Sanderson weighed asking if he wanted a.m. or p.m., but decided there was no point in antagonizing the man. Samuels was a nuisance, but in the end only a man doing his job. They’d been at it for the better part of an hour. What is the date? Can you tell me the year? Where are we? Ridiculous hoops, but hoops he had to jump through all the same. It hadn’t helped that when he’d been asked to count backward by sevens, starting with one hundred, Sanderson had stumbled at seventy-nine. But then, he wasn’t taking any of it very seriously. To make his misery complete, he’d woken with another headache. He’d be damned if he was going to mention that to the doctor.

Sanderson drew a clock with Mickey Mouse hands and handed it over.

Dr. Samuels frowned. He was a tall man, balding and with a beard that looked positively Freudian. It seemed as if every shrink Sanderson had ever known tried for the same look, a manifestation of transference or repression or some damned thing that made them all, in his view, no better than the poor sods they were passing judgment on.

“How old was your mother when she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s?”

“I can’t remember.”

The doctor looked at him uncertainly.

“Sixty, maybe sixty-one.”

A sigh. “Do you have any trouble balancing your checkbook?”

“Yes, but only because I need a raise.”

“Please, Inspector. We’re nearly done. I’m going to give you three words. Please say them back to me in reverse order. Cashier, lumber, gable.”

“Pignon, bois, caissier.”

The doctor stared at him blankly.

“Gable, lumber, cashier—in French, because you didn’t specify a language. Doctor, perhaps we could continue these parlor games later over a pint, but I really should be going. The streets are not as safe as they ought to be lately, and my oath obliges me to do something about it, notwithstanding the off-chance that there may be beta-amyloid proteins clogging my brain.”

“All right,” Samuels said. “I think I have enough to work with. But I will insist on an MRI.”

Sanderson nearly protested, but decided it would do no good. He heaved a sigh and said, “Let’s get on with it then.”

Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

Janna Magnussen banked the Cessna into another tight turn.

“There are fifty thousand cabins in the Stockholm Archipelago,” she said. “I don’t see a single one here.”

“This is the place,” Slaton said. “I’m sure of it.”