik spoke.

‘Well, I realize this was a bit sudden, but I’m grateful you could see me on such short notice.’

‘We were just wondering if something has happened. Have you found out anything new? We haven’t heard from you in a while…’ The sentence petered out and Birgit looked hopefully at Patrik.

‘The investigation is progressing slowly but surely, and that’s about all I can say at this point. The murder of Anders Nilsson has also thrown a whole new light on the case.’

‘Yes, that’s obvious, but have you determined whether the person who murdered Anders is the same person who murdered our daughter?’

Birgit’s chatter had a frenetic tone to it that made Karl-Erik check an impulse to lean forward and place a soothing hand on hers. Today, he had to steel himself against assuming the protector role in which he was so well practised.

For a moment he allowed himself to drift away in his mind, away from the present to a past that now seemed so distant to him. He looked around the living room with something that resembled distaste. They had fallen so easily for the temptation, one could almost smell the blood money. The house in Kålltorp was more than they ever dared dream of when the children were small. It was big and airy, with the fine details from the Thirties preserved, even as they had indulged all the modern creature comforts. With the salary from his job in Göteborg, they could finally afford all of this.

The room they were sitting in was the largest room in the house. Much too over-furnished for his taste, but Birgit had a penchant for shiny, glittery objects and everything was as good as brand-new. About every three years, Birgit would begin to complain that everything looked so worn out. She would tell him how bored she was of everything in their house, and after a few weeks of her entreating looks he usually gave in and pulled out his wallet. It was as though she could keep re-inventing herself and her life over and over again, by replacing everything. At present she was into a Laura Ashley period, and the room was so full of rose patterns and flounces that it felt suffocatingly feminine. Karl-Erik knew that he wouldn’t have to tolerate it for more than a year, max. If he got lucky on the next redecoration Birgit would be partial to Chesterfield armchairs and the English hunting motif. On the other hand, if he was unlucky it would probably be tiger stripes next time.

Patrik cleared his throat. ‘I have a number of questions, and I’d appreciate your help in clarifying a few matters.’

Nobody said anything so he continued. ‘Do you know anything about how Alex and Anders Nilsson happened to know each other?’

Henrik looked shocked, and Karl-Erik said he had no idea. It pained him to say that, but it couldn’t be helped.

‘They were in the same class, but that was so many years ago.’

Birgit squirmed nervously as she sat on the sofa next to her son-in-law.

Henrik said, ‘I recognize the name. Didn’t Alex have some of his paintings for sale at the gallery?’

Patrik nodded. Henrik went on, ‘I don’t understand, was there supposed to be some further connection between them? What reason could there be for someone to murder both my wife and one of her artists?’

‘That’s precisely what I’m trying to work out.’ Patrik paused before he continued. ‘Unfortunately we were also able to confirm that they had an intimate relationship.’

In the silence that followed, Karl-Erik saw many emotions vying on the faces of the two people sitting across from him, Birgit and Henrik. He himself was only mildly surprised, but it quickly gave way to acceptance. What the police officer had said must be true. It was only natural if one considered the circumstances.

Birgit held her hand over her mouth in an expression of horror, and Henrik’s face slowly lost all its colour. Karl-Erik saw that Patrik Hedström was not enjoying his role as the harbinger of bad news.

‘That can’t be right.’ At a loss, Birgit looked at the others but found no support. ‘Why would Alex have a relationship with someone like that?’ She gave Karl-Erik an urgent look, but he refused to meet her eyes and instead stared down at his hands. Henrik said nothing; he looked as if he had collapsed.

‘You don’t know whether they continued to stay in contact after you moved away?’ asked Patrik.

‘No, I can’t imagine they would. Alex cut all her ties when we moved away from Fjällbacka.’ Again it was Birgit who spoke while Henrik and Karl-Erik sat in silence.

‘There’s another thing I’d like to ask about. You moved to Göteborg in the middle of the term when Alex was in the eighth grade. Why was that? The move seemed very sudden.’

‘There was nothing strange about it. Karl-Erik got a fantastic job offer that he simply couldn’t refuse. He had to decide quickly; they needed someone right away. So that’s why it all happened so fast.’ She wrung her hands incessantly as she talked.

‘But you didn’t register Alex in any school in Göteborg, did you? Instead she started at a boarding school in Switzerland. What was the reason for that?’

‘With Karl-Erik’s new job we found ourselves in much improved financial circumstances, and we simply wanted to give Alex the best opportunities we could,’ said Birgit.

‘But weren’t there any good schools in Göteborg?’ Patrik implacably hammered away with his questions. Karl-Erik couldn’t help admiring his commitment. Once he had also been that young and enthusiastic. Now he was just tired.

Birgit went on, ‘Of course there were, but just imagine what a social network she could acquire by going to a boarding school like that. There were even a couple of princes at the school. Just think what contacts like that could do for a girl.’

‘Did you go to Switzerland with Alex?’

‘Naturally we went down there to register her at school, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Well, that wasn’t quite what I meant.’ Patrik looked in his notebook to refresh his memory.

‘Alexandra left here in the middle of spring semester 1977. She was registered at the boarding school in the spring of 1978, and that was also when Karl-Erik began his job here in Göteborg. My question is therefore, where were you during that year?’

A furrow had formed between Henrik’s eyebrows, and he shifted his gaze back and forth between Birgit and Karl-Erik. Both were avoiding his eyes. Karl-Erik felt a grinding pain spreading outward from his heart area and slowly increasing in strength.

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at with all these questions. What does it matter whether we moved in ’77 or ’78? Our daughter is dead and you come here asking us questions as if we’re the guilty ones. There must have been some mistake somewhere. Someone wrote it down wrong in some register, that’s what it must be. We moved here in the spring of ’77 and that’s when Alexandra began school in Switzerland.’

Patrik gave Birgit an apologetic look as she got more and more upset. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carlgren, to be causing you any discomfort. I know you’re going through a difficult time, but I have to ask these questions. And my information is correct. The two of you didn’t move here until spring 1978, and for the whole year before that there is nothing to prove that you were even in Sweden. So I have to ask once again: where were you during the year between spring of ’77 and spring of ’78?’

With desperation in her eyes Birgit turned to Karl-Erik for help, but he knew that he could no longer give her the kind of help she wanted. In the long run, he believed that he was doing this for the good of the family; he also knew that, in the short run, it might crush her. But he had no choice. He gave his wife a sad look and then cleared his throat.

‘We were in Switzerland. Alex, my wife and I.’

‘Hush, Karl-Erik, don’t say any more!’

He ignored her. ‘We were in Switzerland because our ten-year-old daughter was pregnant.’

He wasn’t surprised to see Patrik drop his pen in his consternation over what he’d just said. Whatever the police officer had reckoned on, or suspected, it was something else entirely to hear it said out loud. How could anyone have imagined something so awful?

‘My daughter was exploited-raped. She was only a child.’

He felt his voice break and pressed his fist hard against his lips to try to collect himself. After a while he was able to go on. Birgit refused even to look at him, but now there was no turning back.

‘We could tell that something was wrong, but we didn’t know what it was. She had always seemed happy, secure. Sometime in the beginning of the eighth grade she began to change. She turned quiet and uncommunicative. None of her friends came over anymore, and she could be away for hours at a time. We didn’t know where she was. We didn’t take it that seriously, thinking it was only a phase she was going through. A preliminary stage to her teenage years maybe, I don’t know.’

He had to clear his throat again. The pain in his chest was increasing. ‘It wasn’t until she was in her fourth month that we discovered she was pregnant. We should have seen the signs earlier, but who could believe…We couldn’t even imagine…’

‘Karl-Erik, please.’ Birgit’s face was like a grey mask. Henrik looked numb, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, which he probably couldn’t. Even to his own ears Karl-Erik could hear how incredible it sounded when he spoke the words aloud. For twenty-five years the words had been gnawing at his guts. Out of consideration for Birgit he had stifled his need to speak out, but now the words came pouring forth and he couldn’t stop them.

‘We couldn’t consider an abortion. Not under those conditions. Nor did we give Alex any opportunity to make a choice, even if she could have done so. We never asked her how she felt or what she wanted to do. Instead, we hushed it all up. We took her out of school, went abroad and stayed there until she gave birth to the child. No one could know anything about it. Because what would people say?’

He could hear for himself how bitter that last sentence sounded. Nothing had been more important than that. It had taken precedence over their own daughter’s happiness and well-being. He couldn’t even place the entire blame on Birgit for making that choice. She had never been the one who was most concerned about outward appearances. After years of self-examination, he had been forced to admit to himself that he let her have her way based on his own wish to retain an unblemished appearance. He could feel sour stomach acid creeping up his throat. He swallowed hard and went on.

‘After Alex had the baby, we registered her at the boarding school, returned to Göteborg and got on with our lives.’

Every word was dripping with bitterness and self-contempt. Birgit’s eyes were filled with fury, perhaps hatred as well. She stared at him intensely as if to use sheer will-power to make him stop. But he knew that the process had begun the same moment that Alex was found dead in the bathtub. He knew that the police would root around, turn over every stone and drag out into the sunlight everything that crawled. It was better that they tell the truth in their own words. Or in his words, as it turned out. Perhaps he should have done it earlier, but he had needed the time to muster the courage. Patrik Hedström’s telephone call was the last push he needed.

Karl-Erik knew that he had left out a good deal, but a weariness had settled over him like a blanket, and he let Patrik take up the thread and ask the questions that would fill in the gaps. He leaned back in the armchair and gripped the armrests hard.

