I double-lock my door and send my photographs from tonight to Thord at his official police-email address, like the Sheriff asked me to. They’re not hi-res but when I zoom into the photos I can see the car is dark blue and the registration plate is either missing or else it’s been covered over. The top-hat man looks strong. The boot sits open, a coil of blue rope visible in the boot light. And the look on Emil’s face says, what the hell is happening to me and why is nobody coming to help? It says, don’t hurt me. It says, do not kill me.

Why did they kidnap him, of all people? Emil seems harmless enough. Sure, I didn’t appreciate his less-than-subtle candy-bracelet routine, but he didn’t touch me. Nobody in Visberg has ever said a bad word against him. Did he do something? Was he to blame somehow for his father’s accident? Or did he know something?

There’s an argument flaring up in the next-door apartment again.

No bangs on the walls this time, but swearing and screams. Crying. If it wasn’t for little Dan and the fact I can remove my hearing aids whenever I like, I’d probably move. In fact I’d definitely move.

I check my fridge. A lettuce that has turned urine-yellow. Why do I buy salad just to let it rot? Half a carton of milk and half a carton of filmjölk, the sour milk my London flatmates never really grew accustomed to. Sweet, soft cheese, known as messmör. It tastes like tangy caramel. A bar of Marabou with digestive pieces. No alcohol. Two bottles of Coke – it tastes so much better from real glass bottles. And a box of long-life UHT orange juice. I close it and open the freezer. Lots of snow, the kind you don’t want in a freezer, and a half-eaten box of fish fingers. I take them out and then there’s a knock.

On my internal door?

I think about the threatening front-page note. And the postcard with the poem. Someone from inside the building, or at least someone who has the code?

Another knock.

Two more.

I swallow hard and take the stungun from my handbag, the one Benny Björnmossen gave me.

‘Hello?’ I say.

‘It’s me, dickhead.’

I open and Tam’s standing there, shivering and holding up two bags of Thai food.

I breathe a big sigh of relief and let her in and double-lock the door.

She looks at the folded, cardboard box of fish fingers on the counter and points to it. ‘That’s why I’m here, see? Panang or Pad Thai?’

‘Pad Thai.’