Dr. Christine Palmer knew hospitals well, and those in Stockholm were like any other. She waited until her nurse had cycled through on her regular rotation, then got out of bed. She’d been admitted overnight for observation, but her diagnosis was a relief for an expectant mother—the pain in her upper abdominal region was no more than an aggravation of the injury she’d sustained from her leap across the harbor a week ago. A broken rib, possibly, but this could not be verified by X-ray since her pregnancy test had come back positive. She was still in pain today, but reckoned that the hospital was done with her. The reason she hadn’t been discharged likely had more to do with the police. She had not seen them yet, but since she’d given her true name when she was admitted, Christine knew it was only a matter of time.

She peered into the hallway but didn’t see her nurse. Still dressed in a hospital gown, she spotted a wheelchair across the hall, which she thought might draw less attention than simply ambling down the hallway. She was one step out of her room when she heard, “Going somewhere?”

To her left was a fair-skinned man with graying blond hair. He said, “I’m Assistant Commissioner Paul Sjoberg, Criminal Investigation Unit of the Stockholm police.”

“It’s about time,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“That’s a long story.”

“I have all morning,” the policeman said.

Christine pointed toward the chair. “I wasn’t going to leave, if that’s what you’re thinking. I believe I have a friend on another floor.”

He seemed to consider this. “Perhaps we could go see him soon. But first, I think we should talk.”

Sjoberg put her in the wheelchair, and then pushed her back into her room. He took a seat on a yellow visitor’s chair so ugly it would have looked at home in any hospital in the world. He said, “I’m not sure where to begin. This interview ought to take place in a proper room at headquarters—you can expect that soon. But right now time is critical. I want to find your husband. He is your husband, isn’t he?”

She nodded.

“Are you aware that he killed two men here in Stockholm?”

“He told me that was—” Christine hesitated, then, “let me start at the beginning.”

And she did, a recap much like the one she’d given David on Bricklayer. She followed with a brief account of her exploits since their split at the island of Bulleron. She said as little as possible about David’s activities since arriving in Sweden, and nothing at all about his past. After fifteen minutes Sjoberg asked the question she knew was coming.

“Where is he now?”