Henrik was the first to speak. His voice was noticeably shaky. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t Alex say anything? I knew that she was hiding something from me, but not this.’

Karl-Erik threw out his hands in a resigned gesture. There was nothing he could say to Alex’s husband.

Patrik had fought hard to retain his professionalism, but it was obvious that he was shaken. He picked up the pen he had dropped on the floor and tried to focus on the notebook in front of him.

‘Who was it that attacked Alex? Was it someone at the school?’

Karl-Erik only nodded.

‘Was it…’ Patrik hesitated. ‘Was it Nils Lorentz?’

‘Who’s Nils Lorentz?’ asked Henrik.

Birgit answered him, with steel in her voice. ‘He was a substitute teacher at the school. He’s the son of Nelly Lorentz.’

‘But where is he now? He must have gone to prison for what he did to Alex, didn’t he?’ Henrik looked like he was wrestling hard to understand what Karl-Erik had said.

‘He disappeared twenty-five years ago,’ Patrik explained. ‘No one has seen him since then. But what I also want to know is why no police report was ever filed. I’ve searched through our archives, and there’s never been any complaint to the police against him.’

Karl-Erik closed his eyes. Patrik wasn’t asking the question as an accusation, but that was how it felt. Each word felt like needles piercing his skin, reminding him of the terrible mistake they had made twenty-five years ago.

‘We never lodged a complaint. When we understood that Alex was pregnant and she told us what happened, I stormed up to Nelly’s house and told her what her son had done. I had every intention of reporting him to the police, and I told Nelly as much, but-’

‘But Nelly came and talked with me and suggested that we could solve it without getting the police involved,’ said Birgit as she sat on the sofa, her back straight as a poker. ‘She said that there was no reason to humiliate Alex any further by having all of Fjällbacka whispering about what had happened. We could only agree, and we decided that it would be to her benefit if we could handle the matter within the family. Nelly promised that she would take care of Nils in a suitable manner.’

‘Nelly also arranged a very well-paid job for me here in Göteborg,’ said Karl-Erik. ‘I assume that we were no better than most people, dazzled by the promise of gold.’ Karl-Erik was being brutally honest about himself. The time for denials was past.

‘That had nothing to do with it. How can you say that, Karl-Erik? We were only thinking of what was best for Alex. What good would it have done her if everyone had known? We gave her a chance to move on with her life.’

‘No, Birgit, we gave ourselves a chance to move on with our lives. Alex lost that chance when we decided to hush things up.’

They gazed at each other across the coffee table, and Karl-Erik knew that some things could never be repaired. She would never understand.

‘And the baby? What happened to the baby? Was it given up for adoption?’ asked Patrik.

Silence. Then a voice came from the doorway.

‘No, the baby was not given up for adoption. They decided to keep the baby and lie to her about who she was.’

‘Julia! I thought you were up in your room!’

Karl-Erik turned to see Julia standing in the doorway. She must have tiptoed down the stairs, because no one had heard her coming. He wondered how long she’d been standing there.

She was leaning against the door jamb with her arms crossed. Her entire shapeless body radiated spite. Even though it was four in the afternoon, she still hadn’t changed out of her pyjamas. She looked as if she hadn’t showered in at least a week. Karl-Erik felt sympathy mix with the pain in his chest. His poor, poor little ugly duckling.

‘If it hadn’t been for Nelly, or should I say “grandmother”, you never would have said anything, would you? You never would have got round to telling me that my mother is not my mother, but my grandmother, and Pappa is not Pappa but my grandfather, and above all that my sister is not my sister, but my Mamma. Are you following this, or should I go over it one more time? It’s a bit complicated.’

The sarcastic comment was directed at Patrik. It almost looked as if Julia enjoyed seeing the dismayed expression on his face.

‘Perverse, isn’t it?’ She lowered her voice to a theatrical whisper and put her finger to her lips. ‘But hush, you mustn’t tell anyone. Because what would people say? Imagine if they started gossiping about the well-to-do Carlgren family.’

She raised her voice again. ‘But thank goodness Nelly told me everything last summer when I was working at the cannery. She told me what I had a right to know. Who I really am. My whole life I’ve felt like an outsider, that I didn’t belong in this family. Having a big sister like Alex certainly wasn’t easy, but I worshipped her. She was everything I wanted to be, everything I was not. I saw the way you looked at her and the way you looked at me. And Alex never seemed to care much about me, which only made me worship her even more. Now I understand why. She could probably hardly stand to look at me. The bastard child who was born out of rape. And you forced her to be reminded of it every time she looked at me. Do you really not see how cruel that was?’

Karl-Erik flinched at her words as if he’d been slapped. He knew that she was right. It had been horribly cruel to keep Julia, and in that way force Alex to relive over and over the monstrous event that had marked an end to her childhood. Nor had it been fair to Julia. He and Birgit could never forget the way she had been conceived. Apparently Julia had sensed it from the very beginning, because she came into the world shrieking. She had continued to scream and struggle against the world during her whole childhood. Julia had never missed an opportunity to behave badly, and he and Birgit had been too old to handle a young child, especially one as demanding as Julia.

In a way it had been a relief when she came home one day last summer with the rage oozing from every pore and confronted them. It had not surprised them that Nelly on her own authority had told Julia the truth. Nelly was a nasty old woman who only cared about her own interests. If it would benefit her in some way to tell Julia what she knew, then she would do so. That’s why they had tried to stop Julia from accepting the offer of the summer job, but Julia had stubbornly stood her ground, as usual.

When Nelly told Julia the true story, a whole new world opened up for her. For the first time there was someone who really wanted her, someone she belonged to. Despite the fact that Nelly had Jan, it was the bond of blood that counted for her. She had told Julia that when the time came she intended to leave her fortune to her. Karl-Erik understood very well how this had affected Julia. She was full of anger towards the people she had thought were her parents, and she worshipped Nelly with the same intensity she had once displayed towards Alex. All this flashed through his mind when he saw her standing in the doorway, outlined by the soft light coming from the kitchen. The sad thing was that-even if it was true that they had looked at Julia many times and were reminded of the horror in the past-she would never realize how much they loved her. But she had been like a stranger in their home, and they had felt awkward and helpless before her. They still felt that way. Now they would probably be forced to accept that they had lost her for good. She was still physically living in their home, but mentally she had already left them behind.

Henrik looked as if he could hardly breathe. He leaned his head forward towards his lap and closed his eyes. For a moment Karl-Erik wondered whether it had been right to ask Henrik to come here and participate. He had invited him because he thought that Henrik deserved to know the truth. He too had loved Alex.

‘But Julia…’ Birgit reached out her arms to Julia in an awkward, entreating gesture. Julia just turned her back to her in contempt, and they heard her stamping up the stairs.

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Patrik, throwing out his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘I knew that something wasn’t right, but I never would have imagined this. I don’t know what to say.’

‘We don’t know what to say ourselves. Especially to each other.’ Karl-Erik looked at his wife.

‘How long did the abuse go on? Do you know?’

‘We’re not really sure. Alex didn’t want to talk about it. Probably at least a couple of months, maybe up to a year.’ He hesitated. ‘And there you have the answer to your earlier question.’

‘Which one do you mean?’ said Patrik.

‘The one about the connection between Alex and Anders. Anders was also a victim. The day before we were going to move, we found a note that Alex had written to Anders. It seems that he too had been molested by Nils. Obviously they had understood somehow, or found out, that they were both in the same situation-how I don’t know. And they turned to each other for comfort. I took the note over to Vera Nilsson. I told her what had happened to Alex and what had probably happened to Anders. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Anders is…or was,’ he corrected himself quickly, ‘all she had. I suppose I hoped that Vera would be able to do what we weren’t brave enough to do-report Nils and hold him responsible for what he had done. But nothing happened, so I assume that Vera felt just as weak as we did.’

Unconsciously he had begun to massage his chest with his fist. The pain kept growing in intensity. It had begun to radiate out to his fingers.

‘And you have no idea where Nils went?’

‘No, no idea. But wherever he is, I hope he’s suffering, that devil.’

The pain was now like a landslide. His fingers had begun to go numb and he knew that something was wrong. Seriously wrong. The pain made his field of vision contract, and even though he could see the others’ mouths moving it was as if all images and all sounds were coming to him in slow motion. At first he felt happy that the anger had gone from Birgit’s eyes, but when he saw that it was replaced by worry he understood that something serious was happening. Then the darkness flooded in.

After the panicky ambulance ride to Sahlgrenska Hospital, Patrik sat in his car and tried to catch his breath. He had followed the ambulance in his own car and stayed with Birgit and Henrik until they got word that although Karl-Erik’s heart attack was serious, he was past the most critical stage.

This day had been one of the most upsetting in his life. He had seen a lot of misery in his years as a police officer, but he’d never heard such a heart-rendingly tragic story as the one Karl-Erik had told that afternoon.

Even though Patrik recognized the truth when he heard it, he still had a hard time accepting what he’d heard. How could anyone go on with their life after going through what Alex had endured? She was not only abused and robbed of her childhood, she had also been forced to live the rest of her life with a constant reminder of it. No matter how Patrik tried he couldn’t understand her parent’s actions. He couldn’t imagine letting the perpetrator get away if his child were abused, nor could he imagine that he would choose to try to hush things up. How could keeping up appearances be more important than his own child’s life and health? That was what he had such a terribly hard time understanding.

He sat in the car with his eyes closed, leaning against the headrest. Twilight was falling and he should be starting the drive home, but he felt weak and apathetic. Not even the thought that Erica was waiting for him could induce him to drive home. His ingrained positive attitude to life had been shaken to its core. For the first time, he felt doubtful that the good in human beings was really greater than the evil.

