They sat on her bed while the detective pulled out desk drawers and looked through various folders and photo albums, and now and then he asked them about where and how. But her childhood room led him no further. A half hour later they stood at the front door, and he thanked them, and promised again to contact them later about what he knew—which seemed to offer them some relief. They’d feared the worst when he appeared at their home, and now they had been given some hope. So as he headed to his car, he turned back and said, “Everything will turn out fine.” And he tried to sound much calmer and more confident than he actually was.

Chapter 28

The suffocating heat hounding the people of Stockholm’s inner city had turned Piet Hoffmann’s rental car into a roaring beast, which let loose the moment he sat down inside it. But starting the car and the air conditioning was not an option. Blend in. Attract no attention. Don’t stick out in any way. He adjusted his earbuds until they sounded right, and put his phone on the burning surface of the passenger seat. The tiny microphone hidden in the narrow opening between the bathroom door and its frame worked perfectly, and he opened the program whose software would translate their words if they spoke in another language. His disguise didn’t just get him closer—it got him all the way in.

“Did you see his face when I said seventy-five thousand?”

They spoke Swedish. And were probably in the larger room. But one was walking around, that’s how it sounded—hard heels against a hardwood floor.

“Yep—the bastard looked like he was gonna swallow his wallet.”

“His next break-in is gonna cost him a lot more than that.”

“That’s what these idiots never get. They . . .”

Suddenly the voices fell silent. And the footsteps ceased.

“What the hell . . .”

The leader, the one with the eyes used to being obeyed. He was the one speaking, and now he stopped. Right at the half-open bathroom door. It was easy to tell that the sound was coming straight from above. Now you could hear the door being pulled wide. The slight creak of its hinges.

“Shit . . . come in here!”

Now they see it.

The little gift he left for them on the sink basin.

“How the hell did that end up there?”

“No clue.”

“I was in here earlier, it wasn’t there.”

A hand grenade. Loaded. Camouflaged with plastic arms and plastic legs. Just like the one they put in Rasmus’s red backpack.

“That guy. Who was just here. He went to the toilet. He . . .”

“Oh fuck—Hoffmann! Hoffmann sent that asshole!”