Ewert Grens liked walking slowly through the streets of Stockholm, always had, all the way back when Anni was at his side, squeezing his hand. Right now the erratic morning traffic honked and jostled forward beside him as he sped down the steep slope of Kronoberg Park, saw his reflection in the water from Sankt Eriks Bridge, exchanged Odenplan’s mumbling for the silence of Dala Street.

Sixty-four and a half. Six months to go. Then someone would take his place in his office, make themselves at home there, open his door when someone knocked on it. Just as he’d taken the office from someone nobody remembered anymore. You exist for a time. Then you don’t. The police pension is one of the best, they say, and some of his fellow officers planned to walk out that unwieldy iron door the moment they turned sixty-one and never look back again.

To let go of everything.

Become nothing at all.

He’d decided one day that the fears that plagued him were ugly and meaningless, decided he’d had enough of it. He’d wasted enough of his life bent under the weight what had already happened. And yet despite all that, lately he’d had a hard time sleeping, even on his corduroy sofa, whose overly soft cushions usually made him feel like he was being held, and therefore allowed him to rest.

Because now here it was again. Fear. Because this was all he had. He didn’t want anything else, didn’t know anything else, didn’t even know anyone outside those walls—had never wanted to, never longed for another life.

A few minutes more down the sidewalks of Vasastan where the buildings stood side by side, tightly packed and heavy, their large windows watching him. Until he came to the door marked 74, which he’d left so many years ago, but still remembered.

That round stairwell, the uneven stairs, the elegant ceiling, the continually flowering wallpaper.

And on the third floor, the same heavy front door awaited him. But this time with scratches around the lock, completely fresh, wood chips still hanging loose and not yet darkened.

He paused there, eyes closed, breathing carefully—trying to catch those small thuds in his chest near his heart, the uneven and uneasy rhythm that reminded him of a five-year-old’s feet.

“Hello?”

A woman, blond, almost as tall as himself, somewhere between forty and fifty.

“Ewert Grens, detective superintendent at the City Police. I’m here about your break-in.”

Her eyes didn’t leave his—vigilant, almost hostile.

“Your people already talked to me about this.”

“That’s correct. But I . . .”