Kerstin evaluated what Sandra had said—perhaps the tone of it frightened her. But soon enough she collected her thoughts.

“If the photographer didn’t have anything to do with Hallin, he or she was probably just as much to blame for my husband’s prolonged suffering. And even his death. It might have been possible to save him if he had received medical attention in time. The photographer documented the scene of the accident but didn’t call emergency services.”

“Another person to hate then,” Sandra noted quietly.

“But it might be worse than that,” said Kerstin. “As you’ve noticed, I’ve thought a lot about this since we last spoke. There’s another possibility. What if the photographer was involved in the accident?”

“Then why document the fallout?” Sandra responded.

“To direct suspicion elsewhere? Hallin might just have been passing. Stopped and taken in the situation, but concluded there was nothing he could do, that the situation appeared to be under control. He may have assumed that someone—the photographer—had already raised the alarm. The photographer took a photo of the Audi above the ravine, and then implied that it was the car that had caused the accident and then left the scene.”

“Shouldn’t Hallin have contacted the police later on then, when the newspapers reported it as a single-car crash that was only discovered after four days?” Sandra queried.

She wanted Hallin to be guilty. At the same time, the scenario set out by Kerstin was completely plausible. And the fact that Hallin hadn’t contacted the police immediately was hardly surprising: he had been driving while drunk and had just raped a woman. The fact that he didn’t contact them later on was because he didn’t want to admit to having been in the area at that time if the woman—Sandra—had unexpectedly reported the rape.

“Perhaps he doesn’t read the papers,” Kerstin speculated without conviction.

“That may be the case,” said Sandra, whose thoughts were heading in a different direction.

“It would explain why he didn’t take the blackmail attempt seriously,” said Kerstin. “He wasn’t involved in the car accident, so he ignored the whole thing.”

“That’s true,” said Sandra, who really didn’t want it to be that way. “But then surely he would have reported the blackmail attempt to the police?”

“He probably thought it was just a joke,” said Kerstin, with a laugh. “When you think about it, six million is a pretty daft sum to demand.”

Sandra grinned too. They had come so far in their conversation that they could laugh at it all. It was a big step forward for Kerstin—for both of them. Even if Kerstin wasn’t aware that this therapy was operating in both directions.

When the call was over, Sandra lost herself in her thoughts once again. Hallin could be innocent in relation to the tragic accident. It bothered her very badly, but the possibility was there. But what other reasonable explanation could there be for the photographer handing over their evidence—which implicitly implicated Hallin as the guilty party—to the widow without calling 112?