The man had come at her diagonally from behind; the only thing she’d had time to register was that she had been pushed over by a large, heavy body and then, the sound of a bottle breaking. Before she could wrap her head around what was happening, the man had got back up and run away. She couldn’t say in which direction he went, just that her neighbours Olaf and Maria Koorte, who had just exited the building and interrupted the attack, had helped both her and the puppy, which had fled in terror into the thorny shrubbery.

‘And her neighbours just happened to come out just then, that early in the morning. Half past five, who the fuck leaves their house at that hour?’

Evald Johannisen is tilting his chair back at a dangerous angle. He has hooked his arms over the back of the chair so they can dangle free.

Just a bit more and you’ll break your neck against the radiator.

‘They were going out for a run,’ Karl Björken replies patiently. ‘The same route Anita Kollbar used to run, in case you want to know.’

‘So a couple of geniuses, in other words.’

‘They figured it was safe because they were going together. Either way, they chose to stay and help Filippa while the perpetrator fled the scene.’

‘Maybe it would have been better if wifey had stayed while the man ran after that swine,’ Johannisen grumbles.

This time, no one argues. Even though the official advice to the public is to do exactly what the Koortes did, several other people around the table were clearly thinking the same thing.

‘Be that as it may, this means we finally have a description. The victim didn’t see anything; the perpetrator attacked from behind as usual. But her neighbours saw him, and what they have told us so far tracks with what little we have from previous victims. Both Olaf and Maria Koorte had a clear view of the guy, and they will be sitting down with the sketch artist separately. They might be there right now, as a matter of fact.’

There’s a pause. A tense, collective silence as the realisation sinks in: We’re going to catch the bastard.

‘I guess we keep our fingers crossed their pictures match up. We know how close to reality those sketches usually are,’ Johannisen says. ‘All right, so, what does the son of a bitch look like?’

Everyone notes that despite his cynical assessment, not even Evald Johannisen is able to keep the anticipation out of his voice. No one says it out loud; Johannisen is the kind of man whose self-image mustn’t be punctured.