The Sandman

117

Joona goes back to his car and sets off towards Stockholm. He calls Anja and asks her to check for Rosenhane Legal Services.

‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’

‘The time,’ he repeats, suddenly thinking that it’s only been a few hours since Marie Franzén was shot and killed. ‘I... sorry, let’s do it tomorrow.’

He realises that she’s already ended the call. A couple of minutes pass before she calls him back.

‘There’s no Rosenhane,’ she says. ‘No law firm, and no solicitor either.’

‘There was a PO box address,’ Joona insists.

‘Yes, in Tensta, I found that,’ she replies gently. ‘But it’s been closed down and the lawyer who was renting it doesn’t exist.’

‘I see...’

‘Rosenhane is the name of an extinct aristocratic family,’ she says.

‘Sorry I called so late.’

‘I was joking, you can call me whenever you like. I mean, we’ll soon be married and everything...’

The address is a trail that doesn’t lead anywhere, Joona is thinking. No PO box, no law firm, no name.

It suddenly occurs to him how strange it was for Anders Rönn to call Jurek Walter dyslexic.

I’ve seen his writing, Joona thinks.

What Anders Rönn interpreted as dyslexia was probably just the result of long-term medication.

Once again his thoughts go to Marie Franzén, murdered by Susanne Hjälm. Now there’s a child waiting for a parent who’ll never be coming home.

She shouldn’t have rushed forward, but he knows he could easily have made the same mistake if his operational training wasn’t ingrained so deeply – and then he would have been killed, just like his own father.

Maybe Maria Franzén’s daughter has been told the news by now. The world will never be the same again. When he was eleven his father was shot and killed with a shotgun. His father, also a police officer, had only gone to a flat where there had been reports of a domestic disturbance. Some time that day Joona remembers sitting in his classroom when the headmaster came in and got him. The world was never the same again.