On another level he also felt a bit guilty. The shocking story had touched him deeply, but at the same time he had felt a professional satisfaction when the pieces of the puzzle one by one fell into place. So many questions had been answered this afternoon. Yet he now felt an even greater frustration than before. He had found the explanation to so much, but he was still fumbling in the dark when it came to who had murdered Alex and Anders. Perhaps the motive lay hidden in the past, perhaps it had nothing to do with the past at all, although he found that hard to believe. In spite of everything, this was the only connection he had found between Alex and Anders.

But why would someone want to murder them because of abuse that had taken place more than twenty-five years ago? If that were the reason, why do nothing until now? What had set in motion something that had lain dormant for so many years and then resulted in two murders in the space of a couple of weeks? The most frustrating thing was that Patrik had no idea what direction to take now.

The afternoon had meant a big breakthrough in the investigation, but at the same time it had led into a blind alley. Patrik went over in his head what he had done and heard that day, and it struck him that he had one very concrete lead with him in the car. Something he had forgotten in the aftershocks of the visit with the Carlgrens and the tumult that followed Karl-Erik’s dramatic heart attack. Once again, Patrik felt the same enthusiasm he had experienced that morning. He realized that he had a unique opportunity to follow up this lead more closely. All he needed was a little luck.

He turned on his mobile phone, ignoring the three messages on his voicemail, and rang Information to get the number of Sahlgrenska Hospital. He got the switchboard and asked to be connected.

‘Sahlgrenska Hospital.’

‘Yes, hello, my name is Patrik Hedström. I wonder whether you have a Robert Ek working in the forensic medicine division.’

‘One moment, I’ll check.’

Patrik held his breath. Robert was an old classmate from the Police Academy who had gone on to study to be a forensic technician. They had hung out together during the course but then lost contact. Patrik thought he’d heard through the grapevine that Robert was now working at Sahlgrenska, and he crossed his fingers that this was true.

‘Let’s see. Yes, we do have a Robert Ek working there. Would you like me to connect you?’

Patrik silently cheered. ‘Yes, please.’

There were a couple of rings and then he heard Robert’s familiar voice.

‘Forensic medicine, Robert Ek.’

‘Hi, Robban, can you tell who this is?’

There was silence for a couple of seconds. Patrik never thought that Robert would recognize his voice, and was just about to help him out. But then he heard a howl from the phone.

‘Patrik Hedström, you old dog! What the hell, it’s sure been a long time! How come you’re calling? Not exactly an everyday event, I mean.’

Robert was teasing him, and Patrik felt a little ashamed. He knew he was terrible at keeping in touch with people. Robert had been a lot better at it but had given up after a while when Patrik never called back. He felt even more ashamed because now that he was finally calling, it was because he needed a favour. But he could hardly back out now.

‘No, I know, I’m so damned bad at staying in touch. But right now I’m actually sitting in the car park outside Sahlgrenska, and I remembered hearing somewhere that you were working here. I thought I’d check to see if you were in so I could pop in and say hello.’

‘Sure, damn it. Come on in, no problem.’

‘How do I find you? Where’s your office?’

‘We’re in the cellar. Go in through the front entrance, take the lift down, turn right and go all the way to the end of the hall. There’s a door at the end, and that’s where we are. Just ring the bell and I’ll let you in. It’ll be cool to see you again.’

‘Same here. So I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.’

Again Patrik felt ashamed that he was about to exploit an old friend. On the other hand, Robert owed him big-time. At the academy Robert had been his roommate. He was engaged to a girl named Susanne, but at the same time he was carrying on a hot affair with one of their female classmates, Marie, who was also engaged. This had gone on for almost two years, and Patrik couldn’t even count the number of times he’d saved Robert’s skin. He had provided numerous alibis, demonstrating his rich imagination when Susanne called and asked if he knew where Robert was.

After the fact he didn’t think it seemed very honourable behaviour, either for him or for Robert. But they were so young and immature back then. To be honest, Patrik had also thought it was rather cool-he had even been a bit envious of Robert, shagging two girls at once. Of course, eventually the bubble burst, and it ended with Robert having neither a flat nor a girlfriend. But being a born charmer, Robert hadn’t needed to sleep on Patrik’s sofa for too many weeks before he found a new girl and moved in with her.

At the same time Patrik had learned that Robert was working at Sahlgrenska, he also heard that he was now married with kids, which he had a very hard time imagining. Patrik intended to find out whether that was true or not.

He made his way down the seemingly endless hospital corridors. Even though it had sounded simple when Robert gave him directions, Patrik managed to get lost twice before he finally stood before the correct door. He rang the bell and waited. The door flew open.

‘Hey-y-y-y!’

They embraced heartily and then took a step back to see how time had fared for each of them. Patrik saw that the years had been kind to Robert; he hoped that Robert thought the same about him. For safety’s sake he sucked in his stomach and puffed out his chest a bit more.

‘Come in, come in.’

Robert led the way to his office, which was tiny with barely enough space for one person, let alone two. Patrik studied Robert more closely as he sat down on a chair facing him in front of his desk. His blond hair was just as well-combed as when they were younger, and under the white lab coat his clothes were just as well-ironed. Patrik had always thought that Robert’s need for neatness functioned as a counterbalance to the chaos he always tended to create in his personal life. His eyes were drawn to a photograph on a shelf behind the desk.

‘Is that your family?’ He was not entirely successful in concealing the astonishment in his voice.

Robert smiled proudly and took down the photo from the shelf.

‘Yep, this is my wife Carina and my two kids, Oscar and Maja.’

‘How old are they?’

‘Oscar is two and Maja is six months.’

‘That’s great. How long have you been married?’

‘Three years now. I’ll bet you never would have believed that anyone could make a father out of me.’

Patrik laughed. ‘No, I have to admit, you would have had to give me high odds on that one.’

‘Well, you know, when the devil gets old, he gets religious. What about you? You probably have a whole flock by now.’

‘No, it didn’t really turn out that way. I’m divorced, actually. No kids, which is probably lucky under the circumstances.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘It’s not that bad. I’ve got something going right now that seems very promising, so we’ll see.’

‘So, how come you’re popping up like a jack-in-the-box after all these years?’

Patrik squirmed a little. He was once again reminded of how embarrassed he felt at not being in touch for so long, and then coming here to ask a favour.

‘I’ve come down on police business and heard you were working here in forensics. I have a case I’d like some help with, and I simply don’t have time to run it through the usual channels. It would take weeks before I got an answer, and I just don’t have the time or the patience.’

Robert looked as if his curiosity had been aroused. He put his fingertips together and waited for Patrik to go on.

Patrik leaned down and took from his bag a piece of paper wrapped in plastic. He handed it to Robert, who held it under the bright desk lamp to see more closely what it was.

‘I took the paper from a pad at the home of a murder victim. I can see that there are impressions from something that was written on the sheet above it, but they’re too faint for me to make out more than fragments. You probably have the equipment here to enhance this sort of impressions, don’t you?’

‘Ye-e-es, we do indeed.’

Robert’s reply was a bit hesitant as he continued to study the piece of paper under his lamp. ‘But as you say, there are rather strict rules about how requests should be handled and in what order. We have lots of stuff piled up waiting.’

‘Sure, I know. But I thought this wouldn’t take long and it would be easy to check. I thought that if I asked you as a favour to take a quick look and tell me whether anything can be got from it, then maybe…’

Robert frowned as he thought over what Patrik had said. Then he gave him a sly smile and got up from his chair.

‘All right, I suppose I shouldn’t be so bureaucratic. It’ll only take a few minutes. Come on.’

He led Patrik from the crowded office and through the door opposite his own. The room they entered was big and bright and filled with all sorts of strange-looking equipment. It was squeaky clean and had a clinical look that came from the white walls and all the workbenches and cabinets in gleaming chrome. The apparatus that Robert needed was at the far side of the room. With the greatest of care he removed the paper from the plastic and placed it on a glass plate. He pressed a button and a bluish light came on. The words on the paper immediately stood out in all desired clarity.

‘Have a look. Was this what you were hoping for?’

Patrik quickly read through the text. ‘This is exactly what I was hoping for. Could you leave it there a minute while I write it down?’

Robert smiled. ‘I can do better than that. With this machine I can take a picture of the text and you can take it with you.’

A broad smile spread across Patrik’s face. ‘Excellent! That would be perfect. Thank you!’

Half an hour later Patrik left the hospital with a photocopy of the sheet of paper from Anders’s notepad. He had made a solemn promise to get in touch with Robert more often, and he hoped that he’d be able to keep that promise. Unfortunately he knew himself all too well.

He did a lot of thinking on the drive home. He loved driving in the dark. The silence as he was enveloped by the velvet-black night, broken only by the lights of occasional oncoming cars, made him think more clearly. Bit by bit, he added what he already knew to what he had now read on the piece of paper. When he pulled into the driveway of his building in Tanumshede he was quite sure that he had solved at least one of the riddles that were plaguing him.

It felt strange to go to bed without Erica. Odd how quickly one got accustomed to something, as long as it was something pleasant. He found that he now had a hard time sleeping alone. It had surprised him how deeply disappointed he was when Erica rang his mobile on his way home to tell him that her sister had come to visit unexpectedly. She thought it would be better if he slept at his own place. He’d wanted to ask more but heard from Erica’s voice that she couldn’t explain, so he made do with saying that he’d call her tomorrow and that he missed her.

Now his sleep was filled with images of Erica as well as thoughts about what he would have to do in the morning. For Patrik it was a very long night.

