‘Bruno Sordi?’

‘That’s him. He kept shouting that I had to admit it.’

‘Admit what?’ Anna remembers Bruno saying the same thing to her.

‘I’ve no idea – at the time I was too busy trying not to be strangled, but thinking back I’m pretty sure it was to do with an email.’

‘An email? What kind of email?’

‘Again, I’ve no idea, but I think that’s what he said. Admit that you sent the email – something along those lines.’

Anna wonders where an email fits in.

‘Thank you for your time,’ she says. ‘One of my officers will contact you to arrange a more formal interview, but please don’t hesitate to get in touch if anything else occurs to you.’ She gives him her mobile number before ending the call.

She opens the file and glances through Kent Joakim Rylander’s criminal record one more time, then focuses on the last year of his life. He was released from prison in November 2016. Between that date and his death he is listed as a suspect in seven cases involving fraud on internet auction sites, getting people to pay for goods that don’t exist. In order to carry out that kind of crime you need a computer, a tablet, or a smartphone at the very least. One that had at some point been charged in Rylander’s battered old Saab.

She makes a note to look for IT equipment during the house search. Adds the word ‘EMAIL’ in capital letters, then enters the address of the scrapyard into Google Maps. The satellite image shows a remote location next to a lake. Three buildings in a horseshoe formation, and a smaller structure a few hundred metres away. Everywhere – along the narrow access road, all over the yard and behind the house – she sees pale and dark rectangles. When she zooms in, they turn out to be scrap vehicles. The satellite pictures are so good that she can sometimes make out tyre tracks and pools of mud. She zooms out again. The nearest village is Klippan, just under three miles away. She continues zooming out. In the opposite direction it’s over ten miles to a place called Reftinge. Something about that name rings a bell; she’s heard or read it somewhere quite recently.

She says it out loud a few times, rolls the ‘R’ to imitate a Skåne accent, but realises that she sounds ridiculous. She decides to leave it for the time being and enters her own ID number into the computer. The case comes up, the status box still shows ‘ongoing’. Shit!

She calls her solicitor.

‘Good to speak to you, Anna. I was actually going to contact you later today.’

‘Right.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Good or bad news?’

The brief silence answers her question.