How does Rylander fit in? Why did he turn up in Nedanås for the homecoming party? Where did he get Simon Vidje’s music from, and why did he ask for it to be played when Caia Bianca was on the dance floor? Where is his phone, why wasn’t he wearing his shoes, and most important of all: who killed him? Even though she doesn’t have anything specific on which to base her hypothesis, she is convinced that Rylander’s death was neither suicide nor an accident. There is something missing, something that will tie everything together. Something that she is going to do her utmost to find out.

Tiredness begins to take over. She thinks back to what Mats said earlier: Carina was shivering, her lips were blue. How could he know that? Maybe his sister told him, but it seems unlikely. Mats and Marie seem to be anything but close.

She slowly drifts away to the no man’s land between sleep and wakefulness. Just before she drops off, she thinks she hears the sound of a creaking plank up in the chapel.

Chapter 35

35

Autumn 2017

Anna is in her office at seven o’clock the following morning. Agnes is going to ride her Vespa to the train station, so they haven’t even seen each other, let alone tried to talk things over.

Grönwall, or possibly a member of her own team, has printed out the information from the criminal records database on Rylander, including a photograph, and put everything in a file on her desk. She appreciates the efficiency, but decides it’s probably a good idea to lock her door from now on. The photo is eight years old and he’s wearing ordinary glasses, but there is no doubt that the body in the tree and Kent Joakim Rylander are one and the same person.

She leafs through the file. Rylander started with petty theft and minor drugs offences in his late teens, then advanced to car theft, burglary and various degrees of receiving stolen goods. A slightly more serious narcotics crime put him behind bars for a few years. As soon as he came out, the merry-go-round began again. He drifted from place to place in southern and central Sweden, changing his address virtually every year. Gradually he moved from narcotics into fraud and document forgery, crimes that carry shorter prison sentences but require greater skill, which suggests that Rylander wasn’t stupid. Like so many other criminals, he used many different names. He called himself Kenta, Kekke, Jocke and similar variations on his two first names. He also changed his surname no fewer than three times before settling on Rylander.