Her voice seems to fade away again, as though someone were playing with the volume control.

Karen can sense Karl leaning forward slightly, hears the sound of him taking notes.

‘Did you see anyone on the street?’

‘No. But I probably didn’t look. I remember thinking that it was completely quiet. I like it when . . . liked it when . . . the stillness . . .’

Seeing Anita Kollbar’s face transform as the significance of her words sink in is almost physically painful. As though she were ashamed, she buries her face in the pillow and clutches the corner of it. But she doesn’t make a sound.

‘Do you feel up to this?’ Karen asks after a while. ‘We can stop here and come back another time.’

She can hear Karl inhale and hold his breath while he waits for the answer. Then Anita Kollbar turns back to Karen. Dry-eyed, as though she has no tears left to shed. And there’s a flash of something other than grief there. Resolve.

‘No, let’s do it now,’ she says.

‘OK. Can you tell us what route you took? And again, if you saw or noticed anything.’

‘I walked at first, don’t like running on asphalt. Went down Anurgate to the intersection by Lemdalskroken. There’s a field there and a footpath down to the lake. I jogged pretty slowly across the field at first, I’m pretty out of shape, so . . .’

That volume control again. Karen waits patiently.

‘I saw a hare, I remember that. In the field. But no people . . . And then I got to the lake path and turned right towards the benches they have there . . .’

Karen can picture it. The path around Lindby Lake had been a regular haunt during bright summer evenings for anyone who attended Östra Upper Secondary. Which Arve, her first real boyfriend, did. Arve, who had preferred to take Karen down to one of the sloping lawns by the lake rather than exposing her to his parents’ critically watchful eyes back home.

There, on a blanket, they’d eaten rye rolls filled with soft sheep’s cheese and drunk the wine Arve had pilfered from his parents’ well-stocked basement. Had thrown crumbs to grebes and tufted ducks, only to conclude the mallards were somehow always first in line.

Arve Ling. She hasn’t thought about him in years. Now he appears before her inner eye, tall and gangly with that adorable crooked front tooth. She sees herself, young, in love, full of anticipation. A blanket on a lawn by Lindby Lake, a whole lifetime ago.

Back in the present, she listens to Anita Kollbar’s account of that fateful run with mounting unease. Knowing they’re just a few hundred feet from where the attack took place.

‘I remember I was happy because it felt so easy. Running, I mean. The air felt so good that early in the morning . . .’

‘And you still hadn’t noticed anything unusual or anything that made you react? Anything—’