“Are you with me, Grens? They want me to start a gang war and kick off an arms race, by using the very weapon they want to sell. And they want to do it without ever showing themselves. In case it goes wrong. So they need someone neutral, who can’t be connected to them. I’m fairly certain we’re dealing with international arms dealers, new to the Swedish market. Who want to start by selling off some of their stockpile of a machine gun that wasn’t supposed to exist and yet does. And then, once they’ve done that, take over the rest of the arms trade.”

“‘And yet does’ . . . What do you mean by that?”

“I’ve got one in the trunk of my car. Parked about a block away.”

Ewert Grens randomly pulled a couple of copies out of the large stack sitting in the middle of his kitchen table.

“International arms dealers who know who you are, what you’ve done, and what you’re capable of? Who have penetrated my police station?”

“As deep as it goes.”

Ewert Grens stood up. No longer thirsty for water or coffee. Just restless. Like always, when he needed to think.

A dirty cop. Someone who got into the safe in the investigative unit and stole the folder and the envelope that described Piet Hoffmann’s work as an infiltrator. Just like a dirty cop broke into the archive in the basement and stole Zana Lilaj’s life.

Two corrupt colleagues at the same time?

Or the same?

He tried the hall. Long and straight. Paced back and forth several times. It didn’t help. He wandered in and out of his bedroom, in and out of his office, in and out of the library. That didn’t help either. But on the balcony. Out there he could relax. With his view over the rooftops of Stockholm. Out there he could get ahold for just a moment of that buzzing, spinning.

Dejan Pejović. Branko Stojanović.

Within hours of each other, just a few kilometers apart, they ended up dead on their backs in the dawn light. Executed. Identical wounds and identical ammunition. Both associated with notorious arms dealers.

There had to be a connection.

But were they connected to this?

To Piet Hoffmann?

Threats against the Hoffmann family, which in turn were supposed to create an opening for an international arms dealer?

It might be a coincidence. That happens.

That’s what Erik Wilson, Grens’s boss and Hoffmann’s former handler, had said over a piece of apple cake.

But I’m a police officer, so I don’t really believe in coincidences—do you, Ewert?

Ewert Grens breathed in the lukewarm air, leaned far out over the balcony’s low railing, and his chest tightened when he realized how easy it would be to fall. Against the asphalt. Forever.

No.