Piet Hoffmann stared at the whiteboard on Ewert Grens’s kitchen table. Part of a police investigation that would keep expanding. The six documents hung up a bit randomly—the detective superintendent was probably not usually the one in charge of this task—would be highlighted and annotated and more documents would be hung up. Hoffmann was just about to put up the seventh—the phone company’s information about the last number dialed by a not-yet-seriously injured security guard and the person who picked up more than a thousand kilometers to the south—when their temporary and comfortable silence was broken. By a doorbell. Three identical notes.

“Are you expecting a visitor, Grens?”

From the front hall. That’s where the sound came from. Again.

“I never have visitors. Nobody rings that doorbell. That’s how I like it. And now, while I already have one visitor, someone comes to my door for the second night in a row. I’m becoming very popular.”

The detective headed in the direction of the fading bells.

But he didn’t open the door.

“Yeah?”

Instead he was content to shout through it.

“What’s this about?”

“It’s me—Mariana.”

Grens recoiled, unintentionally.

“You’ve never been here before.”

“Well then, I guess it was about time. Are you going to open the door or should I stay out here shouting at your neighbors?”

He unlocked it, and Mariana Hermansson attempted to step inside. But stopped. Her boss stood in the way.

“You never said what this was about.”

“What are you up to, Ewert?”

“I . . .”

“After ten years I finally knock on your front door and you won’t let me in?”

“I . . . Of course you can . . . What do you want?”

She pushed him a little. Enough to squeeze by him.

“Ewert—are you hiding something from me?”

He’d asked Sven to look into her and even follow her. Unsure who she really was, now that everyone around him was a suspect, and any one of them could be the person who switched sides.

“Hiding? No . . . or yes. But . . .”

He made a quick decision. Took her by the arm. Led her through the hall, into the kitchen. Toward a man she had never seen.

“Yes. I’m hiding something. Him. Because I have to.”

Hermansson stared at the man she estimated to be around forty-five, though it was difficult to say since this pen pusher had really let himself go physically, so he could be younger.

“We’re working on an investigation, as you can see. It intersects with the investigation you and I and Sven started yesterday. Which hopefully you’re here to talk about.”

She stared at the whiteboard, which looked like the beginning of a regular fact gathering in an informal preliminary investigation, then at the pen pusher, then at Grens.

“Ewert—what is this?”

“I’ll explain, if you tell me why you’re here.”

“A private investigation? And a man you need to hide?”