ONE EVENING WHEN Sandra had gone to bed, but still hadn’t fallen asleep, she heard footsteps on the porch. It happened fairly often when you lived in the country, and sometimes she would catch the intruder red-handed, sometimes she would see the tracks the morning after. In the summer they had no such needs, but during the rest of the year wild animals weren’t bothered by stairs if it was something edible they were after. A pot filled with wilting summer plants for instance, or like now: spring bulbs that were almost over.

The sound of the uninvited guest made her more alert, and the light May evening didn’t make it any easier for her drift off. Instead, her thoughts began to whir, and for better or worse it was Hallin who dominated them.

It had been a week and she hadn’t heard from him. She wondered what his reasoning was—she tried to put herself in the shoes of someone like him in a threatening situation like this.

The denial was hardly sincere on his part. In all likelihood, he remembered the event. That was unless he had raped so many women that he couldn’t keep count, but this was highly unlikely since Sandra hadn’t heard any suggestion of there being a serial rapist on Gotland. It hurt her a little to think that others who had been affected behaved more soundly than she had, and actually reported the attacks.

Nevertheless, Hallin was probably thinking about it right now, speculating which direction the devilment that had hit him might take.

The easiest thing would simply be to cough up and be done with it. But perhaps he couldn’t do that without his wife getting curious and starting to ask questions, and that was possibly a fate worse than death for him. It might also be that he couldn’t afford it—however improbable that sounded for a man of his age and stature in society. Three thousand seven hundred kronor a month ought to be manageable for most people in his situation.

The other option was to let Sandra report the case to the social services, whereupon he would still be forced to pay support at parity with Sandra’s fairly generous offer once there had been a paternity test. Which wouldn’t enable him to keep it from his wife either. There was also the risk here that Sandra would report the rape—something he must be scared to death about. But perhaps he thought the risk was minimal that Sandra would have the energy to start a process like that after so many years, and that she would lose if she did. Perhaps he was also fostering some hope that he wasn’t the father of the child and he therefore had no intention of putting a penny in her account until she had managed to prove it.