When a high-ranking head of the migration board is found shot to death in his living room, there is no shortage of suspects, including his wife. But no one expects to find mysterious, child-size fingerprints in this childless home.

Public prosecutor Jana Berzelius steps in to lead the investigation. Young and brilliant but emotionally cold, Berzelius, like her famous prosecutor father, won’t be swayed by the hysterical widow or intimidated by the threatening letters the victim had tried to hide. She is steely, aloof, impenetrable. That is, until the boy…

A few days later on a nearby deserted shoreline, the body of a derelict preteen is discovered, and with him, the murder weapon that killed the official. Berzelius finds herself drawn more deeply into the case when, as she attends the boy’s autopsy, she recognizes something familiar on his small, scarred, drug-riddled body. Cut deep into his flesh are initials that scream child trafficking and trigger in her a flash of memory from her own dark childhood. Her connection to this boy has been carved with deliberation and malice that penetrate to her very core.

Now, to protect her own horrific but hidden past, she must find the real suspect behind these murders before the police do.

International bestselling author Emelie Schepp introduces us to the enigmatic, unforgettable Jana Berzelius in this first novel of a suspenseful, chilling trilogy.

Marked for Life
Emelie Schepp

To H.

Contents

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

Sunday, April 15

“EMERGENCY SERVICES 112, what has happened?”

“My husband’s dead...”

Alarm operator Anna Bergström heard the woman’s shaking voice and quickly glanced at the corner of the computer screen in front of her. The clock showed 19:42.

“Could you give me your name, please.”

“Kerstin Juhlén. My husband is Hans. Hans Juhlén.”

“How do you know he is dead?”

“He isn’t breathing. He’s just lying there. He was lying there like that when I came home. And there’s blood...blood on the carpet,” the woman sobbed.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Is anybody else hurt?”

“No, my husband is dead.”

“I understand. Where are you now?”

“At home.”

The woman on the other end of the phone took a deep breath.

“Can I have your address please?”

“Östanvägen 204, in Lindö. It’s a yellow house. With large flower urns outside.”

Anna’s fingers worked quickly across the keyboard as she sought out Östanvägen on the digital map.

“I am sending you the necessary help,” she said in a calming voice. “And I want you to stay with me on the telephone until they come.”

Anna didn’t get any answer. She pressed her hand against the headset.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“He really is dead.” The woman sobbed again. The sobs immediately turned into hysterical crying, then all that could be heard in the alarm service’s telephone was a long anguished scream.

* * *

Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin and Detective Inspector Maria Bolander stepped out of their Volvo in Lindö. The cold sea air from the Baltic caught Henrik’s flimsy spring jacket. He pulled the zipper up to his neck and put his hands in the pockets.

On the paved driveway there was a black Mercedes together with two police cars and an ambulance. Some ways from the cordoned-off area stood another two parked cars, and judging by the lettering on their side doors, they belonged to the town’s competing newspapers.

Two journalists, one from each paper, were leaning so hard against the police tape to get a better look that it stretched tautly across their down jackets.

“Oh hell, what an upscale place.” Inspector Maria Bolander, or Mia as she preferred, shook her head in irritation. “Statuary even.’’ She stared at the granite lions, then caught sight of the huge urns next to them.

Henrik Levin remained silent and started to walk up the lit pathway to the house at Östanvägen 204. Small heaps of snow on the gray edging stones bore witness that winter had not yet given up. He nodded to the uniformed officer Gabriel Mellqvist who stood outside the front door, then he stamped the snow off his shoes, opened the heavy door for Mia and they both went in.

Activity was feverish inside the magnificent home. The forensic expert worked systematically to find possible fingerprints and other traces of evidence. They had already lit up and brushed the doors and door handles. Now they were focused on the walls. Occasionally the flash of a camera lit up the discreetly furnished living room where the dead body lay on the striped carpet.

“Who found him?” Mia asked.

“His wife, Kerstin Juhlén,” Henrik said. “She apparently found him dead on the floor when she came home from a walk.”

“Where is she now?”

“Upstairs. With Hanna Hultman.”

Henrik Levin looked down at the body that lay before him. The dead man was Hans Juhlén, in charge of asylum issues at the Migration Board. Henrik stepped around the body, then leaned down to study the victim’s face—the powerful jaw, the weather-beaten skin, the gray beard stubble and graying temples. Hans Juhlén had often been featured in the media, but the archive photos they used did not reflect the aged body that now lay in front of them. The dead man was dressed in neatly ironed trousers and a light-blue striped shirt. Its cotton material soaked up the growing bloodstains on his chest.

“Look, but don’t touch,” forensic expert Anneli Lindgren said to Henrik and gave him a meaningful look as she stood next to the large windows.

“Shot?”

“Yes, twice. Two entry points from what I can tell.”

Henrik glanced around the room, which was dominated by a sofa, two leather armchairs and a glass coffee table with chrome legs. Paintings by Ulf Lundell hung on the walls. The furniture didn’t appear disturbed. Nothing was knocked over.

“No signs of a struggle,” he said and turned toward Mia, who was now standing behind him.

“No,” Mia answered without taking her eyes off an oval sideboard. On it lay a brown leather wallet with three five-hundred-kronor bills stuck out. She felt the sudden urge to pull them all out—or at least one, but she stopped herself. In her head she said, enough was enough; she had to pull herself together.

Henrik’s eyes wandered to the windows which looked out onto the garden. Anneli Lindgren was still brushing for fingerprints.

“Find anything?”

Anneli Lindgren looked up at him from behind her spectacle frames.

“Not yet, but according to the victim’s wife, one of these windows was open when she came home. I’m hoping I’ll find something other than her prints on it.”

Anneli Lindgren continued her slow, methodical work.

Henrik ran his fingers through his hair and turned back to Mia.

“Shall we go upstairs and have a few words with Mrs. Juhlén?”

“You go up. I’ll stay down here and keep an eye on things.”

* * *

Upstairs, Kerstin Juhlén stared hollowly as she sat on the bed in the master bedroom with a cardigan draped around her shoulders. As Henrik entered the room, police officer Hanna Hultman took a respectful step backward and closed the door behind them.

On his way up the staircase Henrik had imagined the victim’s wife as a delicate woman in elegant clothes. Instead she appeared heavyset, dressed in a faded T-shirt and dark stretch jeans. Her blond hair was styled in a blunt cut, with dark roots that revealed she was overdue for a visit to the hairdresser. Henrik’s eyes searched the bedroom with curiosity. First he studied the chest of drawers and then the wall of photographs. In the middle of the wall hung a frame with a large faded photo of a happy wedding couple. He was aware that Kerstin Juhlén was looking at him.

“My name’s Henrik Levin, and I’m the Detective Chief Inspector,” he said softly. “I’m sorry for your loss. You will have to excuse me for having to ask you a few questions at this time.”

Kerstin dried a tear with the sleeve of her cardigan.

“Yes, I understand.”

“Can you tell me what happened when you came home?”

“I came home and...and...he just lay there.”

“Do you know what time it was?”

“About half past seven.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“When you entered the house, did you see anybody else here then?”

“No. No, there was only my husband who...”

Her lip quivered and she put her hands on her face.

Henrik knew this wasn’t the right time for a more detailed interrogation so he decided to be brief.

“Mrs. Juhlén, we have some support coming for you, but I must ask just a few more questions in the meantime.”

Kerstin removed her hands from her face and rested them on her lap.

“Yes?”

“You told someone a window was open when you came home.”

“Yes.”

“And it was you who closed it?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t see anything strange outside that window before you closed it?”

“No...no.”

“Why did you close it?”

“I was afraid someone might try and come back in.”

Henrik put his hands in his pockets and pondered a moment.

“Before I leave you, I wonder if you’d like us to call anyone in particular for you? A friend? Relative? Your children?”

She looked down, her hands trembling, and whispered something in a barely audible voice.

Henrik couldn’t make out what she was trying to say.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

Kerstin shut her eyes for a moment, then slowly raised her pained face toward him. She took a deep breath before she answered him.

* * *

Downstairs still in the living room, Anneli Lindgren adjusted her glasses. “I think I’ve found something,” she said. She was examining the print of a hand that was beginning to take form on the window frame. Mia went up to her and noted the very clear form of a palm with fingers.

“There’s another one here,” Anneli pointed out. “They belong to a child.”

She fetched the camera to document her find. She adjusted the lens of her Canon EOS to the right focus and was taking photos just as Henrik came into the room.

Anneli nodded to him.

“Come here,” she said. “We’ve found some fingerprints.”

“They’re small,” said Anneli and held up the camera in front of her face again, zoomed in and took yet another picture.

“So they belong to a child?” Mia clarified.

Henrik looked surprised and leaned close to the window to get a better look. The prints made an orderly pattern. A unique pattern. Clearly from a child-sized hand.

“Strange,” he mumbled.

“Why is it strange?” said Mia.

Henrik looked at her before he answered.

“The Juhléns don’t have children.”

CHAPTER TWO

Monday, April 16

THE TRIAL WAS OVER, and Prosecutor Jana Berzelius was satisfied with the result. She had been absolutely certain that the defendant would be found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm.

He had kicked his own sister senseless in front of her four-year-old child and then left her to die in her apartment. No doubt it was an honor crime. Even so, the defendant’s solicitor, Peter Ramstedt, looked rather surprised when the verdict was announced.

Jana nodded to him before she left the courtroom. She didn’t want to discuss the judgment with anybody, especially not with the dozen or so journalists who stood and waited outside the court with their cameras and cell phones. Instead, she made her way toward the emergency exit and pushed the white fire door open. Then she quickly ran down the steps as the clock read 11:35.

Avoiding journalists had become more of a rule than an exception for Jana Berzelius. Three years earlier, when she started in the prosecutor’s office in Norrköping, it was different. Then she had appreciated the coverage and praise the media gave her. Norrköpings Tidningar had, for example, titled a story about her Top Student has a Place in Court. They used phrases like comet career and next stop Prosecutor-General when they wrote about her. Her cell phone vibrated in the pocket of her jacket, and she stopped in front of the entrance to the garage to look at the display before answering. At the same time, she pushed open the door into the heated garage.

“Hello, Father,” she said directly.

“Well, how did it go?”

“Two years’ prison and ninety in damages.”

“Are you satisfied with that?”

It would never occur to Karl Berzelius to congratulate his daughter on a successful court case. Jana was accustomed to his taciturnity. Even her mother, Margaretha, who was warm and loving during her childhood, seemed to prefer to clean the house rather than play games with her. She’d put in a laundry rather than read bedtime stories, or clean the kitchen rather than tuck her daughter into bed for the night. Now Jana was thirty and she treated both her parents with the same unemotional respect with which they had raised her.

“I am satisfied,” Jana answered emphatically.

“Your mother wonders if you’re coming home on the first of May? She wants to have a family dinner then.”

“What time?”

“Seven.”

“I’ll come.”

Jana clicked off the call, unlocked her black BMW X-6 and sat down behind the wheel. She threw her briefcase onto the leather-upholstered passenger seat and put her mobile on her lap.

Jana’s mother also frequently phoned her daughter after a court case. But never before her husband did. Such was the rule. So when Jana felt her cell vibrate again, she immediately answered as she expertly maneuvered her car out of the tight garage space.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Hello, Jana,” said the male voice.

Jana braked and the car jerked to a halt in the reversing movement. The voice belonged to Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath, her superior. He sounded keen to hear the case results. “Well?”

Jana was surprised at his evident curiosity and briefly repeated the outcome of the trial.

“Good. Good. But I’m actually calling about another matter. I want you to assist me on an investigation. A woman has been detained after she called the police to report finding her husband dead. He was the official in charge of migration asylum issues in Norrköping. According to the police, he was shot dead. Murdered. You’ll have a free hand in the investigation.”

Jana remained silent, so Torsten continued:

“Gunnar Öhrn and his team are waiting at the police station. What do you say?”

Jana looked at the dashboard—11:48 a.m. She took a short breath and got her car moving again.

“I’ll drive straight there.”

* * *

Jana Berzelius quickly walked in through the main entrance of the Norrköping police station and took the elevator up to the third floor. The sound of her heels echoed in the wide corridor. She looked straight ahead and gave only a brief nod to the two uniformed policemen that she passed.

The head of the CID, Gunnar Öhrn, waited for her outside his office and showed her to the conference room. One long wall was dominated by windows which overlooked the Norrtull roundabout, where the lunch traffic had already become noticeable. On the opposite wall a whiteboard of considerable size was mounted, along with a film screen. A projector hung from the ceiling.

Jana went up to the oval table where the team sat waiting. First she exchanged greetings with DCI Henrik Levin, then she nodded to the technician Ola Söderström, Anneli Lindgren and Mia Bolander before sitting down.

“Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath has just put Jana Berzelius in charge of the preliminary investigation of the Hans Juhlén case.”

“Right.”

Mia Bolander clenched her teeth, crossed her arms and leaned back. She distrusted the woman she considered her rival, who was about the same age as she. The investigation would be arduous with Jana Berzelius at the helm.

The few times Mia Bolander had been forced to work with Jana Berzelius had not made her feel friendly toward the prosecutor. Mia felt Jana just had no personality. She was too stiff, too formal. She never seemed to relax and enjoy herself. If you are colleagues, you ought to get to know one another more. Perhaps share a beer or two after work and just chat a bit. Be social. But Mia had relatively quickly learned that Jana was a person who didn’t appreciate such friendly moments. Any question, no matter how small, about her private life was answered with just an arrogant look.

