It was crazy really that she hadn’t already contacted the police to find out what they had to say, to find out what their view was on Hallin’s role in the disappearance, and to request police protection at the hospital. After all, the kidnapper had not been fully successful in his endeavours thus far. At the same time, it seemed somehow pointless—assigning the three-year-old and thereby herself such importance that uniformed police officers had to guard the room they were in, as if they were in some Hollywood movie.

Of course Hallin wouldn’t try anything here and now. It would draw too much attention and create too much commotion in relation to himself. He had to assume that Sandra would make sure that all spotlights were aimed at him in particular. So when all things were considered, Sandra had nothing to fear, but she was still sitting there throwing suspicious glances around and jumping at the slightest sound from outside the ward. It was just a feeling she had—it might be illogical but it was still very tangible. Somehow, she felt exposed, and the darkness and stillness around her did nothing to improve matters. Right now, the morning seemed a very distant prospect.

She browsed on her phone a bit to see whether she had missed anything. She had read somewhere that using your mobile was the last thing you should do if you wanted to try and sleep. The flickering light, or the sound, or whatever it was, triggered all the wrong receptors in the nervous system, and postponed sleep by several hours. Splendid, Sandra thought to herself. She rediscovered the message she had received earlier that evening from Kerstin. She decided to give it another look in the absence of anything else to do, and she sent the photo to her laptop via Bluetooth.

She imported the blurry photo to her image application, but realised before she had even got started that she lacked the resources and skills necessary to deal with it. Instead, she sent it over to one of the editors at the newspaper who she knew was working tonight and asked him get someone with the right expertise to do their very best to enhance the photo quality. Then she did what she could on her own: she enlarged it, auto corrected, modified the exposure and contrast and anything else she could think of without being able to make head or tail of what was in the photo. Other than it being a car in the rain, and possibly a person.