‘Do we know he exited via the basement?’ Karl asks as they pass the third floor.

‘No, but it seems like the only possibility. Though frankly it doesn’t really matter which door he slunk out through. He has at least an hour’s head start, and we have no idea where he’s going.’

Five floors now. Short sentences.

‘We know who he is,’ Karl says. ‘The public knows who he is. He won’t get far. Are the technicians here yet?’

Smeed makes no reply. None is needed.

Gundar Freske’s front door is wide open and one of Sören Larsen’s boys is crouched over a big black carrying case on the landing outside. Karl Björken considers the blue protective overalls and plastic booties.

‘Kind of overkill, don’t you think?’ he says quietly to Smeed after they pass him. ‘Don’t we have enough on this guy already?’

Just then, Sören Larsen appears in the kitchen doorway and Karl catches himself thinking about the pencil marks his parents made on the inside of the pantry door; one for each child and year. Sören Larsen’s marks must have stopped at the height he himself reached in middle school.

‘Found anything?’ Smeed asks.

‘Well, it’s pretty clear the guy’s only disabled when the police come to visit. The serial number tells us that was signed out by Ethel Freske six years ago,’ he says with a nod to the wheelchair.

‘Doesn’t anyone keep track of anything anymore?’ Smeed snaps. ‘First skeleton keys go unreturned and now wheelchairs, too. Whatever happened to having functional routines?’

‘Can I ask how many outdated mobile phones you’ve returned to the Police Authority, out of interest?’ Larsen retorts calmly. ‘And, speaking of wh—’

‘Don’t tell me you found his phone?’

‘No. He doesn’t have a contract, so if he owns a phone, it’s a pay-as-you-go one. You know that, Jounas.’

Smeed says nothing. He does know that. They checked with all the operators when they swabbed him.

‘The question is who he would even call,’ Björken puts in. ‘He doesn’t seem very sociable. Was he in contact with anyone at all after his mother died?’

‘Well, that’s for you people to find out,’ Sören Larsen says. ‘But I can tell you he did own a computer. An old LG from God knows when. It’s in the bedroom.’

‘Are you serious? Have you had time to have a look at it?’

‘Only briefly. He hasn’t deleted his emails, but his inbox seems a sad mix of advertisements and spam. Oh, and a handful of emails from New Builds. You can have a look at them right now if you want, before we take it to the lab.’

‘Nothing else?’