Mia considered Jana Berzelius an arrogant fucking diva. Unfortunately, nobody else shared Mia’s opinion. On the contrary, they nodded appreciatively when Gunnar presented Jana now.

What Mia detested most was Jana’s status as an upper-class girl. Jana was old money, while Mia, with her working-class background, was mortgaged. That was as good a reason as any for her to keep her distance from Jana and her airs.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jana noted the disdainful looks from the female inspector but chose to ignore them. She opened her briefcase and pulled out a notepad and pen.

Gunnar Öhrn drank the last few drops from a bottle of mineral water, then handed out packets to everyone which contained copies of everything they had documented about the case so far. It included the initial report; photos from the crime scene and immediate vicinity; a sketch of the Juhlén house where the victim, Hans Juhlén, had been found; and a short description of Juhlén. Lastly came a log with times and investigative steps that had already been taken since the victim had been discovered.

Gunnar pointed to the timeline that had been drawn on the whiteboard. He also described the initial report of the conversation with the victim’s wife, Kerstin Juhlén, which had been signed by the police officers in the patrol car. They had been the first to interview her.

“Kerstin Juhlén was, however, hard to talk to properly,” said Gunnar.

She had initially come close to being hysterical, had screamed loudly and talked incoherently. At one point she started to hyperventilate. And all the time she had repeatedly said she didn’t kill her husband. She only found him in the living room. Dead.

“So do we suspect her, then?” said Jana and noticed that Mia was still glaring at her.

“Yes, she is of interest. We have detained her. She hasn’t got a verifiable alibi.”

Gunnar thumbed through the packet of papers.

“Okay, to summarize then. Hans Juhlén was murdered some time between 15:00 and 19:00 yesterday. Perpetrators unknown. The forensic experts says the murder took place in the house. That is, the body had not been transported from anywhere else. Correct?”

He nodded to Anneli Lindgren to confirm.

“That’s right. He died there.”

“The body was taken to the medical examiner’s lab at 22:21 and inspectors continued to go through the house until after midnight.”

“Yes, and I found these.”

Anneli put down ten sheets of paper with a single sentence written on each. “They lay well hidden in the back of the wardrobe in the victim’s bedroom. They appear to be short threatening letters.”

“Do we know who sent them and to whom they were addressed?” asked Henrik as he reached across to examine them. Jana made a note about them in her notepad.

“No. I got these copies from forensics in Linköping this morning. It’ll probably take a day or so before they can get us more information,” said Anneli.

“What do they say?” said Mia. She pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her knitted sweater, put her elbows on the table and looked at Anneli with curiosity.

“The same message is on each one—‘Pay now or risk paying the bigger price.’”

“Blackmail,” said Henrik.

“So it would seem. We spoke to Mrs. Juhlén. She denies any knowledge of the letters. She seemed genuinely surprised about them.”

“They hadn’t been reported then, these threats?” said Jana and wrinkled her brow.

“No, nothing has been reported by the victim himself, his wife or anybody else,” said Gunnar.

“And what about the murder weapon?” said Jana, switching the topic.

“We haven’t found one yet. Nothing was near the body or in the immediate vicinity,” said Gunnar.

“Any DNA traces or shoe tracks?”

“No,” said Anneli. “But when the wife came home, a window was open in the living room. It seems fairly clear that the perpetrator gained entrance that way. The wife closed it, unfortunately, which has made it more difficult for us. But we did manage to find two interesting handprints.”

“Whose prints?” said Jana and held her pen ready to note down a name.

“Don’t know yet, but everything points to their being the prints of a child. The strange thing is that the couple don’t have any children.”

Jana looked up from her notepad.

“Is that really significant? Surely they know someone who has children. A friend? Relative?” she said.

“We haven’t been able to ask Kerstin Juhlén more about it yet,” answered Gunnar.

“Well, that must be the next step. Preferably straightaway.”

Jana took her calendar out of her briefcase and flipped through to today’s date. Reminders, times and names were neatly written on the pale yellow pages.

“I want us to talk to her as soon as possible.”

“I’ll phone her lawyer, Peter Ramstedt, right away,” said Gunnar.

“Good,” said Jana. “Get back to me with a time as soon as you can.” She put her calendar back in her briefcase. “Have you questioned any of the neighbors yet?”

“Yes, the nearest ones,” said Gunnar.

“And?”

“Nothing. Nobody saw or heard anything.”

“Then ask more. Knock on all the doors along the entire street and in the immediate vicinity. Lindö has many big homes, a lot of them with large picture windows.”

“Yes, I imagine you would know that, of course,” said Mia.

Jana looked directly at Mia.

“What I am saying is that somebody must have seen or heard something.”

Mia glared back, then looked away.

“What more do we know about Hans Juhlén?” Jana went on.

“He lived a fairly ordinary life, it seems,” said Gunnar and read from the packet. “He was born in Kimstad in 1953, so he was fifty-nine. Spent his childhood there. The family moved to Norrköping in 1965, when he was twelve. He studied economics at university and worked for four years in an accounting firm before he got a position in the Migration Board’s asylum department and worked his way up to become the head. He met his wife, Kerstin, when he was eighteen and the year after that they married in a registry office. They have a summer cottage by Lake Vättern. That’s all we’ve got so far.”

“Friends? Acquaintances?” Mia said grumpily. “Have we checked them?”

“We don’t know anything about his friends yet. Or his wife’s. But we’ve started mapping them, yes,” said Gunnar.

“A more detailed conversation with the wife will help fill in more detail,” said Henrik.

“Yes, I know,” said Gunnar.

“His cell phone?” Jana wondered.

“I’ve asked the service provider for a list of calls to and from his number. Hopefully I’ll have that tomorrow latest,” said Gunnar.

“And what have we got from the autopsy results?”

“At the moment, we know only that Hans Juhlén was both shot and died where he was found. The medical examiner is giving us a preliminary report today.”

“I need a copy of that,” Jana said.

“Henrik and Mia are going straight there after this meeting.”

“Fine. I’ll tag along,” said Jana, and smiled to herself when she heard the deep sigh from Inspector Bolander.

CHAPTER THREE

THE SEA WAS ROUGH, which meant that the stench got even worse in the confined space. The seven-year-old girl sat in the corner. She pulled at her mama’s skirt and put it over her mouth. She imagined that she was at home in her bed, or rocking in a cradle when the ship rolled in the waves.

The girl breathed in and out with shallow breaths. Every time she exhaled, the cloth would lift above her mouth. Every time she inhaled, it would cover her lips. She tried to breathe harder and harder to keep the cloth off her face. Then one time she blew so hard it flew off and vanished.

She felt for it with her hand. In the dim light she instead caught sight of her toy mirror on the floor. It was pink, with a butterfly on it and a big crack in the glass. She had found it in a bag of rubbish that somebody had thrown onto the street. Now she picked it up and held it in front of her face, pushed away a strand of hair from her forehead and inspected her dark tangled hair, her big eyes and long eyelashes.

Somebody coughed violently in the space, and the girl gave a start. She tried to see who it was, but it was difficult to distinguish people’s faces in the dark.

She wondered when they would arrive, but she didn’t dare ask again. Papa had hushed her when she had asked the last time how long they would have to sit in this stupid iron box. Now Mama coughed too. It was hard to breathe, it really was. A lot of people had to share the little oxygen inside. The girl let her hand wander along the steel wall. Then she felt for the soft cloth from her mama’s skirt and pulled it over her nose.

The floor was hard, and she straightened her back and changed position before continuing to run her hand along the steel wall. She stretched out her index and middle fingers and let them gallop back and forth along the wall and down to the floor. Mama always used to laugh when she did that at home and say that she must have given birth to a horse girl.

At home, in the shed in La Pintana, the girl had built a toy stable under the kitchen table and pretended her doll was a horse. The last three birthdays, she had wished for a real pony of her own. She knew that she wouldn’t get one. She rarely got any presents, even for her birthday. They could hardly afford food even, Papa had told her. Anyway, the girl dreamed of a pony of her own that she could ride to school. It would be fast, just as fast as her fingers that now galloped back up the wall.

Mama didn’t laugh this time. She was probably too tired, the girl thought, and looked up at her mother’s face.

Oh, how much longer would it actually take? Stupid, stupid journey! It wasn’t supposed to be such a long trip. Papa had said when they filled the plastic bags with clothes that they were going on an adventure, a big adventure. They would travel by boat for a while to a new home. And she would make lots of new friends. It would be fun.

Some of her friends were traveling with them. Danilo and Ester. She liked Danilo; he was nice, but not Ester. She could be a little nasty. She would tease, and that sort of thing. There were a couple of other children on the same journey too, but she didn’t know them; she had never even seen them before. They didn’t like all being in a boat. Not the youngest one at any rate, the baby, she was crying all the time. But now she’d gone quiet.

The girl galloped her fingers back and forth again. Then she stretched to one side to reach up even higher, then down even lower. When her fingers reached all the way into the corner, she felt something sticking out. She became curious and screwed her eyes up in the dark to see what it was. A metal plate. She strained forward to try and study the little silver plate that was screwed into the wall. She saw some letters on it and she tried to make out what they said. V... P... Then there was a letter she didn’t recognize.

“Mama?” she whispered. “What letter is this?” She crossed her two fingers to show her.

“X,” her mother whispered back. “An X.”

X, the girl thought, V, P, X, O. And then some numbers. She counted six of them. There were six numbers.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE AUTOPSY ROOM was lit up by strong fluorescent ceiling lights. A shiny steel table stood in the middle of the room and on it, under a white sheet, you could see the contours of a body.

A long row of plastic bottles marked with ID numbers were lined up on another stainless-steel table along with a skull saw. The metallic smell of meat had permeated the room.

Jana Berzelius went in first and stood across the table from the medical examiner, whose name was Björn Ahlmann. She said hello, then pulled out her notepad.

Henrik went over and stood next to Jana, while Mia Bolander stayed back near the exit door. Henrik too would have liked to have stayed at a distance. He had always found it difficult to be in the autopsy room, and he by no means shared Ahlmann’s fascination with dead bodies. He wondered how the pathologist could work with corpses every day and not be affected. Even though it was also part of Henrik’s job, he still found death hard to witness up close. Even after seven years on this job, he had to force himself to keep a composed face when a body was exposed.

Jana, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be bothered at all. Her facial expression revealed nothing, and Henrik found himself wondering if anything at all could get her to react. He knew that knocked-out teeth, poked-out eyes, chopped-off fingers and hands didn’t do it. Nor tongues that had been bitten to bits, or third-degree burns. He knew that because he had witnessed the same things in her presence, and he inevitably had to empty the contents of his stomach afterward, whereas she never seemed disturbed.

Jana’s facial expressions were indeed extremely restrained. She was never harrowed or resolute; she hardly showed any emotions at all. She rarely smiled and should a smile happen to cross her lips, it was more like a line. A strained line.

Henrik didn’t think that her austere personality matched her appearance. Her long dark hair and big brown eyes gave off a warmer vibe. Perhaps she was only projecting her professional side to maintain others’ respect. Certainly her navy blazer, three-quarter-length skirt and ever-present high heels played into her image as a strict, no-nonsense prosecutor. Perhaps she let out her personal feelings outside work... Perhaps not.

Björn Ahlmann carefully folded back the sheet and exposed Hans Juhlén’s naked body.

“Right, let’s see. We have an entry hole here and we have an entry hole here,” said Björn and pointed at two open wounds on the chest. “Both seem to be perfectly placed, but this is the one that killed him.”

Björn moved his hand and indicated the upper hole.

“So there were definitely two shots then?” Henrik commented.

“Exactly.”

Björn picked up an image from a CAT scan and clipped it up on the light box.

“Chronologically, it seems that he first received a bullet in the lower part of his rib cage, and fell down. He fell backward, which resulted in a subdural hemorrhage at the back of his head. You can see it here.”

Björn pointed at a black area on the image. “But he didn’t die, not from the first shot or from the heavy fall. No, my guess is that when Hans Juhlén collapsed, the perpetrator went up close and shot him again. Here.”

He pointed at the second entry hole in Juhlén’s body.

“This shot went right through the cartilage of the rib cage and through the pericardium, the heart. And he died immediately.”

“So he died from bullet number two.” Henrik again repeated the pathologist’s words.

“Yes.”

“Weapon?”

“The cartridges that were found show that he was shot with a Glock.”

“Then it won’t be so easy to trace,” said Henrik.

“Why?” said Jana, at the very same moment that her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it and asked again, “Why?”

“Because, as I’m sure you are aware, a Glock is a very common weapon. So common it’s used by our army and by police across the world. So I just mean it will take a while to run a check on all those on the list of people holding legitimate licences,” he said.

“Then we’ll have to put that task in the hands of somebody with patience,” Jana answered, and again felt a short vibration in her pocket. The caller must have left a message.

“Any sign that the victim tried to defend himself?” Mia asked from across the room.

“No. No signs of violence. No scratch marks, no bruises or marks from a stranglehold. He was shot. Plain and simple.”

Björn looked up at Henrik and Jana.

“The flow of blood shows that he died on the spot and his body was not moved, but—”

“Yes, Gunnar told us.” Mia interrupted him from across the room.

“Yes, I talked with him this morning. But there are...”

“No fingerprints?” she said.

“No. But...”

“Narcotics then?”

“No, no drugs. No alcohol. But...”

“Broken bones?”

“No. But will you let me finish now?”

Mia became silent.

