At the bottom of the stairs is a pine-clad hobby room. Two leather sofas with a patina acquired over several decades, a glass coffee table with a matching drinks trolley, and of course the essential slightly-too-large flatscreen TV on the wall. She follows Eva-Britt’s directions, pulls aside a bead curtain and finds herself in a narrow hallway. There is a faint smell of mould, combined with disinfectant. The bathroom is the first door on the right. The walls are tiled from floor to ceiling in green, and there is a shower cubicle in one corner. She can just see a bottle of blue shower gel through the glass, which is still wet. The cabinet contains foot cream, a pack of out-of-date ibuprofen, an open packet of disposable razors, and a can of cheap shaving foam. She is slightly embarrassed by her nosiness, but tells herself that it’s one of the qualities that makes her a good police officer. That and the ability to remain sceptical, and yet she is becoming increasingly convinced that Elisabet Vidje has a point: Morell, possibly with the help of his good friend Bengt Andersson, is trying to steer her in a certain direction. Get her to accept their version of Simon’s death as the truth. There could be many reasons for this. The wounds from the tragedy have clearly not fully healed, and maybe Morell doesn’t want them opened up again, either for the good of the community or the four survivors. At the same time, Anna can’t ignore Elisabet’s criticism of the investigation, and her suspicions that Morell has clung to his job for all these years to make sure that the truth about what really happened to Simon never comes out.

She is about to go back upstairs via the hobby room when she sees that the door opposite the bathroom is slightly ajar. By the light from the hallway she catches a glimpse of something that could be a display cabinet, and she can’t resist taking a peek. The room is spacious, and has stained-glass windows just below the ceiling. She is able to make out a dozen or so cardboard boxes piled on top of one another. Beyond them is a desk with a stereo system that must be at least thirty years old, including a record player and double cassette deck. Right at the back she sees a messily made bed. The air smells of fitted carpet and Kouros, which immediately transports her back to a peer-group party towards the end of high school. Fumbling hands, the taste of Hubba Bubba bubblegum, ‘Take My Breath Away’ on the record player.

She is sure of two things before she switches on the light. One: this was Alex Morell’s room when he was a boy, and two: he is living here now.