He pulled out his cock and pissed straight into the bushes in an impressively high arc, squeezing his eyes tight shut. It worked, oddly enough.

He was Alex Morell, sports star and future Olympic medallist, and no one was going to walk all over him. Not fucking Joe with his sarcastic smile and his wandering hands, or his toffee-nosed sister who didn’t know how to pick a winner. And no other fucker either. Joe had moved his motorbike away from the shore and put it next to Simon’s bicycle. Alex stopped in mid-flow, took a couple of steps to the side, then pissed all over the tank and the handlebars.

There you go, you fucker, he thought contentedly, before directing the last spurt at Simon’s bicycle.

Suddenly he heard agitated voices from above. He tucked his cock away and zipped up his jeans. The voices were getting louder. Someone was shouting his name. He set off up the path, clenching his fists. With every step it was as if the sense of powerlessness began to ease. Step by step, bit by bit, until all that remained was burning, white-hot rage.

Chapter 23

23

Autumn 2017

Call-me-Lasse’s Passat arrives in the yard at exactly three o’clock. His timing is so precise that Anna suspects he’s been parked up around the bend, waiting for the right moment. Erik jumps out and chivalrously holds the back door open for Agnes, while Anna climbs into the front passenger seat.

Call-me is as pleasant as always. He looks nice, he has a good job, and a son who obviously gets on well with Agnes, yet after a little while Anna realises she is thinking about Alexander Morell and what Göran told her. The group photograph comes into her mind again: Simon Vidje, Alex Morell, Marie Andersson, Bruno Sordi – and Carina Pedersen, Alex’s blonde and slightly too pretty girlfriend, whom he didn’t marry. She wonders why, and at the same time she feels pleased, which is weird to say the least. Carina is the only one of the four surviving friends that she hasn’t met. Not that it matters; Anna isn’t carrying out any kind of investigation.

Of course you’re not, Håkan says with a laugh. Shall we have a chat about whether Santa Claus exists as well?

She doesn’t answer him, partly because he has a point, and partly because he’s bound to answer back. But mainly because he’s dead.

They take the four hairpin bends heading down the hill; by now she feels a lot more comfortable with the terrain. On the third bend they meet a white Glarea pickup truck, exactly like the one she almost hit the other evening; as before, the driver is partly on the wrong side of the road, and Call-me has to swerve. She hears him swear quietly through gritted teeth.