“Thank you. What does seem interesting is the path of the bullets through the body. One of the entry holes—” Björn pointed at the upper of the two “—is not out of the ordinary. The bullet went horizontally through the body. But the other bullet went diagonally, at an angle. And judging by the angle, the perpetrator must have been kneeling, lying down or sitting up when he or she fired the first shot. Then, as I said earlier, when the man fell down, the shooter went up to him and fired a final shot right through his heart.”

“Execution style, then,” said Mia.

“That’s up to you to judge, but yes, it would seem so.”

“So he was standing up when bullet number one hit him,” said Henrik.

“Yes, and he was shot at an upward angle from the front.”

“So somebody knelt or lay down and then shot up at him from the front? It hardly makes sense,” said Mia. “I mean, it’s really weird that somebody would be sitting on the floor in front of him and then kill him. Wouldn’t he have had time to react?”

“Perhaps he did. Or else he knew the murderer,” said Henrik.

“Or it was a bloody dwarf or something,” said Mia and laughed out loud.

Henrik sighed at her.

“You can discuss that among yourselves. According to my calculations, that, at any rate, is how Hans Juhlén died. My findings are summarized here.” Björn held out copies of the autopsy report. Henrik and Jana each took one.

“He died sometime between 18:00 and 19:00 on Sunday. It’s in the notes.”

Jana thumbed through the report which at first sight seemed to be as comprehensive and detailed as Ahlmann was known to be.

“Thanks for the summary,” she said to Björn as she fished up her phone from her pocket to listen to the voice message.

It was Gunnar Öhrn who had left a single short sentence in a resolute tone. “Interview with Kerstin Juhlén, 15:30,” he’d said, and nothing more. Not even his name.

Jana put the phone back into her pocket.

“Interview at half past three,” she said quietly to Henrik.

“What?” said Mia.

“Interview half past three,” said Henrik loud and clear to Mia who was about to say something when Jana interrupted.

“Well, then,” she said.

The medical examiner adjusted his glasses. “Are you satisfied?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He slowly pulled the sheet back over the naked body. Mia opened the door and backed out to avoid brushing against Jana as she approached the doorway.

“We’ll get back to you with any questions,” said Henrik to Ahlmann as they left the autopsy room.

He strode in the lead toward the elevator.

“Do that,” answered Björn behind them. “You know where I am,” he added, but his voice was drowned out by the drumming noise from the ventilation pipes in the ceiling.

* * *

The Public Prosecution Office in Norrköping consisted of twelve full-time employees with Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath in charge. Fifteen years earlier, when Torsten Granath took over as head of the office, the office went through a radical change. Under his leadership, a policy was instituted of replacing staff members who were no longer pulling their weight with a few new hires who had highly productive track records. He had thanked several longtime employees for their service while at the same time encouraging them to retire, fired lazy administrators and helped underutilized specialists to find new challenges in other areas of their profession.

When Jana Berzelius was hired, Torsten Granath had already trimmed down the organization considerably; only four members were left on staff. That same year, the office was charged with a larger geographical area, and they also had to deal with crimes in the adjacent municipalities of Finspång, Söderköping and Valdemarsvik. The recently increasing trade in narcotics also called for more employees. For those reasons, Torsten Granath had recruited new staff and now they were twelve in all.

As a result of Torsten’s policy, the office could now proudly display its competence. Torsten Granath at sixty-two ironically had slowed down a little himself and now occasionally found his thoughts wandering off to the well-kept greens on the golf courses. But his heart still belonged to his profession. Leading the work here was his mission in life and he would keep on with it until he reached pensionable age.

His office was of the homely type, with curtains draped in the window, gilded frames with photos of grandchildren on his desk and a green woolly rug on the floor. He always paced back and forth on that rug when he talked on the telephone. That was what he was doing when Jana Berzelius entered the department. She said a quick hello to the administrator, Yvonne Jansson.

Yvonne stopped Jana as she walked by.

“Hang on a sec!”

She handed over a yellow Post-it note with a familiar name written on it.

“Mats Nylinder at Norrköpings Tidningar wants a comment on the murder of Hans Juhlén. They’ve evidently found out that you’re in charge of the preliminary investigation. Mats said that you owed him a few words since you sneaked out of court this morning. He had wanted a statement about the judgment and waited more than an hour for you.”

Jana didn’t answer, so Yvonne went on.

“Unfortunately he isn’t the only one who’s rung. This murder has every paper in Sweden interested. They all want something to put in their headlines tomorrow.”

“And I’m not going to give them anything. You’ll have to refer them to the police press officer. There will be no comment from me.”

“Okay, no comment it is.”

“And you can tell Mats Nylinder that too,” said Jana and headed toward her office.The sound of her heels echoed as she entered the room with its parquet floor.

The furnishings were Spartan, but had a touch of elegance. The desk was of teak and so were the functional bookshelves that were filled with bound case files. On the right side of the desk was a silver letter tray with three levels. On the left side there was a laptop, a 17-inch HP. On the windowsill stood two white orchids in high pots.

Jana closed the door behind her and hung her jacket over the back of her leather-upholstered chair. While her computer started up, she studied the flowers in the window. She liked her office. It was spacious and airy. She had chosen to position the desk so that she sat with her back to the window; through the glass wall she then had full view of the corridor outside.

Jana put a tall stack of summonses to be adjudicated next to her computer.

Then she quickly glanced at her watch. Only one and a half hours before the interview with Kerstin Juhlén.

She suddenly felt tired, leaned her head forward and started to rub the back of her neck. Her fingertips slowly massaged the uneven skin there and traced over its bumps. Then she neatened her long hair to make sure it covered the back of her neck and flowed down her back.

After looking through a few of the summonses, she got up to fetch a cup of coffee. When she came back, she left the rest of the paperwork untouched.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SMALLISH INTERVIEW room was bare except for a table and four chairs, with a fifth chair in a corner. One wall had a window with bars; on the oppositve wall was a mirror. Jana sat next to Henrik with her pen and notepad in her hand as he started the tape recorder. She let him handle the questioning. Mia Bolander had pulled up the extra chair behind them. Loudly and clearly, Henrik recited Kerstin Juhlén’s full name, then her personal identity number, before going on.

“Monday, the sixteenth of April, 15:30 hours. This interview is being conducted by DCI Henrik Levin who is being assisted by DI Mia Bolander. Also present are Public Prosecutor Jana Berzelius and Solicitor Peter Ramstedt.”

Kerstin Juhlén had been detained as a possible person of interest, but so far had not been charged with any crime. She sat next to Peter Ramstedt, her lawyer, and placed her clasped hands on the table. Her face was pale and she wore no makeup. Her hair was uncombed, her earrings removed.

“Do you know who killed my husband?” Kerstin Juhlén asked in a whisper.

“No, it’s still too early in our investigation to say,” answered Henrik and looked gravely at the woman in front of him.

“You think I’ve done it, don’t you? You think that I was the one who shot him...”

“We don’t think anything.”

“But I didn’t do it! I wasn’t home. It wasn’t me!”

“As I said, we don’t think anything yet, but we must investigate the circumstances surrounding his murder and determine how it all happened. That’s why I want you to tell me about Sunday night when you came home to the house.”

Kerstin took two deep breaths. She unclenched her hands, put them on her lap and straightened up in the chair.

“I came home...from a walk.”

“Did you walk alone, or was somebody with you?”

“I walked by myself, to the beach and back.”

“Tell us more.”

“When I came home, I took my coat off in the hallway as I called out to Hans, because I knew that he ought to be home by then. ”

“What time was it then?”

“About half past seven.”

“Go on.”

“I didn’t get an answer so I assumed that he had been delayed at work. You see, he would always go to the office on Sundays. I went straight to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I saw the pizza box on the kitchen sideboard and realized that Hans was actually home. We usually eat pizza on Sundays. Hans picks it up on his way home. Yes, well... I called out again, but still got no answer. So I went to check if he was in the living room and what he was doing and... I saw him just lying there on the floor. In shock, I called the police.”

“When did you phone?”

“Straightaway...when I found him.”

“What did you do then, after you phoned the police?”

“I went upstairs. The woman on the phone said I should do that. That I mustn’t touch him, so I went upstairs.”

Henrik looked at the woman in front of him. She looked nervous, with a shifting gaze. She fingered the cloth of her light gray pants anxiously.

“I’ve asked you before, but I must ask again. Did you see anybody in the house?”

“No.”

“Nobody outside?”

“I noticed that the front window was opened, so I closed it. In case someone was still lurking about. I was frightened. But no, I’ve already told you. I saw no one.”

“No car on the street?”

“No,” Kerstin answered in a loud voice. She leaned forward and rubbed her Achilles tendon on one foot, as if she were trying to scratch an itch.

“Tell us about your husband,” said Henrik.

“Tell you what?”

“He worked as the head of asylum issues at the Migration Board here in Norrköping, correct?” said Henrik.

“Yes. He was good at his job.”

“Can you elaborate? What was he good at?”

“He worked with all sorts of things. In the department he was in charge...”

Kerstin became silent and lowered her head.

Henrik noted that she swallowed hard, he imagined, to prevent tears from coming.

“We can take a little break if you like,” said Henrik.

“No, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

Kerstin took a deep breath. She looked briefly at her lawyer, who was twirling his pen on the table, and then she started talking again.

“My husband was indeed the head of a department at the board. He liked his job and had worked his way up, devoted all his life to the Migration Board. He is...was the sort of person people liked. He was kind to everybody regardless of where they came from. He didn’t have any prejudices. He wanted to help people. That was why he liked it there so much.

“The Migration Board has had to put up with a lot of criticism recently,” Kerstin said, then paused before going on.

Henrik nodded. He knew the National Audit Agency had recently examined the Migration Board’s procedures for arranging accommodation for asylum seekers, and they cited it for improper practices. During the last year, the board spent fifty million kronor on buying accommodations. Of that, nine million kronor had been spent on direct agreements, which are forbidden if done without the proper procedures. The Audit Agency had also found illegal contracts with landlords. In many cases no contracts were used at all. The local papers had published several articles about the audit.

“Hans was upset over the criticism. More refugees had been applying than they had anticipated. He had to quickly arrange accommodations for them. And then it went wrong.”

Kerstin became silent. Her lip quivered.

“I felt sorry for him.”

“It sounds as if you are well aware of your husband’s work,” said Henrik.

Kerstin didn’t answer. She wiped a tear from her eye and nodded at the thought.

“There was the problem with improper behavior too,” she said.

She quickly described how there had been assaults and thefts at the asylum accommodation center. Because of the stress of their situation, often arguments broke out among the new arrivals. The staff that had been temporarily hired to run the center found it hard to keep order.

“Which we know about,” said Henrik.

“Oh yes, of course,” said Kerstin and straightened her back again.

“Many of them were in poor mental condition, and Hans tried to do everything he could to make their stay as comfortable as possible. But it was difficult. Several nights in a row somebody set off the fire alarm. People got scared and Hans had no alternative but to hire more staff to keep an eye on the center. My husband was personally very committed, I can tell you that, and he put his very soul into his work.”

Henrik leaned back and studied Kerstin. She didn’t look quite as miserable now. Something had gradually come over her, perhaps a pride in her husband’s work—perhaps a sort of relief.

“Hans spent a lot of time at the office. There were late evenings, and every Sunday he left home after lunch and didn’t come back until dinnertime. It was hard to know exactly what time he would get home, what time to have dinner ready, so he always used to buy a pizza instead. Just like yesterday. As usual.”

Kerstin Juhlén hid her face in her hands as she shook her head. The anguish and the misery of it all had immediately come back.

“You have the right to take a break,” said Peter Ramstedt as he carefully put a hand on her shoulder.

Jana studied his touch. She knew this lawyer had a reputation of being strongly attracted to women and rarely hesitated to physically console his clients. If he got the chance, he was open to do more than that.

Kerstin raised her shoulder slightly in discomfort, which evidently made the solicitor realize that he should remove his hand. Peter pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to her. Kerstin gratefully accepted, and she blew her nose in it audibly.

“Sorry,” she said.

“That’s all right,” said Henrik. “So if I’ve understood you correctly, your husband had a difficult job.”

“No, I mean...yes, but I don’t know. I can’t really say exactly... I think...it would be best if you were to speak with my husband’s secretary.”

Henrik wrinkled his brow. “Why is that?”

“It would just be for the best,” she whispered.

Henrik sighed and leaned forward over the table.

“What’s his secretary’s name, then?”

“Lena Wikström. She has been his assistant for almost twenty years.”

“Of course we’ll speak with her.”

Kerstin’s shoulders sank and she clasped her hands.

“May I ask,” said Henrik, “if you and your husband were close?”

“How do you mean? Of course we were close.”

“You didn’t have a disagreement about anything? Argue a lot?”

“What are you getting at, Chief Inspector?” interjected Peter, leaning across the table.

“I just want to be sure we get the full picture for this investigation,” said Henrik.

“No, we rarely argued,” Kerstin answered slowly.

“Apart from you, who else was close to him?”

“His parents have been dead a long time, unfortunately. Cancer, both of them. He didn’t have any real friends, so you could say that our social life was rather limited. But we liked it like that.”

“Sister? Brother?”

“He has a half brother who lives in Finspång. But they haven’t had much contact with each other in recent years. They are very different.”

“In what way?”

“They just are.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lars Johansson. Everyone calls him Lasse.”

Mia Bolander had been sitting with her arms crossed, just listening. Now she asked straight out, “Why don’t you have children?”

Kerstin was surprised by the question and hastily pulled her legs back under her chair. So hastily that one shoe came off.

