When the blackmail letter had turned up on the kitchen counter one dinner time, Gunilla hadn’t confronted him straightaway, despite the fact that his reaction awakened suspicions, judging by her expression. She had let him withdraw to his study with the letter before she checked up on him, at the expense of the food getting cold on the stove. She had seen him fumbling through the photos on the sly and demanded an explanation from him. It turned out that she had already drawn certain conclusions about what had happened that day, and now that Jan had come clean about everything that had happened, she had been set on solving the problem rather than showering him with reproach. “Think,” she had insisted. “If it was impossible for the girl to take those photos then someone else must have done it. Think.” But Jan had managed that all by himself, just before Gunilla had showed up. He had told her about the memory of Peter Norling’s company car up there on the narrow forest track above the ravine. How he had realised that Norling had in all likelihood been the person behind the blackmail attempt against him. He had to be the one who was threatening to go to the police with the photos and report Jan for at least the hit-and-run. If he didn’t get six million kronor.

Now it transpired—at least if Sandra’s serial was to be believed—that Peter Norling had been by the ravine and had witnessed the accident, but that he was innocent of the blackmail attempt. Nevertheless, he had vanished after a few days, and with him the threat. This had been very fortuitous for Jan, who hadn’t come up with a better plan than hoping for the best while awaiting catastrophe in a state of perplexity. As far as Gunilla was concerned, that kind of approach was alien—and Jan ought to have understood that back then. Naively, he had never regarded it as Gunilla’s concern that he would end up in prison for rape, a hit-and-run, and so on. He had seen that as his own problem.