I say hi to Nils and Lena then get to work. Writing up the story of elk heads, stolen and now recovered, but also building outlines for the peripheral stories around the murder case. Local readers don’t just want forensics and police transcripts and maps of where the body was discovered. I’ve learnt all this to my cost. They also want threads connecting the story to the local community. A murder itself, never mind one with a beheading and ritualistic display, is difficult to digest. But interviews with local shopkeepers about Arne Persson’s character, about his restored Chevrolet; interviews with players at his old chess club, detailing how highly competitive Arne Persson was when playing the game; snippets about how his late father was a doctor based in the asylum, now refitted as the Hive; photographs of Visberg town square, comparing the square in 1900 to the square in 2000 – that’s what’s fascinating for locals; it’s what connects them to the heinous crime, what they need or want, or both. They deserve to be helped through this. Because they still have to live here once the slick-back journalists from Stockholm and Malmö have long gone.

I research DNA from human-hair samples. Noora’s right. Of course she is. The hair itself, without the root, has no nuclear DNA, but it does contain mitochondrial DNA, which doesn’t identify the person the hair came from exactly, but it does identify the common maternal thread. Who in Visberg has red hair? I google red-hair statistics for Sweden. Depends on your definition of red but the rates can be as high as thirty per cent. Nowhere higher in the world, save for the UK, Ireland and Holland. I get to work on a list. People I’ve seen in Visberg who have red hair. Julia, the receptionist at Edlund Tandklinik has red hair. I suspect Eva Edlund does as well, but she dyes it blonde, like all her fellow club members seem to. The wood-carving sisters have grey, scraggy hair. Tobias the hygienist has short, blond, hair. Sven Edlund’s hair is black and grey, salt-and-pepper, as Tam would say. The gamer twins are both blond. Luka Kodro from the grill has jet-black hair. Ragnar Falk’s beard and hair is as white as Santa’s.

Lena’s door bursts open.

Her mobile is pressed to her shoulder.

‘Visberg,’ she says. ‘Get to Visberg now.’

I get up from my chair and Lena tells the person on the other end of the call that she’ll call them back.

‘Grave’s been robbed in Visberg Cemetery. The Lutheran church. Get there and take photos.’

Of course I’ll take photos.

‘Whose grave?’

‘Find out. Go.’

I grab the Posten’s proper camera, a digital SLR, and run out, almost knocking Lars over as I go.

‘Easy,’ he says.