Henrik turned around and looked at Mia. He was irritated, but she was pleased that she’d asked. Kerstin bent down and groaned as she stretched to reach her shoe under the table. Then she sat up straight again and put her hands on the table, one atop the other.

“We never had children,” she said briefly.

“Why not?” said Mia. “Couldn’t you conceive or what?”

“I think we could have. But it just sort of never happened. And we accepted that.”

Henrik cleared his throat and started talking to prevent Mia from asking more questions along this line.

“Okay. You didn’t mix with many people, you said?”

“No, we really didn’t.”

“When did you last have visitors?”

“That was a long while ago. Hans was working all the time...”

“No other visitors to the house? Repairmen, for example?”

“Around Christmas a man knocked on the door selling lottery tickets, but otherwise there haven’t been...”

“What did he look like?”

Kerstin stared at Henrik, surprised by the question.

“Tall, blond as I remember. He seemed nice, presentable. But I didn’t buy any tickets from him.”

“Did he have any children with him?”

“No. No, he didn’t. He was alone.”

“Do you know anybody with children?”

“Well, yes, of course. Hans’s half brother. He has an eight-year-old son.”

“Has he been to your house recently?”

Kerstin stared at Henrik again.

“I don’t really follow your question...but, no, he hasn’t been in our house for ages.”

Jana Berzelius drew a ring around the half brother’s name on her notepad. Lars Johansson.

“Do you have any idea who might have done this to your husband?” she said.

Kerstin squirmed a little, looked out of the window and answered, “No.”

“Did your husband have any enemies?” said Henrik.

Kerstin looked down at the table and took a deep breath.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Nobody he was angry with or had argued with or who was angry with him?”

Kerstin didn’t seem to hear the question.

“Kerstin?”

“What?”

“Nobody who was angry with him?”

She shook her head no so violently that the loose skin under her chin wobbled.

“Strange,” said Henrik as he laid out copies of the threatening letters on the table in front of her. “Because as you know, we found these at your house.”

“What are they?”

“The letters from your closet. We are hoping you will tell us about them.”

“But I don’t know what they are. I’ve never seen them before.”

“They seem to be some sort of threats. That means your husband must have had at least one enemy, if not more.”

“But, no...”

Kerstin shook her head again.

“We are very anxious to find out more about who sent these—and why.”

“I have no idea.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, I’ve told you I’ve never seen them before.”

Click-click could be heard from Peter Ramstedt’s pen.

“As my client has said twice, she does not recognize these papers. Would you be so kind and note that now for the record? Then you don’t have to waste time repeating the same question.”

“Mr. Ramstedt, you are surely well aware as to how an interview is carried out. Without extended questioning, we won’t get the information we need,” said Henrik.

“Then be so kind as to stick to relevant questions. My client has clearly stated that she has not seen these papers previously.”

Peter looked straight at Henrik. CLICK-CLICK.

“So you don’t know if your husband felt threatened in any way?” Henrik continued.

“No.”

“No strange phone calls?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t think or don’t know?”

“No, no calls.”

“You don’t know anybody who wanted to warn him? Or get revenge?”

“No. But the nature of his work of course made him rather vulnerable.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well...my husband thought that the decision process for asylum was difficult. He never liked having to turn away any asylum seekers, even though he wasn’t personally responsible for having to tell them himself. He knew how desperate many were when they didn’t get asylum here. But not everyone qualified. And no one has threatened him. Or has sought revenge, if that is the question.”

Henrik wondered whether Kerstin was telling the truth. Hans Juhlén could admittedly have kept the threatening letters hidden away from her. But it did nevertheless seem unlikely that he never during all his years in the job felt frightened of somebody nor talked with his wife about it.

* * *

“There must have been a relatively serious threat against Juhlén,” Henrik said to Jana when the interview was concluded. They both left the interrogation room with slow steps.

“Yes,” she answered briefly.

“What do you think about the wife?”

Jana remained standing in the corridor while Henrik closed the door. “There are no signs of violence in the house,” she said.

“Perhaps because the murder was well planned.”

“So you think she’s guilty?”

“The spouse is always guilty, right?” Henrik smiled.

“Yes, almost always. But at the moment no evidence links her to the murder.”

“She seemed nervous,” he added.

“That isn’t enough.”

“I know. But it feels as if she isn’t telling the truth.”

“And she probably isn’t, or at least not completely, but to arrest her I’m going to need more than that. If she doesn’t start talking or we can’t get any technical evidence, I’ll have to let her go. You’ve got three days.”

Henrik ran his fingers through his hair.

“And the secretary?” he said.

“Check out what she knows. I want you to visit her as soon as you can, but definitely by tomorrow. Unfortunately I have four cases which I have to pay attention to, and so I am not free to go with you. But I trust you.”

“Of course. Mia and I will talk with her.”

Jana said goodbye and walked past the other interrogation rooms.

As a public prosecutor, she regularly visited the place. She was on emergency duty a certain number of weekends and nights every year—it went with the job. A rotating duty schedule was posted, whose main purpose was to ensure that a prosecutor was available for urgent decisions such as whether somebody should be detained. A prosecutor could keep somebody in detention up to three days without introducing charges. After that, a court hearing was necessary. On a number of occasions, sometimes late at night, Jana had been called in and, in a rush, had to make a decision about an arrest.

Today all the cells in the center were full. She looked up toward the ceiling and thanked a higher power that she wasn’t on call the coming weekend. At the same time, she remembered that she would be on standby duty the weekend after that. She slowed her pace as she walked down the corridor, then stopped to sit and pull her calendar out. She turned the pages ahead to April 28. Nothing was noted there. Perhaps it was Sunday, April 29? Nothing there either. She turned a few more pages and caught sight of the entry for the first of May. A public holiday. ON CALL. And that was the day she had agreed to have dinner with her mother and father. She felt immediate stress. She couldn’t possibly be on call that same day. How had she not seen that? Of course, it was not absolutely necessary to be at her parents’ for dinner, but she didn’t want to disappoint her father by not coming over at all.

I’ll have to swap days with somebody, she thought, as she put her calendar back in her briefcase. She got up and continued walking, wondering with whom she’d be able to swap days. Most likely Per Åström. Per was both a successful public prosecutor and a popular social worker. She respected him as a colleague. During the five years they had known each other, a friendship of sorts had grown up between them.

Per was thirty-three years old and in good shape. He played tennis on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He had blond hair, a little dimple in his chin and eyes that were different colors. He smelled of aftershave. Sometimes he tended to go on a bit, but otherwise a nice guy. Only that; nothing more.

Jana hoped that Per would swap with her. Otherwise she would resort to bribing him with wine. But red or white? She weighed the two choices in time with the sound of her heels on the floor. Red or white. Red or white.

She contemplated taking the stairs down to the garage but chose the elevator instead. When she saw that the defense lawyer Peter Ramstedt was waiting there too, she immediately regretted her decision. She stood back from him at a safe distance.

“Ah, it’s you, Jana,” said Peter when he noted her presence. He rocked back and forth on the soles of his shoes.

“I heard that you had gone to review the autopsy and see the victim’s body at the medical examiner’s.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“One hears a thing or two.”

Peter gave a slight smirk and exposed his whitened teeth.

“So you like corpses?”

“Not particularly. I’m just trying to lead an investigation.”

“I’ve been a lawyer for ten years and I’ve never heard of a prosecutor going to an autopsy.”

“Perhaps that says more about other prosecutors than about me?”

“Don’t you like your colleagues?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Isn’t it simpler in your position to let the police do the legwork?”

“I am not interested in what is simple.”

“You know, as a prosecutor you can complicate an investigation.”

“In what way?”

“By calling attention to yourself.”

Hearing those words, Jana Berzelius decided to take the stairs down to the garage anyway. For every step she cursed Peter Ramstedt.

CHAPTER SIX

THE ROCKING HAD STOPPED. They were traveling silently, shut inside the dark container.

“Are we there?” said the girl.

Her mama didn’t answer her. Nor her papa. They seemed tense. Her mother told her to sit up. The girl did as she was told. The others also began to move. There was a feeling of unease. Several others were coughing and the girl felt the warm, stuffy air as it sought its way down into her lungs. Even her papa made a wheezing sound.

“Are we there now?” she said again. “Mama? Mama!”

“Quiet!” said Papa. “You must be completely quiet.”

The girl became grumpy and pushed her knees up toward her chin.

Suddenly the floor shuddered under her. She fell to one side and stretched out an arm to brace herself. Her mother got hold of her and held her close. It was silent a long, long time. Then the container was lifted up.

They all hung on tight in the cramped space. The girl gripped her mama’s waist. But even so, she hit her head when the container landed hard on the ground. At last they were in their new country. In their new life.

Mama got up and pulled her daughter up too. The girl looked at Danilo, who was still sitting with his back to the wall. His eyes were wide open, and just like all the others he was trying to hear sounds outside. It was hard to hear anything through the walls but if you really concentrated then you could perhaps distinguish weak voices. Yes, there were people talking outside. The girl looked at her papa and he smiled at her. That smile was the last thing she saw before the container was opened and daylight poured in.

Outside the container stood three men. They had something in their hands, something big and silvery. The girl had seen such things before, in red plastic that sprayed water.

One man started to shout at the others. Something weird was on his face, an enormous scar. She couldn’t help but stare at it.

The man with the scar came into the container and waved the silvery thing. He was shouting all the time. The girl didn’t understand what he said. Neither did her parents. Nobody understood his words.

The man went up to Ester and pulled at her sweater. She was scared. Ester’s mama was also frightened and didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. The man pulled Ester and held her in a firm grip around her neck as he backed away, all the time with the silvery thing pointed at Ester’s mama and papa. They didn’t dare do anything; they stood there completely still.

The girl felt somebody take a firm hold of her arm. It was Papa, who quickly pushed her in behind his legs. Her mama spread out her skirt to cover the girl even more.

The girl stood as still as she possibly could. Behind the skirt she couldn’t see what was happening. But she could hear. Hear how the grown-ups started to shout. They were shouting no, no, NO! And then she heard Danilo’s desperate voice.

“Mama,” he shouted. “Mama!”

The girl put her hands over her ears so that she wouldn’t have to hear the other children’s crying and shrieking. The voices of the grown-ups were worse. They were crying and shrieking too, but they were much louder. The girl pressed her hands even harder against her ears. But then after a while, all became silent.

The girl took her hands away and listened. She tried to look out between her papa’s legs, but when she moved he pressed her hard against the wall. It hurt.

The girl heard steps approach and felt her papa press her harder and harder against the steel wall. She could hardly breathe. Just as she was about to open her mouth to complain, she heard a popping sound and her papa fell down on his face on the floor. He lay there unmoving in front of her. When she looked up, the man with the scar was standing in front of her. He smiled.

Her mama threw herself forward and held on to her as best she could. The man just looked at them, then shouted something again and Mama shouted back.

“You don’t touch her!” she screamed.

Then he hit her with the silver thing he had in his hand.

The girl felt how her mama’s hands slipped down her tummy and legs until she lay on the floor with staring eyes. She didn’t blink, just stared.

“Mama!”

She felt a hand on her upper arm as the man yanked her up. He held her arm tightly, pushing her ahead of him out of the container.

And as she left she heard the dreadful sound when they fired the silver things. They didn’t have water in them. Water didn’t sound like that. They shot something hard, and they shot straight into the dark.

Straight at Mama and Papa.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tuesday, April 17

JANA BERZELIUS WOKE up at five in the morning. She had had the same dream again; it never left her in peace. She sat up and wiped the sweat off her brow. Her mouth was dry from what she imagined was her shrieking. She straightened out her cramped fingers. Her fingernails had dug into the palms of her hands.

She had experienced the same dream for as long as she could remember. It was always the same images. It irritated her that she didn’t understand what the dream meant. She had turned, twisted and analyzed all the symbols each time she fell victim to it. But that was no help.

Her pillow lay on the floor. Had she thrown it there? Presumably, as it was a long way from the bed.

She picked up the pillow and put it back against the headboard, then pulled the duvet back over herself. When she had lain there restless under the warm duvet for twenty more minutes, she realized it was pointless to try to fall back to sleep. So she got up, showered, dressed and ate a bowl of muesli.

With a mug of coffee in her hand, she looked out the window at the unsteady weather. Even though they were already halfway through April, winter still made itself felt. One day it was a cold rain, and the next it was snowing with a temperature of close to freezing. From her flat in Knäppingsborg, Jana had a view of the river and the Louis de Geer Hall. From her living room she could also see the people who visited the quaint shopping area. Knäppingsborg had recently been renovated, but the urban planners on the council had managed to retain the genuine feel of the place.

Jana had always wanted a flat with high ceilings, and when the first plans were approved for renovating the old buildings in the area, her father had put his name down to invest in a housing-association apartment for his then newly graduated daughter. As luck would have it, or thanks to a few phone calls, Karl Berzelius was given the opportunity to choose first. Of course she chose the apartment that was forty square meters larger than the others, with a total floor area of 196 square meters.

Jana massaged her neck. Her scar always became irritated by the cold weather. She had bought a cream at the pharmacy that the pharmacist assistant said was the latest on the market, but she hadn’t noticed any improvement.

Jana draped her long hair over her right shoulder, exposing her neck. With a careful touch, she gently rubbed the cream into the carved letters. Then she covered her neck with her hair again.

She took a dark blue jacket out of her closet and put it on. Over that she buttoned up her beige Armani coat.

