My eyes get blurry from lack of sleep but I snap off a line of Marabou milk chocolate, the one with excellent salty crackers hidden inside, and keep on searching. Some war-crime files I’d rather not look at too closely. Reviews of Medicine Man, the Dustin Hoffman movie. Law suits and criminal cases against dentists who removed multiple teeth from children unnecessarily for financial gain. My rear molar starts aching again out of sympathy. I do a search of Värmland and sketch out a map pinpointing the location of all dental surgeries. But it wasn’t necessarily a qualified dentist who did this heinous thing. Back in my London student days I once helped a flatmate repair his own filling. He couldn’t afford a dentist and couldn’t get into an NHS surgery. So he did it himself. DIY filling-repair kit from Boots in Bethnal Green. He drank some of my rum before he started. I was just the mirror holder, really. And he managed it. Replaced the chunk of broken filling with a new one. I print off the map and check the results. Visberg Tandklinik is the closest dental practice to the location of the murder, we know that already. That surgery has two registered dentists: Sven Edlund and his non-practicing wife, Eva. Then there’s Tobias the hygienist and Julia Beck the receptionist. In Gavrik we have the Folktandklinik. Other practices further afield in Torsby, Falun, Munkfors and so on.

My phone rings and I put my aid back in. The jingle plays and then I can hear.

‘Tuva Moodyson.’

‘I haven’t got long,’ says Thord.

‘Talk over a quick lunch?’

‘How quick?’

‘Twenty minutes?’

‘Fifteen. The Hotel. I’m leaving now.’

He hangs up.

I grab my coat and boots and cross the road. He’s there coming out of the station. If I walk with him I might get sixteen minutes. Seventeen if I walk him back after.

‘The morning I’ve had,’ he says.

‘The head?’

He nods. ‘And the paperwork. Got my mid-year appraisal next week and I did not need this.’

We’re already outside Hotel Gavrik. Small town. Short distances. The hotel is backdropped by the twin chimneys of the factory. The hotel’s sign is wonky as usual and the entrance is flanked by two carved pumpkins.

I hold the door for him.

‘Lunch, is it?’ says the owner-receptionist-waitress.

What do you think? Double room for a quick lunchtime shag, the local journo and second in command of the cop shop in full uniform.

‘Yes, please,’ says Thord, because he’s a better person than I am.

She shows us to a table but we opt for a quieter one in the far corner.

Paper tablecloth, paper napkins. Photocopied menu says pumpkin soup followed by meatballs and mash followed by fruit salad. Vegetarian option for main course is mash and salad. Welcome to Gavrik.