‘I spoke to her daughter on the phone,’ Call-me goes on. ‘It was an overdose. Tanya had just been discharged from a rehab centre. Apparently, she was in and out all the time; she’d had problems with drug addiction for many years, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected. The daughter wanted her mother’s letter from Elisabet anyway, so I sent it on to her. This whole story is just so tragic.’

*

As soon as Anna unlocks and opens her office door, she can feel that something is wrong. She is certain she pushed her chair all the way in, so that the seat was right underneath her desk. Now it’s a few inches short. The same applies to the papers on the desk. Everything is where she left it – but not quite. She checks the bottom drawer where she keeps Simon Vidje’s case file. It is still locked. She opens it with her key; the file is still there, and a quick flick through tells her that nothing is missing. She thinks for a moment, then looks in the wastepaper basket. It has been emptied, which means the cleaner has a key to her office, so it’s possible that he or she moved the papers. And yet she isn’t completely convinced. She picks up her coffee mug and heads for the kitchen. Morell’s office door is open, and he is absorbed in something on his screen.

‘Hi, Henry.’

‘Hi, Anna.’

She continues to the kitchen and pours herself a coffee, even though she doesn’t really want one. Morell takes the bait, just as she’d hoped, and appears in the doorway after only a few seconds.

‘So, how did it go yesterday? Did you find anything at Rylander’s place?’

She shrugs, pretends she isn’t studying him closely. ‘We’ve got a few things to work on.’

‘Forgive my curiosity, Anna. We haven’t had a murder in Nedanås for many years. Has the cause of death been established?’

‘Not yet.’

She tries to compare his body language and expression with his tone and the words coming out of his mouth. Does he know who Joe Rylander really is? And if so, does he know about the blackmail message, and the fact that she has retrieved Simon Vidje’s file from the archive? If he does, it means that there’s a leak. Her money is on the crown prince, Jens Friberg.

There is nothing suspicious about Morell. No tiny shift in his expression, no tics or unconscious grimaces to suggest that he might be hiding something. Instead, he simply gives her the fatherly smile that she finds so hard to resist as he scratches his beard.

*