At half past eight she left the flat, walked to her car and drove in the smattering rain to the courthouse. She was thinking about the first case of the day, which concerned domestic violence. The proceedings would start at nine. Her fourth criminal case, the last for the day, probably wouldn’t finish until half past five at the earliest.

It would be a long day, she knew that.

* * *

It was just after 9:00 a.m. when Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander entered the Migration Board offices. They checked in at reception and were given a temporary key card.

Lena Wikström, the secretary, was in the middle of a telephone conversation when they stepped into her outer office on the second floor. She held up her finger to signal that she would be with them in a few moments.

From Lena’s office you could see straight into what had been Hans Juhlén’s. Henrik noted that Hans’s office looked tidy. The surface of the wide desk was uncluttered, with just a computer and a pile of folders next to it. Lena Wikström’s space was quite the opposite. Papers were strewn everywhere, on the desk, on top of file folders, underneath ring binders, in trays, on the floor, in the paper-recycling box and in the wastebasket. Nothing appeared organized. Documents lay all around.

Henrik felt a shiver down his spine and wondered how Lena could concentrate in such chaos.

“That’s that.” Lena ended the call and got up. “Welcome.”

She shook hands with Henrik and Mia, asked them to sit down on the worn visitors’ chairs next to her desk and immediately started speaking.

“It’s dreadful what happened. I still can’t understand it. It’s simply terrible. So terrible. Everybody’s wondering who would do such a thing. I’m answering calls about Hans’s murder all the time now. He was murdered, wasn’t he? Usch, yes, it’s simply too terrible, I must say.”

Lena started to pick at her peeling nail polish. It was hard to say how old she was. Henrik guessed fifty-five plus. She had short dark hair and was wearing a light lilac blouse and earrings in a matching color. She almost gave an impression of elegance and affluence. If it hadn’t been for the flaking nail polish, of course.

Mia took out her pen and notepad.

“I understand you’ve worked with Hans Juhlén for many years, is that correct?” she said.

“Yes, more than twenty,” said Lena.

“Kerstin Juhlén said it was almost twenty.”

“Unfortunately she doesn’t really keep track of her husband. No, it’s actually twenty-two. But I haven’t been his assistant all that time. I had another chief first, but he retired many years ago and handed over to Hans. Hans was in charge of the accounts department before this position. We met frequently during that time since I assisted the previous chief.”

“According to Kerstin, Hans was somewhat stressed recently, would you agree as to that?” Henrik said.

“Stressed? No, I would hardly say that.”

“She was referring to the recent criticism that had been directed toward the department.”

“Oh really? Yes, well, that of course. The newspapers wrote that we were bad at accommodating the flow of asylum seekers. But it’s hard to know exactly how many will come. You just have to make an educated guess, a projection. And a projection is only that, after all.”

Lena took a deep breath.

“Three weeks ago we received a large group of asylum seekers from Somalia and that meant work both before and after regular hours. Hans didn’t want to risk more exposure in the local papers. He took the criticism seriously.”

“Did he have any enemies?” said Henrik.

“No, not as far as I know. But you always feel a bit vulnerable in this job. There are a lot of emotions, a lot of people behave threateningly when they’re not allowed to stay on here in Sweden. So if you think of it like that, then there are potentially a lot of enemies. That’s why we have a security firm that always patrols here,” said Lena. ‘But I don’t think Hans felt he had specific enemies.”

“Even evenings and nights?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been threatened?”

“No, not personally. But the Board always has to think about security. Once a man poured gasoline over himself and ran into reception and threatened to set himself on fire if he didn’t get a residence permit. They can be completely mad, those people. Yes, there’s all sorts.”

Henrik leaned back in the chair and glanced at Mia. She moved on to the next question.

“Is it possible to talk to the person from security who was here on Sunday?”

“This past Sunday? When he...”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Lena picked up the phone, punched in a number and waited. Shortly after, the security firm promised to immediately send a Jens Cavenius who had worked all Sunday.

“So do you know if Hans had felt especially threatened in any way?” said Henrik.

“No,” said Lena.

“No strange letters or phone calls?”

“Not that I saw, and I open all the mail... No, I haven’t seen anything.”

“Do you know if he had any contact with a child?”

“No. Not specifically. Why do you ask that?”

Henrik declined to answer.

“When he was here, late evenings and Sundays, do you know what he did?”

“I don’t know exactly, but he was busy with paperwork and reviewed lots of documents. He didn’t like the computer at all and wanted to use it as little as possible so I had to print out all documents and reports for him.”

“Were you usually here with him when he was working?” said Mia and pointed at Lena with her pen.

“No, not on Sundays. He wanted to be by himself, alone, that was why he liked working evenings and weekends. Nobody was here to disturb him.”

Mia nodded and wrote in her notepad.

“You said that certain persons can behave threateningly. Do you have a list of the names of all the asylum seekers that we can take with us?” said Henrik.

“Yes. Of course. For this year, or further back?”

“This year’s list would suffice to start with.”

Lena went into the database on her computer and ordered a printout. Her laser printer came to life and started delivering page after page with names in alphabetical order. Lena picked them up as they came out. After twenty pages, a warning lamp started to flash.

“Oh, how annoying, it’s always going wrong,” she said, and turned red in the face. She opened the paper tray which—to her surprise—was not empty.

“Oh, what’s the matter now?” She pushed the tray back in. The printer made a noise but again the red lamp indicated that something was wrong.

“Apparatuses are best when they work properly, aren’t they?” she said in an irritated voice.

Henrik and Mia just sat there in silence.

Lena opened the tray, saw that there was still some paper left and closed it again, this time with a bang. The printer started up, but no pages came out.

“Oh, why are you being so difficult!” Lena hit the start button with her fist and that got the printer to work. Embarrassed, she ran her fingers through her hair until all the pages printed out. Just then, the phone rang and in a short conversation the receptionist informed Lena that Jens Cavenius had arrived.

* * *

Jens Cavenius stood leaning against a pillar in reception. The nineteen-year-old looked as though he had just woken up. His eyes were red, and his hair was flattened on one side and untidy on the other. He was wearing a lined jean jacket and white Converse sneakers. When he caught sight of Henrik and Mia, he approached and stretched out his arm to shake hands.

“Shall we sit down?” Henrik asked.

He gestured toward a sofa and armchairs to the right of reception, which was surrounded by two-meter-high plastic Yucca palms. Some Arabic brochures were in a display on the white coffee table.

Jens flopped onto the sofa, leaned forward and despite his red-shot eyes, looked expectantly at Henrik and Mia. They sat down opposite him.

“You worked here on Sunday?” Henrik said.

“Yeah, sure,” said Jens and clapped the palms of his hands together.

“Was Hans Juhlén here then?”

“Yep. I chatted a bit with him. He was the boss, like.”

“What time was it then?”

“Perhaps around half past six.”

Henrik looked at Mia and saw that she was prepared to take over the questioning. With a nod he let her do so.

“What did you talk about?” she said.

“Well, it was more like we said hello to each other. You could say,” said Jens.

“Okay?” said Mia.

“Or nodded, I nodded to him when I went past his office.”

“There was nobody else here then?”

“No, no way. On Sundays it’s just dead here, like.”

“When you went past Hans Juhlén’s office, did you see what he was doing then?”

“No. But I could hear him using the computer keyboard. You know, you’ve got to have good hearing to be a security guard, so you can notice sound that might be weird or something. And my night vision is pretty good too. I was the best in the test in fact, in the selection. Not bad, eh?”

Mia was hardly impressed by Jens’s senses. She raised her eyebrows to indicate ridicule and turned toward Henrik, whose gaze had fastened on one of the Yucca palms.

When she saw that Henrik appeared to be lost in thought, she thumped him on the arm.

“Hans Juhlén’s computer?” she said.

“Yes?” said Henrik.

“He seems to have used it quite a lot.”

“Yes, all the time,” said Jens and clapped his hands.

“Then I think we should take it with us,” said Henrik.

“So do I,” said Mia.

CHAPTER EIGHT

POLICE OFFICER GABRIEL MELLQVIST was shivering. It was cold. His shoes were leaking and the cold rain trickled down from his cap onto his neck. He didn’t know where his colleague Hanna Hultman was. Last he saw her, she was standing outside house number 36 ringing the doorbell. Together they had gone door-knocking at about twenty detached houses this morning. None of the residents had made any observations that were of any importance to the investigation. And not a single strange man or woman had been glimpsed. On the other hand, most people weren’t even at home on Sunday. They had been at their summer cottages, on golf courses, at horse-jumping competitions and God knows what. A mother had seen a little girl go by, probably it was a playmate who was going home for the evening, and Gabriel wondered why she had even bothered to mention it to him.

He swore to himself and looked at his watch. His mouth was dry, and he was tired and thirsty. They were clear signals that his blood sugar was too low. Even so, he went off to the next house which was behind a high stone wall.

Door-to-door canvassing was not his favorite occupation. Especially not in the rain. But the order had come from the very top of the criminal department and that meant it was best to do as he was told.

The gates were closed. Locked. Gabriel looked around. From here he could hardly see Östanvägen 204 where the murder had been committed. He pressed the intercom next to the gate and waited for an answer. Pressed again and added a “Hello!” this time. Gave the locked gates a bit of a push and they rattled. Where the hell was Hannah now? She couldn’t be seen anywhere on the street. She couldn’t have gone down one of the parallel streets. No, not without telling him first. She’d never do that. He sighed, took a step back and walked straight into a puddle. He felt how the cold water was sucked up by the sock in his right shoe. Oh great! Really great!

He looked up at the house again. Still saw no sign of life. He wanted most of all to give up and go off to the nearest lunch place and just get some grub. But then he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something that moved. He screwed his eyes up a little in an effort to see what it was. A security camera! He pressed the intercom, shouted a few times to elicit an answer and managed in his enthusiasm to suppress the sensation of dizziness that gradually crept up on him.

* * *

Forty minutes and ninety-eight kronor later, Henrik Levin had eaten his fill. The Thai buffet had consisted of far too many tasty dishes. Mia Bolander had accompanied him, but chosen something lighter, a salad.

Henrik regretted his choice of lunch when he got back in the car again. He felt heavy and drowsy and let Mia drive to the police station.

“Next time can you remind me that I must have salad too,” he said.

Mia laughed.

“Please?”

“I’m not your bloody mother! But all right, then. Does Emma want you to lose weight or what?”

“Do you think I’m fat, then?”

“Not your face.”

“Thanks.”

“She won’t let you fuck her, is that it?”

“What?”

“I mean, you seem to want to go easy on the carbs, which means you want to lose weight. I read online that the biggest motivation for men to lose weight is that they want to have more sex.”

“I was just talking about a salad. I just want to eat salad next time. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you think I’m fat?”

“No. You’re not fat. You only weigh eighty kilos, Henrik.”

“Eighty-three.”

“Sorry, eighty-bloody-three kilos, then. You’re a pudding, right! Why would you want to weigh any less?”

Mia winked provocatively.

Henrik remained silent and kept his real reason for wanting to eat lighter to himself.

Mia didn’t need to know that seven weeks earlier he had embarked on a low-carb diet. He was also aiming to get more exercise on weekdays. But it was hard to keep to his new lifestyle choices, especially when Thai food tastes so much better with rice. After work it was simpler: home, eat, play, bath time, tuck into bed, TV, sleep. His time with his five-and six-year-old kids when he got home was pretty much routine. Admittedly, he hadn’t actually asked his wife, Emma, if he could spend an hour, once or twice a week, at the gym. Hopefully she would say yes. But deep inside Henrik was afraid of what answer he would get. A firm no.

His wife already resented his spending too little time with the family.

But he felt that if he were in better shape, they would have better and more frequent sex. To him it was a win-win situation.

But those few times he had asked Emma for permission just to play football with the local club on a Saturday, he was turned down. The weekends were for the family, she said, and they should be out in the garden, visiting the zoo park, going to the cinema or just spending family time together. She felt she and Henrik needed to nurture their relationship by spending more time cuddling together.

Henrik didn’t particularly like cuddling. He liked having sex. To him, sex was the greatest proof that you loved your partner, he thought. It didn’t matter when or where you did it. Just that you did it. That wasn’t what Emma thought. For her, it had to be pleasurable and relaxing, and you needed lots of time and the right setting. Their bed still remained her preference and then only when the children weren’t awake. Since Felix, who was afraid of ghosts, insisted on going to sleep every night between them in bed, their opportunities for sex were few.

Henrik had to settle for the hope that things would get better. This past month he had felt more desire. And Emma had gone along with it too. Once, at any rate. Exactly four weeks ago.

Henrik smothered a bit of heartburn. The next time it would be only salad.

* * *

When Henrik and Mia entered the conference room they were met by the news that police officer Gabriel Mellqvist had fainted while knocking on doors in Lindö. He had been found by an elderly lady who had heard her doorbell ring a number of times. But since she was confined to a wheelchair, she couldn’t hurry to the door. When she finally opened it, she saw the policeman lying on the ground.

“Luckily Hanna Hultman had come to his aid and in Gabriel’s pocket found a glucose syringe that she jabbed into his thigh,” said Gunnar. “That was the bad news. The good news is that we’ve found a security camera outside the lady’s house. It is directed toward the street—it’s positioned here.”

Gunnar put an X on the map of the residential area that was hanging beside the time line posted on the wall.

The whole team was in the room. All except Jana, which pleased Mia.

“In the best case, the events from Sunday will still be on a server somewhere. I want you, Ola, to check that straightaway.”

“Now?” said Ola Söderström.

“Yes, now.”

He got up.