When the kids were asleep for the night they finally had a chance to talk. Erica had quickly thawed out some frozen dinners since Anna looked like she needed to get something in her stomach. Erica had forgotten to eat as well and now her stomach was growling.

Anna mostly poked at her food with her fork. Erica felt a familiar sense of anxiety about her younger sister. Just like when they were little. She wanted to take Anna in her arms, rock her and tell her that everything would be all right, kiss the hurt and make it go away. But they were grown-up now, and Anna’s problems far exceeded the pain of a skinned knee. Confronted by this problem, Erica felt powerless and helpless. For the first time in her life her little sister seemed like a stranger, and she found herself awkward and unsure of how to talk to her. So she sat in silence, waiting for Anna to point the way. After a long wait she finally did.

‘I don’t know what to do, Erica. What’s going to happen to me and the children? Where are we going to go? How will I support us? I’ve been a stay-at-home mum for so long that I don’t know how to do anything else.’

Erica saw Anna’s knuckles turn white as she gripped the table, as if in a physical attempt to keep a grip on the situation.

‘Shhh, don’t think about that now. It’s all going to work out. You just need to take one day at a time, and you can stay here with the kids as long as you like. The house is yours too, remember?’

She permitted herself a crooked smile and saw to her joy that Anna responded in kind. Anna wiped her nose with the back of her hand and picked absentmindedly at the tablecloth.

‘I just can’t forgive myself for letting it go so far. He hurt Emma. How could I let him hurt Emma?’

The snot began running again, and she used a tissue instead of her hand.

‘Why did I let him hurt Emma? Didn’t I know deep inside that it was going to happen someday? Did I choose to shut my eyes for the sake of my own comfort?’

‘Anna, if there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure about, it’s that you would never consciously let anyone hurt your kids.’

Erica reached across the table and took Anna’s hand in hers. It was shockingly thin. Her bones felt like a bird’s, as if they would break if she squeezed too hard.

‘What I still can’t understand is that in spite of what he did, there’s still a part of me that loves him. I’ve loved Lucas for so long that the love has become ingrained in me, it’s a part of who I am. No matter what he did, I can’t get rid of that part. I wish I could take a knife and physically cut it out of me. I feel disgusting and dirty.’

With a shaking hand she touched her chest as if to show where the evil was.

‘That’s not unusual, Anna. You don’t have to be ashamed. The only thing you have to do now is concentrate on feeling well again.’ She paused. ‘But you do have to report Lucas to the police.’

‘No, Erica, no, I can’t.’

The tears ran down her cheeks and a few drops hung from her chin before they fell and made wet marks on the tablecloth.

‘Yes, Anna, you have to. You can’t let him get away with this. Don’t tell me you can live with yourself if you let him almost break your daughter’s arm without having to pay the consequences!’

‘No, yes, I don’t know, Erica. I can’t think straight, it’s like my whole head is full of cotton. I can’t think about this right now, maybe later.’

‘No, Anna. Not later. Later it’ll be too late. You have to do it now! I’ll go down to the police station with you tomorrow, but you have to do it, not only for the children’s sake but also for your own.’

‘I’m just not sure I have the strength for it.’

‘I know you do. Unlike you and me, Emma and Adrian have a mother who loves them, a mother who is ready to do anything for them.’

She couldn’t prevent the bitterness from seeping into her voice.

Anna sighed. ‘You have to drop that, Erica. I accepted a long time ago that Pappa was the only parent we really had. I also stopped worrying about why that was. How do I know? Maybe Mamma never wanted to have kids. Maybe we weren’t the kids she wanted to have. We’ll never find out now, and it doesn’t do any good to dwell on it. Although, of the two of us, I was probably the one who was luckier. Because I also had you. Maybe I never told you this, but I know how much you did for me. I know what you meant to me when we were growing up. You had nobody, Erica, nobody to take care of you except Mamma. But you mustn’t be bitter, promise me that. Don’t you think I’ve seen how you withdraw as soon as you meet somebody and it looks like it might get serious? You withdraw before you risk getting hurt. You have to learn to let go of the past, Erica. It seems like you have something really good going right now. You mustn’t retreat this time too. I do want to be an aunt someday.’

They both started laughing through their tears, and it was Erica’s turn to wipe her nose with a paper napkin. All the emotion in the room made the air feel supersaturated, but at the same time it felt as if they were doing some spring cleaning of the soul. There was so much that had gone unspoken, so much dust in the corners, and they both could feel that it was time to take out the dust mop.

They talked all night, until the winter darkness began to be replaced by a grey morning mist. The children slept longer than usual, and when Adrian finally announced that he was awake with a piercing shriek, Erica offered to take care of the kids and let Anna sleep for a couple of hours.

She felt in lighter spirits than she could ever remember feeling. Naturally she was still furious about what had happened to Emma, but she and Anna had said a lot during the night that should have been said long ago. Some truths had been unpleasant but necessary to hear, and it surprised her how easily her sister could see right through her. Erica had to admit to herself that she had probably underestimated Anna. She may even have been a bit patronizing and only seen her as a big, irresponsible child. She was much more than that, and Erica was glad that she had finally managed to see the real Anna.

They had also talked a lot about Patrik, and with Adrian on her arm Erica now gave him a ring. He didn’t answer at home, so she tried his mobile instead. Placing a call turned out to be a bigger challenge than she was used to, since Adrian was overjoyed by the marvellous toy she had in her hand and tried desperately to make it his own. When Patrik answered his mobile after only one ring all the night’s weariness vanished as if by magic.

‘Hi, darling.’

‘Mmm, I like it when you call me that,’ Erica said.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Okay, thanks. There’s a bit of a family crisis here. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. A lot has happened, and Anna and I stayed up all night talking. Right now I’m watching the kids so she can get some sleep.’

He heard her stifle a yawn.

‘You sound tired.’

‘I am tired. Hitting the wall. But Anna needs sleep more than I do, so I have to stay awake a couple more hours. The kids aren’t old enough to take care of themselves yet.’

Adrian babbled in agreement.

Patrik made a snap decision. ‘There’s another solution to the problem.’

‘Oh yeah, what’s that? Should I tie them to the banister for a couple of hours?’ She laughed.

‘I’ll come over and take care of them.’

Erica gave an incredulous snort. ‘You? Take care of the kids?’

He put on his most aggrieved voice. ‘Are you implying that I might not be man enough for the job? If I can take down two burglars single-handedly, I can certainly handle two extremely short human beings. Or don’t you trust me?’

He paused for effect and heard Erica sigh theatrically on the other end.

‘All right, you may be able to handle it. But I’m warning you, these are really small wild animals. Are you really sure you can stand the pace, at your age I mean?’

‘I’ll try. I should probably bring my heart medicine just in case.’

‘Okay, offer accepted. When can you get here?’

‘Right now, actually. I was already on my way to Fjällbacka for something else and I’ve just passed the minigolf course. So I’ll see you in about five minutes.’

She was standing in the doorway waiting for him when he stepped out of the car. On her arm she had a boy with round cheeks and flailing arms. Behind her, scarcely visible, stood a little girl with her thumb in her mouth and her other arm in a cast and sling. He still didn’t know the reason for Anna’s sudden appearance, but from what Erica had told him about her brother-in-law combined with the sight of the little girl’s plaster-wrapped arm, a nasty suspicion emerged. He didn’t ask. Erica would tell him what happened when she had a chance.

Patrik said hello to all three of them in turn. Erica got a kiss on the mouth, Adrian a pat on the cheek, and then he squatted down to say hello to a solemn Emma. He took her good hand and said, ‘Hi, my name’s Patrik. What’s yours?’

The reply came after a long delay. ‘Emma.’ Then she stuck her thumb back in her mouth.

‘She’ll thaw out,’ said Erica as she handed Adrian to Patrik and turned to Emma.

‘Mamma and Auntie have to take a nap, so Patrik came over to take care of you for a while. Is that okay? He’s a friend of mine and he’s very, very nice. And if you’re very, very nice Patrik might take an ice cream bar out of the freezer for you.’

Emma gave Erica a suspicious look, but the chance for an ice cream bar exerted an irresistible attraction, and she nodded reluctantly.

‘So I’ll leave them to you and see you in a while. Try to make sure they’re in one piece when I wake up, if you would.’

Erica vanished up the stairs.

Patrik turned to Emma, who was still giving him a suspicious look.

‘So, what do you say? Shall we play a game of chess? No? How about having a little ice cream for lunch? You think that sounds fine? Okay. Last one to the fridge gets a carrot instead.’

Slowly Anna struggled back to consciousness. It felt like she’d been dozing a hundred years, like Sleeping Beauty. When she opened her eyes she had a hard time orienting herself at first. Then she recognized the wallpaper from her childhood room and reality crashed over her like a ton of bricks. She sat up at once. The kids! Then she heard Emma’s happy shriek from downstairs and remembered that Erica was watching them while she slept. She lay back down and decided to snooze for a few more minutes in the warm bed. As soon as she got up, she’d have to deal with everything; this way she could buy herself a few more minutes of escape from reality.

Slowly it penetrated her brain that it wasn’t Erica’s voice she heard from downstairs, mixed in with Emma and Adrian’s laughter. In a cold, icy moment she thought that Lucas was here, but then she realized that Erica would rather shoot him on the spot than let him in the front door. She had a hunch who the visitor might be, and in curiosity she crept out to the landing and looked through the bars of the banister. Down in the living room it looked as if a bomb had gone off. The sofa cushions along with four dining room chairs and a blanket: had been turned into a fort, and Adrian’s blocks were scattered all over the floor. On the coffee table were strewn so many ice cream wrappers that Anna hoped Patrik was a big ice cream eater. With a sigh, she realized that it would probably be extremely difficult to get her daughter to eat either lunch or dinner. The daughter in question was riding on the shoulders of a dark-haired man with a pleasant face and warm brown eyes. She was laughing so hard she was practically choking. Adrian apparently shared her glee as he lay on a blanket on the floor, wearing only a nappy. But the one who seemed to be having the most fun was Patrik, and it was at that moment that he forever won a place in Anna’s heart.

