He looked around and noticed with satisfaction that no weeds grew along the walls, in spite of the long gap between the wall and the pavement. He was clearly not the only one who was serious about removing unwanted weeds early in the summer. Lady Gúgúlú and the hidden people she obviously believed lived in the rocks wouldn’t be so impressed, he thought, smiling to himself. He shook off these thoughts as three patrol cars drove into the neatly swept yard. The first out was Helena, ready to get to work, with a folder of paperwork in one hand, containing all the forms they would need.

‘Well,’ she said, handing him a sheet of paper from the folder. ‘There’s a long day ahead of us.’

‘True,’ he said, stifling a yawn. There was always an inner exhaustion that took hold of him whenever he was presented with a potential crime scene. He looked down at the form. It was the registration document for Björn’s car, a blue Subaru Outback. He glanced around and saw the car parked in the space marked with the number of Björn’s flat. He compared the registration number on the form with the car’s number plate, and when he was satisfied 249that they tallied, he handed the paperwork to one of the uniformed officers.

‘We’ll need to take the car as well.’

‘I’ll request transport for it,’ Helena said, her phone at her ear. It was good to work with Helena. She was brisk, the type who made things happen right away, instead of collecting a list of jobs to be dealt with when there was time, as some people did. ‘I wonder why he didn’t use his own car to go to the airport?’ she said as she waited for her call to go through, then walked away a few steps when it was answered, without waiting for Daníel’s reply.

Daníel thought it over, and decided that the most probable reason was that Björn hadn’t wanted it to be obvious that he had left the country. It was noticeable that he had avoided using any automatic gates at the airport terminal, so that no clear image of his face had been recorded, and in the images of him that customs had been able to extract he had always been looking downward. This could also have been a strategy to keep his face hidden.