Nils Krantz, the forensic technician, sounded like everyone else Ewert Grens had ever woken up in the night. Confused, slow. It took him a minute to grab the phone, get it right side up, catch his breath. While Krantz was doing that, Grens considered the fact that they were the same age. He wondered if Krantz knew you could stay on nowadays for a couple more years. Or if he even wanted to. Maybe he was counting the days that couldn’t end soon enough. Strange—they’d known each other well as colleagues for many years. And yet not at all.

“Yes. I’m here. What do you want?”

“The blood sample. From the window in Zaravic’s apartment.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to widen the search.”

Krantz fumbled with the phone again. It sounded like he dropped it, looked for it. Found it.

“I widened it as far as I could. With the help of my contact at NFC, I ran it against all four DNA banks. Trace samples, open case files, general registry, and the elimination database from our personnel. I even searched—above and beyond your request, Ewert—quite a few of the other EU databases as well. Without success.”

“And now I want you to search in one more.”

“There aren’t any.”

“The police academy. I want you to compare the samples they take from students during their DNA tracking class.”

“That’s only used as a teaching exercise, it’s not an official database.”

“No—but it exists. And compare our sample to all of theirs. Especially those taken in the last three years. And I want you to do it now, Nils. Immediately.”

A long, deep sigh straight into the phone.

“That means I’ll have to wake up other people who are sound asleep.”

“Welcome to my world, Nils.”

Ewert Grens, during the conversation, had driven from Svea Road toward Gärdet. It wasn’t far, just a few kilometers, with almost no traffic at all. When he arrived at the right address on the right street and turned his eyes to the top floor, one window was lit despite the late hour. She was awake.

Chapter 56

Neither of them spoke for a long time. They were standing next to each other inside an illuminated mountain room, breathing dry air, surrounded by the smell of cellar and gun oil. It was that real surreal moment, again. Because what they were looking at didn’t exist.

“Infiltrator.”

When Piet Hoffmann finally began to speak, and Latifi allowed himself to listen, Hoffmann had to go back in order to go forward.

“That’s what I was.”

“Infiltrator?”

“Yes.”

Latifi rocked on the soles of his feet while his eyes drowned in the pallets of thousands of unused machine guns. He seemed to consider it, then nodded.

“Then I think I get it. Get you.”