As expected she finds Henry Morell there, engaged in a serious conversation with Jens which stops as soon as they see her. There is no sign of Bruno, but Alex is sitting a short distance away with an ice pack clamped to his nose and his other hand cupped around his crotch. The handcuffs are gone, his shoulders are slumped, his eyes fixed on the vinyl flooring.

‘Anna, I’m so pleased you’re here,’ Morell says with exaggerated warmth. ‘I must thank you for a very timely intervention, and I must also apologise for Alexander’s behaviour. Totally unacceptable, of course.’

‘Why hasn’t he been locked up?’

The question is directed at both men, but only Jens looks away.

Morell draws her to one side.

‘Between you and me, Anna, Alexander is having a hard time at the moment. The divorce has taken its toll. He invested a lot of money and thousands of hours in the house to provide a good life for his family, and now he’s living in his parents’ basement and is only allowed to see his daughters at the weekend.’ He makes a resigned gesture, lowers his voice. ‘Alexander had problems in the past – before Joss and the girls. He spent some time in a psychiatric unit – more than once, in fact. Locking him up can act as a trigger, if you know what I mean.’

He interprets her stunned silence as assent.

‘So, this is what we’re going to do. Bruno can sleep it off in the custody suite. In about half an hour I’ll cancel Alexander’s arrest and take him home. That will give us time to interview the DJ. I realise that Alexander put you in an unpleasant situation, but I’m sure you’ve experienced worse. Plus, you sorted everything out wonderfully well. If you ask me, Alexander got exactly what he deserved, and the whole village could see that you were fully in control of the situation.’ He smiles and gives her that fatherly look that she finds so hard to resist.

‘S . . . so you want me to convince the victim, whom I’ve just dragged down here, not to press charges, even though there were hundreds of witnesses?’ She tries to keep her voice calm, but doesn’t entirely succeed.

‘No, no, I would never ask you to do that. Jens will deal with the practicalities. I just wanted to ask you not to file a charge of assaulting a police officer. Look on it as a personal favour to me – a kind of retirement present, if you like.’

She hesitates, waits for Håkan to say something, come up with one of his helpful comments. Morell gets there first.