It would have to be that way. He parked the car in a space on Stora Torget and walked on shaky legs to his office. It was snowing heavily, and he pulled up his hood to avoid getting wet hair.

He told the receptionist he had been for lunch with PayEx and then walked over to XL-Bygg and back to pick up a few things. Then he snuck into his office without anyone else noticing. He sat there, staring into space for the rest of the day—apart from a few interruptions to fetch coffee when voices were audible in the kitchenette. He took care to keep his distance and not breathe in a way that would suggest associations with alcohol to anyone. He coughed into the crook of his arm and encouraged the suggestion that he might have caught a cold.

IT WAS ALMOST a week after that fateful day that he sat at the breakfast table reading about the accident in the newspaper. It said there had only been one car, which was a big relief. If the police had suspected anything else, it wouldn’t have said there was only one car. And the poor devil driving had, as expected, died. But who would have thought otherwise? Apparently he had been there for four days, which was a little tragic, even if he had been dead at the time. He must have been, given the long flight through the air and how the wreck had looked.

That reflection in particular put him ill at ease. The fact that the driver in the other car hadn’t with one hundred percent certainty died at the moment of impact. Jan had been struggling with that uncertainty for a week now. But he would still couldn’t have acted differently, he just couldn’t. And it must have gone without saying that the bloke had departed this life in the same moment the car hit the ground and was crushed like that. Jan playing mountain climber in his loafers wouldn’t have changed a thing.

His liver pâté sandwich tasted of nothing. He swallowed what was left in his mouth, but put the remaining sandwich to one side under a paper napkin. Perhaps the jar of pickled gherkins had been open in the fridge for too long, even if his wife ate from it perfectly happily. Gunilla, who had no idea how close she had come to being a widow just a few days earlier.

Jan had to make an effort not to be gloomy about everything. He thought that what was really positive was that the victim had been alone in the car: there hadn’t been a baby or a wife in the back seat or anything like that. That would have been really difficult. Only the driver had left this earth, and that could happen to anyone who was a little careless while driving.

On the other hand, that wife who had been lucky not to be in the car had the misfortune of losing her husband, according to the local paper. But that was a forgone conclusion from the very start, really. Her old man wasn’t exactly a rally car champion.