“Hang on,” said Henrik. “I think you’ve got some more to do. We’ve confiscated Hans Juhlén’s computer and need to go through it.”

“Did the interview with Lena Wikström lead to anything?”

“She doesn’t share Kerstin Juhlén’s picture of Hans. According to Kerstin, Hans always worked on his computer. According to his secretary, Lena, he never did. I think it’s a little odd that they would have such different impressions.”

Ola, Gunnar and Anneli Lindgren agreed.

“Lena also didn’t think that Hans Juhlén was as stressed as his wife claimed,” said Henrik.

“But that’s only what she says. I believe he was bloody worried. I would be too if there had been a lot of shit thrown at me in the newspapers and threatening notes too,” said Mia.

“Exactly,” said Ola.

“Lena said that there was always a security aspect concerning asylum seekers who weren’t granted asylum. So we’ve asked for a list of all the people who have sought asylum so far this year,” said Henrik.

“Fine, anything else?” said Gunnar.

“No,” said Henrik. Going door-to-door hadn’t produced much, except for the potential security footage.

“No witnesses?” said Mia.

“No. Not a one,” said Gunnar.

“It’s just bloody crazy. Didn’t anybody see anything?” said Mia. “So we’ve got fuck-all to go on.”

“For the time being we have no witnesses. Zero. Nada. So we’ll have to hope that the security camera will give us something. Ola, check if we can get hold of the images right away,” Gunnar said and turned to Ola. “Then you can go through Hans’s computer. I’ll see if the call logs from the provider are ready. If not, I’ll phone and pester them till they are. Anneli, you go back to the crime scene and see if you can find anything new. Anything at all would do in the present situation.”

CHAPTER NINE

AT FIRST THE girl had cried hysterically. But now she felt calm. She had never felt like this before. Everything happened as if in slow motion.

She sat with her now heavy head bent over her thighs, her arms hanging limply from her sides, almost numb now. The engine in the van in which they were traveling growled weakly. Her thighs were stinging. She had wet herself when her captors had gripped her hard and pushed a needle into her arm.

Now she looked slowly up toward her left upper arm at the little red mark. It was really tiny. She giggled. Really tiny. Teeny weeny. The syringe was also really tiny.

The van jerked and the asphalt turned into gravel. The girl leaned her head back and tried to balance its weight so that she wouldn’t bang herself against the van’s hard interior. Or against somebody else. They were sitting tightly packed, all seven. Danilo, who was next to her, had cried too. The girl had never seen him cry before, only smile. The girl liked his smile and always smiled back at him. But now he couldn’t smile. The silvery bit of tape was stuck hard over his mouth, and he breathed in what air he could through his dilated nostrils.

A woman sat opposite them. She looked angry. Terribly, terribly angry. Grrrr. The girl laughed to herself. Then she sank down again with her head against her thighs. She was tired and most of all wanted to sleep in her own bed with the doll that she had once found at a bus stop. The doll with only one arm and one leg. But it was the finest doll the girl had ever seen. The doll had dark curly hair and a pink dress. She missed her doll dreadfully. The doll was still back there with Mama and Papa. She would fetch her later, when she came back to the container.

Then everything would be all right again.

And they would go back.

Home.

CHAPTER TEN

THE SECURITY CAMERA film had just arrived by messenger from the security firm. Ola Söderström opened the package and quickly inserted the little hard disk into his computer. He immediately started looking through the images, which gave a good overview of Östanvägen. Unfortunately the rotating camera lens didn’t reach all the way to Hans Juhlén’s house. Judging by the angle, the camera must have been about two meters above the ground, perhaps three, and provided an adequate coverage so that you could register everything on the street. The quality was good and Ola was pleased with the sharpness. He fast-forwarded past Sunday morning. A woman with a dog walked by, a white Lexus left the street and then the woman with the dog came back again.

When the clock counter showed 17:30, he slowed down the speed. The empty street looked cold and windy. The overcast weather made it hard to detect any movements and the street lighting was of poor quality.

Ola was wondering whether it was possible to adjust the brightness so that he could see the scene more clearly, when he suddenly caught sight of a boy.

He froze the image. The counter showed 18:14.

Then he let the recording continue. The boy cut across the street quickly and then vanished out of view.

Ola reversed the disk and looked at the sequence again. The boy was wearing a dark hooded sweater that hid his face well. He walked with his head down and both hands stuck inside the big pocket on his stomach.

Ola sighed. He rubbed his hand over his face and up through his hair. Just a child on his way somewhere. He let the footage continue and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head.

When the counter showed 20:00, he still hadn’t seen anything. No movement. Not a single person. Not a car had passed during those two hours. Only the boy. At that moment, Ola realized what he had seen. Only the boy.

He got up so fast from the chair that it fell backward onto the floor with a crash.

* * *

“You seem to be in a good mood.”

Gunnar gave a start when he heard Anneli Lindgren’s voice. She stood in the doorway with her arms folded over her chest. Her hair was tied back in a tight ponytail that accentuated her clear blue eyes and high cheekbones.

“Yes, I’ve just been promised the call logs,” he said. “It helped when I made a fuss.”

“Well now, is that all it takes to put you in a good mood?” said Anneli.

“Yes, it is, I can tell you. Shouldn’t you be on your way?” Gunnar said.

“Yes, but I’m waiting for some support. It’s a big house to work through. I can’t get through it all on my own.”

“I thought you liked working alone.”

“Sometimes, sure. But you tire of it after a while. Then it’s nice to have company by your side,” Anneli said and tilted her head.

“But you don’t have to go through everything again. Just take what’s of interest.”

“Well, that’s obvious. What do you take me for, huh?” Anneli straightened her head and put her hand on her waist.

“And talking about going through things,” said Gunnar, “I’ve been tidying in the storage room and found some stuff that belongs to you.”

“You’ve been tidying the storage room?”

“Yes. What of it?” Gunnar said and shrugged his shoulders. “I needed to get rid of some junk and I found a large cardboard box with ornaments in it. Perhaps you’d like them back?”

“I can fetch them later in the week.”

“No, better if I bring the box to work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see if those lists have arrived as promised.”

Anneli was just about to leave the room when she almost bumped right into a stressed Ola Söderström in the doorway.

“What is it?” said Gunnar.

“I think I’ve found something. Come and see!”

Gunnar got up from his desk and followed his colleague Ola into the computer room.

Ola, twenty years his junior, was tall and thin with a pointed nose. He was dressed in jeans, a red checked shirt and, like every other day of the year, a cap. Regardless of the temperature on the thermometer, be it minus or plus thirty degrees Celsius, he had his cap on. Sometimes it was red, sometimes white. Sometimes striped, sometimes with a check pattern. Today it was black.

Gunnar had told Ola many times that he should avoid wearing headgear during working hours, but he finally gave up because his irritating hat was trivial compared with Ola’s skill with computers.

“Look at this.” Ola pressed some keys and the recorded tape started to play. Gunnar saw the little boy on the film.

“He turns up at exactly 18:14,” said Ola. “He cuts across the street and seems to be on his way up toward Östanvägen, toward Hans Juhlén’s house.”

Gunnar observed the boy’s movements. Stiff. Almost mechanical.

“Play it again,” he said when the boy disappeared from view.

Ola did as he was told.

“Freeze it there!” said Gunnar and moved closer to the screen. “Can you zoom in?”

Ola pressed some keys and the boy came closer.

“He’s got his hands in that hoodie pocket. But the pocket is bulging too much. He must have something else in there,” said Gunnar.

“Anneli did find the handprints from a child,” said Ola. “Could it be this boy?”

“How old?” said Gunnar.

Ola looked at the figure. Although he was dressed in a large hooded sweatshirt, you could still make out the size of his body under it. But it was his height that decided the matter.

“I’d guess eight, perhaps nine,” said Ola.

“Do you know who’s got a child of that age?”

“No.”

“Hans Juhlén’s half brother.”

“Shit.”

“Zoom in closer.”

Ola zoomed in another step.

Gunnar put his face right up to the screen so he could examine the bulging pocket better.

“Now I know what he’s got in his pocket.”

“What?”

“A gun.”

* * *

Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander were driving from Norrköping toward Finspång. They sat in silence, deep in their own thoughts as they passed a road sign that told them they had five kilometers to go.

Henrik pulled over to the side of the road so he could look up the address he wanted on the GPS navigator. The digital map showed that they had 150 meters to go to their final destination, and the navigator’s voice told him to keep driving straight ahead at the next roundabout. Henrik followed the directions and approached the given address, which was in the Dunderbacken district.

Mia pointed to an empty parking space next to a recycling station that was overflowing with discarded paper and packages. Somebody had put an old radio in front of the green bins.

“So this is where he lives, the half brother,” said Mia. She got out of the car, stretched and yawned out loud. Henrik got out and slammed the car door on his side.

A few people were standing and talking to each other in the grassy area between the low-rise apartment buildings. Nearby a couple of children played with a bucket and spade in a sand pit next to a set of swings. The chilly April weather had made their cheeks rosy. A man, presumably the father, sat on a bench next to them, fully occupied with his cell phone. A woman in an ankle-long winter coat was approaching them on the sidewalk with shopping bags in each hand. She stopped and said hello to a long-haired man who was unlocking a yellow Monark bicycle in a bike stand.

Henrik and Mia walked across the grass and looked for the right building number. They entered number thirty-four. A thinly-dressed man was standing in the entrance hall; he took a few steps to one side and walked back and forth, more or less as if he were impatiently waiting for somebody.

Mia glanced quickly at the list of residents next to the elevator and read the name for the third floor. Lars Johansson. Then they walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell.

Lars opened immediately. He was only wearing underpants and a pale football jersey adorned with the Norrköping team’s emblem. He was unshaven and had dark rings under his eyes. While he massaged his neck, he looked with surprise at the two police officers standing in front of him.

“Are you Lars Johansson?” Henrik asked.

“Yes, what’s this about?” said Lars.

Henrik introduced himself and Mia and showed his warrant to enter.

“And I was thinking that you came from one of those rags or something. Journalists have been running around here the last few days. But come in, damn it, come in! I haven’t cleaned recently so keep your shoes on. Have a seat in the living room, I’ll just go put some trousers on. I must go for a pee too. Are you willing to wait?”

As Lars backed away toward the bathroom, Henrik looked at Mia, who couldn’t help shaking her head when they followed him down the apartment’s hallway.

The bathroom was straight ahead and they could see Lars in it, picking out a pair of gray cotton trousers from the laundry basket. Then he closed the door and locked it.

“Shall we?” said Henrik and gestured politely toward Mia. She nodded and took a few steps more.

The kitchen lay to the left, and they could see it littered with piles of dirty plates and pizza cartons. A tied-up bag of rubbish sat in the sink. The bedroom that was across from the kitchen was rather small and contained a single unmade bed. The Venetian blinds were closed and Lego pieces of various sizes cluttered the floor. To the left of the bathroom lay the living room.

Henrik hesitated as to whether he should sit down on the brown leather sofa. A duvet in one corner made him realize that the sofa doubled as a bed. It smelled stuffy.

A flushing sound could be heard and Lars came into the living room wearing trousers that were five centimeters too short.

“Sit down. I’ll just...” Lars pushed the pillow and the duvet onto the apricot-colored linoleum on the floor.

“There now, take a seat. Coffee?”

Henrik and Mia declined and sat down on the sofa, which made a hissing sound under their weight. The smell of sweat was pervasive and made Henrik feel a little queasy. Lars sat down on a green plastic stool and pulled his trousers up another two centimeters.

“Lars,” Henrik began.

“No, call me Lasse. Everyone does.”

“Okay, Lasse. First and foremost, our condolences.”

“For my brother, yeah, that was bloody awful, that.”

“Did it upset you?”

“No, not really. You know, we weren’t exactly best buds, him and me. We were only half brothers, on our mum’s side. But just because you’re related doesn’t mean that you spend lots of time together. It doesn’t necessarily mean you even like each other, for that matter.”

“Didn’t you get on?”

“Yeah, or perhaps, hell, I don’t know.”

Lasse thought about it for a second or two. He lifted up one leg a little, scratched his crotch area and in doing so exposed a hole that was the size of a large coin. Then he started telling about his relationship with his brother. How it wasn’t really good. That they actually hadn’t had any contact at all this past year. And it was because of his own gambling. But he didn’t gamble now. For his son’s sake.

“I could always borrow money from my brother when things were really bad. He didn’t want Simon to go without food. It’s tough living on welfare and, you know, you’ve got to pay the rent and so on.”

Lasse rubbed the palm of his hand against his right eye, then went on: “But then something strange happened. My brother became stingy, claimed that he didn’t have any money. I thought that was bloody nonsense. If you live in Lindö then you’ve got money.”

“Did you ever find out what happened?” said Henrik.

“No, just that he said he couldn’t lend me anything more. That his old lady had put a stop to it. I had promised to pay him back, even though it wouldn’t be for a while, but I promised anyway. But I didn’t get any more money. He was an idiot. A stingy idiot. He could have done without a pricey steak dinner one evening and given me a hundred kronor, you might think. Couldn’t he? I would have, if I were him, that is.”

Lasse thumped his chest.

“Did you argue with him about money?”

“Never.”

“So you’ve never threatened your half brother or exchanged harsh words, anything like that?”

“The odd curse word, perhaps, but I would never have threatened him.”

“You have a son, right?” Mia went on.

“Yes, Simon.” Lasse held out a framed photo of a smiling boy with freckles.

“Mind you, he’s only five in that photo. Now he’s eight.”

“Have you got a better picture of him, a recent one?” said Henrik.

