It’s obvious that she’s been crying, but at the moment she seems composed. She doesn’t look angry or even contemptuous, just sad. Anna opens the door and stands there, unable to move.

‘Did you do it, Mum?’ Agnes asks. ‘Did you kill Dad?’

Anna takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.

‘No,’ she says, gently pushing Håkan right to the back of her mind. ‘No, I didn’t.’

*

They don’t talk much in the car. Agnes sits with Milo on her knee, and as always he has picked up on her mood and does his best to cheer her up, burrowing his head beneath her chin, whimpering and licking her throat and cheeks. Agnes doesn’t push him away; instead, she wraps her arms around him and hugs him so tightly and for so long that eventually he gets fed up and tries to wriggle free. When they arrive home, she heads straight for her room. Anna hears the opening chords of Simon Vidje’s song before Agnes plugs in her headphones.

Klein has followed them to Tabor with the Vespa on the back of his truck. He unloads the moped without a word, and parks it by the house.

‘Thank you,’ Anna says, but receives only a curt nod in response.

‘I . . .’ She hesitates. ‘I’ve chucked Henry Morell out of the police station.’ She’s not sure why she feels the need to tell him this. Maybe she doesn’t want him to go just yet, leaving her alone with Agnes.

‘Right.’ Klein’s voice is rough, but there is a glint in his eyes.

‘He tried to interfere in my investigation. Tried to stop me taking a fresh look at Simon’s death.’

Klein nods thoughtfully. ‘That was brave of you. Brave but stupid.’

His words annoy her. ‘Why have you kept Karl-Jo’s sports car?’ she asks, nodding in the direction of the outbuilding. ‘The summer car – wasn’t that what he called it?’

Klein gives a slight twitch.

‘He wanted to restore it,’ he mumbles. ‘I even helped him to make a start, but that got in the way.’ He jerks his head towards the upper floor of Tabor.

‘The mural?’

‘It became an obsession, took up virtually every waking hour. He was never satisfied, he kept on redoing it, over and over again. Painted fresh layers on top of the old ones. If you ask me, it was that painting that made him blind, not grief. If it had been up to me we’d have burned down both Tabor and the mural a long time ago. Nothing good comes from an obsession, not Karl-Johan’s . . .’ he pauses, ‘or anyone else’s, for that matter.’

It takes a moment for Anna to realise that he means her.

Chapter 48

48

Autumn 2017