‘Karl-Johan is a romantic,’ Elisabet says quietly. ‘He loves the thought of nature, but struggles with the practicalities. He’s never really grasped that death is a prerequisite for life.’

She pats the deer one last time, and her expression returns to its usual sharpness.

‘But you didn’t come here to talk about hunting, did you, Anna?’

‘Maybe we should go inside and sit down,’ Anna suggests.

Just as she’d suspected, the lodge turns out to be Bror Klein’s home. An open hallway with the bathroom straight ahead, kitchen and living room on the left, two closed doors on the right. The walls and ceilings are panelled with yellowed pine, and remind her of a cabin that she, Håkan and Agnes used to rent in the mountains. It even smells the same – dry wood and an open fire. The décor is spartan; apart from red deer and fallow deer antlers, she can see only one ornament, a wall hanging with the text: He who seeks shall find, and to him that knocks the door shall be opened.

Elisabet sits down at the table, and while Klein is making coffee Anna slips into the bathroom to gather her thoughts. What is she going to say? How much can she reveal?

Klein’s bathroom is as minimalist as the rest of the lodge. Toilet, bath, shower, washbasin, metal cabinet which of course she has to peep into. Toothbrush, toothpaste, a couple of bottles of tablets. One is for high blood pressure, but she doesn’t recognise the other. She googles it on her phone and discovers that it’s a mild anti-depressant. So stone-faced Klein takes happy pills – that’s unexpected. She replaces the bottles and quietly closes the cabinet. As she leaves the bathroom she can hear Klein and Elisabet talking in the kitchen. She still has time to find out a little more about the secretive Bror Klein. The door next to the bathroom probably leads down to the cellar. A faint smell of dampness is coming through the wide gap under the door.

She tries the handle – locked. She crosses the hall and opens the first door on the right. A bedroom with a neatly made single bed and a wardrobe. She steps inside; just like in the rest of the house, there are hardly any personal items, except for a book and a photograph on the bedside table.

The book is Dante’s Divine Comedy, which surprises her almost as much as the happy pills. It looks like an old edition. She opens the front cover; it was printed in the early twentieth century. There is an inscription in ornate handwriting:

To Bror from Karl-Johan, Christmas 1972.