There’s a bloodstain or a paint stain on the beanbag near the blackboard. Hans Wimmer opens a door I hadn’t noticed before, a door to another staircase leading lower still. A basement beneath a basement.

I jog to the stairs and say, ‘Thanks then,’ and run up two at a time.

A stumble toward the top and I grab the chain to steady myself and it cuts my index finger. The wind has picked up outside and the apple trees are thrashing around. I try the lock but it’s fixed so I can’t open it.

A bang downstairs. The sound of an engine starting.

I fumble with the door and after a while it gives and I step out into the cool November air.

Eva Edlund appears as if from nowhere.

I suck the wound on my finger.

‘Was it you who defaced the Edlund family statue with that pamphlet?’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘Keep them to the benches and shops, please. The statue is a protected monument, just ask the Kommun.’

‘Can I ask you a question?’

Eva squints.

‘Have you seen Hans Wimmer’s kids recently?’ I can’t get the image of the bloodied beanbag out of my head. ‘I’m just checking up on them. Making sure they’re okay.’

‘His children?’ she says, looking up at the broken clock outside the shop. ‘Hans Wimmer has no children.’

46

Eva walks off in her chequered golf trousers. She glances back at me.

Hans Wimmer has no children? What about the toys? The car seat?

I turn to face the clock shop and the closed sign is back on the door. ‘Tempus Fugit. On Vacation’. The sign across the stairs down to the basement is swinging back and forth. Doesn’t feel right. And his house is closest to the original murder scene.

Maybe there are kids around but they’re his step-children. Would Eva know every aspect of his life? Maybe he has a girlfriend who has kids?

Noora’s on the other side of the square checking someone’s driving licence.

I run over.

She ignores me and tells the guy from Svensson’s Saws & Axes to drive more slowly, especially now we’re in November. He looks at her like, I’ll do what I want, and then gets back into his pick-up truck.

‘Got a sec?’

She nods and we walk over to the bandstand.

‘Search party found a black hat near the old steelworks,’ she says.

‘Emil’s?’

‘Nope. They got over-excited and called Chief Björn, they even demanded a CSI team, you believe that? Margareta Eriksson says he never even owned a black hat.

‘Hans Wimmer,’ I say.

We sit down on chairs under the canopy of the bandstand.

‘I haven’t got long,’ she says. ‘What about him?’

‘He has kids’ toys in his shop basement and also in his house deep in Visberg forest. But Eva Edlund just told me he has no kids.’