On Monday, October 23, at 16:51, Det. Grens proceeded to Dala Street 74.

He’d sat beside her, trying to make out what she was saying in her sleep. Several times he almost patted her cheek, but always stopped himself, and readjusted the raincoat draped over her. He knew what he had to do, what he’d learned to do when he trained at FLETC, a U.S. military base in southern Georgia. He and Erik Wilson went there to learn everything there was to know about the FBI witness protection program. Basically it was the opposite of how the Swedish police operated, their clumsy attempts at hiding former gang members from Stockholm’s concrete suburbs in isolated and deserted summer camps deep in the Swedish forests. Two days. That’s how long these potential witnesses usually lasted. Out there they had nothing to do with their time besides panic. The darkness and silence combined with their fear of death at the hands of their former gang broke them down.

The sign on the apartment door indicated that it belongs to the Lilaj family. The apartment, which consists of five rooms and a kitchen, was searched. The lights were turned on in every room.

The American Witness Protection Program. Grens had copied it. Even before the crime scene investigation was completed, he moved the girl from his office to a safe house that was actually worthy of the name.

The man was found in the hall, in a sitting position in a chair located between the hat and shoe racks. The woman was in a chair in the kitchen, near the kitchen table. The older sister was found lying on her side on a bed in bedroom A. The brother was sitting in a desk chair in bedroom B.

A girl who couldn’t yet understand that her family was gone and would never come back, and she wasn’t even allowed to bring a single personal item from her former life, the life that had been her entire universe. Nothing. He decided she was going to keep living.

Survive.

So her past would never become her future.

Mirza Lilaj, Diellza Lilaj, Eliot Lilaj, and Julia Lilaj were taken to Söder Hospital. Resuscitation attempts yielded no results. Declared dead at 18:23.

The child in his arms again, he headed out to go shopping in the neighborhood he lived in but never had visited. Children’s clothing stores. Toy shops. The homicide department suddenly approved the expenses though they had neither been budgeted nor given formal cost centers. New dresses. New shoes. New hairband. And it made her so happy. Especially the two new dolls and the red baby carriage. As if they were presents.

The victims were placed in cold storage awaiting transport to Forensic Medicine in Solna.

Leave nothing that can be traced back.

The very last thing he pulled out of the suitcase, which a young police officer had thoughtfully packed in her apartment, was a photograph, taken in a studio.