After hanging up, she just sits for a while, staring out at the deserted office landscape. Thinks about the questions she has never asked. About illness and death, about Grandma, about Aunt Pam. She didn’t say anything about the hard, elusive thing she felt in the shower, or about the anxious wait for the results of her mammography, or her increasingly firm conviction that something’s wrong. Didn’t mention the tiredness that makes her choose to lock herself in the Bunker on a sunny Sunday rather than face the world. Didn’t say a word about the fear simmering inside her, doesn’t want to spread it to others. Not after everything that has happened in the past six months. Not after what happened then, eleven years ago.

Her mother has worried enough.

Then she forces her thoughts back to what she discovered just before her phone rang. Opens a few more documents, then her browser. Skims, finds something.

She looks up at a sound from the hallway. The doorway to the open-plan office fills with the contour of a tall, broad-shouldered figure.

‘Hiya, Eiken,’ Karl Björken says and takes a seat two desks down. ‘What are you doing here on a sunny Sunday?’

‘That’s what my mother wants to know. I just felt I needed to read up on the case. The things that happened last autumn, before I joined the team.’

‘Like what?’

Karen watches Karl turn on his computer, check a few Post-it notes someone has stuck to his phone and sniff a half-eaten sandwich from two days ago before binning it.

‘How sure are you there’s no connection between the victims and the perpetrator?’ she says. ‘That he’s choosing at random, I mean?’

‘Relatively. But entirely sure . . . ? How the fuck are we supposed to know for sure, when none of the women saw him?’

‘And between the victims? Could there be something we missed?’

‘That’s a really stupid question, no offence.’

‘Fine, then, what about this: how thoroughly did you look? Sandrine and Loa both lived in Moerbeck, for instance.’

Karl leans back with a yawn.

‘Well, Loa’s dead, but I’ve talked to Sandrine several times. She’s absolutely certain she has never met or even seen Loa Marklund.’

‘Isn’t that a bit weird, though, considering that they lived in the same area?’

‘We’re talking about Moerbeck, not Langevik. Thousands of residents and a hell of a turnover, too. Besides, it’s not exactly a neighbourly place.’

‘Yeah, I know, but I looked up Anita Kollbar.’

‘What? You talked to her again?’

‘No, but I was actually thinking about going over there tomorrow. Unless you mind,’ she adds, with Smeed’s words ringing in her ears. And try to remember that this time you’re working under Björken.

‘May I ask why?’

‘I know it’s a long shot, but I actually took a closer look at where she works.’