She stood up and cleared her throat to draw the attention of the three playmates.

‘Mamma, look, I got a horsie.’

Emma demonstrated her total power over the ‘horsie’ by pulling hard on his hair, but Patrik’s protests were much too mild for the little tyrant to care.

‘Emma, you have to be nice to the horse. Or else you might not be able to ride him anymore.’

This remark prompted a certain caution in the rider. For safety’s sake she patted Patrik’s mane with her good hand to make sure she wouldn’t lose her riding privileges.

‘Hey, Anna, long time no see.’

‘I know. I hope they haven’t worn you out too badly.’

‘No, we’ve been having a lot of fun.’ He suddenly looked a bit worried. ‘I’ve been very careful with her arm.’

‘I believe it. She looks like she’s getting along fine. Is Erica sleeping?’

‘Yes, she sounded so tired when we talked on the phone this morning that I offered to step in.’

‘And with gusto, obviously.’

‘Yes, although it’s got a bit messy. I hope Erica won’t get mad when she wakes up and sees the way I’ve totally sabotaged her living room.’

Anna found his concern quite charming. It seemed that Erica had already whipped him into shape.

‘I’ll help you clean up. But first I need a cup of coffee, I think. Would you like one?’

They drank coffee and talked like old friends. The way to Anna’s heart was through her children, and the adoration in Emma’s eyes was unmistakable when she climbed all over Patrik, who only waved off Anna’s attempts to tell her daughter to leave him in peace for a while. By the time Erica came down with bleary eyes about an hour later, Anna had quizzed Patrik about everything from his shoe size to why he got divorced. When he finally said that he had to go, all the girls protested, and Adrian would have too if he hadn’t been taking his afternoon nap.

As soon as they heard his car drive off, Anna turned to Erica with eyes wide.

‘God, what a mother-in-law’s dream. He doesn’t have any younger brothers, does he?’

Erica just laughed happily in reply.

Patrik had been given a few hours’ reprieve from the task he knew he had to deal with-something that had made him toss and turn all night. He had seldom dreaded anything as much as he did this, but he knew it was an unavoidable part of the profession he had chosen. He now knew the solution to one of the two murders, but it didn’t make him happy.

Patrik drove slowly from Sälvik down towards the centre of town. He wanted to postpone this as long as possible, but it wasn’t far and he got there sooner than he wanted to. He parked the car in the lot by Eva’s Foods and walked the rest of the way. The house stood at the top of one of the streets that sloped steeply down towards the boathouses along the water. It was a fine old house, but it looked as though it had been neglected for many years. Before he knocked on the door he took a deep breath, but as soon as his knuckles touched the wood he was the consummate professional. He couldn’t let his personal feelings be involved. He was a cop and as such was bound to do his job, no matter what Patrik the private citizen might feel about the task.

Vera opened the door almost immediately. She gave him a questioning look but stepped aside at once when he asked to come in. She preceded him into the kitchen and they sat down at the kitchen table. Patrik was struck by the fact that she didn’t ask him what he wanted, and for a moment he thought it might be because she already knew. Regardless of the reason, he somehow had to present what he wanted to say in as considerate a way as possible.

She calmly rested her eyes on him, but he saw dark circles under them, a sign of her grief after her son’s death. On the table lay an old photo album, and he guessed that if he opened it he’d see pictures of Anders from his childhood. It was hard for him to come here, to visit a mother who was grieving for a son who had only been dead a few days. But once again Patrik had to push aside his natural protective instincts and instead concentrate on the job he had come to do. To find out the truth about Anders’s death.

‘Vera, the last time we met it was under very sad circumstances, and I just want to start by saying that I’m truly sorry about your son’s death.’

She merely nodded in reply, then waited silently for him to go on.

‘But even though I understand how difficult this is for you, it’s my job to investigate what happened to Anders. I hope you understand.’

Patrik spoke slowly and clearly, as if to a child. Why, he didn’t know, but he felt that it was important for him that she really understood what he was saying.

‘We’ve investigated Anders’s death as a murder, and we’ve also searched for a connection with the murder of Alexandra Wijkner, a woman with whom we know he had a relationship. We haven’t found any traces of a possible killer, nor have we found evidence as to how the murder itself was committed. This has really put us in a quandary, to be honest. No one has been able to come up with any really good explanation as to how the course of events may have unfolded. But then I found this at Anders’s flat.’

Patrik placed the photocopy of the piece of paper on the kitchen table in front of Vera, with the text facing her. An expression of astonishment passed over her face and she looked several times from the paper to Patrik’s face and back. She picked up the paper and turned it over. She ran her fingers over the letters and then put the paper down on the table again, still with an expression of shock on her face.

‘Where did you find this?’ Her voice was hoarse with sorrow.

‘At Anders’s place. You’re surprised because you thought that you took the only copy of this letter, isn’t that right?’

She nodded.

Patrik went on, ‘You did, actually. But I found the notepad that Anders wrote the letter on, and when he pressed the pen into the paper it also left an impression on the sheet underneath. That’s how we were able to retrieve the message.’

Vera gave him a wry smile. ‘I didn’t even think of that, of course. It was clever of you to work it out.’

‘I think I know approximately what happened, but I’d really like to hear you tell it in your own words.’

She fingered the paper for a moment, feeling the words with her fingertips, as if she were reading Braille. A deep sigh, and then she complied with Patrik’s friendly but firm request.

‘I went over to Anders’s place with a bag of food. The door was unlocked, but it almost always was, so I just called out and then went in. It was calm, completely quiet. I saw him at once. I felt like my heart stopped that instant. That was exactly how it felt. As if my heart stopped beating and there was only stillness in my chest. He was swaying a little. Back and forth. As if there were a wind inside the room, which of course I knew was impossible.’

‘Why didn’t you call the police? Or an ambulance?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. My first instinct was to run up and get him down somehow, but when I entered the living room I saw that it was too late. My boy was dead.’

For the first time since she started talking he heard a slight quaver in her voice, but then she swallowed hard and forced herself with uncanny calm to go on.

‘I found this letter in the kitchen. You’ve read it, you know what it says. That he couldn’t go on living. That life was one long torment for him and now he couldn’t fight it anymore. All his reasons to continue were gone. I must have sat there in the kitchen for an hour, maybe two, I don’t really know. In an instant I stuffed the letter in my purse, and then I only had to take the chair he used to climb up to the noose and put it back in its place in the kitchen.’

‘But why, Vera? Why? What purpose did it serve?’

Her gaze was steady but Patrik could see from her trembling hands that her outward calm was a sham. He couldn’t even imagine what horror it must have been to see her son hanging from the ceiling, with a thick blue tongue and eyes popping out. It had been hard enough for him to look at Anders, and now his mother would have to live the rest of her life with that image in her mind.

‘I wanted to spare him more humiliation. For all these years people have looked at him with contempt. People pointed and laughed. Put their noses in the air when they walked past, feeling superior. What would people say when they heard that Anders had hanged himself? I wanted to spare him that shame, and I did it the only way I could think of.’

‘But I still don’t understand. Why would it be worse if he took his own life than if he was murdered?’

‘You’re too young to understand. The contempt for suicides still sits deep in people here in the coastal regions. I didn’t want people to talk like that about my little boy. They’ve talked enough rubbish about him over the years.’

There was a touch of steel in Vera’s voice. For all these years she had devoted herself to protecting and helping her son, and although Patrik still didn’t understand her motive, it was perhaps only natural that she continued to protect him even after his death.

Vera reached for the photo album on the table and opened it so that both she and Patrik could see. Judging by the clothing, the pictures must have been from the Seventies. Anders’s face smiled at him, open and carefree, from all the slightly yellowing photos.

‘He was certainly fine, my Anders.’

Vera’s voice was dreamy and she stroked a finger across the pictures.

‘He was always such a nice boy. There was never any problem with him.’

Patrik looked with interest at the pictures. It was unbelievable that this was the same person whom he had met only as a wreck. Lucky that the boy in the photos didn’t know what fate had awaited him. One of the pictures aroused his interest even more. A thin, blonde girl stood next to Anders, who was sitting on a bicycle with a banana seat and chopper handlebars. She showed just the hint of a smile as she peered out shyly from under her fringe.

‘This must be Alex, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Vera’s tone was curt.

‘Did they play much together when they were little?’

‘Not often. But sometimes, sure. They were in the same class, after all.’

Patrik cautiously entered a sensitive area. He mentally tested the water with his toes before each step he took.

‘I understood that they had Nils Lorentz as a teacher for a while?’

Vera gave him a searching look. ‘Yes, that’s possible. It was a long time ago.’

‘There was some talk about Nils Lorentz, from what I hear. Especially since he later simply disappeared.’

‘People talk about all sorts of things here in Fjällbacka. So they probably talked about Nils Lorentz as well.’

It was obvious that he was now poking at a festering wound, but he had to keep going and probe even deeper.

‘I spoke with Alex’s parents, who made certain claims about Nils Lorentz. Claims that also affected Anders.’

‘I see.’ She was obviously not going to make it easy for him.

