Grens offered his hand to the young woman, shook it long and hard. He couldn’t even think about what would have happened if she hadn’t arrived. If Zofia, if Rasmus and Hugo, if . . . now he felt it again. Not the uneasiness of not understanding what he saw. This was more like the despair he sometimes still felt when he thought about Anni. To lose someone who was a part of you.

“Thank you. What you . . . It’s invaluable. Irreplaceable. I can’t find any better words.”

She nodded, almost shyly. The detective superintendent continued.

“But how could you—how did you know? How did you manage to get here, in time?”

He looked into her intelligent eyes, and she seemed almost embarrassed. He liked that a lot. Someone who wasn’t chasing after confirmation, thirsty for attention like so many others.

“I . . . don’t really know why. At the police academy, our lecturers talked a lot about gut feeling, said it can be dangerous, things can go very wrong if a police officer lets themselves be led by that. But that was what I felt, a—gut feeling. When Zaravic was released. And when I saw him, how he . . . I had already parked my car on Bergs Street and followed him. It took them a few minutes to break in with the crowbar, break down the door. That’s why I was able to get here in time.”

Grens’s inner pocket buzzed. Piet Hoffmann’s current number. The detective superintendent apologized and headed toward the kitchen and the balcony, pulled the door shut behind him. A strong wind was blowing, he hadn’t noticed before.

“Yes?”

“What the hell is going on, Grens? I called Zofia and got no answer, and I called you and you didn’t answer and . . .”

“It turned out fine.”

There are different kinds of silence in a conversation. This one was longer than the usual, and more powerful than most Grens had experienced.

“And . . . what does that mean?”

“That your wife and your children are safe—right now they’re sitting on the sofa drinking water and eating biscuits with my colleagues. And Dusko Zaravic and his associates are dead in the room next door.”

“How, Grens . . . if they’re dead, and if you were so late . . . who shot? Zofia? Was she the one . . . ?”

“A very brave police cadet. The best officers are always the ones who ignore their bosses. And this young woman, she . . . without her, things would have ended differently.”

“And without her, Paula wouldn’t be back either.”

Grens spun around. Hermansson stood behind him, had come out on the balcony without him noticing it.

“What?”

“Sorry, Ewert, I didn’t mean to disturb you—but Paula, the secret documents about Hoffmann. All the original documents were in Zaravic’s car.”

She handed him the folder.