“I’ll have a look.”

Lasse reached toward a white cupboard with glass doors and pulled out a little box that was full of a jumble of stuff.

Sheets of paper, batteries and electric cables all tangled together. There was also a smoke detector, a headless plastic dinosaur and some sweet wrappers. And a glove too.

“I don’t know if I’ve got a decent recent one. The photos they take at school are so hellishly expensive. They charge four hundred kronor for twenty pictures. Who can order those? Bloody daylight robbery.”

Lasse let the sheets of paper fall onto the floor so he could get a better look at the contents of the box.

“No, I haven’t got a good one. But come to think of it, in my cell I might have one there.”

Lasse disappeared into the kitchen and came back with an old-fashioned flip phone in his hand. He remained standing on the floor and pressed the buttons.

Henrik noticed that the arrow button was missing and that Lasse had to use his little finger to browse through the picture folder.

“Here,” said Lasse, and held the cell toward Henrik, who took it and looked at the photo on the screen.

A low-res image showed a relatively tall and still freckled boy. Reddish cheeks. Friendly eyes.

Henrik complimented Lasse on his son’s good looks, then told him to send the picture via MMS to him. Within a minute he had saved it in his image archive.

“Is Simon at school?” said Henrik when he put his telephone back in his pocket.

“Yes, he is,” said Lasse and sat down on the stool again.

“When does he come home?”

“He’s with his mum this week.”

“Was he with you last Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you between five and seven in the evening?”

Lasse rubbed his hands up and down his shins.

“Simon played his videogames.”

“So you were both here, at home?”

He rubbed again.

“No. Only Simon.”

“Where were you then?”

“Er...an early poker evening, you know, just down the block. You’ve got to join in when your mates ask you. But this was the last time. Absolutely the last time. Because, you see, I don’t gamble. Not any longer.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE MAN WITH the scar paced back and forth. He glared at them with a wild look in his eyes, as they stood there in a row, barefoot on the stone floor. The windows were covered but in one or two places a sliver of light shone in between the wall planks.

The girl’s lips and cheeks ached from the glue of the silver tape they had slapped across her mouth. She had had difficulty breathing through her nose when they were in the van. Then, later, when they were pushed into the little boat, she had felt sick and been forced to swallow the vomit which had risen in her throat. The woman had ripped the tape off when they finally got to the big room, or hall, or whatever this place was.

The girl looked around without moving her head. Big beams supported the ceiling and she could see many spiders’ webs. Was it a stable? No. It was much bigger than that. There were no rugs and no mattress to sleep on. It couldn’t be someone’s house. At least it didn’t look like one, except for the stone floor. The girl had a stone floor at home too. But there the stones were always warm. Here, they were icy cold.

The girl shuddered but immediately straightened up again. She tried to stand up as straight as she could. Danilo, too, had pushed out his chest and raised his chin. But not Ester. She just cried. She held her hands in front of her face and refused to stop.

The man went up to Ester and said something in a loud voice. She didn’t understand what he said. Nor did any of the other children. So Ester cried even louder. Then the man raised his hand and hit her so hard that she fell down backward. He waved to the other two grown-ups who stood by the wall. They got hold of Ester’s arms and legs and carried her out. That was the last time she saw Ester.

The man walked slowly toward her, stopped, then leaned forward until his face was only a couple of centimeters away from hers. With eyes cold as ice, he said something in Swedish which she later would never forget.

“Don’t cry,” he said. “Never cry anymore. Never ever.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

MIA BOLANDER SAT with the others in the conference room for the last briefing of the day. They were going over a number of question marks in the murder investigation of Hans Juhlén. The most important surrounded the boy whose picture was now displayed on the large screen.

Gunnar Öhrn had given high priority to the as-yet unnamed boy. He was either directly connected to the murder, or he was a key witness in the investigation. Regardless, he had to be found. That meant even more door-to-door canvassing to ask if anybody could identify the boy.

Mia was pleased that she had left that sort of drudgery when she was promoted. Questioning neighbors wasn’t a challenge in the slightest. Absolutely nothing was exciting about it.

She was the first to help herself to the biggest cinnamon bun on the dish in the middle of the conference table. She was a competitive person, and could thank her elder brothers for that. In her childhood, everything had been about being first. Her brothers, who were five and six years older than she, had fought over who could do the most press-ups, who could race to the corner first and who could stay awake the longest. Mia struggled to impress her brothers, but they never let her win. Not even in something as silly as her memory.

So it had become natural for Mia to compete about virtually everything and this instinct had never waned. Since she had also been gifted with a decidedly volatile temperament, many of her classmates at school let her have her own way. Even in junior secondary school she had on several occasions been sent home for getting into fights with older pupils.

In her fifth year at the school, she had hit a classmate so hard that she drew blood. She could still remember the boy, her own age with a wide nose. He used to tease her and throw gravel at her during the PE lessons. He was also the only pupil who could run the 100 meter dash faster than she. He hadn’t gone unpunished. After a lesson one day, Mia had kicked him so hard on his shin, he had to go to the school nurse and then on to the hospital to deal with a crack in his bone. That in turn had almost gotten her suspended, but she claimed it was an accident. The incident was noted on her school record by the headmaster, but Mia couldn’t care less. She had run the fastest at the next PE lesson. That was all that mattered.

Mia gobbled up the rest of the bun. The granulated sugar fell onto the table and she scooped it all into a tiny mound, then licked her fingertip and used it to pick up the sugar and put it in her mouth.

Mia had almost no friends during her school years. When she was thirteen, her eldest brother died in a gang fight and she decided to go against the flow. At first she was forced to survive her tough suburban neighborhood where you were supposed to stick out as much as you could. Piercing, dyed hair, partly shaved head, no hair, tattoos, cuts, open wounds—nothing was alien. Not even for Mia, who herself had pushed a needle through one eyebrow just to fit in. But what distinguished her from the others was her attitude. She actually wanted to make something of her life. And with the help of her cocky attitude and her competitive spirit, she made it through school. She had decided that she wasn’t going to be a loser like her brother.

Mia helped herself to yet another cinnamon bun, then she held the dish out to Henrik, who shook his head no.

By now they had already spent close to an hour discussing how the boy might be involved in the case. Ola showed a frozen image of the boy from the security camera file. He was slightly turned away, crossing the street.

With the help of the keyboard, Ola showed more, image after image. They appeared one by one at a slow pace. The team followed the boy’s steps until the last thing to disappear was his hood.

Henrik picked up his cell and compared the images on the screen with that of Lasse Johansson’s son, Simon. He remarked that any suspicions against Simon were now dismissed.

“The nephew is shorter, more muscular. The boy on the picture is thinner,” he said.

“Let’s see.” Ola stretched to reach Henrik’s phone and looked at the digital photo.

“And this Simon has reddish hair. I think our guy is darker. That’s what it looks like, anyway,” said Henrik.

“Okay, so we can forget Simon, but that still leaves the question—who is the boy? We must get hold of him,” said Gunnar and moved on to the telephone log. Ola, who usually checked all the technical details, had been fully occupied with the security camera film so, to hurry the process along, Gunnar had chosen to check the lists himself. Now he pushed copies of the log into the middle of the table and let each of them take one.

Henrik took a gulp of coffee and looked at the first page.

“Hans Juhlén’s last call was on Sunday at 18:15 to the Miami pizzeria. Ola?”

Ola got up and noted the call on the time line on the wall.

“The phone call has been confirmed by the pizzeria and they also confirmed that he picked up the pizza at 18:40. You can see the other calls on the next page,” he said.

They all turned to page two.

“There weren’t many,” said Henrik.

“No, there are only a few. Most of them are to or from his wife. There is an outgoing call to a car service, but nothing remarkable about that,” said Gunnar.

“What about texts?” said Mia.

“Nothing strange there either,” said Gunnar.

Mia folded up the pages and threw them onto the table. “So what do we do now?”

“We must find that boy,” said Gunnar.

“Do we know anything about the half brother?” Anneli wondered aloud.

“Not much. Mia and I just interviewed him. He is single, on welfare, he says, with some kind of shared custody of his child. And he is addicted to gambling,” Henrik answered.

“Does he have a criminal record?” said Mia.

“No,” said Gunnar.

“My instinct is that he isn’t involved in the murder,” said Mia.

“What do we think about Hans Juhlén’s wife, then?” said Gunnar.

“I don’t think she did it,” said Mia.

“I’m not convinced either,” said Anneli. “We don’t have any witnesses or any decent technical evidence.”

“Lasse said something interesting when we saw him. He mentioned that Hans claimed to be broke. He suddenly didn’t have enough money to even lend Lasse a few kronor,” said Henrik. “Since we know he had received some threatening letters, we can assume that somebody had a hold on him. Perhaps that’s where the money went.”

“Could Hans have had gambling debts too?” said Mia.

“Possibly, that could also explain why he seemed so stressed, at least to his wife, recently. Maybe it wasn’t just the criticism his department was getting, but the threatening letters too.”

“Right, we’ll use that as a starting point. I want you to check his bank accounts. Ola, that’s the first thing you’ll do tomorrow morning,” said Gunnar.

“What about the computer?” said Ola.

“The bank statements first, then the computer. Right, that’s it,” said Gunnar.

Henrik looked at the clock and swore to himself when he saw it was already half past seven. Overtime again. Emma would have finished dinner and the children would have already gone to sleep. Oh hell!

He sighed and drank the last of the coffee, which was now cold.

* * *

Henrik Levin tried to unlock the front door as silently as he possibly could. He opened it quickly, stepped into the hall and immediately nipped into the bathroom.

When he had finished, he washed his hands, then looked at his face in the mirror. The stubble had grown over the last three days, and it needed trimming more than he had thought. He felt with his right hand on his cheek and around his chin. He didn’t want to shave now. A shower perhaps.

Henrik ran his fingers through his brown hair and noted a gray hair on his forehead. He immediately pulled it out and let it fall into the washbasin.

“Hi.”

Emma poked her head into the bathroom. Her hair was clumsily done up in a bun on the top of her head. She was wearing a red velour jumpsuit and black socks.

“Hi,” said Henrik.

“I hardly heard when you came in,” said Emma.

“I didn’t want to wake the children.”

“How’s your day been?”

“Okay. And yours?”

“Fine. I managed to paint the hall drawers.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah.”

“White?”

“White.”

“I thought I’d take a shower.”

Emma leaned her head against the doorpost. A strand of hair fell onto her brow and she pulled it back behind her ear.

“What’s the matter?” said Henrik.

“What?”

“It looks as if you want to say something.”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sure.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a good film on TV, I’m going to watch it in the bedroom.”

“I’ll come soon, just going to shower.”

“And shave?”

“Yes, I’ll shave.”

Emma smiled and closed the door behind her.

Oh well, Henrik thought, and dug out his razor from the drawer. He’d be having a shave after all.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Henrik came into the bedroom with the towel wrapped around his hips. Emma seemed lost in some magnificent drama that had won more than one Oscar. Henrik feared he would be forced to watch the end of the tearful film. Fortunately there was no five-year-old in the bed.

“Felix?” he said.

“Asleep in his room. He has made a ghost drawing for you.”

“Another one?”

“Yes,” Emma answered without taking her eyes off the huge TV on the wall.

Henrik sat down on the edge of the bed and glanced at the couple entwined around each other on the TV. Felix was in his own bed. Now perhaps there might be a chance to...

He put the towel aside, slipped in under the warm duvet and snuggled up close to Emma. He put his hand on her naked tummy, but her eyes stayed glued to the film. He leaned his head against her shoulder and slowly stroked her thighs. He felt her hand on top of his, and they played with each other’s fingers under the duvet.

“Emma,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Darling...”

“Yes?”

“There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

Emma didn’t answer. She studied the couple on the screen who were now united in a long, intense kiss.

“I’ve been thinking a little and you know that I’d like to start back at the gym. So I thought...if it’s okay, that I...that I might go twice a week. After work.”

Emma gave a start and for the first time took her eyes off the film. She gave him a disappointed look.

Henrik supported himself on one elbow.

“Please, sweetie?”

Emma raised her eyebrows. Then she demonstratively lifted Henrik’s hand off her tummy.

“No,” she answered briefly and returned to the end of the romantic story.

Henrik was still leaning on his elbow. Then he moved over onto his back with his head on the pillow and cursed himself. He knew better. He should have phrased his request in such a way that she couldn’t say no. He stared up at the ceiling, then he puffed up the pillow and turned his back to Emma. Sighed. No sex today either. And it was his own damned fault.

* * *

It had just started snowing when Jana Berzelius and Per Åström decided to leave the local restaurant, The Colander. Per had suggested a restaurant dinner out to celebrate their judicial successes in a dirty divorce case, and Jana had finally given in. Making food alone was not exactly her favorite pastime, nor was it Per’s.

“Thanks for this evening,” said Jana and got up from the table.

“Happy to do it again soon. If you’d like to,” said Per and smiled.

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Jana and refused to return his smile.

“That was a dishonest statement.”

“Not at all, dear Mr. Prosecutor.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No.”

“May I remind you that you appreciate my company?”

“Not one bit.”

“A drink before we go?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I fancy something with gin. It’ll have to be the usual. You?”

“No, thank you.”

“Then I’ll get two.”

Jana sighed as Per vanished off to the bar. She reluctantly sat down and saw through the window how the snowflakes were slowly falling to the ground. She put her elbows on the table, leaned her chin against her clasped hands and looked across toward Per who was talking to the barman.

