‘The two of them turned up on a motorbike, just after one in the morning,’ the man on the other end says. ‘A man and a woman. I could see straight away that there was a problem. The guy was drunk. He was aggressive towards the woman – I think he actually hit her once, so I rang the direct line to Reftinge police station. They filled up the bike, and when the guy came in to pay, he tried to steal a cigarette lighter – just a cheap one from the display by the till. I asked him for the money and he started mouthing off. He faced up to me and started knocking things over, as if he wanted a fight. The woman tried to calm him down, but he wouldn’t listen. The police arrived and took him away.’

‘And the woman?’

‘I felt sorry for her. I gave her a lift to catch the night bus to Klippan; it was due to leave at two. She seemed like a nice girl who’d ended up in the wrong company.’

*

Anna buys an energy drink and knocks it back standing by the car. She soon feels more lively and in a better mood. The wind coming off the plain nips her cheeks and blows new life into her mind and body. She uses the rest of the journey to shake off the trip to Stockholm by focusing on Joakim ‘Joe’ Rylander. Neither he nor his girlfriend Tanya Savic were at the quarry when Simon Vidje died, at least according to the four witnesses, yet in his email Rylander hints that he knows something about Simon’s death and wants to be paid for his silence. Which is probably why he was murdered.

So, what was it that Rylander knew? The email was sent to all four friends, so it must be something that touched each of them. Or was it just a trick, a way of putting extra pressure on the person – or persons – who really did have something to hide? Another question: how did Rylander get hold of the cassette tape with Simon’s recording? The entire studio, containing all of Simon’s possessions, burned to the ground the evening after his death. Was Rylander involved in the fire, or did he acquire the tape some other way?

When she arrives home the house is empty and there is no sign of Agnes’s Vespa. Her first impulse is to call her and demand to know where she is, but instead she sends a text asking what she’d like for dinner. She sits there holding her phone for a minute or so, but there is no reply.