‘According to them, Nils Lorentz sexually assaulted Alex, and they claimed that Anders was also abused.’

Vera sat ramrod stiff on the edge of the kitchen chair, and she didn’t reply to Patrik’s statement, which he had intended as a question. He decided to wait her out, and after a moment of internal struggle she slowly closed the photo album and got up from her chair.

‘I don’t want to talk about ancient history. I want you to go now. If you want to charge me for what I did when I found Anders, then you know where to find me. But I don’t intend to help you root about in things that would best be left buried.’

‘Just one question: did you ever talk to Alexandra about this? From what I understood she had decided to deal with what happened, and it would have been natural for her to speak with you as well.’

‘Yes, she did. I sat there in her house about a week before she died, listening to her naive ideas about coming to terms with the past, taking all the old skeletons out of the closet, and so on and so forth. Modern drivel in my opinion. Today, everyone seems obsessed with washing their dirty linen in public, claiming it’s so healthy to reveal all their secrets and sins. But some things should remain private. I told her that as well. I don’t know whether she listened to me, but I hope so. Otherwise, I only had a stubborn bladder inflammation to show for the trouble of sitting there in her freezing house.’

And with that Vera signalled that the discussion was over and walked towards the front door. She opened it for Patrik and said a very guarded farewell.

When he found himself standing out in the cold again with his cap pulled down over his ears and his mittens on, he literally didn’t know which foot to stand on. He hopped a few times to warm himself up and then headed briskly for his car.

Vera was a complicated woman, he had gathered that much from their conversation. She belonged to a completely different generation, but in many ways she was in conflict with that generation’s values. During her son’s childhood she had supported him by her own labour, and even after he reached adulthood and should have taken care of himself, she continued to keep him under her wing. In her way, she was a liberated woman who over all those years had got along without a man. At the same time, she was bound by the rules that existed for women, and men for that matter, from her generation. He couldn’t help feeling a certain reluctant admiration for her. She was a strong woman. A complex woman, who had endured more than any person should have to endure in a lifetime.

He didn’t know what the consequences might be for Vera when it came out that she had interfered to make Anders’s suicide look like a murder. He would definitely need to turn in that information to the police station, but he had no idea what would happen after that. If it were his decision, he would choose to look through his fingers, but he couldn’t promise that’s what would occur. From a purely legal point of view it was possible to charge her with obstructing an investigation, for example, but he sincerely hoped that wouldn’t happen. He liked Vera, he couldn’t get away from that. She was a fighter, and there weren’t many like her.

When he got into his car and flipped open his mobile, he discovered a message waiting for him. It was from Erica. She reported that there were three ladies and a very, very small gentleman who hoped he would have dinner with them this evening. Patrik glanced at the clock. It was already five, so he decided without great internal debate that it was probably already too late to go to the station. And what did he have at home to do? Before he started the car he rang Annika at the station and gave her a brief report on what he’d accomplished, but he left out the details since he wanted to report on the whole situation when he had Mellberg face to face. He wanted at all costs to prevent the situation from being misinterpreted, and to prevent Mellberg from mobilizing some enormous operation simply for his own amusement.

As Patrik drove back to Erica’s house, the thoughts of Alex’s murder kept returning. It frustrated him that he had run into yet another blind alley. Two murders meant twice the chance that the killer had made a mistake. Now he was back at the beginning once more, and for the first time he thought he might never find the person who had murdered Alex. That made him strangely sad. It felt somehow that he knew Alex better than anyone else did. What he’d found out about her childhood and life after the assaults had moved him deeply. He wanted to find her killer more than he’d ever wanted anything in his whole life.

But he had to accept the situation. He had now reached another blind alley, and he didn’t know where he should go from here, or where to look. Patrik forced himself to let it go for the time being. Right now he was going over to see Erica, her sister, and especially the kids, and that was exactly what he needed this evening. All this misery had made him feel frayed inside.

Mellberg drummed impatiently with his fingers on the desktop. Where the hell was that young whippersnapper? Did he think this was some sort of damned day-care? That he could come and go as he liked? Of course it was Sunday, but anyone who thought he could take a day off before this was all over was seriously mistaken. Well, he would soon disabuse him of that notion. At his station, it was strict regulations and clear discipline that counted. Good honest leadership. It was the watchword of the times, and if anyone had ever been born with leadership qualities, then he was the one. His mother had always said that he would make something great out of himself. Even if he had to admit that it may have been taking a bit longer than either of them had expected, he had never doubted that his excellent qualifications would pay off sooner or later.

That’s why it was so frustrating that they seemed to be stuck in these investigations. Mellberg felt that his big chance was so close that he could taste it. But if his miserable team didn’t start delivering results soon, he might as well give up any hope of a promotion and a move back to Göteborg. Slackers, that’s what they were, village cops who could hardly find their own arse with both hands and a pocket torch. He’d had some hope for young Hedström, but it seemed as if he, too, would disappoint him. Patrik still hadn’t reported the results of his trip to Göteborg, so it might turn out to be nothing more than an entry on the expense side of the books. It was ten past nine and he still hadn’t seen any trace of him.

‘Annika!’ He yelled in the direction of the open door and felt his irritation rise even higher when it took a good minute before she deigned to respond to his call.

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Have you heard anything from Hedström? Is he still asleep in his warm bed, or what?’

‘I should hardly think so. He rang and said that he had a little trouble getting his car started this morning but that he was on the way.’ She looked at the clock. ‘He should be here in fifteen minutes or so.’

‘What the hell, he could walk here if he wanted to.’

Annika hesitated and to his astonishment he saw a little smile play over the corners of her mouth.

‘Well, I don’t think he was at home.’

‘Where the hell was he then?’

‘You’ll have to ask Patrik that,’ said Annika, turning to go back to her room.

The fact that Patrik seemed to have a good excuse for being late annoyed Mellberg even more, for some reason. Couldn’t he plan ahead and allow for some extra time in the morning in case he had car trouble?

Fifteen minutes later, Patrik knocked discreetly on the open door and came in. He looked out of breath and red-cheeked and seemed unabashedly happy and brisk even though he’d made his boss wait for almost half an hour.

‘Do you think this is a part-time job here, or what? And where the hell were you yesterday? Wasn’t it two days ago that you drove to Göteborg?’

Patrik sat down in the visitor’s chair across the desk and calmly answered Mellberg’s barrage of questions.

‘I apologize for being late. The car wouldn’t start this morning, and it took over half an hour to get it going. Yes, it was the day before yesterday that I went to Göteborg, and I thought I’d report on that first, before I tell you what I did yesterday.’

Mellberg grunted in reluctant agreement. Patrik told him what he’d found out about Alex’s childhood. He included all the disgusting details. At the news that Julia was Alex’s daughter, Mellberg felt his jaw drop in the direction of his chest. He’d never heard anything like it before. Patrik continued to tell him about Karl-Erik’s emergency trip to the hospital and how he’d had a piece of paper from Anders’s flat analyzed on the spot. He explained that it had turned out to be a suicide note, and then he gave an account of what he’d done yesterday and why. Patrik then summed it all up for an unusually quiet Mellberg.

‘So one of our murders has turned out to be a suicide, and as for the other, we still have no idea who did it or why. I have a feeling that it has something to do with what Alexandra’s parents told me, but I have absolutely no evidence or actual facts to support that theory. So now you know everything that I know. Do you have any ideas about how to proceed?’

After another moment of silence, Mellberg managed to regain his composure. ‘Well, that was certainly an amazing story. I would have put my money on that guy she was screwing, rather than a rehash of some old incident from twenty-five years ago. I suggest you talk to Alex’s lover boy and tighten the thumb-screws a little extra this time around. I think that would prove to be a considerably better use of our resources.’

As soon as Patrik told him who the child’s father was, Mellberg had moved Dan up to the top of the list of suspects.

Patrik nodded, a bit too willingly in Mellberg’s suspicious mind, and stood up to go.

‘Oh, uh, good job, Hedström,’ Mellberg said reluctantly. ‘Are you following up on that now?’

‘Absolutely, Chief, consider it done.’

Did he catch a trace of sarcasm there? But Patrik looked at him with an innocent expression and Mellberg waved off the suspicion. The fellow probably had enough sense between his ears to recognize the voice of experience when he heard it.

The purpose of a yawn was to get more oxygen to the brain. Patrik was very doubtful whether it was doing him any good. The fatigue from the night he’d spent at home tossing and turning had caught up with him, and sleeping with Erica had been vetoed by a majority decision. He looked wearily at the by now familiar piles of paper on his desk and had to quell an impulse to take all the documents and toss them in the wastebasket. He was sincerely sick of this whole investigation by now. It felt as if months had passed, while actually it had been no more than two weeks. So much had happened and yet he hadn’t made any progress. Annika went past his office and saw him rubbing his eyes. She came back with a much-needed cup of coffee and set it in front of him.

‘Feeling bogged down?’

‘Yes, I have to admit that it’s a little rough going just now. But all I have to do is start over from the beginning. Somewhere in these stacks of paper is the answer, I know it. All I need is a tiny little lead that I missed before.’ He tossed his pencil on top of the piles in resignation.

‘Anything else?’

‘What?’

‘I mean, how’s life, apart from the job? You know what I mean.’

‘Yes, Annika, I know exactly what you mean. What do you want to know?’

‘Is it still bingo?’

Patrik wasn’t sure he really wanted to know, but against his better judgement he asked anyway. ‘Bingo?’

‘Yes, you know. Five in a row…’ Then she left, shutting the door with a mischievous smile on her lips.

Patrik chuckled to himself. Yes, you could probably call it that.