She caught his eye and he waved from the bar the way small children often do, by opening and closing his hand. She shook her head at him and then looked toward the window again.

The first time she met Per, she had just arrived at her new office at the prosecution department. Her boss, Torsten Granath, had introduced them to each other and Per had amicably told her about routine procedures at the office. He had given her some tips about good restaurants too. Also about music. And asked her questions about everything else that wasn’t work-related. Jana had answered briefly. Some questions she hadn’t answered at all. Per wasn’t satisfied with the answer in the form of her sultry silence, and continued to ask various unnecessary questions. To Jana, Per’s curiosity felt like a sort of interrogation and she had told him to stop. Then she briefly informed him that she did not like small talk. He had simply grinned at her, in a dreadfully stupid way, and from that day on their friendly relationship developed.

The restaurant was fully booked. The dining room felt rather squashed with all the winter coats, and the brown checkered floor was wet from the snow tracked in on the guests’ shoes. The buzz of voices was loud and the clinking of glasses quiet. There were a few lamps and a lot of candles.

Jana’s eyes left the window and were again drawn to the bar, past Per and on to the mirror shelf behind the barman. She looked at the selection on offer and recognized the labels like Glenmorangie, Laphroaig and Ardberg. She knew they were among the classics and were all distilled in Scotland. Her father was keenly interested in whisky and insisted on sipping a smoky sort at every family dinner. Jana’s interest was limited, but she had been brought up not to say no to a glass when it was offered. She preferred a glass of white, from a well-chilled bottle of sauvignon blanc.

Per came back and Jana looked suspiciously at the large measures in the glasses he put down on the table.

“How strong?” she said.

“A single.”

Jana glared at her dining companion.

“Okay, okay, a double then. Sorry.”

Jana accepted his apology. She sipped her drink and made a face at the dry taste.

Somewhat later, when they had emptied the contents of the glasses, and Per had insisted on ordering two more, the conversation had turned into collegial bickering about morality and ethics in the world of law. After having discussed various stories about much-publicized cases and lawyers of doubtful reputation, the conversation turned to the problem of tired lay magistrates.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the lay-magistrate system should be radically changed. Instead of political nominees they should appoint people who are interested in law and justice,” said Per.

“I agree,” said Jana.

“You want people who are dedicated. After all, their votes on the magistrates’ bench are decisive.”

“Absolutely.”

“Now two adolescents in Stockholm have lodged an appeal on the grounds that one of the lay magistrates had a snooze during the court proceedings.”

“Yes, I heard about that.”

“It’s simply not acceptable that we have to incur the expense of a retrial just because a lay magistrate dozed off during the court hearing. He should be docked his pay. Unbelievable,” said Per.

He took a gulp of his drink, then leaned across the table and gave Jana a serious look. Jana met his eyes. Serious too.

“What?” she asked.

“How are you getting on with the Hans Juhlén murder?”

“You know I can’t say anything about that.”

“I know. But how’s it going?”

“It’s not going at all.”

“What’s happening?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Can’t you tell me a little? Off the record?”

“Drop it.”

“Is there some dirt there?”

Per smirked at Jana and his eyebrows went up and down.

“Bit of a dirty story there, right? There’s usually some dirt when it’s about bosses.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“I interpret your silence as a yes.”

“But you can’t do that.”

“Can’t I? Cheers, by the way!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Wednesday, April 18

JOHN HERMANSSON FOUND THE BOY.

Seventy-eight years old and a widower for five years, John lived at Viddviken, a little village by the coast, five kilometers from Arkösund. The house was really too large for the single man and needed far too many hours of maintenance. But what kept him there was his love of the natural surroundings. Since his wife had died, he had trouble sleeping. He usually woke up very early in the morning and instead of lying in bed he would get up, regardless of the weather, and go for a long walk. Even on a chilly morning like this. He had stepped into his Wellingtons, pulled on his anorak and gone out. The sun had just started to rise and was spreading on the frosty grass in the garden. The air felt damp.

John passed the gate and decided for once to skip the forest and walk down to the sea instead. It was only a couple of hundred meters to the shore and the rocks facing Bråviken Bay. He walked down the narrow gravel lane to the water. The gravel crunched under his feet.

He followed the narrow lane that turned off to the right and after the two big pine trees he reached the sea. The water was like a mirror in front of him. That was unusual. There were usually high waves in the bay. John took a deep breath and could see it as he exhaled. Just as he was about to go back, he caught sight of something strange by the shore. Something silvery that glistened. He went closer to the ditch and bent down to look. It was a gun and it had blood on it.

John scratched his head. A bit farther away, the grass was red. But his eyes fastened on what lay next to that, under a fir tree. A boy. He lay with his face down with wide-open eyes. His left arm was bent at an unnatural angle and his head was covered in blood.

The nausea came quickly and John breathed heavily. His legs failed him and he had to sit down on a rock. He was unable to get up again, just sat there with his hand over his mouth and stared at the dead boy.

In his heart he knew that this horrific scene would be etched in his memory.

Forever.

* * *

The alarm reached the Norrköping Police at 05:02.

Thirty minutes later two patrol cars turned down the gravel lane at Viddviken. Another five minutes later the ambulance came for John Hermansson who was still sitting on the rock by the sea. A man who was delivering newspapers had noticed the old guy and asked him if everything was okay. He had pointed at the dead boy and then rocked back and forth and made a strange mumbling noise.

Just after 06:00 yet another police car turned down the lane.

Gunnar Öhrn had hurried across to the ditch closely followed by Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander. Anneli Lindgren came directly after them with a bag containing the tools necessary for a technical investigation of the finding place.

“Shot,” Anneli noted and put on her latex gloves.

The boy’s lifeless eyes stared at her; his lips were dry and cracked. His hooded sweater was dirty and discolored by the coagulated blood. Without a word she pulled out her mobile and phoned the medical examiner, Björn Ahlmann.

He answered after the second ring.

“Yes?”

“There’s a job for you.”

* * *

It couldn’t be prevented. The news flash from the TT national wire service about a young boy having been found murdered near Norrköping spread at an incredible speed to all the media in Sweden, and the Norrköping police press officer had calls from a dozen journalists who wanted more details. Since it involved a minor shot to death, the entire nation was engaged, and on the morning TV shows various criminological experts expressed their views. They had found a weapon near the body. Many people assumed that the boy was from criminal circles, which sparked discussions about the level of violence among today’s youth and its consequences.

When the phone rang with the news, it woke Jana Berzelius from her sleep. She got out of bed and decided to take a brisk shower to wake herself up. Since she had a bit of a hangover, she would much rather have stayed in bed. It was Per’s fault. They ended up having three drinks, more than she could handle. And before that they had shared a bottle of wine with their meal and ignored the advice about drinking one glass of water for every glass of something stronger.

After the refreshing shower she took a pill for her headache and allowed herself a few moments, her hair still wet, to lie stretched out on her bed. She counted slowly to twenty, then got dressed, brushed her teeth and looked for a packet of peppermint-flavored gum. After that, she was ready for the meeting at the police station.

“We are here to summarize what we know about the boy who was found dead out at Viddviken this morning.”

Gunnar used a magnet to put up the photo on the whiteboard before going on.

“Anneli, who is still out at the scene, said that the boy had been shot and that he died sometime between 19:00 and 23:00 on Sunday night. According to her, the broken vegetation indicated that the boy had been in movement and judging by the injuries to the body, he was shot from behind.”

Gunnar took a sip of water and cleared his throat.

“At present we don’t know whether the victim has other injuries or was sexually assaulted. The autopsy will show that and the medical examiner has given his word that he will put together a report as soon as possible. We hope as soon as tomorrow. The boy’s clothing has been sent to forensics.”

He got up from the chair.

“We are still combing the area around the murder scene, but as yet we haven’t got any footprints or anything else from the perpetrator. The only thing that we are relatively certain about is that the dead boy at Viddviken is the same boy who was seen on that security camera footage from Östanvägen.”

“And the murder weapon?” said Henrik.

“We don’t know exactly yet. What we do know is that he was shot and a weapon was found near him. But the weapon has not been confirmed as the one that killed him. What we are certain about is that the weapon found near the boy was a Glock, and Hans Juhlén was killed...”

“...with a Glock.” Henrik filled in the sentence.

“Exactly. The serial number is as yet unknown. I have sent the weapon to the national lab which will examine the bullets still in the gun. If they match those that killed Hans, we will have reason to suspect that this boy was somehow involved in Juhlén’s murder. We’ve taken his fingerprints too.”

“And?” said Mia.

“They matched. The handprints and fingerprints in Hans Juhlén’s house match the boy’s,” said Gunnar.

“So he was there,” said Mia.

“Yes. And my first guess says that he...”

“...is the murderer.”

Jana mumbled the words and felt a creeping sensation along her backbone. She was surprised at her own reaction.

“...is the murderer, exactly,” Gunnar made clear.

“But, what the hell, kids don’t murder people. Not just like that. And especially not here in Norrköping, not in Lindö. I think it’s extremely unlikely that he could have done it, or done it alone,” said Mia.

“Perhaps. But for the moment we don’t have anything else to go on,” said Gunnar.

“But then, what’s the motive?” said Henrik. “Would a child send threatening letters to a head of department at the Migration Board?”

“It’s up to us to find out whether the boy is the murderer or not. And we must find out who killed the boy,” said Gunnar, breathing heavily.

“But who is the boy?”

“We don’t know that yet either. Nor do we know why he was in Viddviken or how he came to be there. At any rate, he hasn’t been lying in the water, that much is clear. He was on the shore but his back was turned against the sea,” said Gunnar.

“He was running away from somebody,” said Henrik.

“It seems so,” said Gunnar.

“No tire tracks?” said Henrik.

“So far, we haven’t found any, no,” said Gunnar.

“So he came by boat, then. And the perpetrator must have been onboard,” said Henrik.

“But we can’t exclude the possibility that he got there by car or some other means,” said Gunnar.

“Witnesses?” said Mia.

“None. But we are checking the entire coast from Viddviken to Arkösund.”

“But still, who is he? The boy,” said Henrik.

Gunnar took a deep breath.

“So far he isn’t in any registry that we have. But, Mia, I want you to check through all cases of missing children. Check new ones as well as old, even those where the period of possible prosecution has expired. Get a photo of the boy and talk with the social services, check schools and youth clubs. We might have to ask the public for help,” said Gunnar.

“Via the media?” said Henrik.

“Yes, but I’d rather not do that. There would be such a...how can I put it?...such a circus.”

Gunnar went up to the map on the wall and pointed out the finding place.

“This is where the body was found. So we’re looking for some sort of a boat or vehicle that passed Viddviken on the water between 19:00 and 23:00 Sunday night.”

He moved his hand upwards across the map.

“We’ve put in a unit to go door-to-door there, and there’s a dog patrol going over the immediate area.”

“What shall we do about Kerstin?” said Jana. “If you can’t get me more evidence, I’ll have to release her early tomorrow morning.”

“Perhaps she knows who the boy is?” said Mia.

“We must also ask her about her husband’s financial situation,” said Gunnar.

“Ola, make sure you have scoured his bank accounts. Private, savings account, investments, you name it. Check them all.”

Ola nodded in response.

“Henrik, interview Kerstin again. We haven’t finished with her. Not yet,” said Gunnar.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IT HAD HURT. She knew it would. She had heard it through the walls. But she didn’t know it would hurt so badly.

One of the grown-ups had told her to follow him into the dark storeroom. There he had tied her hands behind her back and forced her head forward. With a sharp piece of glass he carved her new name on her neck. It said KER. From now on that was what she would be called, that was who she would become and remain so forever. While the man with the ugly scar gave her an injection, he had conveyed to her that she would never be hurt again, nothing would happen to her now. At the same time that the sense of calm spread through her body, a strength also grew within her. She didn’t feel fear any longer. She felt powerful. Undefeatable. Immortal.

The grown-ups let her stay in the storeroom with her hands tied so that she wouldn’t touch her wound until it had healed. When she was finally let out, she felt weak and cold and had no appetite.

The girl tried to see the carved letters in a mirror but she couldn’t. She put her hand on the back of her neck. It stung; the skin was still sensitive. A scab had formed and the girl couldn’t help fingering it, but then it started to bleed. She was angry with herself and tried to stop the bleeding by applying pressure with the sleeve of her sweater. But the red stains on the cloth grew larger each time she pressed it against her neck.

She looked at her arm in front of her. The stains were large and she turned on the tap and held her arm under it to try to get rid of the blood. But it didn’t help, it only got worse. Now the sleeve was bloody and wet.

She leaned against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. The glow from the round lamp was weak and there were dead flies inside the glass globe. How would they punish her now? She wasn’t meant to touch her neck. That’s what they had said. The wound had to heal completely. If you touched it, it would look much worse. Ugly.

She slid down to the floor with her back against the wall. The break was soon over; she couldn’t stay much longer in the toilet. How long had she been on the island? A month? Perhaps several months. The trees had at any rate lost all their leaves. She had thought that the golden-brown leaves were so lovely. At home she had never seen a tree that changed color like that. Every time she stood to attention in the yard, she wished she could cast herself into the piles of golden leaves. But she never could. She was only allowed to fight. All the time. Against the wiry boy Minos. And even against Danilo. He was bigger and stronger than she, so she hadn’t been any match for him. He tried not to hit her too hard, but eventually he had to. If you didn’t fight, you got beaten, beaten a lot, so Danilo hit her. At first he tried to be careful, a light thump and a slap. But then the man with the ugly scar had lifted him up so violently by his hair that he pulled some clumps out.

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