He forced his thoughts back to the task at hand and scratched his head meditatively with a pencil. There was something that didn’t fit. Something that Vera had said just didn’t seem right. He took out the notebook he’d been writing in during their conversation and went through his notes methodically, word for word. An idea was slowly forming. It was only a small detail, but it might be important. He pulled out a sheet of paper from one of the piles on his desk. The impression of chaos was deceptive. He knew precisely where everything was.

He read over this item with great meticulousness and circumspection, and then reached for the telephone.

‘Yes, hello, this is Patrik Hedström from the police in Tanumshede. I was wondering if you’ll be home for a while, I have a few questions. You will be? That’s great, then I’ll be over there in twenty minutes. Where exactly do you live? Just on the way into Fjällbacka. Take a right just after the steep hill and it’s the third house on the left. A red house with white trim? Okay, I should be able to find it. Otherwise I’ll call you back. See you soon.’

Scarcely twenty minutes later Patrik stood outside the door. He’d had no problem finding the little house, where he guessed that Eilert had lived for many, many years with his family. When he knocked on the door it was opened almost at once by a woman with a pinched-looking face. She introduced herself effusively as Svea Berg, Eilert’s wife, and showed him into a small living room. Patrik could see that his call had triggered feverish activity. The good china was on the dining-room table, and seven kinds of pastry were piled on a tall three-level cake plate. This case was going to give him a real spare tyre by the time it was over, Patrik sighed to himself.

Even though he instinctively took a dislike to Svea Berg, he instantly liked her husband when he encountered a pair of lively, clear-blue eyes above a firm handshake. He could feel the calluses on Eilert’s hand and knew that this was a man who had worked hard his whole life.

The sofa cover looked wrinkled when Eilert got up, and with a deep frown Svea was there to smooth it out with a reproachful glance at her husband. The whole house was squeaky clean, without a wrinkle, and it was hard to believe that anyone actually lived in the place. Patrik felt sorry for Eilert. He looked lost in his own home.

The effect turned almost comical when Svea quickly alternated between the ingratiating smile when she was facing Patrik to the reproachful grimace when she turned to her husband. Patrik wondered what it was her husband had done to bring on such disapproval. He suspected that Eilert’s mere presence was a source of vexation for Svea.

‘Well, Constable, take a seat and have some coffee and cakes.’

Patrik sat down obediently on the chair facing the window, and Eilert made a move to sit on the chair across from him.

‘Not there, Eilert, you know that. Sit over there.’

Svea pointed dictatorially to the chair at the head of the table, and Eilert obeyed politely. Patrik looked around as Svea dashed about like a lost soul, pouring coffee as she simultaneously smoothed out invisible wrinkles in the tablecloth and curtains. The home had apparently been decorated by someone who wanted to give the appearance of a prosperity that did not exist. Everything was a bad copy of the real thing, from the curtains that were supposed to look like silk with plenty of flounces and rosettes in a ‘progressive’ design to the plethora of knick-knacks made of silver plate and imitation gold. Eilert looked like a fish out of water in all this simulated pomp.

To Patrik’s frustration, it took a while before he could get on to his actual business. Svea babbled incessantly as she slurped loudly from her coffee cup.

‘This coffee service, you understand, was sent to me by my sister in America. She married a wealthy man there and she’s always sending me such fine presents. It’s very expensive, this service.’

She raised her elegantly decorated coffee cup with great ostentation. Patrik was rather sceptical of the value of the service, but wisely chose not to comment.

‘Yes, I would have gone to America as well, if I weren’t always in such delicate health. If it hadn’t been for that, I probably would have married a rich man there too, instead of sitting in this hovel for fifty years.’

Svea cast an accusatory eye at Eilert, who calmly let the comment pass. It was undoubtedly a tune he’d heard many times before.

‘It’s gout, the constable should know. My joints are all used up, and I’m in pain from morning till night. It’s lucky I’m not the type to complain. With my terrible migraines as well, there would be plenty to complain about, but it’s not in my nature to complain, you understand. No, one must bear one’s afflictions with equanimity, as they say. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “How strong you are, Svea, going on day in and day out with your infirmities.” But that’s the way I am.’

She modestly lowered her eyelids as she made a great show of wringing her hands, which in Patrik’s layman’s eyes looked anything but gout-ridden. What a damned harpy, he thought. Painted and dolled up with far too much cheap jewellery and a thick layer of make-up. The only positive thing he could say about her appearance was that at least it matched the decor. How on earth could such a mismatched couple as Eilert and Svea have stayed married for fifty years? But he assumed it was a generational thing. Their generation got divorced only for considerably worse reasons than mutual differences, But it was a shame. Eilert couldn’t have had much fun in his life.

Patrik cleared his throat to interrupt Svea’s torrent of words. She obediently fell silent, and her eyes hung on his lips to hear what exciting news he might come out with. The gossip grapevine was going to start up as soon as he stepped out the door.

‘Well, I have a few questions about the days before you found Alexandra Wijkner’s body. When you were there looking after the house.’

He stopped and looked at Eilert, waiting to hear what he would say. But Svea began first.

‘Yes, I do declare. That something like that would happen here. And that my Eilert would discover the body. No one has talked about anything else the past few weeks.’

Her cheeks were glowing with excitement, and Patrik had to restrain himself from offering a sharp comment. Instead he gave a sly smile and said, ‘If you’ll forgive me, I wonder if it would be possible for me and your husband to speak undisturbed for a while. It’s standard protocol in the police that we only take testimony when persons not directly concerned are not present.’

A pure lie, but he saw to his satisfaction that Svea, despite her great annoyance at being excluded from the centre of all the excitement, accepted his authority in the matter and reluctantly got up from the table. Patrik was rewarded at once with an appreciative and amused glance from Eilert, who could hardly conceal his glee at seeing Svea so ignominiously robbed of her gossip tidbits.

When she had reluctantly dragged herself out of the kitchen, Patrik went on, ‘Now where were we? Yes, you were going to start by telling me about the week before, when you were at Alexandra Wijkner’s house.’

‘Why is that important?’

‘I’m not sure just yet. But it could be important. So try to remember as many details as possible.’

Eilert thought for a moment, using the time to stuff his pipe carefully from a packet of tobacco marked with three anchors. He didn’t speak until he had lit the pipe and puffed a couple of times.

‘Now let’s see. I found her on a Friday. I always used to go there on Fridays to check on everything before she arrived in the evening. So the last time I was there was the Friday before that. No, actually, we had to go to our youngest son’s fortieth birthday party on Friday, so I went there on Thursday evening instead.’

‘How was the house then? Did you notice anything unusual?’ Patrik had a hard time concealing his eagerness.

‘Anything unusual?’ Eilert puffed slowly on his pipe as he thought. ‘No, everything was fine. I did a round through the house and the cellar, but everything looked good. I locked the house carefully when I left, as always. She’d given me my own key.’

Patrik felt compelled to ask straight out the question that was gnawing inside him. ‘And the furnace? Was it working? Was there heat in the house?’

‘Oh yes, certainly. There was nothing wrong with the furnace then. It must have gone out some time after I was there. I don’t understand what importance that has. When the furnace went out?’ Eilert temporarily took the pipe out of his mouth.

‘To be quite honest, I don’t know if it is important. But thank you for your help. It might be important.’

‘Just out of curiosity, why couldn’t you have asked me that on the phone?’

Patrik smiled. ‘I suppose I’m a bit old-fashioned. I don’t think I get as much out of phoning as by talking with someone face to face. Sometimes I wonder if I should have been born a hundred years ago instead, before all these modern inventions.’

‘Nonsense, boy. Don’t believe all that rubbish that it was better in the old days. Being cold, poor, and working from eight o’clock till sunset is nothing to envy. No, I use all the modern conveniences I can. I even have a computer, hooked up to the Internet. I’ll bet you wouldn’t believe that of an old man like me.’ He pointed knowingly at Patrik with his pipe.

‘I can’t say that I’m surprised, actually. Well, now I must be going.’

‘I hope I was of some use, so you didn’t have to drive here for nothing.’

‘Not at all, I got exactly the information I wanted. And I got to taste your wife’s excellent pastries too.’

Eilert gave a reluctant snort. ‘Yes, she certainly can bake, I can say that for her.’ Then he sank into a silence that seemed to encompass fifty years of hardship.

Svea, who had undoubtedly been standing with her ear to the door, could stand it no longer and came into the room. ‘So-o-o, did you find out everything you needed?’

‘Yes, thank you. Your husband has been quite accommodating. And I’d like to thank you for the coffee and the excellent pastries.’

‘Think nothing of it. I’m glad you liked them. So Eilert, if you’ll start clearing the table I’ll show the constable to the door.’

Obediently Eilert began collecting the coffee cups and plates as Svea accompanied Patrik to the front door under a constant stream of words.

‘Close the door hard after you. I can’t stand a draught.’

Patrik heaved a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him. What a frightful woman. But he had got the confirmation he wanted. Now he was quite sure that he knew who had murdered Alex Wijkner.

At Anders’s funeral the weather was not as nice as for Alex’s burial. The wind tore at exposed skin and made everyone’s cheeks blossom with the cold. Patrik had dressed as warmly as he could, but it wasn’t enough against the relentless chill. He shivered as he stood by the open grave when the coffin was slowly lowered down. The ceremony itself had been short and dreary. Only a few people had come to the church, and Patrik had sat discreetly on the pew in the back. Only Vera was sitting up in front.

He had been dubious as to whether he should follow along to the burial site, but decided at the last second that it was the least he could do for Anders. Vera hadn’t changed expression the whole time he watched her, but he didn’t think her grief was any less for it. She was simply a person who didn’t like to show her feelings in public.

Patrik could understand and sympathize with that. In a way he admired her. She was such a strong woman.

After the burial ceremony was over, the few guests in attendance went their separate ways. With her head bowed, Vera walked slowly up the gravel path towards the church. The cold wind was whipping hard, and she had tied her scarf like a kerchief over her head. For a second Patrik hesitated. After an internal struggle that increased as the distance grew between him and Vera, he made up his mind and hurried to catch up with her.

‘Lovely ceremony.’

She smiled bitterly. ‘You know as well as I do that Anders’s funeral was just as pathetic as most of his life. But thanks anyway. It was nice of you to say so.’

Vera’s voice bore the mark of many years of fatigue. ‘I probably should be grateful, really. Not so many years ago he wouldn’t have even been allowed to be buried in the public churchyard. He would have been given a spot off to the side, outside church-sanctified ground, a spot specially reserved for suicides. There are still many of the older folks who think that suicides don’t go to heaven.’

She fell silent for a moment. Patrik waited for her to continue.

‘Will there be any legal consequences from what I did to cover up Anders’s suicide?’

‘No, I can guarantee that there will not. It was regrettable that you did what you did, and certainly there are laws about it, but no, I don’t think there will be any consequences.’

They passed the parish house and walked slowly in the direction of Vera’s home, which was only a couple of hundred yards from the church. Patrik had worried all night about how he should proceed, and he had reached a cruel but he hoped successful solution.

Nonchalantly, he said, ‘What I think is most tragic in this whole story with Anders’s and Alex’s death is that a child also had to die.’

Vera turned vehemently towards him. She stopped and grabbed hold of his sleeve.

‘What child? What are you talking about?’

Patrik felt thankful that, against all odds, a lid had been kept on that particular piece of information.

‘Alexandra’s child. She was pregnant when she was murdered. In her third month.’

‘Her husband…’

Vera stammered, but Patrik continued with forced coldness. ‘Her husband had nothing to do with it. They had clearly not had any relations in several years. No, the father seems to be someone she used to meet here in Fjällbacka.’

Vera was holding so hard onto his sleeve that her knuckles turned white.

‘Good Lord. Good, good Lord.’

‘Yes, it’s certainly cruel. To kill an unborn child. According to the autopsy report it was apparently a little boy.’

He was grimacing inside but forced himself not to say any more. Instead he waited for the reaction he was counting on.

They were standing under the big chestnut tree, fifty yards from Vera’s house. When she suddenly exploded in motion he was taken by surprise. She ran surprisingly fast for her age, and it took a couple of seconds for Patrik to recover from the shock and run after her. When he reached her house the front door was wide open and he cautiously stepped inside. Sobbing sounds were heard from the bathroom down the hall, and then he heard her violently throwing up.

It felt wrong to stand there in the hall and wait with cap in hand, listening to her vomiting, so he took off his wet shoes, hung up his coat, and went in to the kitchen. When Vera came out a few minutes later the coffee-maker was bubbling and there were two cups on the kitchen table. She was pale, and for the first time he saw tears. Only a hint, like a glitter in the corner of her eye, but it was enough. Vera sat down stiffly on one of the kitchen chairs.

In a few minutes she had aged many years, and she moved slowly, like a much older woman. Patrik let her have a few more minutes’ respite as he poured coffee for them both. But the moment he sat down he let her know with a stern look that the moment of truth had arrived. She knew that he knew, and there was no turning back.

‘So I murdered my grandson.’

Patrik took it as a rhetorical question and didn’t reply. If he did he’d be forced to lie. Once he’d come this far he couldn’t back up. In time she would find out the truth. But first it was his turn.

‘I knew it was you who murdered Alex when you lied about being there the week before she died. You said that you sat in her cold house freezing, but the furnace didn’t break down until the week after that, the week she died.’

Vera was staring into space, and it seemed that she didn’t even hear what Patrik had said.

‘It’s strange. It’s only now that I actually realize that I took another person’s life. Alexandra’s death was never very real to me, but Anders’s child…I can almost see him before me…’

‘Why did Alex have to die?’

Vera held up her hand. She would tell him everything, but at her own pace.

‘There would have been a scandal. Everyone would have pointed at him and talked about him. I did what I thought was right. I didn’t know that he would still be the object of everyone’s ridicule. That my silence would eat him away inside and strip him of everything of value. It was so simple. Karl-Erik came to me and told me what had happened. He had talked with Nelly before he came to me, and they had reached an agreement. Nothing good would come of having the whole town know about it. It would be our secret, and if I knew what was best for Anders, I would keep my mouth shut. So I shut up. I kept quiet for all those years. But each year robbed Anders of more than the one before. Each year he kept wasting away in his own private hell, and I chose not to see my role in it. I cleaned up after him and supported him as best I could, but the only thing I couldn’t do was to make what happened go away. Silence can never be taken back.’

She had drunk her coffee in a few greedy gulps and raised her cup to Patrik. He got up and fetched the pot and poured her some more. It seemed as though the habit of drinking coffee was what helped her keep a grip on reality.

‘Sometimes I think the silence was worse than the assaults. We never talked about it, not even inside these four walls, and only now do I understand what it must have done to him. Maybe he interpreted my silence as a reproach. That’s the only thing I can’t stand. That he might have thought I was blaming him for what happened. I never thought that, not even for a second, but I’ll never know now whether he knew that.’

For a second the façade looked as if it might crack, but then Vera straightened up and forced herself to go on. Patrik could only imagine what an enormous effort it took.

‘Over the years we found a sort of equilibrium. Even though life was miserable for both of us, we knew what we had and where we stood with each other. Naturally I knew that he still saw Alex occasionally and that they had some sort of strange attraction for one another, but I still believed that we could go on as we had always done. Then Anders told me that Alex wanted to expose what had happened to them. She wanted to clean all the old skeletons out of the closet, I think was what he said. He sounded almost indifferent when he mentioned it, but for me it felt like an electric shock. That would change everything. Nothing would be the same if Alex dragged up old secrets after so many years. What good would it do? And what would people say? Besides, even if Anders tried to pretend that it hadn’t affected him, I knew him better than that. I believe that he didn’t want her to make it public any more than I did. I know-knew, my son.’

‘So you went to visit her.’

‘Yes. I went there that Friday evening hoping to talk some sense into her. Make her understand that she couldn’t single-handedly make a decision that would affect us all.’

‘But she didn’t understand.’

Vera gave a bitter smile. ‘No, she didn’t.’

She had finished her second cup of coffee before Patrik had even finished half of his first one, but now she set the cup aside and folded her hands on the table.

‘I tried to appeal to her. I explained to her how difficult it would be for Anders if she made public what had happened, but she looked me straight in the eye and claimed I was only thinking of myself, not Anders. He would be glad if it finally came out, she said. He had never asked us to keep quiet, and she also told me that I, Nelly, Karl-Erik and Birgit hadn’t considered them when we decided to keep the whole thing secret. We were only interested in keeping our own reputations unsullied. Can you imagine such cheek!’

The rage that a moment before had been ignited in Vera’s eyes was extinguished just as quickly as it appeared and was replaced by an indifferent, dead look. She continued in a monotone.

‘Something burst inside me when I heard her make such an outrageous claim. When I had done everything with Anders’s best interests at heart. I could almost hear a click in my head, and I simply acted without thinking. I had my sleeping pills with me in my purse, and when she went into the kitchen I crumbled a few tablets into her cider glass. She had poured a glass of wine for me when I arrived. When she came back from the kitchen I pretended to accept what she’d said and offered to drink a toast as friends before I left. She seemed grateful for that and drank her cider to keep me company. After a while she fell asleep on the sofa. I hadn’t really thought out what I should do next. The sleeping pills were an impulse on the spur of the moment, but I got the idea that I would make it look like a suicide. I didn’t have enough sleeping pills to force a fatal dose into her. The only thing I could think of was to slit her wrists. I knew that many people did it in the bathtub, so it felt like a feasible idea.’

Her voice was toneless. It sounded as if she were relating a completely normal everyday event, not a murder.

‘I took off all her clothes. I thought I could probably carry her, since my arms are strong from all those years of cleaning, but it was impossible. Instead I had to drag her into the bathroom and manoeuvre her into the tub. Then I slit her arteries in both arms with a razor blade I found in the medicine cabinet. After cleaning the house once a week for several years, I was familiar with everything about it. I washed off the glass I drank out of, turned off the lights, locked the door and put the spare key back in its place.’

Patrik was shaken, but forced his voice to remain calm.

‘You understand that you’ll have to come with me now, don’t you? I won’t have to call for reinforcements, will I?’

‘No, you don’t have to do that. May I just gather up a few things to take with me?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, that will be fine.’

She got up. In the doorway she turned round.

‘How was I to know she was pregnant? Of course, she didn’t drink any wine, I thought of that, but I had no idea that was why. Maybe she only drank in moderation, or had to drive somewhere. How should I know? It was impossible for me to know, don’t you think?’

Her voice was pleading, and Patrik could only nod mutely. In time he would tell her that the child wasn’t Anders’s, but for the time being he didn’t want to disturb the balance of trust they had established. There were several more people she would have to tell her story to before they could close the case on Alexandra Wijkner for good. But something was bothering him. His intuition told him that Vera still hadn’t told him everything.

Later, when he got into the car he took out his copy of the letter that Anders had left behind, as his last message to the world. Slowly he read through what Anders had written, and once again Patrik felt how strong the pain was behind those words on the page.